The armor of a dead man

From director Jim Sheridan’s forward to In America: A Portrait of the Film:

When I was doing my own story, I thought a lot about Bloom and his dead son, and the resonance throughout Ulysses, of Shakespeare, and of Hamlet in particular. And when I wondered if it was right to do such a personal story and cannibalize my own life, I remembered that the great Shakespeare had a child called Hamnet and that three years after his son’s death, he took out an old play and rewrote it.

And not only did he rewrite it, he went in the lonely isolation of backstage, he put on the armor of a dead man, and he clunked out on stage as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. That idea has always struck me as profound. A live man in dead man’s clothes talking to his dead son, alive, in front of him, on stage and asking for revenge. Shakespeare must have been tough, I thought, to keep the deep baritone of the ghost intact.

Life-changing books

El País recently surveyed 100 Spanish-language authors about the top ten books that changed their lives. (Here is a PDF of the complete list of the authors and their choices.)

A few interesting bits:

• The top five authors turned out to be (from one to five) Cervantes, Proust, Homer, and Kafka (in both fourth and fifth place).
• Jorge Luis Borges is number one of the Latin American authors mentioned.
• Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamozov is number one on Horacio Castellanos Moya's list.
• Alberto Manguel's first pick was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• Javier Marías placed both Richard III and Macbeth at the top of his list.
• Proust's In Search of Lost Time was at the top of Antonio Muñoz Molina's list.
• Iván Thays has Ana Karenina at the top, with Pale Fire a close second.
• Enrique Vila-Matas' number one is Kafka's Diaries.
  

(With thanks to A.)

Intertextual intermarriage

Eric Griffiths' "Dante, Primo Levi and the intertextualists" is a wonderful essay that explores the erstwhile uses, true definitions, and revelatory functions of intertextuality. Perhaps I'm quoting too liberally here, but I suppose it's more for myself than anyone else. This is the sort of writing I never tire of rereading:

At one point during Dante’s impersonation of Arnaut Daniel, in Purgatorio 26, there occurs a word, “escalina”, which, Prue Shaw points out, “exists neither in Provençal nor Italian”. Amid the gloss of the mosaic, her knowledgeable eye singles out, as it were, one square of matted chewing gum. Maybe the agent Dante mistakenly believed there was such a word; maybe he thought it ought to exist and made it up (neologism is a permanent possibility in any language, reluctantly though langue admits this); maybe a corrupt scribe had a hand in the text, and Arnaut was not describing Dante as “al som de l’escalina” – “on the highest pavement of the stair”, as T. S. Eliot, whom the phrase haunted, once translated it – but as “ses dol e ses calina” (“without pain and without heat”). No system can spare us these “maybe”s. You may call this “literary word” an “intersection of textual surfaces”, but that will not help you cope with the fact that what we come across at this intersection is a crux.

And

Milton’s great poem is not, as Bakhtin was inclined to label all epics, “monological” but in dialogue over time with himself, both intersubjective and intra-subjective. This is why it often sounds like a play by Shakespeare. Sometimes the resemblances are probably happenstances. When, at the outset, he promises his readers “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”, we had better not hear “unattempted yet” as an echo of the same words from King John, Act Two, scene one (line 601), where the Bastard torrentially reflects that the only reason he is railing against bribery is that nobody has so far troubled to try greasing his palm. We discount this as “static”, interference from a shared, but insignificantly shared, atmosphere, unless we impute to Milton a desire to hint with inordinate faintness that we should think of him as a bastard, too. But when Satan leads Eve to the forbidden tree, and she explains that it is off-limits to her, “To whom the tempter guilefully replied. / Indeed?”, a family resemblance between two tempters may strike us. We can hear here an echo of that “Indeed?” with which in Act Three, Scene Three, Iago initiates Othello’s downfall. Textually, and a fortiori intertextually, there is more in common between Milton and the Bastard than between Satan and Iago – two words rather than one – but if we personify “Indeed?”, embody it with camp surprise and mock solicitude, with the paraded reasonableness that comes pat to both these insinuators, we find they are a match for each other.

And

An unargued preference for “more general discursive structure” over attention to a “particular intertextual source” or two has the further drawback that it conduces to fetishism of the categories brought to bear on utterances. “Structure”, “system”, “genre” and “discursive formation” remain drastically under-described pseudo-entities; like nation states, their existence and frontiers acquire a bogus solidity. As in nationalist historiography, sham demarcations are established; a weird protectionism envelops the resultant intellectual domains, so that when a writer like Primo Levi alludes in one of his poems to the “Shema Yisrael” this is called “appropriation” (who was expropriated by it ?). Contributors to the Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi think it odd that Levi, a “secular humanist”, according to them, “nonetheless uses the language of the Hebrew Bible in his poetry”. Yet Levi “uses” terms, cadences and their implied commitments from Diodati’s 1603 Italian version of the Scriptures (he does not quote Hebrew) throughout his prose as well as his poetry. When he speaks of the “shame which il giusto experiences facing a crime committed by someone else”, the Italian word is the equivalent of the King James’s “the righteous”. When he is drawn, as he so often is, to people who are “mite”, like his best friend, Alberto, “la rara figura dell’uomo forte e mite, contro cui si spuntano le armi della notte” (“the rare example of a man at once strong and meek, against whom the weapons of the night fall away blunted”), the magnificence of his phrase stems from Wisdom 2:19 and Matthew 21:5 and the many other places where that notable intersection, Judaeo-Christianity, transvalued meekness. You don’t learn about these detailed realities of Levi’s writing from the Cambridge Companion; the contributors’ attachment to their own labels is such that they even describe “compassion and forgiveness” as “Christian virtues”, a slur on the Hebrew Bible if ever I heard one. For them, an iron curtain has fallen between the “cultural” and the “religious”, so they imagine Levi must be a double agent, engaged in “ironic rewriting of divine utterances in secular terms” (they do not mention what the point of his irony is), whereas, in fact, the Scriptures are already written in “secular terms”, there being no other terms available even to God, supposing he wishes to speak with his creatures. The Word itself, as Bakhtin said, has to be “embodied”, “enter another sphere of existence” and “become discourse”.

And

To hear why Levi in the camp heard Ulysses’s injunction “Considerate la vostra semenza” (“ask yourselves what seed you spring from”) as “come uno squillo di tromba, come la voce di Dio” (“like the sound of the trumpet, like the voice of God”: Deuteronomy 4:33, Jeremiah 4:19), you need to bear in ear the continuity of promise carried through the word “seed” from Genesis to the offertory of the Roman Catholic Requiem where it begs God to be freed from death “which of old you promised to Abraham and his seed”. You need to recognize this “seed” as enshrining a concept of human solidarity across times and frontiers, a concept at the heart of Levi’s resistance to the violence unleashed upon the “human” by pseudoscientific expertise about “race”, for example, by Mussolini’s hireling academics who in 1938 issued a manifesto proclaiming that “we must regard as dangerous theories which . . . include Semitic groupings within the scope of a common Mediterranean race . . . . The Jews do not belong to the Italian race”. When Levi describes in the words of Diodati’s version of Scripture his response to Dante, an unbelieving Jewish Piedmontese writer (exiled in Poland), nourished on the words of a bible translation made by a devout Tuscan Protestant (exiled in Switzerland), comes to life at the sound from his own mouth of the account given by a Florentine Catholic poet (exiled somewhere in what was not yet known as “Italy”) of the response given to a Roman pagan by a Greek pagan (self-exiled till drowned in the antipodes). I don’t think “intersection” is a good enough word for what happens here; “intermarriage” would be better.

(via Light Reading)

An antidote for dehumanization

In an essay in the print version of January's Arcadia, columnist Margarita Valencia discusses W.H. Auden, beginning with one of his essays on Shakespeare:

Auden asegura que lo que Yago hace con Otelo es un experimento científico, uno que culmina exitosamente en la medida en que logra convertir a Otelo en un objeto. "Conocer en el sentido científico significa, en últimas, tener poder sobre lo que se conoce. [...]", añade Auden. "Siempre es posible reducir a los seres humanos al estatus de cosas completamente conocibles desde el punto de vista científico y totalmente controlables". Esta fantasía de control total gracias a la ciencia, tan característica de la modernidad a la que Auden dio voz en su poesía, aun acompaña y sostiene las discusiones sobre el valor de las artes y de las humanidades, una de las manifestaciones más penosas de la insustancialidad cultural que pugnó por dominar el discurso en torno a la cultura en el siglo XX.

It's an insightful look at The Dyer's Hand and the increasing relevance of Auden's poetic philosophy in a climate of voluntary self-deception.

She concludes by affirming,

No puedo imaginar un mejor antídoto para la deshumanización que la poesía, cuyo único propósito, si es que ha de tenerlo, es desintoxicarnos y desencantarnos diciendo la verdad.

What Ann may have thought

Germaine Greer contemplates Ann Hathaway's reaction to Shakespeare's sonnets. Much speculation here, but interesting reading:

"It is entirely possible that Shakespeare's wife never read a word that he wrote," Stephen Greenblatt tells us in Will in the World. It is also possible, given the absolute absence of evidence to the contrary, that Ann Hathaway was blind. She may have been illiterate when Shakespeare met her, and he may have spent happy hours teaching her to read. [...]

It is more likely, however, that long before she became intimate with Will Shakespeare, Ann's Puritan family had made sure that she could read. By the 1580s, people who couldn't read were sensible of a spiritual as well as a social disadvantage, because they were barred from direct access to the word of God. In the winter, when there was little or no work for children in the fields, even the humblest farming villages set up dame schools, where girls were taught to read and sew, boys to read, write and cast accounts. Reading was essential if a woman was to follow her daily devotions; sewing provided for her and her family. In Shakespeare's plays we encounter men who cannot read, but never women.

