Cosmopoetica

Thanks to the one serious flaw in the 3-volume set of Grene and Lattimore’s Greek Tragedies—they have Oedipus the King and Antigone in the first volume, but not Oedipus at Colonus– I read the “Oedipus Cycle” out of chronological order. I didn’t even read them in the order they were composed. So I ended up confusing myself.

Jim Gourley’s insightful comments have helped me immensely in starting to make sense of the parallels between Creon and Oedipus as well as historical background that informs the composition. I really need to read more on the latter!

In Oedipus at Colonus, Creon gets his come-uppance for morphing into a defiant butthead. Oedipus goes to his reward(s). And the stage is set for Antigone’s defiant and/or petulant and/or commendable and/or moving sacrifice for the doomed Polyneices.

I have to agree with Jim that the parallels between Creon and Oedipus are striking. I’m not quite so sure how much greater Creon’s punishment is. It’s unclear to me how long Oedipus wandered before reaching Colonus (which is why the time-frame involved matters a little to me), but no matter how long it might have been, Creon is apparently doomed to not just living with failure, but doing so with no redemption or succor at his end as Oedipus found. On the other hand, Oedipus had to live with not only being a defiant, hubristic ass, but in the process killing his father, marrying his mother, and siring his own sibling children. Creon simply has to rue his hard-headedness with the attendant comforts of remaining the King…

I’m going to consider the Oedipus cycle as a whole in a different post. I can say this: the whole cycle should be required adult reading.

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Antigone is a compelling play. Reading it again as an adult I’m struck by themes (and questions) that I never noted before… or that were given to me by a teacher and promptly forgotten.

For instance, why does Antigone go back to the body? She’s buried Polynieces—or at least performed the rites sufficient to allow him passage to Hades—so her work is done. Antigone is a play of (relative) subtlety and complexity—I think Antigone’s action has to be more than a simple necessity of plot. Is it a reflection of Sophocles’ low estimation of women? Is Antigone as suicidal as she seems at certain times? Does she return to the scene out of the same twisted logic and compulsion that compels criminals in contemporary crime dramas to return to the scene of the crime, a secondary story Sophocles’ recognized but chose not to tell? Or am I over-thinking what could just be Yet Another Example of the Work of Fate?

It’s no wonder that Antigone and Lysistrata have so often been invoked and reshaped in modernist times through a feminist glass (in very different ways, of course). Antigone is a complex character—embodying more than any other woman the complex and contradictory aspects of being human. She’s pious, manipulative, impulsive, thoughtful, vengeful, wistful… and in her end she is an instrument of the gods.

And what happened to Creon, so wise and measured in his responses in Oedipus the King? Even given the constant support of the oddly one-sided chorus it felt like such a radical change, though in keeping with the Oedipal theme of pride resulting in blindness, literal or metaphorically.

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Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (aka Oedipus Rex) is second only to Hamlet in my personal canon of touchstone plays, works that are so "big"– of such archetypal and architectonic importance to my aesthetic apparatus– that it’s hard to write about them at all. I feel wholly inadequate to the task and can’t turn down the volume of the voice that reminds me there’s probably nothing I can say that someone else hasn’t already said… and said better.

What struck me most re-reading Oedipus the King (which I last read in high school, using that little knowledge to skip it when it was required in college) is the language. I doubt David Grene’s wonderful translation was the one we used in school all those years ago, and that probably has something to do with the feeling of discovery. But so far I’ve found a greater, unexpected beauty in all the ancient plays I’ve re-read. Much of the change in perception probably has to do with being older and (arguably) a tiny bit wiser. Teiresias, in particular, is razor sharp. He first prophesizes eloquently but directly, with the force of a broadsword:

Teiresias
Since you have taunted me with being blind,
here is my word for you.
You have your eyes but see not where you are
in sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with.
Do you know who your parents are? Unknowing,
you are an enemy to kith and kin
in death, beneath the earth, and in this life.
A deadly footed, double striking curse,
from father and mother both, shall drive you forth
out of this land, with darkness on your eyes,
that now have such straight vision. Shall there be
a place will not be harbour to your cries,
a corner of Cithaeron will not ring
in echo to your cries, soon, soon,–
when you shall learn the secret of your marriage
which steered you to a haven in this house,–
haven no haven, after lucky voyage?
And of the multitude of other evils
establishing a grim equality
between you and your children, you know nothing.
So, muddy with contempt my words and Creon’s!
Misery shall grind no man as it will you.

and when rebuffed, brings out a rapier:

Oedipus
I did not know then you would talk like a fool–
or it would have been long before I called you.

