Uncovering Writing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nicely done translation with an excellent note by Heaney at the end that explained how he worked on this volume. The story is very good and I’ve been lucky to have see different versions performed live. Sophocles’s story still resonates today in how power can be used and abused.

One line of the play that really hit strong was Antigone explaining that her brother would not be upset by her burying her other brother: “The dead aren’t going to begrudge the dead” (p. 33).

Heaney writes in his note that “Greek tragedy is as much musical score as it is dramatic script” (p. 79). I would generalize this to all poetry in that the performance of verse (be it play or poetry) is a major component of the work.