The Brothers Karamazov

I finished the book about a week ago. It was a good read… all the way until the end, when I was somewhat surprised. Alyosha’s speech seemed to be on such a note of happy idealism that was a tad too dramatic and idealistic for me, in some ways I felt that the ending could have been better. I was expecting something dead realistic. ‘That’s how the world is, live with it, but live on christ-like’. Alyosha’s speech was more along the lines of ‘Whatever happens, let us live on with Hope and Love!’ You can argue that the content is by and large the same, but the tone was totally different.

I gave it some thought and eventually realised, upon a second reading of the ending, that it’s not altogether so incongruent with the rest of the novel. After all, is not a central theme in Dostoevsky’s novelistic outlook about Amazing Grace? That no matter what happens, how debauched Dmitry might be, he can be assured of Grace, most aptly portrayed in the form of his brother, the ‘cherub’ Alyosha? No matter how filthy and downtrodden human nature may be, there is always a sparkle of that noble aspiration to goodness, as Dmitry’s Confessions in prose and verse, show? (I must admit, I liked that section of the whole near-1000 page novel – it left an impressionable mark on me). What better way to end the novel than to introduce that little sparkle of hope in the otherwise dreary ending to the novel, where Dmitry was convicted of a crime he did not commit and sent to Siberia, and Ivan with not much hope of living?

Although I like the book for its explorations of such themes as human nature and guilt, and redemption and forgiveness, I cannot help but admit that certain places left me feeling rather letdown. For one, Dostoevsky seems to paint stock characters. His characters are larger than life, improbable, and he does not seem to care much about what happens to them as a character per se (we never see Alyosha marry although his starets, who has this prophetic quality about him, has predicted it, and in spite of the fact that his lifelong friend, Lise, had confessed earlier on in the novel about her ardent feelings for him and we see him reciprocating. And what will come out of Ivan in the end? Will he live? And barring that, what will happen of his tortured soul, between atheism and his desire to believe?), as long as he is able to use them to flesh out his main themes. His dramatic, sometimes gripping, pace of narration holds the reader in breathless suspense until the end, which was disappointing since I was already caught up in the whole chase-the-narrative mode until I squared with Alyosha’s somewhat anticlimax ending.

As regards the point I am going to make, this is probably personal, but I feel as though Dostoevsky had not really elucidated his themes really well. For a novel this size, I left off feeling like all I got were memorable snippets, such as Dmitry’s Confessions, The Grand Inquisitor, The Onion, The Devil visits Ivan etc. Towards the end, during the long trial, when Dostoevsky begins to dig into earlier parts of the novel which you would not have suspected to be part of the evidence against Dmitry’s committing the murder, I had already forgotten most of them and only had a faint inkling that I’d seen those before… It’s not surprising, I suppose, that when I finally put the novel down and was trying to analyse it in terms of themes and message, that I found the task insurmountable. I resolved to consult a critic’s works instead of go solo.

That said, however, I loved those scenes, they are really inspiring in terms of portraying the eternal struggle between rationalistic Ivan and his desire to believe, his conscience and his statement that ‘everything is permissible’, the strumpet Grushenka (for that really seems to be the main essence of her character, although I own that when she loves she loves steadfast – if only for a moment) and her sudden admission of granting an onion (an altruistic act counter to her base nature) and owning that she is like that old woman who granted an onion in that fairy tale… who will save Grushenka? In those memorable snippets I think I find the best this novel has to offer. It is touching, in a way completely Dostoevsky-an, the way these seemingly irredeemable characters can, in their most debased hour, suddenly turn in a frenzy and confess to nobler sentiments, and all in a way that actually moves people, instead of appear farcical. In a sense it is at these moments when I think I see a sneak-peek into the human condition: whatever the basest of characters may be, there be moments of introspection when they, in like frenzy, confess to better aspirations, if only… True to life, Dostoevsky’s characters return to the dirt and grime their impassioned states seem to be inevitably drawn to. Realistic and poignant, it is this that draws the reader to Dostoevsky.

The Seventh Seal

Ingmar Bergman’s critically acclaimed black-and-white medieval movie that reminds me more of a play.

