Antigone | The Antigone and its Moral
In the following excerpt from an article that originally appeared in The Leader on March 29, 1856, George Eliot interprets Antigone as the conflict between "the strength of man's intellect, or moral sense, or affection" and "the rules which society has sanctioned."
The Antigone has every quality of a fine tragedy, and fine tragedies can never become mere mummies for [critics] to dispute about: they must appeal to perennial human nature, and even the ingenious dulness of translators cannot exhaust them of their passion and their poetry.
E'en in their ashes live their wonted fires.
[Matthew Arnold] said that the dramatic motive of the Antigone was foreign to modern sympathies, but it is only superficially so. It is true we no longer believe that a brother, if left unburied, is...
[The entire page is 778 words long]
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