Shakespeare is universal.
Harold Bloom,an American literary critic and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University
Today is Shakespeare’s birth and death date.
I have decided to lend him the space of my blog to celebrate his birthday. His 448th.
Don’t say I never did anything for you, buddy.
In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology.
Freud finds ways of translating it
into supposedly analytical vocabulary.
…………………………………………………………
Freud : to his sweetie, Martha, a love letter:
§ How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.
§ Letter to his fiancée Martha Bernays (27 June 1882);
§ Woe to you, my Princess, when I come... you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle girl who doesn't eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.
§ Letter to his fiancée, (2 June 1884)
…………………………………………………………………………
For over a thousand years South American indigenous peoples
have chewed the leaves of Erythroxylon coca,
a plant that contains vital nutrients as well as numerous alkaloids,
including cocaine.
The coca leaf was, and still is,
chewed almost universally by some indigenous communities
(WIKIPEDIA)
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Indigenous is a good word these days. Most politically correct scholars say nothing bad about those who are indigenous, who “belong to a place…originate and live naturally in a region”.
Well, that is me!
I was born in this town & will probably die in it.
Fine with me.
………………………………………………………….
Time's glory is to command contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.
§ The Rape of Lucrece,
said Shakespeare.
I am sorry to hear he was a rapist, but, well, times were different then & whatnot, blah blah. Moral relativism must win out here….
…………………………………………………………..
§ A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship
§ is also capable of enjoying as pleasure
§ any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations.
§
§ A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.
§ Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Freud….
……………………………………………………………..
Well put.
I must admit I have not read a lot of Shakespeare, because he is a bit hard-core for me. I remember the rash of teen suicides that happened after my “Teacher of the Year” English teacher, Mrs. Maypole, staged Romeo and Juliet in her classroom.
All the depressed chicks I kinda digged were gone, in one week’s time.
……………………………………………………………………
These days, deeply dark girls have a sort of following among very disturbed boys, I hear.
Girls with no ‘conscience’…
“Conscience is the internal perception
of the rejection of a particular wish
operating within us.
§ Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics| (1913)
Freud,again.
……………………………………………………………………
A lot of people these days are born with consciences. This is a good, brand new start for the human race, I say. I have a subsidiary rudimentary one, myself, and I got the best damn education anyone could expect their kid to get in this town.
I read Dante in high school! Good god!
§ “So may heaven's grace clear away the foam from the conscience, that the river of thy thoughts may roll limpid thenceforth.
§ Dante
……………………………………………………………………..
Limpid, that is me.
Ay!
…………………………………………….
Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third.
§ T. S. Eliot, "Dante" (1929), from Selected Essays (1932)
After the spate of suicides, my English teacher nonetheless insisted upon a class reading of Hamlet. It made me the man I am today, thank god and Mrs. Maypole.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Happy death day, and birth day too, w.s.!
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p.s.
Sir: do NOT feel responsibility for the shortening of any savvy readers' lives:
To be, or not to be, — that is the question: —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; —
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They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
§ Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora (1841)
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I was born on Midsummer Night's eve , by the bye..
So that is my favorite movie of yours, man.
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here he is, now, making a guest appearance:
"This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)"
James,of course you understood the sayings of the 448 years old Shakesρeare..My own to you...One of the noblest among the OSalonaires..Rated James and thank you for letting me now and that withing your work I indeed attended the birthday of a 448 years old still living in his writing human..The first so significant birthday that I have been too..And I indeed thank you for this...So strange the name and work to live more than us...Makes us all think on what we write...Scriρta manet and long live after us....One of your best this one James..so thank you!!!!
Must agree.
All Eastern so-called wisdom summed up in this:
"Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
And then more and more
and more
thinking
thinking...
thinking is fun. you too are fun!
what a fun world. where:
:ay,
"But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Hamlet, scene ii
Well, it goes without saying he was GREAT. "First kill all lawyers" is my favorite quote of his. In one week's time-- all the depressed chicks? Hmmm, ha.
Happy B-day Billy S. U the bomb.
to die on June 24th.
at the age of oh, 24.
ha!
sorry..am in a silly mood...
yes the lawyers need to be mass murdered and sunk in the sea.
i am waiting for a candidate to express his agreement with me
until
i give him my sacred vote.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare..
yup..heehee.
Though really now James, I'm surprised you haven't read more Shakespeare! Get thee to a stage production of The Tempest.
"Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again." - Caliban. scene II
You have wandered far afield in this commemoration -- but it is a quite interesting field.
Among my favorite lines from Shakespeare are these; they put me in mind of Ecclesiastes, in that both reflect a sort of jaded resignation without succumbing totally to cynicism.
"Out, out, brief candle .... life is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage -- and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot .... full of sound and fury, and signifying ..........nothing."
It all worked out.........
Also, wow, that Freud cocaine quote. I did not know he actually wrote that.
it's playing now, to wild sold out crowds...
i may have to wait a stretch..
this jives with my experience:
" in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again."
remember, i am also a Yeats scholar!
" I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats in "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
(who doesn't? wish?)
Tom: this is why i study literature, especially the good ones:
to achieve that
"resignation w/o cynicism".
maybe os aint the place to be for that , i dunno...
but i hope......
ALSO: yeah, well, they tell me (the heavy weight critics do)
that 1/3 of shakespeare will NEVER be totally understood.
i am happy with 1/1000th.
ALYSA: yup. freud & coke.
freud would say:
"I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was."
quoting
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595
and then
once you got , like, 1000 of em from one play
( i recommend 'hamlet')
you get the jist & just plunge in...
I wonder if Freud didn't perhaps snort a tad too much of the happy stuff? One or two tokes over the line?
well, that quote is YOUR trip, your dream within a dream, etc..
as for Freud, he is
"high on cocaine,
drivin that train,
casey!
watch yer speed!"
Freud still rules our hearts and minds.
that is why we all discount him, intellectually...........
wait til you see my b-day tribute to Him!
coming attraction:
(keep it to yerself, mums the word):
"But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.
Matthew 7:24-27
I will try to be brief
I often find that one cannot breathe life into a Stone
especially when Mr. Stone has eaten me out of house and home
and he has not a drop of the milk of human kindness
But that was in my salad days
when I could find neither rhyme nor reason
to walk along the primrose path
and while I give sweets to the sweet
I also know that sweet are the uses of adversity
and it seems to be a forgone conclusion
that the whirligig of time
is out of joint
In one fell swoop
I laughed myself into stitches
for having too much of a good time
Happy B Day Mr. Willie
thanks for the reminder Mr. James
rated with love
...especially loved the Edgar Allen Poe quote...
"O brave new world, That has such people in't!"
Seguing to :: "All the depressed chicks I kinda digged were gone, in one week’s time."
"§ “So may heaven's grace clear away the foam from the conscience, that the river of thy thoughts may roll limpid thenceforth."
"§ A sadist is always at the same time a masochist."
And so forth... I wasn't too distracted to actually read, mind you.
Shakespeare birthed and departed the same calendar day you're saying Emmerling? Good cross analysis and well done .. I say
Great post, and didn't know he died the same day as he was born. So much cooler than, you know, one of the other days of the year.
I love that JMac1949 brought up Jung in the very first comment too!