Was browsing around the local library for the Dekalog to continue my episode-watching when I realised that the one and only copy was borrowed. I stumbled upon this and knowing my friend to have expressed her wish to watch it once, I peered with interest at the blurb and its first sentence about a knight, freshly returned from the crusades in the holy country for ten years, challenging Death to a game of chess to decide his impending fate, caught my eye.

I watched the film twice, the first time with the commentary on (this, after a previous bad encounter with Jean Cocteau’s Orphee, which I couldn’t understand unaided), and, not entirely getting the film, I watched it again unaided.

I’m come to think that the entire film revolves around the central theme of Death, which it is preoccupied with, and by implication, Life – the joys of being alive, the meaning of, and what can one know of the otherworld, if there is one (something that the knight’s squire, a cynic, refutes) beyond Death. And, it seems, inevitable in a Bergman film, the idea of religion.

Part of the reason why this film leaves a favourable impression on me, despite the rather stiff portrayal of characters and their movements, and the seemingly random scene-to-scene progression, is because of its medieval theme. I haven’t really seen a film that brings medieval times so much to life. The attire, which is strange enough to belong to that era, yet carries a rugged simplicity about it, fitting an era which had much less of the splendours of our current generation, the general simple make-up of the flimsy cart and the wagons, the modes of transport, the tavern with its straw laiden floor and the swine trodding them alongside the humans, the solemn yet messy procession of flagellants flogging themselves for God’s glory without pomp and ceremony – all these, probably a side-effect of a low-budget movie shot within 52 days in the summer, produced the ordinariness that lends the film an authenticity of portrayal of those times that I believe most other modern films cannot match up to.

Something of the medieval nature of the film is given by the ‘random’ scenes in the film – it just does not flow the way Hollywood movies and their equivalents do. How does a solemn round of chess with Death flow seamlessly into a lively tavern scene, or how does a scene of a medieval play synchronise with a (mock)bawdy scene of the seduction of an actor by a smith’s wife? To me this is reminiscent of a Shakespearean play – bare settings, stiff acting, scenes that are plainly separate and distinct, instead of melting into each other in a trend of continuity that seems to be all the rage these days. The beauty and essence of Bergman’s film is arguably in his Message, as evinced through the speech of the artistes, and the accompanying gestures and facial expressions. It has too much of a staged-up, dramatic, pregnant with meaning feel to be truely realistic. But then again, that wasn’t its aim.

Death is the central concern of the film, I see in the Knight a reflection of myself at my most doubtful moments regarding God’s existence. The Knight is tired of his life, which has been a meaningless search. What for? For definite knowledge of God’s existence, it seems. He does not want belief, he wants knowledge. He wants to know for sure that He exists, and not have Christ live painfully and in such a humiliating way, behind shrouds of doubt and speculation. He wants certainty, and it is in part for this knowledge that he desires a wager with Death, as the latter seeks him, in the form of a fateful game of chess in which Death would spare him if he wins, but claim him if he loses. I didn’t see it the first time round, but this is evident in the Confessions encounter he has with Death, and later, when, at the last chess encounter with Death, when the knight responds that Death will reveal his secrets when he comes to claim the knight and his friends the next time they meet. Unfortunately for the knight, Death replies candidly that he does not know anything, that he is ‘unknowing’. Belief (which seems impossible for the knight), or cynicism (of which his realistic Squire is the embodiment of), seems to be a necessary choice that the wavering knight has to make.

In a sense I am tempted to see the Knight as the representation, Everyman, in this allegory of every man’s universal wager with Death.

I cannot, however, figure out a couple of questions that remain lingering after I viewed the movie twice. Firstly, as the disbelieving son of a pastor/priest/church figure of a Father, Ingmar Bergman, I believe, associated more with the Squire than anyone else in the play, as Peter Cowie, the movie critic who gave the commentary, claims. If so, I cannot quite reconcile his ending with the consistent portrayal of the Squire’s ’superiority’ over the Knight in everyday matters – the Squire’s realism makes him the ’saviour’ of the mystic girl who would have been raped if not for his intervention, an aid to the smith and indirectly a help in the reconciliation of the smith and his wife, an equal ’saviour’ to the poor Joseph who was bullied at the inn, and Justice when he branded the seminarist. In stark contrast the Knight is the one whose idealism and subsequent pessimism tortures his inner soul, which had to be soothed and temporarily revived through Joseph and Mary’s hospitality over a bowl of wild strawberries and fresh milk. Why then, is the Squire also in the Dance of Death, when the more religious amongst them, his girl and the Knight’s wife, as it were, are not included? Why give the final triumph to religion?

And the weirdest part is that Joseph and Mary and little Michael, a parellel with the Holy Family, are the only persons in the fateful party who escaped from Death for the moment at the end of the story.

It is hard to reconcile this with the obvious portrayal of religious characters throughout the movie in a bad light. The seminarist resorts to stealing and attempted rape, the priest (I’m not sure if it is) at the head of the flogging procession stops to address the crowd in derogatory terms, insulting them and instilling fear if only for the purpose of turning them towards Christ and their salvation in this way. The priests are said to have been more approving of immolation for one’s sins than eternal suffering in hell. Death is twice disguised as religious personnel, once as the priest at Confession and another time as the monk who has broken the arms of the witch. Yet the pious are given such wonderful acclaim. Joseph and Mary and Michael are saved, the Squire’s girl tries to save the Seminarist when he is struck by the plague despite his earlier attempts to rape her, and she and the Knight’s wife are spared from the solemn Dance of Death. The only plausible way of reconciliation seems to be that Bergman, whilst distrustful of religion and its fanatic, oppressive leaders (not surprising, given his childhood), is nevertheless drawn by the good-naturedness of the pious, which I believe he credits to their simplicity rather than their piety.

Literature is Didactic: 23/5/08

I must not forget 23 May 2008.

On the morning of the 23rd of May 2008, I was reading a section of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and afterwards I viewed the Dekalog. I think it was episode trzy (three). Then I had an epiphany: Literature teaches!

Later on I rode the bus to HKU whereon I was reading a book, ‘Why literature matters’ whose message was in accordance with what I was thinking about earlier.

Literature has a message. In The Brothers Karamazov, which others call a dark novel (I actually thought it was pretty optimistic), Dostoevsky interspersed sudden unexpected confessions from his characters of their guilt, their downtrodden natures, but, and most importantly, the hope they have of salvation and of divine grace descending upon them. The message is of man’s fallen nature and grace. I believe there are other themes as well, but the one that strikes me most is this.

The Decalogue also has a message, episode three was about honouring the sabbath, and, as I wrote earlier in a previous entry, I believe that it was kept, somewhat unconventionally. The series can be rather perplexing and grayscale in its message (it does not admit of a clear answer), and is food for thought.

But what distinguishes literature from hard-core thinking subjects like philosophy, for example, the book asserts, is (inter alia) literature’s sensuousness. Spot-on, it hit on the reason why I prefer literature. Literature is subtle. Literature does not seek to explicitly put forward its axioms and whatnot. Instead it spins a narrative, and sometimes does so in such a realistic manner that one is drawn into another world, but one no less realistic from the real one, whereby one learns to contemplate universal issues that have equal relevance in reality. One can choose how much one will really devote to rumination, but most of the time the author’s craft is such that one is drawn in, and one slowly starts to think…

Another great aspect of literature is that it does not always admit of a clear answer. When things are in narrative format it is hard to see it in definitive terms. The author’s ’solution’ may not always be agreed with, and at any rate, one can always think about alternative causes of action that led to the outcome in the narrative apart from what the author points out (I am thinking about Hardy’s idea of Fate leading to the demise of Jude and Sue in Jude the Obscure – at some points I believe that, had Jude and Sue been a little more clear-minded, they could have avoided their tragic outcomes). Literature does not command acceptance, it is not a proposition in philosophy or a theory in science that has first to be accepted before the rest of the exposition can go on (at least, not that necessary – I know that sometimes the author’s firmly held beliefs shape the way of his narrative and the reader feels at points so irritated and frustrated that he is ready to fling the book to the floor. But the essence of my argument is, the author has not at any point required the reader to accept his presuppositions before being able to carry on reading the narrative – the reader can disagree, and still reach the end of the work all the same).

I know I went on for a while and to the casual reader this may seem unnecessary. But having pondered and agonised over the question of why literature matters it was relieving to see that it has its importance and its place in society.

