Origins

Antigone has always been one of my favorite literary characters, for the simple reason that she does what is right, regardless of the consequences (kind of like Princess Leia! But this was more sophisticated). So I thought long and hard about what I wanted to name the blog and came up with “Antigone’s Clamor”. There’s a quote in the play that goes like this:

Every kind of stillness. The hush when the executioner’s ax goes up at the end of the last act. The unbreathable silence when, at the beginning of the play, the two lovers, their hearts bared, their bodies naked, stand for the first time face to face in the darkened room, afraid to stir. The silence inside you when the roaring crowd acclaims the winner—so that you think of a film without a sound track, mouths agape and no sound coming out of them, a clamor that is not more than picture; and you, the victor, already vanquished, alone in the desert of your silence. That is tragedy.

Don’t you just love that? It reminds me of those moments when silence is so loud that it is almost like clamor. Plus, those who chose to follow Divine law are sentenced to a lonely path, like Antigone. This is why Sophocles’ writing has lasted for over 2000 years. That, and he didn’t make her a vampire (not that I don’t LOVE a good vampire novel!!).