Et tu, Brute?

We have all experienced a moment in which the unimaginable happens. Someone who could never abandon you, someone you know as deeply as you know yourself, perhaps more so, betrays you... There's a sick feeling in the gut when the realization sets in, an overwhelming denial of reality as the subconscious kicks and screams in a desperate attempt to hold onto what once was there, what is no more. The result is always the same, death. Just as a building losing its foundation will topple to the ground, so does man.

I used to be naive. At the age of 18 I was entirely too close to getting the following lines from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar tattooed on my body:

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

(II.2.32-33)

I breathe in gratitude every day for not having gone through with this. The reason is not that the lines have lost their power and beauty for me, the entire speech is still perhaps my favorite from all of Shakespeare. It's that I realize I may as well have tattooed the word hypocrite on my face. I have died more times than I am willing to admit, my foundations have buckled and I, like so many others, have crumbled. I see now that to be valiant is not to live a life without ever dying. It is to emerge from the ashes reborn. If Caesar is correct, and the valiant never taste of death but once, then valiancy can only be achieved by robots and/or individuals with emotional disabilities.

In Julius Caesar when the senators stab the emperor repeatedly, the final blow is dealt by Caesar's closest friend, Brutus, bringing forth the famous line "Et tu, Brute?" And you, Brutus? The line consists of only three words, but they are perhaps the most powerful three words in literature. All who have experienced a similar epiphanic moment can feel Caesar's pain. He says, "And you, my closest friend and companion, you of all the people in the world? I could expect this from my worst enemies, but how could this come from you?" After Caesar's death, Shakespeare provides the play with a savior, someone to project the fallen emperor's emotions for all to understand. Marc Antony speaks the following lines to a crowd of spectators over Caesar's dead body;

If you have tears prepare to shed them now...

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.

Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!

This was the most unkindest cut of all.

Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,

Quite vanquished him. Then burst his mighty heart,

(III.2.178-183)

For anyone who has experienced death such as this, a savior is always one's greatest desire. Once the realization sets in that the past reality no longer exists, the next impulse is to disperse the weight from the absent foundation among those that that still remain. Our way of doing this is to talk with others, for it seems the simple knowledge that others understand one's suffering is a comfort. In Caesar's case, he is no longer able to speak for himself, and so Antony bears the fallen weight.

In reality, there are rarely Marc Antonies waiting to take up one's cause. There is only you, and emerging from the debris is a solitary, lonely business. This is where I believe the true essence of valiancy lies. To never taste the bitterness of betrayal is easy; to never have one's identity shattered and put through the fires of hell is possible for even the simplest of insects. But to rebuild oneself stronger than before is something only the truly valiant can accomplish. There is no virtue that can shield us from our mortality, both physical and emotional.We are all phoenixes, destined to die and be reborn from our ashes.

As Virgil says,

sunt lacrimae rerum,

et mentum mortalia tangunt.

These are the tears of things,

And the stuff of our mortality cuts us to the bone.

Tragic Redemption

The use of tragic redemption is perhaps one of Shakespeare's favorite literary devices. He uses it beautifully in plays such as Othello and Hamlet, and perfects it in King Lear. At first glance, these plays seem void of any element of redemption.. In Othello we see a tragic ending in which Desdemona and Othello die ingloriously and without reason except to quench the base desires of Iago. In Hamlet we see the prince of Denmark avenge his murdered father and poisoned mother, only to swiftly die himself. And in King Lear we see an ending that, according to critic Thomas Roche, is "as bleak and unrewarding as man can reach outside the gates of Hell".

I suppose that if one has grown up watching too many Hollywood movies the idea of redemption correlates directly with the movie The Shawshank Redemption in which Andy Dufresne escapes through a river of shit and triumphantly holds his hands to the sky as lightning, thunder, and rain fall from the heavens. In principle, both Shakespeare's use of tragic redemption and The Shawshank Redemption's triumphant victory scene are the same. Each character has fallen to a depth unimaginably foreboding, but they all depart with an achievement/redeeming quality essential to the wholeness of their characters.

In Othello we see a man of unequaled integrity and inner strength succumb to the seeds of doubt planted by Iago, and as a result he kills the woman he loves. The tragic redemption comes into play after Othello learns of Iago's treachery and Desdemona's innocence, and in response he ends his own life. His death shows the audience that he would rather die than live a life permanently stained with the horror of what he'd done. Balance is restored in the end with Iago's death sentence, though his actual death is never observed..

