Finished reading Sophocles’ third and final Theban play. Actually, it’s the first. Though “Antigone” brings the cycle to a close, it was the first written and performed. One might say that Sophocles was the ancient father of the prequel, producing “Oedipus The King” after “Antigone.”
This is the tragic account of a daughter-sister of Oedipus burying the body of her disgraced brother, Polynices, against the will of Creon, the king of Thebes, her uncle (in its complicated way). To quote Creon, this is a “story with a great deal of artful precaution. It’s evidently something strange.”
In this third (and first) tale, Teiresias the blind prophet, makes a curious observation (if you will), that points the way out of tragedy, that “all men fall into sin. But sinning, he is not for ever lost hapless and helpless, who can make amends and has not set his face against repentance.” Though his advice goes unheeded and the characters meet their tragic end, one wonders: must our end be the same?
(Artwork is “Antigone in front of the dead Polynices” by Nikiforos Lytras, 1865)
