Sophocles' "Antigone": Eros in Politics

Author(s): Richmond Y. Hathorn

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 SOPHOCLES' ANTIGONE: EROS IN POLITICS

RICHMOND Y. HATHORN

IN A WELL-KNOWN PASSAGE from Book simply because it is the only final realm
Two of Plato's Republic (357b-d), of reality.2 Again in Plato's Crito pretty
Glaucon points out that there are three much the same issue is broached, here
commonly accepted meanings of the appearing in the form of a clash be-
word "good," the second being actually tween the practical course and the
a combination of the first and third: ideal, between the choice of a good
that there are, first, a class of things that leads to other goods and the direct
which are good in themselves, abso- preference of the good in itself. The
lutely good; second, a class of things similarity of dilemmas is not fortuitous,
which are good in themselves and also of course, for surely Plato had the
productive of good results; and third, career of Socrates in mind when sketch-
a class of things which are called good ing the contrasting portraits of the
only because they lead, presumably, "happy undeserving" Unjust Man and
to consequences which would fall within the "wretched meritorious" Just Man
the first class.1 It becomes the en- that follow Glaucon's analysis of goods
deavor of Socrates throughout the re- in Republic, Book Two (360e ff.). In
mainder of the Republic to demonstrate the shorter dialogue, Crito presents the
that justice, the topic under discussion, question in the form in which it would
is to be classified with those things occur to the mind of the natural man:
which are absolutely good as well as In a conflict between practical good and
good in their consequences. Nor does ideal good, is it not better to choose the
he consider his task discharged until-- practical? Especially when the ideal choice
to the disgruntlement of a certain type means nothing less than death, which for
of reader-he has torn away the veil the individual is the elimination of all con-
that separates this transient world from sequences whatever? Is it not better on
the face of it to cling to life at any cost?
the world of eternal verities and shown
that the justification of justice depends Aristotle, that paragon of the natural
ultimately upon its substantiation in reasoner, would have approved of Cri-
that order of true being which is cer- to's formulation of this question; in
tainly the only final source of power Book One of his Ethics he rather airily
110 RICHMOND Y. HATHORN

asserts that the summum bonum must surely deserved some of it -must have
be attainable by man arisen from a general tendency of theirs
(kte't6n anthr6-to to let utilitas prevail over honestas,
thereby apparently refusing
po'i),
let his inquiry stray into the pursuit of in political matters at least.4 The con-
any good that may lie beyond the con- cern of many of their contemporaries,
fines of this life (1096b; cf. 1100a- Parmenides for example,5 with the
1101a). problem of the One and the Many, a
There is a story told of Gertrude problem that is likely to strike us as
Stein that in the last hours of her life somewhat artificial today, must have
she roused herself from coma to ad- sprung from the realization that a philo-
dress her lifelong companion with the sophical pluralism, by positing more
query, "Alice, what is the answer?", than one ultimately discrete reality, in-
and that having fallen back to remain evitably leads to an ethical relativ-
insensible for some time she again ism that may degenerate into no ethics
roused herself to speak her last words, at all.
which were, "Alice, what is the ques- In writing his Antigone Sophocles
tion?" Socrates, it will be remembered, seems to have been swayed by some-
attempts by and large to show that thing like the foregoing considerations,
Crito's question is not well-formulated, for the play brings into sharpest focus
that to the question as Crito puts it the truth that human beings waver be-
there is no answer. Truly a man should tween an ethic of calculation and an
not ask, "In a conflict between prac- ethic of faith and love. Yet any ethical
tical good and ideal good, is it not calculus, from the lowest to the highest,
better to choose the practical?" The from the most selfish hedonism to the
putting of the question in these terms noblest utilitarianism, is in time and of
is responsible for the vulgar notion of time, in causality and of causality, con-
the idealistic fool. There is a question verting value into an endless process
rather that runs before, that is logically of becoming.6 (It is not surprising,
precedent: "In the long run is it pos- then, that modern positivism, bound as
sible for the practical and the ideal to it is to the cause-and-effect relation-
clash? Is not any ultimate conflict be- ships of scientific method, is so helpless
tween practicality and ideality delu- to construct ethical codes or to erect
sive?" Socrates' answer is that it is aesthetic standards, having rather to
delusion indeed, the philosopher's real issue its adherents an empty promis-
task being rather to distinguish between sory note on a future habitation that
true and false ideals. Here we have science is somehow impossibly to
the basis of the whole Platonic enter- build.) The ethic of love and faith is
prise, the attempt to lay a foundation different. By valuing the object or
of ontology on which an ethic may be action for itself alone it dispenses with
constructed. Cicero, as a good Aca- all results. Nor is anything sentimental
or romantic implied here; no occur-
demic, follows his master; in the De
Officiis he develops the implications rence is commoner than to focus our
of these views (3. 3. 11): evaluative faculties on an object with-
out calculation of temporal conse-
S. . dubitandum non est quin numquam quence. Did anyone ever really love a
possit utilitas cum honestate contendere. baby for the adult that he might be-
Itaque accepimus Socratem exsecrari solitum come? "What youthful mother . . ."