Teiresias
I am a fool then, as it seems to you–
but to the parents who have bred you, wise.

Oedipus
What parents? Stop! Who are they of all the world?

Teiresias
This day will show your birth and will destroy you.

Oedipus
How needlessly your riddles darken everything.

Teiresias
But it’s in riddle answering you are strongest.

And finally takes his leave with twisted wordplay that befits the contortions of the prophecy that is soon to consume Oedipus:

Teiresias
I tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)– he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he’ll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father’s bed
with that same father that he murdered.

An obvious problem with reading dramatic works is the fact that, as readers, we are missing a good part of the power of a play: the physical production and the interpretation of the actors. While this is a generalized problem with reading plays, I think it’s magnified when the readers are high school, or even college, age. With life experience comes the ability to go beyond the dramatic plot and consider the more subtle aspects of language and, of course, the existential quandary of fate, which is barely discerned– if at all– by someone in their teens. But it’s easy to be distracted by the simple, powerful drama of Oedipus the King:

Oedipus
… Light of the sun, let me
look upon you no more after today!
I who first saw the light bred of a match
accursed, and accursed in my living,
with them I lived with, cursed in my killing.

[...]

Second Messenger
… He [Oedipus] tore the brooches–
the gold chased brooches fastening her robe–
away from her and lifting them up high
dashed them on his own eyeballs, shrieking out
such thing as: they will never see the crime
I have committed or had done upon me!
Dark eyes, now in the days to come look on
forbidden faces, do not recognize
those whom you long for– with such imprecations
he struck his eyes again and yet again
with the brooches. And the bleeding eyeballs gushed
and stained his bear– no sluggish oozing drops
but a black rain and a bloody hail poured down.

and forget that the classic questions raised in Oedipus the King about fate and destiny are classic questions for a reason… they remain as relevant today as they were 2500 years ago, though they come now in different guises and inform ideologies that would, in custom and gown, be unrecognizable to Sophocles.

I, of course, have no answers to this central existential dilemma. But I know I perceive the problem more fully and keenly than ever, and plays like this may mean many of the same things they meant to me when I read them as a teen, but in radically intensified fashion. In a recent comment my friend Jared asked about works we should return to regularly. I’m not sure the most correct answer isn’t "all of them." But since we can’t possibly do so, whatever answer I may come up with later will certainly include works like Oedipus the King among them.

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Bits of wisdom– or at least food for thought– from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.

Priest
for I have seen that for the skilled of practice
the outcome of their counsels live the most.

Priest
Neither tower nor ship is anything
when empty, and none live in it together.

Creon
…things hard to bear themselves
if in the final issue all is well
I count complete good fortune.

Oedipus
…pains are most nobly taken
to help another when you have means and power.

Creon
If you think obstinacy without wisdom
a valuable possession, you are wrong.

Creon
I don’t know; and when I know nothing I
hold my tongue.

Creon
…time is the only test of honest men,
one day is space enough to know a rogue.

Creon
I see you sulk in yielding and you’re dangerous
when you are out of temper; natures like yours
are justly heaviest for themselves to bear.

Jocasta
…listen to me and learn that human beings
have no part in prophecy.

Chorus
Insolence breeds the tyrant, insolence
if it is glutted with a surfeit, unseasonable, unprofitable,
climbs to the rooftop and plunges
sheer down to the ruin that must be,
and there its feet are no service.

