Derek Mahon: The Antigone Riddle

Poem Title

Original Publication

The Antigone Riddle

The Snow Party, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975    

CP Page no

66

Length / Form

A short riddle in two parts.

Allusion to Classical figure

Antigone, but only in the title.

Allusion to Classical place

Relationship to Classical text

.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts

Classical/post-Classical intertexts

Further Comment

This poem could be seen as providing a coda to ‘Glengormley (CP, p.14), which quotes the translated line from Sophocles Antigone ‘Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man’ (Antigone, 332).

Further Analysis

The first five words of the poem are all English derivatives from Latin or Greek (‘Elocution, logic, political science,/ Antibiotics’).