SOURCE: "Anouilh's Antigone: An Interpretation," in English Studies in Africa, Vol. 6, No. 1, March, 1963, pp. 51-69.

[In the essay below, Nazareth compares Anouilh's Antigone to Sophocles' drama of the same name.]

"When Jean Anouilh turns historian we can take it that truth will be revealed in the light of the emotions—lightly, wittily revealed, in brilliant flashes. But truth is no less true because it comes as a jest in a jewelled sentence." (Caryl Brahmns, in a review of Becket in Plays and Players, August, 1961.)

"With Anouilh now firmly entrenched as purveyor of fancy goods to the entertainment hunters, it is hard to credit that, not so long ago, he was classed as a rebel… [Anouilh was] never a major writer, or even a serious thinker … Antigone will not stand up to scrutiny; [its] factitious and sentimental skating round subjects, in which the real issue is always carefully avoided, is revealed. … Anouilh has not only cut history down to size, but larded it with humour of the cheapest kind." (Tom Milne, in a review of Becket in Encore, October, 1961.)

When there is such controversy about a contemporary dramatist, it is fruitful to make a detailed examination of at least one of his plays, in Mr Lewis Galantiere's translations. "Antigone will not stand up to scrutiny": Let us therefore scrutinize Antigone.

Some critics say that Antigone is a tragedy. For instance, T. R. Henn begins his analysis of Antigone by saying "A critic has said, I think with justice, that M. Anouilh 'alone among modern playwrights is able to wear the tragic mask with ease'" [The Harvest of Tragedy, 1956]. Note, too, Raymond Williams's analysis of Antigone [in Drama from Ibsen to Eliot, 1952].

However, if we accept the play as a tragedy, we find that we are unable to explain several parts of Anouilh's play. For instance, towards the end of the play, when Antigone is about to be sealed up in a cave, she talks to the guard. The guard then starts talking about himself and the things that concern him:

If you're a guard, everyone knows you're something special; they know you're an old N.C.O. Take pay for instance. When you're a guard you get your pay, and on top of that you get six months' extra pay, to make sure you don't lose anything by not being a sergeant any more …

And so on. Antigone is not interested, of course, and interrupts him with, "Listen … I'm going to die soon." But he is not interested in her fate and continues talking about himself. Surely, when the guard talks so much about himself, the tragic mood of the play is destroyed.

Even more striking is Anouilh's use of the chorus. Anouilh's chorus is one man, who leans casually on the proscenium arch while talking directly to the audience. The play opens with the words,

Well, here we are. These people are about to act out for you the story of Antigone.

He points to Antigone and says,

That little creature sitting by herself, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing, is Antigone. She is thinking. She is thinking that the instant I finish telling you who's who and what's what in this play, she will burst forth as the tense, sallow, wilful girl whose family would never take her seriously and who is about to rise up alone against Creon, her uncle, the king.

But mat is not all. The chorus (in the French version it is the Prologue) goes on to say

Another thing that she is thinking is this: she is going to die. Antigone is young. She would much rather live than die. But there is no help for it. When your name is Antigone, there is only one part you can play; and she will have to play hers to the end.

This, surely, is an untragic way to begin a tragedy! The chorus insists on explaining to the audience the fact that they are watching a play—and explaining at such length that the tragic mood is destroyed.

Later, after Creon discovers that his law has been defied and Polynices has been buried, the chorus says,

The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy … Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless.

In fact, the chorus goes on to make a long speech on what tragedy is.

Many critics take the speeches of the chorus at their face value. Henn quotes part of the chorus's definition at the beginning of Chapter VI of The Harvest of Tragedy and accepts it as a genuine definition. Raymond Williams says:

The convention, both of commentary on the various characters in turn, and of establishment of the play and the characters as action and parts which begin "now that the curtain has risen", is very impressive. By the end of Prologue's speech the audience has been firmly introduced to the conventional nature of the play, and also to each of the characters … It is very simple, and completely convincing. It gains an immediate dramatic concentration, and the conditions of intensity; it also provides the major resource which the naturalistic drama has lacked, mat of commentary. (The italics are mine.)

