Antigone

Summary Antigone

As a writer and dramatist Dominik Smole (1929–1992) matured while contributing to the magazines Beseda, Revija 57 and Perspektive whose writers were the so called "Critical Generation” who, as Kermauner writes, fought "against the fake perceptions of the bureaucracy and middle classes, the (Communist) Party and the middle-age generation … the fake perceptions hid what we observed was actually happening to a man: that he was losing the primary characteristics of his humanity: to be!” The peak of Smole’s artistic creativity was a philosophical poetic dramatic play in verse Antigone (1959) for which he was conferred an award for the best Yugoslav text at the Sterijino pozorje Festival. In 1960 the play was performed three times – a cult première performance on 8 April directed by Franci Križaj at the Oder 57 theatre. The first performance by the Slovenian professional theatre was on 5 November in Drama SNG Maribor and was directed by Miran Hercog. Amongst Smole’s better known plays are Antigona (Antigone), Krst pri Savici (Baptism at the Savica), Cvetje zla (The Flowers of Evil), Potovanje v Koromandijo (A Journey to Koromandija) and Zlata čeveljčka (The Two Golden Shoes). Based on his highly successful novel Črni dnevi, beli dan (Black Days, White Day) (1958) a script for Hladnik’s film Ples v dežju (Dancing in the Rain) (1961) was written. For his work as a playwright Smole was awarded the Prešeren Award in 1986. Between the years 1972 and 1980 he was the artistic director of the Mladinsko Theatre. He also worked for a few years as a dramaturge at the SNG Drama in Ljubljana.

Smole’s play in verse Antigone (1960), for which Dr Vladimir Kralj wrote that "in Slovenia there has not been a play so rich in ideas and stylistically complete since Cankar”, is amongst the best of Slovene plays. Smole modernized Sophocles’s mythological story about Antigone who buries her brother Polyneices despite the King’s prohibition and transformed it to a modern tragedy using outstanding poetic language and stylistic skill. He transformed the characters (Antigone, Ismene, Teiresias, Creon, Haemon) into carriers of modern philosophical thought and human values. A radical move forward was created through the physical absence of Antigone. When Smole’s Antigone is looking for her brother Polyneices, she is in fact looking for herself and through her brother’s burial achieves her own realization. Her rebellion is not directed towards the tyrant and her action is a categorical imperative, a realization of consciousness and spiritual values. Wiseman Teiresias, a court opportunist is a clear personification of several of today’s politicians in Slovenia and in the world: "Life is a commodity carrying a brand of mediocre quality: it is not the best, not the nicest but we need it every day. Leave Antigone for she would say: the right side needs to be discovered.” In the article published in the theatre programme and entitled with Smole’s quote "Antigona je tisto kar vsak ve, da bi moral biti” ("Antigone is what everyone knows they should be”), dramaturge Maja Borin asks questions about the contemporary understanding of Antigone and contemplates about the functions of myths, gods, values, men in power, capitalist materialism in relation to the spiritual world in the world of modern Thebes. "From a body Antigone transcended into an undefined notion of soul. She should have been exiled from the banal reality of Thebes a long time ago, moved, dead (like God and myth), but the ‘Princess’ leaves her living quarters at the wrong time and unannounced and, like an ‘evil spirit’, possesses the religious members of the established capitalist rational world.”

Photo gallery

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Photo: Damjan Švarc