Antigonick - Winner of the Criticos Prize

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You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Antigonick is a comic-book presentation of Sophokles' Antigone in a translation by Anne Carson, with text blocks hand-inked on the page by Carson and her collaborator Robert Currie. Carson, a poet influenced by authors as diverse as Sappho, Euripides, Emily Brontë, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, is known both for innovative translations of ancient texts and for her restrained but searing confessional poetry (try " The Glass Essay" or The Beauty of the Husband).

Other fun plays on words is Antigone mentioning she is lonely inside herself, poking at her fate of being sealed alone inside a cave.In contrast to Grief Lessons and Carson’s Oresteia translation, this one is far less literal, pulling in contemporary language and references to contemporary authors who have commented on Antigone. There is a bizarre, almost frenetic disarray throughout Antigonick, a chilling sense of how easily democracy can slip to tyranny when citizens are paralyzed into silence and inaction.

When her brother Polynices declares war on Thebes, the city is defended by her other brother Eteocles. I strongly recommend this work to anyone interested in the story of Antigone (I am obsessed with all things Antigone), beautiful language, and stunning books. Rather, she reminds us that the imperative is to refuse to turn away from the suffering exacted by oppression and injustice, to bear witness and hold up the words of those who have been silenced.It is all rather odd and seemingly random, which I find rather charming simply for the oddity of it all and how lovely it is as a book that is also a functional piece of art. The book needs to be held, the overlays played with, and the ability to flip back support by the physical text. Most curious of all the cast is Nick, a silent part that spends the entire play on stage measuring things. I felt like giving thanks the entire time I was reading it, that Anne Carson has written a translation of Sophocles's Antigone that manages to be very beautiful and very funny and utterly surprising, all at the same time.