Dekalog: Trzy (The Decalogue Episode Three)

Just emerged from watching the third episode of the Decalogue.

This episode is modelled (or rather, inspired) by the third commandment of the Holy Ten: ‘Keep the sabbath day, for it is holy’. A married cab driver is – enticed? harangued? threatened? – by his ex-lover on Christmas eve to drive all around Warsaw to look for her errant new boyfriend who has ran away. It is eventually found that she has lied the night through to keep him with her because she is convinced that if she manages to keep him through the lonely night good luck will ensue.

Ewa, the ex-lover, is to all appearances a psychotic, manipulative and emotionally reliant, needy woman. Janusz, the cab driver, does not seem put off, although at moments in the film he coolly asks if she has had enough and would like to go home. Instead he seems, if mildly irritated, largely coalescing. It did puzzle me at first but as the film progresses I think that for all his new-found fidelity to his family (and not really his wife, really, we see that the love he has for her has quietened down considerably) Ewa still has a hold on him and his willingness to accompany her on this joy ride of sorts, despite knowing, by a very cunning and observant que, that she is lying (shan’t spoil the story for you), has got to do with his wanting to tie up loose ends in his past affair with him. The complications of adulterous relationships…

I cannot help noting with interest that although going on a goose chase all over Warsaw on Christmas eve with an ex-lover seems prima facie to be in direct conflict with the commandment, one cannot help feeling like Janusz has kept the commandment. The holiest thing he did was probably to help the broken (although fallen) spirit of Ewa: keeping her company on the loneliest of nights (for a single, emotionally let down woman devoid of family love – all she has for family is a senile aunt). Sometimes all people need is affection. And at the same time convincing himself of the true worth of his family, witnessed when he makes a decisive break from Ewa’s clutches and returns to his wife, who, in understated elegance and magnanimous, loving restraint, shows by a simple one-word question that she knows what he has been up to the whole time. Some comments I’ve seen online state that the ‘rendezvous’ showed him just how self-centred Ewa is and how, in all probability, their affair was, which motivated him to make a clean break. I concur.

Can’t type the rest of the themes that I’d gleaned from the movie over, rather pressed for time and hungry (lunchtime!). But I’ll leave a link to a site which discussed the episode:
http://artsandfaith.com/index.php?showtopic=876

The Brothers Karamazov – Still very unclear

The chapter where Ivan squares off with Smerdyakov.

We finally see Ivan losing his cool. Here the whole scene is underlined by a certain amount of pathos as we watch the usually very cool and rational Ivan suddenly losing himself somewhat erratically.

Dostoevsky does endear ourselves to this character. Makes me remember those times when someone hit a raw nerve.

Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

I started this book the day I finished my exams the Saturday before last (10 May). I’m a third through by now.

Intrigued by a referral and rough summary of his broad thematic message and his Grand Inquisitor chapter, I decided to tackle the book. It was an exciting, gripping and yes, intriguing read from the start.

I cannot believe how deranged a family this is. Yes, sometimes his portrayals border on the theatrical (and therefore the unbelievable), but critics are right to credit Dostoevsky for his vivid portrayals of humans. I think what impresses me most is the fact that in varying degrees even the most debauched characters think of the ‘univeral questions’ – God, sin, forgiveness, eternity, life etc.

Before I started the novel I thought I would like Ivan. It is true, I do like the character. He is impressive in his coolly rational manner, his (somewhat pseudo) intellectual qualities and the pathos of his belief-disbelief. But now somewhere deep into the Grand Inquisitor I find him a little… half-baked intelligent, somewhat contradictory, a little crazed, perhaps due to disillusionment (all the pity). Even, amazingly, somewhat annoying – why does he refuse to accept the painful truth? Perhaps he is annoying because he is incomprehensible to me (which, granted, is not very good grounds for feeling annoyed at anyone, or any character).

I thought I’d be neutral with regards Alyosha, but so far I’ve developed a liking for this angelic younger brother. I always had an impression that he was naively sticking to his beliefs, unquestioningly, but how wrong! Alyosha does question. The amazing fact is that despite his own questions and despite his brother Ivan’s doubt-ridden questions about faith that he hurls mercilessly at his own brother (I recall the amazingly frank quote that he loved his brother very much and didn’t want to lose him to the starets, the religious leader), Alyosha doesn’t budge. Such steadfastness deserves admiration.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Feminist Literature. I tried to put the book down at first with disgust at such a genre. It wasn’t exactly the most appealing type of literature for me.

