"My sister Ismene, accursed twin of the line of Oedipus, do you know of some form, some labyrinth, some shame, or some useless labor, that the father of the earth has not yet sent to us, who are stranded here?" "In the long war, one among many, our brother Eteokles died for us." "In the tyrant's service, he died young." "Polyneikes was even younger when he saw his brother trampled under the hooves of the war-horse." "In tears he fled from the unfinished battle." "For others another decision is made by the spirit of battle, when with a hard blow with his right he unnerves his hand." "Now the fugitive lurches forward until he has crossed the Dirsean river, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of Thebes, his seven-gated city, when he is suddenly seized by blood-spattered Kreon, who killed his brother, standing behind them," "lashing them all into his battle, and he is slaughtered." "Have they told you or haven't they told you of the latest insults to be heaped on Oedipus' dwindling children?" "I haven't been to the market, Antigone." "I've heard no news of our loved ones, neither loving words nor sad words and I'm not happier and I'm not sadder." "Then hear the news from me and if your heart stands still or pounds too hard, because it's broken, then tell me so." "Gather your grey dust." "It seems you'd paint me blood-red words." "Here it is: our two brothers both dragged into Kreon's war for the grey iron ore of distant Argos, and both killed, are not both to be buried in the earth." "Of course the fearless hero of the battlefields, Eteokles, shall, it is understood, be honored and buried according to custom." "But the other, Polyneikes, who died in disgrace, it is now said of his body, and it has been made known in the city, that no one shall make a grave for him or mourn for him." "He is to be left unmourned and unburied, as a sweet meal for the vultures." "And he who does something about it is to be stoned to death." "Well, tell me, what are you going to do about it?" "What are you doing, sister, testing me?" "To see if you'll help me." "In what danger?" "To bury him." "He, who was denounced by the city?" "He, whom the city has renounced." "He, who caused the revolt!" "Yes, my brother and yours." "Sister, they'll catch you defenseless." "But they won't catch me faithless." "Poor thing." "What drives you to drive down to destruction the last of Oedipus's children?" "Forget the past." "Because you are younger you've seen less horror." "When we forget the past the past returns." "And think of it this way:" "we're women who haven't the strength to fight against men and therefore we're obedient in this and in some things even harder." "Therefore" "I ask the dead and the oppressed to forgive me." "When force is used against me," "I obey the authorities." "What's the sense, of committing useless actions?" "I won't ask you again." "Follow someone who gives orders." "And do what you are ordered." "But I am following the custom and burying my brother." "And if I die for it?" "So what?" "I'll rest in peace among the peaceful." "And I'll have left something holy behind me." "I prefer to make friends in the underworld for I will live there forever." "As for you, laugh at shame and live." "Antigone, bitterly hard as it is to live in disgrace, still even the salt tears stop." "They don't flow from the eyes forever." "The executioner's ax puts an end to life's sweetness, but for the survivor it opens the slow veins of pain." "He can't stop screaming yet even while screaming, he hears the birds swooping above him and sees through curtains of tears the familiar elms and rooftops of home." "I hate you." "How shamelessly you show me the tattered apron of your sentimentality?" "Right now, on the naked stones, the flesh of your flesh is laid out under the wide sky for the vultures." "But you think that was yesterday." "No, I'm not good enough just to offer myself as a sacrifice, nor willful enough." "And I'm afraid of you." "Don' t give me advice!" "Live your life." "But let me at least do what I can to honor those of us who have been shamed." "I'm not so particular, I hope, that I couldn't bear to die an unbeautiful death." "Go on and gather your dust." "What you say is wrong but it's said in love, and beloved." "The wagons of booty are coming!" "The victory loaded with plunder to make Thebes forget the war." "In the temples of all the gods, come out!" "And sing all night the choral songs." "For Thebes is crowned with laurel and the Feast of Bacchus reigns..." "But he who won us the victory," "Kreon, Menokeus' son, he comes from the battlefield with news of the booty and promises us at last the return of the soldiers, for which he has ordered and called together a council of the Elders of Thebes." "Gentlemen, tell the world:" "Argos is finished." "The reckoning was total." "From the eleven cities, only a few escaped, only the fewest." "It is said of Thebes that when she's lucky she'll be luckier." "But misfortune has not weakened you rather you have weakened misfortune." "The thirst of our bloodthirsty weapons was quenched by the first taste of blood, but we did not deny them repeated refreshment." "On a rough resting place," "Thebes, you have laid down the men of Argos." "Without a city, without a grave, out in the open, lies that which defied you." "Look over there where their city once stood!" "There you'll see dogs with shining faces." "The greatest vultures circled her, screaming from corpse to corpse but the meal was so rich" "that the overfed birds couldn't rise from the ground." "Lord, you paint a pretty picture of great power and the city will love it when you deliver it and you cleverly add one more thing: the wagons of plunder that drive through the streets full of our own men." "Soon, friends, soon!" "But first to business!" "You haven't yet seen me hang the ceremonial sword in the temple." "You see, I have for two reasons called you together: first, because I know that you will not count the costs when it comes to oiling the wheels of the man-mangling war-machine, any more than you deny him" "the blood of your sons in battle." "However, when they return, exhausted to the comforts of home, there is too much counting in the markets." "Therefore, give me your quick assurance that the casualty lists of Thebes do not exceed the customary expectations." "And also, because the people of Thebes are always too quick to forgive, now that the danger is over, they come here to wipe the sweat off the homecoming hero without asking whether that sweat is the sweat of the fever of" "battle or only the cold sweat of fear, mixed with the dust of desertion." "Therefore, I have buried, and I ask you to approve it, Eteokles who died for the State, with honors and laurels." "But Polyneikes the coward, to Eteokles and to me abhorrent and friend to the