Teach us to care and not to care…
T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Over the years when reading Sophocles’ Antigone, I tended to see her as the conscientious heroine, standing alone against her uncle Creon, the brutal head of state. I’d also connect her to contemporary figures such as Archbishop Oscar Romero, who challenged the power of the El Salvadoran government, and ended up being assassinated.
Yet when recently reading another translation of the play, under the influence of a re-immersion in the works of Vietnamese Buddhist sage Thich Nhat Hanh, I saw not only how Creon was relentless, but so was Antigone, and not just toward Creon. Yes, Antigone manifested care and concern for her dead brother Polynices, who, though a traitor to his country, deserved the proper burial rites. Antigone was right to call attention to Creon’s missing the mark, as Tiresias confirms near the play’s end. But Antigone could not summon compassion for her sister Ismene who initially did not have it in her to disobey their mighty uncle. Antigone could “look deeply” at her deceased brother but not at her living sister.
Since the war in his homeland, Nhat Hanh had long contended, “do not take sides” and “every side is our side.” People who live in this way are rare, indeed. Had there been less one-sidedness in South and North Vietnam, there might have been a lot less death. Taking sides with total conviction of one’s rectitude can make for a riveting drama, resulting in several deaths, in Antigone.
When it comes to our daily lives, I can imagine Nhat Hanh saying, “Teach us to yield, and not to yield.”
