[In this excerpt, Harvey investigates Antigone in terms of Anouilh's own definition of tragedy.]

Anouilh's approach to tragedy is essentially a theatrical one. For him the stage is set for tragedy when an individual feels himself rooted to a role, irrevocably trapped in a part. What role? what part? The hero himself is not sure. All he knows is that it is his role, and as he plays out this still imperfectly illumined part, the tragedy unfolds. The climax is the epiphany; it is the moment of revelation when the hero finally discovers not his guilt or hubris but his very identity, the meaning of his role. And what is this meaning? Invariably, the role reduces itself to a lust for purity, to a thirst for perfection and principle—in a word, to idealism. Tragic circumstances have given the hero a choice: either he may compromise his ideals or else play out this demanding part to the end, to his death. In such a scheme destiny is no longer reflected in the flow and combination of external events; outside circumstances are in fact irrelevant, and all the impressive talk of welloiled machines and rat traps to the contrary, the only fate weighing upon Anouilh's heroes is that of their own predestined idealism. This is why tragedy itself becomes for the playwright little more than a matter of distribution, of casting.

By building his tragedies around the disclosure of a hero's pre-established mission, Anouilh appears to have set himself apart from his contemporaries. True, Giraudoux once advocated in Electre the "declaring" of oneself, by which term he meant the acceptation and playing out of one's inner destiny. But there the notion was only incidental, and in later works Giraudoux abandoned it altogether. In fact, both in essays and subsequent drama (La Guerre de Troie, in particular) he went on to insist that an external destiny was vital to tragedy. He once even defined tragedy as man's perception of this superior force leading him about as by a leash. As for existentialist drama, it would seem that Anouilh's tragedy lies at the furthermost pole from it; for what possibility do Anouilh's heroes have freely to decide what they are or to form themselves through their acts? Even Leonard Pronko [in Anouilh, 1961], after noting several parallels between Anouilh's and existentialist theatre, admitted that in Anouilh the notion of roles was inherently deterministic. He could describe the freedom enjoyed by the playwright's tragic heroes only as illusory or, at best, confused.

Anouilh's tragedies are often called metaphysical, because they treat man's unacceptable place in the universe. But could they not with equal logic be classified as tragedies of character? The emphasis is placed not on the idealism per se but on the gradual revelation of this idealism to the hero. Conflict anchors itself within each protagonist: having placed his values beyond himself, the hero is impelled at once toward life and toward the ideal; he seeks to reconcile the necessary with the impossible. It would seem that the success or failure of such tragedy should depend to a large extent on the impact of the hero on the spectators. Thus the playwright's principal task should be the fullest possible development of his tragic hero. Nevertheless, it is for this very character development that Anouilh has frequently been censured. Hubert Gignoux, Anouilh's most discerning critic during the Liberation, complained [in Jean Anouilh, 1946] that the personalities of these heroes were more important to him than their tragic destinies: psychological drama stifles the tragedy, he said. At a performance of Antigone he was "a spectator not at the eternal conflict between order and truth, but at the conflict between a man and a woman 'who were not made to get along together.'" We wonder whether Gignoux would have accepted Anouilh's characterizations more readily had he approached Antigone not so much as a struggle between truth and order but as the tragedy of a girl who comes to realize that she aspires to a purity which denies life itself.

Gignoux has raised other, equally typical objections. Discussing the optimum æsthetic distance for tragedy ("further away from the hero we would not pity him enough, but closer to him, we would judge him too much"), he finds himself so near to Antigone that he is conscious even of her physical person. The question of æsthetic or psychic distance is always a fascinating one—and its answer always subjective. One may or may not feel too involved with Antigone, too conscious of her body and brain, to appreciate her tragedy. Anouilh himself, it must be noted, was quite sensitive to problems of distance, especially in this play. At the very beginning the Prologue informs us that the heroine can already feel herself withdrawing at a vertiginous speed from her family and from us all—though merely saying so does not make it a fact. The guards, who as caricatures are exaggerated far beyond the Sophoclean models, impart a loftier stamp to the protagonists by contrasting so boldly with them. As a matter of fact, the entire production was conceived with an eye to ennobling and dignifying the proceedings. Certainly, had he so wished, Anouilh could have further increased the æsthetic distance by making his heroine less real psychologically. But his concept of tragedy demanded that we spectators truly believe in Antigone, that we fully accept her soul as it is revealed even to herself, and that we not dismiss her newly found thirst for purity as mere baggage tacked on to a rebellious girl solely to give her tragic stature.

