Recapturing Sophocles' Antigone by Tyrrell William Blake. Bennett Larry J. & Larry J. Bennett

Author:Tyrrell, William Blake.,Bennett, Larry J. & Larry J. Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Published: 1998-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

5. Haemon, Son and Citizen

Second Stasimon and Third Episode (582-780)

Because Antigone, like all Greek tragedy, used only three actors, the reader may have the impression that the spectacle was sparse. But in the scene just concluded, Creon is attended by at least two servants (Sophocles Antigone 491), Antigone stands before him, the Watchman having been dismissed, and Ismene is accompanied by female servants who, since they escort her back into the house (578), must have entered with her. Now, all have disappeared save for Creon who remains visible before the house. The contrast could hardly have failed to strike Sophocles’ original audience and bears noting by his modern audiences. The spectacle foreshadows Creon’s fate, and the elders’ song reinforces what they see.

The elders begin their song with an adynaton about the fortunate, a one-line generalization that contains its own untruth, for what life has “no taste of troubles” (κακῶν ἄγευστος αἰών Sophocles Antigone 583)?1 Not surprisingly, they quickly turn their attention to those whose house is incessantly afflicted with recklessness, ruin, and delusion, that is, with atê from the gods that creeps over the house like a wave driven by storm winds of Thrace (584-592).2 Behind them stands such a house whose succeeding generations bring no release from pain. They speak of the doom awaiting its final progeny:

νῦν γὰρ ἐσχάτας ὑπὲρ

ῥίζας ἐτέτατο φάος ἐν Οἰδίπου δόμοις·

κατ’ αὖ νιν φοινία

θεῶν τῶν νερτέρων ἀμᾷ κόνις,

λόγου τ’ ἄνοια καὶ φρενῶν Ἐρινύς.

Sophocles Antigone 599-603

Now, above the last

root a light had been stretched over Oedipus’ house.

Again the bloody dust3

of nether gods mows it down,

folly of word and Erinys of mind.

The promise of continuity is broken. Underworld gods, because of foolish words spoken by a deluded mind, are preparing to destroy “the last root” of the house. The gist of the elders’ message is clear, yet its structure and imagery have elicited much controversy and therefore warrant elaboration.

After a clear reference to the continual suffering of “the house of Labdacus’ sons” (Sophocles Antigone 594), the elders regard the fate of the present generation, the “Now” that rests in Antigone. The pluperfect tense of the verb indicates that the hope that had been vested in Antigone is lost. The “bloody dust,” reminiscent of that which covered the “oozing” body of Polyneices (μυδῶν 410), is now the instrument of revenge of the nether gods.4 The image of dust mowing down a root must have been palpable to an audience living in a land where dust or sand was ubiquitous and dust storms plagued its dry season,5 particularly since they had just heard such a storm vividly described, a storm that injured men and “all the foliage of the trees on the plains” (πᾶσαν . . . φόβην / ὕλης πεδιάδος 419-420). The dust belongs to the nether gods who are concerned with both the unburied dead and the honors due themselves. Though a root is more likely to be “mowed down,” in the world of metaphor, the “it” (nin) of line 601 could refer to either root or light and has been read as both.

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