Antigone
by Sophocles(-441)
Playc. 45 pages
“There is no happiness where there is no wisdom.”
One great work, every day
by Sophocles(-441)
“There is no happiness where there is no wisdom.”
Sophocles(-441)
Antigone buries her brother against the edict of King Creon, and dies for it; Creon loses everyone he loves because he would not bend. Sophocles wrote this near the height of Athenian power, and the tragedy of the state versus the individual, of law versus kinship, remains unresolved. Hegel saw it as the collision of two rights; Anouilh rewrote it under Nazi occupation. The play is performed constantly because the conflict never ends. Who has authority over the dead? What do we owe the state? Antigone answers with her body, and the question echoes.