HAEMON:
Nor should it be. Say everything, that’s you
And listen to nothing.
CREON:
Rid of the brood, and quickly!
HAEMON:
And I’ll get rid of me so you need see
No one upright, and tremble.
Exit Haemon.
ELDERS:
Him leaving in anger, sir, he is your lastborn.
CREON:
Still he’ll not save the women from their deaths.
ELDERS:
You think of killing both of them now, do you?
CREON:
Her who kept out of it, not that one, there you’re right.
ELDERS:
Thinking of the other, how will you do the killing?
CREON:
Conduct her from the city where my people now
Are lifting their feet for Bacchus, she however
The guilty one, be stored where human tracks are lonely
Alive in a pit of rock with only millet and wine
The due of the dead, as though buried herself.
So I decree it
So that the city will not wholly be disgraced.
Exit Creon into the city.
ELDERS:
But like a mountain of clouds it stands before me now
That this is the hour when Oedipus’ child in her chamber
Hears Bacchus in the distance and prepares for her last way.
For now he summons his own and as ever still thirsting for
joy
Our wasted city gives him a joyful answer.
For victory is great and Bacchus cannot be resisted
When he approaches our anxious city and hands her the
drink of forgetting.
Then the black she was sewing, the mourning black for her
sons
She flings it away and hastens to the orgies of Bacchus,
seeking exhaustion.
The Elders fetch themselves Bacchic staves.
Spirit of lusts of the flesh but always
Winner in any quarrel. Even the tied by blood
He flings all awry, so strongly he pleads.
He is never worsted, whoever he comes on
Are not themselves, they are seized, they rave
And under the yoke they stir and
Offer new necks, not fearing
The breath of the salt mine nor on
The black waters the thin-walled ship. Skins
He mixes with others and flings
Them all together but does not lay waste
The kingdom of earth with violent hands but is
From the first for peace and joins in the making
Of great ends. For in them unwarlike
Heavenly beauty plays her part too.
Enter Antigone led by the guard and followed by maids.
AN ELDER:
But now myself I lose
The measure and can no longer stop
The spring of tears for now
Antigone must receive the gifts
Of the dead, the millet and wine.
ANTIGONE:
My fellow citizens of home, oh see
Me going the final way
And seeing the sun’s
Last light.
That never again? For he
Who will bed us all one day, the god of death
Is leading me living
To the banks of Acheron.
No wedding will be mine
No bridal song will be sung for me
I am the bride of Acheron.
ELDERS:
But you go famous and accompanied by praise
Away to that chamber of the dead
Not carried off by sickness nor given
The iron wages of iron
But living the life of your own
You go down alive
Into the world of the dead.
ANTIGONE:
Oh alas they are mocking me
Not yet gone below
Still in the daylight.
Oh city, oh you my city’s
Men of plenty! And yet one day
You must be my witnesses how I
Unwept by loved ones and in accordance with
What sort of laws
Must enter the opening dug for me
The unheard of grave. I am
Not joined with mortals
Nor with the shades
With life nor death.
ELDERS:
Power, when power is the issue
Never gives. In the angry knowing herself
She has destroyed herself.
ANTIGONE:
Oh my father, oh unhappy mother
From whom with a darkened mind I came
To them I am coming cursed
To live with them without a man.
Alas, alas my brother
Sweet to live and fallen
Me too who was still here
You drag down with you.
AN ELDER setting a dish of millet before her:
But Danaë too she had to have
On her body instead of the light of the sky
The iron grid, and bear it. She lay in the dark.
But, child, her birth was lofty.
And she counted the strokes of the hours
The golden strokes, for the author of time.
ANTIGONE:
Lamentably, so I have heard, she died
Who came from Phrygia
Tantalus’ daughter
On Sipylus’ peaks
She is crouched and shrunk
To a slow stone, they put her in chains
Of ivy and winter is with her
Always, people say, and washes her throat
With snow-bright tears
From under her lids. Like her exactly
A ghost brings me to bed.
AN ELDER setting down a jug of wine before her:
Named among the holy however, holy
In her birth, is she but we are earth and born earthly.
True, you perish, but as one of the great. And not
Unlike our offerings to the gods.
ANTIGONE:
Already, with sighs, you are giving me up.
You are gazing into the blue and never
Into my eyes. But all I did was do
In holiness what is holy.
