Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When did Sophocles write Antigone?
Antigone (/ænˈtɪɡəni/ ann-TIG-ə-nee; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 441 BC.
Due to the popularity of Sophocles' play "Antigone", the ending of "Seven against Thebes" was rewritten about fifty years after Aeschylus' death. While Aeschylus wrote his play to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, it now contains an ending that serves as a lead-in of sorts to Sophocles' play: a messenger appears, announcing a prohibition against burying Polynices; his sister Antigone, however, announces her intention to defy this edict.
Antigone, also known as "The Antigone of Sophocles", is an adaptation by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht of Hölderlin's translation of Sophocles' tragedy. It was first performed at the Chur Stadttheater in Switzerland in 1948, with Brecht's second wife Helene Weigel, in the lead role. This was Brecht's first directorial collaboration with Caspar Neher.
Ahuti, Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis’;
Byatikram o Niyam, Brecht’s “The Exception and the Rule”;
Antigone, Sophocles’ Antigone;
Bandini, Euripides’ Trojan Women;
Raja Oidipous, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King;
Antigone at the Barbican was a 2015 filmed-for-TV version of a production at the Barbican directed by Ivo van Hove; the translation was by Anne Carson and the film starred Juliette Binoche as Antigone and Patrick O'Kane as Kreon.
The Burial at Thebes: A version of Sophocles' Antigone is a play by Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, based on the fifth century BC tragedy "Antigone" by Sophocles. It is also an opera by Dominique Le Gendre
In this play Sophocles raises a number of questions: Should Polyneices, who committed a serious crime that threatened the city, be given burial rituals, or should his body be left unburied as prey for scavenging animals? Should someone who attempts to bury him in defiance of Creon be punished in an especially cruel and horrible way? Are Creon’s actions justified? Are Antigone’s actions justified? In this play, Creon is not presented as a monster, but as a leader who is doing what he considers right and justified by the state. The chorus is presented as a group of citizens who, though they may feel uneasy about the treatment of the corpse, respect Creon and what he is doing. The chorus is sympathetic to Antigone only when she is led off to her death. But when the chorus learns that the Gods are offended by what Creon has done, and that Creon’s actions will result in the destruction of their city, then they ask Creon to change course. The city is of primary importance to the chorus.[8][9] Once the initial premises behind the characters in Antigone have been established, the action of the play moves steadily and inevitably towards the outcome.[10] Once Creon has discovered that Antigone buried her brother against his orders, the ensuing discussion of her fate is devoid of arguments for mercy because of youth or sisterly love from the Chorus, Haemon or Antigone herself. Most of the arguments to save her center on a debate over which course adheres best to strict justice.[11]
Niobe is also mentioned in Sophocles's "Antigone" where, as Antigone is marched toward her death, she compares her own loneliness to that of Niobe. Sophocles is said to have also contributed a play titled "Niobe" that is lost.
Liliana Cavani's 1970 I Cannibali is a contemporary political fantasy based upon the Sophocles play, with Britt Ekland as Antigone and Pierre Clémenti as Tiresias.
In Antigone, Sophocles asks the question, which law is greater: the gods' or man's. Sophocles votes for the law of the gods. He does this in order to save Athens from the moral destruction which seems imminent. Sophocles wants to warn his countrymen about hubris, or arrogance, because he believes this will be their downfall. In Antigone, the hubris of Creon is revealed.
Martin Heidegger, in his essay, The Ode on Man in Sophocles’ Antigone, focusses on the chorus’ sequence of stophe and antistrophe that begins on line 278. His interpretation is in three phases: first to consider the essential meaning of the verse, and then to move through the sequence with that understanding, and finally to discern what was nature of humankind that Sophocles was expressing in this poem. In the first two lines of the first strophe, in the translation Heidegger used, the chorus says that there are many strange things on earth, but there is nothing stranger than man. Beginnings are important to Heidegger, and he considered those two lines to describe primary trait of the essence of humanity within which all other aspects must find their essence. Those two lines are so fundamental that the rest of the verse is spent catching up with them. The authentic Greek definition of humankind is the one who is strangest of all. Heidegger’s interpretation of the text describes humankind in one word that captures the extremes — deinotaton. Man is deinon in the sense that he is the terrible, violent one, and also in the sense that he uses violence against the overpowering. Man is twice deinon. In a series of lectures in 1942, Hölderlin’s Hymn, The Ister, Heidegger goes further in interpreting this play, and considers that Antigone takes on the destiny she has been given, but does not follow a path that is opposed to that of the humankind described in the choral ode. When Antigone opposes Creon, her suffering the uncanny, is her supreme action.[13][14]
The Chorus in Antigone departs significantly from the chorus in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, the play of which Antigone is a continuation. The chorus in Seven Against Thebes is largely supportive of Antigone's decision to bury her brother. Here, the chorus is composed of old men who are largely unwilling to see civil disobedience in a positive light. The chorus also represents a typical difference in Sophocles' plays from those of both Aeschylus and Euripides. A chorus of Aeschylus' almost always continues or intensifies the moral nature of the play, while one of Euripides' frequently strays far from the main moral theme. The chorus in Antigone lies somewhere in between; it remains within the general moral and the immediate scene, but allows itself to be carried away from the occasion or the initial reason for speaking.[7]
In the timeline of the plays, the events of "Oedipus at Colonus" occur after "Oedipus Rex" and before "Antigone"; however, it was the last of Sophocles' three Theban plays to be written. The play describes the end of Oedipus' tragic life. Legends differ as to the site of Oedipus' death; Sophocles set the place at Colonus, a village near Athens and also Sophocles' own birthplace, where the blinded Oedipus has come with his daughters Antigone and Ismene as suppliants of the Erinyes and of Theseus, the king of Athens.
