“As I Wait For Her Whom No One Can Command”

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

“An unfathomable, indefinable figure; lacking a fixed identity in your very authenticity; you escape yourself, Antigone. I understand that you prefer the obscurity of the underworld, for you are not of this world. Yet, there is nothing of indecision in your evasion: you make the law (nomos) for yourself, all alone! In your insolent autonomy as a daughter of Oedipus the transgressor, you know in advance that you are excluded from political justice, which is to say from human norms. But your knowledge (which testifies all the same that you “exist within” this social world, at least in part) does not bother you at all. On the contrary, you persist in your obstinate, invincible, sublime certainty. “She did not deny a word of it” (436); “Yes, I confess; I will not deny my deed” (443). And in doing so, you bewilder Creon, who cannot accept the fact that someone dares to defy the law, not because she is ignorant of it, but precisely in order to meet death in full consciousness: “Did you know the proclamation against your action?” Antigone: “I knew it: of course I did. For it was public” (445ff). No, she is not mad, our little Antigone. Or rather, she is mad, but with a madness that reveals a superior logic, limpid and intrinsic, that reveals itself as contagious - perhaps even eternal, universal?”