Antigonick - Winner of the Criticos Prize

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Unlike versions of Antigone that try to capture the drama's grandeur (such as Robert Fagles's translation for Penguin) or to make it relevant (including Don Taylor's version, currently at the National Theatre), Carson's aims to show the difficulty of translation, the truly "unbearable" nature of tragedy. Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction.

In this aspect, and occasionally even in its style, it's reminiscent of Ezra Pound's Sophokles: Women of Trachis .For two decades her work has moved–phrase by phrase, line by line, project by improbable project–in directions that a human brain would never naturally move. Readers who are not familiar with ancient Greek texts will most likely feel a bit alienated by all this, but unfamiliarity is, perhaps, the point. The illustrations are of good quality and excellent reproduction, but they seem to have only a vague, and often not even that, relation to the text.

I do love the other Anne Carson books I own, and this truncation of Sophocles* original play Antigone is a gem.Kreon tries to isolate her mentally, to gaslight her: “You’re the only one in Thebes who sees things this way. When Antigone is caught pouring dust and water on her brother’s body, she is brought before the king.