Word: creon
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...whose sake does she break the law? "For nobody. For myself." Even though she knows Creon will remove the dirt, she also knows that "what a person can do, a person ought to do." It is said that mankind's strongest drives are sex, hunger, and self-preservation. But there are some people for whom conscience is just as strong, or stronger--at times terrifyingly strong. Antigone is one such; she prefers to die rather than to try to live with a guilty conscience and with compromise...
Antigone holds a special historical position, too. Written in 1942 and first performed in 1944, it was the most important stage work to emerge during the Occupation. It was widely construed as a political allegory, the conflict between Antigone and Creon being viewed as that between the R*esistance and the collaborationists. The French people were divided, however, into those who found the play "fascist" and those who found it "antifascist." Thus Anouilh would seem to have achieved a good deal of the "negative capability" that Keats attributed to Shakespeare. And it is true that Anouilh did not stack...
...Aldredge, an ambulating master-of-ceremonies, hosting the activities with a hand-microphone that feeds amplifying speakers on the wall, and occasionally smoking a cigarette. At one point he is irresistibly compelled to desert objectivity and intrude himself into the action in a vain attempt to change Creon's mind and save Antigone. It is a stunning moment, and here Aldredge quite rightly leaves his microphone aside. At another point, the Chorus holds up the play in order to give the audience a speech about Anouilh's view of the essence of tragedy. This was a frightfully dangerous thing...
...chief conflict in the play remains that between Conscience and Compromise. Although Antigone and Creon both appear in the earlier part of the work, they confront each other face to face only in the second half--and this tug-of-war is the heart of the play. In this production, the two principals are a worthy match for each other: Maria Tucci and Morris Carnovsky. Carnovsky is of course a known quantity. But I had never been especially struck by Miss Tucci's endeavors. Her Antigone, however, is miles above anything she has done before; it is in fact...
...mind back to thoughts of Greta Garbo. Her Antigone is proud and courageous and noble. But instead of a Sophoclean serenity she is seized with anguish. She is not so concerned with the eternal repose of Polyneices as with the right to dissent when conscience dictates. She tells Creon, "I am not here to understand.... I am here to say no to you, and die." But she is not against Creon personally so much as against the society he represents...