people of Argos, he shall lie unburied, as bare as this lies here." "He was the enemy:" "my enemy and Thebes'." "And therefore I want no mourning." "I want him to be left with no tomb, unburied to be devoured, as a meal, by dogs and vultures." "If, instead of the greater good of the city-state, anyone should prefer life, I have no respect for the man." "But he who serves my State, dead or alive, I'll praise him either way." "I hope you approve this." "We approve it." "And will you be responsible for carrying out the orders?" "A job like that is for the younger men." "Not this job." "The watch for the dead has started already." "And are we to keep watch for the living?" "Yes, because there are some who are dissatisfied." "There's no one here that's fool enough to risk his life." "Not openly." "But many have shaken their heads until they lost them... which brings me to this:" "we must do more." "The State must be cleansed..." "I got here as fast as I could, out of breath to bring the message swiftly to our leader." "Don't ask me why" "I couldn't make it any faster." "My feet got ahead of my head or my head raced on and dragged my feet behind, yet no matter how tired I got, or how long I was in the sun, out of breath, still" "I kept going." "I'm not holding anything back, so I ask myself why not say it right out, since I didn't do it?" "And I don't know anything." "I don't even know who did it to you." "For me to draw conclusions when I know so little wouldn't mean a thing." "Your innocence, my ambitious messenger, won't win you medals for swift footwork." "You entrust your guards with great power." "But the exercise of great power comes with great fatigue." "Tell me your news and get out of here." "I'll tell you my news." "The body, just now, someone buried it." "Someone who evaded us, over the body sprinkled dust, so that the vultures can't see him." "What?" "Who would dare undertake it?" "I don't know." "There was no mark of a spade, no sign of the use of a shovel." "And the smooth ground showed no wheel-marks." "No sign of the culprit." "Wasn't a real grave, just some soft dust, as if breaking your law didn't involve kicking up a lot of dirt." "But there were no animal tracks." "Not even a dog had come to tear and devour." "What the first light of day showed us struck us as unholy." "And the lot fell to me to bring our leader the message, and nobody loves the bearer of bad news." "O Kreon, son of Menokeus, can it be that something holy has happened here?" "Stop that!" "Don't make me angrier yet by saying that the spirits pamper the cowards who would cooly allow the desecration of the pillars of their city's temples and sacrifices!" "There are some in the city who hold certain things against me and boast that they will not bow to my will." "I know all about it, they do it with bribes and presents." "Of all things graven, there is nothing as evil as silver." "It corrupts whole states." "It lures men from their homes to practice every kind of godless action." "But I tell you, if you don't deliver the person who did this, in human form, alive, bound to a board, and delivered, you will be hanged and enter hell with a rope around your neck." "Then you'll learn how rewards are earned." "Stop plundering each other and realize that not all things are made for profit." "Sir, a man in my position has a lot to be afraid of." "There are too many roads that lead to him, being just a nobody whom you threaten." "I'm less afraid at the moment -- well, always a little afraid -- of being accused of accepting bribes -- though if you suspect me, I'll turn my purse inside out twice, to prove I have nothing " "than I fear to enrage you by contradicting you." "What I'm really afraid of is that this investigation will get me a rope around my neck." "The hands of the powerful more often provide my kind with rope than with silver, as you well know." "Are you asking me riddles, you transparent fool?" "The dead man was of high rank and must have high-ranking friends." "Then go for their ankles if you can't reach any higher!" "I know that there are troublemakers everywhere." "There are several who shudder to hear of my victory and place the laurel wreath with fear and trembling." "I'll find them out." "It's an unhealthy spot, where the mighty have gotten into the hair of the mighty!" "I think " " I'm still here." "I wonder why." "There is much that is monstrous." "But nothing more monstrous than a human being." "Only he goes out at night on the sea." "While against the winter blows the south wind, he ventures out in winged whistling houses." "And the earth below the Heavens, the unspoilable and the untiring, his ambitious plows tear it up," "as year after year he drives his horses over the land." "He traps and hunts the gently fashioned birds and the wild beasts and the wide seas' salt-nourished life," "with craftily slung nets, the skillful man." "With cunning he catches the wild things that forage at night in the hills." "He yokes the rough-maned stallion by the neck, and also the untamed ox that roams through the hills." "And speech and the airy flight of thoughts and the laws that order the State, he has mastered -- and to avoid the polluted swamp air and how to come in from the rain, he knows it all" "and yet all is unknown." "He comes to nothing." "He always has advice, nothing is advisable for him." "Though all things are without borders for him, a limit has been set on him." "For he who finds none, becomes his own enemy." "As though he were an ox, he yokes the neck of humanity, but humanity tears it off." "If he advances, he steps across the bodies of his own people." "His own stomach, he cannot fill alone." "But he builds a wall around his own property and the wall:" "it must be torn down!" "Open the roof to the rain!" "He counts what is human as nothing at all." "He has become his own monster." "O, I am tempted by heaven not to admit that I know her." "It isn't she." "Antigone, unfortunate child of an unfortunate father, Oedipus' child, what brings you to this place as a criminal" "under the laws of the State?" "Here she is." "She did it." "We caught her as she made the grave." "Where's Kreon?" "He's there, coming out of the house." "What are you bringing her here for?" "Where did you catch her?" "She made the grave." "Now you know everything." "I hear your words clearly." "But did you yourself see it?" "Just as she started the grave, against your orders." "When you're lucky you can speak clearly." "So you had ought to..." "give me the story." "After I left you, as you made those terrible threats, we wiped the dust off the body, which was putrefying already and we sat on a hill where there was air, because the smell of the dead man was strong." "And we agreed that if we got sleepy we'd wake each other with a poke of the elbows." "Suddenly we opened our eyes, because a sudden warm wind lifted the mist from the ground in a whirlwind which concealed the valley, tearing the hair of the woods into the valley, filling the air with fog so that we had to blink" "yes, that was it, and rub our eyes." "It was then that we saw her standing there crying out in a sharp voice like a bird that mourns when it sees the empty nest without young ones." "She wailed because she saw the dead man naked and she spread the dust over him again out of the iron jug." "She sprinkled dust over the dead man three times." "We ran and held her and she didn't resist." "And we accused her of these present things that we have witnessed." "But she denied nothing and was gentle toward me and sad at the same time." "Do you admit or do you deny that you did it?" "I say that I did it and I don't deny it." "Now tell me, and be brief:" "Are you aware of what was announced in the open city about this particular corpse?" "I knew it." "How could I help it?" "It was clear enough." "And yet you dared to break my law?" "Just because it was your law, a human law, that's why a human being may break it -- and I am just as human as you and only slightly more mortal." "And if" "I die before my time, I think it's because it has its advantages." "When you've lived the way I have, surrounded by evil, isn't there some slight advantage in death?" "And further, if I had let my mother's dead son lie unburied, that would have made me unhappy." "But this does not make me unhappy." "And if I seem crazy to you because I fear the judgement of heaven which hates the bared sight of mangled bodies and I don't fear your judgement, then let a crazy judge judge me." "Tough child of a tough father:" "she hasn't learned how to be cautious." "The toughest iron, tempered in the ovens, yields and loses its stubbornness." "It happens every day." "But this one here enjoys making fun of the laws of the land." "And to top this impertinence: now that she's done it, she laughs about it and boasts that she's done it." "I hate that:" "when somebody's caught in a crime and tries to make it look pretty." "And yet, though she insults me in spite of our family ties" "I'll be slow to condemn her because of our family ties." "Therefore I ask you:" "since you did it in secret and now it's out in the open, wouldn't you say, to avoid severe punishment, that you're sorry you did it?" "Tell me why you're so stubborn." "To set an example." "Doesn't it matter to you that I have you in my hands?" "What more can you do to me, since you have me, than kill me?" "Nothing more." "But having this, I have all." "What are you waiting for?" "What you're saying," "I don't like it and I won't like what you're going to say." "And I know you don't like me either." "Though there are those who do, because of what I did." "So you think there are others who see things as you do?" "They see it too and they are moved by it." "Aren't you ashamed to claim their support without asking?" "There's nothing wrong in honoring my brother." "But the one who dies for his country was also your brother." "Yes." "Of the blood." "We are all of one family." "And the coward?" "Do you love him as much as the other?" "He who was not your slave is dearer to me than a brother." "Of course, if good and evil are the same as one another." "The things are not the same:" "to die for you or to die for one's country." "Wasn't there a war?" "Yes, your war." "Not the country's?" "A strange country." "It wasn't enough for you to rule over the brothers in their own city." "How beautiful Thebes was when we lived in peace and unafraid under the trees." "But you had to drag them all the way to Argos, so you could rule over them there too." "And you turned them into the butcher of peaceful Argos." "But the scared one you lay out to feed the vultures and frighten his loved ones." "I advise you to say nothing." "Don't say anything to defend her." "If you know what's good for you." "But I will appeal to you, for if you help me in my trouble it will help you later." "The man who's after power is like the thirsty man who drinks salt-water;" "he can't hold it in, but he has to have more." "Yesterday it was my brother." "Today it is I." "I am waiting to see who stands by you." "And you take it and let him shut you up." "It will be remembered." "She's keeping accounts!" "Dissension." "That's what she wants under the Theban roof." "You who cry for unity live by conflict." "I live by conflict here and on the Argive battlefield." "That's right." "That's how it is." "Anyone who uses power against his enemy will turn and use power against his own people." "It seems the dear girl wouldn't grudge me to the vultures." "And what if Thebes fell, through our conflict to be devoured by the invaders?" "The men in power always threaten us with the fall of the State." "It will fall by dissension, devoured by the invaders?" "And so we give in to you, and give you our power, and bow down and, because of this weakness, the city falls and is devoured by the invaders." "Are you accusing me of throwing the city away to be devoured by the enemy?" "The city threw herself away by bowing down before you." "Because when a man bows down he can't see what's coming at him." "He only sees the earth -- and oh!" "she will get him!" "Insult the whole earth, you monster, insult your country!" "Wrong." "Earth is an ordeal." "But my country is not only the earth, or a house built by sweat, not that house standing helplessly in the path of the fire, not a place where I can't hold my head up." "I claim that's not my country." "Your country no longer claims you as her own, but throws you out like filth that dirties all it touches." "Who throws me out?" "There are less in the city, since you rule it." "And there will still be less." "Why do you come alone?" "You left with many." "Who's missing?" "Where are the youngsters?" "The men?" "Aren't they coming back?" "How she lies!" "Everyone knows: to clear the battlefields of the last weapons, they stayed behind." "And to do your last mischief and become a horror, till their own fathers wouldn't recognize them when they are finally killed like beasts of prey." "She's insulting the dead!" "How stupid you are!" "I'm in no mood for winning arguments." "Pity her, take no account of her words." "When have I ever concealed the sacrifice made for victory?" "But you in your ravings, don't let your tragedy make you disparage Thebes' glorious victory." "But she doesn't want the people of Thebes to live in the house of Argos." "She'd rather see Thebes destroyed." "We would sit better in the ruins of our own city, and more safely, than with you in the enemies' houses." "There, she said it!" "You heard it." "She breaks every law, knows no limits, like a guest, reluctant to leave whom one hopes never to see again, who insolently tampers with his