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The Organist · Andrew Leland

Antigonick

November 30, 2017·52 min·4 clips
Anne Carson's letter to Antigone opens by noting her name means 'against birth' and that Brecht made her carry a door through the entire play.
Antigonic begins with a frame. Andrew Leland introduces Anne Carson's experimental translation of Antigone, then stops with Angela Shackle to ask what radio can do with a text this strange. The answer is not to smooth it out. Shackle talks about a translation that is not straight or literal, even though Carson worked from the original Greek. Reception history shows up early. Antigone is treated as a character already carrying years of interpretation, including philosophers, playwrights, Hegel, and Beckett. The play knows people have been arguing with it for a long time. That gives the production its pull, because the old tragedy keeps speaking through later readers and stagings. Then the frame drops away. The excerpt lands in a tense confrontation where law is not neutral. Creon wants authority to settle the matter. Antigone answers with gods, the dead, and unwritten ordinances no ruler can outrun. The language is sharp and severe. It can sound ancient, modern, funny, and almost impatient in the same exchange. Antigone accepts death without softening it. What hurts is leaving her mother's son unburied. Creon keeps trying to name and control the argument, but the words keep sliding: patriot, traitor, enemy, kin, shame, honor. Ismene arrives late and pleading. Her wish to share the blame only makes Antigone's refusal harsher. No one gets to borrow her death. After the intensity, the episode returns to the ordinary machinery of radio: website notes, illustrations, producers, editors, engineers, and one last episode before a break.

As heard by us

A radio Antigone that keeps translation open, layered, and a little unresolved.

The Organist's Antigonic treats Anne Carson's translation of Antigone as something less fixed than a single version of the play. Angela Shackle's radio adaptation keeps that openness intact, so the piece can hold Greek source, reception history, and later readers in the same…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want Antigonic, Anne Carson's experimental translation of Antigone, turned into a radio echo chamber.

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