#schrodingers theban princess

[finelythreadedsky]

yeah yeah we all love that anne carson antigonick line "I’m a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren’t I, not at home with the dead nor with the living" BUT consider that the word she translates as "at home with" is... μέτοικος. which is also "metic," that is, the class of non-citizen immigrants in athens. now all six of the translations that i've checked just now essentially agree with carson on the meaning here, rendering μέτοικος as something along the lines of "living with" or "at home among". but if we hew more closely to the technical and specifically athenian sense of the word... antigone isn't a foreigner to the dead or to the living. not displaced in either world but at home in both.

a metic is a strange kind of inbetween thing, neither at home nor not at home, neither fully belonging nor fully not belonging. which is precisely what antigone is not, neither among the dead nor the living.