A kommos (from Greek κομμός, "kommós", literally "striking", especially "beating of the head and breast in mourning") is a lyrical song of lamentation in an Athenian tragedy that the chorus and a dramatic character sing together. A kommos occurs "when the tension of the play rises to a climax of grief or horror or joy". Examples include the final section (lines 908-1077) of Aeschylus' "The Persians" (472 BCE) in which Xerxes laments the defeat of his Persian army, the final appearance of Antigone in Sophocles' "Antigone" (c.442 BCE), the interaction between the chorus and Oedipus when he returns having blinded himself in Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" (c.429 BCE), and the exchange between Orestes, Electra and the chorus immediately after Clytemnestra's murder in Euripides' "Electra" (c.410 BCE).
Sophocles' "Antigone" ends in disaster. Creon orders Antigone buried alive in a tomb. Although Creon has a change of heart and tries to release Antigone, he finds she has hanged herself. Creon's son Hæmon, who was in love with Antigone commits suicide with a knife, and his mother Queen Eurydice, also kills herself in despair over her son's death. She has been forced to weave throughout the entire story, and her death alludes to The Fates.
The title was inspired by the female character of the play Antigone by Sophocles. The play is about a passionate young woman, that does what she knows is right, even though it is against the law. She makes sure that all of the town's people know what she did and she is punished by the king.
Felix Mendelssohn composed a suite of incidental music for Ludwig Tieck's staging of the play in 1841. It includes an overture and seven choruses. Walter Hasenclever wrote an adaptation in 1917, inspired by the events of World War I. French playwright Jean Anouilh's tragedy Antigone was inspired by both Sophocles' play and the myth itself. Anouilh's play premièred in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in February 1944, during the Nazi occupation of France. Right after World War II, Bertolt Brecht composed an adaptation, Antigone, which was based on a translation by Friedrich Hölderlin and was published under the title Antigonemodell 1948. The Haitian writer and playwright Félix Morisseau-Leroy translated and adapted Antigone into Haitian Creole under the title, Antigòn (1953). Antigòn is noteworthy in its attempts to insert the lived religious experience of many Haitians into the content of the play through the introduction of several Loa from the pantheon of Haitian Vodou as voiced entities throughout the performance. Antigone inspired the 1967 Spanish-language novel La tumba de Antígona (English title: Antigone's Tomb) by María Zambrano. Puerto Rican playwright Luis Rafael Sánchez's 1968 play La Pasión según Antígona Pérez sets Sophocles' play in a contemporary world where Creon is the dictator of a fictional Latin American nation, and Antígona and her 'brothers' are dissident freedom fighters. In 1977, Antigone was translated into Papiamento for an Aruban production by director Burny Every together with Pedro Velásquez and Ramon Todd Dandaré. This translation retains the original iambic verse by Sophocles. In 2004, theatre companies Crossing Jamaica Avenue and The Women's Project in New York City co-produced the Antigone Project written by Tanya Barfield, Karen Hartman, Chiori Miyagawa, Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage and Caridad Svich, a five-part response to Sophocles' text and to the US Patriot Act. The text was published by NoPassport Press as a single edition in 2009 with introductions by classics scholar Marianne McDonald and playwright Lisa Schlesinger. There are four operas: Antigone (1977) by Dinos Constantinides, on an English libretto by Fitts and Fitzgerald, Antigone (1986) by Marjorie S. Merryman, Antigone (1988) with music by Vassily Lobanov and libretto (in Russian) by Alexey Parin and the fourth – The Burial at Thebes (2007–2008) by Dominique Le Gendre and libretto by Seamus Heaney, based on his translation for the normal spoken theatre. The production features conductor William Lumpkin, stage director Jim Petosa, and six singers and ten instrumentalists.[22] Bangladeshi director Tanvir Mokammel in his 2008 film Rabeya (The Sister) also draws inspiration from Antigone to parallel the story to the martyrs of the 1971 Bangladeshi Liberation War who were denied a proper burial.[23] In 2000, Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani and poet José Watanabe adapted the play into a one-actor piece which remains as part of the group's repertoire.[24] An Iranian absurdist adaptation of Antigone was written and directed by Homayoun Ghanizadeh and staged at the City Theatre in Tehran in 2011.[25] Roy Williams’s 2014 adaptation of Antigone for the Pilot Theatre relocates the setting to contemporary street culture.[26] Syrian playwright Mohammad Al-Attar adapted Antigone for a 2014 production at Beirut, performed by Syrian refugee women.[27] "Antigona," a 90-minute flamenco version, performed by Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca, with Barrio as Antigona. Martín Santangelo, Artistic Director and Producer, with Choreography by Soledad Barrio and additional choreography by Isabel Bayon; Consulting Director, Lee Breuer; Mask Design based on the work of Mary Frank; Music by Eugenio Iglesias, Salva de Maria and Martín Santangelo. Presented at the West Park Presbyterian Church, 165 West 86th Street, New York, NY 10024, July 13 to August 15, 2015. In 2012, the Royal National Theatre adapted Antigone to modern times. Directed by Polly Findlay,[28] the production transformed the dead Polyneices into a terrorist threat and Antigone into a "dangerous subversive."[29]
The 17 tracks on the album are based on the text of Sophocles translated by Robert Davreu, being the Greek chorus parts of the theatrical trilogy adaptation "Le Cycle des Femmes: Trois histoires de Sophocle" or just "Des femmes" (being the Sophocles pieces "Women of Trachis", "Antigone" and "Electra" by the Lebanese-Quebec artist Wajdi Mouawad in June 2011 and presented initially at Festival d'Avignon in 2011. Tracks 1 to 8 are from "Women of Trachis", tracks 9 to 13 from "Antigone" and 14 to 17 from "Electra".