ELDERS:
And the son of Dryas, when his mouth ran over
Scolding the wrong, by Dionysus
He was swiftly seized and buried under chutes of stone
And groping in madness, with a scolding tongue
He got to know the god.
ANTIGONE:
And better it would be if you
Collected together all the scolding of wrong and dried
It of tears for me and put it to use. You are not
Farseeing.
ELDERS:
But on chalky rocks
Where at both ends sea is, on the Bosporus shores
Close to the city, there the god of battle
Watched while the eyes of the sons of Phineus
For seeing too far, the eagle eyes
Were stabbed with spears and it grew dark
In the brave orbs of their eyes.
For the force of fate is terrible.
Not wealth nor the god of battle
Or tower escapes it.
ANTIGONE:
Do not, I beg you, speak of fate.
I know it. Speak of him
Who lays me out, innocent, for death. Knit him
A fate! For do not think
Unhappy souls, you will be saved.
Other bodies, hacked
Will lie in heaps unburied around
That one unburied. You having dragged the war
For Creon over zones beyond our homeland
However many battles he is lucky in, the last
Will swallow you up. Calling for spoils
It won’t be chariots
full you see coming but
Empty. I weep for you, the living
What you will see
When my eyes are already filled with dust. Sweet Thebes
My native city! And oh, you springs of Dirce
And all around Thebes, where the chariots
Parade, oh you groves of trees! It tightens my throat
To think what will happen to you. Inhuman
Human beings have come forth from you and so
You must come to dust. Tell
Whoever asks for Antigone we
Saw her flee to the grave.
Exit Antigone with the guard and the maids.
ELDERS:
Turned and with long strides walked as though she
Were leading her guard. Over the square
She went where the victory columns
Are raised already, brazen. There she walked faster;
Vanished.
But she also once
Ate of the bread that was baked
In the stony dark. And while unhappiness
Harboured in the towers
In their shadow she sat at ease until
The deadly things that went forth from Labdacus’ home
Returned deadly. The bloody hand
Dealt them among its own and they
Did more than receive, they grabbed at it.
Only after that did she
Lie angrily in the open air and was also
Flung into the good!
The cold woke her.
Not until the last
Patience was consumed and measured out the last
Criminal act, did the child of unseeing Oedipus
Remove the long since threadbare blindfold from her eyes
To look into the abyss.
Now just as unseeing
Thebes lifts her heels and staggering tastes
The drink of victory that is mixed
Of many herbs in the dark
And gulps it down and exults.
Tiresias is coming, the blind man, the seer, impelled
For sure by the stench of waxing discord
And revolt boiling below.
Enter Tiresias led by a child and followed by Creon.
TIRESIAS:
Easy, child, go always and steadily
Unshaken by the dancing, you
Are the leader. The leader
Must not follow Bacchus.
A fall is certain for anyone lifting
His heels too high from the ground.
And don’t hit against
The victory columns. In the town
They are shrieking victory
In the town full of fools
And the blind man
Follows the sighted child but after the blind man
Comes one blinder still.
CREON who has followed him mockingly:
What’s that you’re mumbling
Moaner, about the war?
TIRESIAS:
This, that you are dancing
Fool, before the victory.
CREON:
Old and troublesome
Seer of things that are not but you do not see
Columns set up all around
And towering high.
TIRESIAS:
I do not. And my wits
Are not addled. And therefore I have come
Dear friends. For even the leaves
Of the laurel when they are fleshy I rarely know them
But only when dry, when they rustle for me
Or I bite them and taste
Bitterness in them and know: that is laurel.
CREON:
You dislike festivities. Then at once
Your mouth’s more terrible when you speak to us.
TIRESIAS:
I have seen terrible things. Hear what the birds
Mean for Thebes so drunk
With early victory and deaf
With the droning din of the Bacchic dancing: I sat
In the ancient chair and had before me a haven of all the
birds.
I heard a stirring in the air then, murderous
And came a raging, tearing with claws at one another
And slaughter among the winged creatures. In fear
I tried the altars that were swiftly lit. And
In no place did I come upon a good fire. Only smoke
Writhed upwards thickly and the thighs
Of the sacrifices looked open from the fat that covered
them.
ELDERS:
A very bad sign on the victory day
And news that cankers our enjoyment.
TIRESIAS:
Creon, the signless orgies’ deadly interpretation
Would be that you are why the town is sick
Because the altars are and fire places
Defiled by dogs and birds who have fed full
On the unseemly fallen son of Oedipus.
