King in the Kingdom of Evil: The Figure of Creon in the Plays by Dominik Smole and Milan Uhde

Abstract

The topic of the article is the comparison of two plays concerning the figure of King Creon: the paper focuses on the Slovenian poetic-philosophical play Antigona by Dominik Smole (1929–1992), which was produced by the Oder 57 in 1960, and the satirical-absurd play Děvka z města Théby (Prostitute from the City of Thebes) written in 1967 by the Czech playwright Milan Uhde (b. 1936). The latter was performed only for a short time in Czech National Theatre in Prague and Brno and was banned after 1968 because of the Soviet occupation and the new regime. Both plays were written in the same period. There is no real connection or possible influence between them, but still we can observe the same intertextual connections and philosophical ideas. Both follow Sophocles’s play, and both were deeply influenced by Anouilh’s Antigone. Both plays ground their philosophical perspectives in existentialism and absurdist theatre (these labels also appear in later analyses). This paper focuses on the figure of Creon, who in both plays becomes the main antagonist in the dramatic events revealing the discourse between the individual and the collective. His figure appears in the realm of evil and he puts Antigone’s action in question. His personality is marked by opposites and his actions express his inner conflict between obligations to the state and human choices. The figure of Creon is also interesting because of the political connotations in both dramas: his problem can be interpreted as the typical problem of a socialist ruler.