eos, qui primum haec natura cohaerentia asks Yeats School Chil-
opinione distraxissent.3 ("Among
dren"), ". . . Would think her son, did
Who was it, then, who initiated this she but see that shape/ With sixty or
sophistical categorization? Probably more winters on its head/ A compen-
some members of that motley group sation for the pang of his birth,/ Or
known as the Sophists. The malodor- the uncertainty of his setting forth?"
ousness of their reputation--and they Did anyone ever love a great sym-
SOPHOCLES' ANTIGONE: EROS IN POLITICS 111

phony because it eventuated in dead her reward is not only death, but the
silence? Works of art are autotelic: obloquy of being thought to have acted
"Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of impiously toward the state (919-24).
thought,/ As doth eternity," says Keats Thus she is not even to have the conso-
to his Grecian Urn. Love, by abstract- lation of thinking that she has won
ing its object from time and from some posthumous glory by her deed.
causation, eternizes it, and at this point Nor is the comfort or rest that she may
passes into faith, into the belief that have given to her dead brother's spirit
such eternizing has some basis in ulti- at all emphasized in the play.8 It was
mate being and is thus the most prac- good that the ceremony should be per-
tical kind of practicality. formed; it had to be done; and she did
"There are many clever and fear- it. It is perhaps to point up the inap-
some things, but none is a cleverer or plicability of the ethic of calculation to
more fearsome thing than man," sing her case that Sophocles puts into her
the Chorus in Antigone (332 ff.). "Man mouth the speech (905-12) -so shocking
subdues the sea and the earth," they to romantic readers - to the effect that
continue, in effect, "outwits work ani- she would not have risked this certain
mals, wild animals, and fishes, fashions death for a child or a husband, since
language and founds cities; through all either might have been replaced in the
the future he finds his way (pantop6ros? course of nature, whereas, with both
dporos ep' ouden 6rchetai/ t6 millon). her parents dead, she could never have
But he shall find no way through death another brother. Some editors have
(Hdida m6non/ phe?2xin ouk epdxetai), wished to athetize the lines; others
for death is the no-future."7 have called them an inept borrowing
The noblest ethic of calculation can- from Herodotus; still others have con-
not encompass death, the end of the sidered them an indication of Antigone's
whole chain of consequences. When unamiable personality.9 But surely she
faced with death, or rather when faced is merely putting as strongly as pos-
with a choice between death with honor sible the inescapability of her moral
and survival with ignominy, it is im- dilemma: in the situation that confronts
possible to ascertain an Aristotelian her there can be no shuffling; she can-
mean. The situation itself admits of not beguile herself with the thought of
nothing but extremes. The truly tragic a future reparation of any sort; she
situation is always of this nature; it is must choose between utmost nobility
almost by definition a case in which the and utter cowardice.
ethic of calculation reveals its insuf- Admittedly her ethic also may be
ficiency. Hector, as he faces Achilles called calculating in a certain sense.10
by the walls of Troy in that prototype But her calculations are based upon
of all tragic crises, has found that the that which transcends life, and hence
time for parleying, for bargaining, and upon the absolutely unknown.11 Unlike
for evading is past. Nor can he flatter Creon she does not reckon on probabili-
himself that a noble death will produce ties, those extrapolations of our past
any desirable results. Will his dying experience, but she rests upon hopes,
well help to save Troy? No. Will it pal- and these hopes embrace a minimum
liate the suffering of his fellow-Trojans of content. 12 All of her detailed descrip-
by one jot? No. Will it mitigate the lot tions concern the world which she is
of his father or mother or wife or child? leaving rather than the underworld to
No. Will it ensure his body considerate which she goes; of the latter she knows
treatment afterwards? Certainly not. only that, compared to the duration of
It makes no difference in the scales of our death, the duration of our life is
fate; it has no good effects in the brief indeed. That all will be well in
course of time. Yet it is good. death, she herself questions (521):
That Antigone is in a similarly tragic "Who knows whether these things are
situation is obvious; she mentions that holy in the world below?" (To be sure,
112 RICHMOND Y. HATHORN

the query is raised to throw doubt on to save his own skin, but to do nothing
the rightness of Creon's procedure, but more. It is fitting that his threat to the
it equally throws doubt on her own.) Guard should come to apply to himself
Antigone merely nurses the hope (en (308 ff.): "Death (Hades) alone will
elpisin that she will meet not be sufficient punishment for you;
trepho?)
