(no subject)

[skygiants]

blotthis read Anne Carson's Antigonick last year; I read that review and decided that the time had definitely come for me too to read Antigonick.

This is not actually the first time I'd come to this decision -- I took an Antigone class in college, there were a spate of Boston productions a few years back and I saw several of them, it's a story I know well and find meaningful in a variety of forms -- but the difference here is that this time I told blotthis my intention and so they put their copy in my hands to take home with me in order to make sure I actually did so.

It's a really beautiful book, with illustrations layered over the text on translucent pages in a way that I found both fascinating and (intentionally I think?) distracting. It's extremely tempting to try and read meaning into the way the words and images interact in a layout like this:



(Here's what it looks like when you turn the page, with the image and text separated)



And it is absolutely possible that there are layers of artistic meaning in the arrangement of the book that a better scholar of art and poetry than me could spend hours happily investigating! But I it's equally possible that the illusion of meaning -- the consistent human urge to read patterns and philosophy into phenomena -- is part of the point. Antigonick is an intensely metatextual text, a constantly self-interrogating text; the weight of fate & gods-doom that hangs over the original becomes in Antigonick the weight of Antigone's own themes and narrative echoing down through centuries of time and translations, which does not make it any less painful, or less raw:



These couple of pages I think also illustrate a little bit the way in which Carson is just really a master at the art of juxtaposition to drive the knife home: I wish I had a better way to describe that targeted sharp use of the idiomatic-contemporary, which is so easy to overdo or do badly, and so effective when done well.

I probably should stop here or I will end up quoting much of the play. I am probably not now going to binge-reread a whole pile of Antigones, but the urge is there.

Comments

[bardic_lady]

See, this is why I want to do the Anne Carson translation of Agamemnon for zeatre. Her version is so good

[osprey_archer]

Oh! This looks so interesting!

My first experience of Antigone was in fourth grade, when the class down the hall did Antigone as their class play. In retrospect this was perhaps an unusual choice for fourth graders, but it clearly electrified me as I still remember it lo these many years later.

[sovay]

Antigonick is an intensely metatextual text, a constantly self-interrogating text; the weight of fate & gods-doom that hangs over the original becomes in Antigonick the weight of Antigone's own themes and narrative echoing down through centuries of time and translations, which does not make it any less painful, or less raw

I appreciate the photographic evidence!

I bounce screamingly off Anne Carson and there doesn't seem to be anything to do about it (people keep trying me on her, I try, people keep telling me to try harder; to be fair, since grad school this has mostly stopped), but I appreciate that she works for so many people. My formative Antigone was Anouilh's.

[kore]

I love the play, and love Carson's rendition of it (except the boy measuring -- in a real production I bet that would be the first thing to go) but the illustrations drove me BATTY. They just seemed scribbly, and I couldn't relate them to the text in any meaningful way. I had less of a problem with the font than some other people, but it was still nice to get a version with the printed text.

[rachelmanija]

That looks amazing.

[chestnut_pod]

Wow, what a cool piece of art. I'm glad Carson has enough sway to get publishing houses to make really neat book-art objects like this and Nox. I wish more people did!

[asakiyume]

My formative Antigone was Anouilh's.

MINE TOO.

Knocked my socks RIGHT OFF.

[asakiyume]

Whoa, yeah; I see how you could go push-pins-photos-and-string crazy trying to see what extra meanings were in the way the art and text mingle. Very beautiful to look at, though, if you don't get too close to the event horizon.

[skygiants]

It is extremely compelling!!

[skygiants]

Antigone as a fourth grade class play is a fascinating choice and tbh I am surprised and impressed they let them do it! When we did Pippin in 7th grade they were so nervous about the fact that the play alluded to suicide that they had to change the lyric "step into the fire, Pippin" to "step into the box."

[skygiants]

I ALSO LOVE THE ANOUILH. We read that in my college class and it's the version that's stuck with me the most by far. (The context is also .... intensely compelling.)

[skygiants]

The Nick Of Time is definitely the kind of thematic pun that one feels really proud of in the moment and then, you know, darlings, murder, etc ....

I found a lot of the illustrations really striking -- like, aesthetically, they worked for me tremendously -- but I eventually had to just dislodge my brain from the attempt to impose meaning on them in any way or I would have gotten absolutely lost, and, also, never finished the book.

[skygiants]

I am very glad to have finally had this experience -- I think it would have been very different reading in plain-text.

[skygiants]

This is the first of hers like this I've encountered! I don't think I've heard of Nox -- is it similar to this?

[skygiants]

Yeah, if I came across these image-text overlays in a museum, I feel like I could stare at them for hours trying to puzzle them out, but in a book one eventually does have to turn the next page! (Especially when one is reading on one's lunch break, which does have a definite end limit --) Extremely visually cool, though.

[chestnut_pod]

Not really, actually! The Nox book/object is like one of those magnetic book-boxes they sell at craft stores, and then the illustrated text accordions out of it. You could read it like a normal codex, with some finagling, but you could also do much weirder things.