Collected Plays, Volume 4 (Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry & Prose) 8
Page 5
And if I die in it, so what? I will be quietened
Lying with the quiet ones. Behind me I will have
Accomplished what is holy. Then a longer time
I shall be liked by those down there than here
For there I’ll dwell for ever. But you
Laugh at disgrace and live.
ISMENE:
Antigone, it is bitter
To suffer a wild disgrace, but also
There is a limit on the salt of tears, they do not spring
From the eyes inexhaustibly. The edge of the axe
Ends sweet life but it opens
The veins of pain in the ones it leaves behind. They must
lament
Without rest but even lamenting they hear
Above them the twittering of birds and again
Through the veil of their tears appear
The ancient elms and the roofs of home.
ANTIGONE:
I hate you, shamelessly showing me
A lap of skirt full of holes and in it your
Dwindling stock of grief. Meanwhile
On bare stones flesh of your flesh is lying
Served up to the birds of the far and wide skies, he is to you
Already a yesterday thing.
ISMENE:
Only
To raise myself in revolt I am not good enough, and clumsy
And fear for you.
ANTIGONE:
Don’t counsel me. Come out with your own life!
But let me do the very least and honour what is mine
Where it has been reviled. I am in all things
Not so delicate, I hope, that I could not
Die an unlovely death.
ISMENE:
Go then with your dust. But listen: your speech
Is all awry, but lovely on what we love.
Exit Antigone with her jug. Ismene goes indoors. Enter the Elders.
ELDERS:
But victory big in booty has come
And favoured the numerous chariots of Thebes
And after the war
Now let there be a forgetting.
Into all the gods’ temples
With choirs through the night
Come and let Thebes whose nakedness laurels have clothed
Be shaken with the stamp and dancing of Bacchus!
But the bringer of victory
Creon, Menoeceus’ son, must have hurried here
From the battlefield to proclaim
Booty and at last the return of the soldiers
Since he has called and commanded this gathering of
the Elders.
Creon comes out of the palace.
CREON:
Sirs, share this with everyone: there is
No Argos any more. The settling up
Was total. From eleven townships
Few got away, oh very few!
As it is said of Thebes: you bear to Good Luck
Twins in a trice, and Bad Luck
Does not flatten you, it
Itself is flattened. Your spear’s thirst
Was quenched at the first drinking. And was not denied
Repeated drinking. Thebes, you laid to rest
The people of Argos on a hard place. Now without town or
tomb
What mocked you lies in the open air.
And looking where
Their city was
What you see are dogs
With glistening countenances.
The noblest vultures wing their way to her, they tread
From corpse to corpse
And from the rich servings there
They cannot lift into the air.
ELDERS:
Sweet picture, sir, of vast and terrible things.
And it will please the city when it comes to them
If shrewdly mixed with something else: chariots
Climbing the streets here carrying our own.
CREON:
Soon, friends, soon. But now to business. Not yet
Will you see me hang my sword up in the temple.
There are two reasons why I summoned you
From among all. For one, because I know
You don’t keep count how many wheels the war god’s
Foe-crushing chariots need and don’t begrudge him
Your sons’ blood in the battle, but when he comes
With losses home under the well-defended roof
There is much reckoning up in the market place. Swiftly
Therefore make clear to Thebes the blood-spillage
Does not exceed the usual. Then this, because
All too forgiving Thebes, being saved
Again, will hurry as always to wipe the gasping homecomers’
Sweat off their brows and will not especially note
Whether the sweat is the sweat of the angry fighter or
Only the sweat of fear and with it mixed
The dust of flight. Therefore I covered
And you are to approve it, Eteocles
Who died for the city, with wreath and grave
But the poltroon Polynices, to him
And to me related and a friend to the people of Argos
Will lie unburied as they lie. Like them
He was an enemy, to me was and to Thebes.
My wish therefore is no one mourn him, also
That he be left unburied and on show
A meal, a meat torn up by birds and dogs.
For who rates higher than his native city
His life, I count him nothing.
Who means my city well though, dead or alive
Equally always he has my esteem.
I hope that you approve that.
ELDERS:
We do approve it.
CREON:
Be overseers then in the aforesaid.
ELDERS:
Fill suchlike posts with young men.
CREON:
Not that. The corpse already has a watch out there.
ELDERS:
And we’re the watchers on the living, are we?
CREON:
Yes. There are certain people it displeases.
