Anouilh's Antigone: A Critical Analysis of Adaptations

Anouilh's Other "Antigone"
Author(s): David J. DeLaura
Source: The French Review , Oct., 1961, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Oct., 1961), pp. 36-41
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/384339
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Anouilh's Other "Antigone"
by David J. DeLaura
T HE CUTS AND ADDITIONS made by Mr. Lewis Galantiere in
the text of Jean Anouilh's Antigone (1944) seriously distort the substan-
tive content of Anouilh's drame ai these and markedly hamper its dra-
matic impact as well. The American version accomplishes this latter
questionable end by derailing the power and logic of dramatic develop-
ment and by robbing the play of some of its most telling lines and ef-
fects. Galantiere's "adaptation" appears in an influential anthology,1
and, in classrooms and theater groups throughout the country, continues
sadly to misrepresent a major creative achievement of contemporary
French existentialist thought and art.
Messrs. Watson and Pressey take note that, in Katherine Cornell's
New York production in 1946, Galantiere added to the parts of Antig-
one, Haemon, and the guards, but they assure us: "Whatever textual
changes may have been made for Miss Cornell's production, the text as
printed here shows no serious additions to Anouilh's, except when An-
tigone distinguishes between God and His priests" (WP, p. 113). Unfor-
tunately, this is simply not true. The distorting pressures exercised by
Galantiere's busy scissors and paste mar a number of the crucial mo-
ments of the play, especially the finale. I shall attempt to point out
some of the more important changes of tone and emphasis.
First and most important, there is the matter of the religious tone.
The American editors correctly comment that "In the French Antigone
the name of God is used only as an oath or simple intensifier" (WP,
p. 113). But Galantiere's added "religious" notes go well beyond Antig-
one's distinction between God and His priests, and in fact are a major
feature of the American adapter's softening and rounding off of Antig-
one's character. Only once, it seems, does Antigone in the French text
invoke even a quasi-religious motive in her insistence on burying her
brother. But even here it is a strikingly personal and only dubiously
religious impulse which she asserts; the French and English texts agree
in her statement: "I owed it to him. Those who are not buried wander
eternally and find no rest .... Polynices has earned his rest" (WP, p.
1 Contemporary Drama: Eleven Plays, ed. E. Bradlee Watson and Benfield Pressey
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956). Hereafter cited as WP. The original edi-
tion was published by Random House (New York, 1946).
36
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ANOUILH 37
126). But at this point the parallel breaks down. Creon, in both ver-
sions, shortly thereafter attacks this allegedly religious motive, and
shows up the emptiness of this "priestly abracadabra" ("ce bredouillage
en s6rie sur sa d6pouille").2 Galantiere's Antigone answers simply: "Yes,
I have seen all that" (WP, p. 127). In Anouilh's play, by contrast, Creon
concludes, in a key phrase of the play: "C'est absurdel" And Antigone
replies: "Oui, c'est absurde" (Ant., p. 75). The deflection of meaning
is complete when Galantiere's heroine is made to answer: "No, Creon.
There is God and there are His priests. They are not the same things.
You are not free to do with men as you wish-not even when they are
dead." A glance at Anouilh's text reveals that the heroine in the French
original is far less consciously noble and far more "selfish" in tone:
CREON: Pourquoi fais-tu ce geste, alors? Pour les autres, pour ceux qui
y croient? Pour les dresser contre moi?
ANTIGONE: Non.
CREON: Ni pour les autres, ni pour ton frdre? Pour qui alors?
ANTIGONE: Pour personne. Pour moi. (Ant., p. 76)
For similar reasons, it seems, Galantiere had left to the Chorus, in a
monologue just prior to the great confrontation of Antigone and Creon,
the remark that "Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that
foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it" (WP, p. 123). But when such
sentiments are appropriate on Antigone's own lips, they are simply ex-
cised in the English text. Taunted by Creon that in her refusal of "hap-
piness" she is like her father, Oedipus, she replies in the original: "Nous
sommes de ceux qui lui sautent dessus quand ils le rencontrent, votre
espoir, votre cher espoir, votre sale espoirl" (Ant., p. 100) "Filthy hopel"
These are the unpleasant words the New York Antigone cannot utter,
whereas they are entirely suitable to Anouilh's heroine, who is frankly
a difficult, intractable, willful, and assertive creature, no bearer of sol-
emn metaphysical burdens.
The changes in tone and precision become especially evident in the
prison scene. As she dictates a letter to her lover, Haemon, who will
never receive it, Antigone has, in both versions, two characteristics which
maintain our essential sympathy for her-her loneliness and her fear:
"it's so dreadful here alone. I am afraid" (PW, p. 134); "j'ai peur" (Ant.,
p. 119). Beyond this, however, the two texts diverge quite radically, the
American in the direction of sentimentality and blurred outlines. Where
Galantiere has Antigone dictate, "My darling, I had to die" (WP, p.
2 Antigone (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1946), p. 75. Hereafter cited as Ant,
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38 FRENCH REVIEW
134), her distant French cousin had actually said: "Mon ch6ri, j'ai vou-
lu mourir.... " (Ant., p. 118; emphasis added) Galantiere adds a note
which smudges the clarity of her characterization as developed up to
that point: "But it was not for myself," says the American heroine, "No,
it wasn't for myself" (WP, pp. 134-35). No trace of this is in the French.
Antigone there writes simply to her lover: "Pardon, mon chdri. Sans la
petite Antigone, vous auriez tous 6te bien tranquilles" (Ant., p. 120),
and we inevitably recall her stark answer earlier in the play: "Pour
personne. Pour moi." Galantiere's omissions are equally disturbing.
Anouilh's heroine is not merely afraid but unclear as to the rationale
of her conduct. She is pathetically willing to admit that Creon is, in
some sense, right, and she even admits to being uncertain of why she
is dying: "Et Crdon avait raison, c'est terrible, maintenant, a c6t6 de
cet homme, je ne sais plus pourquoi je meurs" (Ant., pp. 118-19).
Certain touches prepare us for the total subversion of the finale. Hae-
mon's warning, for example, to his father ("Already the people are full
of fear and anger because you have not buried Polynices," WP, p. 133),
which does not appear in the French though it has a parallel in the
Greek, is the prelude to a "patriotic" conclusion. This planned distor.
tion is emphasized, moreover, by Galantiere's having given the Chorus
two "pious" remarks which Anouilh did not write. When Haemon breaks
with his father, the Chorus is made to say: "Creon, the gods have a
way of punishing injustice" (WP, p. 133). And after the horrible reve-
lation of the multiple suicide at the end, the Chorus comments: "You
who would not bury Polynices today will bury Eurydice and Haemon
tomorrow. And Antigone, too. [Pause.] The gods take a hand in every
game, Creon. Even politics" (WP, p. 135). To this latter invented re-
mark Creon ("nodding soberly") replies: "The gods!" Presumably we
are to assume that the hard and confident secularist and rationalist of
the earlier part of the play has now come to realize that "the gods" are
not to be mocked. This is simply unintelligible in the light of the move-
ment of the French play. Anouilh's Chorus says merely: "Et tu es tout
seul maintenant, Crdon," and Creon's entire reply is: "Tout seul, oui"
(Ant., p. 125). (These latter enigmatic lines are retained in Galantiere's
version, augmented by the unwarranted reference to the gods.)
The Chorus's concluding comments are, finally, distorted beyond rec-
ognition. Removed in English from Anouilh's somber, almost bemused,
finale, with its emphasis on the inscrutability of the "fever" which shook
Antigone, are the following lines of the Chorus: "Sans la petite Anti-
gone, c'est vrai, ils auraient tous 6td bien tranquilles. Mais maintenant,
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ANOUILH 39
c'est fini. ... Et ceux qui vivent encore vont commencer tout douce-
ment A les oublier et h confondre leurs noms. C'est fini. Antigone est
calmbe maintenant, nous ne saurons jamais de quelle fi6vre" [Ant., pp.
126-27). The real quality of Galantiere's individual creative impulse
in his "adaptation" is revealed in the lines he instead awards to this
detached, even cynical commentator, suddenly turned moralist: "Creon
was the most rational, the most plausible of tyrants. But like all tyrants,
he refused to distinguish between the things that are Caesar's and the
things that are God's. Now and again, in the three thousand years since
the first Antigone was heard of, someone has had to come forward to
remind men of this distinction. And whether we say that the result is
Christianity, or popular revolution, or underground resistance, the
cause is always the same-a passionate belief that moral law exists, and
a passionate regard for the sanctity of human personality" (WP, p. 136).
The noble humanitarianism of this gratuitous ending, rife with com-
fortable patriotism and sentimental sanctities, is a world apart from the
Antigone who dies, she knows not why, but merely because she has done
what she knows she must do-and certainly not for the higher laws of
religion, the Resistance, or a code stressing "the sanctity of the human
personality."3
I have presented here the main evidence for the contention that Ga-
lantiere's "adaptation" of Anouilh's Antigone is a systematic subver-
sion of the French playwright's intentions, and that it is, in fact, scarce-
ly intelligible as it stands. No doubt the production of Anouilh's play
in Paris, in February 1944, was an act of personal and national hero-
ism, and the play rightly became a rallying point for intellectuals and
populace alike. And the American critics, judging on the basis of Ga-
lantiere's text, insisted, at the time of the New York production in 1946,
on the play's essentially patriotic and moral context as a document of
the French Resistance.4 But of course Anouilh never indulges in the
kind of easy "pious" rhetoric to which Galantiere gives full play, and
surely the significance of the French original cannot be limited to this
constricting topical reference. Its emotional and spiritual ambiance
3 In a subtle defense of Antigone's apparently self-regarding motivation, Stark
Young's review of the Broadway production spoke of the play as dealing with "the
profound and hidden ties of family devotion and its loving mystery, plus the recoil
from a sense of outrage done to our deepest instincts" (Immortal Shadows [New York:
Hill and Wang, s.d.], p. 237; original edition [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1948], p. 260).
4 See, for example, John Mason Brown's review in the Saturday Review of Litera-
ture, XXIX (March 9, 1946), pp. 24-26.
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