ANTIGONE'S ANIKE: THE UNLIKELY TWINS

ANTIGONE’S ANIKE: THE UNLIKELY TWINS

Anike is a play which resembles Antigone and I found it exactly the same, well of course the setting and culture is different but the plot and characters and characterizations are the same. Frankly speaking, I was bored with the play as it talks about the same thing and I felt that it was no thrill reading Anike, as I could guess what would happen next, and what the characters are going to say. But I do like Wong Phui Nam’s descriptions of certain settings and situations, for example the decaying body of Sirat. I could visualise and imagine it so vividly, though I have never seen a dead body, better off a decaying one, I felt that Phui Nam’s description made me see a decaying body. What would the decaying skin look like when it’s oxidised and I never knew there’d be fermentation, like beer or even bread, when added yeast. When I read a good material, I prefer it to be unpredictable or at least you can’t wait to know the ending, Anike is a good reading, but I suppose it would be better if one read the play, Anike first before Antigone. Basically because Anike is a local play, and the culture and elements in the play is somewhat common to us, and I felt that it follows exactly the plot of Antigone and it’s just that you reading the same old thing again. The reason I felt this because I guess too much of Antigone was fed into me, and me indulging into the play too much, that at one point I felt like throwing up. But there are some elements that still held my attention in Anike, for instance, the Malaysian culture nicely blended, but it still made me wonder few things. Firstly, the usage of “Daulat Tuanku”, I always thought the phrase was came to use when Islam arrived in Malacca, but the play was set before the arrival of Islam. Then there was ‘tosai’ as the food in one part of the play, I’m not sure all these was in Temasek (now known as Singapore) at that time. When I learnt Malay History (Sejarah Melayu) in Form 6, I got to know that the Siamese was in Temasek before the Majapahits, who fled to Malacca later on. I’m still trying to figure out the link or it was all just imagination, then of course I would never see even the glimpse of the link.

PYGMALION: THE ROMANCE OF IVORY

PYGMALION: THE ROMANCE OF IVORY




Hello there, after short readings here and there, I came up with some interesting details on Pygmalion. Pygmalion is a Greek who is not exactly interested in women. He saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to hate women, and determined to live a bachelor. He was a sculptor, and had made a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no existing woman came anywhere close to it. It was indeed the perfect appearance of a maiden that seemed to be alive. His art was so perfect that it looked as if the nature created it. . Pygmalion admired his own work, and at last fell in love with his own creation. At times, he doubt whether it was alive but it’s only a statue made of ivory. He loved it dearly as if it’s a real women gave it presents such as bright shells and polished stones, little birds and flowers of various hues, beads and amber. He decorated the statue with earrings, pearls, wore it a golden ring, put on a refined dress well, and even a bed, with luxurious material.

The festival of Aphrodite arrived where victims were offered, the altars smoked, and the odour of incense were in the air. When Pygmalion had performed his part in the ceremony, he stood before the altar and timidly said,

"Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, for my wife"—he dared not say "my ivory virgin," but said instead—"one like my ivory virgin."

Aphrodite, who was present at the festival, heard him. When he returned home, he went to see his statue, and leaning over the couch, gave a kiss on the statue’s lips. It seemed to be warm. While he stands astonished and glad, though doubting, and fears he may be mistaken, he kept touching her. It was indeed alive! Pygmalion kissed the now-living statue again. The virgin statue now alive, felt the kisses and blushed, and opening her timid eyes to the light, then fixed them the amazed sculptor. Aphrodite blessed them in a sacred marriage that she had set up, and from this union a child, Paphos was born.

TIRESIAS: THE BLIND PROPHET WHO ONCE A PEEPING TOM?

Tiresias: The Blind Prophet Who Once was Peeping Tom?
Hello everyone,
I did a short research on Tiresias, and I found that besides being a wise seer, he has been both male and female. Tiresias, a seer, or prophet, from Thebes, said to have been struck blind by the goddess Athena because he had seen her bathing. Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and one of the greatest Greek goddess, she compensated Tiresias with the gift of prophecy. Then Tiresias can foretell the future, but you gain one, you lose one. According to another version, of Tiresias story, after separating a pair of snakes that he found copulating in the road, Tiresias was for a time transformed into a woman. Later, having become a man again, which is back to his original self, he was asked by Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the gods, to tell which sex had more pleasure in love. When he replied that woman had nine times as much pleasure as man, Hera, in anger, blinded him, but Zeus granted him long life. Tiresias played a prominent part in Theban legends, delivering prophecies to Oedipus, king of Thebes. He died while fleeing the wrath of the Epigoni, warlike sons of the Argive heroes who were killed in the war of the Seven Against Thebes, well most of it were described in the Greek Mythology.


Athena

THE 22ND CENTURY KING LEAR

King Lear

The 22nd century’s King Lear

What happened in King Lear, the play, isn’t much a new scenario today and I am not at all surprised of what his daughter’s Goneril and Regan did to him. Though there’s so much to learn from the tragic play, things isn’t changing much in this world today as more and more sins were being committed, so don’t blame Shakespeare for writing such a tragic play centuries ago. Now we are hearing news such as the daughter is slaughtered by the father and vice-versa, the son stabbing his mother, and guess what if it happened in Lear’s noble and royal family, it will as well happen in our very own royal or ‘peasant’ families. But of course, most fathers and mothers will fall for flattery of their most favourite daughter or son, whereby hate the child who don’t flatter them. I just don’t understand why parents would believe something said by one child about another child without investigating, and by the end of the day, that child and the parent would turn against the weaker child, well the child who was just being herself and not wanting to portray a false identity. In King Lear, Lear fell for the fake-loving words of Regan and Goneril, and chased Cordelia, Gloucester fell for Edmunds deceits and forgery. The parents in today society is not much the different, most of them are blind enough to see the hidden truth. Some of them refused to see when their ego stands strong within their minds.

ANTIGONE'S PRIDE

ANTIGONE’S PRIDE

The play Antigone is a simple play. A headstrong girl who has great love over her family, one day found her brother left unburied and wanted to give him a proper burial, but she had to defy her uncle the king. Soon she succeeds and she was sentence to death. Then comes in her timid, but later supportive sister, later on her lover, which happens to be the king’s son, who finally commits suicide because he didn’t agree with his father’s decision. It’s a tragic play with everyone dying in the end except the king, which is quite obvious to the play-readers that the king is meant to suffer of his stubbornness. I do understand Antigone’s pain, in seeing her loved one being put in that situation but she has to know that she is going against the law of the ruler and she will get punished. Though she is right by burying the body (according to Creon’s law), but she knew that it’s wrong. What I feel is that she should have done it in secret and be more cautious and not arrogant when questioned. Deep down inside she knows that she defied the law, and she also knows that personally what she did was right, so she would have accomplished it easily without getting caught if she was more careful.