Giving Voice to Antigone

Robert Fagles is one of this country’s most distinguished translators. Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, his translations include Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles’ Three Theban Plays, and The Oresteia of Aeschylus. He has also published a book of poems, I, Vincent: Poems from the Pictures of Van Gogh.

Gideon Lester: You’ve spent much of the past two decades translating Homer. Has your approach to translation changed over that time?

Robert Fagles: Not really. Homer gave me new modes of expression, but I wanted to capture as much of him as I could, making him available and, with luck, compelling to a modern audience. I set the same task for myself when I translated Aeschylus and Sophocles.

GL: In 1996, when you published your translation of the Odyssey, you told the New York Times that one of your main concerns had been to replicate Homer’s multiplicity of voices. Does your approach to voice differ when you’re translating tragedy rather than epic poetry?

RF: I don’t think so. I found when I was translating Homer that although he’s telling a story, he also dramatizes that story. The Iliad and the Odyssey are filled with direct discourse. There is a whole series of plays built into the narrative structure. I want the lines to be speakable, and I want personality to be revealed through the dialogue. It’s a question of character, whether from the mouth of an epic poet or an actor on a stage.

GL: Though Sophocles’ approach to character is quite different from Homer’s.

RF: That’s true, and Sophocles may offer character development in a way that Homer does not. Homer’s notion of character is more collective – Odysseus is the sum of his parts. Antigone’s character moves along a vector, as does Creon’s. For all the constancy of Antigone’s fire, there are subtle gradations in that fire depending on whom she’s speaking with.

GL: Creon finds himself in a situation that is psychologically horrifying, whether you look at him as a mythic creation or a twentieth century character.

RF: We have to see him as both at once, something ancient and something modern. Something eternal and something timely.

GL: Is that how you see your task as translator, as a bridge that spans the 2,500 years since the original was written?

RF: It’s forever a tightrope act. You look back to the great original behind you, trying to be as faithful to it as possible, trying to convey as much of what it says as possible, but the conveyance takes place in a modern medium that has both limitations and opportunities for a kind of expansiveness. It’s a balancing act between the ancient and the modern.

GL: Do you find yourself sacrificing the form of the original in order to preserve its spirit?

RF: Not entirely. An intriguing part of translating Greek tragedies is that they weave together at least three elements: dialogue, arias by single characters, and the great choruses. Each requires a separate tone of voice and shape on the page, yet they have to blend together. The choruses, for example, need to be cadenced and clearly stressed, yet always leading to the next dramatic interchange.

GL: It’s particularly hard to know how we should handle the Chorus in contemporary productions.

RF: The original function of the Chorus is now beyond us, I suppose, and it is the translator’s task to bring it home in contemporary ways. I tried at least to provide a strong beat in their lines, which can be sounded out as an incantation that is, I hope, powerful and clear.

GL: Are there particular problems in translating Sophocles that are less true of Aeschylus?

RF: Yes. Aeschylus is high-flown – the sky’s the limit. Sophocles has more measure and control, and moments of plain clarity that are arresting in the Greek and hard to bring off in English without lapsing into prose.

GL: Can you give me an example?

RF: Antigone tells Creon, “I was born to join in love, not hate – that is my nature.” It’s a ringing declaration that is also astonishingly simple, human. Similarly, Oedipus has a line in Oedipus the King that I translated, “My troubles are mine, and I am the only man alive who can sustain them.” I worked hard at that line, not only because I think it summarizes much of Oedipus’ attitude towards himself and his own destiny, but also because I wanted to render its simple clarity.

GL: It’s a moment of great self-awareness. Do you think that Creon achieves a similar degree of introspection in Antigone?

RF: Perhaps by the end of the play, though certainly not in the middle scenes. One of the tricks when working on Antigone, whether you’re translating or producing the play, is to discover how far Antigone and Creon are held in balance, as opposite but equal forces. They seem evenly matched at first, but I’m not at all sure they remain so.

GL: You mean that because Antigone exits the play so early, we are forced to confront Creon as the central figure of the drama?

RF: Yes, although Antigone’s presence and power remain, and serve in the long run to disintegrate Creon. Her avowal of the great laws of the gods and the bonds of kinship are really what bring Creon down, and cause him the painful punishment he suffers.

GL: You’ve said in the past that while translating Homer, you spent time each day refreshing your memory not only of the Greek text but also of modern American poetry.

RF: Yes. Figuratively speaking, I kept both books open before me. I’ve always found that as a translator I have to keep in mind the contemporary usage of my own language, American English.

GL: Do you pick your American authors depending on the material that you’re translating?

RF: I don’t choose a particular poet who can help me – Robert Frost for dialogue or Robert Penwarren for the mythic in all its power – I don’t attempt that kind of pairing. I try to keep in mind what the great poets of our day have found permissible, possible, and helpful in the use of our own idioms.

GL: You’re now translating Virgil?

RF: Yes, the Aeneid. I’ve been working at it for a couple of years. I had to go back and brush up my Latin, which is not as strong as my Greek, and it has been a wonderful experience relearning, to the best of my abilities, a distant language.

GL: Is the dramatic impulse similar in the Aeneid to the Homeric epics?

RF: Yes, which has come as something of a surprise to me, and yet it really should not. Virgil’s poetry is highly literary, but there remains a performative aspect to it. Virgil was famous in his own day as a reciter of his own work.

GL: Even the most lyrical of his poems, the Eclogues, have a dramatic quality.

RF: They’re essentially conversations, rising in intensity.

GL: They’re also set at moments of crisis and conflict, and paint deft psychological portraits.

RF: True, they’re full of motion, personality drama.

GL: Aristotle drew a strong distinction between epic and dramatic forms, and placed them at opposite ends of the literary spectrum.

RF: I think he was a little too strict.

GL: You believe that there are areas where epic and tragic forms intersect?

RF: Yes. I and others like to read the Iliad as the first tragedy we have.

GL: And the Odyssey as its comedic counterpart?

RF: Comedic, but not necessarily in the funny sense, though the poem has its sneezes, puns, and fools. Rather in Dante’s sense of a commedia, a struggle against adversity to reach a state of equilibrium and harmony.

Gideon Lester is A.R.T.’s Resident Dramaturg.