SOURCE: Spingler, Michael. “Anouilh's Little Antigone: Tragedy, Theatricalism, and the Romantic Self.” Comparative Drama 8, no. 3 (fall 1974): 228-38.

[In the following essay, Spingler asserts that Anouilh's use of the chorus in Antigone functions to “establish the play's essential theatricality” and reinforce his perception of romantic theatrical techniques.]

The loss of a tragic sense in the theatre is a major concern of many modern dramatists and critics. In his Antigone, Jean Anouilh suggests that the reasons for this decline may be located within one of the fundamental developments of modern tragedy, that is, the replacement of action by character as the dramatic mainspring.¹ He sees the predominance of character as a fundamentally romantic development which leads to the emergence of a protagonist whose self-consciousness diminishes the tragic event. Anouilh's disenchantment with romantic posturing is expressed primarily in terms of a theatricalism which implies that tragedy based solely on character is really role-playing and self-dramatization. He does not see the role as a solution to the problem of writing a modern tragedy but as a reflection of the dilemma. In Antigone, the self-conscious role is inimical to the tragic spirit.²

There are three elements in the play which comprise the design Anouilh uses to dramatize his theme. At the heart of Antigone lies a persuasive denial of tragic vision put forward by Creon who, traditionally, should be the partner in the tragic action. In counterpoint to this, we find a highly sentimentalized and romantic rendering of Antigone which makes the play seem to be, at least superficially, a tragedy of character rather than of action. The unifying perspective through which we are invited to judge the conflict caused by a sentimental character replacing the moral structure of a tragic universe is provided by Anouilh's use of the chorus as a distancing device. Anouilh depends primarily upon the chorus to establish the play's essential theatricality.

Anouilh's chorus does not follow the Greek model of dancing and singing the transcendent vision of the tragedy. It is comprised instead of a single actor, a commentator whose observations invite the audience to assume a detached and critical perspective toward Antigone and her drama. A frame for the play and a creator of distance between it and the spectator, the chorus' presence on the stage recalls the Brechtian admonition not to mistake the staging of the event for the event itself.

This function of the chorus is clear from the first words of the play in which he introduces the characters as actors waiting to play a part: “Voilà. Ces personages vont vous jouer l'histoire d'Antigone.”³ The key word here is jouer, and the use of histoire rather than tragédie is also significant. He clarifies Antigone's position within the play by referring to her as a character who has not yet become fully realized: “Elle pense qu'elle va être Antigone toute à l'heure, qu'elle va surgir soudain de la maigre jeune fille noiraude et renfermée que personne ne prenait au sérieux dans la famille et se dresser seule en face du monde, seule en face de Créon, son oncle, qui est le roi. Elle pense qu'elle va mourir, qu'elle est jeune et qu'elle aussi, elle aurait bien aimé vivre” (p. 9). Initially, these words seem to be an introduction to the tragedy which is about to unfold, a preparation of the audience in order that it be familiar with the plot. Yet, if we consider these words more carefully and ask who, precisely, at this very moment, is thinking these thoughts, it becomes apparent that Antigone is an actress thinking about the characteristics and demands of her part just before going on.

This view of Antigone as both actress and character is essential to the play's theme. The chorus repeats it when she is led in by the guards: “Alors, voilà, cela commence. La petite Antigone est prise. La petite Antigone va pouvoir être elle-même pour la première fois” (p. 58). The sense of the importance of the role is very strong here, and the chorus has, in fact, pointed out the connection between Antigone's role and the element of fate within the play: “… et il n'y a rien à faire. Elle s'appelle Antigone et il va falloir qu'elle joue son rôle jusqua'au bout” (p. 10). Because of the chorus' insistence upon Antigone's dual nature as both character and player, we see her as tragic actress rather than tragic victim.

The chorus establishes a similar view towards the play itself. Because of his comments, we do not experience tragedy in the play as rhythm and structure but consider it at a distance as an abstract concept and problem. The chorus occasionally interrupts the action in order to explain the proceedings to the audience. His remarks before the confrontation between Antigone and Creon remind one of a public lecture on “The Theory of Tragedy.” “Et voilà. Maintenant le ressort est bandé. Cela n'a plus qu'à se dérouler tout seule. C'est cela qui est commode dans la tragédie” (p. 56). The major theme of the chorus' comments is that tragedy is comforting because of its inevitability: “… on n'a plus qu'à se laisser faire. On est tranquille. Cela roule tout seule. … C'est propre, la tragédie. C'est reposant, c'est sûr … Et puis, surtout, c'est reposant, la tragédie, parce qu'on sait qu'il n'y a plus d'espoir …” (pp. 57-58). We may be tempted to consider this theory of tragedy an extremely dubious one, which is very possibly the reason for its inclusion in the play. We shall see that the notion that tragedy is restful because it is sure has its appeal for Antigone. Most important is the effect upon the audience of the intrusion, at a critical juncture, of any theory, doubtful or illuminating, which considers tragedy conceptually. A spectator cannot be expected to share in a tragic experience when he is being lectured about it by a man in evening dress.

