"هر مرگ دریچه ی تازه ایست که به روی تباهی بسته میشود.
هر مرگ دروغ، زشتی و فحشاء را پایان میبخشد.
و آنگاه دریچه ای تازه باز خواهد شد.
به این نور تن سپاریم، به این نور، به این نور."

J'ai du attendre jusqu'à fin du mois pour que je puisse trouver le livre le plus beau de ce mois d'avril.
Antigone de Jean Anouilh est tellement beau, tellement émouvant, que je ne peux rien dire, j'ai pas de mots pour en parler. J'ai pleuré, ça je peux le dire, je dois le dire. Mais plus que ça, non, c'est impossible. Il faut le lire pour comprendre.

Shes a strong

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS -
WE LIVE IN TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS.
1960's song.

If Sophocles' version of this is the best, Anouilh's is the one that's most like we all are INSIDE.

When I was 16, a callow youth, I thought Anouilh's heroine just couldn't compromise. I thought, how dumb! Creon was right to imprison her… But later in life, when my personal shibboleths were challenged by my seniors I wouldn't budge.

How come?

Well, our personal experiences in an amoral world can force our ethical hand, and then we create personal principles. That’s the change that youth endures. We must FIND ourselves.

And when we do, sometimes it’s: My way or the highway!

Not all our moral choices come from upbringing, schooling, or culture. Some are created OURSELVES by our personal idiosyncrasies and histories.

A traumatic childhood event can begin the personal conditioning process. So can parental abuse or sibling rivalry. Or, a sudden, earth-shaking shock. We are all different because of our private reactions as well as our parental conditioning. And especially today, because we are freer to choose.


But are we luckier? Would Antigone be luckier today? No, because the law is the law, and Creon's law is the Law in Athens. As it is here now.

Our freedom becomes a thorn in our side in the end with the endless conditions imposed on it. So we choose sides. And we naturally go for the most personally satisfying side.

The other side chooses practical Necessity. Same thing: My way or the highway!

But come, says the Law as the Lord says to Isaiah - let us reason together...

YES. Let us Reason! For we can indeed lead with our heart - BUT WE MUST FOLLOW WITH OUR HEAD. Exactly as Creon says to Antigone…

Like Antigone, and like all kids when faced with their seniors' ultimatums, reasoning is PASSIONATE. For Creon, and us adults, reasoning is HUMAN. It bends. As WE must bend, though not to the extent of committing a Wrong action. And Reason and our Heart TOGETHER will lead us to the Golden Mean.

We must charitably bend. And that will Hurt.

But you know, adults see kids as unreasonable, and kids sometimes see adults as middle-class moral mediocrities. The impasse isn't going to go away without the Balm of Time.

Unfortunately neither Creon or Antigone HAS time! And, really, neither do we.

It’s DOWN TO THE CRUNCH time! Time, as Auden says, to face the music:

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

And we must face that blaring music over, and over again - without sacrificing our personal values. Our personal Cross will turn it to Harmony. And one day its “music will untune the sky.” On that day we will see our life as it really is.

And we can finally Face the Face of truth. For it is Good...

Anouilh's characters are as real as we are.

And his play isn't about compromise, as I thought at 16.

It's about living a real life among real people, WIDE AWAKE - with ALL our differences intact!

Antigone, sans doute un des personnages féminins les plus remarquables de l’histoire de la littérature.

Vous me dégoûtez tous avec votre bonheur ! Avec votre vie qu’il faut aimer coûte que coûte. On dirait des chiens qui lèchent tout ce qu’ils trouvent. Et cette petite chance pour tous les jours, si on n’est pas trop exigeant. Moi, je veux tout, tout de suite, — et que ce soit entier, — ou alors je refuse ! Je ne veux pas être modeste, moi, et me contenter d’un petit morceau si j’ai été bien sage. Je veux être sûre de tout aujourd’hui et que cela soit aussi beau que quand j’étais petite — ou mourir. (94-95)

Picked this up at 4am on a whim
Had to finish it as soon as i woke up today !

Here, the play by Sophocles is transfered to our time, with its classical themes as resonsability and pragmatism, justice, and - typical Anouilh - the absurdity of life. Creon has a more human face than in the ancient Greek play.

[ We are still looking for 2 Gardes (male) and Le Page (boy) for the French edition. If you’re a francophone or a francophile and interested in recording a few lines, or if you know someone who would be interested, please let me know et tout sera réglé :) ]

————————————

« C’est laid un homme qui a peur ! »


If you've already read this fantastic play and wanna re-read it, it might be a great opportunity to hear it -while reading. It is now possible to listen to this play, read by a bunch of native English speakers, here on LARA. The translation is available in French -if you're also interested in French! Just hover the mouse over each word/sentence, et voilà!



