Suffering Sophocles

It will be boring, friends said. Why on earth are you spending two days doing that when you could be shopping, sleeping, swimming? But the recent workshop on Antigone’s Sophocles (with Brecht and Jean Anouilh thrown in as supporting artistes) was a true revelation. .

Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus – not a great start because he was a motherf..….well, you know that story. So already from a doomed family, her two brothers then murder one another, Oedipus dies and his brother, Creon, becomes king. One of Antigone’s brothers Polynices has rebelled against the state and is to be left outside for the dogs and vultures to pick over his bones. But Antigone decides to bury him and so the wheels of fate roll on when she is condemned to death. There will be more deaths that follow.

No relevance to today? Family versus state? Idealism? Dying for a cause? Conscience? All those themes, written in 441 B.C, wrapped tight in the most rhythmic, beautifully phrased prose:

‘My plans, my mad fanatic heart, my son, cut off so young…’

Suddenly, I saw the roots of King Lear and many other great works of literature. It was back to the source of things….

So, I have made enquiries about doing a part-time Classics degree. Not more Creative Writing – the route I thought I would take. Perhaps I am very impractical about this and I will end my days as a crusty, dusty and far from lusty would-be academic with whiskers and a snuff habit. I feel intoxicated by the Ancient Greeks – this was a time when skilful language was everything: it was valued, honed and considered an asset. Well, I want to be more skilful, understand the cadences of every sentence, the power of one adverb over another, to move people. (Brecht to be recommended too, for his poetry. Anouilh I found too sentimental.)

It is all in the lap of the Gods whether I get (and can afford – there is always that little sting) a place at the University. I may fall to earth pretty fast but hey, an academic friend of mine said it well:

‘I've found my own classical studies incredibly enriching. Not only have I experienced that amazing sense of connectedness with our vast cultural heritage (something that the educated person once took as given but which has been sadly lost in recent decades) but I've felt like a traveller into other minds. I feel I've rubbed shoulders with people recognisable as coming from the same species as ourselves but very different in other ways. The realisation that thought is words and that words do not correspond across all languages is humbling, liberating, and utterly vital for a writer. I love Ancient Greek because I feel that it is the evolving language of a people developing both their philosophies and the ways of expressing them in tandem. I also feel that I didn't really understand Byron and Shakespeare until I understood their exposure to the Classical tradition.’

So backwards to go forwards, really.