Posted by Tom on August 01, 1999 at 18:33:15:
In Reply to: understanding being posted by tangobob on February 26, 1999 at 10:43:11:
I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. I'm not sure about your argument about "To be or not to be" as being specifically about whether or not he should kill Claudius. Neither do I think that the speech is specifically contemplating Hamlet's suicide. Rather it is a contemplation of the meaning of existence itself, rather than any specific existence. Those words, possibly the most famous and horribly overused quotation in any language, magnificently transcend the context to become universal.
The play appears to be humanity's glorious journey from the struggle between "To be or not to be," to the glorious affirmation of "Let be" in Hamlet's Act V speech: "There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now it will not be to come. If it will not be to come it will be now. If it will not be now yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man knows ought of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be" The speech - like many of humanity's greatest thought's is so simple that it is easily overlooked. But to me it represents the essence of the drama. The struggle to come to terms with our own mortality, to come to terms that life has NO meaning, no higher purpose in the grand, cosmic scheme of the existence of the universe, to resolve this struggle is to find that the meaning of life is to live for the day - to let be. Human life goes nowhere except on the "road to dusty death." But to come to derive strength from this knowledge is to be able to live. My idea was expressed very simply in Michael Tippett's oratorio, The Mask of Time, when he said: "Come to terms with your mortality: This is God." This journey from "To be or not to be," to "Let be" is the quintessence of being. But this is where I think your idea about the tragedy is the revenge is utterly spot on. Shakespeare at the end denies us even this hope of world-weary resignation when he shatters Hamlet and makes him murder the king. Viewed in the terms that I have put the play, I think you will agree that this is an event of such devestating tragedy that one might ask why Hamlet - or the whole of humanity, for this is what he represents - should have even bothered traversing the vain struggle against the cloying, stifling, hopeless infinity of death.
I don't believe - as you do - that Shakespeare and Dostoevsky have "similar views on being." They are both writers I worship, but I think they believe starkly different things. Dostoyevsky in his greatest tragedies, C+P, Brothers K and so on,
affirms that the struggle against death has some meaning. "It is life that matters, life alone!" These deeply beautiful words of Dostoevsky's hold comparison with "Let be!" I must admit. But if you follow my argument through that Shakespeare destroy's this partial affirmation of life at the end of the play, this is starkly different to the hopeful notes that Dostoevsky ends his greatest tragedies with. King Lear and the Brothers Karamazov - possibly the two greatest works of world litterature - have a great deal not only in common but also in contrast. In Lear the play ends with the hopeless collapse of the world, the apocalypse, "the promised end," as Edgar says. The tragedy is of such dangerously, dark, infinity that it leaves us to question who we pity most in the end: the dead or the living? Brothers Karamazov on the other hand affirms a much more optimistic picture of life. Mitya, what a character! Incomparable! A force of nature! Mitya is left at the end with a seemingly higher purpose to his suffering, he suffers a great, world redeeming suffering, a suffering which in itself leads upwards, gloriously from the wood at the beginning of the Inferno to the vision of divine splendour at the end of the Paradisio. It is this differing attitude to suffering which to me represents a fundamental rift between Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. Dostoevsky takes the attitude that suffering can serve a higher purpose, that through suffering we are redeemed from our sins and by a gradual miracle can attain a state above our suffering. This state is resigned, calm, divine. It seems that Shakespeare believes this when he says "Let be!" and in the resignation of the beautiful "If it be not now.." which I quoted earlier. But the ending of the play shatters this belief and he adopts a wholly different attitude to suffering. Suffering crushes, destroys utterly. Man only seemingly has a capacity to rise above it. In reality he suffers, undergoes a meaninglessly brief period of naieve resignation, only to be anhilated utterly by death. The challenge for the reader is to decide which of these writers he shall listen to.
I apologize for going on so long!
Thank you,
Tom
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