‘My art discovered signs that tell the tale’, says Tiresias (998) and perhaps every hopeful translator. M., an experienced practitioner who has produced translations of Greek Lyric, Catullus, Horace and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, now applies his art to the Antigone. This book is suitable for readers with little or no background in Greek theatre, the historical context or Greek mythology. The introduction includes a clear synopsis of the play, a description of the historical context of Antigone and Sophocles' other work, and some fine, detailed information about mythological allusions in the play and the conventions of ancient Greek theatre. A section on the play's interpretation could have been developed further. M. finds magisterial interpretations ‘presumptuous’ (p. xlvi), and only introduces us to one (Hegel's, perhaps the most magisterial of them all), before giving his own idiosyncratic view that ‘the critical ethical conflict is not between Creon and Antigone but between Antigone and Ismene’ (p. xlix).
M. has chosen to render the spoken parts into a clean and unadorned iambic pentameter, the style of which one can glimpse in Antigone's words to Ismene or some well-known lines of Creon:
The sung choral sections appear in short, rhymed and italicised stanzas. This is quite an accomplishment, given that the translation remains accurate, though some may feel that the brevity and rhyme occasionally rob these lines of the heft they require.
The anapaestic choral passages are translated in an equivalent but loose anapaestic rhythm in lines of varying length.
The translation is accompanied by many explanatory footnotes to help the reader along. There are two appendices. The first is a guide to pronunciation that is useful but quirky and inconsistent (e.g. Haemon is Hē´-mon but Hephaestus He-fes´-tus, Are´-gīv' for Argive, Si´-puh-lis for Sipylus). The second contains useful and detailed synopses of the Oedipus story as it survives in Homer and the tragedians. Finally, there is a brief ‘Suggestions for Further Reading’.