Chorus
If a man walks with haughtiness
of hand or word and gives no heed
to Justice and the shrines of Gods
despises– may an evil doom
smite him for his ill-starred pride of heart!–
if he reaps gain without justice
and will not hold from impiety
and his fingers itch for untouchable things.
When such things are done, what man shall contrive
to shield his soul from the shafts of the God?
When such deeds are held in honour,
why should I honour the Gods in the dance? 

Creon
… It is most decent
that only kin should see and hear the troubles
of kin.

Creon
Do not seek to be master in everything,
for the things you mastered did not follow you
throughout your life.

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[CC Licensed image by Sebastià Giralt]

Hippolytus (another work I’d, to my shame, not read before now) is a strange play, at once obviously overt in its "lessons" and quite beautiful. And there are many lessons: worship as many gods as you can (aka don’t piss the gods off), being too devoted to one’s ideals can be deadly (for very different reasons), hasty judgment yields regret, wisdom is determined by success more than choice, the gods have rules too, etc.

[CC licensed image by Marvin (PA)]

It’s no surprise that Theseus would act impetuously in condemning his own son… he is, after all, even by standards of Greek myth a "man’s man" who is famous for a whole bunch of (admittedly righteous) kills. But Hippolytus was a surprising character, a devoted virgin who thinks constantly about sex (like a typical teen though I’ve no idea how old he is intended to be), and a practically insufferable snob who seals his own fate with some gusto, and finally a terribly tragic hero… a role he appears to evolve into in the span of about two hours.

[public domain image from Wikimedia Commons] 

And even given the times and the general attitude toward women, the judgments in this play–overt and implicit– are particularly harsh. All the good of Phaedra’s attempts to overcome the love Aphrodite has unfairly bestowed upon her is rendered irrelevant by her suicidal betrayal. And Euripides takes great pains to reinforce this aspect:

Hippolytus
Women! This coin which men find counterfeit!
Why, why, Lord Zeus, did you put them in the world,
in the light of the sun? If you were so determined
to breed the race of man, the source of it
should not have been women. Men might have dedicated
in your own temples images of gold,
silver, or weight of bronze, and to each been given
his worth of sons…

[...]

In this we have proof of how great a curse is woman.
For the father begets her, rears her up,
must add a dowry gift to pack her off
to another’s house and thus be rid of the load.
And he again that takes the cursed creature
rejoices and enriches his heart’s jewel
with dear adornment, beauty heaped on vileness.
With lovely clothes the poor wretch tricks her out
spending the wealth that underprops his house.

[...]

I hate a clever woman–God forbid
that I should ever have a wife at home
with more than woman’s wits! Lust breeds mischief
in the clever ones. The limits of their minds
deny the stupid lecherous delights.
We should not suffer servants to approach them,
but give them as companions voiceless beasts

[...]

I’ll hate you women, hate and hate and hate you,
and never have enough of hating…
Some say that I talk of this eternally,
yes, but eternal, too, is woman’s wickedness.

Most moving, though, are the descriptions of love, the ravisher and destroyer of man and god alike:

Nurse
So you will die for love! And all the others,
who love, and who will love, must they die too?
How will that profit them? The tide of love,
at its full surge, is not withstandable.
Upon the yielding spirit she comes gently,
but to the proud and the fanatic heart
she is a torturer with a brand of shame.
She wings her way through the air; she is in the sea,
in its foaming billows; from her everything,
that is, is born. For she engenders us
and sows the seeds of desire whereof we’re born,
all we her children, living on the earth.
He who has read the writings of the ancients
and has lived much in books, he knows
that Zeus once loved the lovely Semele;
he knows that Dawn, the bright light of the world,
once ravished Cephalus hence to the God’s company
for love’s sake. Yet all these dwell in heaven.
They are content, I am sure, to be subdued
by the stroke of love.

But the Nurse’s wisdom has limits (obviously) and the love that cheers the gods destroys too many humans, as explained by the chorus:

Strophe
Love distills desire upon the eyes,
love brings bewitching grace into the heart
of those he would destroy.
I pray that love may never come to me
with murderous intent,
in rhythms measureless and wild.
Not fire nor stars have stronger bolts
than those of Aphrodite sent
by the hand of Eros, Zeus’s child.

