Nikos Orphanides

Antigone in occupied Cyprus

Abstract

After the independence of Cyprus, the conflicts between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities, and the Turkish invasion of 1974, a Cypriot poet from Kythrea, Nikos Orphanides, wrote two poems inspired by Sophocles’ Antigone. Orphanides’ collection Within the Walls contains A poem for Antigone and Personal for Antigone, where the Cypriot poet identifies Antigone as the paradigm of an enigmatic and painful love relationship, the symbol of a lost homeland, a fighter for the Greek Cypriots fallen after the Turkish occupation, and a refugee forced to flee the atrocities of war. In a sort of poetic dyptich, Orphanides connects Sophocles’ play, Cypriot contemporary history, and his own memories and emotions from youth, in order to offer a female archetypal model of fighter for civil rights during and after the war.