The guards have left, preceded by the little page. ✎ Creon and Antigone are alone, facing each other. ✎
CREON ✎ —Have you discussed your plans with anyone? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Did you meet anyone on the way? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You are quite sure? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Then listen: you are going back to your room, you are going to bed. You'll say that you're sick and you haven't been out since yesterday. Your nurse will confirm your story. I will make sure these three guards disappear. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Why? You know I'll just try again. 🔊✎
A silence. They look at each other. ✎
CREON ✎ —Why did you attempt to bury your brother? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —I have forbidden it. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ softly. ✎ — I had to all the same. 🔊✎ If you aren't buried, you wander through eternity without ever finding rest. 🔊✎ If my brother had returned, exhausted after a long hunt, I would have taken off his boots, I would have got him something to eat, I would have made his bed... 🔊✎ Polynices has finished his hunt today. He's going back to the house where my father and mother are waiting for him. Eteocles too. He has a right to rest. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —He was a rebel and a traitor, you know that. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —He was my brother. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You've heard them read the edict at the crossroads, you've seen the posters on all the walls in town? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You knew what I promised would happen to anyone, whoever he may be, who dared give him the funeral rites? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Yes, I knew that. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Maybe you thought that you were the daughter of Oedipus, the daughter of the pride of Oedipus, and that was enough to put you above the law. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —No. 🔊✎ I didn't think that. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —The law is first of all made for you, Antigone, the law is first of all made for the daughters of kings! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —If I had been a servant doing the dishes when I heard the edict being read, I would have wiped my greasy hands and I would have gone out in my apron to bury my brother. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —That is not true. If you had been a servant, you would have known very well that you would die, and you would have stayed at home and cried for your brother there. 🔊✎ You just thought that you were of the royal family, my niece and the fiancée of my son, and that when it came down to it I wouldn't dare to have you killed. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You are wrong. On the contrary, I was certain you would have me killed. 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ looks at her and murmurs suddenly. ✎ — The pride of Oedipus. You are the pride of Oedipus. Yes, now that I can see it deep in your eyes, I believe you. 🔊✎ Yes, I can understand now that you thought I'd have you killed. And you're so proud it seemed like a perfectly natural ending for you. 🔊✎ For your father too, happiness could never be enough, normal human unhappiness was too little. 🔊✎ In your family, it's kind of embarrassing to be just human. You need to get together with fate and death. You need to kill your father and sleep with your mother and then hear the whole thing afterwards, word by word. 🔊✎ Those words that condemn you are so exciting, aren't they? You just lap them up when your name is Oedipus or Antigone. And then it's so simple to poke your eyes out and go out begging on the roads with your children. 🔊✎ No thank you. Those times are over for Thebes. 🔊✎ Thebes has the right now to a prince without a tragic history. Thank God, I'm just plain Creon. 🔊✎ I've got my feet on the ground, my hands in my pockets, and since I happen to be king, I'm not as ambitious as your father, I just want to make the world a bit less crazy, if I can do that. It's not exactly an adventure, it's just a job. And like all jobs, it's not always fun. 🔊✎ But since I'm here to do it, then I'll do it... 🔊✎ And if some day a dubious messenger turns up from the far mountains to say that there are some questions about where I was born, I will just tell him to go home again, and I won't start checking up on your aunt and comparing dates. Little girl, kings have more important things to do than occupy themselves with their private lives. 🔊✎ (He goes up to her and takes her by the arm.) ✎ So listen. Yes, you are Antigone, yes, you are the daughter of Oedipus, but you are twenty years old, and not very long ago this would have been sorted out with a couple of smacks and going to bed without your dinner. 🔊✎ (He looks at her, smiling.) ✎ Have you killed! Take a look at yourself. You're too thin. Put on a bit of weight, so that you can give Haemon a nice, fat, healthy baby. I promise you, Thebes needs that more than it needs your death. 🔊✎ Go back to your room now, do what I told you, and keep your mouth shut. I'll make sure no one else talks. 🔊✎ Come on, move! And stop looking at me like that. 🔊✎ Obviously, you think I'm a pig, I get that, and I'm sure you think I have no poetry in my soul. But I care about you all the same, bad temper and all. 🔊✎ Remember who gave you your first doll, only a few years ago. 🔊✎ Antigone does not answer. ✎ She makes to leave. ✎ He stops her. ✎