However, due to personal reasons, I still had to go over her copy of Herland anyhow, so I thought, might as well.

I still haven’t really changed my opinionb of feminist literature, but I do think that Herland is a novel that, though not ecxactly the best that I’ve come across so far, has definitely eplored some areaswhic hI think was rather interesting. I like the author’s rather surprisingly new way of looking at a topic. Illustrating it, I should sauy.

Not only was the feminist movement rather different ain her age, the whole fresh new angle of seeing things was aptly portrayed by her use of a character from a female utopia to judge the social ills of our world.

Perhaps what strikes me most regarding this social aspect of her novel is how she shows we have all acclimatised ourselves, as it were, to the imperfections of this society such that we are no longer very much taken aback oabout things like war, overpopulation, cruelty, hatred and distrust, abortion, murder etc. In fact, we seem to have been effectly apatheticized, if there is such a word. We don’t even feel, apart from a rater removed theoretical angle, that this is wrong. We accept it silently as a way of nature, of life.

Perhaps it is this apathetic and nhelpless attitude that is slowly turning into nonchalance. I certainly feel that way. Nations feel that their conquest of other nations, their fight for more land, is something that is natural for a growing population. We see human history in terms of expansion and conquest. Nations are by and large apathetic to social problems that are apparent in other civilisations because they don’t concern one directly; and aid only seems to poiur in when the problem looks like it is going to remotely afffect one in some way or another.

But looking at other parts of our global population since Gilman wrote her novel somewhere near 1905 I am glad to see more cooperation intern-nationally, and more care for the global population at large. But that is not really the crux of the matter. I am slightly disturbed by the way that we come into this world as innocent children who become horrifyingly acclimatised to the bad climate of this world without really knowing it.

Perhaps Gilman’s book, whilst not my iddeal novel, really served one purpose at least: awakened the original concept of innocence in me.

Terra Nostra: the 1st Chapter

Terra Nostra is a novel by the South American writer Carlos Fuentes.

South American writing of the 20th century tends to fall into a genre known as magic realism, where elements of fantasy find themselves interwoven into what is otherwise a rather normal, believeable storyline. Thus readers are asked at times to temporarily suspend their rational faculties. It’s not full-blown fantasy, and thus can produce rather interesting effects. To me, it feels rather surreal sometimes.

Carlos Fuentes, when writing Terra Nostra, was reputedly supposed to have a lofty ambition – he wanted to write all novels. Interesting, isn’t it. A bit like Milton with his Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. So much so that the introduction to the book actually had another author saying that Fuentes could probably be Legion himself, attempting a diabolic, hubris-ridden reconstruction of history in its entirety, openly challenging the notion that only God can fully comprehend and perceive the world in all its different quarters in all ages.

This fact is immediately noticeable in one thing: the length of the book. It’s extremely thick.
I read only the first chapter. It’s interesting. It is Paris, current (modern) times. Yet Paris is full of the smell of rotting flesh, sweltering summer heat. Something feels like it’s dying, decaying.

Our main character (at least in this part of the narrative) does the following in sequence: dreamt a dream that states how incredible it is the first animal that dreamt of another (and similar things besides), watched his aged landlady (?) give birth to a son, receives a letter wherein some weird couple tells him what to name the son and how, in another time, this was his son, walks about the street carrying a signboard promoting food from the store which he works for (that’s his main duty), sees the women of Paris, young and old, giving birth, bumps into a peculiar girl, who turns out to be the lady in the couple pair who wrote to him. As she speaks to him a parrot (or some sound-emitting feathered creature) shrieks, ‘listen to my story, I want to tell my story’.

Then there’s the bit of chapter two that I read. Presumably this is the story. Philip II of Spain (I presume, since the book’s title list of characters introduces him as Felipe, El Senor, heir to Felipe, the Fair) is on a hunting trip and has some complications regarding the hart that he wants to chase but might not be able to catch, as it was apparently hunted for, then the narrative shifts to interior monologue where we catch a glimpse of his mental state in which the importance of a hunt to boost prestige and confidence in the royal family amongst his men is stressed, and something about his mastiff accidentally scratching him with the spikes on its collar and how Felipe is really worried about bleeding to death (maybe his blood cells can’t clot up fast enough).

