After Sophocles’ Tragedy: Antigone

Translated from Ancient Greek by Antanas DAMBRAUSKAS

It seems that until recently we lived in a time when we thought we had learned the lessons history had taught us. Yet today, the worst-case scenarios described in textbooks are returning to reality. Where should we turn for answers? Where should we look when history—not so long ago—tries to become our future?

Born in the cradle of democracy, ancient Greece, Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone reveals an age-old clash of values, a conflict between two political truths, which director Kamilė Gudmonaitė examines from her own perspective.

“Although Europe remains a bloc of liberal democracies today, we can see an attraction to ideological alternatives. The liberal order is losing its emotional weight; we see disillusionment with it, and even with democracy itself. Globalisation is perceived as a threat, economic inequality is growing, and so more and more people are turning to populist right-wing parties that offer ‘clear enemies’ and ‘simple solutions’, familiar epics and their heroes, which do not require long and ‘ineffectual’ discussions. All this is set against a backdrop of geopolitical crisis and ongoing wars. I believe the front line here is first and foremost not a physical boundary, but a clash between ideological ways of thinking about the world. As in our production, Sophocles’ Antigone becomes the front line between Europe’s ideologies,” says the director.

The play brings Antigone and Creon into conflict: characters representing two different directions. Antigone fights for her convictions and her brother’s honour, while the ruler Creon demands obedience to the laws and public order. The tragedy feels more relevant than ever, offering an intellectual cross-section of Europe and showing how the search for truth is set against its construction. But in our many-voiced world, can we still speak of just two truths at all?

To paraphrase Bonnie Honig, a professor of contemporary culture, media and political science who has examined Antigone through a political lens, antiquity does not become the present; antiquity exists in a relationship with it. So what is that relationship today? Can such a truth exist in a crisis—the kind of truth we knew before? Finally, if discussion is the engine of democracy, why is it still so difficult for us to talk?