Gilbert Norwood explains Antigone's performance of the second burial in terms of her stubbornness. His argument says that had Antigone not been so obsessed with the idea of keeping her brother covered, none of the deaths of the play would have happened. This argument states that if nothing had happened, nothing would have happened, and doesn't take much of a stand in explaining why Antigone returned for the second burial when the first would have fulfilled her religious obligation, regardless of how stubborn she was. This leaves that she acted only in passionate defiance of Creon and respect to her brother's earthly vessel.[17]
Antigone is a 1961 Greek film adaptation of the Ancient Greek tragedy "Antigone" by Sophocles. It stars Irene Papas in the title role and was directed by Yorgos Javellas.
Haemon, Creon's son, enters to pledge allegiance to his father, even though he is engaged to Antigone. He initially seems willing to forsake Antigone, but when Haemon gently tries to persuade his father to spare Antigone, claiming that "under cover of darkness the city mourns for the girl", the discussion deteriorates, and the two men are soon bitterly insulting each other. When Creon threatens to execute Antigone in front of his son, Haemon leaves, vowing never to see Creon again.
In Antigone as well as the other Theban Plays, there are very few references to the gods. Hades is the god who is most commonly referred to, but he is referred to more as a personification of Death. Zeus is referenced a total of 13 times by name in the entire play, and Apollo is referenced only as a personification of prophecy. This lack of mention portrays the tragic events that occur as the result of human error, and not divine intervention. The gods are portrayed as chthonic, as near the beginning there is a reference to "Justice who dwells with the gods beneath the earth." Sophocles references Olympus twice in Antigone. This contrasts with the other Athenian tragedians, who reference Olympus often.
Antigone's determination to bury Polyneices arises from a desire to bring honor to her family, and to honor the higher law of the gods. She repeatedly declares that she must act to please "those that are dead" (An. 77), because they hold more weight than any ruler, that is the weight of divine law. In the opening scene, she makes an emotional appeal to her sister Ismene saying that they must protect their brother out of sisterly love, even if he did betray their state. Antigone believes that there are rights that are inalienable because they come from the highest authority, or authority itself, that is the divine law.
An important issue still debated regarding Sophocles' Antigone is the problem of the second burial. When she poured dust over her brother's body, Antigone completed the burial rituals and thus fulfilled her duty to him. Having been properly buried, Polyneices' soul could proceed to the underworld whether or not the dust was removed from his body. However, Antigone went back after his body was uncovered and performed the ritual again, an act that seems to be completely unmotivated by anything other than a plot necessity so that she could be caught in the act of disobedience, leaving no doubt of her guilt. More than one commentator has suggested that it was the gods, not Antigone, who performed the first burial, citing both the guard's description of the scene and the chorus's observation.[15]
The extant fragments of Euripides' "Antigone" do not reveal much of the plot, but Aristophanes of Byzantium has written that Euripides' play differed from Sophocles' in three major ways:Modern scholars interpret Aristophanes comment to indicate that Euripides' play developed along similar lines to Sophocles', except that Haemon's participation in, or at least knowledge of, Antigone's burial of Polynices led to the happy resolution of their marriage in Euripides' play instead of their deaths in Sophocles' play. One extant fragment is a plea to the god Dionysus, suggesting the possibility that Dionysus was the "deus ex machina" who saved Antigone and Haemon and prophesied the birth of Maeon. Several extant fragments deal with love and marriage, and John Homer Huddilston believed that this, and hint from other fragments (although some of these are now believed to be from plays other than Antigone) indicate that Antigone and Haemon were married secretly.