We notice that Williams takes the speeches at their face value and thinks they are convincing. The fallacy of Williams's comments is obvious when we ask ourselves the obvious question: does naturalistic drama need commentary? What about Chekhov's drama?

Other critics also take these speeches at their face value, but conclude that they are not convincing. The play, these critics say, is pseudo-tragedy, it is sentimental and pretentious. The chorus is defining tragedy, so that the audience will be deceived into thinking it is experiencing a great tragedy. Further, Anouilh does not have the courage of his convictions. He wants to write a tragedy, but he is afraid that the audience will accuse him of sentimentality; and so he also laughs with the audience at the play. In other words, he does not take the play seriously; he is intellectually dishonest. This is symptomatic of the vulgarity and lack of culture of the masses. Conditioned by mass-produced television, films, pop-songs and advertising, the masses can only accept pseudo-tragedy. They have to be told that they are experiencing a great tragedy, because they are incapable of experiencing true tragedy.

But we must stop to ask ourselves this question: does Anouilh want us to take the speeches of the chorus at their face value? If he were doing so, would he overplay his hand, or, if he were attempting aesthetic sleight-of-hand, would he insist that the audience watch the hand he was going to deceive them with? Would he let the chorus say, "In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. That makes for tranquility"? Isn't it the natural tendency for the audience to react against tragedy because of speeches like this?

If we take the speeches at their face value, we shall be misunderstanding the play. J. L. Styan's comment in his analysis of Colombê [in The Dark Comedy, 1962] is relevant and illuminating. He says,

Because of the play-within-the-play, we are doubly the sceptical audience we were: we simply do not respond sentimentally to the sentiment with which the words are spoken. To believe that the author intended us to, would contradict the total meaning of this play, not to mention others.

The speeches of the chorus are a sardonic comment on what tragedy (i.e. a tragic play) is. Anouilh is telling us through the chorus what is wrong with tragedy. Tragedy is clean, restful and flawless; therefore it is not true to life. It ignores certain issues in life which, according to Anouilh, it should not. Therefore his play cannot be interpreted as a tragedy in the same sense in which we usually understand the term 'tragedy'. The fact that the chorus is anti-tragic and tells us what is wrong with tragedy is an indication that Anouilh's Antigone is 'played against' a tragedy. To be specific, Anouilh's Antigone is 'played against' Sophocles's Antigone.

The framework of both plays is the same. Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, decides to defy the edict of her uncle King Creon and to bury the body of her brother Polynices. She asks her sister Ismene for help, but Ismene refuses to help her. So Antigone buries Polynices herself. She is brought before Creon, who decides to have her killed—even though she is engaged to his son Haemon. After Antigone's death, Haemon commits suicide. When his mother, Eurydice, hears about his death, she also commits suicide.

However, what lies within this framework is different in the two plays. The differences are apparent very early in the plays. When Sophocles's Ismene refuses to bury Polynices, she says:

We must remember that we are women, and women are not meant to fight with men. Our'rulers are stronger than ourselves, and we must obey them in this, and in things more bitter still … And so I shall obey those in power, since I am forced to do so, and can only ask the dead to pardon me, since there is no wisdom in going too far.

We feel that Ismene is perhaps weak, but that is all we feel. Now let us look at what Anouilh's Ismene says:

He [Creon] is stronger than we are. He is the king. And the whole city is with him … His mob will come running, howling at us as it runs. A thousand arms will seize our arms. A thousand breaths will breathe into our faces. Like one pair of single eyes, a thousand eyes will stare at us. We'll be driven in a timbrel through their hatred, through the smell of them and their cruel, roaring laughter. We'll be dragged to the scaffold for torture, surrounded by guards with their idiot faces all bloated, their animal hands clean—washed for the sacrifice, their beefy eyes squinting as they stare at us. And we'll know that no shrieking and no begging will make them understand that we want to live, for they are like slaves who do exactly as they've been told, without caring about right and wrong. And we shall suffer, we shall feel pain rising in us until it becomes so unbearable that we know it must stop. But it won't stop; it will go on rising and rising, like a screaming voice. Oh, I can't, I can't, Antigone.