father, mother and brother in the after- first you must be strung up alive and
life, and that her conduct will have exhibit an object-lesson in impiety
been approved by them (897 ff.). Since (hibris)."16 After Creon learns that
Creon thinks that "profit resting merely Eros, the god of Love,17 can be more
on hope has often destroyed men" destructive than money, which was the
(221-22), in his eyes she is a fool, as he only power his calculating mind had
is in hers (469-70). recognized before,18 he becomes, when
Between these opposed ultimates of Love has robbed him of his wife and
Holy Fool and Natural Fool of Fortune son,19 only a "breathing corpse"
(to use Shakespeare's phrase), two (6mpsuchos nekr6s - 1167), a living ob-
fools of lesser degree are personated.13 ject empty of profit or pleasure.20
Ismene is the obeyer of impulse, pur- All commentary, then, to the effect
suing no consistent line of action; she that Antigone has a martyr-complex,
does not share the noble inflexibility that she is possessed by a stubborn
of Antigone, but in her two chief ap- death-wish, that she lacks tragic stature
pearances in the drama presents first because she knows that after her death
a picture of simple fear and then one she will be rewarded for her virtue a
of simple affection.14 She is acquainted hundredfold, all this is commentary
with love, but not with her sister's couched in terms of that very ethic of
transcendent love confirmed by faith. calculation which Creon approves and
More significant is the figure of the she herself rejects. As a martyr, she is
Guard, who is far more than the mere a tragic figure precisely because she
comic relief he is usually taken to be. acts in terms of that other ethic; she
He is rather a sardonic caricature of does not know, she believes; in fact,
the calculator, a representative of the one thing that she does know is
Creon's ethical position reduced to its that her reward will not be in the
narrowest bounds.15 A sly pettifogger, nature of the rewards of this life. She
who "fences off the action on all sides" calculates, or rather speculates, that
that his aim may be good (241-42), the the ethic of temporal and causal cal-
Guard has no thought for anyone but culation is illusory and inadequate, and
himself. He is comical precisely be- that true gain lies somehow on the
cause he is portrayed as the Natural other side of death.21 Antigone, the
Man on the lowest level; as such he Bride of Death, speaks of kerdos, "gain
can furnish the audience that feeling of and reward," but her wager is that he
superiority noted by Aristotle as essen- who acts only in the light of natural
tial to comedy. As a Natural Man, he reason is aligning himself with a power
anticipates a certain amount of suffer- that is certain, even in the light of that
ing, but hopes that it will not be beyond reason, to be no power at all.22
the common measure (235-36), and he There are few references to the myth
sums up the code of his tribe admirably of Antigone aside from this play, and it
(439-40): "Nothing is so important to is sometimes thought that the story
me as saving my own skin." must have been of Sophocles' own in-
Such is the logical conclusion of vention.23 This can hardly be true; all
Creon's system of this-worldly calcula- too much is made of Antigone as the
tion, for it must be remembered that Bride of Death, as a virgin who gives
he, too, considers all concern with the up all hope of earthly nuptials in order
afterlife merely "wasted effort" (p6nos to embrace Hades as her husband, for
periss6s - 780). As events move on such a theory to be tenable. If Antigone
toward the play's end, he is allowed is "in love with death," to the amaze-
SOPHOCLES' ANTIGONE: EROS IN POLITICS 113

ment of the Chorus, who have thought of impossible ideals. He supposes that
that "no one can be such a fool as to the other is pursuing some good which
be enamored of dying" (thanein eri i- is different from his own good; let the
220),24 it is not because she is obsessed other pursue it then, he says, and let
by some Freudian death-wish, but be- her take the consequences. He fails to
cause her story, like those of Danae, perceive that her belief is: dubitandum
Lycurgus, and Cleopatra in Stasimon non est quin numquam possit utilitas
Four,25 was a transmission to Sopho- cum honestate contendere. The conflict
cles' time from the dim days of human is between a person who thinks that
sacrifice. Many primitive peoples, as there can be a fundamental ontological
is well known, were in the habit of conflict and a person who has faith that
offering up a victim annually, or more there can be none. For Antigone be-
