I have not said much about Antigone recently as I have been busy with other projects. We had our first read through with the cast last night. It was quite wonderful. The translation of the Anouilh is a new one, finished only days before the reading. I love how the newness of the translation makes the event both like a new play and like a classic. It is a great fusion of those two energies. The combined effect of which is perfect for the play itself. The tension between the new freshness of youth and the stoic acceptance of ones role in life that comes with time.
The Sophocles version has a very formal classic sense of ethics. Creon, having violated the will of the Gods is set against Antigone who represents pious familial duty. Their places are clear. Anouilh makes the situation far more ambiguous. Over the course of the play it becomes clear that the roles of ‘Creon’ and ‘Antigone’ are artificial constructs as much as the ethical systems they represent. Antigone’s journey towards death is almost halted by Creon. His logical explanation of the factual truth of the situation almost convinces Antigone to accept the comprimises inherent to social life. Almost, that is, until he offers her happiness. A kind of blank unthinking happiness that one gets as a social being containing their impulses. Sacrificing desire in favor of social norms.
As Derrida says:
[F]reedom and responsibility are incompatible with the mere reporting of the existence of a norm, a normative reality. Freedom is free with regard to such a normative reality, as is responsibility. If there is responsibility, if there is an ethical and free decision, responsibility and decision must, at a given moment, be discontiguous with the normative or the “normal,” not in their misrecognition of norms, not in their ignorance of a knowledge about norms – rather they must take a leap and welcome a sort of discontinuity, a heterogeneity in relation to the normative as such . . . This means that, at a certain moment, questions of norm must escape scientificity, they must escape a techno-scientific programming.
Freedom and responsibility demand that one know what is known, that one take knowledge into account as rigorously and in as unlimited a way as possible, but the moment of the decision, of responsibility as such, is not a moment of knowing, and neither, consequently, is it a moment that depends on what this knowledge of norms might have to teach us.
Antigone knows the truth of her brothers. She knows they are both despicable hateful people not worthy of respect. She knows that Creon acted out of duty toward the state and his role as leader, rather than out of any inherent will to honor a hero. And still, still she decides to continue her march towards death. It is with full knowledge of the artificiality of her situation that she marches inevitably towards her suicide. There is no other option for her. It is the role that was written. She must negotiate between the negotiability of her own existence and the non-negotiability of her situation.
While at a physical level, her course of action does not change, at an existential level it is wholly different. We see this existential transformation so clearly when she says to Creon:
Yes, I am ugly! It’s demeaning, isn’t it, the shouting, the fighting over scraps? Papa only became beautiful afterwards, when he was really sure, in the end, that he had killed his father, that he had slept with his mother, and that nothing, absolutely nothing, could save him. Then he grew calm, very suddenly, almost smiling, and he became beautiful. It was finished. He only had to close his eyes to never see any of you again! Oh, your faces, your sorry-looking faces, all candidates for happiness! You are the ugly ones, even the most beautiful of you. You all have something ugly in the corner of your eye, or clinging to your mouth. . .You think you can order me to do anything?
I hear in these words an echo of the great late 20th century existential text “It is only after you have lost everything, that you are free to do anything.”
In the end, Creon sounds the most reasonable. Not because he is right, or because his rational arguments are more true, but because anyone who embodies Antigone, is not sitting in a theatre. The Antigones are all dead or locked up, or about to be dead or locked up. They are the unrelenting. The uncompromising. The Invisible. They may put on the mask but they know it is only a tool. Perhaps they are not all dead or locked up. Perhaps it is possible to wear the mask with full knowledge of the absurdity and inherent deceit of that act and still remain authentic in ones actions.
Regardless, their existence is a constant negotiation between life and death. Not at the physical level, that is true for all beings. But at an existential level. At the level of the soul they must constantly negotiate between that which will cause their death and that which will give them life. They must do this in full knowledge that what might give the soul life could swiftly bring death to the body. These two, the soul and body, continue on down the path of life together, each at every moment risking the death of the other. This is the ongoing negotiation of the awakened soul in the social sphere.
As NOFX asks, “Even if it’s easy to be free, what’s your definition of Freedom?”