The difference between these two speeches is striking. Anouilh's Ismene says the same thing as Sophocles's Ismene, but takes it a stage further. In the second case (Anouilh's), we are presented with a powerful, shocking and realistic picture of the horrible fate that Ismene thinks awaits her and Antigone if they break Creon's law. It is a horrifying picture. Ismene is only human, and we realize most forcefully why Anouilh's Ismene refuses to bury Polynices, as we did not in the case of Sophocles's Ismene.

Creon has passed the edict that Polynices is not to be buried; anybody who defies this edict does so on pain of death. Sophocles's Creon has done this because he thinks it is for the good of the state. After Antigone has defied the edict and buried Polynices, there is a brief exchange between her and Creon. She says that she could not bring herself through fear of one man and one man's pride to disobey the laws of the gods. Creon's pride is hurt because he is unsure of himself. He decides to kill Antigone because "she will be the man, not I, if she wins this victory and goes unpunished." He refuses to listen to the advice of his son, saying finally, "I am the state". He even refuses to listen to Teiresias and accuses him of corruption; Teiresias, with whose help he has ruled the state. Too late does he realize his blindness. After the deaths of Antigone, Haemon and Eurydice, he says

Ah me! the guilt is mine, I know it.
I blame no other.

When Anouilh's Antigone is brought before Creon, she insists that Creon kill her. But Anouilh's Creon wants to save Antigone. He does not believe in "all that flummery about religious burial." He asks Antigone,

Do you really believe that a so-called shade of your brother is condemned to wander forever homeless if a little earth is not flung on his corpse to the accompaniment of some priestly abracadabra?

Until Kitto's interpretation of Sophocles's Antigone in Form and Meaning in Drama (1956), it was believed that Sophocles's Antigone had to bury her brother because the soul of a dead person was condemned to wander forever homeless if the body was left unburied. Anouilh's Antigone was written long before Kitto published his interpretation. It does not matter to Creon which body is buried and which is unburied; in fact, he does not even know whether the body is that of Polynices or Eteocles. Antigone cannot understand him; he then reveals his position clearly. He had to agree to be the ruler of the state, or the state would have collapsed. Sophocles's Creon says:

My friends, the gods have brought our ship of state safely to port after wild tossing on the stormy seas.

Anouilh's Creon also talks of the state as a ship; but he carries the image much further:

There had to be one man who said yes. Somebody had to agree to captain the ship. She had sprung a hundred leaks; she was loaded to the water-line with crime, ignorance, poverty. The ship was swinging with the wind. The crew refused to work and were looting the cargo. The officers were building a raft, ready to slip overboard and desert the ship. The mast was splitting, the wind was howling, the sails were beginning to rip. Every man-jack on board was about to drown—and only because the only thing they thought of was their own skins and their cheap little day to day traffic. Was this a time, do you think, for playing with words like yes and no?

Once more we see in stark terms why Anouilh's Creon had to do what he did. We realize clearly the real, factual difficulties in the path of the ruler of the state, which we did not in the case of Sophocles's Creon. Further, Anouilh's Antigone had last seen Polynices when she was twelve years old, and therefore she did not really know him. Creon tells her that both Eteocles and Polynices were "rotten".

Both men tried to assassinate their father. Had Antigone considered all this when she decided to bury Polynices?

Anouilh has raised far more factual issues than Sophocles by just taking everything a stage further, and by including 'irrelevancies'. Everything that Anouilh says could have really happened, but Sophocles does not even touch upon many of these issues.

At this stage I should like to quote extensively from Aldous Huxley's essay Tragedy and the Whole Truth (1932), because it is vital to our understanding of Anouilh's play. I do not agree with Huxley's ideas and comments in this essay; I am quoting from it extensively because I suggest that the kind of aesthetic and critical consciousness Huxley reveals in this essay is like Anouilh's creative consciousness, and it will therefore help us understand Anouilh's approach in Antigone. (The fact that Huxley has long been accepted as a serious writer in France is an indication that his creative consciousness is congenial to the French.)