The effect of the chorus is to create a climate of ambiguity much the same as the one described by Richard Coe concerning the theatre of Genet: “The drama is both true and not true simultaneously—it commands or should command, absolute belief, but only in a context of absolute unbelief; and the absolute belief (or suspension of disbelief) is only valid if it knows itself to exist in a context of unrealities—that is, if it is unceasingly aware of itself as illusion”⁴ (p. 214). This self-conscious ambivalence is the essential mode within which the conflict between Antigone and Creon must be assessed. This conflict, as Anouilh presents it, is between a character who rebels against his tragic type-casting and a heroine who represents a romantic decaying of the tragic mold.

The principal set piece of the play in which Antigone faces Creon should contain the essence of the tragic issue. In Anouilh's version, instead of confronting a tragic antagonist who represents an opposing ethical view, Antigone faces a pragmatic and cynical man who refuses to enter into the tragic action with her. Creon's major argument is not that Antigone's act is wrong, merely that it is without significance. Moreover, his intent is not to justify his own moral position, but to convince Antigone that there is no longer an ethical base which would give her position the moral value of tragedy.⁵ He begins his case by attacking the idea of tragedy associated with Antigone's father: “Et tuer votre père et coucher avec votre mère et apprendre cela après, mot par mot. Quel breuvage, hein, les mots qui vous condamnent? Et comme on les boit goulument quand on s'appelle Oedipe ou Antigone. Et le plus simple après, c'est encore de se crever les yeux et d'aller mendier avec ses enfants sur les routes” (p. 73). The direct reference to the events of Oedipus Rex is a device for self-conscious allusion: the character who looks from a distance at a dramatic tradition from which he springs. In this sense Creon's words and the chorus' complement each other. Both suggest an outside or alien view of tragedy and together they raise the question of the need, or lack of need, for tragedy in modern theatre.

Whereas the chorus' attitude toward tragedy is ambiguous, Creon's bias against it is clear. He looks upon Oedipus and his family as a pack of vain trouble makers, and he is intent upon banishing the tragedy they carry with them from his realm: “Thèbes a droit maintenant à un prince sans histoire. … J'ai résolu avec moins d'ambition que ton père de m'employer tout simplement à rendre l'ordre de ce monde moins absurde, si c'est possible” (p. 73). Creon, like the chorus, uses the word histoire to refer to the tragic material of the Oedipus myth. The king's use of the word has the sense of troublesome and annoying business, and he makes it clear that he has no intention of becoming involved in such an affair: “Et si demain un messager crasseux dévale du fond des montagnes pour m'annoncer qu'il n'est pas sûr de mon naissance, je le prierai tout simplement de s'en retourner d'où il vient” (p. 74). Creon is the protagonist who, when confronted with the tragic revelation, would simply turn his back on it and act as if nothing had happened. He refuses the tragic moment as being politically inexpedient.

The king's problem is to convince Antigone to refuse tragedy also. To do this, he attempts to discredit any external ethical support for the tragic act. He starts by questioning the religious values which are behind Antigone's deed, maintaining that there is no reason for Antigone to bury Polynices since the burial ritual is, in itself, meaningless: “Tu y crois donc vraiment, toi, à cet enterrement dans les règles? A cette ombre de ton père condamné à errer toujours si on ne jette pas sur le cadavre un peu de terre avec la formule du pretre? … Et tu risques la mort maintenant parce que j'ai refusé à ton frère ce passeport dérisoire, ce bredouillage en série sur sa dépouille, cette pantomine dont tu aurais été la première à avoir honte et mal si on l'avait jouée. C'est absurde” (pp. 76, 77). There is little that Antigone can reply to Creon's debunking of the burial rituals since she does not believe in them herself. She agrees that it is absurd to invoke them and admits that she has, in fact, thought of stopping the priests if they ever recited their prayers over someone she loved. Both Creon and Antigone reflect here a world in which skepticism weakens the sort of belief necessary to a tragic universe. The issue at the heart of the tragic necessity, Polynices unburied, is considered by both as based on nothing but a shabby hoax.

