But reading it for myself, aside from the sheer astonishing beauty of the Greek text, I was struck by how not at all about that the play seemed in my eyes. Yes, Antigone tells Creon to take a long walk of a short pier, yes, she buries her brother and puts family above government, yes there is some Ra Ra Athens subtext about how kings are bad and should be defied–though all of this is enormously played up in French and American translations where we have a vested interest in shitting on kings.

But to me, what the play was clearly about was this strange, fucked up girl. What it was about was sex and death. The political stuff is like an intermission before we get back to this necrophiliac incestuous instinct playing itself out horribly but gorgeously. It’s not a mistake that the famous choral ode in Antigone is not about sticking it to the man, but about the power of the sexual drive.

Anyway, as you can tell, I was and am super into this idea of Antigone. It was the first time I thought: I could translate this ancient thing and actually say something new (ish. There’s no such things as new-new in Classics, but I could make it Different. I could make it wild and strange). And at 21 I resolved to translate it.

I’m 32, and it hasn’t happened. I got really busy with publishing fiction and I didn’t finish my graduate program and Life Happened.

[…]

Which brings me to Kickstarter.

So what if I did a Kickstarter project to fund a new translation of Antigone?

”Antigone, Original Amazing Punk Bitch”, Catherynne M. Valente