Already I can see the magic realism in the first chapter, and the transition from first to second chapter, the employment of a narrative feature: the story within a story, as in the Arabian Nights.

Whilst typing this out I realised that the first chapter is also sort of concerned with the theme of Life and Death (giving birth, decaying Paris?) and possibly of reincarnation, with the hint of the newborn being his son in a different time and space. It’s a rather end-days scenario: the end of times, strange things (anomalies) happen – I mean, all women giving birth? – the birth of a figure from a past time frame, two mysterious characters claiming to know more than the eye beholds…

And what’s this thing about Felipe suddenly? It’s beginning to feel very much like a meta-narrative: the present, the past, all embodied in two beginning chapters of the novel. The past and the present are interlinked, interwoven, even, probably, existing at the same time. Reminds me very much of Borges and his experiments with the possibility of circular history, or even constantly occuring history.

Hamlet fascinates me!

I return to summarise the remaining half of what Bradley had to say.
Bradley’s next half didn’t add much to the argument in my opinion. He spins out more examples to prove his thesis that Hamlet delayed because of melancholy. Hamlet’s self-reproaches are supposedly meant to show that he thought the ghost was real and the command to be executed (I guess this excuses the theory that his inaction was caused by disbelief in the ghost), and his meditations on suicide just a few hours before the play was scheduled to start, showed that he was truly melancholic, otherwise his brooding speech ‘to be or not to be’ should have been replaced by a speech conveying worry at how his uncle would react to the murder play instead, which seems a more natural reaction.

Bradley moved on using a chronological approach, and deviated to say that as a matter of fact the King was not convinced with Hamlet’s feigned madness. He was rather alarmed by the fact that Hamlet ominously warned that ‘I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are’. An interesting point, I always felt that Hamlet’s feigned madness had an art to it, here and there traces of dramatic irony can be spotted.

Next Hamlet’s refusal to kill the King when he was on his knees attempting to pray is addressed: his soliloquy that began ‘Now might I do it’ is purportedly said to show that Hamlet ‘has no effective desire to do it’, a fact that is buttressed by the long pauses and melancholic phrases that follow after that, showing he is melancholic, after all. But Bradley argues that Shakespeare has nonetheless used this scene to his advantage: Hamlet’s feelings of hatred for the King and his reluctance to send him to heaven are still real, despite not being the real reason behind his delay, and this scene allows a heightened sense of admiration from the audience because Hamlet abstains from killing the King when he is vulnerable, a fact that is noble. In fact, his wishy-washyness about the whole affair is compensated in the immediate scene when, thinking the King was behind the curtains, he immediately fell on poor Polonius, showing once again that he had both the courage and the determination to weed the usurper. Again, when he leaves for England, it is ever on his mind to avenge his dead Father, Hamlet never seems to hesitate for a moment that that is his duty.

But once Hamlet returns to Denmark he is a changed man. There is in him now only a ‘resignation (that)… deserves the name of fatalism rather than that of faith in Providence… the Hamlet of the Fifth Act shows a kind of sad or indifferent self-abandonment, as if he secretely despaired of forcing himself to action, and were ready to leave his duty to some other power than his own’. I personally do feel the indifferent self-abandonment when he fences with Laertes, and one thing he says perhaps point it out pretty clear: ‘I loved you ever: but it is no matter’. Bradley points it out: ”Is is no matter’: nothing matters.’

The rest of the commentary is kind of insignificant to me. Bradley shows that Hamlet seems, amongst Shakespeare’s great inventions, to be a queer one with an odd way of repeating phrases once too often to be considered a coincidence, and reckons Shakespeare decided to invent a quirk in his character.

