Antigones poetisches Universum

Dr. Sonja Dierks

doi:10.5771/9783465147527

Summary

Probably no other classical text has inspired as many creative interpretations and critical questions as Sophocles' Antigone. Why does the character of Antigone continue to haunt us to this day? What makes her contradictions, her stubbornness, her violent desires so relevant today? Why doesn’t Antigone want revenge like Electra? Why would she rather leave her husband and children unburied than her brother? Antigone's desire is impossible in the sense that it wants the impossible. The beginning of her death triggers an insurmountable tension. Her death is not a forced suicide. It challenges us because it reveals what is wrong with the state. Why is the conflict unsolvable? Starting from these questions, the author turns to other characters and persons who transform Antigone's desire into something akin to a process of infinite learning; in its difference to itself. Antigone's poetic universe is an attempt to give voice to a language that does not think first of itself, but of its being-with.