However, regardless of her attitude towards the burial ceremony, Antigone's loyalty to her brother remains the major external justification for her act. Polynices is the last prop Creon pulls out from under her. He does so by revealing that her brothers were merely two thugs who plotted to murder their father and who were involved in a struggle with each other which resembled more a gangland war than a political revolt: “Nous avions à faire à deux larrons en foire qui se trompaient l'un l'autre en nous trompant et qui se sont égorgés comme deux petits voyous qu'ils étaient pour un pur règlement de comptes” (p. 95). Creon even claims that the bodies were so disfigured that he couldn't tell them apart, thus being obliged to choose arbitrarily one as the war hero and the other as the traitor. This final detail is certainly Anouilh's most imaginative twist to the classic myth, and, together with Creon's earlier remarks and the chorus' commentary, it completes the discrediting of the tragic universe associated with Antigone and her family.

At this point, any vestige of Greek tragic thought has been erased from the play. Without the moral basis for defying Creon, Antigone has no justification for continuing her tragic revolt. There is nothing for her to do but turn and go up to her room. Until this midpoint, Antigone's stand has been modeled after the Greek example; she defies Creon because of loyalty to Polynices. But Creon has very thoroughly discredited her tragic ideals and, now, she does not believe in the universal, ethical basis of tragedy any more than he does. The play must either stop or find a new direction. This new direction is based on Antigone's turning within herself to renew her tragic vocation.

Creon, himself, through a blunder, allows Antigone to find a justification for tragedy based on her sense of self which will replace the discredited moral universe. Like many cynical and ruthless men, the king has a sentimental streak which leads him to make a comparison between Antigone and a Creon of the past: “Je te comprends, j'aurais fait comme toi à vingt ans. C'est pour cela que je buvais tes paroles. J'écoutais du fonds du temps un petit Créon maigre et pâle comme toi et qui ne pensait qu'à tout donner lui aussi” (pp. 97-98). Creon then advises Antigone to be content with the simple things of life in which she may find some happiness. Her reply is one of the most telling of the play: “Quel sera-t-il mon bonheur? Quelle femme heureuse deviendra-t-elle la petite Antigone?” (p. 99) The term “un petit Créon” is a mistake which undoes all the king's previous argument because it causes Antigone to articulate her private sense of being. She responds with a term of her own, “la petite Antigone,” which has already been used several times by the chorus. The definite rather than indefinite article suggests that she considers this definition of the self complete, permanent, and not to be compromised by Creon's picture of her future life. Antigone is now able to fill the void created by the disappearance of the tragic universe with an interior world whose major value is her fidelity to her self-conception. In dramatic terms, Antigone is clinging to her role which she sees in danger of being changed by Creon's view of the future. This is the turning point of the play. Antigone must abandon the Greek model and enter into the contemporary theatre of self-consciousness. Her sense of herself as a specific character is the third element in Anouilh's dramatic design. It complements the chorus' distancing commentary and Creon's rejection of a tragic universe, and, therefore, Anouilh establishes the character carefully in the opening scene of the play.

The scene between Antigone and her nurse is an invention of Anouilh and, from the first, it contains troubling inconsistencies with what one expects from tragedy. Its tone and mood are sentimental and domestic, the rough, loving, scold of a nurse contrasted with the sweet and fragile heroine.

Antigone's initial replies to the nurse are the most important indications of her character: “La nourrice: D'où viens tu? Antigone: De me promener, nourrice. C'était beau. Tout était gris. Maintenant tu ne peux pas savoir, tout est déjà rose, jaune, vert. C'est devenu une carte postale. Il faut te lever plus tôt nourrice si tu veux voir un monde sans couleurs” (p. 14). These words may strike a strange note when one considers that they are spoken just after Antigone's burial of Polynices. The mood is lyrical and elated and seems inconsistent with the gravity of the situation. This is surely the point of the scene. The dialogue between Antigone and her nurse directs the spectator's attention away from Antigone's act and toward the personality and character of the girl herself. Her second reply to the nurse intensifies our impression of her: “Le jardin dormait encore. Je l'ai surpris nourrice. Je l'ai vu sans qu'il s'en doute. C'est beau un jardin qui ne pense pas encore aux hommes” (pp. 14-15). This Antigone will be quite familiar to a French audience. Her replies contain a preciosity which evokes the poésie de banlieue one might find in a Prévert scenario. When Antigone says, “… je me suis glissée dans la campagne sans qu'elle s'en aperçoive” (p. 15), we are reminded of the arabesques we expect from the lovely and eccentric girls who populate Giraudoux's theatre.