Then came something about Ophelia, Bradley trying to defend her character. Why is it that everyone blames Ophelia whilst they will always defend Desdemona as eternally pure? I myself feel the two are of about the same character. I’m pretty mild in my criticisms of each of them, but I think they never match up to Portia. Bradley tries the ’stage’ reason for Ophelia’s character: it was necessary that Ophelia was not an impressive character to steal the limelight or make the love story gain more significance as compared to the real theme, and if Ophelia had been of stronger material, Hamlet could have gone mad, or even more probable, died from suicide. Another more important defence was concerning Ophelia’s foolish obeyance of her father, buying into the plot to make Hamlet reveal his madness was feigned: Bradley argues she couldn’t have known for what wicked ends the revelation was pressed for. She’d probably thought everything was caused by her rejection of the Prince and so was trying her best to make amends. Personally I think everyone’s had their day when they do something unintentionally stupid and potentially dangerous so I’d spare Ophelia on that score.

As for the Queen, I liked Bradley’s quote of the day for her: her nature is hedonistically inclined, she is ‘like a sheep in the sun’, and loves to see everyone around her happy, ‘like more sheep in the sun’. I’m not a great fan of this sort so I kind of like the gentle insult. But it is true she dies a better woman than she was in the beginning, having been exposed finally to the suffering that she had (however unsuspectingly) been party to creating.

Lastly the King. Bradley made me see he is actually a greater figure than is generally thought of him. He is pretty capable, he sees through Hamlet’s feigned madness, suspects correctly the root cause of it, wooed the Queen partially through presents, which succeeds due to her ’sheep in the sun’ nature, and is shrewd enough to exploit Laertes’ anger and indignation into a temporary alliance against a common enemy.

Bradley finishes with a final comment drawing similarities between Hamlet and Macbeth, primarily, how the two plays seem to have an element of supernatural decision-making in them: supernaturally, both have otherworldly characters appearing in the play, and an interesting similarity lies in how, no matter how Macbeth tries to escape his fate and Hamlet delay in his mission and his Uncle trying to avoid his punishment, everyone is drawn to the tragic ending in the end. Like some sort of power is driving them irrepressibly to their rightful downfall…

Anyway, back to my title, why does Hamlet fascinate me? Although this sounds strangely proud I do feel there is some resemblance betweeen Hamlet and I, and it’s an ever-bugging question: why did Hamlet fail in the end? What was his hamartia? Could it be mine too? After Bradley I still don’t agree it is Melancholy, nor Reflection, I believe it to be Obsession. Hamlet is too obsessed with the Task at Hand – not about how to practically solve it, but all its aspects: the immensity, the moral implications, justifications, even the characteristics of it now (the current state of affairs) that these distract him from the real task. Of course, you can say, how’s that different from Melancholy? Or Reflection? I guess it’s not much different. Perhaps I just don’t like the nouns Bradley or Coleridge used.

Anyway reading Hamlet was like a literary self-help journey. It helped me to see that my problem might just be obsession. So now when I’m simply overwhelmed, I try to breathe in… bite the bullet, and go.

Talk about Shakespeare being a psychologist!

Why did Hamlet delay?

I finally accomplished my goal of reading Hamlet today. Special thanks to my lit ‘S’ course, my interest in the tragedy was aroused when I read more about the play in a commentary. Hamlet, according to one teacher of mine, is the only tragic hero in Shakespeare who is not stupid. Othello’s demise was due to his: (choose here) jealousy, inflexibility, dullness of mind etc., King Lear’s was due to his… well, to me, his dumbness and choleric haste in despatching Cordelia away, Macbeth’s, his ambition and his guilt (his dumbness lay in his execution of the murder, and his treacherous dealing of murdering all who ‘disturbed his sleep’), but Hamlet?

Reading A.C. Bradley on Hamlet, Coleridge and Schlegel labelled Hamlet as ‘The Tragedy of Reflection’. The central question about Hamlet, of course, is undoubtedly the question, ‘Why did Hamlet delay?” A deeply loyal and affectionate son to his murdered father, the Danish King, Hamlet was shown by the ghost of his father that his Uncle had murdered him, usurped the throne and married incestuously his wife the Queen. Hamlet is also instructed to avenge his father’s death. But he didn’t avenge him immediately, and the play goes on with Hamlet’s… indecision.

