The Nature of Immortality

I am an teaching option English major and despite the fact that they are "cynical  vermin," I strongly believe that the influence that I have on my future High School students will have a considerable impact on not only their immediate lives but to the impact they themselves will have on the future as well and if I instill in them an appreciation for language, a love for the written word, and desire to learn that they can then pass on to their own students or children, in a way, I will never die.

I know that we are supposed to write a sonnet about this, and I will, but at a later date. I just wanted to write this down before I forget what I wanted to say. 

Pity Like a Newborn Babe and the "Linguistic Swoon"

 

  The complete passage from Macbeth reads: 

And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

 Personally, I envisioned a newborn baby wrapped in cloth, riding a hurricane-like storm fueled by his tears that is being driven by flying angel-horse hybrid creatures whilst crying into a megaphone he has plugged into an amp, "HORRID DEED!"   In a panic (not wanting to let the class down after my previously breathtaking work in "God in his PJ's") I looked up the quote on Google images for inspiration and found this William Blake painting. While his work captures the obviously violent vibe of the wild horse-drawn natural disaster, there is a serenity in the faces of the newborn and the body below that suggests a softer side of regret and vulnerability, leaving you with mixed feelings as to who you should have pity for.  The passage itself creates a very vivid picture with its description of what it would look like if the horrid deed was told with the volume and intensity that Macbeth would have it recalled with.  In just five lines, Shakespeare has created a very clear scene in the reader's mind. 

 

I realize that we will cover Macbeth later, but I'd like to take this opportunity to talk very briefly about the sensual nature of the language in Shakespeare's plays and how they evoke powerful emotion while playing on all of our senses.  Today we talked about Midsummer Night's Dream and how it is one of the most "voluptuous" plays and how it is difficult to read it without falling into a "linguistic swoon." 

Lysander's lines on the risky and fleeting nature of love could just as easily have said something to the effect of "even if two people love each other, a whole bunch of things can go wrong and their time together can go by faster than they thought it would." Instead he says this:

  "Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,

Brief as the lightning in the collied night;

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth,

And ere a man hath power to say “Behold!”

The jaws of darkness do devour it up.

So quick bright things come to confusion."

  As a reader or member of an audience watching the play acted out, we can feel the dread of looming sickness and death, hear the crack of lightning and see as it flashes across the sky and then vanish, and we understand just how fleeting and fragile love can be.  The words spoken in a Shakespeare play are in themselves an experience to be had both in the mind and body of the reader, perhaps giving them their longevity.  These are real people and real situations despite their mythical nature and they are made real by the sensual effect they have on those who come into contact with them.  

While on the subject of Mythology, am I the only one who feels like maybe they are no longer qualified to read Shakespeare after today's discussion of the entire other story that you would have had to have known to understand who the people in MSND even are? I knew that these plays were steeped in myth but it never occurred to me that they would overstep the bounds of archetypal themes into the realm of entire mythological back-stories. 

School of Night

After hearing Dr. Sexson's introduction of Sir Walter Raleigh with his pearls and his "princely perfume," I got it into my head that the School of Night was not unlike some of the more pretentious and annoying customers I encountered in my years as a Starbucks barista:  a collection of men in dark clothing that sat around sipping espresso drinks and discussing just how enlightened and generally awesome they are.  After reading Frederick Turner's article I found that that while they were stylish in their melancholy and punk-rock in their atheism, these men actually had something interesting to say. 

It is hard to believe that Marlowe and his sardonic wit when discussing religion could have existed in a time when the monarch played the dual role of the head of the church and atheism was the same as treason. I read Dr. Faustus in another class but I didn't read it as it is explained in Turner's article.  While I imagined the absence of God as being comforting to one so self-important as Faustus, Turner explains that it is in fact terrifying but subsequently frees a  "free thinker" such as the members of The School of Night to philosophize a meaning for life without an omnipotent mediator: "Having no God to mediate the ferocity of its aspiration, the mind must contemplate and prey upon itself, until the veils of habit, tradition, and expectation  are torn away and the soul confronts the essential zero at its core."


I am having trouble reconciling the idea of the School of Night consisting of scientists and atheists with the return of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism.  Hermeticism as I understand it is a belief in an all-encompassing God as well as the notion that every being in the universe is connected while Neoplatonism is a mixture of Christianity and a new understanding of Plato.  Perhaps the men of the School of Night's ideas of men as the brothers of the gods sparked an interest in knowing and understanding what Neoplatonism calls thinking closer to the mind of God than of man such as astrology and alchemy. 

We shall see.

"Checking the Brownies"

I'm a little embarrassed after today's comments on Sylvia Plath and lets call them her "eccentricities," but before today's class I had the full intention of talking about The Bell Jar and my thoughts on the idea of a "secular scripture."  

When I think of a sacred text, I think of something a person can carry with them as an artifact, a little piece of an idea that they can turn to for guidance.   They can see parts of themselves in its contents, and therefore  take from it a sense of comfort from the advice and solace they find in the words.  Other than the Bible, I suppose my sacred text is The Bell Jar.    Just as Job teaches me to be patient and Esther teaches me to be strong, Esther Greenwood teaches me to not let the anxiety of having to be everything to everyone at once overwhelm me.  Although I won't be "checking the brownies" anytime soon, I am genuinely aware of the feeling of being in a bell jar. 

"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell."

What does this have to do with Shakespeare, you ask? I'm not sure.  Perhaps people look to Shakespeare as a narrative compass or an outline to which they can compare their own ideas.   Maybe secular scripture is something that can be read over and over and never get old. Longevity.  That's how I feel about The Bell Jar, as morbid as that sounds. 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead

I know a little more than I'd like to about Shakespeare as a man (thank you Gretchen Minton) but one thing that strikes me about his work is that if you've read it, you've pretty much read everything that's been written after him or you can at least put the pieces together enough to understand it. Shakespeare is is like The Beatles: everything that has been produced after him is either inspired by his work or a shameless knock-off.  I realize that much of what he wrote was based on biblical storytelling and ancient mythology, but it is still amazing that in the midst of something as catastrophic as the plague someone could come up with such witty and sardonic stories that have lasted as long as his have. 

Another thing that I know and am fascinated by about Shakespeare is the versatility with which someone can interpret the text or make their own.  During my graveyard shift-induced Netflix binge over the Winter break I stumbled upon a movie called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead."  Basically, a young man is sucked into directing Hamlet for a small company of players who are subsequently revealed as being vampires who are part of a feud against prince Hamlet who was actually a real guy who cured his own vampirism by drinking from the holy grail that, as it turns out, was in Denmark the whole time.  I loved Tom Stoppard's play that this movie quotes and pokes fun at, and I love that no matter how much time passes there will always be another way to put a new spin on a canonized work by our buddy, Bill. 

I know that no matter how much I think I know about Shakespeare, there is always something more to be found and m really looking forward to digging it up with this class.