set you to thinking about what aspects of the play really interest you. Incidentally, though I do tend to go on rather—it’s a habit which, like smoking,I seem unable or unwilling to abandon—do interrupt me at any time.
“I’ve only just begun reading about the
Antigone
, and I want to be perfectly frank in telling you that. I do not expect to remain one lesson ahead of the class, as is the usual desperate remedy of pedagogues. I expect you’ll catch up with me or overtake me, and my only wish is that we shall all leave the course knowing more about the
Antigone
and perhaps about how to approach a living, vital work than we did before.”
“I don’t understand,” Elizabeth McCarthy said. “Is the
Antigone
any more living or vital than Caesar, or Cicero, say, and does it have to be approached differently?”
“I think the
Antigone
is more living, but the point is arguable and, as I have said, I hope you will argue it. There are, after all, two kinds of literature, broadly speaking: that which still speaks to us and our particular anguishes of today, and that which spoke to its contemporary audience and can only have a scholarly interest for us as we try to discover what the work meant to those for whom it was written. Take a play like, oh,
Bartholomew Fair
by Ben Jonson. It’s a wonderful comedy if you’ve got up enough about the sixteenth century to be able to get the jokes. Shakespeare, on the other hand, speaks, as we say, to our condition. The study of Jonson’s play I would like to call a task in literary history, the study of Shakespeare’s a task in literary criticism, but it happens that is not a very safe distinction to make, and I hope you will all be quite clear that I am not making it.” The class grinned and Kate felt better.
“Our interest,” Freemond Oliver said, “even forthose of us who struggled through the play in Greek, is that it’s so very
now
—I mean, the story of a tyrant who wants to impose his rules and his ideas of patriotism, and this young woman, this single individual, who insists on following her own conscience about what is right, and who wants to act from love.”
“Sure,” Kate said, “but I would argue with you whether Creon is a tyrant—there
is
a good deal of right on his side, which also makes the play so modern. You can say if you want, and George Eliot has, that the conflict is between individual judgment and the conventions of society, but it is dangerous to assume that the conventions of society are, despite our sneering use of the word ‘conventional,’ necessarily wrong. Without some conventions, each day would be a new battle back at the beginning of time.”
“Anyone who says he will stone to death whoever disobeys his rules is a tyrant,” Angelica Jablon proclaimed.
“Creon has a lot of right on his side,” Betsy Stark said, “particularly if you give him credit for changing his mind, which seems to be the human accomplishment least often accomplished. Imagine Bill Buckley changing his mind about student movements or Eleanor Roosevelt.”
“It’s like the arguments over closing the school for Moratorium Day,” Irene Rexton said. “We ended up having a so-called compromise; that is, we came to school and had discussion groups on the Vietnam War. But that didn’t leave me, for example, if I believed that the war was an honorable one, able to attend school in the ordinary way, which surely I had a right to do.”
“Isn’t it ‘school’ discussing a war the country’s allhung up on over?” Angelica asked, with more heat and prepositions than were perhaps desirable.
“The question of whether or not Creon is a tyrant is therefore on the agenda,” Kate quietly said, “as is the connected question of whether Creon or Antigone is in fact the ‘hero’ of Sophocles’ play. Expert opinion, as is its unpleasant habit, is divided. We do know that the role of Antigone was played by the first actor, and that of Creon by the third, which
“I’ve only just begun reading about the
Antigone
, and I want to be perfectly frank in telling you that. I do not expect to remain one lesson ahead of the class, as is the usual desperate remedy of pedagogues. I expect you’ll catch up with me or overtake me, and my only wish is that we shall all leave the course knowing more about the
Antigone
and perhaps about how to approach a living, vital work than we did before.”
“I don’t understand,” Elizabeth McCarthy said. “Is the
Antigone
any more living or vital than Caesar, or Cicero, say, and does it have to be approached differently?”
“I think the
Antigone
is more living, but the point is arguable and, as I have said, I hope you will argue it. There are, after all, two kinds of literature, broadly speaking: that which still speaks to us and our particular anguishes of today, and that which spoke to its contemporary audience and can only have a scholarly interest for us as we try to discover what the work meant to those for whom it was written. Take a play like, oh,
Bartholomew Fair
by Ben Jonson. It’s a wonderful comedy if you’ve got up enough about the sixteenth century to be able to get the jokes. Shakespeare, on the other hand, speaks, as we say, to our condition. The study of Jonson’s play I would like to call a task in literary history, the study of Shakespeare’s a task in literary criticism, but it happens that is not a very safe distinction to make, and I hope you will all be quite clear that I am not making it.” The class grinned and Kate felt better.
“Our interest,” Freemond Oliver said, “even forthose of us who struggled through the play in Greek, is that it’s so very
now
—I mean, the story of a tyrant who wants to impose his rules and his ideas of patriotism, and this young woman, this single individual, who insists on following her own conscience about what is right, and who wants to act from love.”
“Sure,” Kate said, “but I would argue with you whether Creon is a tyrant—there
is
a good deal of right on his side, which also makes the play so modern. You can say if you want, and George Eliot has, that the conflict is between individual judgment and the conventions of society, but it is dangerous to assume that the conventions of society are, despite our sneering use of the word ‘conventional,’ necessarily wrong. Without some conventions, each day would be a new battle back at the beginning of time.”
“Anyone who says he will stone to death whoever disobeys his rules is a tyrant,” Angelica Jablon proclaimed.
“Creon has a lot of right on his side,” Betsy Stark said, “particularly if you give him credit for changing his mind, which seems to be the human accomplishment least often accomplished. Imagine Bill Buckley changing his mind about student movements or Eleanor Roosevelt.”
“It’s like the arguments over closing the school for Moratorium Day,” Irene Rexton said. “We ended up having a so-called compromise; that is, we came to school and had discussion groups on the Vietnam War. But that didn’t leave me, for example, if I believed that the war was an honorable one, able to attend school in the ordinary way, which surely I had a right to do.”
“Isn’t it ‘school’ discussing a war the country’s allhung up on over?” Angelica asked, with more heat and prepositions than were perhaps desirable.
“The question of whether or not Creon is a tyrant is therefore on the agenda,” Kate quietly said, “as is the connected question of whether Creon or Antigone is in fact the ‘hero’ of Sophocles’ play. Expert opinion, as is its unpleasant habit, is divided. We do know that the role of Antigone was played by the first actor, and that of Creon by the third, which
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