Huxley distinguishes between two forms of literary art, Tragedy and Wholly-Truthful Literature, and says that the two are incompatible. He gives an example from the Odyssey. Six of the best and bravest of Odysseus's companions are lifted out of the ship by Scylla. The survivors could only look on while Scylla "at the mouth of her cave devoured them, still screaming, still stretching out their hands [at Odysseus] in the fearful struggle". Odysseus adds that it was the most fearful and lamentable sight he had ever seen in all his "explorings of the passes of the sea".

Later, the danger passed, Odysseus and his men went ashore for the night, and, on the Sicilian beach, prepared their supper—prepared it, says Homer, "expertly". The Twelfth Book of the Odyssey concludes with these words: "When they had satisfied their thirst and hunger, they thought of their dear companions and wept, and in the midst of their tears sleep came gently upon them!"

Homer's … is the whole Truth. Consider how almost any other of the great poets would have concluded the story of Scylla's attack on the passing ship. Six men, remember, have been taken and devoured before the eyes of their friends. In any other poem but the Odyssey, what would the survivors have done? They would, of course, have wept, even as Homer made them weep. But would they previously have cooked their supper, and cooked it, what's more, in a masterly fashion? Would they previously have drunk and eaten to satiety? And after weeping, or actually while weeping, would they have dropped quietly off to sleep? No, they most certainly would not have done any of these things. They would simply have wept, lamenting their own misfortune and the horrible fate of their companions, and the canto would have ended tragically on their tears.

Homer, however, preferred to tell the Whole Truth. He knew that even the most cruelly bereaved must eat; that hunger is stronger than sorrow and that its satisfaction takes precedence even of tears. He knew that experts continue to act expertly and to find satisfaction in their accomplishment, even when friends have just been eaten, even when the accomplishment is only cooking the supper. He knew that, when the belly is full (and only when the belly is full), men can afford to grieve, and that sorrow after supper is almost a luxury. And finally he knew that, even as hunger takes precedence of grief, so fatigue, supervening, cuts short its career and drowns it in a sleep all the sweeter for bringing forgetfulness of bereavement. In a word, Homer refused to treat the theme tragically. He preferred to tell the Whole Truth.

Huxley goes on to say,

To make a tragedy the artist must isolate a single element out of the totality of human experience and use that exclusively as his material. Tragedy is something separated from the Whole Truth, distilled from it, so to speak, as an essence is distilled from the living flower. Tragedy is chemically pure. Hence its power to act quickly and intensely on our feelings.

Compare this to Anouilh's

The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy … Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless.

Huxley says,

Wholly-Truthful art overflows the limits of tragedy and shows us, if only by hints and implications, what happened before the tragic story began, what will happen after it is over, what is happening simultaneously elsewhere (and 'elsewhere' includes all those parts of the minds and bodies of the protagonists not immediately engaged in the tragic struggle). Tragedy is an arbitrarily isolated eddy on the surface of a vast river that flows majestically, irressitibly, around, beneath, and to either side of it. Wholly-Truthful art contrives to imply the existence of the entire river as well as the eddy. It is quite different from tragedy, even though it may contain, among other constituents, all the elements from which tragedy is made.

Writers who create Wholly-Truthful art shirk almost nothing. Among other things are the irrelevancies which, in actual life, always temper the situations and characters "that writers of tragedy insist on keeping chemically pure." These irrelevancies would destroy Tragedy.

Consequently, Wholly-Truthful art produces in us an effect quite different from that produced by tragedy. Our mood when we have read a Wholly-Truthful book is never one of heroic exultation; it is one of resignation, one of acceptance … But I believe that its effects are more lasting. The exultations that follow the reading or hearing of a tragedy are in the nature of temporary inebriations. Our being cannot long hold the pattern imposed by tragedy.

