The Antigone of Sophocles is not 'just any' text. It is one of the enduring and canonical documents in the history of our philosophical, literary, and political consciousness. What begins in this book and stands at its center is the attempt to answer the question of why a handful of ancient Greek myths still dominate our consciousness of ourselves and the world, giving it a vivid form. Why are the 'Antigones' truly eternal, and why do they touch the present directly? George Steiner's examination of a history spanning more than two thousand years of the apparently imperishable Antigone material, its inner conflicts, and adaptations, traces its origins in antiquity through Hölderlin's re-creation and its fundamental significance for the philosophies of Hegel and Kierkegaard to the poets of today.