Derek Mahon: The Antigone Riddle

(Page numbers given refer to Collected Poems: Derek Mahon [CP]: The Gallery Press, 1999)

*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’).

Derek Mahon