It is essential that we see Antigone in sentimental closeup because what counts finally is not what she does but how we see her and how she sees herself. It is a characteristic of self-conscious theatre that the two perceptions are very much the same. So, Anouilh provides a striking number of sentimental touches in the opening moments of the play. Antigone still uses her baby name for her nurse, “Nounou.” The heroine has a little dog named “Douce” whose fate seems to be at least as important to her as the unfolding of the tragic action. Perhaps the best example of the sentimentality which eventually overshadows ethical considerations is the revelation later that Antigone has buried Polynices with the toy shovel with which, as children, they built sand castles at the beach.

These details are extremely important to the play's design. The distance from tragedy established through the Chorus and Creon are all the more effective since Antigone is touching and convincing. One of the play's peculiar tensions is this combination of distance and intimacy; we are asked to judge at a distance a character with whom, in other circumstances, we might sympathize or identify. Having raised the problem of the place of tragedy in modern theatre, Anouilh asks whether a sentimental character can be the equal of a great tragic vision.

Antigone is clearly a type, suggesting a role, not of the Greek tragic heroine, but one defined by the lyricism of her first scene. She is the fresh, delicate ingenue caught up in her own image of youthful purity and sensitivity. She is a romantic who is enamoured of extravagant attitudes and gestures. What Antigone lacks in tragic stature she makes up for in touching character. Compared to her Greek counterpart, she is, indeed, the little Antigone. The very fragility of this role necessitates Antigone's protecting it with her life against the possibility of its corruption in time.

This concentration upon the self is the most important distinction the play suggests between Greek and modern tragedy. Whereas in Sophocles' play, Antigone's burial of Polynices is an act which cannot be undone, we have seen that, in Anouilh's version, that is precisely what happens when Creon undermines the tragic universe. Antigone does not claim that she owes it to a higher good to bury Polynices. In fact, her brother is never mentioned again. The reason for her defiance becomes her devotion to herself.⁶ In answer to Creon's question of for whom she has done this deed, she replies, “Pour personne. Pour moi” (p. 78). Creon realizes too late that the only necessity for Antigone's death lies within herself: “Antigone était faite pour être morte. Elle-même ne le savait peut-être pas, mais Polynices n'était qu'un prétexte. Quand elle a dû y renoncer, elle a trouvé autre chose tout de suite. Ce qui importait pour elle c'était de refuser et de mourir” (p. 102). Death becomes the only way that Antigone can dramatize herself in a tragic role.

Antigone attempts to impose upon the world an interior mythology which pits a youth of intransigent purity and innocence against an old age of corrupting compromise. She sees the danger of “la petite Antigone” being transformed with the years into the equivalent of the corrupt and cynical king. So her stand becomes, essentially, a refusal to grow old in order to give her identity the lasting form of the role, removing it from the changing flow of life:⁷ “Moi, je veux tout, tout de suite,—et que ce soit entier—ou alors je refuse! Je veux être sûre de tout aujourd'hui et que cela soit aussi beau que quand j'étais petite—ou mourir” (p. 97). Ironically, Antigone's position results from her acceptance of Creon's version of life, and she is left consequently with an extremely limited choice: either conform to the king's cynical view, or say no and die. Her stance recalls J. L. Styan's observation that sentimental plays often indulge a romantic impulse to accept or reject life.⁸

However, it is Anouilh's heroine, not his play, that is romantic. The play puts romantic attitudes in a perspective which reveals the flaws and pitfalls to which they can be prey. Rebellious postures such as Antigone's are essential to a romantic affirmation of the self which makes liberty synonymous with heroism and views heroism as a fundamentally solitary and self-fulfilling endeavor. When Ismene belatedly rushes in and offers to die with her sister, Antigone cries, “Ah! non. Pas maintenant. Pas toi! C'est moi, c'est moi seule. Tu ne te figures pas que tu vas venir mourir avec moi maintenant. Ce serait trop facile!” (p. 105) Antigone's infatuation with dying makes her resemble those modern heroes described by Victor Bromberg as fascinated by “the poetry of insurrection and the pathos of defeat.”⁹ Her fall is self-willed, and it reflects a romantic attempt to achieve tragic stature through attitude and gesture.

