The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone
By Seamus Heaney (Translator)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
HC, 80 pages, US$18
ISBN: 0-3741-1721-7
The right thing for the wrong reason
By Steven Martinovich
web posted November 8, 2004
Although it was first produced around 441 BC, Sophocles' masterpiece Antigone is no less relevant today then when Demosthenes and Aristotle quoted it in support of their political arguments. It is a play that debates loyalty and what happens when an individual considers their loyalty to a principle more important than their loyalty to the state. It also asks the audience the age-old question of how far the state can go in demanding loyalty from its citizenry.
In the play Antigone, a daughter of the doomed Oedipus, declares to her sister that she will disobey her sovereign King Creon of Thebes and bury her brother Polyneices. Creon had ordered that because Polyneices fought against his own people in a recent war with Argos, he to be denied burial -- a fate that would fill the average Greek with terror. She is captured in the act and condemned to death for defying Creon's commandment. Each justifies their actions: Creon declares that his order is just because of Polyneices' treachery and that he must be obeyed as king while Antigone argues her loyalty to her family and the dictates of the gods outweigh the demands of the state.
Given the current political tenor with the American-led war against terrorist groups, the questions that Antigone asks are once again being debated today. When George W. Bush declared that one was either with the United States or against it, it reminded many of Creon's declaration that one was either a patriot of Thebes or an enemy for supporting Antigone's attempt to honor Polyneices. Not surprisingly that is one of the inspirations Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney draws upon in a new translation of Antigone entitled The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone.
Although Antigone is considered the play's heroine, thanks to her dedication to her justifiable principles, it also makes it clear that there are merits to Creon's arguments, though not in how he enforces them. Modern audiences tend to be more sympathetic to Antigone's agony in seeing her brother's body defiled for his treachery but it can be argued, as Hegel did, that Creon also represents a moral force -- that the community can only survive if it is united. As Creon declares early in the play:
"For the patriot,
Personal loyalty always must give way
To patriotic duty.Solidarity, friends,
Is what we need. The whole crew must close ranks.
The safety of our state depends on it.
Our trust. Our friendships. Our security.
Good order in the city. And our greatness."
Any good will that Creon enjoys from those defensible statements likely dissipates, however, when after maintaining that he and Thebes are one and the same he asks his son Haemon, "Do my orders come from Thebes and from the people?" He is a king that is unwilling to accept the wisdom and guidance of others, ignoring that the people of Thebes are inclined to judge Antigone lightly and that the gods are not pleased with his behavior. The play, whether in Sophocles' original or Heaney's version, also points out that while Creon was wrong in punishing Antigone so harshly, she isn't judged to be entirely in the right either -- though the play leaves exactly why that is to the vagaries of the gods.
Each is doing the right thing -- Creon's defense of his authority, Antigone for her dedication to family -- for the wrong reason. By the time Creon sees the error of his ways and orders Antigone freed from the cave she has been walled up in -- but who has already committed suicide during her imprisonment, his own family has suffered death for his actions thanks to the gods. The unstoppable Antigone has collided with the immovable rock of Creon and resulted in the destruction of both.
The Burial at Thebes isn't the strongest translation of Antigone -- Robert Fagles' version, for example, is more substantial -- Heaney's take on it is nonetheless successful in demanding the reader answer the play's potent questions. Heaney is conscientious of the play's intent but is successful in subtlety updating the language to make it more accessible to modern audiences. Sophocles' Antigone and Heaney's The Burial at Thebes shows that the line dividing the individual from the state is no less blurry today then it was two and a half millennia ago. 
Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
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