luggage." "I only took what was mine." "And I had to steal that." "You see as far as your nose." "But the State's divine order, you don't see that." "It may well be divine, but I'd rather that it were human, Kreon, son of Menokeus." "Get out." "You were always our enemy and even in hell you shall be so;" "like the mangled one, you shall be hated even in hell, you nothing." "Who knows what the customs are down there." "The enemy, even when dead, does not become a friend." "Of course he does." "I don't live to hate but to love." "Then go to hell if you want love and love down there." "Under my rule, your kind doesn't live long." "But now Ismene comes the sweet one, who is for peace." "But with tears awashed, her face is yet flushed with pain." "Yes!" "You!" "You stay inside." "Get home." "I have brought up two monsters." "A pair of snakes." "Come, out with it." "Did you takes part at the grave, or are you innocent?" "I did it." "If my sister will accept me." "I took part too, and I accept my guilt." "But your sister won't let you." "She didn't want to." "I didn't take her with me." "Fight it out!" "I don't bicker over small things." "I'm not ashamed of my sister's misfortune, and I'm asking her to call me her accomplice." "By all who are beyond the world of matter and who talk together down in hell:" "those who love with words alone, I do not like." "Sister, not everyone is good enough for sacrifice, but even I am good enough for death." "Don't die too abstractly." "Don't meddle in things that are not your business." "My death is enough." "My sister is too strict." "I love you." "If she is gone, what would I have to love?" "There's Kreon." "Love him." "Be his." "I'm leaving you." "Does it amuse my sister to make fun of me?" "Maybe it hurts too, and the cup of my pain runneth over." "But what I said still goes." "That would be nice." "But I've made my decision." "Is it because you did it without me, that you can die without me?" "Be of good cheer and live." "I have a dead soul and I am only of use to the dead, sister." "These women, I tell you they're all alike:" "one of them loses her mind, and another one follows." "I can't live without her." "We're not talking about her." "She doesn't exist." "But you're killing your own son's bride." "There's more than one field for a man to plow." "Get ready to die." "And so that you'll know exactly when it's going to happen:" "when at the Festival of Bacchus drunken Thebes invites me to dance." "Get rid of these women." "When you dress up for the victory dances, don't stamp on the ground too hard, and not there where it grows green;" "may he who has troubled you, mighty one, praise you." "Don't drive him down so deep that he's out of sight, for he lies in that direction, on the ground, naked to confront you." "His shame he is resigned to, hideous and horrified, abandoned to his loss, dehumanized, he remembers his earlier form and rises and is new." "Patiently the brothers of Lachmyia sat in their fire-gutted house." "rotting away, they earned their living by weaving; each winter the ice froze over them, and their women didn't live there, didn't live there at night, but furtively sat around all day in their scarlet cloaks." "And always the threatening cliff beckoned to them." "But not until Peleas came, dividing them with his sceptre, parting them, touching them ever so lightly, could they rise up... and kill their oppressors." "for that was the last straw for them, for often the sum of misery must only be rounded out by a fraction;" "and then the blind sleep, full of moaning with prehistoric exhaustion, comes to an end." "Slowly and swiftly, unevenly, waxes the moon and wanes, and all the while evil is growing, and now the last light falls on the last root of Oedipus' house." "And when the great fall, they don't fall alone; on a great multitude they fall." "As when, below us on the Pontian sea, the winds of Thrace blow wickedly in the salty night to tear up a hut, and lifted from the ground, it whirls along the dark and disheveled shore," "and the groans roar from the stricken coast." "Hamon is coming, your youngest son, dismayed at the loss of Antigone." "His young bride lies stricken on her dread bride bed." "Son, there's a rumor you've come to me for love of that young woman, not to speak to your ruler, but to your father, and if that's so" "you've come for nothing." "When we returned from the battle, which went well, through blood and sacrifice, she was the only one who did not welcome us, begrudging our side the victory." "She busies herself with one matter and that one rotten." "Nevertheless, I come to you about this thing and hoping that my father should not hear with anger, the familiar voice which he has fathered, when to the ruler it is the one that must bring bad news." "When a man brings up fresh children, it can be said that his bedtime efforts bring him only the laughter of his enemies." "You govern many people, but if you'll listen only to good news, don't lose any more sleep:" "let go of the helm, like one who doesn't want to steer, and drift!" "The people are afraid of your name." "Therefore, when big fires burn, you get small messages." "But there is this advantage to family ties:" "we don't hold each other to account so strictly." "And many debts are readily forgiven, and so we often hear the truth from members of our family because we can restrain our anger towards them." "My brother, Megareus, can't come to tell you because he fought at Argos and has not come back and doesn't know what fear is, so I have to tell you." "Listen: there is deep dissatisfaction in the city." "You listen:" "when my flesh and blood turns rotten, it nourishes my enemy." "The uncommitted man who doesn't know his mind tastes dissent in every small annoyance." "One complains of taxes, another wants an end to conscription -- but I keep them both separated and in my power because I have the weapons." "But when there are loopholes and the government seems divided and wavers and is indecisive, then the stone can start rolling until it threatens the house that's already surrendered." "Speak but I'll listen only to him whom I brought up and to whom" "I taught the strength of the spear, my son." "There is some truth in everything." "There is a saying:" ""Test the strength of thy tongue on the anvil of truth." She who didn't want the merciless dogs to devour her brother: the city" "is with her in this." "Although they condemn the dead man's crimes." "It's not enough." "I call that weakness." "No, the filth that I've cut off is not enough." "It must me done in public, so that other filth will not forget how I cut off the filthy." "But you, knowing little of the case, knowing nothing, you advise me:" "watch your step, look for alternatives, talk to them in their terms, as if authority could sway the many-bodied masses to