Earlier this week I had a double dose of Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize-winning poet, thanks to an In Conversation program at the Guthrie on Monday and a showing of his Antigone adaptation, The Burial at Thebes, on Tuesday. (Caveat: I'm vaguely aware of an FTC law that requires bloggers to note when they've received goods or been paid by an entity that they review, but I believe that only matters if the entity requires a review, which the Guthrie has not. That being said, I submitted my blog address to the Guthrie when they invited bloggers to do so, I got a couple free tickets to Thebes, that was that. I bought the tickets to see Heaney myself. Feel free to read the following comments with all that unnecessary exposition in mind, or, kindly dispose of it given its superfluousness)
Heaney was introduced to me by a dear friend whose first role in my life was that of favorite professor, Dabney Stuart, who's a poet and letter-writer and sender of books. I'm sure Dabney has become some romanticized image of Brilliance in my head, but he always counted me as a romantic so I won't apologize for that on his account. We exchange letters sporadically, and occasionally when I'm stumbling over my own attempts at verses or when I just want to talk to someone about a book, I'll wonder if he thinks of me sometimes, aside from in those letters.
Dabney taught a poetry class at my alma mater and while I remember several of the poets and poems we went through, Heaney's "Digging" lodged in me soundly and never loosened. Heaney's "Digging" and "Oysters", Yeats's "No Second Troy" and "An Irish Airmen Foresees His Death" together, sing to me better than any musician. So to hear Heaney himself (who I'd always imagined as sort of an aloof, painful jerk) speaking of his boyhood, Belfast, death, and growing old, I felt like a mesh of all my poets, my favorites, were speaking to me from no less than 15 yards away. When he was asked what poetry "meant," what good poetry's purpose must be, he just sighed and laughed and thought a minute. He didn't have a polished answer, and in between other questions and thoughts, he'd come back to that one and try to tackle it again. He settled on the subject with a comment that poetry should, simply, be more than what it is. He worded it differently a dozen times. It should be bigger. Deeper. More palpable. Wiser. Than what each single word alone could possibly mean if each were added together like an equation. All of it, together, should be more. And in the end, he was unsatisfied by that definition.
Antigone is one of those classic plays that I must imagine would be hell to be invited to adapt. What can be done to make Antigone fresh? Its import lies in how heavily universal its concepts of self-sacrifice and morality and government oppression are, its merit is pertinence despite age. It has been told and retold and Antigone has been dragged out of her cave a million times as a feminist ideal and champion, so anyway, I wouldn't envy a poet/playwright for retelling such a myth. How do you retell a story that is effectively its own metaphor?
But Heaney's struggle with defining the import and power of poetry echoed with me as I watched Thebes. Because that struggle was perfect on stage, the way "Oysters" is perfect on paper. Thebes works because it balances the heavy history of a play regurgitated for every power struggle, every argument of might vs. right, with the requirement of telling Antigone's sad, sad story in a way that feels important for the 90 minutes it lasts. You can't watch 90 minutes of metaphor. I don't care how cool an English major you are or were, 90 minutes of symbolism will suck the joy out of any soul. So the story itself still has to feel like the characters are alive, aching, and their end is something the audience should care about.
The scene between Creon and Haemon has always haunted me but I think this production was the first time I had any heartache for Creon (and I almost feel guilty admitting it). Haemon is beautifully done in this work, emphatic in his love for Antigone, and smooth in his attempt to cajole his father into freeing her, making Dad see reason. There was a hint of "you will regret this moment" streaming from his lips in his final words to his father, and memories of that shouting match invariably resurface as Creon later crumbles over the body of his beloved son. Heaney's adaptation allows a deeper vulnerability in the ironclad Creon of other productions. While Antigone's demise lives the loudest in current vernacular, called up as a symbol for lost, valiant causes, in this production it is Creon's sorrow that is the scariest. Antigone, after all, dies knowing she did what she must. Creon lives on, knowing his blind governance and disregard for inherent morality (the morality of the gods), slaughtered innocents, including his son and his wife. That continued life seems the most tragic. Creon's burden wrecks me. What "rules" do I insist on that are contrary to my faith or the tenets of my God? How often do I let blind ambition cloud my judgement, block my ears from reason? How dangerous is my pride?
I think most people hope they would be Antigone. But I think the power of Heaney's play rests in how often we tremble with worry that in a moment of truth we will be Creon. And, like poetry, the last words, the individual moments, grow to mean more than the sum of their parts. It isn't just an old Greek play with some new vocabulary. It's the train wreck of pride we watch in ourselves, and the palatable fear that we will realize, too late, that pride will surely strip us of those we love most.
Powerful stuff, poetry.
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