Compare all this to the chorus' sardonic and ironic comments:

It [tragedy] has nothing to do with melodrama … Death in a melodrama is really horrible because it is never inevitable. The dear old father might so easily have been saved; the honest young man might so easily have brought in the police five minutes earlier.

In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. That makes for tranquility … Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn't any hope. You're trapped. The whole sky has fallen on you, and all you can do about it is shout. Don't mistake me: I said "shout": I did not say groan, whimper, complain. That is vulgar; it's practical.

The two accounts are remarkably similar, especially if one substitutes "Wholly-Truthful art" for "melodrama".

Huxley gives another example. He says,

Shakespeare's ironies and cynicisms serve to deepen his tragic world, but not to widen it. If they had widened it, as the Homeric irrelevancies widened out the universe of the Odyssey—why, then, the world of Shakespearean tragedy would automatically have ceased to exist. For example, a scene showing the bereaved Macduff eating his supper, growing melancholy, over the whisky, with thoughts of his murdered wife and children, and then, with lashes still wet, dropping off to sleep, would be true enough to life; but it would not be true to tragic art. The introduction of such a scene would change the whole quality of the play; treated in this Odyssean style, Macbeth would cease to be a tragedy.

We certainly cannot agree with what Huxley says about our reaction to tragedy. But, as I said earlier, it is his kind of consciousness in this essay that is important, because it is similar to Anouilh's creative consciousness. His distinction between 'Tragedy' and 'the Whole Truth' as art forms is therefore particularly useful to us. He suggests that there is in some writers a consciousness of simple, everyday, commonplace things, which seem on the surface to be irrelevant, but which do, in fact, temper a particular situation. This consciousness leads these writers to create 'Wholly-Truthful Art' and not 'Tragedy'; this distinction, from the critics' point of view, is only one of art forms, because the creative consciousness involved is different. Lionel Trilling tells us in The Modern Element in Modern Literature, "It is a commonplace of modern literary thought that the tragic mode is not available even to the gravest and noblest of our writers." I suggest that this is due to the twentieth-century consciousness of 'realism' (note also Eric Bentley [in The Playwright as Thinker, 1 960]). A consciousness of 'realism' means a consciousness of the 'irrelevant' things that are really relevant. Hence one cay say that the dominant mode of writing in the twentieth century is 'Wholly-Truthful Art' (or 'realism').

It is important at this stage to distinguish between 'realism' in drama, as the form of a play, and realism as the effect (or content) of a play. Anouilh's Antigone is realistic in effect, but not in form.

Let us return to a comparison of the two plays (Anouilh's and Sophocles's). Antigone has buried her brother, knowing that her punishment will be death. Anouilh's Antigone, however, seems at first guilty of the fourth temptation of Archbishop Thomas in T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Accepting the fact that she will be killed, she seems to look forward with relish to her death. She seems to enjoy the idea of being executed. Creon does not want to kill her—but she insists. She had an ideal when she buried Polynices. But Creon tries to destroy her ideal by telling her, among other things, that both her brothers had been evil. For a moment, Antigone seems destroyed. Up to this point, our sympathy lies with Creon. But then Antigone decides that she will die for the ideal she had. In the eyes of Creon, her sacrifice is completely unjustified. Creon accepts life for what it is, and decides to 'make the best of a bad job'. But Antigone refuses to compromise with life—she chooses instead to die. We may compare Antigone's action here to the advice Zooey gives Franny in J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey (1962)—she acts from a purity of motive. It does not matter that the facts do not fit her ideal; she refuses to let the ideal be destroyed. She says, in a very powerful speech,

I spit on your idea of happiness! I spit on your idea of life—that life must go on; come what may. You are like the dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness—provided a person doesn't ask too much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete, otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the little bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!

In this speech, our sympathy lies wholly with Antigone.

It is clear, then, that Anouilh's play explores problems that have not been raised explicitly in Sophocles's play. One should not therefore conclude that Anouilh's play is independent of Sophocles's, and that we ought not to identify the two. Huxley tells us:

In recent times literature has become more and more acutely conscious of the whole Truth—of the great oceans of irrelevant things, events and thoughts stretching endlessly away in every direction from whatever island point (a character, a story) the author may choose to contemplate.