difficult deeds by being nothing but a small, cowardly ear." "But it saps the strength to think up cruel punishments." "To crush the curse to earth, until it curses, requires strength." "But the gentle uses of order can do much." "There are many orders, but who gives the orders?" "Do it your way, but make it the right way." "Not knowing what I know, you can't know what it is." "Are you my friend no matter how I do it?" "I want you to do it so that I can be your friend." "But don't say that you alone can be right, and no other." "He who cuts himself off from the others has no thoughts or speech or soul like another, and" "if we look inside such a man we will find him empty -- but another kind of man if there is such a wise man somewhere, is not ashamed to keep on learning and not carry anything to extremes." "Look, when the rain-swollen brook gushes past all the tress, how all those that bend are spared, but the unyielding are broken." "Or when a laden ship spreads out her sails and won't slacken, bending back from the rower's bench, how it must end in shipwreck." "Give in -- when the spirit demands it." "Give us change." "And change us." "And if we shudder in our humanity, then shudder with us." "And the chained, shall we present ourselves to the slave-driver?" "Is that what you want?" "And the chained when the stench of death reaches their nostrils the drudgery driven may rise up and wonder where they are being driven, and driven so hard, and drag us all down into the abyss with all the wheels and chains." "Know that the city is torn by doubts." "What peace threatens, war deranges." "The war is over." "Thanks for the instructions." "Then too, in preparation to celebrate the victory, you intend to purge yourself in a bloodletting of all those in your house who have offended you." "This suspicion, I have often heard." "By whom?" "Your reward was here." "Much greater than if you choose only to be a spokesman, babbling so suspiciously about suspicion." "Forget them." "Of the virtues of leadership the most useful is called:" ""forgive and forget."" "Leave the old to be old." "Since I am so old" "I find forgetting difficult." "But you, couldn't you, if I ask you, forget her whom you're defending lest those who long for my downfall whisper," ""He seems to be that woman's comrade."" "Not only hers, but of all that's just, wherever I see it." "Wherever there's a hole in it." "Insults won't stop my concern for you." "Your bed is still empty." "I'd call that stupid if it wasn't my father that said it." "I'd call that fresh if it weren't a woman's slave who said it." "Better her slave than yours." "Now it's out and can't be retracted!" "And it won't be." "You want to say everything and hear nothing." "That's how it is." "And now get out of my sight." "Go like the coward who spares himself too, in the hour of decision." "Take that brat away." "Quickly." "And I'll get away." "So that you need not look at a man who is not afraid and makes you tremble." "Sir, he who went out angry is your youngest son." "But he won't rescue those women from death." "Then you're thinking of killing them both?" "No, not the one who stayed away, you're right." "And the other one, how will you kill her?" "Lead her out of the city, where now the dances of Bacchus are lifting the feet of my people." "Put her guilt away where there are no people to see her, alive, into a cave in the cliffs." "With millet and wine, the only meal fit for the dead, as though she were buried." "Those are my orders." "So that in the end my city shall not bring me shame." "But like the mountains from the clouds this puts itself now before me, that this is the hour when Oedipus' child in her room hears Bacchus in the distance and prepares for her last journey." "Now he calls on his people, always thirsting for pleasure;" "and our city woefully gives him the joyous answer;" "for victory is great and Bacchus irresistible." "When he approaches the mourners he hands them the drink of forgetfulness." "And the city discards the black robes she was sewing to mourn her sons and runs to the orgy of Bacchus in search of depletion." "O lusts of the flesh, it is you who win every battle!" "Even incestuous lovers are overwhelmed by your urging." "He never feels empty who gives himself over to be it, not only to feel it." "Possessed, he is at peace;" "and he yields himself to the yoke and bears his neck, not afraid of the fumes of the salt-mines or the ship with thin walls on the black waters." "Alien skins he mixes and tosses them all together, yet never despoils the bounteous earth with violent hands, but peacefully from the first act of creation is companioned with concord and great conciliations." "Never warlike, divine beauty joins him in the games." "But now I find myself losing the rhythm and I can't hold back the welling of tears for now Antigone comes to receive the gifts of earth, the wine and the millet." "Citizens of the city of my fathers-- look at me take my last steps and my last look at the sunlight." "And never again?" "He beds us all alike, the god of death." "He is leading me alive to the harbor of his river." "No wedding for me." "For me no wedding-song." "Betrothed bride of the Acheron, I am." "But your going is famous; praises go with you, as you go into this death chamber." "No illness consumed you, nor were you the victim of hard labor for hard wages," "Such terms you would not accept." "Living your own life, you go living down into the world of the dead." "Oh no!" "They're making fun of me!" "Yes, of me, and I'm not even dead yet, and I still see the daylight." "My city!" "and oh, my city's wealthy men!" "You must, yes, must bear witness for me, of how and why I go unmourned by those who love me, and under what laws into an unmarked grave" "I go, into an unheard of grave." "I, who belong neither to mortal men nor to the shadows" "I, who belong to life not to death." "What comes of power, it doesn't reflect upon." "It has lost you, the knowledge enraged by yourself." "O my father, O my unhappy mother, of whom I was born in anguish, and to whom I return cursed, to lodge without a husband." "O, O my brother, how sweet life is, and you've lost it." "Me too, I'm all that's left." "Draw me close down to you." "The body of Danae too had in place of the light of heaven with patience to endure the iron gate." "She lay in the dark prison, though she too came of a mighty race, child." "And she counted there, for the creator of time, the strokes of the hours of gold." "I've heard how pitifully the Phrygian girl," "Tantalos' daughter, died in the tower of Sipylos, she would become immobile and, like a stone bent beneath wreaths of ivy, constricted in their slow gathering;" "and, with her, ever since, as men say, the winter remains and her throat is washed with the snowbright tears of her eyelids." "It