Interview with Will Aitken led by Bronwyn Averett
February 8, 2018
Antigone Undone, the latest book by Montreal writer Will Aitken (University of Regina Press), is a fascinating and emotionally driven look at Aitken’s behind-the-scenes experience of a production of Antigone directed by Ivo Van Hove, starring Juliette Binoche, with a translation by Anne Carson. From strolling around Luxembourg where the play débuted, to a tense few days in Amsterdam, and back to Montreal, Aitken gives the reader a deeply personal glimpse at an episode of depression that was sparked by encountering Antigone, both the play and the character. Using his own experience as a starting point, Aitken then explores various interpretations of Antigone, through scholarly texts and through interviews with Binoche, Carson and Van Hove about the play. By blending genres and exploring the stylistic elements of memoir, travelogue, essay, and academic writing, it’s a beautiful book that examines the vast power art has over us, in both its creative and destructive capacities.
BRONWYN AVERETT:
What struck me most about this book is the way that it moves seamlessly between observations about your personal inner space and observations about creative production. It engages with your emotional state in the way of a memoir but is also an intellectual exploration of Antigone—this particular production, various interpretations of the Sophocles play, and also the character herself. I’m wondering if you set out to bridge these different genres and forms and approaches, or if it naturally occurred in the writing process?
WILL AITKEN:
I think it has more to do with working for many years as a journalist and growing increasingly irritated at the pretense of journalistic objectivity, and just unable to do it. And I did it for so long, because it was demanded of me, and then when I finally decided to do this, I thought, it has to be about everything that’s going on with me while I’m writing it. And it started with the Visconti book [Death in Venice: A Queer Film Classic, Arsenal Pulp Press 2011]. I think what really influenced me was reading all the academic criticism of Visconti. I mean he’s one of the most exciting filmmakers who ever worked, but the writing about him was turgid and dull, and up until recently totally avoided the topic of his gayness. It was all trying to hold Visconti to this very high intellectual standard. And Visconti didn’t like intellectuals, he was much more comfortable “feasting with panthers” and it just didn’t fit. And so, I thought, if I’m going to do these things any further, then I have to shake all that off and have a little fun.
BA:
That makes sense, because reading this book, works of art sort of slip in and out of your experience, rather than being subjected to intense analysis. They’re your constant reference point, and they all tie into whatever you’re experiencing. There’s no division between art and life.
WA:
There’s no division, and trying to maintain a false division doesn’t work. Actually Anne [Carson] talks about this in the introduction to Economy of the Unlost. She talks about not being unable to keep up the pretense of objectivity and questioning its value. It’s a beautiful passage about trying to do academic writing and doing it wrong. And I thought, okay, I’ll be wrong.
BA:
Right, and your embracing that “wrongness” comes through so purposefully. So, something you explore in the book is the fact that Antigone had a profound effect, not just on you, and not just on the actors who have played her—in this case, Juliette Binoche—but also on so many writers and thinkers. And they all have different interpretations of her. Is there something intrinsic to Antigone that keeps her evolving and also just seems to reach out and hold onto people?
WA:
After 2,500 years, she refuses to be pinned down. Reading the commentary on her, which mainly runs from the 18th century to the present, everybody important who looks at her has a completely different take on her. And it’s very convincing while you’re reading it but then you step back and think, But what about this? What about that? The current reading of her is of this great feminist figure, which I think she is, whether that was Sophocles’ intention or not. And she’s this revolutionary. But then a lot of that is problematic as well, because of the classism that she shows. You know, as Bonnie Honig points out, she’s trying to bury her brother precisely because he was her brother, and because he was royal like her. But of course, if he’d been a slave, it wouldn’t have mattered.
So, I don’t think that you finish thinking about her, and that’s such a valuable gift. Trying to see her through 2,500 years, she’s there of course, but who knows what her thereness means now?
BA:
I found there was a bit of a tension in the book around the question of how much we really can read Antigone as a contemporary figure, or apply her to contemporary life. Looking at Kreon and Antigone—and maybe even especially looking at them through your experience of the play, portrayed by Patrick O’Kane and Juliette Binoche—and it’s hard not to apply this dynamic to everything going on now concerning #metoo and male accountability in relation to women. “Resistance” is part of the book’s subtitle. But as you’ve pointed out, Antigone is both resisting male power and also reinforcing a certain conservative and also patriarchal social order. So it’s complicated. Did you struggle with how much to relate it to our moment?
WA:
That’s a good question, because when I was writing the book, none of this had happened. And so the first draft was done before Trump even came into office. And at that point, I made a conscious decision that I was going to keep it in that time, and not have any references to or even think about Trump. I wanted to keep it in that specific time, before the revolution that’s going on with women right now. It just seemed important. The title nods to Trump-times, but for everything else, I kept the present moment out of it. I thought it would be too easy to jump to so many parallels.
BA:
It seems like, in every one of the works you discuss that consider Antigone, she becomes a kind of mouthpiece for someone’s very strong ideas. Should we wonder how comfortable we are with this fictional young woman becoming forced to act as a spokesperson?