The "island point" in Anouilh's Antigone is Sophocles's Antigone. Anouilh's Antigone follows Sophocles's Antigone up to a stage—and then explores certain problems which are realistic, 'true-to-life', and which are not improbable in Sophocles's play. But when we see Sophocles's Antigone these questions do not strike us. What were the personal problems facing Ismene in her decision not to help Antigone? What would really happen if she did help Antigone? Further, when Antigone decides to bury Polynices, does she consider first whether or not he has been good? Does she think of the problems Creon has to deal with as a ruler? What if Creon had refused to be king; would anyone else have agreed to be king? What would happen to the state if Creon did not face up to his responsibilities as king? Again, when Antigone buries Polynices, is there any personal ideal she wants to live up to? Is Creon's reaction after the three deaths merely a temporary emotional reaction; will he change his mind in his calmer moments and say that he was not really to blame? By using Sophocles's play as a frame of reference, Anouilh solves a major problem the artist of to-day is said to face. This is lack of 'contact' between audience and artist, lack of common values. As Stephen Spender tells us [in The Writer's Dilemma, 1961],

The thing written establishes communication between writer and reader … The message has to be conveyed at several levels. These might be compared to the wires of a cable … One wire is the background of objects experienced in life and having established associations which are common to writer and reader.

By assuming knowledge of a myth or a play that the audience knows, the dramatist creates the common "background of objects". Further, Henn tells us that the twentieth-century revival of interest in Greek myth or fable is partly due to the psychological recognition of the archetypes. The fables thus acquire a new validity in themselves, and can be re-clothed effectively on what is basically the same skeleton. But this is only a partial explanation.

If such a re-clothing takes place, with a partial re-articulation of the bones, a new field is opened for the exercise of wit, the perception of metaphysical similarities or discordances, and endless over-and-undertones of irony. Out of such parallelisms, close or remote, the dramatist can invite his audience to find 'meaning' which is usually a synthesis of factors which are, to a great extent, set in opposition or paradox … He can provide a critical edge, at various planes, by explicit comparisons between the two ages; the past whose bones he has discovered, the present whose breath is upon them.

One should mention at this stage that Anouilh's Creon contrasts with Sophocles's Creon in one particular aspect, to create a positive by which we are to judge him. Anouilh's Creon does not believe in "all that flummery about religious burial". But Sophocles's Creon does. This makes us realize how much Anouilh's Creon has lost spiritually. He has no ideals. There is no greatness in his soul; his soul is filled with commonness, as of dust.

Another commonplace of modern literary criticism is that the modern audience is complacent. (Obviously, this must be qualified; there is greater critical activity now than ever before.) Anouilh deals with this problem in the same way as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot do in their poetry. He constantly changes the focus in his play, thereby upsetting the mood of the audience and preventing it from getting complacent. He jerks the audience back to awareness. At the same time, this change of focus is used, as in the case of Pound and Mr Eliot, to make the play all-embracing of various complexities. In Aldous Huxley's The Genius and the Goddess, John Rivers says,

The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense … Fiction has unity, fiction has style. Facts possess neither. In the raw, existence is always one damned thing after another, and each of the damned things is simultaneously Thurber and Michelangelo, simultaneously Mickey Spillane and Thomas àKempis.

By a constant change of focus, by selecting a contraposition from which we are to view his object, Anouilh can include "simultaneously Thurber and Michelangelo, simultaneously Mickey Spillane and Thomas àKempis."

I suggest that Anouilh is one of the pioneers of what has been called the Theatre of the Absurd. The dramatists of this theatre regard their audience as complacent, apathetic, asleep. With taunts and shock effects, by breaking the continuity of a traditional form of drama, the dramatists hope to jerk the audiences into awareness, consciousness, understanding. Anouilh' s Antigone has been misunderstood because of the preconceptions some critics have had about drama. For instance, note Montgomery Belgion's criticism of Shaw [in Reading for Profit, 1945]:

Realism may be all right, and a stage convention may be all right. But these characters are neither one nor the other. They are pseudo-realistic.