may be that I, like her, go to a sanctified bed." "Her speech is holy, holy born is she, while we are of this earth, and earthly born." "Yes." "You perish, but greatness is yours and not unlike a holy sacrificial victim." "And so you give me up for lost with a sigh." "How piously you gaze upwards at the blue heavens, but you don't look me straight in the eye." "And yet, I've only done what's holiest of holy." "They caught the son of Dryas loudly and rapturously protesting against the injustice of" "Dionysus, and with stones they stoned him to death and he got to know" "in his madness, with his shrieking voice, God." "And it would be better too, if you gathered together all the protests against injustice and dried them of tears and did something useful with them." "You don't look far enough." "But on the chalky cliffs with the sea on both sides, at the mouth of the Bosphorus," "there, near the city, the war god watched as two" "Phineans, who saw all too far, had their eagle eyes pierced through with spears, and they were enveloped in darkness, the circles of their brave eyes." "For the power of fate is frightful." "Neither riches, nor the war-god, nor towers escape him." "Don't talk, I beg you, about fate." "I know all about that." "Speak of him who kills me, an innocent, he has a visit coming from fate." "Don't think, that is, that you're safe." "You're really the victims." "More mangled bodies will be heaped up for you, unburied as a cairn for those who are unburied." "You, who dragged Kreon's war across distant frontiers, however many may be for you happy battles, the last one will destroy you." "You, who called for booty, you will not see full wagons, but empty ones." "I mourn for you, survivors," "what you will see when my eyes will be filled with dust!" "Lovely Thebes, my homeland, my fathers' city!" "And you, Dirsean River that circles Thebes, where the wagons draw up; oh, you woods!" "...my voice falters to say what will become of you!" "You have spawned the inhuman." "Therefore you must come to dust." "Tell any one who asks about Antigone that you saw her escape into her grave." "Turned around and went, with broad steps, as though she led her guards." "Across the plaza there she went, where the victory columns had already been erected." "Then she went faster, vanished." "But she too once ate of the bread that was baked by slaves in the dark cliffs." "In the shade of the prison towers that shelter sorrow, she sat still contentedly, till all that had left the deadly doors of Labdacus' house re-entered dead." "The bloody hand deals out to each his own, and they don't just take it, they grab it." "Only thereafter she lay rebellious in her freedom, thrust into the good." "The cold awakens her." "Not until the last of her patience was exhausted and the last crime measured would Oedipus' unseeing child remove the customary blindfold from her eyes to look at the abyss that surrounds her." "Just as blindly now" "Thebes lifts its feet and giddily tastes the victory libation of highly-spiced herbs concocted in the darkness" "and swallows it, and exults." "Here comes Tiresias, the blind man, the seer, driven no doubt by rotten rumors of growing dissension" "and the simmering unrest below." "Always go gently, child, go steadily and be untroubled by the dancers." "You're leading." "Leaders shouldn't follow Bacchus." "Inevitable is the fall for he who, too high, lifts his heels from the ground." "And look out for the victory-columns." "Victory!" "they scream in the city, and the city is full of fools!" "And the blind follow the seeing, but the blind, one blinder still follows." "Why are you mumbling, mutterer, about the war?" "Because you are dancing, fool, before you have won it." "Stubborn and senile, seeing what doesn't exist, but the columns that tower around us, victorious," "you don't see those." "Can't see 'em." "And my reason is not twisted." "That's why I'm here, dear friends." "Same for the laurel those thick leaves, I don't recognize them, before they are withered and rattle or I bite into them and taste the bitterness and I know that's laurel." "You don't like celebrations." "That's why you speak to us with a terrible tongue." "I have seen terrible things." "Listen to the bird-oracles and what they portend for Thebes, drunk with premature victory and by the droning shouts of the Bacchus dancers deafened:" "on the ancient chair I was seated, before me a harbor full of birds." "And I heard a murderous turbulence rise in the air above me." "And there was the lashing fury of scratching claws as the birds butchered each other." "Frightened," "I quickly tested the newly-lit altars, but not in a single spot could I make a good fire." "Only smoke waltzing tearfully skyward and the thighbones of the sacrificial ox jutting out of the fat meant to cover it." "Very bad signs on the day of victory, and news that kills joy." "This is the deadly meaning of the sinister symbols:" "it is you, Kreon, who cause the city's sickness." "because the altars and hearths are profaned by dogs and vultures who are satisfying their hunger on the body of Oedipus' son, fallen, in a most disquieting way." "Therefore they don't sing their song of good omen, the birds, since they have -- from a dead man -- eaten the flesh." "But the Gods don't care for the taste of such smoke." "Therefore soften your heart towards the dead man, and stop your persecution of those who have gone away!" "Your birds, old man, fly very nicely for you." "I know all about that." "They would perhaps fly as nicely for me." "I am not altogether unschooled in this business of the prophetic arts, though I'm not so greedy." "So pocket your treasures from Sardis and your Indian gold." "But know this:" "I will not bury the corpse, and I am not afraid of heaven's wrath." "Nothing human bothers the gods, that much I know." "But many fall, old man, even the very powerful among the mortals to an end that is very grim, when they make up stories that are very grim for the sake of profit." "I am too old to compromise myself for the short time that's left to me." "No one is so old that he doesn't want to grow older." "I know." "But I know more." "Say it, Tiresias." "Sir, let the seer be heard." "Say it, by all means, but let's make a bargain." "the prophet likes to profit from his prophecy in silver." "I heard that that's what tyrants have to offer." "Even when they're blind, they'll bite into the coin and they know:" "that's silver." "I don't want you to offer me any because in wartime no one knows what he'll keep, whether it's silver, or sons, or power." "The war is over." "Is it?" "I'll ask you a question!" "Since, according to you, I know nothing," "I'll have to ask." "Since into the future, so you tell me, I can not see, I must see into the present and into the past to stay within my art and still