1 Sophocles' Antigone Introduction, translation, and notes by ...

Another example. The marvelously compact ou[toi sunevcqein, ajlla;
sumfilei'n e[fun (523) is bound to fail in English. Both sunevcqein and
sumfilei'n are neologisms: sun- meaning "with" is linked with ev[cqein meaning
"to hate," and this coined word means "to share in the feeling of hate," and
sumfilei'n means "to share in the feeling of love." The emotions are extended to a
social situation by the sun-prefix, cf. "sym-pathize." The entire sentence covers the
concept of birth, and what a person is by "nature," fuvsi", as opposed to what a person
becomes through "law," or "custom," novmo". Antigone's nature is not to divide, but
bring together: not to cause hostilities between people, but to unite them in filiva,
"friendship," and the duty that that entails (see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII-IX).
Philos can mean "beloved," "friend," or "relative," in addition to "one's own," and a
comparable ambiguity is in the verb, philein.
The difference between Creon who divides by civil law, and Antigone who
reconciles by obeying the laws of nature is at the crux of this drama. I first translated line
523 specifically: "I want to bring my brothers together, not keep them apart." I would
have liked to say something more general: "I am one for reconciliation rather than
hostility," but this sounds pretentious in performance. I finally opted for "I was born to
love, not to hate," which I think is the most dramatically viable translation.
There is ambiguity in Antigone's statement in 48 that Creon "can't keep me from
mine." Mine" can refer concretely to Antigone's brother or abstractly to her rights, or
sense of right. I translate this line as "He has no right to come between my brother and
me." I opted for clarity, but something is obviously lost.
Often there are no satisfactory equivalents in English. For instance, in translating
1175, I have the messenger tell the chorus simply that "Haemon is dead, and he killed
himself." Sophocles left us in doubt as to how Haemon died because he uses the word
autocheir, which can refer either to "his own hand," or "his relative's hand." So in the
original, the chorus have to ask who killed Haemon because of this ambiguity.
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