Auden on Shakespeare
I recently finished reading W.H. Auden's 'Lectures on Shakespeare', which is essentially the collection of transcripts of a lecture series he gave in New York in 1946-7. I have a habit of flagging and then writing out interesting bits from books that I read, and I thought there might be an interested audience in this case.
Because language is the medium of literature, people who are usable in literary works have to be conscious people. They are one of two types: (1) people who are not really conscious but are made to be so, and (2) actually educated people, for whom artists have a natural bias. That's why most works about peasants are boring -- literary works consist mostly of people's remarks.
- from 'Richard III'
From the personal point of view, sexual desire, because of its impersonal and unchanging character, is a cosmic contradiction. The relation between every pair of lovers is unique, but in bed they can only do what all mammals do. All of the relation in friendship, a relationship of spirit, can be unique. In sexual love the only uniqueness can be fidelity.
- from 'Comedy of Errors/Two Gentlemen of Verona'
People say, for example, "I want to write", though nothing ever gets written. Why? First, they're mistaken about writing. They aren't specific: they say they want to "be a writer", not that they want to "write such-and-such". The eye is on the result, not on the process, and behind that is a lack of passion and of the willingness to go through the hard stages of training and study. You must be in love with your work, not with yourself. [...] When you begin writing, you find it difficult and your mind wanders. If you regard only your ego, you act as if every word has to be a masterpiece, and if not, why finish?
- from 'Love's Labours Lost'
Now, consider the nature of falling in love. Its elements include, first, as Martin Buber explains in I and Thou, the discovery of a Thou instead of an It. Thou demands a relation to an I. Thou must be mysterious, numinous. From the discovery of Thou comes the discovery of an I in its fullness and unity. The I becomes more active, more interested, and ashamed of the condition it is in. It wants to be better. [...] Second, what do you want, falling in love? Not simply possession. It becomes important to my existence that you exist, and I want my existence to be important to you. I want to know you.
- from 'Romeo and Juliet'
(this whole concept of Buber's, and Auden himself, were both such integral parts of when our falsehoods are divided that reading this made my head explode a little)
Why should so much poetry be written about sexual love and so little about eating -- which is just as pleasurable and never lets you down -- or about family affection, or about the love of mathematics?
- from 'Sonnets'
A dramatic poet is the kind of person who can imagine what anyone can feel, and he begins to wonder, "What am I?" "What do I feel?" "Can I feel?" Artists are inclined to suffer not from too much emotion but rather from too little. This business of being a mirror -- you begin to question the reality of the mirror itself.
- from 'Hamlet'
(yes, those two people who have read that scene from my Inception WIP: I used the hell out of this! but I'd written the mirrors before I ever came across the quote)
Look at Beatrice or Benedick: you say, yes, here is a person I might meet and have dinner with and talk to. In the later plays, with people like Iago and Lear, you say, no, I don't think this is a person I might meet, but this is a state which in the life of man everybody at one time or another experiences. Nobody's Iago all of the time.
- from 'King Lear'
We see malice and ambition in Richard III, ignorance in Romeo and Juliet, melancholia in Hamlet, ambition in Macbeth, paternalism and the demand for love in Lear, pride in Coriolanus, the desire to be loved in Timon, and jealousy in Othello. These are pure states of being that have a certain amount of police court cases or psychiatric clinics in them, but we are not likely to imitate them. We may feel as they do on occasion, but these people are really rather silly. We wouldn't murder a guest at a party, nor are we likely to run out of the house in the middle of a storm. We think people are crazy to behave like that. We read about such behavior in the papers. Antony and Cleopatra's flaw, however, is general and common to all of us all of the time: worldliness -- the love of pleasure, success, art, ourselves, and conversely, the fear of boredom, failure, being ridiculous, being on the wrong side, dying. If Antony and Cleopatra have a more tragic fate than we do, that is because they are far more successful than we are, not because they are essentially different.
- from 'Antony and Cleopatra'
~
GOD, AUDEN. BE LESS AWESOME <3
Because language is the medium of literature, people who are usable in literary works have to be conscious people. They are one of two types: (1) people who are not really conscious but are made to be so, and (2) actually educated people, for whom artists have a natural bias. That's why most works about peasants are boring -- literary works consist mostly of people's remarks.
- from 'Richard III'
From the personal point of view, sexual desire, because of its impersonal and unchanging character, is a cosmic contradiction. The relation between every pair of lovers is unique, but in bed they can only do what all mammals do. All of the relation in friendship, a relationship of spirit, can be unique. In sexual love the only uniqueness can be fidelity.
- from 'Comedy of Errors/Two Gentlemen of Verona'
People say, for example, "I want to write", though nothing ever gets written. Why? First, they're mistaken about writing. They aren't specific: they say they want to "be a writer", not that they want to "write such-and-such". The eye is on the result, not on the process, and behind that is a lack of passion and of the willingness to go through the hard stages of training and study. You must be in love with your work, not with yourself. [...] When you begin writing, you find it difficult and your mind wanders. If you regard only your ego, you act as if every word has to be a masterpiece, and if not, why finish?
- from 'Love's Labours Lost'
Now, consider the nature of falling in love. Its elements include, first, as Martin Buber explains in I and Thou, the discovery of a Thou instead of an It. Thou demands a relation to an I. Thou must be mysterious, numinous. From the discovery of Thou comes the discovery of an I in its fullness and unity. The I becomes more active, more interested, and ashamed of the condition it is in. It wants to be better. [...] Second, what do you want, falling in love? Not simply possession. It becomes important to my existence that you exist, and I want my existence to be important to you. I want to know you.
- from 'Romeo and Juliet'
(this whole concept of Buber's, and Auden himself, were both such integral parts of when our falsehoods are divided that reading this made my head explode a little)
Why should so much poetry be written about sexual love and so little about eating -- which is just as pleasurable and never lets you down -- or about family affection, or about the love of mathematics?
- from 'Sonnets'
A dramatic poet is the kind of person who can imagine what anyone can feel, and he begins to wonder, "What am I?" "What do I feel?" "Can I feel?" Artists are inclined to suffer not from too much emotion but rather from too little. This business of being a mirror -- you begin to question the reality of the mirror itself.
- from 'Hamlet'
(yes, those two people who have read that scene from my Inception WIP: I used the hell out of this! but I'd written the mirrors before I ever came across the quote)
Look at Beatrice or Benedick: you say, yes, here is a person I might meet and have dinner with and talk to. In the later plays, with people like Iago and Lear, you say, no, I don't think this is a person I might meet, but this is a state which in the life of man everybody at one time or another experiences. Nobody's Iago all of the time.
- from 'King Lear'
We see malice and ambition in Richard III, ignorance in Romeo and Juliet, melancholia in Hamlet, ambition in Macbeth, paternalism and the demand for love in Lear, pride in Coriolanus, the desire to be loved in Timon, and jealousy in Othello. These are pure states of being that have a certain amount of police court cases or psychiatric clinics in them, but we are not likely to imitate them. We may feel as they do on occasion, but these people are really rather silly. We wouldn't murder a guest at a party, nor are we likely to run out of the house in the middle of a storm. We think people are crazy to behave like that. We read about such behavior in the papers. Antony and Cleopatra's flaw, however, is general and common to all of us all of the time: worldliness -- the love of pleasure, success, art, ourselves, and conversely, the fear of boredom, failure, being ridiculous, being on the wrong side, dying. If Antony and Cleopatra have a more tragic fate than we do, that is because they are far more successful than we are, not because they are essentially different.
- from 'Antony and Cleopatra'
~
GOD, AUDEN. BE LESS AWESOME <3