be a seer." "Of course, I only see what a child sees:" "that the victory-columns are stripped bare of bronze!" "I say that's because they're still making spears." "And also that for the troops, furs are being sewn." "I say: as if Autumn were coming." "And that fish are being preserved:" "as if for winter rations." "I thought that was before the victory battle, and is now discontinued." "Won't booty come with metal and fish now from Argos?" "And there are many guards, and whether they guard much or little, no one knows." "But there is much confusion in your house and no amnesties granted as is customary after happy occasions." "And it is said that you son Hamon left you in anger because Antigone, his bride, you have entombed in a cave, because she wanted to open a grave for her brother Polyneikes, because you struck him down and left him unburied," "because he turned against you, because your war killed his brother, Eteokles." "That's how you're cruelly bound up with cruelty." "And since I'm not silenced by silver I'll ask this second question:" "why are you so cruel," "Kreon, son of Menokeus?" "I'll make it easier:" "is it because there's not enough metal for your war?" "What is it that you've done, both mad and bad, that now you must compound both madness and badness?" "You're thinking of the forked tongue, though a half-tongue were worse." "But I'll give my double answer." "It is: none." "And I answer nothing with nothing and say:" "the bad economy cries out for great men, and none are to be found." "The war goes away by itself and breaks a leg." "Pillage comes from pillage and the hard time need a harder time and more needs even more and comes in the end to nothing." "And so I have looked back, and I have looked around, you look ahead and shudder." "Sir, if our hair was still black, it would have turned white this instant." "The man, enraged, has said bad things." "Don't say anything worse." "And I say: why bring us what's better left unsaid?" "Kreon, son of Menokeus, when are the young men returning to the city now empty of men, and how goes your war, Kreon, son of Menokeus?" "Since that troublemaker has directed your eyes to this matter, I'll tell you:" "that which perfidious" "Argos made us wage, the war, to its end it hasn't yet come and isn't going very well." "When I announced peace, there was only one little detail missing, and that only because of Polyneikes' treason." "But he has been punished and so has she who mourned him." "And this too is not at an end: he has turned against you, he who leads here at home the strength of your spears, the youngster," "Hamon your son." "I no longer want him at all." "Get him out of my sight and yours;" "he deserted me for trivial thoughts of his bed." "My son Megareus still fights for me." "My son sends endless cruel thrusts against the weakened walls of Argos with the armored youths of Thebes." "They are not expendable." "Kreon, son of Menokeus, we have always followed you." "And there was order in the city, and you kept far from our throats our enemies." "But now, under the Theban roofs, the thieves who have nothing and thrive on war and those who live on discord, the rabble-rousers with the empty stomachs and strong lungs in the market place, talking because they are paid or because they are not paid," "now they are shouting again, and they have some strong material too." "Have you started something too big, son of Menokeus?" "When I attacked Argos, who sent me?" "The metal spears went out to bring metal from the mountains at your request -- for you know Argos is rich in metals." "And also rich in spears, it seems." "Some things, evil things we heard here and we dismissed them, trusting you with the reports;" "and we closed our ears, fearing fear." "And we shut our eyes when more tightly you pulled at the bridle." "Just one more pull on the bridle and one more battle you said, that's all we need, but now you are beginning to deal with us as you deal with the enemy." "How horribly you lead your double war." "Your war!" "You lead it!" "If I had Argos, it would be yours soon enough!" "Enough of this!" "So that rebellious girl has stirred up all those who heard her!" "Surely the sister was right to bury her brother." "Surely the commander was right to punish the traitor." "The naked truth asserts its right, and right drives us right to our doom." "War makes new rights and wrongs." "And lives by the old ones." "War devours itself and those in need get nothing." "Ingrates!" "You'll eat the meat but you don't like to see the cook's bloody apron!" "The sandalwood that I gave you to build your houses, where the sound of sword is not heard, was grown in Argos!" "And so far no one has sent back the bronze-plate that I brought you from Argos, but you huddle together, and babble about the blood-baths and complain of my crassness." "I can expect yet more provocations when the booty doesn't get here." "Man, how much longer will Thebes still be without its men?" "Until your men have conquered rich Argos for you." "Call them back, damn you before they all die." "Empty handed?" "That assignment, will you confirm it?" "Empty handed, or without hands, whatever is left of our flesh and blood!" "Certainly." "Argos will fall, then I will call them." "And my eldest son, Megareus, will bring them to you." "And see to it that the doors and gates are not too narrow and only tall enough for such as walk bent down." "The shoulders of men of greater girth could crash the palace door here and break the doors of the treasury there." "And it may be there'll be such joyous embraces at the reunion that your hands and your arms shall be shaken out of their sockets." "And when you press with passion against the anxious breast of their armour, mind your ribs!" "Because on that happy day you'll see more bare iron than destitution." "Many reluctant victors have been garlanded with chains and danced on bended knees." "Evildoer, are you threatening your own people?" "Are you ready to set our own men against us?" "I want to discuss it with my son, Megareus." "Sir, bow your head!" "I am a bringer of bad news!" "Stop the hasty celebration of a victory that was announced too early!" "In a new battle, your army at Argos has fallen and is in retreat." "Your son Megareus is dead." "He lies mangled on the hard ground of Argos." "When you punished the retreat of Polyneikes, and the many in the army who opposed you were arrested and publicly hanged, and you yourself hurried back to Thebes, we were ordered by your eldest son to advance into a new battle." "The troops had not yet slept off the bloodbath in their own ranks." "With tired hands they raised, the battle ax, still wet with Theban blood, against the men of Argos." "And all too many faces turned around toward Megareus, who, in order to seem fiercer than the enemy, perhaps had