ELDERS:
There’s no such fool here he will gladly die.
CREON:
None openly. But many a one there is
Goes on shaking his head till it falls off.
And that brings me to this: more still needs doing, alas.
The city must be cleansed …
Enter a guard.
GUARD:
Sir!
My führer, breathlessly
I hurry to hand in the swiftest news, don’t ask why not
Even swifter, my feet
Ahead of my head or else
It tugging them after, for
Wherever I am going and how long
Still in the sun and out of breath
Going I am at least nevertheless.
CREON:
Why so out of breath or
So hesitant?
GUARD:
I hush nothing up. Why, say I
Not say straight out what wasn’t done by me?
And don’t know either for I do not even know
Who did this thing to you. Harsh sentence
On one so ignorant would be
Discouraging.
CREON:
Taking no chances are you? The eager messenger
Of your own misdeed you want the prize
For good legwork.
GUARD:
Sir
You laid a vast thing on your watchers. But
Vast things do also give a lot of trouble.
CREON:
Speak, will you, finally, then go again.
GUARD:
I’ll speak then. Somebody who got away
Just now has buried the dead man, sprinkling
His skin with dust so the vultures would not spy him.
CREON:
What’s that you say?
Who was it dared do this?
GUARD:
I do not know. A spade had not dug there
Nor any shovel flung. And smooth the ground
Not ridden over by wheels. No sign
Who did it. Not a burial mound
Only a gentle dust as though someone had shied
Before the ban and had not brought much dust.
And nowhere prints of any beasts
Nor dogs that had come and torn.
When first light showed us this it had
To all of us an eerie feel. And I
Was chosen by lot to tell you, führer
And no one loves the bearer of dire words.
ELDERS:
Oh Creon, son of Menoeceus, might not
The gods be in this happening?
CREON:
Enough of that. Don’t make me angrier still
And say the spirits are gentle on the coward
Who coldly would have let be violated
The groups of columns of their temples and the offerings.
No
Some in the city take some things amiss
And mutter and in the harness will not bow
Their necks for me. I know for sure
These got this up, with bribes.
For among all things ever stamped for use
None is so bad as silver. Whole towns
It leads astray and goads men from their houses
To know the knack of every godless work.
Hear this though, if you do not bring me in
Earthly and alive, whoever did it
Yoked and guilty, you’ll be hanged and go
With a rope around your neck to the underworld.
Then see where you can draw your profit from
Share out the spoils with one another and learn
Not everything is there to buy and sell.
GUARD:
Sir, our kind have a lot to be afraid of.
The place, the down-below place, you allude to
For us has far too many entrances. I’m less
Not to say not at all, afraid this minute that
I was given any silver – but if you think so
I’d better turn my pockets out twice more
In case there’s something in there after all–
Than that I’ll make you cross by contradicting.
But what I fear more is when I start looking
It’s rope I might be given, in high hands
There being more of rope for such as us
Than silver. If you take my meaning.
CREON:
You, so transparent, are you setting me conundrums?
GUARD:
The high-up dead man had his high-up friends.
CREON:
Catch them around the shins if you can’t reach higher
Up them. There are, I know, one place or another
Malcontents. Some hear of my victory
Quaking with joy and put the laurel on
With fearful haste. I’ll find them out.
Exit into the palace.
GUARD:
Unhealthy place this where the high
Are scrapping with the mighty. I’m
So it seems, still here. To my surprise.
Exit.
ELDERS:
Monstrous, a lot. But nothing
More monstrous than man.
For he, across the night
Of the sea, when into the winter the
Southerlies blow, he puts out
In winged and whirring houses.
And the noble earth of the gods in heaven
The unspoilable tireless earth
He rubs out with the striving plough
From year to year driving
The race of horses to and fro.
And the breed of the lightly made birds
He ensnares and hunts
And the tribe of wild beasts
And Pontus’ nature that thrives in salt
With ropes slyly slung
This knowing man.
And catches the game with his arts
That sleeps and roams on the mountains.
And over the rough-maned horse he flings
The yoke on its neck, and over the mountain-
Wandering and untamed bull.
And speech and the airy flight
Of thought and statutes to order a state
He has learned and to flee the damp airs
Of ill-blowing hills and
The bolts of rain. All-travelled
Untravelled. He comes to nothing.
Always he knows what to do
Nothing nonplusses him.
In all this he is boundless but
A measure is set.
