Extract Dialogues from Antigone by Sophocles 希臘悲劇《安蒂崗妮》摘錄

I re-readed an ancient Greek tragedy Antigone, which wrote by the same author of the well known tragedy"King Oedipus"。(就是那個弒父取母的伊狄帕斯王啊，《安蒂崗妮》可以說是伊狄帕斯王這個故事的續集。內容最好看原文，很精彩；如不能，可以看Yahoo知識簡介：http://hk.knowledge.yahoo.com/question/question?qid=7008051202700及wiki：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone). There are some dialouges catched my eyes and I noted them down here to share with you.

Antigone by Frederic Leighton, 1882 (Photo from Wiki)

P. 129

Antigone: I know my duty, were true duty lies.

Ismene(Antigone's sister): If you can do it; but you're bound to fail.

Antigone: When I have tried and failed, I shall have failed.

Ismene: No sense in starting on a hopeless task.

Antigone: Oh, I shall hate you if you talk like that!

And he will hate you, rightly. Leave me alone

With my own madness. There is no punishment

Can rob me of my honourable death.

P. 138-139

Creon(the King): ...... Did you know the order forbidding such an act?

Antigone: I knew it, naturally. It was plain enough.

Creon: And yet you dared to contravene it?

Antigone: Yes.

    That order did not come from God. Justice,

    The dwells with the gods,below, knows no such law.

    I did not think your edicts strong enough

    To overrule the unwritten unalterable laws

    Of God and heaven you being only a man.

    They are not of yesterday or to-day, but everlasting,

    Though where they came from, none of us can tell.

    Guilty of their transgression before God

    I cannot be, for any man on earth.

    I knew that I should have to die, of course,

    With or without your order. If it be soon,

    So much the better. Living in daily torment

    As I do, who would not be glad to die?

    This punishment will not be any pain.

    Only if I had let my mother's son

    Lie there unburied, then I could not have borne it.

    This I can bear. Does that seem foolish to you?

    Or is it you that are foolish to judge me so?

P. 140

Antigone: There is no shame in honouring my brother.

Creon: Was not his enemy, who died with him, your brother?

Antigone: Yes, both were brothers, both of the same parents.

Creon: You honour one, and so insult the other.

Antigone: He that is dead with not accuse me of that.

Creon: He will, if you honour him no more than the traitor.

Antigone: It as not a slave, but his brother, that died with him.

Creon: Attacking his country, while the other defended it.

Antigone: Even so, we have a duty to the dead.

Creon: Not to give equal honour to good and bad.

Antigone: Who knows? In the country of the dead that may be the law.

Creon: An enemy can't be a friend, even when dead.

Antigone: My way is to share my love, not share my hate.

P. 157

Messenger: ......

What is the life of man? A thing not fixed

for good or evil, fashioned for praise or blame.

Chance raises a man to the heights, chance casts him down,

And none can foretell what will be from what is.