Antigone’s Claim: Hölderlin’s (and Hegel’s) Insights into a Legal and Genealogical Conundrum of the Tragedy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The essay offers a new reading of Hölderlin's Antigone translation, uncovering new legal considerations through a reconstruction of the (putative) Ancient Greek context. The analysis is very detailed and deserves consideration, but it is off to a rocky start. The author needs to clarify the introduction and several points that I have commented on directly in the ms.   

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English is on the whole idiomatic, but needs some careful copy-editing. 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments in the text. All passages have been corrected according to your suggestions

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is presented as an accurate and thorough analysis of Hoelderlin's Antigone, which is investigated with a tight and timely commentary. The article is certainly publishable but could be improved in at least two respects. Firstly, I would make clearer, in the opening, the theoretical thesis it is intended to support. How does this article propose an advancement of studies? How does the author position himself in the current debate on the subject? Secondly, it would also be useful to consider specialist literature on Hoelderlin's Antigone, since it is a text that is in any case well known to scholars

Author Response

Thanking you for your helpful remarks, I have added a few references to the lack of discussion of my main focus (the epiclerate), references to more recent authors (Foley, Bacelar) who mention the epiclerate, but without integrating this aspect into their reading; and a few words referring to Butler's Antigone's Claim (2000). As there is still very little secondary literature on the epiclerate in Antigone, I added an excursus on Hölderlin's and Hegel's ideas and mutual influences on the topic.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a fine paper on Hölderlin’s translation of Antigone (one that is generally written about as an “adaptation” rather than a translation, a point that could be hit quite a bit harder in the essay). This essay is short, but that’s not anything readers will complain about. Its most important point, in my opinion, has to do with the connection to Hegel (lines 323-324), especially because readers will want to know about how Hölderlin’s idea interact with Hegel’s philosophy of tragedy and about how Antigone and Creon are trying to achieve equally sincere legitimate purposes — something the author calls “tragic ambivalence” — which has been studied a lot, and which may make this significant for some scholars.

Overall, this essay is acceptable for publication, but I have several comments that I think should be taken into account before publication is finalized.

-Lines 73-74: the author articulates their thesis as having to do with “livelier ways of understanding” Hölderlin’s translation/ adaptation. That not an incisive way of expressing this. Can the author come up with a more salient rationale for this project than providing us with a livelier understanding? Isn’t it much more about coming to terms with (a) Hölderlin’s reverence for the Greek over and above Manichean Christian understandings; and (b) Hölderlin’s deeper comprehension of the dialectics of tragedy, per Hegel. All that would be far more incisive than simply rendering the work livelier.

-The publication of the Hölderlin edition cited was from 1977; when was it originally written? It’s from 1804, I think. I don’t see where the author says this, but it should be up front.

-Line 32: the line should be changed to “Hölderlin’s deep affinities with Ancient Greek” (instead of “the ancient Greek language”). 

-Lines 70-71: the author refers here to “My Zeus” to anticipate their later discussion, but it doesn’t make sense where it is. That should be clarified or edited out.

-Lines 122-125, I don’t believe that the translations, as printed, fully map onto one another; can the author clarify the jump from the German to the English. The German text doesn’t mention “transformation” — literally was “made like a desert.” 

-Line 171 is convoluted: The author writes about “what entitles Antigone to vindicate a preeminent position.” Can the author phase this more clearly? Similarly, where they write about “the impression of undue modernization” (line 246), I couldn’t follow the point. What impression is that?  

-The author might define the term “epicler,” which is a key term, early on. The word is used a couple of times before it is actually defined (on lines 193-94). As the author knows, it is not a standard English word and will read to many simply as a misspelling, unless readers are informed otherwise. Similarly, please define “enthymeme” (line 351) for the reader. That’s an interesting word, and it would be worth dwelling on why it is being used (i.e., why we regard this as an argument in which one side remains unstated).

-Although the two translations of the German line written on line 351 are certainly possible, I don’t see how one is “passive,” or why one would see passive grammar here. Perhaps elaborate on why one would translate that in a passive voice?

Finally, the essay contains many traces of a talk such as “For my argument here” (line 100), or “it seems that” (line 131), or “let’s have a look at …” (line 266). It would be preferable if those various pronuntatio were better integrated into the text, or simply set aside.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your excellent and challenging suggestions. As to your first point (Hegel and Hölderlin), I added almost 3 pages in an annexus at the end of my paper and changed a few formulations in order to make my argument clearer. 

Here are my answers to the other, minor questions:

-The publication of the Hölderlin edition cited was from 1977; when was it originally written? It’s from 1804, I think. I don’t see where the author says this, but it should be up front.answer: I repaired this on p. 3

 

I think-Line 32: the line should be changed to “Hölderlin’s deep affinities with Ancient Greek” (instead of “the ancient Greek language”). answer: yes, I did that-

 

Lines 70-71: the author refers here to “My Zeus” to anticipate their later discussion, but it doesn’t make sense where it is. That should be clarified or edited out.answer: yes I did that

 

-Lines 122-125, I don’t believe that the translations, as printed, fully map onto one another; can the author clarify the jump from the German to the English. The German text doesn’t mention “transformation” — literally was “made like a desert.” Answer: I heard that [Niobe] has been made to be like a desert.

 

-Line 171 is convoluted: The author writes about “what entitles Antigone to vindicate a preeminent position.” Can the author phase this more clearly? answer (I hope I got it right): What entitles Antigone to vindicate a preeminentposition, when she sets herself apart as a too important person to whom Creon shouldnot have dared to annouce the decree?

 

-Similarly, where they write about “the impression of undue modernization” , I couldn’t follow the point. What impression is that?  answer: line 247 I added: which Binder criticized (Binder (1992, p. 160).

 

-The author might define the term “epicler,” which is a key term, early on. The word is used a couple of times before it is actually defined (on lines 193-94). As the author knows, it is not a standard English word and will read to many simply as a misspelling, unless readers are informed otherwise. Answer: yes I did that on p. 3

 

Similarly, please define “enthymeme” i(line 351) for the reader. That’s an interesting word, and it would be worth dwelling on why it is being used (i.e., why we regard this as an argument in which one side remains unstated).answers: epicler has been defined on p. 3enthymeme:  Hölderlin enhances the accusatory rhetoric of thisfallacious enthymeme (i. e. with an argument in which one premise is notexplicitly stated although the speaker perfectly knows that Antigone is first andforemost Oedipus’ daughter and heiress and only secondly Jocasta’s child also) mantlingthe manipulation of his rhetoric by enhancing the scandalous character of her behavior.(Aristotle, Rhet., 1401 b 4-6)[1]: 

[1] Aristotle, Rhet., 1401 b 4-6, on the use of “indignant language”, which uses the accents of passionate indignation to create the “impression of the guilt of the accused”.

 

 

 

-Although the two translations of the German line written on line 351 are certainly possible, I don’t see how one is “passive,” or why one would see passive grammar here. Perhaps elaborate on why one would translate that in a passive voice?answer: you are quite right: I rephrased as follows:  “sie meidet den schlimmen Tod nicht” is a statement that can be understood in two different ways. It can mean “she will not escape – i.e. be spared a shameful death” (because I, Creon, am condemning her to death); or in the active understanding “she [deliberately behaves in a way which] does nothing to avoid shameful death”.

 

 

Finally, the essay contains many traces of a talk such as “For my argument here” (line 100), or “it seems that” (line 131), or “let’s have a look at …” (line 266). It would be preferable if those various pronuntatio were better integrated into the text, or simply set aside.Answer: I do not find these phrases irritating for the reader.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf