Antigone
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- First published
- 1888
- Pages
- 51
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Antigone (1912) is a public domain work.
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About this book
When the brothers Eteocles and Polynices kill each other in the fight for Thebes, the new king Creon honors one with burial and leaves the other to rot as a traitor, forbidding anyone to touch the body. Their sister Antigone refuses to obey. She buries her brother in defiance of the law, insisting that the unwritten commands of the gods outrank any edict of the state. Creon's pride will not bend, and the collision destroys them both, along with nearly everyone he loves. Written around 441 BCE, this is Sophocles' searching study of conscience against authority and family duty against civic order, a conflict that has kept the play alive for two and a half thousand years.
From the opening pages
Antigone and Ismene before the Palace gates.
Ismene, sister of my blood and heart, See’st thou how Zeus would in our lives fulfil The weird of Oedipus, a world of woes! For what of pain, affliction, outrage, shame, Is lacking in our fortunes, thine and mine? And now this proclamation of today Made by our Captain-General to the State, What can its purport be? Didst hear and heed, Or art thou deaf when friends are banned as foes?
To me, Antigone, no word of friends Has come, or glad or grievous, since we twain Were reft of our two brethren in one day By double fratricide; and since i’ the night Our Argive leaguers fled, no later news Has reached me, to inspirit or deject.
I knew ’twas so, and therefore summoned thee Beyond the gates to breathe it in thine ear.
What is it? Some dark secret stirs thy breast.
What but the thought of our two brothers dead, The one by Creon graced with funeral rites, The other disappointed? Eteocles He hath consigned to earth (as fame reports) With obsequies that use and wont ordain, So gracing him among the dead below. But Polyneices, a dishonoured corse, (So by report the royal edict runs) No man may bury him or make lament— Must leave him tombless and unwept, a feast For kites to scent afar and swoop upon. Such is the edict (if report speak true) Of Creon, our most noble Creon, aimed At thee and me, aye me too; and anon He will be here to promulgate, for such As have not heard, his mandate; ’tis in sooth No passing humour, for the edict says Whoe’er transgresses shall be stoned to death. So stands it with us; now ’tis thine to show If thou art worthy of thy blood or base.
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