Again, note C. E. Vaughan on Ibsen [in Types of Drama]:

How far is the scheme of Ibsen's drama, the design as apart from the execution of it, compatible with the highest ends at which tragedy can aim? Are not his details overloaded, his themes depressing, his characters too persistently lacking in the nobler, the more heroic qualities without which our sympathies remain cold?

The criticism often brought against Jonson and Wilde is that their characters are two-dimensional or are counters, and people are not like that. By such conceptions, Anouilh's play must seem false and irresponsible. His method of changing the focus and breaking the continuity is looked upon as irresponsible clowning. (It is interesting to note that this criticism is also levelled against Byron.)

But, as Styan points out [in The Elements of Drama, 1960], drama is the historic creation of a sequence of suggestions which create impressions in the minds of the audience. The sequence of impressions operates to create in the minds of the audience the total effect of the play. (To 'minds', we must also add—in the case of most plays—'hearts and souls'.) We are not to judge a play by the methods the dramatists use; we are to judge it by its total effect. (Of course, we are to see how the impressions are created, and whether or not they link together to form the total effect of the play.) We are to see how genuine the total effect is. If in its total effect the play presents a distorted view of life, or it distorts psychology, or it offers facile solutions, or it muddies fundamental issues, we reject the play. Yeats tells us [in Plays and Controversies, 1923] that Richard II "is typical, not because he ever existed, but because he made us know something in our minds we had never known of had he never been imagined."

Let us see how Anouilh creates his impressions in Antigone. His method is essentially fivefold. First of all, he reacts against the fact—'fact' to Anouilh but not to us—that Tragedy does not present the whole Truth. Through his chorus, he passes sardonic comments on the smooth way tragedy works in order to destroy the idea that tragedy is true-to-life and that his play is a tragedy. Secondly, he brings in several 'irrelevancies' which make his play realistic, but untragic. Several examples of this have been quoted earlier in this essay. Another example is when Antigone wants to write a letter to Haemon just before her death. The guard at first refuses. But, by bribing him, she gets him to agree to copy out a letter she will dictate. We then have the following scene:

Antigone Write now. 'My darling …'

Guard (writes as he mutters) The boy friend, eh?

Antigone 'My darling. I wanted to die, and perhaps you will not love me any more …'

Guard (mutters as he writes) '… will not love me any more'.

Antigone 'Creon was right. It is terrible to die.'

Guard (repeats as he writes): '… terrible to die.'

Antigone 'And I don't even know what I am dying for. I am afraid …'

Guard (looks at her) Wait a minute! How fast do you think I can write?

This method of 'echo' or repetition can be used by different dramatists in different ways. It can be used to make a scene more tragic. It can be used to fill the audience with a chilling sense of foreboding, as Webster uses it in The Duchess of Malfi. Anouilh, by means of a disinterested guard, uses it to destroy the tragic mood that would have existed if this play were a tragedy—though it does not destroy the pathos of Antigone's plight.

Thirdly, Anouilh presents Antigone in modest, human terms. For example, Antigone's answer to Ismene's "Don't make fun of me" is

I'm not, Ismene, truly. This particular morning, seeing how beautiful you are makes everything easier for me. Wasn't I a miserable little beast when we were small? I used to fling mud at you, and put worms down your neck. I remember tying you to a tree and cutting off your hair. Your beautiful hair! How easy it must be never to be unreasonable with all that smooth silken hair so beautifully round your head.

Notice, too, Anouilh's use of the nurse. Not knowing that Antigone has been out to bury Polynices, the nurse concludes that she has been out to meet a lover:

And we'll hear what he [Creon] has to say when he finds out that you go wandering alone o'nights. Not to mention Haemon. For the girl's engaged! Going to be married! Going to be married, and she hops out of bed at four in the morning to meet somebody else in a field. Do you know what I ought to do to you? Take you over my knee the way I used to when you were little.