or less frequently on extraordinary lieves that Eros is the greatest of all
occasions; such ceremonies often took powers, and that even in politics he
the form of wedding a virgin to a god. shall ultimately prevail.29
Now if one subscribes to the ethic of Something of Antigone's concept of
faith rather than to the ethic of mun- the good was in the older Greek ideal
dane calculation, one must, however of arete, the ideal of the Homeric hero
much deploring the savagery of its ex- and of the aristocracy during the
pression, concede that the intuition "Greek Middle Ages." The aristocrat,
that prompted this primitive behavior as one of hoi dristoi, "the best," had
was perfectly sound: the mystery at the advantage of being able to act in
the root of Antigone is the belief that accordance with an absolute code, as
the powers beyond human power, be- opposed to the codelessness of base and
yond this world and beyond this life, self-seeking calculation subscribed to
are somehow pleased and appeased by by hoi kakoi, "the low, the cowardly,
actions that show contempt for life and and the worthless."30 This was no
world.26 This may be the explanation simple question of aristocracy versus
of why regularly the victim was democracy, for many Athenian states-
honored by the population - before be- men, such as Cimon and Pericles, as
ing ultimately dishonored and disposed well as statesmen in later ages such
of - and of why he or she felt it an as Cicero and Jefferson, were able to
honor to be so singled out. To this pursue the aristocratic ideal in a more
affinity of the superhuman with the or less democratic context. Sophocles
supernatural Antigone attests; time, also was an aristocrat. Living in an age
cultural attrition, or Sophocles himself of selfish demagogues who were dis-
had stripped away the more sanguinary carding the older ethic as politically
reminiscences of the primitive ritual impracticable31 and of sophistical
and had left her a martyr to the basic moralists who were likewise rejecting
mystery of mankind face to face with it as indefensible in terms of natural
death. reason,32 he wrote Antigone, we may
Is Antigone a martyr, then?27 If suppose, as an affirmation of the ancient
with this word we indicate one who by ideal.33 In it the ethic of love and faith
his suffering is willing to witness to incalculably triumphs over the ethic of
the validity of what he cannot know, calculation. Eros, that terrible and
it is hard to see that she can be called tender god of love, turns out to be the
anything else. Her martyrdom rests most powerful force in the universe
precisely on the fact that she has love after all (781 ff.):
and faith, but not knowledge.28
Politics, we are told, is the art of the Eros unconquerable in battle, Eros, you who
fall upon the treasures of men,
possible. The politician Creon's baffle- And rest all night on the delicate cheeks
ment when confronted by the martyr of a girl,
Antigone is the bafflement of the prac- You who stride the seas and frequent the
tical man when crossed by the advocate flock in its fold:
114 RICHMONDY. HATHORN

Among the deathless you are inescapable, level of reasoning of the man who could console
And men, creatures of a day, you rob of all his son for the loss of his betrothed by remind-
reason.34 ing him that "there are other fields to plow"
(569), and she is showing that even so the reason-
As a result of this play, we are told, ing will not work.
10 Goethe's stigmatization of her farewell
Sophocles so pleased the electorate speech as a "dialektischer Kalkil" is often re-
that he was chosen by the demos of ferred to. But in it, as shown above (preceding
Athens to the office of strategos. We note), she is not reasoning on her usual level.
11 Aside from a few common-sense observa-
may assume that he did his duty, but tions, such as that she would die anyway,
history does not record whether in this whether Creon had anything to do with it or
office he met with any great measure not (460-61).
12 There is nothing in the play, however, to
of practical success.
justify the view of Untersteiner (pp. 93-98) or of
Max Pohlenz, Die Griechische Trag6die, 2nd ed.
Northwestern State College (G6ttingen, 1954) p. 195, that Antigone's true
of Louisiana Ego will somehow find its completion in death.
13 The old question of whether the drama is a
NOTES "diptych," Antigone's play or Creon's play,
1 Aristotle accordingly reduces the classes of seems to have little point; such a problem arises
goods to two in his discussion of Plato in Ethics only from misreading Greek tragedy in terms
1096b. of the Romantic interest in "personality." (Cf.