Antistrophe
In vain by Alpheus’ stream,
in vain in the halls of Phoebus’ Pythian shrine
the land of Greece increases sacrifice.
But Love the King of Men they honor not,
although he keeps the keys
of the temple of desire,
although he goes destroying through the world,
author of dread calamities
and ruin when he enters human hearts.

Posted in: Art & Life & Politics, reading log No Comments »

[CC licensed image by Camus Live Art]

Tough time of the year to find time to write, so my notes are even less cohesive than usual…

Prometheus Bound is one of many Ancient Greek plays I should have read long before now. The Prometheus of Prometheus Bound doesn’t much resemble the version I’d read about in myths and stories before. This Prometheus is far from being a jester who gave humans fire but whose tricks caused much human suffering, but instead is a hero who rescued the human race from “shattering destruction” at the hands of Zeus, who intended to “blot out the race.”

And this Prometheus didn’t just rescue the “mindless” humans from oblivion, giving us minds and making them “master of their wits,” he also taught us to mark and live in harmony with the seasons, to count and number, to use an alphabet, to observe the constellations, to yoke beasts and harness horses, to build ships, and to prophesy through encounter and augury. And he was responsible for each age of bronze, iron, silver and gold. As he says:

In one short sentence understand it all
every art of mankind comes from Prometheus

This Zeus, too, is changed. In Aeschylus’s version Zeus is obviously an irredeemable tyrant who will, Prometheus prophesies, finally fall victim to “his own light-witted counsel.” The Zeus of Prometheus Bound is petty, vindictive and treacherous… as Prometheus tells it, he played a key role in Zeus’s ascension, only to be cast away when his usefulness had come to an end.

[CC licensed image by Jaime.Silva]

In addition to diverging greatly from the standard mythology as I’d learned it, Prometheus Bound also possesses great beauty and power in its language. In the opening of the play, Hephaestus speaks to Prometheus before he binds him (this opening section is presented prose):

Here you shall hear no voice of mortal. You shall be grilled by the sun’s bright fire and change the fair bloom of your skin. You shall be glad when Night comes with her mantle of stars and hides the sun’s light; but the sun shall scatter the hoar-frost again at dawn. Always the grievous burden of your torture will be there to wear you down; for he that shall cause it to cease has yet to be born.

And in one of the chorus’s antistrophes, they speak of the depth of feeling and sympathy for Prometheus (who will have none of it):

The wave cries out as it breaks into surf;
the depth cries out, lamenting you; the dark
Hades, the hollow underneath the world,
sullenly groans below; the springs
of sacred flowing rivers all lament
the pain and pity of your suffering.

Nor is the play empty of wit, as when Prometheus pauses in his prophesying to Io and notes:

If anything of this is still obscure
or difficult as me again and learn
clearly: I have more leisure than I wish

or sarcasm, as when, toward the end of the play, Prometheus tears Hermes, sent by Zeus to force an apology, a new one:

Prometheus
Your speech is pompous sounding, full of pride,
as fits the lackey of the Gods.
…
Do you think I will crouch before your Gods,
–so new– and tremble? I am far from that.
Hasten away, back on the road you came.
You shall learn nothing that you ask of me.

Hermes
Just such the obstinacy that brought you here,
to this self-willed calamitous anchorage.

Prometheus
Be sure of this: when I set my misfortune
Against your slavery, I would not change.

Hermes
It is better, I suppose, to be a slave
to this rock, than Zeus’s trusted messenger.

Prometheus
Thus must the insolent show their insolence!

And there is a lot of sound advice in Prometheus Bound, such as when he puts the chorus in its place:

Prometheus
It is an easy thing for one whose foot
is on the outside of calamity
to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer

or makes one of his many astute observations about power and politics:

This is a sickness rooted and inherent
in the nature of a tyranny:
that he that holds it does not trust his friends.

