“Today,” he said, “I thought it would be a good idea to talk about, among other things, the liminal in Greek tragedy. What does that mean? Well, think of Antigone, pushed to a choice between death and dishonor; or Iphigenia, preparing herself to die for Greece; or Oedipus, deciding to blind himself and wander the highways. The liminal is between two worlds—on the very edge of what it means to be human—where everything is stripped away from you; where you transcend this life, and experience something beyond it. And when the tragedies are working, they give us a glimpse of what that feels like.”
