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Abstract: This paper investigates the ways that the visual and textual features of Anne Carson's Antigonick present a particularly spectral reading of the body within Sophocles' tragedy. Carson's translation materially conjures spectral absences and presences in a way that establishes itself as a posterior physical monument to its ancient predecessor and furthermore captures the corporeal questions posed by Sophocles - such as, how might we conceptualise with the embodied aftermath of the sexual union of incestuous bodies? How are we to deal with the bodies which use themselves as weapons against the state and which violate both social and political codes? In a tragedy whose action pivots around the status of the body of a brother, the misplacement of the body of a sister, and whose crises stem from instances of the misplaced body parts of a father and mother, the presence and treatment of the bodies lurking about the text of Carson's ghost world is central.
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In a staged reading of Antigonick performed at the 2012 Louisiana Literature Festival, Anne Carson prefaces her translation of Sophocles' tragedy with a short introduction entitled "The Task of the Translator of Antigone".1 With this titular nod to Walter Benjamin's pivotal essay on translation,2 Carson situates herself within the canon of translation theory when she declares that her job is to carry over the character of Antigone and her "problem" from Greek into English. She concludes her introduction with the announcement, "Dear Antigone, I take it as the task of the translator to forbid you should ever lose your screams". Thus broadcasting her mission to bring these screams into English, Carson's translation incorporates nontraditional typography, illustration, and paper to offer up a new visual and readerly experience of Sophocles' tragedy. Carson designates her task as one of protecting Antigone, both as character and as text, from vocal oblivion.
The paratextual Benjamin reference invites us to consider what sort of "translation" we find in Antigonick. This paper uses the term "translation", partly out of deference to Carson's own self-designation as "the translator" and the book's cover text, which reads "translated by Anne Carson".3 Furthermore, the author operates in agreement with Charles Martindale, that translation is an act of interpretation and "a saying...