WA:
I did think about that. It came up when I was writing about Kierkegaard, because he creates this whole new Antigone and talks about seducing her. It really hit me when I was reading Judith Butler, but that’s part of what’s exciting, that she uses Antigone as a starting point, to go somewhere.
BA:
Did you have a favourite Antigone, while you were writing this?
WA:
I would say that, although she’s not central to Three Guineas, I think the radical spirit that [Virginia] Woolf took from her informs Three Guineas all the way through. That essay, I thought I had read it, but reading it again, it’s just a phenomenal piece of work. So radical and so unconventional, in this kind of crazed voice that she chose to adopt. And she must have had qualms about that. Given her history of mental illness, to adopt a tone and a manner that was so out there, it was such a risk for her to take. And it pays off incredibly well. Even with the structure that you can’t quite sort out. Trying to release her own anger and, at the same time, this holy anger that comes with it. Sort of similar to what Juliette [Binoche] does in playing Antigone.
BA:
Considering Virginia Woolf’s famous episodes of mental illness, that brings us to where the book started, which is an episode of severe depression. What inspired you to write about your experience with mental illness in this very candid way? I find it so brave.
WA:
I think I was just trying to understand what had happened. There wasn’t any agenda. What happened so perplexed me and frightened me and threw me for a loop that the only way I could think of dealing with it (besides psychotherapy) was writing about it and trying to get it down. I didn’t feel like I could avoid it.
BA:
This description of your depression, I found it was so true to the experience. You’re walking around Amsterdam, and it’s a seamless descent. As a reader, you don’t think, Oh, that’s depression. But you know that something is going on. And it seems like that’s actually what depression is. Not knowing you’re in it for a very long time, until you’re there. Were you looking at journals while writing this? And was it difficult to pinpoint that this had something to do with the play.
WA:
It came on so gradually. I don’t think I connected it with the play. But it took me two and a half months to go see the shrink, and to realize that I was in a depression. I didn’t keep a journal, so most of that part is reconstruction. But what was going on in Amsterdam was so vivid, because I was so vulnerable and paranoid, that it was easy to retrieve it. I was aware of the connections to Antigone. The most important thing while I was there was feeling so ineffectual, and realizing that depression was such an unhelpful response to the play, because it’s so inward-turning. What emerges in those scenes was my sense that my depression wasn’t worthy, wasn’t good enough. I’d never felt those things in relation to a piece of art.
BA:
Right, you say that art was always a solace.
WA:
And here I am being slapped around by Antigone
BA:
Then you have this quote from Tolstoy: “”A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.”” But then you ask: “Or can it destroy tout court?” That idea has always meant a lot to me. And I think that’s part of what connects the reader to you, is this description of the destruction that art can cause.
WA:
That’s been the surprise is the way I feel like the book is connecting with people. It’s the last thing that I expected.
BA:
What was your expectation?
WA:
Well, I had all sorts of dire predictions. But I didn’t know that writing about my personal life would be accepted along with everything else. Why do I think my depression is more interesting than Juliette Binoche or Anne Carson? But through various communications with people about the book, I feel like I’ve hit a nerve that I didn’t realize I was hitting. It wasn’t something I was aiming at. People are responding personally to my being very naked about depression.
BA:
Well, yes, but this makes total sense to me because a lot of people who engage with art and with texts are depressed.
WA:
Yes, especially right now. Someone said to me recently: “Well, you’re in really good company,” meaning, this psychological turmoil I went through.
BA:
Right, but we’re depressed reading the news every day. And then you engage in a meaningful way with Antigone and you see that this same “news” and this same storyline has been going on for 2,500 years.
WA:
That’s the best summary of the book, really.
BA:
One last question, more about your process. Several times, in the book, it seems that your language plays off the text of the play. So, for example, there’s this important element of the grave. And at a certain point you’re talking about watching Kreon as played by Patrick O’Kane and this is your description: “The king has been sealed so tightly in the carapace of his certitude.” So that image really invokes the grave, as though Kreon is in a grave as well. Then Kreon’s line, after all this tragic death, is: “I am utterly blended with pain.” And then you yourself, watching the play, recall this moment: “My identification with Antigone becomes complete.” Those sound so similar to me. How much you were engaged with the Anne Carson’s translation while writing this book?
WA:
That translation is so beyond brilliant, I don’t even think I emphasized that enough in the book. Before we went to Luxembourg, I hadn’t seen her translation, I had just seen Antigonick. So, the first rehearsal, watching it, I was just trying to concentrate on what was being said. And after I got back to Montreal, when Anne sent me the text, I just got so compulsively into it. I don’t know how many times I read it, and I was constantly combing through it. The rhythms of the text are so unlike any other translation I’ve ever read of any Greek tragedy. And after seeing it five times in a row, I had a lot of it just swirling around in my head. Parts of it have always been very accessible to me. And the power of that translation is really profound.
Will Aitken has written three novels – Realia, A Visit Home, Terre Haute – and the non-fiction book Death in Venice: A Queer Film Classic. He lives in Montreal.
Bronwyn Averett is an editor and translator based in Montreal. She holds a PhD in French and haswritten about books for publications such as Electric Literature, Rain Taxi, and Necessary Fiction. You can find her at indirectlibre.com or, more succinctly, @indirectlibre.