CREON ✎ —Antigone! That's the way to your room. 🔊✎ Where were you going? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ she has stopped, she replies softly without making a show of it. ✎ — You know very well... 🔊✎
A silence. ✎ They stand again, facing each other. ✎
CREON, ✎ murmurs, as to himself. ✎ — What game are you playing at? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I am not playing. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Don't you understand that if anyone other than those three thugs finds out what you tried to do, I will be obliged to put you to death? 🔊✎ If you keep quiet, if you give up this crazy idea, I have a chance to save you, but it'll be gone five minutes from now. Do you understand that? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I have to bury my brother. Those men uncovered him again. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You will once again make this absurd gesture? 🔊✎ There's a different guard now watching over Polynices' body, and even if you manage to cover him up again, you know perfectly well they will just uncover him. What will you achieve except breaking your fingernails and getting caught? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Nothing else, I know. But at least I can do that. You have to do what you can. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Do you really believe in this burial according to the rites? This idea that your brother's spirit will be condemned to wander forever if you don't throw a bit of dirt on the corpse and say the right words? 🔊✎ You've heard the priests of Thebes doing the burial ceremony? You've seen those poor, tired church employees cutting short their gestures, gabbling the words, trying to get it over quickly enough so that they can fit in another stiff before they break for lunch? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Yes, I've seen them. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —And you've never thought to yourself that if that was someone you loved lying there in the box, you'd want to start screaming? Scream at them to shut up and go away? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Yes, I've thought that. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —And you're risking your life now because I have refused to give your brother this stupid passport to the hereafter, this mass-produced mumbling over a corpse, this pantomime that would have left you more sick and ashamed than anyone. It doesn't make any sense! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Yes, it doesn't make any sense. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —So why are you making this gesture then? For the others, the people who believe in it? To set them against me? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —So not for the others, and not for your brother? For who then? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —For nobody. For myself. 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ looks at her in silence. ✎ — So you want to die then? You look like a little animal someone's caught. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Don't you start feeling sorry for me. Do what I'm doing. Do what you have to do. But if you're a human being, do it quickly. 🔊✎ That's all I'm asking. You're right, I won't be able to stay strong forever. 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ moves closer to her. ✎ — I want to save you, Antigone. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You are the king, you can do anything, but that's one thing you can't do. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You can't save me, you can't make me do what you want. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Such pride! Such a little Oedipus! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —All you can do is have me killed. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —And if I have you tortured first? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Why? So that I'll cry, so that I'll beg for mercy, so that I'll swear anything you want, and then try again as soon as the pain has gone? 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ grabs her by the arm. ✎ — Listen to me. Of course I'm the bad guy here, you're the good guy. And you know that. But don't overexploit it, you little bitch. 🔊✎ If I were just your ordinary standard issue tyrant, you would long ago have had your tongue cut out and your arms and legs stretched on the rack, or you'd just have been thrown in a hole. But you can see something in my eyes that's hesitating, you can see I'd rather talk than call my men. So you keep on needling me, attacking me as much as you can. 🔊✎ What are you trying to achieve, you little fury? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Let go of me. You're hurting my arm. 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ gripping her more tightly. ✎ — No. I am stronger in that respect, I will also exploit it. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ utters a little cry. ✎ — Ow! 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ his eyes laughing. ✎ — Maybe that's all I should have done really, just twisted your wrist, pulled your hair like you do with little grls. 🔊✎ (He is still looking at her. He becomes serious again. Moving very close to her, he says:) ✎ I am your uncle, we both know that, but we're not very nice to each other in this family. 🔊✎ I suppose you think it's funny all the same, to be able to disrespect a king who's listening to you, a man who has the power to do anything and I promise you has seen plenty of other people killed, some of them just as cute as you, and who's still taking all this trouble to try and stop you from dying? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ after a while. ✎ — You're squeezing too hard now. It doesn't hurt any more. It's like I don't have an arm. 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ looks at her and lets her go with a little smile. He murmurs. ✎ — God knows I've got other things to do today, but I'll do whatever it takes to save you, you little pest. 🔊✎ (He sits her down on a chair in the middle of the stage. He removes his jacket and moves towards her, heavy, powerful, in his shirt-sleeves.) ✎ The day after a failed revolution, I promise you there's plenty of cleaning up left. But urgent business can wait. I don't want to see you die in some stupid political intrigue. You're better than that. 🔊✎ Because your Polynices, this wailing ghost and this body that's rotting away surrounded by its guards and all this other emotional stuff that's got you so excited, it's just a political intrigue. 🔊✎ First of all, I'm not tender-hearted but I'm kind of fussy: I like things to be clean and neat. You think this doesn't disgust me as much as you, this piece of stinking meat we've left out in the sun? In the evening, when we get the sea breeze, you can smell it even in the palace. It turns my stomach. But all the same, I don't close the window. 🔊✎ It's horrible, and I can even admit it's stupid, it's disgustingly stupid, but all of Thebes needs that smell in its nostrils for a while. 🔊✎ You think of course I should bury your brother, just for hygienic reasons if nothing else. But to make the animals I govern understand, the whole town has to stink of Polynices' decaying carcass for a month. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You're revolting! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Yes, my dear. The job requires it. You can discuss whether you should do the job or not do the job. But if you're going to do it, you need to do it like that. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —So why do you do it? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —One morning, I woke up and I was king of Thebes. And God knows there were things in life I wanted more than power... 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You should have said no then! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —I could have. But I just felt suddenly like a workman who was turning down a job. It didn't seem honest. I said yes. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Well too bad for you. Me, I've not said "yes"! Why should I care about your politics and your necessities and your sad little intrigues? 🔊✎ I can still say "no" to everything I don't like, and I can decide on my own. And you, with your crown and your guards and all the rest of it, all you can do is kill me, because you have said "yes". 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —If I don't want to, I don't need to listen to you. You have said "yes". I have nothing to learn from you. Not you. 🔊✎ You're there, you're drinking in my words. And if you don't call your guards, it's so that you can hear me out to the end. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —No. I terrify you. That's why you're trying to save me. It'd be so much easier to have an obedient, living Antigone in the palace. 🔊✎ You're too sensitive to make a good tyrant, that's what it's about. But you're going to have to kill me soon all the same, you know you will, and that's what frightens you. A man who's frightened is so ugly. 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ dully. ✎ — Well yes, I am frightened by the idea that I'm going to have to kill you if you carry on like this. I don't want to. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Well I don't have to do things if I don't want to! Perhaps you didn't want to refuse my brother a tomb either? Go on, say you didn't want to? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —I have already said that. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —But you did it all the same. And now, you're going to kill me without wanting to. And that's what it is to be a king! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Yes, that's what it is! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Poor Creon! With my dirty broken nails, and the bruises your guards have left on my arms, and the fear twisting up my stomach, I'm a queen. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Then look, have pity on me. The body of your brother rotting under my windows, that's enough payment to reestablish order in Thebes. 🔊✎ My son loves you. Don't make me pay with you as well. I've paid enough. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —No. You've said "yes". And now you'll never stop paying! 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ losing it, suddenly shakes her. ✎ — But Jesus Christ! Try to understand for a moment, you little idiot! I've tried to understand you. 🔊✎ Someone has to say yes. 🔊✎ Someone has to steer the ship. It's leaking everywhere, it's full of crime, stupidity, misery... 🔊✎ And the wheel's just spinning round. 🔊✎ The crew don't care anymore, all they want to do is loot the hold, and the officers are already building a comfortable little raft, just for them, with all the fresh water, so at least they can get out. And the mast's about to split, and the wind's howling, and the sails are tearing themselves apart, and all these animals are going to die, because all any of them can think about is how to save their own precious skin. 🔊✎ Do you think you've got time for these fancy thoughts, to know if you should say "yes" or "no", to ask yourself if you're paying too much, if you can still feel like a man afterwards? You grab the wheel, you face the mountain of water in front of you, you yell an order and you fire into the crowd, on the first man who moves forward. Into the crowd! It doesn't have a name. 🔊✎ It's like the wave that comes crashing down on the bridge under your nose; the wind whipping you, and the thing that falls down when you shoot don't have names. Maybe it's the guy who gave you a light and smiled yesterday. He doesn't have a name. And you don't have a name either, clinging to the wheel. Only the boat and the storm have names. 🔊✎ Do you understand? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ shakes her head. ✎ — I don't want to understand. It makes sense to you. I'm not here to understand. I'm here to say no and die. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —It's easy to say no! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —If you're going to say yes, you need to sweat, you need to roll up your sleeves and grab life with both hands and stick them in up to the elbows. 🔊✎ It's easy to say no, even if you're going to die. You just sit there and wait. You wait to live, you even wait for them to come and kill you. It's cowardly. It's just something people have made up. 🔊✎ Can you imagine a world where the trees said no to the sap rising in them, where animals said no to their instincts of fighting and reproducing? 🔊✎ At least the animals are simple and kind and tough. They move forward bravely on the same road, each one pushing the one in front. If one of them drops dead, the others go on, and it doesn't matter how many die, there's always one of each species left to make more and carry on down the same road, just as they always have. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —What a dream for a king, those animals! It would be so simple. 🔊✎
A silence. Creon looks at her. ✎
CREON ✎ —You despise me, don't you? 🔊✎ (She doesn't answer, he continues as to himself.) ✎ It's strange. I've often imagined it, this dialogue with a pale young man who's tried to kill me, that I can't get to show any emotion but contempt. But I never thought it would be with you, and for something so stupid... 🔊✎ (He has put his head in his hands. You feel he's about to give up). ✎ Alright, one last try. I don't have a good role, but it's the one I've got, and I'm going to kill you. But first, I just want you to be quite sure you know what you're doing. 🔊✎ Do you know why you're dying, Antigone? Do you know what disgusting little story you're going to undersign in your blood? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —The story of Eteocles and Polynices, your brothers. You think you know it, but you don't. No one in Thebes knows it except me. But I think, this morning, that you also have the right to find out. 🔊✎ (He sits there dreaming for a while, his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. We hear him murmur.) ✎ You'll see, it's not very nice. 🔊✎ (And he starts dully without looking at Antigone.) ✎ First of all, what do you remember about your brothers? Two playmates who no doubt despised you, who broke your dolls, always whispering secrets together to make you mad? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —They were big kids... 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —And then I'm sure you admired their first cigarettes, their first long trousers; and then they started going out at night, and they smelled like men, and they no longer looked at you at all. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I was a girl... 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You saw your mother crying, you saw your father angry, you heard the doors slamming when they came home, and their nasty smiles in the corridors. They walked past you, full of worthless sarcasm, smelling of liquor.. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Once, I hid behind a door, it was morning, we'd just got up and they were coming home. 🔊✎ Polynices saw me, he was so pale, but his eyes were flashing and he was so handsome in his tux! He said, "Hey, is that you there?" And he gave me a big paper flower that he'd brought back from the night. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —And you kept that flower, didn't you? And yesterday, before you went out, you opened your drawer and you looked at it for a long time, to give yourself courage? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ starts. ✎ — Who told you that? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Poor Antigone, with her nightclub flower! Do you know what your brother was like? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I know you're going to say something bad about him! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —A stupid little frat boy, a heartless, brutal little womaniser, a little animal whose only talents were driving his sportster a bit faster than the others and blowing a bit more money in the strip-joints. 🔊✎ Once, I was there, your father refused to give him a large sum he'd lost at roulette. He went white and raised his fist and called your father a bad word. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —And then he smashed his animal fist as hard as he could into your father's face. 🔊✎ It was horrible. Your father was sitting at his desk holding his head, bleeding from the nose and crying. 🔊✎ And in a corner of the office, Polynices, smirking, lit up a cigarette. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ now almost begging. ✎ — It's not true! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Remember, you were twelve. You didn't see him for a long time after that. That's right, no? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ dully. ✎ — Yes, that's right. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —It was after that incident. Your father didn't want to judge him. He joined the Argive army. 🔊✎ And as soon as he was with the Argives, the assassination attempts started against your father, against an old man who hadn't decided to die and hand over his kingdom. One attempt after another, and when we caught one of the hitmen they always ended up saying they'd been paid by him. Though not just by him, I might add. 🔊✎ That's what I wanted you to know., what's happening backstage in this drama where you so want to play a role, what goes on in the kitchen. 🔊✎ Yesterday, I organised a magnificent funeral for Eteocles. Eteocles is now a hero and a saint for Thebes. 🔊✎ Everyone was there. The schoolkids had raided their piggy-banks to buy wreaths. Old men, pretending they were moved, were telling exaggerated stories in trembling voices about the good brother, the son of Oedipus, the prince royal. I gave a speech too. 🔊✎ And every single priest in Thebes, wearing their most suitable expressions. Full military honours. Well, I had to. You understand that I couldn't afford the luxury of saying they were both bastards. 🔊✎ But I'll tell you something else, something really horrible that only I know: Eteocles, that prince of virtue, wasn't a bit better than Polynices. The good son had also tried to have his dad assassinated, the loyal prince had also decided to sell Thebes to the highest bidder. 🔊✎ Don't you think that's kind of funny? Polynices is now rotting in the sunshine because he was guilty of treason, but I have proof that Eteocles, the guy asleep in his marble tomb, was going to do just the same thing. It was just a throw of the dice that Polynices got in first. 🔊✎ This is a story of two conmen who conned each other while they were conning us and cut each other's throats like a couple of petty criminals settling scores... 🔊✎ It's just that I needed to make one of them into a hero. So I gave orders to find their bodies in the middle of all the others. 🔊✎ They found them in each other's arms, I guess for the first time in their lives. They'd stabbed each other at the same time, and then the whole Argive cavalry had ridden over them. They'd been mashed into pulp, unrecognisable. 🔊✎ I had one of the bodies, the less damaged one, collected for my hero's funeral, and I told them to leave the other one where it was. I don't even know which was which. And I promise you, I really don't care. 🔊✎
There is a long silence, they don't move, they don't look at each other, then Antigone says softly: ✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Why have you told me all this? 🔊✎ Creon gets up and puts on his jacket again. ✎
CREON ✎ —Would it have been better to let you die for this miserable business? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Maybe. I thought so. 🔊✎
There is another silence. ✎ Creon approaches her. ✎
CREON ✎ —What are you going to do now? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ rises like a sleepwalker. ✎ — I'm going back to my room. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Don't stay alone too long. Go see Haemon, this morning. Get married soon. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ In a whisper. ✎ — Yes. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You have all your life in front of you. Don't think too much about our discussion. You still have that treasure, it's yours. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Nothing else matters. And you were going to throw it away! 🔊✎ I understand you., I would have done the same when I was twenty. That's why I kept listening to your words. I saw at the other end of time a little Creon, thin and pale like you are, who also kept thinking of sacrificing himself... 🔊✎ Get married soon, Antigone, be happy. Life isn't what you think. It's like water which young people let run through their fingers, without thinking. Quick, close your hands, close your hands. Keep it there. 🔊✎ You'll see, it will become a simple, hard little thing that you can nibble on as you sit in the sun. They'll tell you the opposite because they need your strength and swiftness. Don't listen to them. Don't listen to me either when I give my next speech in front of Eteocles' tomb. It won't be true. Nothing is true except the things you don't say... 