urged them forward in too harsh a voice." "And yet at first the battle's luck was with us, for every battle rouses its own battle fever, and blood suffices, be it ours or theirs, and it intoxicates." "What courage cannot do, fear does." "Albeit the terrain and the equipment and the rations all play a part in it." "And sir, the people of Argos fought with desperation." "The women fought and the children fought." "Pots and pans, long without food, were filled with boiling water and poured down on us." "Even surviving houses were burned down behind us, so that there were no prepared positions to which we could withdraw." "Every household article and every house became a weapon and a trench." "But still your son drove us forward and drove us further into the city, which, devastated, now transformed itself into a grave." "Among the ruins we were separated from one another;" "smoke from all occupied quarters, sheets of fire, confounded our vision." "Fleeing the fire and seeking the enemy, we slew one another and no one knows by whose hand your son died." "The flower of Thebes." "All gone." "And Thebes itself cannot last long, because the Argives are coming with men and wagons into our streets." "And I, who have seen it am glad that it's over." "Woe!" "Megareus, my son!" "Don't waste time grieving." "Gather the forces." "Gather nothing." "Down the drain." "Drunk with the joys of victory" "Thebes leaps up as the enemy approaches to put her in the iron chains!" "You sold us out when you gave your sword away." "Now remember your other son:" "call the younger!" "Yes, Hamon, my last one!" "Yes, my youngest son!" "Come help me now in my great downfall; forget what I said, because when I was master of many" "I could not master myself." "Hurry to the cliffside and remove the grave walls quickly." "Free Antigone!" "If I let her go will you stand by me?" "You agreed to everything when you challenged nothing -- that means you're committed!" "Go!" "The ax!" "The ax!" "Stop the dancing!" "Spirit of joy, who is proud of the waters that Cadmus loved," "come, if you want to see her again, your city." "Travel swiftly and get here before nightfall, because after that she'll be gone." "This, O god of joy, is your native city, the Bacchanalian," "Thebes, where you lived, at Ismenus' cold brook." "Here. the smoke of your sacrifices rising firmly above the rafters of the rooves, you have seen it." "From her many houses, no more fire nor the smoke of the fire, nor the shadow of the smoke, shall you see." "For a thousand years her children saw themselves as masters of the most distant seas, but tomorrow they shall have, and today they have hardly a stone on which to lay their heads." "At the cocytus, in your days, god of joy, you were seated with the beloved" "in the woods of Castalia." "And visited the blacksmith and tested with your thumb, smilingly, the edges of the swords." "Often you followed the deathless songs of Thebes through the streets when they still were merry," "Oh, their weapons have mauled their own flesh, their strength was consumed by exhaustion." "Oh, violence is in need of a miracle, and gentleness is in need of a little wisdom." "And now the much battered enemy stands at the gates of our palaces and commands the bloody spears around the seven gated mouth and will not leave there until our cheeks are filled with blood." "But here comes a girl pushing her way through the crowd, with news, surely, of Hamon, whose father appointed to lead our rescuing troops." "O wasted strength!" "Oh, the last sword is broken!" "Hamon is dead, bleeding by his own hand." "I was an eye-witness -- what happened earlier" "I heard from the slaves who went to their master on that high plain where, gnawed by the dogs, the poor corpse of Polyneikes lay." "They washed him silently and laid him out, with fresh branches, as is the custom, and a little shelter they carefully built up from his native soil." "Pushing past all the others the master approached the grave in the cliff, where we women were standing." "One of us heard a voice and loud cries from inside the chamber and ran to the master to tell him." "He hurried, and as he went he was surrounded strangely by dark and pitiful voices." "Then, coming close, he called out and cried pathetically" "when he saw that the bolt had been torn out of the wall, and said, as though he believed what he said, "That's not Hamon's voice." "That's not my child's voice." Beckoning the call of our frightened master, we assembled." "There, at the back of the cave among the graves, we saw hanged by the neck, her, Antigone," "a rope made of cloth around her neck." "And he -- stretched out at her feet, lamenting his bridal bed and the abyss below and his father's work." "And when he sees it he goes into him and speaks to him:" ""O come out, dear child, I beg you on my knees."" "Saying nothing, the son looks at him coldly, staring at him, and draws his double edged sword towards him." "But when his frightened father turns to flee, he falters." "Without one more word, standing upright, he slowly pierces the sword into his own body." "Wordless, he falls." "The dead lie with the dead." "Bridal fulfillment is found somberly in the house of the underworld." "Here comes my master himself." "The city has fallen, habituated to the bridle and without bridle." "Leaning on women, the defeated man comes, and in his hands he carries a great memento of a stupid rage..." "Look at what I've got." "It's the shirt." "I had thought it would have been a sword when I went to get it." "He, too soon for me, died, my child." "Just one more battle and Argos would have surrendered!" "But what there was of courage and of excellence was turned against me, so now Thebes falls and it should fall, should fall with me, should be done with" "and left to the vultures." "That's how I want it." "Turned around and went" "holding nothing more in his hands than a bloodstained cloth, all that was left of the house of Labdacus" "into the tottering city." "But we, we follow him still, and it's all downhill." "It shall now be cut off, so that it shall not strike again, our obliging hands." "But she who saw it all could only help the enemy who now comes to destroy us entirely." "For time is short and the unknown surrounds us;" "and it isn't enough just to live unthinking and happy and patiently bear oppression and learn wisdom only with age." "The human memory of past suffering is short." "Its imagination for future suffering is more limited yet." "This is because humanity is menaced by wars compared to which those already past will seem like pitiful attempts, and without any doubt they are going to happen, if the hands of those who prepare them in public are not crushed." "subtitles: depositio based on" "Judith Malina's English translation of Brecht and Danièle Huillet's French subtitles"