It’s interesting that Pandora, originally fashioned as a bride for Prometheus, is wholly absent from the account but for (what I take to be) one powerful reference:

Chorus
Did you perhaps go further than you have told us?

Prometheus
Yes, I stopped mortals from foreseeing doom.

Chorus
What cure did you discover for that sickness?

Prometheus
I sowed in them blind hopes.

[CC licensed image by Whistling in the Dark]

I was also intrigued by the setting (and thus the staging) of the play. All of the action takes place on a single promontory and Prometheus, the main character is bound and nailed to a rock, practically immobile (a part I was born to play, incidentally). There’s very little meaningful stage direction. It made perfect sense in my head, but I wondered how it was presented to audiences… and what it might look like to do so now…

Side Note 1: Have you ever heard of The Prometheus Society?

Side Note 2: Have you seen the Prometheus Collage?

Posted in: Art & Life & Politics, reading log 5 Comments »

[CC licensed photo by Ell Brown]

Writing anything about Hamlet is to be a decided amateur, a devoted duffer. The hopelessly amateur golfer likely loves the game, knows the course(s) he plays inside and out, immerses herself in the world and lore of the sport, and knows that there’s nothing he can do that hasn’t been done before and better by those before… but he loves the hell out of it all anyway. I know I’ll never be the equal of Hamlet– or the critics who have written so much about it– but I feel compelled to write anyway.

I need some kind of full-page-size highlighter or underlining device when reading Hamlet. There’s hardly a page (a half-page in the edition I’ve been reading) that doesn’t have a passage worth noting. The blue veins of my underlining throughout the text indicate a dense circulatory system of creativity and brilliance. I don’t have the superlatives needed to describe how mind-blowingly good Hamlet was this time around, though I was re-reading it for the umpteenth time. I give a lot of credit to the excellent annotations of the Arden edition of the text which put a bright light on many subtleties and allusions I’d previously missed. The verbal riches of this play alone are absurd.

I wouldn’t say Hamlet is wasted on the young, but it’s a play that deserves to be read slowly and attentively as an older adult. What I appreciate about Hamlet can be likened to an expanding set of concentric circles… what I liked about it in high school, then what I understood in college, what moved me so much in my mid-20s, and the amazing importance it has assumed for me in my late 30s. There are so many layers of wordplay, so many levels of humor and wisdom, and so many mysteries and ambiguities in the nature of the characters (some intentional, some perhaps not) that I doubt I will ever come close to unraveling and getting a fix on even a simple majority of them. So, if these notes are a bit scattered, so be it. It’s my blog; I’ll ramble if I want to.

This time around, I’ve been rethinking my thoughts about the character of Hamlet… and I’m going to write a bit about that despite the danger of becoming disconnected from the play and/or immersed in myself, both of which I think someone whose name I can’t remember had in mind when they wrote:

"Hamlet without Hamlet has been thought about all too much."

I’ve never been comfortable with the common notion that Hamlet represents the inability to act that comes from excessive contemplation. Since my first reading I’ve felt Hamlet wasn’t conflicted about what to do nor was "to be or not to be" a reflection on any simple decision(s) such as suicide, taking action against Claudius, or being responsible to one’s core beliefs. My idea has been that Hamlet was "broken," not in the traditional sense of madness (unless one engages in a kind of regression ad absurdum, asserting that Hamlet’s madness must be real because his feigned madness is so effective, and so on), but in having somehow gone through to the other side of anger and frustration into that realm of pure angry clarity, where taking action is probably best left a temptation, and consideration of that action a kind of succor. Doesn’t this better explain how the "indecisive" Hamlet can maintain his act of madness, down to the winking asides, while so capably skewering Polonius– verbally and then literally– and so easily take action when he must? If we consider that Hamlet kills Polonius not out of (just) anger at Polonius’ close ties to Claudius (from Hamlet’s perspective, and mine, Polonius must suspect Polonius of, at best, willful ignorance regarding Claudius’s treachery) but because Gertrude cries out for help and implies that she could be in mortal danger, and how deftly and quickly he outmaneuvers and puts in place a counter plot to foil the foils in the form of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it seems to me that Hamlet is decisive when he needs to be.