For when he wants for an enemy
He rises up as his own. Like the bull’s
He bows the neck of his fellowmen but these fellowmen
Rip out his guts. When he steps forth
He treads on his own kind, hard. By himself alone
His belly will never be filled but he builds a wall
Around what he owns and the wall
Must be torn down. The roof
Opened to the rain. Humanity
Weighs with him not a jot. Monstrous thereby
He becomes to himself.
But it stands before me now like God’s temptation
That I should know and yet shall say
This is not the child. Antigone
O unhappy girl of the unhappy
Father Oedipus, what is this bearing
Over you and where is it leading you
For disobeying the statutes of the state?
Enter the guard, leading Antigone.
GUARD:
She did it. She did. We seized her
Making the grave. But where is Creon?
ELDERS:
Here, even as you ask, back from the house.
Creon comes out of the palace.
CREON:
How is it you fetch her here? Where did you seize her?
GUARD:
She made the grave. Now you know everything.
CREON:
Your word is clear but was it you who saw her?
GUARD:
As she mounded the grave, which you forbade.
A man in luck is clear at once as well.
CREON:
Give your account.
GUARD:
The affair was so. When I had gone away
From you, from your colossal threats
And we had wiped the dust off the dead man
Lying already rotting, we sat up in the air
On a high hill because a stink
Came off the dead man strongly. We agreed
In case of sleep to jab each other in the ribs
With the elbow. Suddenly then we opened
Our eyes wide, and why? Because a warm wind
Suddenly lifted up the mist from the ground
Covering the valley in a twisting storm
Tearing the hair out from the valley’s trees and all
The vast ether was full of it so we were blinded
And rubbed our eyes, just so, and after that
Then she was seen and stood and wept out loud
With a sharp voice the way a bird will grieve
Seeing the empty nest and no young in it.
So she lamented, seeing the dead man bare
And gathered dust on him again from the iron jug
Three times with waterings so burying over
The dead man. Quickly we ran and seized her
Who seemed unabashed and charged her with
The present and with the already happened.
But she denied nothing and was at once
A sweet and an unhappy thing before me.
CREON:
Do you say or deny it that you did it?
ANTIGONE:
I say I did it and do not deny it.
CREON:
Then tell me
now, not lengthily but briefly
Do you know what was given out in public
Concerning that particular dead man?
ANTIGONE:
I knew. How shouldn’t I? Was it not clear?
CREON:
You dared to break my statute in this way?
ANTIGONE:
Because it was yours, because a mortal made it.
A mortal then may break it and I am
Hardly less mortal than you are. But if I die
Before the time I think I will, that is
I say, even a gain. Who lives like me
With many ills surely receives
Some small advantage, dying? Further, had I left
Lying without a grave my mother’s other dead
That would have saddened me. But this
Saddens me not at all. But if you think it foolish
That I should fear the heavenly gods who from above
Have no wish to observe uncovered that piecemeal man
And so do not fear you, now let a fool
Pass judgement on me.
ELDERS:
The wild father’s ilk shows wildly in the child:
Under a bad fate she has never learned compliance.
CREON:
But even the strongest iron
Cooked in the furnace still its obstinacy
Will break and fail. You see this every day.
But she discovers a delight in muddying
The laws prescribed. And having done it
Her second impudence is to boast and laugh
That she did it. I hate a person caught in the wrong
And making out the thing is something beautiful.
But you, insulting me although my blood-relation
Because my blood-relation I will not condemn at once
But ask you: since you did this thing in secret
That now is in the open, will you say
And so avoid a heavy punishment, you are sorry?
Antigone remains silent.
ELDERS:
Say then why you are obstinate.
ANTIGONE:
For an example.
CREON:
Do you not care that I have you in my hands?
ANTIGONE:
What more can you do than kill me now you have me?
CREON:
Nothing. But having that I have it all.
ANTIGONE:
Why wait? Of all your words
None pleases me, none will please me
And so myself I am not agreeable to you
Although I am to others for what I did.
CREON:
So you think others see it as you see it?
ANTIGONE:
These see it too, these too are smitten by it.
CREON:
Aren’t you ashamed to interpret them unasked?
ANTIGONE:
Surely we honour humans of one flesh?
CREON:
He’s also of one blood who died for the country.
ANTIGONE:
One blood. Child of the selfsame man and wife.
CREON:
And the one who spared himself you rate him with the other?
ANTIGONE: