Milli mála - 01.01.2011, Blaðsíða 78

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portantly, it has become a paradigm for tales about strong, inde-
pendent women.
2. Antigone
First appearing over two and half millennia ago in the form of a tale
about its eponymous heroine, Antigone continues to provide a mod-
el for a host of unlike works, each of which comprises different lines
of descent, small variations on the ‘original’ that both make refer-
ence to it and diverge from it in significant ways. Just as in a bio-
logical homologue, certain features remain dormant, become ves-
tigial, or even disappear entirely. In Jean Anouilh’s celebrated ver-
sion of the play, a nurse is added, Tiresias removed, and the chorus
of Theban elders decreased to a single voice. And yet Anouilh’s
Antigone not only remains recognizable as a variation on the Sopho-
clean play: it also serves as one of the most powerful statements in
modern times of an individual sacrificing her life to oppose the
powers that be.7 Numerous other works from the mid-twentieth
century tell of the resistance of the individual, but Antigone’s op-
position both speaks reason and goes beyond its bounds. Perhaps
that is why Anouilh was attracted to the story. In his Antigone, rep-
lication is far from symmetrical and the emphasis consistently
placed on the human dimension rather than on fate or the gods.
Antigone also presents something of a special case. While the
inception of tragedy in ancient Athens dates back to the fifth cen-
tury BCE, the content of the tragic plays dates back much further
in time to the Odyssey and the Iliad (both attributed to Homer) and
to the epic cycle, all of which are supposed to have been distilled
from an oral tradition. The life of many of these tales was therefore
sustained and replicated (one imagines imperfectly) for centuries
before being committed to writing. How much they changed dur-
ing that period is impossible to estimate, but by the time they and
other stories (from Greek cosmology) were plundered by the first
7 Jean Anouilh, Antigone, London: Eyre Methuen, 1951.
ADAPTATION STUDIES AND BIOLOGICAL MODELS: ANTIGONE AS A TEST CASE