🔊✎ You'll learn, you as well, too late, life is a book you love, it's a child playing at your feet, it's a tool that sits comfortably in your hand, it's a bench in front of your house where you rest in the evening. You'll despise me again, but discovering that, you'll see, is the silver lining of getting old; life is perhaps all the same just happiness. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ murmurs, looking at nothing. ✎ — Happiness... 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ suddenly a bit ashamed. ✎ — A feeble word, isn't it? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —What will it be, my happiness? What kind of happy woman is little Antigone going to become? What miserable things is she going to have to do, her as well, so that she can gnaw out her little morsel of happiness? Tell me, who's she going to lie to, who's she going to smile at, who's she going to sell herself to? Who's she going to let die while she looks the other way? 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ shrugging shoulders. ✎ — You're crazy. Be quiet. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —No, I won't be quiet! I want to know what I need to do to be happy. Right now, because I need to choose right now. You say life is so beautiful. I want to know what I'll need to do to live. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Do you love Haemon? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Yes, I love Haemon. I love a Haemon who's strong and young, a Haemon who's demanding and faithful, like I am. 🔊✎ But if he has to keep paying interest to keep your happiness and your life, if Haemon no longer becomes pale when I become pale, if he no longer thinks I'm dead when I'm five minutes late, if he no longer feels alone in the world and hates me when I laugh and he doesn't know why, if he turns into Mr Haemon and learns to say "yes" like everyone else, then no, I don't love Haemon anymore. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You don't know what you're saying. Be quiet. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Yes, I do know what I'm saying. It's you that can't hear me. I'm talking to you from too far away, from a place you can't enter with your wrinkles, your accumulated wisdom, your fat stomach. 🔊✎ (She laughs.) ✎ Ah, I'm laughing, Creon, I'm laughing because suddenly I can see you when you were fifteen! Just that same mixture of believing you can do anything and being completely powerless. All life's done is add a few lines on your face and make you fatter. 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ shaking her. ✎ — Will you finally be quiet? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Why do you want me to be quiet? Because you know I'm right? You think I can't see in your eyes that I know that? You know I'm right, but you'll never admit it, because you're clinging on to your happiness like a dog with a bone. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Yes, your happiness and mine, you idiot! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You all disgust me with your happiness! With your life that you have to love, whatever it costs. Yes, like a dog, like those dogs that lick everything they find. And that little chance that it'll all work out, as long as you don't ask for too much. 🔊✎ Well I want it all, now, the whole thing - or else I refuse! I don't want to be modest and say a little bit is enough if I've been a good girl. I want to be sure of everything today and I want it to be as wonderful as when I was small - or I want to die! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —That's right, go on, go on, just like your father! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Like my father, yes! We're the kind of people who get to the bottom of things. Right until there really isn't the smallest amount of hope left, the tiniest little possibility of hope to strangle. We're the kind of people who jump on it when we see it, your hope, your dear hope, your filthy hope! 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Be quiet! If you could see how ugly you are while you're screaming all this. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Yes I am ugly! It's so disgusting, isn't it, this shouting, this grabbing at each other like beggars fighting. 🔊✎ Papa only became beautiful afterwards, when finally he was quite sure that he had killed his father, that it really was his mother he had slept with, and nothing, absolutely nothing could save him anymore. 🔊✎ He calmed down all at once, it was almost like he smiled, and he was beautiful. It was over. 🔊✎ He just had to close his eyes to stop seeing you. 🔊✎ Ah, your faces, your poor faces all thirsting after happiness! You're the ugly ones, even the most beautiful. You have something ugly around your eyes and your mouths. 🔊✎ You said it just now, Creon. The kitchen. You all have cooks' faces! 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ twisting her arm. ✎ — I order you to keep quiet, do you understand? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You order me, cook? You think you can order me to do anything? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —The room outside is full of people. You want them to hear you? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Good, open the doors! That's right, they'll hear me! 🔊✎
CREON, ✎ trying to close her mouth by force. ✎ — Good God, will you finally shut up? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ resisting. ✎ — Go on, cook! Call the guards! 🔊✎