And that’s the key– there’s no indecision in Hamlet when he needs it. So why is he seen as indecisive and ineffectual? Because that’s one way of interpreting the long-pauses and self-talking soliloquies. Another way would be that Hamlet is waiting, an act of great rationality and prudence. Claudius must act. Hamlet will wait for him to do so in order to ensure that when he strikes, he does so most decisively. If anything, Hamlet is showing great restraint in taking action through such a circuitous route.

But, serendipitously, I’ve been reading Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy and he has a take on Hamlet’s position that encompasses and exceeds my own. He writes:

The ecstasy of the Dionysian state, with its obliteration of the customary manacles and boundaries of existence, contains, of course, for as long as it lasts a lethargic element, in which everything personally experienced in the past is immersed. Because of this gulf of oblivion, the world of everyday reality and the world of Dionysian reality separate from each other. But as soon as that daily reality comes back again into consciousness, one feels it as something disgusting. The fruit of that state is an ascetic condition, in which one denies the power of the will. In this sense the Dionysian man has similarities to Hamlet: both have had a real glimpse into the essence of things. They have understood, and it disgusts them to act, for their action can change nothing in the eternal nature of things. They perceive as ridiculous or humiliating the fact that they are expected to set right again a world which is out of joint. The knowledge kills action, for action requires a state of being in which we are covered with the veil of illusion—that is what Hamlet has to teach us, not that really venal wisdom about John-a-Dreams, who cannot move himself to act because of too much reflection, because of an excess of possibilities, so to speak. It’s not a case of reflection. No!—the true knowledge, the glimpse into the cruel truth overcomes every driving motive to act, both in Hamlet as well as in the Dionysian man. Now no consolation has any effect any more. His longing goes out over a world, even beyond the gods themselves, toward death. Existence is denied, together with its blazing reflection in the gods or in an immortal afterlife. In the consciousness of once having glimpsed the truth, the man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of being; now he understands the symbolism in the fate of Ophelia; now he recognizes the wisdom of the forest god Silenus. It disgusts him.

"Absurdity" was the missing, important aspect of my own conception. Shakespeare spends a lot of time establishing just how smart Hamlet is. Perhaps Hamlet is too smart and, because of this, he perceives an existential absurdity that would only be explicated directly hundreds of years later by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Sartre, etc (and that essentially created modernism, and that I can trace with even my meager knowledge of dram as a line from Hamlet through Waiting for Godot to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). It is a terrible clarity, but one with much deeper roots than the anger I’d always attributed it to.

And to take it just a bit further, this has completely– and unwittingly– informed my own thinking about existence and suicide, inclinations toward the latter of which are surely part of the reason I (and probably many others like me) glommed on to Hamlet so readily. If one looks around and truly feels that there’s nothing that he or she can change, that the world rolls on regardless, that only a most famous handful will have any existence even in memory– and even that ethereal reflection of existence owes as much to happenstance and/or tragedy than any action on their own parts– then any action feels ineffectual and one’s position absurd. In the face of that, when the easiest action is to, in effect, give up and swallow the bromides of self-help or just lay back and let the waves carry you where they may, wrapped up in television, sports, Facebook, and the like, isn’t suicide in some sense a most courageous act? Not the most courageous– that respect I reserve to those who maintain that there is some intrinsic value in a certain kind of action, the people who for no reason other than that they’ve reached a point of being comfortable with actions-in-themselves, maintain their manners even while the plane they are on is going down– but an act nevertheless as likely borne of heart as cowardice?

And I think my feeling that Hamlet has inhabited this kind of exceptional clarity is further supported by his final words:

You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time–as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest–O, I could tell you–
But let it be.

Isn’t it likely that what he could have told Horatio was the secret of existence as a theater of the absurd no more or less rational than the very theater (and the theater within the theater) that was his– and every one else’s life?

This is the kind of stuff that tempts me toward serious literary investigation and criticism despite knowing how poisonous such pursuits can be for me if I’m not extremely careful…

I find myself rethinking other characters as well. Polonius is often played for laughs with his overwrought language and excessive deference. But I wonder if he isn’t quite a bit sharper than we would suppose. Though Hamlet gets the best of him in their verbal jousting, who would not? It seems clear to me that the deferential way in which Polonius approaches Claudius is quite different from the way he approaches Hamlet. In the former he is exercising prudence; in the second he is administering a test.

Polonius doesn’t get a lot of time to make a case for himself. Our perception– as with most of the play– is really that of Hamlet. The parallel between Hamlet’s verbal humiliation of Polonius and his similar goring of Osric, when the two victims are poles apart in even the least charitable reading, has to call Hamlet’s assessment of Polonius into question. Further, in one of the few scenes in the play in which Polonius can speak freely, he acquits himself rather well, explicitly apologizing to Ophelia for being wrong about the cause of Hamlet’s madness:

I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not quoted him: I fear’d he did but trifle,
And meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy!
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the king:
This must be known; which, being kept close, might move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love.

This can be played for more laughs, but it seems a bit of a stretch to me. Polonius still doesn’t understand what is afflicting Hamlet, but thats hardly a serious knock against him, all things considered!

Finally, I also feel I’m coming to a clearer understanding of the role of Horatio as more than mere foil. Horatio’s background, like some other "simple" details in the play, is muddled (just how old is he anyway?)– at one point he is cast as relatively new to Denmark, at another he’s explaining Denmark’s internal politics with some authority, but he’s clearly Hamlet’s best friend. Or does he become so as the play progresses and partly as a function of Rosencrantz and Guildensterns’ unwitting betrayal?

And again, presaging an implication of Nietzsche’s argument (which I read only after jotting this down in my notebook), is Horatio’s willingness to sacrifice his own life at the end of the play a simple matter of being bonded to a best friend or is he performing for us the role of an audience member to the tragic finale, one who is– as we are meant to be– moved at the dramatic height of the action into forgetting his self in true Dionysian fashion?

I could go on at much greater length, but I’ve exhausted my time (and energy) for the moment. Perhaps I’ll throw in some additional thoughts along with my commonplace book entries.

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There are few authors you can readily find in as many different editions as you can Shakespeare. As the first entry in the Shakespeare category of my 101010 Challenge, I’ve been reading the Arden Hamlet (3rd Edition), which is certainly the most comprehensive single-volume edition I’ve ever seen, not just in terms of annotations, but also featuring an extensive historical background, information on stage productions of the play since the 1700s, an intensely thorough explanation of the process used to make decisions on the text as presented, a thorough bibliography, etc. The annotations are exhaustive– often including notes about how actors have interpreted particular points or the approach of different productions– and exhausting:

For Hamlet, which I’ve read many times, the Arden is a great choice. I find myself underlining and commenting about the notes nearly as often as the text of the play! But for other plays, such as Julius Ceasar, which is next on my list and which I’ve only skimmed once in college, I’m considering an edition with fewer and shallower annotations. I find the notes, particularly as they are situated on the page and often taking up more space than the play itself, practically impossible to ignore… and in the Arden edition they are complex enough that sussing the annotations turns into a major distraction from the play.

I want an annotated edition because, though I’m not a half-bad reader, there are still many terms and allusions in any Shakespeare play that I know only vaguely, if at all, many of which are critical to understanding what’s going on.

So, I’m investigating other editions, including the locally available Yale Annotated Julius Ceasar, and Barnes & Noble Shakespeare series volumes.

At the price of most, I’ll probably end up buying a few different editions… any suggestions?

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[Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis]

Alcestis tells the story of King Admetus who, thanks to Apollo (who worked for Admetus while in exile from Olympus), has been granted life beyond his time to die. In exchange, Admetus must find someone who will replace him in death. After Admetus’s parents refuse to die so that he should live, his wife, Queen Alcestis, agrees to do so. When she dies, Admetus’s good friend Heracles, who happens to arrive the same day, swears that he will bring Alcestis back from the dead.

Alcestis is often referred to as a tragi-comic play. The tragic is obvious. First, Alcestis’ long (relatively speaking) death, including words from Death himself, who rebuffs Apollo’s protests:

Death

Much talk. Talking will win you nothing. All the same,
the woman goes with me to Hades’ house. I go
to take her now, and dedicate her with my sword,
for all whose hair is cut in consecration
by this blade’s edge are devoted to the gods below.

And Admetus becoming unreasonably angry with–and thus estranged from–his father (who refused the offer to sacrifice himself for Admetus).

The comic is part farce, part irony. When Heracles arrives on the scene, Admetus doesn’t wish to turn him away and so misleads him into thinking that someone else has died in a kind of Abbott and Costello routine:

Heracles

What is the matter? Why is there mourning and cut hair?

Admetus

There is one dead here whom I must bury today.

Heracles

Not one of your children! I pray God shield them from that.

Admetus

Not they. My children are well and living in their house.

Heracles

If it is your father who is gone, his time was ripe.

Admetus

No, he is still there, Heracles. My mother, too.

Heracles

Surely you have not lost your wife, Alcestis.

Admetus

Yes and No. There are two ways that I could answer that.

Heracles

Did you say that she is dead or that she is still alive?

Admetus

She is, but she is gone away. It troubles me.

Heracles

I still do not know what you mean. You are being obscure.

Admetus

You know about her and what must happen, do you not?

Heracles

I know that she has undertaken to die for you.

Admetus

How can she really live then, when she has promised that?

Heracles

Ah, do not mourn her before she dies. Wait for the time.

Admetus

The point of death is death, and the dead are lost and gone.

Heracles

Being and nonbeing are considered different things.

Admetus

That is your opinion, Heracles. It is not mine.

Heracles

Well, but whose is the mourning now? Is it in the family?

Admetus

A woman. We were speaking of a woman, were we not?

Heracles

Was she a blood relative or someone from outside?

Admetus

No relation by blood, but she meant much to us.

Heracles

How does it happen that she died here in your house?

Admetus

She lost her father and came here to live with us.

Heracles, not knowing Alcestis has died, proceeds to revel:

[Heracles] took a cup with ivy on it in both hands
and drank the wine of our dark mother, straight, until
the flame of the wine went all through him, and heated him,
and then he wreathed branches of myrtle on his head
and howled, off key.

Until an exasperated servant berates him and they realize Admetus has tricked him.

The timeline of the play from this point on is a bit jarring. Heracles speaks with Admetus, swears to rescue Alcestis from death and then, with only a brief interlude from the chorus, has returned from his quest and without much further ado, the play is over.

Alcestis is a rich play, given its age and brevity. It’s interesting to me that the play is called Alcestis, but in fact it is really the story of Admetus. Alcestis’ character is pretty clear from the beginning. Admetus’ actions are (and remain) more ambiguous. Is he a coward for accepting the bargain that extended his life? Does it make it better that he, at least, recognizes himself as such now… when it is too late to change anything? Is he right to berate his father for not sacrificing himself after a long, happy life? And then, when he takes the veiled woman’s hand at the end, is he guilty of intending to betray Alcestis’ dying wish—that he assented to—that he take up with no one else after she is gone?

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The Little Monk:

There will be no meaning in their misery. Hunger will simply mean not having eaten, rather than being a test of strength. Hard work will simply be bending and lugging, and not be a virtue.

Galileo:

There will be no meaning in their misery. Hunger will simply mean not having eaten, rather than being a test of strength. Hard work will simply be bending and lugging, and not be a virtue.

–Bertolt Brecht
from Galileo

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I revisited the Oedipus plays because I’d never read Oedipus at Colonus and the others were read first when I was too young and then as part of a University death-march through Ancient literature.

I was surprised how powerful the plays were in both mythological conception and language. I missed so much the first and second time around. If you’ve never read them– or only read them as required reading at some point, treat yourself and try them again. I recommend the Fagles or Fitzgerald translations… but good enough versions are freely available online.

(more…)

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