2 Hence the irrelevance of that criticism of Kitto, p. 237.) Extreme examples of such mis-
Plato which accuses him of "taking refuge" in reading are afforded by Gennaro Perrotta,
the final Vision of Er because he cannot other- Sofocle (Messina-Milano, 1935) pp. 59 ff. and
wise solve the problem of the definition and A. J. A. Waldock, Sophocles the Dramatist (Cam-
vindication of justice. Of course that is Plato's bridge, 1951); the latter criticizes the drama
conviction all along: it cannot be solved other- for a "hidden shift from one theme to another"
wise. (p. 52), but immediately reveals (p. 53) that he
is not really speaking of "theme" at all, but
3 Cicero says that he is following Panaetius, or merely of which character holds the center of
rather completing a discussion which Panaetius the stage.
promised, but did not carry through; Posidonius, 14 Albin Lesky,
however, had treated the subject. See W. C. "Forschungsbericht Uiber
griechische Trag6die, 3: Sophokles," Anzeiger
Greene, Moira (Cambridge, Mass., 1944) p. 353. 2 dis-
fiir die Altertumswissenschaft (1949) 1-11,
4 And Mario Untersteiner, Sofocle (Florence, cusses with disapproval several commentators
1935) p. 528, tries to show that Sophocles shared who make out Antigone herself to be of the
in the movement of which the Sophists were a irrational, impulsive, intuitive type.
part-a movement toward individualism. But 15 See Weinstock's
Untersteiner's individualism excursus, "Scherz und
alleged Sophoclean
rests on rather mystical argumentation. Ernst," pp. 151-57.
5 According to Eric Voegelin, Order and His- 16 Walter Jens, "Antigone-Interpretationen," in
Satura: FriUchte aus der Antiken Welt (Baden-
tory, vol. 2: The World of the Polis (Baton Rouge,
1957) p. 216, Parmenides grappled with precisely Baden, 1952) p. 47, makes this point.
the issue that is central in Antigone: "The con- 17 Victor Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles
flict occurs between two types of experience. (Oxford, 1954) p. 31, wishes rather perversely to
Truth is the philosophy of the realissimum that limit the meaning of Eros in the play to philia,
we experience if we follow the way of immortali- eliminating any suggestion of agdpe. or of 6ro.s
zation in the soul; Delusion is the philosophy in the usual sense.
of the reality that we experience as men who 18 Compare 295 ff. with 781 ff.
live and die in a world that itself is distended in 19 Cf. Andre Bonnard, La tragddie et l'homme
time with a beginnng and an end. The charac-
of reality as a (Neuchatel, 1951) p. 61.
terization of this philosophy
Delusion derives its justification from the experi- 20 Cf. Weinstock, pp. 142 ff.
ence of a superior reality, of an immortal ground 21 But just as Socrates' words have no effect
of the mortal world." on Crito in the Phaedo, so none of Antigone's
6 Heinrich Weinstock, Sophokles, 2nd ed. (Ber- fine sentiments carry the slightest weight with
lin, 1937) p. 124, objects even to Hegel's famous Enrico Turolla, Saggio sulla poesia di Sofocle
analysis of Antigone on the ground that "dadurch (Bari, 1934) p. 78, who equates both Antigone's
der tiefste Dichter der Existenz zum Prediger and Creon's careers with zero.
niitzlicher Lebensweisheit . . . erniedrigt [ist]." 22 For a survey of the k6rdos-motif in the play,
7 Weinstock's comment (p. 142) is pertinent: see Robert F. Goheen, The Imagery of Sophocles'
Death keeps man from supposing that he is the Antigone (Princeton, 1951) pp. 14-19. Cf. Jens,
measure of all things, and shows him rather that p. 57.
God is the measure. 23 Cf. C. M. Bowra, Sophoclean Tragedy (Ox-
8 See H. D. F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in ford, 1944) p. 64, and Whitman, p. 84.
Drama (New York, n.d.) pp. 147-48. 24 For Antigone's marriage with the God of
9 For a brief summary of the views see Cedric Death see the whole of the kommos, 806 ff., and
H. Whitman, Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass., 1951) cf. Goheen, pp. 37-41. This grisly turn of the
pp. 263-64. Whitman votes for an "actor's inter- marriage-motif may be responsible for the idea
polation" theory. But Antigone here, it seems of Antigone's "uncanniness" so emphasized by
rather, is deliberately lowering herself to the Gerhard Nebel, Weltangst und G6tterzorn (Stutt-
SOPHOCLES' ANTIGONE: EROS IN POLITICS 115

gart, 1951), in his discussion, "Antigone und die Spiegelung innerhalb des vergainglichen Seins."