Anouilh's concept of tragedy involves two dramaturgical problems. The first is how to make the fatality of a role so convincing that spectators will not reject it as arbitrary. The second is how, while operating within this closed universe, to make the revelation of a role exciting not only in its suddenness but in its context of grandeur and mortal struggle. Basically, the author's problem has been to reconcile predestination with dramatic disclosure: How can the hero be trapped in his part and not know what that part is? It is a tricky problem and one that Anouilh has attempted to resolve through a number of expedients. …

Perhaps it is in Antigone that Anouilh has most successfully met the dramaturgical problems raised by his concept of tragedy. Here, once again, the action is irrevocably enclosed in a theatrical frame: a prologue-character introduces the spectators to the members of the cast about to replay their tragedy. There is nothing anyone can do, he says in formulas which by now have become household words; they must all play their parts to the end. Once the prologue has settled the matter of predestination, the lights are lowered, the stage cleared, and the story allowed to unfold realistically. And yet a feeling of fatality pervades the entire performance. It is maintained both by means of intermittent self-conscious lines (e.g. "Each has his role. He has to put us to death, and we have to bury our brother. That's the way the parts were given") and by means of a forceful intrusion of the chorus later in the play. Whereas the chorus and the audience may understand the fatality, the characters do not: Hémon has no idea what is happening, Créon is convinced he can save Antigone, and the heroine herself is (at first) interested only in burying her brother. But as the play builds to a climax—and here Anouilh's genius reaches full sway—heroine and spectator alike uncover the true meaning of her role. Her destiny is not, as everyone has believed all along, to subordinate civil obligations to those of family or religion. Créon lets slip a few words in praise of everyday happiness and all is over: Antigone pounces on these words, and in a flurry of rhetoric she suddenly understands that her role is to reject compromise, to spurn all life which is less than perfection.

What more may be said about Antigone's illumination? To begin with, it is a highly dramatic turnabout, because it comes on the heels of her virtual acquiescence to Créon. Secondly, it is plausible, because it has arisen not from a lovers' quarrel, as did the revelations in Médée, but from an altercation pitting earthly order against divine duty. And finally, it is psychologically convincing, because it follows an intense and exhausting argument, in which (reminiscent of Passeur's or Raynal's theatre of violence) the very heat of argument has led to self-revelation. This was intentional: Anouilh had his chorus introduce the key scene between Antigone and Créon with these words: "there is nothing left but to shout—not moan, no, nor complain—but to howl, at the top of your lungs, the things you've always wanted to say and never have and which perhaps you never even knew before now. And for nothing: just to say them to yourself, just to learn them, yourself."

Concerning Créon's role, it may be noted that, while the first audiences in 1944 reviled him as a collaborationist, many have since come to regard him, and not Antigone, as the true hero of this tragedy of character. The prologue informs us that Créon has already felt ashamed of his base "official" acts, that he has adopted as a modus vivendi a blind and mechanical performance of duty. Hence, throughout the climactic scene both he and Antigone admit that, somehow, it is he who is in the wrong. Toward the end of their grueling encounter, Créon seems to awaken to the value of life itself, no matter how imperfect. But it is not until his shattering clash with Hémon that, pushed to the limit, forced to defend his actions before the accusing eyes of his son, Créon finally realizes that accepting life does not mean complacency in the face of all its horrors as one clutches at meager happiness; he realizes that to accept life is to accept being a man, to shed the comforts of infantile dreams, and to behold for once the world in all its beauty and ugliness.

Antigone is the tragedy of a girl who aspires to a purity beyond life itself. Life is unacceptable for her, and purity unattainable. The heroine, precast into a part which demanded death, is able to transfigure her role to tragic proportions by dying for this purity. The hero—for thus we may call Créon—equally aspires to the ideal, but finds himself thrust into the role of king, weighed down not only by his own life but by the lives of his subjects as well. He, too, plays his part tragically, by embracing the unacceptable.