The use of tragic redemption in Hamlet is slightly different than within Othello. The satisfaction of revenge is achieved as we witness the fall of all of Hamlet's adversaries, but cruelly, we are robbed of the promise and satiety of Hamlet's reign over Denmark. His death, like Othello's, seems unworthy of his life, but after falling from such heights he also achieves a measure of redemption before his end. He concludes his life with these words to Horatio:

O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind

me!

If thou didst eve hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

(V.2.325-332)

And with this speech we know that Hamlet's name will be restored, bringing both sadness for his death and contentment at the knowledge of his redeemed honor.

In King Lear, the audience is provided no such comforts in the notion of redemption. To the untrained eye, one sees a man who witnesses the deaths of everyone he once loved, and ultimately die himself, void of love and worth. A death in vain. Upon reading King Lear one naturally poses the question, what was the point? But I argue the point was to perfect with the utmost subtlety the use of tragic redemption.

Lear reveals himself in the beginning of the play as a man blinded by ignorance. By the end of the play he can at last see the truth. As it is eloquently summed up by an unknown author on an English Literature forum I stumbled upon, "Shakespeare shows that it is Lear’s suffering that leads to his learning and his subsequent redemption. Prior to Lear’s painful banishment, he is a pampered, flattered king living a false life, full of false love. It is excruciating for Lear to face that his life has been 80 years of lies, but in order to learn the truth, he must first suffer through the pain, and as Shakespeare clearly shows, it is better to learn through suffering than to remain comfortable and ignorant. Therefore, Lear’s life is worth all of the agonies it incurs; after all, it is only after Lear begins to suffer that he truly begins to live."

The Sublime (according to Me, Shelby, and Wikipedia)

According to Wikipedia the sublime is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation... According to Shelby the sublime is all of that, but with an extra element of profundity, the sublime's origin. In her presentation she spoke of Caliban's speech in Act 3 Scene 2 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 sometime voices

That, if I then had waked 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 waked,

I cried to dream again. (The Tempest, 3.2.134-142)

The hideous Caliban produces one of the most eloquent and beautiful speeches in the history of written language. This is what Shelby argues is the core of sublimity. To quote this intelligent young lady, "From the union of these dual qualities of repulsion and attraction, the sublime is achieved."

I argue that sublimity does not have to originate from the base or mundane. There are places in the world that are so magnificent one can hardly believe they exist. For me, one of these places is Zion National Park in southern Utah.

The Subway - Zion National Park

More Zion...

Sublime am I right?? "Of course I am" (Dr. Sexson, 2011)

Now to circle back in support of Shelby's theory, I post the infamous plastic bag scene from American Beauty... Is it ridiculous, or is it truly sublime? One could make an argument for both, but in the context of the film, this scene truly reaches an element of sublimity. And what is this object, but nothing more than a discarded plastic bag, dancing in a parking lot.

The principle in this scene is the same as in Caliban's speech. The sublime can be derived from the most beautiful of things to the most base. I suppose it is the element of surprise from Caliban's speech and the plastic bag scene that resonate with us on a level of such depth.

Final Paper

The Implicit Critique of Love

The act of suffering within Shakespeare’s plays is fueled by love. Gooey, messy, torturous love, and what better way for a gifted playwright to emotionally appeal to an entire species than to use that one subject we all share a subliminal affinity to? I would argue that if one were hard-pressed to ask random passersby what author they most associate with love, nearly all of them would say Shakespeare. But simply because the man is synonymous with love doesn’t mean his portrayal of it is the standard to which all love should be held. In fact, Shakespeare’s portrayal of love is not pure and beautiful as many who aren’t familiar with him might think. It is cynical, to the point where one could question if it is not in fact harboring elements of resentment.
In Harold Bloom’s analysis of King Lear in his book Shakespeare, The Invention of the Human, Bloom says, “The implicit critique of love, in Shakespeare, hardly can be termed a mere skepticism” (Bloom, 487). This is an elevated way of saying Shakespeare is a skeptic hiding seeds of disparity in arguably every one of his plays in which love, in any form, plays a role. To examine these plays from a perspective other than that of the infatuated audience member is to see that love is in fact the main problematic, and with love comes the inevitable idea of ownership. An example of the destructive effects of ownership is evident within Othello. It is under love’s blind intoxication that Othello kills his Desdemona. One would think the words of the woman he loves would mean more than those of the scheming Iago, but one thing Shakespeare portrays brilliantly in all of his plays is how impulsively we humans act when responding to fear. In plays such as King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Cymbeline, and Antony and Cleopatra, we see the characters’ fear of losing their object of desire dictating and twisting their fates. Even in Shakespeare’s comedies such as The Tempest, All’s Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, Pericles, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the audience is left with a happy ending, love is presented as a near-ridiculous entity, manipulating characters down paths no person should take.

