Antigone

This article is about the daughter of Oedipus. For the daughter of Eurytion, see Antigone (daughter of Eurytion). For the play by Sophocles, see Antigone (Sophocles). For other uses, see Antigone (disambiguation).

Antigone by Frederic Leighton, 1882

In Greek mythology, Antigone (pronunciation: /ænˈtɪɡəniː/ an-TI-gə-nee; Ἀντιγόνη) is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Oedipus' mother. The name has been suggested to mean "opposed to motherhood", "in place of a mother",^[1] It may also mean "against men" since men were dominant in the Ancient Greek family structure, and Antigone clearly defied masculine authority, or "anti-generative", from the root gonē, "that which generates" (related: gonos, "-gony"; seed, semen).^[2]

Classical depictions

Oedipe et Antigone by Johann Peter Krafft (1809)

Antigone is a daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes and his mother Jocasta. She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he was a traitor to Thebes and the law forbids even mourning for him, on pain of death.

In the oldest version of the story, the funeral of Polynices takes place during Oedipus' reign in Thebes, however, this is before he marries Jocasta. However, in the best-known versions, Sophocles' tragedies Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, it occurs in the years after Oedipus' banishment and death, and Antigone has to struggle against Creon. In Sophocles' version, both of Antigone's brothers are killed in battle against the state. After Oedipus' death, it was decided that the two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices were to reign over Thebes taking turns. Eteocles, however, did not want to give away his power causing Polynices to leave Thebes to set up an army. In the fight against Thebes, the two brothers kill each other. After this event, Creon declares that, as punishment, Polynices' body must be left on the plain outside the city to rot and be eaten by animals. Eteocles, on the other hand had been buried as tradition warranted. Antigone determines this to be unjust, immoral and against the laws of the gods, and is determined to bury her brother regardless of Creon's law. She attempts to persuade her sister Ismene to join her, but fails. Antigone buries her brother by herself; eventually Creon's guards discover this and capture her. Antigone is brought before Creon, where she declares that she knew Creon's law but chose to break it, expounding upon the superiority of 'divine law' to that made by man. She defies his arguments, provoking his wrath and punishment.

Sophocles' Antigone ends in disaster, with Antigone hanging herself after being walled up, and Creon's son Haemon (or Haimon), who loved Antigone, killing himself after finding her body. (Also see Oedipus for a variant of this story.) Queen Eurydice, wife of King Creon, also kills herself at the end of the story due to seeing such actions allowed by her husband. She had been forced to weave throughout the entire story and her death alludes to The Fates.

The dramatist Euripides also wrote a play called Antigone, which is lost, but some of the text was preserved by later writers and in passages in his Phoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession of Dionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon. Antigone also plays a role in Euripides extant play The Phoenician Women.

Different elements of the legend appear in other places. A description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (Imagines ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on a sarcophagus in the Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome. And in Hyginus' version of the legend, founded apparently on a tragedy by some follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Haemon to be slain, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son, Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive. The demi-god Heracles then intercedes and pleads with Creon to forgive Haemon, but in vain. Haemon then kills Antigone and himself.^[3] The intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase (circa 380-300 BC).^[4][5]

Adaptations

The story of Antigone has been a popular subject for books, plays, and other works, including:

• The Antigone, one of the three extant Theban plays by Sophocles (497 BC – 406 BC) - The most famous adaptation
• Antigone, a play by Euripides (ca. 480 – 406 BC) which is now lost except for some fragments
• Antigona, opera by Tommaso Traetta, libretto by Marco Coltellini (1772)
• Antigona, opera by Josef Mysliveček, libretto by Gaetano Roccaforte (1774)
• Antigone, play by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
• Antigone, full-length album by Heaven Shall Burn (2004)
• Antigone, opera by Carl Orff (1895–1982)
• Antigone, play by Jean Anouilh (1910–1987)
• "Antigone-Legend", for soprano and piano (text by Bertolt Brecht), by Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938)
• Αντιγόνη (Antigone), opera by Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925)
• Antigone (1990/1991), opera by Ton de Leeuw (b. 1926)
• Antígona Furiosa (Furious Antigone), play by Griselda Gambaro (b. 1928)
• "The Island", play by Athol Fugard (b. 1932)
• La Pasión Según Antígona Pérez ( (The) Passion according to Antigone Pérez), adaptation of Sophocles by Puerto Rican writer Luis Rafael Sánchez (b. 1936), updated to 20th century Latin America
• Antígona, play by Salvador Espriu (1939)
• Tegonni, An African Antigone by Femi Osofisan (b. 1946)
• Antigone, adaptation of Sophocles' play by Peruvian poet José Watanabe (b. 1946)
• Antigone, opera by Mark Alburger (b. 1957)
• Antigone, comic book by David Hopkins (b. 1977)
• Antigone by Henry Bauchau
• The Burial at Thebes (2004) by Seamus Heaney, adapted into a 2008 opera with music by Dominique Le Gendre.
• Antigone, play by Mac Wellman
• Antígona Vélez (1950) adaptation of Sophocles' play by Argentinean writer Leopoldo Marechal (1900–1970)
• Antigonai (2009) an opera based on fragments by Sophocles and Hölderlin for three choirs and a women trio by Argentine composer Carlos Stella
• Antigone by Bertolt Brecht, based on the translation by Friedrich Hölderlin and published under the title Antigonemodell 1948.^[6]
• Antigone, play by Antonio D'Alfonso (2004)

Further reading

• Antigones by George Steiner. An examination of the legacy of the myth and its treatment in Western art, literature, and thought—in drama, poetry, prose, philosophic discourse, political tracts, opera, ballet, film, and even the plastic arts.^[7]
• Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death by Judith Butler. An examination of the figure of Antigone in literature and philosophy, particularly in Sophocles and in the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Luce Irigaray and Jacques Lacan.^[2]
• Söderbäck, Fanny, ed. Feminist Readings of Antigone. New York: SUNY Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4384-3278-6. Including classical texts by Judith Butler, Bracha Ettinger, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Adriana Cavarero.
• Wilmer, S. E., and Zukauskaite, Audrone, eds. Interrogating Antigone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-955921-3. Including recent texts by Judith Butler, Bracha L. Ettinger, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

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