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    Black Antigone: Sophocles’ Tragedy Meets the Heartbeat of Africa
    Black Antigone: Sophocles’ Tragedy Meets the Heartbeat of Africa
    Black Antigone: Sophocles’ Tragedy Meets the Heartbeat of Africa
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Black Antigone: Sophocles’ Tragedy Meets the Heartbeat of Africa

    By George Porter

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    Black Antigone is a fresh and provocative interpretation of Sophocles’ tragedy, based on the belief that the potent rhythms of the African people were much more a part of ancient Greece than has ever been suggested - especially by the Victorian classics professors on whose translations of Antigone many generations have relied.
    In Black Antigone, these African ‘roots’ are most evident in the controversial treatment of the Chorus, which beats with the rhythmic heart of Africa, reminding us not only that this was supposed to be a Dionysian revel, but that it was Africa that gave us the rhythms of reggae, rhythm-and-blues, and rock. Literary critic Terry Eagleton has described Black Antigone as “remarkably inventive” and Ruth Little of the Young Vic Theatre Company called it “rigorous and muscular”. In addition to the play itself, Black Antigone includes a critical introduction and a bibliography.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChaplin Books
    Release dateOct 23, 2012
    ISBN9781909183070
    Black Antigone: Sophocles’ Tragedy Meets the Heartbeat of Africa

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      Book preview

      Black Antigone - George Porter

      consent.

      Introduction

      ‘Sophocles’ ANTIGONE is just not any text. It is one of the enduring and canonic acts in the history of our philosophic, literary, and political consciousness.’

      Professor George Steiner, Antigones, OUP 1984

      BLACK ANTIGONE is a new interpretation of Sophocles’ tragedy and stems from my belief that the potent rhythms of the people of Africa were much more a part of Bronze Age Greece, and therefore had much more influence on the development of western literature, than has ever been suggested - especially by the Victorian classics professors on whose translations of Antigone many generations have relied. It has not been my intention to outsmart the knowledge and expertise of these translators: what I have attempted to do instead is to present a fresh perspective on the play. Is it provocative? Yes, in the sense that it attempts to show that the blossoming of the theatre of ancient Greece might have had its roots in places that academics have shown themselves reluctant to accept.

      In Black Antigone, these ‘roots’ are most evident in the controversial treatment of the Chorus. In his Notes on the Dance Rhythms used by Sophocles, Professor H D F Kitto says ‘We know nothing about Greek music and can only make indirect inferences about their dances.’ Arguably, if we know nothing according to one of the foremost translators, then anyone’s considered conjecture on the presentation of music and dance could be worthy of respect, regardless of the extent of their knowledge of ancient Greek. In this connection, the meters contained in the body of the play and the Chorus in Black Antigone are based, as far as I am able, on some of those indicated by Professor Kitto. I have not attempted to construct the more obscure forms where indicated by him (such as iambs, trochees, dactyls and anapaests), not because this presents too severe a challenge, but because to do so would get in the way of the regularity of the rhythms which, as they stand, present a pattern which, partly at least, satisfies academic convention.

      The similarity ends here. What the academic translations of the Chorus lack are any feeling for rhythm apart from esoteric precision. Vibrancy is absent, although the meters indicated are those which are associated with strong rhythmic patterns. Why is this? Could it be a subliminal intent on the part of classical translators to effect an attitude to rhythm eschewing the basic human instincts even today plainly visible in most societies, quashing the vitality of simple unadulterated rhythmic patterns and substituting them with less potent and more intricate ones which can only be appreciated by an ear trained to assimilate them? If these translations are true to the spirit of the original, then Sophocles must have bored his audiences, which numbered into thousands, into a state of catatonic submission. Surely, if ‘we know nothing’, we could be just a little more imaginative with our lack of knowledge.

      Perhaps the following comparisons taken from my Chorus and compared with that of a translation by Sir Richard Jebb, to whom most subsequent translators pay homage, may elucidate my point. Jebb produced a superb translation, in the precise scholastic meaning of the term, but using metaphor and rhythm more freely can bring a staid and uninspiring speech to life. In short, what I have tried to accomplish is to claw back some of the spirit I believe was lost in translation by the ponderous and haughty use of the English language aimed at a very narrow section of Victorian elitist academics, who were convinced that nothing black could ever taint the purity of western civilization. To read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is to feel the power and beauty of the English language; to read translations from ancient Greek of Antigone, from which Shakespeare’s own work is possibly inspired, and poetic power and beauty, as mere mortals know it, is nowhere to be perceived:

      Chorus 1 (Jebb)

      For Zeus abhors the boasts of a proud tongue; and when he beheld them coming on in a great stream, in the haughty pride of clanging gold, he smote with brandished fire one who was now hasting to shout victory at his goad upon our ramparts.

      Chorus 1 (Black Antigone)

      Now Zeus ain’t so cool when a man starts to brag,

      And these slick suited soldiers were not in his bag,

      So he flashed off a thunderbolt into their ranks,

      He frightened them witless and finished their pranks.

      Down to the Earth he did flash with a smack,

      Waving his torch like a crazy on crack,

      Raging and raving and screaming for blood,

      Ares the God was delivering the goods.

      Chorus 4 (Jebb)

      Love, unconquered in the fight, Love, who makest havoc of wealth, who keepest thy vigil on the soft cheek of a maiden; thou roamest over the sea,

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