So the question naturally arises, what is Shakespeare trying to tell us? If he were a true admirer of love we would see the characters in his plays choosing to make wise decisions based on their feelings for the person they care about, rather than making tumultuous decisions based on the fear of losing the thing they love. The image I have come to see is Shakespeare holding up a mirror, and in that reflection is the truth of how lost and absurd we really are. By providing parodies of that which we find normal and accepted behavior, such as a father’s desire to be loved by his children or a husband’s conviction of his wife’s loyalty, he shows the audience how destructive our blind emotions can be.
When one of Shakespeare’s characters loses that thing they most care about, the audience is left with a vacuous sense of nothingness. Though The Winter’s Tale is a comedy, Leontes gives a speech early on in the play that relates to this idea. He is speaking to Camillo about his suspicions of an affair between Hermione and Polyxenes.
Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh? A note infallible
Of breaking honesty! Horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? Noon, midnight? And all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,
My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
(Winter’s Tale, 1.2..283-95)

Since Leontes’ suspicions prove to be unfounded in the end, then his proclamation that states his reality is nothing if there is actually nothing going on between Hermione and Polyxenes, tells us on an extrinsic level that his entire world, including his love for Hermione is nothing… Ultimately this undercurrent of ‘nothingness’ leads my trail of thought to two related ideas; the existentialism of playwright Samuel Beckett in plays such as Endgame and Waiting For Godot and also the teachings of Buddhism.

In both Buddhism, and Beckett’s depiction of existentialist doctrine, there is an acknowledgement of the fact that with life, comes suffering. In Buddhism, a set of principles called the Four Noble Truths identifies what Shakespeare seems to be telling us. The first is the truth of suffering, followed by the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. As it is with love, the pursuit of pleasure can only continue what is ultimately an unquenchable thirst. Buddhism claims desire is the ultimate cause of suffering and the only way to escape suffering is to achieve the enlightened state of Nirvana. Beckett indirectly displays an understanding of these ideas in his plays, but unlike Buddhism, and I would argue Shakespeare as well, his intention is not to guide people towards an escape from all of this. He simply provides the spectacle and lets the audience make of it what they will. In Endgame, the characters Hamm and Clov are seemingly trapped in a purgatorial existence in which there are no answers, no dilemmas, simply impossible desires that only reveal how lost the characters are. For instance, in one scene from Endgame, Hamm tells Clov to check outside with the telescope. Clov does and replies back, “zero”. Clov asks why they go through the farce everyday, and Hamm answers that “it is routine”. Other instances include Hamm’s contemplation of what to dream about if he could ever sleep, and the continual question of “What time is it?” followed by the response, “Same as usual”.

Clearly Beckett’s understanding of mankind’s cycle of suffering is comparable to that of Buddhism and Shakespeare, though as I said before, his intention is not to guide us towards an alternative. In contrast, I believe Shakespeare does want to guide his audience, however indirectly. He portrays love from the perspective of someone who seems to grasp the temporality of all things. If he were available for comment I believe he would tell us that every moment is fleeting. We enter a world in which doom and suffering is inevitable and to escape this fact requires an escape from the whole system. To love another is to open oneself up to loss and the eventual mortality of everything. Shakespeare understood this, as does Buddhist doctrine, as does Samuel Beckett, but realistically it will never be the fate of mankind to reject the present moment’s pleasure in favor of avoiding eventual suffering. For how advanced mankind is we rarely exercise the willingness to learn from our mistakes, a fact Beckett understood too well. He produced a memorable quote in one of his novella’s titled Worstward Ho! that pertains to this discussion brilliantly. “Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

In Response to Lisa's blog "I'm happy. Really happy"

Lisa, your last post goes along perfectly with the movie I just put up titled 'Music and Life'. Watch it. Love it. Learn from it. It basically summarizes everything you had to say about the pursuit of happiness being the antithesis of happiness. Everything we need to be happy is right here! Simply to exist is a gift in itself... Our minds are becoming one.

Music and Life - Alan Watts

For some reason I can't load videos into my blogs unless I do it separately. Technology... This video is the one I reference at the end of my last blog titled 'There Is No Spoon'

Sesame Street - Monsterpiece Theater "Waiting for Elmo"