wilde Welt der Toten," esp. pp. 189 ff., where 29 Yet Henri W. van Pesch, De idee van de
Nebel goes too far, however, when he calls her
"a representative of the feminine principle of menselijke beperktheid bij Sophocles (Wagen-
the underworld" (p. 189), "a pathological ingen, 1953) p. 291, can say that Sophocles "con-
sidered love a necessary evil rather than a
example" (p. 191), and "a sister of Clytemnestra
and Cassandra" (p. 193), finally confessing that blessing for man." S. M. Adams, "The Antigone
he cannot understand her. of Sophocles," Phoenix 9 (1955) 57, is more dis-
25 Kitto's idea (p. 172), that in this stasimon cerning: "Most fitly, then, and with strong
irony, do the chorus describe Eros as 'an asses-
Sophocles leaves the final judgment on Antigone sor in office by the side of the Great Laws.' "
to be made by the audience, is attractive, and
owes much to Bowra (pp. 104-105); cf. Goheen, 30 Cf. Alan M. G. Little, Myth and Society in
pp. 64-74. Attic Drama (New York, 1942) p. 44.
26 Weinstock's analysis of the Eros-Chorus con- 31 Cf. J. T. Sheppard, The Wisdom of Sophocles
cludes (p. 149): "Das Menschliche nur bestehen (London, 1947) pp. 52-53.
[kann], wenn es im G6ttlichen sich birgt." 32 Sophocles was not crudely anti-Sophistic, as
27 Karl Reinhardt, Sophokles, 3rd ed. (Frank- is shown by the well-recognized fact that his
furt-am-Main, 1947) p. 85, emphatically denies Antigone is a contribution to the n6mos-phisis
that Antigone is saint or martyr, on the ground controversy on the side of phtisis more or less,
that she has knowledge, though what knowledge a side to which the Sophists generally adhered.
she is supposed to have is scarcely clear. Yet he must have been opposed to their ulti-
28 Hence her play is a test-case for those who mate relativism, and from this charge not even
do not believe it possible that tragedy and re- Mario Untersteiner in The Sophists, tr. Kathleen
ligious faith can coexist; the problem here is Freeman (New York, 1954) can acquit such men
strictly analogous to that in the controversy as Protagoras and Gorgias, however much pro-
over the possibility of Christian tragedy. See, fundity he may have discovered in them. See
among numerous treatments of the theme, Albin Voegelin, pp. 267-331, esp. 274-75, where it is
Lesky, "Zwei Sophokles-Interpretationen," shown that the Sophists, like the Enlighteners
Hermes 80 (1952) 96; Nebel, pp. 175, 231; Hein- of the eighteenth century, substituted a homo-
rich Weinstock, Die Tragidie des Humanismus mensura view of the world for a deus-mensura
(Heidelberg, 1953) pp. 344 ff. These are negative view, a change that was sure to mean "the
views; I should incline to Herbert Weisinger, destruction of philosophy." And (pace Whitman)
Tragedy and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall Sophocles was indubitably a deus-mensura man.
(East Lansing, Mich., 1953), when he says (pp. 33 Cf. John A. Moore, Sophocles and Arete
267-68): "Tragedy, therefore, cannot exist where
there is no faith; conversely, it cannot exist (Cambridge, Mass., 1938) p. 65 and T. B. L.
Webster, An Introduction to Sophocles (Oxford,
where there is no doubt; it can only exist in an
of sceptical faith." Provocative in- 1936) p. 39. To Albrecht von Blumenthal, Sophokles
atmosphere (Stuttgart, 1936), Antigone is representative of
deed is the question raised by Hans Jiirgen "das schbne Mass" as opposed to "das Unmass
Baden, Das Tragische, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1948) des Hasses," which was the chief danger to
p. 130: "Hier erhebt sich jene letzte un- Greece in Sophocles' day (cf. pp. 156 ff.).
beantwortbare Frage: ob nicht alle menschliche
Trag6die nur der Widerschein himmlischer 34 So the victory of Love, which grows more
Trag6die ist-ein Abbild also metaphysischer certain from this point on, counterbalances and
Konflikte, die uns verborgen bleiben und deren grows out of the victory of Force with which the
Vorhandenheit wir nur ahnen auf Grund ihrer play begins (cf. the Parodos, esp. 148 ff.).