But it is not sufficient for Antigone to want to be tragic, for tragedy cannot be based solely on the self. As Lionel Abel observes, “We cannot urge the tragic sense on ourselves or on others. To try to attain it or recommend it is comical and self-refuting, tragedy being real only when unavoidable. There would be no such thing as tragedy if a tragic fate could be rationally chosen.”¹⁰ This is the fundamental problem explored in Antigone. There is a gap between the tragic spirit and the romantic desire for self-assertion, since tragedy takes place in the world whereas romantic affirmations such as Antigone's depend primarily upon a consciousness which has become uncertain as to what the world is.¹¹

Antigone's enduring interest lies in the way it dramatizes the decline of tragic myth in the labyrinth of modern self-consciousness. The play itself seems to be earnestly seeking its own tradition. A discredited tragic universe has been replaced by sentimental character. The inadequacies and ultimate failure of this romantic substitute for tragedy are reflected in a theatricalism which questions the authenticity of the heroine. In a sense, Anouilh, through Creon and the chorus, has hollowed out the Greek myth, and the play's theatricalism is what is left when nostalgia for the tragic form's lost power to convey wisdom remains.

The play's theatricalism intersects with the idea of the impossibility of tragedy, and it is within this matrix that Antigone's fate looks, ultimately, absurd. This is the chorus' sour, final assessment of what has happened. As in all his remarks, he begins with a laconic and sardonic voilà: “Et voilà. Sans la petite Antigone, c'est vrai, ils auraient tous été tranquilles. Mais maintenant, c'est fini. Ils sont tout de même tranquilles. Tous ceux qui avaient à mourir sont morts. Ceux qui croyaient une chose, et puis ceux qui croyaient le contraire—même ceux qui ne croyaient rien et qui se sont trouvés pris dans l'histoire sans y rien comprendre. Morts pareils, tous, bien raides, bien inutiles, bien pourris. Et ceux qui vivent encore vont commencer tout doucement à les oublier et à confondre leurs noms. C'est fini. Antigone est calmée maintenant, nous ne saurons jamais de quelle fièvre” (p. 132). The suggestion of waste and futility conveyed by these words is the antithesis of the redemptive possibilities of tragedy.

The anti-tragic sense in Antigone is so strong that one is tempted to conclude that Anouilh has written the play to rid himself and his theatre of an exhausted dramatic tradition. His decided preference for the ambiguities of theatricalism over the affirmations of tragedy suggest that Antigone has much in common with his pièces grincantes and with contemporary dark comedy in general. The play shares with dark comedy the atmosphere of doubt brought on by the uneasy feeling that the myths which have given our civilization spiritual coherence are now without energy. In such plays commonly held affirmations give way to a climate of self-conscious anxiety. A world which Anouilh sees as containing more chance and play than structure and high purpose is epitomized in the card game which, fittingly, brings down the final curtain, suggesting that Antigone and her myth, at least for Anouilh, have finally been laid to rest.

Notes

1. Eric Bentley has described this development in his discussion of “bourgeois tragedy,” in The Playwright as Thinker (New York: Meridian Books, 1946), pp. 23-47.

2. Anouilh has been criticized for his emphasis on character. John Harvey cites Hubert Gignoux's complaint that the hero's personality is more important than his tragic destiny. Mr. Harvey, however, sees the role as the key to Anouilh's writing a successful tragedy—Anouilh, A Study in Theatrics (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 92, 100. My view is that the emphasis on personality is deliberate and that Anouilh uses the role as an anti-tragic element in the play.

3. Jean Anouilh, Antigone (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1971), p. 9. Further references to the play will be from this edition.

4. The Vision of Jean Genet (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 214.

5. Jacques Guicharnaud points out that Creon breaks down Antigone's “Greek” reasoning. He does not, however, discuss the implications of this breakdown in terms of role-playing and theatricalism—Modern French Theatre from Giraudoux to Genet (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1967), p. 127.

6. It may be argued that Sophocles, also, is a dramatist of character. But, as H. D. F. Kitto observes, he is interested in the way character intertwines with a complex of events—Greek Tragedy (Garden City: Doubleday, 1954), p. 157. Anouilh's Antigone is not interested in events; she responds solely to her self-conception.

7. As befits a playwright who spent his formative years with the Pitoëff Company, Anouilh owes more to Chekov and Pirandello than to Sophocles. The influence of Pirandello on French theatre has been treated in Thomas Bishop's Pirandello and the French Theatre (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1960).

8. The Elements of Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967), p. 222.

9. The Intellectual Hero, Studies in the French Novel, 1880-1955 (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 150.

10. “Is There a Tragic Sense of Life?” in Moderns on Tragedy, ed. Lionel Abel (Greenwich: Fawcett, 1967), p. 178.

11. Moderns on Tragedy, p. 183n. Antigone would fit Abel's definition of a metaplay. Abel asks the following significant question: “If Antigone were self-conscious enough to suspect her own motives in burying her brother Polynices, would her story be a tragic one?”—Metatheatre (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968), p. 77. Mr. Abel does not mention that Anouilh has devoted an entire play to answering the question.