This was the best book I was gifted in 2019. I had just finished teaching Antigone and it was sent in a blind swap as the senders favorite feminist, poetic retelling and it was perfect. It’s absolutely my favorite if 2018. ( )

Annnnnnneeeeeee you're so SMART I love youuuuuu ( )

Anne Carson is a wonder! Her imagination is boundless and her reworking of Antigone is beautiful, funny, its tragedy is of the moment—a moment that falls within the timelessness of Sophocles’ original.
This illustrated volume, hand-lettered with translucent water color paintings on velum, is such a gorgeous thing. ( )

Anne Carson puts a modern spell on Sophocles’ classic ancient Greek tragedy Antigone. An undeniable master stroke beating in its poetic vibrance, this play was stunningly brought to life on Ivo van Hove’s minimalist stage where a circle resides in the middle; a spectator; its luminescence deliberately mimics the moon / sun as they run their course in parallel with the development of the tragedy. A timeless classic that is frighteningly relevant as ever: the dispute between religious and secular laws, authoritarianism and its depredation on culture and faith, and the perils any type of extremism brings. It’s indeed an act of revolt when Antigone secretly buries his brother Polyneikes against King Kreon’s tyranny where a domino effect of mishap and pain follows. And where there is revolt there is also resignation in its horrifying violence. I watched the BBC Four programme and actress Juliette Binoche undoubtedly gives a stupendous performance as Antigone. And together with a brilliant supporting cast, this is a sure delight for Greek mythology and Anne Carson enthusiasts alike. A pleasure both on print and on-screen. ( )

Reading this book felt something like entering a state of grace, or at least gratefulness. I felt like giving thanks the entire time I was reading it, that Anne Carson has written a translation of Sophocles's Antigone that manages to be very beautiful and very funny and utterly surprising, all at the same time.

Carson's translation plays delightfully with the idea that a work of art changes and accumulates meanings as it moves through time. Carson remains connected at least tangentially to original meanings, but she adds further layers of meaning that come solely from the mind of Anne Carson, as a poet, and as a reader of Sophocles, and as a unique individual woman living in the 21st century. Is not every reading a translation in a way, from writer to reader? Here on the page I experience the play through Carson's personal translation of its meanings. Carson invites me in as a reader, too, to have my own experiences with the flow of word and idea.

Here is an example of what I mean. Sophocles gave Kreon a kingly soliloquy near the beginning of the play. He permits Kreon to wax on about his kingliness and his manly righteousness. We readers know from the beginning, of course, that Kreon's speech is just empty words, and that he will soon discover this for himself. In Anne Carson's work, Creon's speech from the beginning is stripped bare of syntax so that it becomes nothing more than a series of static nouns, a technique that somehow both captures the original pomp and pride of Kreon, and also reflects the true meaning of the speech--the meaning that we know, but Kreon doesn't yet know--that his words are empty of true meaning:

[ENTER KREON]

KREON: Here are Kreon's nouns for today

Adjudicate
Legislate
Scandalize
Capitalize

Here are Kreon's nouns

Men

Reason
Treason
Death

Ship of State

Mine...

So not exactly iambic hexameter or whatever. But somehow the grip of the original poem is still there, refracted and hollowed out and exposed from the beginning as pompous, hot-gas, baggy stuff. And I also get a very strong feeling about what Anne Carson thinks about men like Kreon and I like having that layer there in the language.

In addition to word play, there's poetry here that makes me cry because it's so beautiful, especially Carson's translation of the magnificent "Ode to Man" that comes at the end of the first act.

Here are the first lines of Ode to Man translated by Fitzgerald:


Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none
More wonderful than man; the stormgray sea
Yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high;
Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven
With shining furrows where his plows have gone
Year after year, the timeless labor of stallions.

Beautiful.
And here is Carson:

Many terribly quiet customers exist but none more
terribly quiet than Man:
his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea
in marble winter,
up the stiff blue waves and every Tuesday
down he grinds the unastonishable earth
with horse and shatter.

Also beautiful. Carson's full translation of "Ode to Man" was published in the New Yorker, here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/16/the-ode-to-man-from-sophocles-anti...

The entire play is an experience to read, especially in the hardcover illustrated edition hand-lettered by Carson, but the Ode, linked above, is my favorite poetry in the translation. ( )