Part 6 (1/2)
A chorus of Theban elders enters, singing an ode of deliverance and joy; they have been summoned by Creon, the new King, uncle of Oedipus'
children. Full of the sense of his own importance Creon states the official view. Polyneices is to remain unburied.
”Any man who considers private friends.h.i.+p to be more important than the State is a man of naught. In the name of all-seeing Zeus I would not hold my tongue if I saw ruin coming to the citizens instead of safety, nor would I make a friend of my country's enemy. Sure am I that it is the State that saves us; she is the s.h.i.+p that carries us; we make our friends.h.i.+ps without overturning her.”
The elders promise obedience, but grave news is reported by a guard who has been set to watch the corpse. Someone had scattered dust lightly over the dead and departed without leaving any trace; neither he nor his companions had done the deed.
When the Chorus suggest that it is the work of some deity, Creon answers in great impatience:
”Cease, lest thou be proved a fool as well as old. Thy words are intolerable when thou sayest that the G.o.ds can have a care of this corpse. What, have they buried him in honour for his services to them?
Did he not come to burn their pillared temples and offerings and precincts and shatter our laws?”
He angrily thrusts the watchman forth, threatening to hang him and his companions alive unless they find the culprit.
”There are many marvels, but none greater than Man. He crosses the wintry sea, he wears away the hard earth with his plough, ensnareth the light-hearted race of birds, catcheth the wild beasts, trappeth the things of the deep, yoketh the horse and the unwearying ox. He hath taught himself speech and thought swift as the wind, hath learnt the moods of a city life and can avoid the shafts of the frost; he hath a device for every problem save Death--though disease he can escape. Sometimes he moveth to ill, again to good; his cities rear their heads when they reverence the laws and the G.o.ds; he wrecketh his city when he boldly forsakes the good. May an evil-doer never share my hearth or heart.”
Such is the ordinary man's view of the action of Polyneices, for in Sophocles the Chorus certainly represents average public opinion. It is quickly challenged by the entry of Antigone with the Watchman, whose story Creon hastens out to hear. With no little self-satisfaction the Watchman tells how they caught the girl in the very act of replacing the dust they had removed and pouring libations over the dead. Antigone admits the deed. When asked how she dare defy the official ordinance, she replies--
”It came neither from Zeus nor from Justice, nor did I deem that thy decrees had such power that a mortal could override the unwritten and unshaken laws of Heaven. These have not their life from now or yesterday, but from everlasting, and no man knows whence they have appeared. It was not likely that, through fear of any man's will, I would pay Heaven's penalty for their infringement. Die I must, even hadst thou made no proclamation; if I die before my time, I count it all gain. If my act seem folly to thee, maybe it is a foolish judge who counts me mad.”
Creon replies that this is sheer insolence; it is an insult that he, a man, should give way to a woman. He threatens to destroy both girls, but Antigone is sure that public opinion is with her, though for the moment it is muzzled through fear. Ismene is brought in and offers to die with her sister; Antigone refuses her offer, insisting that she alone has deserved chastis.e.m.e.nt.
In a second ode the gradual extinction of Oedipus' race is described, owing to foolish word and insensate thought, for ”when Heaven leads a man to ruin it makes him believe that evil is good”. A new interest is added by Creon's son Haemon, the affianced lover of Antigone, who comes to interview his father. This is the first instance in European drama of that without which much modern literature would have little reason for existing at all--the love element, wisely kept in check by the Greeks. A further conflict of wills adds to the dramatic effect of the play; Creon insists on filial obedience, for he cannot claim to rule a city if he fails to control his own family. Haemon answers with courtesy and deference; he points out that the force of public opinion is behind Antigone and suggests that the official view may perhaps be wrong because it is the expression of an individual's judgment. When he is himself charged thus directly with the very fault for which he claimed to punish Antigone, Creon lets his temper get the mastery; after a violent quarrel Haemon parts from him with a dark threat that the girl's death will remove more than one person, and vows never to cross his father's doorstep again.
Antigone is soon carried away to her doom; she is to be shut up in a cavern without food. In a dialogue of great beauty she confesses her human weakness--death is near, and with it banishment from the joys of life. Creon bids her make an end; her last speech concludes with a clear statement of the problem. Who knows if she is right? She herself will know after death. If she has erred, she will confess it; if the King is wrong, she prays he may not suffer greater woes than her own.
A reaction now occurs. Teiresias, the blind seer, seeks out Creon because of the failure of his sacrificial rites; the birds of the air are gorged with human blood, and fail to give the signs of augury. He bids Creon return to his right senses and quit his stubbornness. When the latter mockingly accuses the seer of being bribed, he learns the dread punishment his obstinacy has brought him.