This could also be seen as "evidence" in favor of Shakespeare himself writing all of this plays, as the issue of his wife and children's illiteracy is an argument sometimes used against this position.

(via Sarah Weinman)

An appreciation

[cross-posted at 400 Windmills]

This is World Book and Copyright Day, in memory of Cervantes, Shakespeare, and others. (It's quite fitting that we remember both Cervantes and the importance of intellectual property as Don Quixote wouldn't be the book it is without his creative act of self-defence: the novel's second part.)

At the Hay Festival in Cartagena this past January, Colombian author Jaime Manrique Ardila (Our Lives Are the Rivers; Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me) had some wonderful things to say about the book that has stayed with him the most: Don Quixote. He said he didn't understand anything the first time he read it at the age of 14, but that his vision of the world had irrevocably changed. While teaching in Massachusetts, he took a class on Don Quixote taught by a friend of his, who was dying of AIDS. It was an life-changing experience.

Manrique said he always wanted to teach it just to be able to read it again. He's read it five times--at the ages of 14, 21, 33, 45, and 52--and always feels like there's something more to understand. It's impossible to comprehend it all: only the heart can absorb Cervantes' humanity. Every page is a book. It takes Proust, Woolf, and everyone combined in order to compare to Cervantes (only Shakespeare rivals him).

He's spoken to Edith Grossman (who translated his volume of poetry, My Night with Federico García Lorca) about it. She's read it 14 times. He admitted that it was a bit unfair to pick Don Quixote as his most recommended book, as all books are based on it. Eduardo Lago, director of the Cervantes Institute in New York, was present as well and explained how he reads Don Quixote every ten years to see how he's changed.

Shakespeare's "Tarantino phase"

Scott McLemee spends some quality time with Titus Andronicus:

[Q]uestions of context and literary intertextuality are one thing, while the experience of watching the work itself performed is quite another. For Titus Andronicus is, to repeat, one batshit crazy play. It is surreal, nightmarish. It is also, to a surprising degree, rather vile. Some members of the audience weep, which is understandable; but I can testify that at least one patron wanted to take a shower afterwards.

(A friend of mine passed out while watching Julie Taymor's film version.)

During the forum at the Shakespeare Theatre over the weekend, Denise Albanese mentioned that she frequently teaches Titus at George Mason. I gave her a call to ask about that. And also, frankly, just because I wanted to discuss about the play with somebody who had lived with it for a while. (Exposure to its surrealistic overload does leave you wanting to “talk it off,” as it were.)

“It’s almost always the first play I teach,” she said. “I do that because very often students have only encountered Shakespeare in high school and have a misunderstanding of him as safe, moral, and dull. This one really dislodges the idea that Shakespeare is full of eternal moral truths. It takes place in a different world from what they expect.”

And how does Titus go over with her students?

“Many of them have a very hard time with it,” she told me. “They expect to be able to like somebody in a piece of literature, to find somebody they can identify with, and that is quite difficult in this case. It’s hard to identify with Titus, who kills his own son for dishonoring him. The moral ambiguity of the play is very, very difficult for some of them.”

Such confusion seems appropriate, in a way. Yet I suspect that there is a certain moral ambiguity about experiencing Titus Andronicus as containing moral ambiguity.

Old laughter

This might wind up sounding like one of those "you-had-to-be-there" things, but I think some would agree that when you read something aloud it can seem much funnier than if you were simply reading it to yourself. Such was the case with L.M. Montgomery's The Golden Road (sequel to The Story Girl, which is also excellent). The children write and edit their own magazine, contributing anything from essays on "My Most Exciting Adventure" to local gossip and fashion notes. Years ago, I would spend hours reading Montgomery's stories to my younger sisters...and for some reason, I still can't read this one with a straight face:

ESSAY ON SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare's full name was William Shakespeare. He did not always spell it the same way. He lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and wrote a great many plays. His plays are written in dialogue form. Some people think they were not written by Shakespeare but by another man of the same name. I have read some of them because our school teacher says everybody ought to read them, but I did not care much for them. There are some things in them I cannot understand. I like the stories of Valeria H. Montague in the Family Guide ever so much better. They are more exciting and truer to life. Romeo and Juliet was one of the plays I read. It was very sad. Juliet dies and I don't like stories where people die. I like it better when they all get married especially to dukes and earls. Shakespeare himself was married to Anne Hatheway. They are both dead now. They have been dead a good while. He was a very famous man.

FELICITY KING.

(PETER, MODESTLY: "I don't know much about Shakespeare myself but I've got a book of his plays that belonged to my Aunt Jane, and I guess I'll have to tackle him as soon as I finish with the Bible.")