P.S.
There's also the French Edition of Antigone going on here , but as you can see/hear it's not completely done yet. We still need some more volunteers for some roles. You can read more about it here on Manny's review.

n  "You all disgust me, with your happiness! With your life that you have to love, at all costs. You're like dogs that lick everything they see. Looking every day for that little chance at happiness, if you don't ask for too much... I want everything, here and now, whole and complete – or else I want nothing! It's not enough to be modest and content myself with a few crumbs if I've been very good. I want to be sure of everything, today, everything as precious and beautiful and perfect as when I was young – or else I want to die."n

I am all of a sudden fascinated with theater during the occupation of France (thanks Cathy!).

Last night I read Antigone and there are a lot of things to explore in this play, but one thing that's really interesting to me is that it was written during the occupation and there is all this mythology surrounding it. There are accepted fables, that this is an anti-occupation play -- a play that was written slyly enough that it got past the German censors even though it had an anti-occupation message.

The truth is a lot more complicated. Apparently right after the occupation ended revisionist stories started flying around, claiming that all of the French writers/playwrights (and audience members)... had been anti-occupation (heroes). But it wasn't quite like that. A lot of writers, and a whole lot of people (among those who could), went along with the occupational forces, and along with their lives, and a lot of playwrights were taking advantage of theater culture during the occupation and just trying to make a buck.

So it is not necessarily true that Anouilh was anti-occupation. (I am still doing some research into his politics and motivations. Hard to get access to some of the more thoroughly researched academic materials.) What I was able to find out was that just about anyone who saw the play at the time of the occupation seemed to see it as a play that supported their particular positions (and yet, perhaps, also as a play that brought their positions into question?) It is certainly true that the occupation was on Anouilh's mind when he wrote Antigone. This quote made sense to me.

“If Anouilh’s Antigone comes closer to the universality of the greeks than do most other modern re-creations of myths, it is not only because of the inherent expressiveness of the myth and the author’s ability to see below the rationalized surface of the story. In addition to these important factors, we should remember that Antigone was written and produced during the Occupation. Even if we do not believe Anouilh intended it as a thrust at the occupiers and at Vichy, we must still recognize that he could rely on a heightened sensitivity in his audience, and a feeling of a collective religious kind of experience before a spectacle depicting the struggle for individual liberty and showing the physically vanquished as essentially free.

from “The World of Jean Anouilh" By Leonard Cabell Pronko

In any case, it's a disturbing play. Perhaps even more disturbing than the Greek tragedy, because of the heightened calmness, the perfectly reasonable discussions about terribly, frighteningly unreasonable things.

It's hard for me to imagine this play in production. It is a lot of talk, and not much of anything else. I think it comes very close to prose and I wonder if that is customary for the time/tradition he is writing in, or if it is unusual.

I don't feel comfortable rating this one. I guess I don't have to give things stars? Hmmmm.

read it to prepare for school and honestly it's pretty good

Antigone: Sophocles versus Anouilh

Since I am about to see a Dutch adaptation of Anouilh's version of Antigone, I decided to read both plays beforehand (Anouilh in French, Sophocles in English). Perhaps it is advisable to read Sophocles first (which I did not do), for it is clearly the more superficial piece of the two. The story is clear-cut, the predicaments of the characters are all there, but the story misses psychological depth: Anouilh's characters are much more rounded than Sophocles'. We get to know much of Antigone's inner world by the talks she has with her nurse, her sister, her fiancé and above all with her uncle Creon. She must be seen as the girl who made the “right” decision, but at the same time she has her faults (she is utterly stubborn and once jealous with her prettier sister). Anouilh's Creon is less of a tyrant and a misogynist than Sophocles' Creon, and is less emotionally unbalanced than his Greek counterpart. Anouilh has set out (and managed) to create a more human Creon. Whereas we do begin to feel sorry for Sophocles' Creon when people around him are beginning to go down like flies and he starts sobbing whole-heartedly, we can really connect with Anouilh's king of Thebes. Granted, he is a tyrant too, but his lines make clear that he feels forced to. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it, as it were. And how reasonable does he sound when he says he wants to save Antigone's life and that she would be a fool to risk it over the fate of a creep who had threatened his own father. And what good would the preposterous wailing and moaning of some religious freaks do? Well said, dear Creon, perhaps your niece had better listened to you after all. But of course, it isn't so. Antigone represents the people who have the courage to resist, to say “no” when others say “yes” out of convenience. Interestingly, we are dealing with the same story with largely the same plot structure, but Anouilh made it so much more interesting. Even the guard adds to the entertainment. Anouilh also gives us a more suspenseful opening: for a long time, we are not sure what Antigone is really up to and what she had done already. Sophocles' piece is more fatalistic. The doom scenario can be sensed from the beginning. Antigone has made up her mind, she is going to meet her death, and so will many others. I realize I am probably downplaying the quality of Sophocles' piece here, but as I said, I think that is probably because I read it after Anouilh, which made it look more simplistic. It must be noted, however, that Anouilh's play seems to be the most popular in theatres nowadays. Rating: Sophocles: 3 stars (6.5/10), Anouilh: 4 stars (8/10).