”Know that thou shalt not see out many hurrying rounds of the sun before thou shalt give one sprung from thine own loins in exchange for the dead, one in return for two, for thou hast thrust below one of the children of the light, penning up her spirit in a tomb with dishonour, and thou keepest above ground a body that belongs to the G.o.ds below, without its share of funerals, unrighteously; wherefore the late-punis.h.i.+ng ruinous G.o.ds of death and the Furies lie in wait for thee, to catch thee in like agonies.”
Cowed by the terror, the King hurries to undo his work, calling for pickaxes to open the tomb and himself going with all speed to set free its victim.
The sequel is told by a messenger who at the outset strikes a note of woe.
”Creon I once envied, for he was the saviour of his land, and was the father of n.o.ble children. Now all is lost. When men lose pleasure, I deem that they are not alive but moving corpses. Heap up wealth and live in kingly state, but if there is no pleasure withal, I would not pay the worth of a shadow for all the rest.
Haemon is dead.”
Hearing the news, Eurydice the Queen comes out, and bids him tell his story in full. Creon found Haemon clasping the body of Antigone who had hung herself. Seeing his father, he made a murderous attack on him; when it failed, he drew his sword and fell on it--thus in death the two lovers were not separated. In an ominous silence the Queen departs.
Creon enters with his son's body, to be utterly shattered by a second and an unexpected blow, for his wife has slain herself. Broken and helpless he admits his fault, while the Chorus sing in conclusion:--
”By far the greatest part of happiness is wisdom; men should reverence the G.o.ds; mighty plagues repay the mighty words of the over-proud, teaching wisdom to the aged.”
To Aeschylus the power that largely controlled men's acts was Destiny. A notable contrast is visible in the system of Sophocles. Destiny does not disappear, rather it retires into the background of his thought. To him the leading cause of ruin is evil counsel. Over and over again this teaching is driven home. All the leading characters mention it, Antigone, Haemon, Teiresias, and when it is disregarded, it is remorselessly brought home by disaster. The dramatic gain is enormous; man's sorrows are ascribed primarily to his own lack of judgment, the tragic character takes on a more human shape, for he is more nearly related to the ordinary persons we meet in our own experience. Another great advance is visible in the construction of the plot. It is more varied, more flexible; it never ceases developing, the action continuing to the end instead of stopping short at a climax. Further, the Chorus begins to fall into a more humble position, it exercises but little influence on the great figures of the plot, being content to mirror the opinions of the interested outside spectator. Truly drama is beginning to be master of itself--”the play's the thing”.
But far more important is the subject of this play. It raises one of the most difficult problems which demand a solution, the harmonisation of private judgment with state authority. The individual in a growing civilisation sooner or later asks how far he ought to obey, who is the lord over his convictions, whether disobedience is ever justifiable. If a law is wrong how are we to make its immorality evident? In an age when a central authority is questioned or loses its hold on men's allegiance, this problem will imperiously demand an answer. When Europe was aroused from the slumber of the Middle Ages and the spiritual authority which had governed it for centuries was shattered, the same right of resistance as that which Antigone claimed was insisted upon by various reformers. It did not fail to bring with it tragic consequences, for the ”power beareth not the sword in vain”. Its sequel was the Thirty Years'
War which barbarised central Germany, leaving in many places a race of savage beings who had once been human. In our own days resistance is preached almost as a sacred duty. We have pa.s.sive resisters, conscientious objectors, strikers and a host of young and imperfectly educated persons, some armed with the very serious power of voting, who claim to set their wills in flat opposition to recognised authority. One or two contributions to the solution of this problem may be found in the _Antigone_. The central authority must be prepared to prove that its edicts are not below the moral standard of the age; on the other hand, non-compliance must be backed by the force of public opinion; it must show that the action it takes will ultimately bring good to the whole community. It is of little use to appeal to the so-called conscience unless we can produce some credentials of the proper training and enlightenment of that rather vague and uncertain faculty, whose normal province is to condemn wrong acts, not to justify law-breaking. Most resisters talk the very language of Antigone, appealing to the will of Heaven; would that they could prove as satisfactorily as she did that the power behind them is that which governs the world in righteousness.
A somewhat similar problem reappears in the _Ajax_. This play opens at early dawn with a dialogue between Athena, who is unseen, and Odysseus; the latter has traced Ajax to his tent after a night of madness in which he has slain much cattle and many shepherds, imagining them to be his foes, especially Odysseus himself who had worsted him in the contest for the arms of Achilles. Athena calls out the beaten hero for a moment and the sight of him moves Odysseus to say:--
”I pity him, though my foe; for I think of mine own self as much as of him. We men are but shadows, all of us, or fleeting shades.”