Therefore the birds’ wellmeaning cry no longer
Comes rushing here for it has eaten of
A dead man’s fat. But the gods
Can’t stomach smoke like that. Therefore
Yield to the dead man, do not persecute
One who has gone.
CREON:
Old man, your birds
Fly how you like. I know that. Haven’t they
Flown for me too? I am not that unschooled
In dealing and the arts of prophecy
Never having stinted. So pocket
Electrum from Sardis and gold from India
But don’t think I will let the coward be buried.
I’m not afraid of sicknesses from heaven.
No human moves the gods. I know that much.
But among mortal men
Old man, even some very mighty fall
A very grievous fall if they speak sweetly
Words that desolate, for their own profit.
TIRESIAS:
I am too old to place myself to gain
A small time more.
CREON:
No one is so old
He would not like to live longer.
TIRESIAS:
I know.
But I know more besides.
ELDERS:
Say it, Tiresias.
Sir, let the seer be heard.
CREON:
Say it however you like. But leave off haggling.
All the clan of seers love silver, as we know.
TIRESIAS:
And tyrants offer it, so I have heard.
CREON:
And a blind man
Bites into the coin and knows
That’s silver.
TIRESIAS:
And I’d rather you offered me none.
For no one knows in war what he’ll hold on to.
Be it silver, be it sons, or be it power.
CREON:
The war is over.
TIRESIAS:
Is it?
I asked you something?
Since I, as you have said, know nothing
Our kind must ask. Since I, as you have said
Can’t see into the future
I have to look into the present and the past and so
Maintain my art and am a seer. True, I see
Only what any child can see. That the bronze
On the victory columns is very thin. I say: because
Spears are being made still, many spears. That for the army
Fleeces are being sewn. I say: as though autumn were
coming.
And fish being dried, as though for winter quarters.
ELDERS:
I thought that was before the victory in battle
And cancelled now? And booty coming
With bronze and fish from Argos now?
TIRESIAS:
And there are guards in plenty but whether it’s much
Or little they guard, nobody knows. But there is great
Loggerheads in your home
and no forgetting
As there is usually after happy business. And it is said
That your son Haemon went from you distressed
Because you flung Antigone, betrothed to him
Into a pit of stone when for her brother
For Polynices, she wished to open a grave
Because you struck him down and left him graveless
When he rose up opposing you because
Your war lost him his brother Eteocles.
So I know you to be cruelly entwined in cruelty
And since my wits have not been spoiled by silver
I ask the second question. Why are you cruel
Creon, Menoeceus’ son? I’ll make it easier:
Is it because you want bronze for your war?
What is it you’ve done, what foolish thing or evil
That now in evil things you must go on and foolish?
CREON:
You two-tongued villain!
TIRESIAS:
Worse would be half a tongue.
But I’ve my twofold answer which is: none.
And I knit nothing with nothing and I say:
Misrule cries out for great men and finds none.
War goes forth from itself and breaks a leg.
From pillage pillage comes and harshness needs harshness
And more needs more and comes in the end to nothing.
And now I have looked back and all around me
You: look ahead, in terror.
Lead me from here, child.
Exit Tiresias, led by the child.
ELDERS:
Sir, had my hair
Just now been black still, now
It would be white. The man in anger
Said bad things
And worse things did not say.
CREON:
So I say what
Has not been said, why utter it?
ELDERS:
Creon, son of Menoeceus, when
Are the young men coming home
To the city empty of men and how
Fares your war, Creon, son of Menoeceus?
CREON:
Since he malevolently has directed
The gaze at this, I’ll tell you: the war
Treacherous Argos made against us, the end
Of it is not yet now nor is
It going very well. When I decreed the peace
Only a little was still wanting and that
Because of Polynices’ treachery.
But he lies chastised
And with him she who wept for him.
ELDERS:
And this too is not
Yet at an end, for he
Has turned himself away from you who leads
The storms of spears for you here, the younger born
Son, Haemon.
CREON:
Nor do I want him any more
At all. Out of my sight and yours
With him who abandoned me
For the petty bother of his bed.
Megareus still fights for me
My son incessantly pitching
In waves against the tottering walls of Argos
The bronze-clad youth of Thebes.
ELDERS:
Which is not inexhaustible.
Collected Plays, Volume 4 (Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry & Prose) 8 Page 7