The scenes that remind us of Antigone's childhood not only 'humanize' Antigone, they also contract the happy innocence of Antigone's youth with the world she now has to face.

Fourthly, as I mentioned earlier, the play raises problems untouched by Sophocles. This is done partly by a discussion between Antigone and Creon. At this stage, Antigone becomes a play of ideas. Bentley tells us that the play of ideas is a modern evolution of drama. Of course, 'play of ideas' is a vague term. In one sense, Bentley says [in The Playwright as Thinker], there are ideas in all words and therefore in all drama. Tragedy has always suggested ideas concerning the significance of human life—but in most tragedies, "the characters fight, the ideas lie still and unmolested. In a drama of ideas, on the other hand, the ideas are questioned, and it is by questioning—and it could only be by the questioning—that the ideas become dramatic." The discussion between Antigone and Creon is moving because it is not a 'detached' discussion of abstract concepts.

Finally, we must not forget the 'modern language and dress'. For instance, the scene between Antigone and the guard, mentioned earlier, when the guard is talking about his pay: "they know you're an old N.C.O. Take pay for instance". Much earlier, the chorus tells us,

There was a ball one night. Ismene wore a new evening frock. She was radiant, haemon danced every dance with her.

We come now to an important point—Anouilh's negativeness. Anouilh's Antigone is not negative, to my mind, because of its historical context. Geoffrey Brereton tells us about Antigone [in A Short History of French Literature, 1956]: "First produced during the German occupation, it has an obvious topical message." "An obvious topical message" is perhaps putting it too crudely; but we can see how the clash between Antigone and Creon could be an intensely true-to-life experience when it was first produced. The setting of the play was really the situation in France. But we find Anouilh offers the same 'positive' in other plays; and, in a different context, we cannot accept this positive. Earlier, I compared Anouilh and Salinger. A comparison between them also shows us the difference between their positives. The norm offered in Zooey is, to put it a little bluntly, that one should act out of a purity of motive, even if various elements in life are 'impure'. But this is important—one should live with this purity. Anouilh, on the other hand, suggests in other plays that because life is impure, one should reject it; the longer one lives, the more soiled one becomes. (Of course, this does not apply to comedies like Ring Round the Moon) We find finally that we have to condemn Anouilh for the very negativeness which he accuses Samuel Beckett of.

To return to Antigone—Anouilh' s Antigone, is to my mind, a good play. Although it is not the same type of play as Sophocles's Antigone, there can be little doubt that Sophocles's play is a much greater play than Anouilh's. Anouilh explores many problems that Sophocles leaves untouched; but Sophocles leaves them untouched because they are irrelevant to his tragic conception and his tragic theme. The theme and one form of Sophocles's Antigone are different from that of Anouilh's. As Kitto tells us [in Form and Meaning in Drama, 1959], Greek plays are "constructive". The simplicity of the form of Sophocles's play is for the sake of concentration.

Since Anouilh uses Sophocles's play as a frame of reference, it follows that his play would not exist if Sophocles's play did not exist. Therefore, in a sense, Anouilh's Antigone is not a finished work of art. Further, while Antigone is a good play, it seems pernicious that its form should be adopted for other plays. Let us see why. It jerks the audience back to consciousness by breaking the continuity of a conventional form. Styan tells us [in The Elements of Drama],

No dramatist can work outside a channel of convention, since only this permits continuity of attention. Even when it is his object to break this continuity, he must begin by moving along one of these channels. It must be an already flowing train of feeling he interrupts if after the break he is to secure that exciting renewal of attention.

The stress is on the fact that the dramatist must interrupt an already flowing train of feeling. How long can the interruptions continue before the train of feeling, in a sense, ceases to flow? A few plays of this sort jerk the audience back to consciousness. But many plays like this can unsettle the audience so much that the audience may not be able to accept a convention of drama anymore. Then what will such plays feed on? How long can dramatists continue breaking the continuity before all continuity in drama is broken?

Thus Anouilh's Antigone is a paradox: it is a good play which ultimately undermines the whole dramatic idiom.