ABSTRACT
Sophocles’ Antigone is strikingly familiar and unnervingly strange at the very same time. For the first time in their lives, Antigone and Ismene will find themselves on opposite sides of the debate over the plight of their unburied brother. The depth and articulation of the expressions of love for Polynices by Antigone has often shocked readers, the most famous and flummoxed being none other than Goethe. Perhaps the explanation for Antigone’s cryptic Ismenes kara is that she is simply holding the head of her sister between her loving hands. And yet, purity or pathology still do not seem to answer the mystery of Antigone’s singular resolve, or her nearly superhuman calm which runs throughout the play, even at the very moments just before her death. Why does Sophocles feel compelled to punish Creon twice for his wrong-headed punishment of Antigone? In order to fully understand the story of Antigone as tragedy, we must learn tragedy’s very specific nomenclature.
