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| Illustrator | Bianca Stone |
| Translator | Anne Carson |
| First Written | -441 |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Origin | Greece |
| Publisher | New Directions |
| ISBN-10 | 0811219577 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0811219570 |
| My Copy | library hardcover |
| First Read | March 29, 2013 |
Antigonick
I think about this book a lot, and F is reading Antigone in his English Language Arts class, so I finally bought my own copy of this. It's more fun than I remembered. Kreon is drawn so well, just a rich, instantly-recognizable leader. Carson is so efficient with this. I guess she's a poet!
Noted on August 28, 2025
This is a new translation of Antigone that I recently stumbled upon (thanks, Library!). It's a really beautiful book, with illustrations done on vellum, that overlay and intersect with the hand-written words. The translation is vibrant and immediate, and I found it both moving and sonorous enough that I kept reading parts out loud.
More than anything else, it made me want to read more traditional translations of Antigone, which I think is fairly high praise.
Noted on April 5, 2013
CHORUS: oh here's Haimon
here's Haimon in pain and rage
cheated of his future bride
[Enter Haimon]
KREON: in a rage about your future bride
or are we still friends
KAIMON: father, I'm yours
KREON: good attitude, son
good heart in your chest
I need you like that
Quoted on August 28, 2025
[enter Kreon]
KREON: here are Kreon's verbs for today
Adjudicate
Legislate
Scandalize
Capitalize
here are Kreon's nouns
Men
Reason
Treason
Death
Ship of State
Mine
CHORUS: "mine" isn't a noun
KREON: it is if you capitalize it
Quoted on August 28, 2025
CHORUS:
Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evil
But if some god shakes your house
ruin arrives
Ruin does not leave
It comes tolling back over the generations
It comes rolling the black night salt up from the
ocean floor
and all your thrashed coasts groan
Archives of grief I see falling upon this house
Death on birth birth on death there is no end to it
some god is piling them on
One last root was reaching up for the light in
the house of Oidipus
but the bloody dust of death
hacks her down mows her down
All the tall mad mountains of her mind
Zeus you win you always win
the whole oxygen of power
belongs to you
Sleep cannot seize it
Time does not tire it
Your Mt Olympus glows like one white stone
around this law:
Nothing vast enters the lives of mortals without ruin
Quoted on April 5, 2013
KREON: You think you are iron but I can bend
you I'm the man here ANTIGONE: Yes you are
KREON: I'll bend your sister too ANTIGONE: Can
we just get this over with KREON: No let's split
hairs a while longer, I'd say you're the only one
in Thebes who sees things this way wouldn't you
Quoted on April 5, 2013
CHORUS: This, this
Oh I don't know
Let's not mention gods
Let's not mention Oidipus
Here's Antigone
Please don't say she's the one
GUARD: She's the one I got her
CHORUS: Oh perfect
Here's Kreon
Quoted on April 5, 2013