In recent days, as we struggle to absorb the dire implications of the annual World Watch State of the World report, we have been meditating upon Anne Carson’s brilliant transduction/translation of Sophocles’ Ode to Man, as first published in the New Yorker, and eventually enveloped by her reinvention of Antigone as Antigonick.
In other hands, such a project might have descended into the tinny echo chambers of postmodern solipsism. Yet Carson’s ear is more finely tuned than that, and her play with Sophocles skillfully sounds out the quiet terrors of the ancient text.
We offer this excerpt in a montage with images from Ronit Baranga’s astonishing series of ceramic sculptures, Grave Watcher’s Childhood.
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