Beyond Steiner's "Antigones": Myth Rewriting as Visitation of the Immemorial

Abstract

This article focuses on the interrelations between myth, mythical character and rewriting. Faced with myth as an epistemological challenge, hermeneutics often is torn between two reductionist temptations: either to ontologize its object or to dissolve it into a kind of original nothingness. We will here first and mainly focus on George Steiner's Antigonesconsidered as a milestone in literary mythography because of its anti-reductionist approach characterized by attention to plurality and emphasis on the complexity inherent in myth. Secondly, and in a much more tentative manner, it will endeavor to propose a new conception of myth, supposedly able to satisfy the so far identified primordial demands it faces us with. We end up proposing a conception of rewriting as visitation and of myth as a face (visage) in Lévinas' sense, thereby ourselves revisiting notions like memory and transcendence. As memory of the immemorial, myth rewriting thus reveals itself paradoxically as a future-oriented, meaning making and hope inspiring task.

Keywords

• literary theory
• translation
• philosophy
• myth reception
• transcendence