So why did he delay? Hamlet, as those who’ve read the book shall know, is no coward, nor a bookish scholar without guts. There was a view going about that he was the sort of person who, having spent 20 years at the University, was ‘thought-sick’ (Schlegel) , ‘loses himself in labyrinths of thought’ (Schlegel) , someone whom one would find ‘an almost enormous intellectual activity and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it’ (Coleridge). ‘The native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought’.
Other quotes included the speculation that ‘During the reign of the strong-willed elder Hamlet there was no call to action for his meditative son. He has slipped on into years of full manhood stil a haunter o the university, a student of philosophies, an amateur in art, a ponderer on the things of life and death, who has never formed a resolution or executed a deed’ (Shakespeare, his Mind and Art, 4th ed., pp 132, 133).

Or is it? Bradley raises a few doubts in response:
1. No one at court has classified him as a thinker in this manner.
2. Hamlet’s philosophy does not come across as the scholastic type, but more of the meditatively derived sort.
3. Famous philosophers and intellectuals have not been known to be extremely indecisive in this regard, thus the idea that the habit of a meditative and reflective life produces irresolution is but a myth.

Another typical view held was that ‘what Hamlet wanted was not a private revenge… it was public justice’, so he delayed in finding the right time to kill the usurper justifiably before the Danish public. But this is countered by the fact that Hamlet has never voiced out any external difficulties in his way, always assumes that he can obey the Ghost (’sith I have cause and will and strength and means / To do’t – Act IV, iv. 45), is so welcomed by the public that if Laertes can easily raise the people against the King, what more Hamlet? and the very fact that ‘Hamlet did not plan the play-scene in the hope that the King would betray his guilt to the court’, but rather because he wanted it as evidence for himself that the King was guilty, seems more than sufficient to rest this claim.

Another view was that Hamlet was restrained by ‘conscience or a moral scruple’, but Bradley argues that Hamlet at all times seems to believe that he must unquestioningly avenge his father. There is no trace of it being the other way. In his soliloquies where he blames himself bitterly for his neglect he does not cite moral scruples as a reason for delaying.
A subtler take on this same bend was that Hamlet felt consciously that he ought to avenge his father, but un-beknownst to his good self he felt ‘moral repulsion’ to the deed. But Bradley raises opposition:
1. If so, why did he not reveal this meaning until the last Act, in his speech to Horatio?
2. Looking to the part where Hamlet spares the King whilst he is praying: his reason being, he did not want to send the usurper to Heaven by killing him at this devout hour. If that was his unconscious thought, it certainly does not match up to a moral scruple by any standards.

Bradley’s answer to the question of All Time is: Hamlet’s indecision was caused by Melancholy. He was immediately spurred to this by the natural aversion a righteous soul like his was to the perversion of his mother’s incestuous re-marriage to his Uncle, his father’s brother, and the Court’s quiet acknowledgement of the matter. More so by the appearance of his Father’s Ghost with the ghastly revelation of his murder, and he slips into a melancholy that can be the only explanation for his tarrying. And why? It accounts for his varied temperaments in the play: his energy and his lassitude, how he can rejoice with exuberance at asking the players to stage a play mimicking the actual circumstances of the murder, yet bitterly scold himself for delaying in his actions, how he can greet his schoolmates with a ‘kind of joy’ at first, but later sink into ‘much forcing of his disposition’ to keep the joy afloat in the midst of his sadness.

My personal take on it? I can’t say I agree fully with Bradley on this matter. Hamlet strikes me as an artistic type, maybe not the sort who produces art, but who lives, immerses in and appreciates art. A spirit like that can be rather temperamental, as they live, love and hate passionately, but I would scarcely account all that for Melancholia.

Besides, Bradley did admit that ‘this pathological condition (Melancholia) would excite but little, if any, tragic interest if it were not the condition of a nature distinguished by that speculative genius on which the Schlegel-Coleridge type of theory lays stress’. I guess at the end of the day Bradley still wants to make his a valid point by citing Hamlet’s Melancholia as a by-product of his philosophical, reflective nature, but his argument that the tragedy would never be truly tragic if not for this attractive quality in Hamlet’s character is a point I want to make: I simply find it hard to agree with Bradley that Hamlet’s delay, a key component in the tragic spiral, should simply be cause by something as Melancholy, which would hardly effect any form of pity, sorrow or fear.

So why did Hamlet delay?