Prison, Shakespeare and the Meaning of Life

            The quote that struck me most when I was watching “Shakespeare Behind Bars” this afternoon was when Hal, the inmate who plays Prospero in The Tempest, talks to us about his experience with the program.  “It’s helped me to forgive myself,” he says, “but the self-forgiveness doesn’t seem to be enough.  It’s kind of hollow.  I try to find deeper meaning in my life, but this can’t be it.”

            Just about all the other performers talked about how much the Shakespeare Behind Bars program helped to change their lives for the better.  Hal was the only one who spoke about it as something ultimately unfulfilling.  I was surprised that he said that at first because the parts of the play I saw him perform were really good.  In the context of Hal’s life, however, I begin to understand how play-acting with his fellow inmates could merely serve as a temporary diversion to keep himself occupied.  With the guilt of killing his pregnant wife by dropping a hair dryer into her bath water hanging over his head for decades, a Shakespeare play probably does the same for him as would a Band-aid on a severed limb.

            Hal admits that “It’s helped me to forgive myself” and I can definitely see how that could be.  Taking on a role like Prospero, who has to learn a major lesson about forgiveness, could help someone to come to the same discoveries.  Finding forgiveness for one’s self and one’s neighbor can be extremely healing. 

On the other hand, Hal knows that any amount of genuine forgiveness isn’t enough to redeem him from the harsh reality that surrounds him on a daily basis.  He will spend the better part of his life confined to a prison.  He will never have the kind of opportunities to create meaning for his life like a normal person would in the outside world.  The reality is that he will never have a normal life.  Maybe performing in a Shakespeare play will allow him to forget about his tedious, restricted life for a while, but once the costumes are put away and the handcuffs get snapped back on Prospero’s last lines take on an almost sarcastic tone.

“As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free.”

That’s all fine and good for Shakespeare to say, but from the lips of a convicted murderer it’s an overly simplistic view of the way society actually treats criminals.  Prospero’s plea falls flat on the ears of our criminal justice system. 

He’ll find no “indulgence” from the powers that be,

To set truly penitent murderers free.   

Health as the Greatest Pleasure

   The Utopians’ ideas about pleasure intrigue me.  “To be sure, they believe happiness is found, not in every kind of pleasure, but only in good and honest pleasure. Virtue itself, they say, draws our nature to this kind of pleasure, as to supreme good.” (pg. 561)  These lines caught my attention mainly because I was curious by what standard they determined what was “good and honest” and what wasn’t.  When we’re caught up in any kind of pleasure, we’re inclined to think it’s pretty great.  I find it hard to believe that Utopians could possibly be so rational all the time.

            I was hard pressed to uncover their standard for “good and honest” pleasure, but at the end of the “Social Relations” section, I found this: “…For they are somewhat inclined to think that no kind of pleasure is forbidden, provided harm does not come of it.” (pg. 556)  This makes sense to me, but still, sometimes we discover only in retrospect that one of our seemingly innocent pleasures has caused some unforeseen trouble.  If I was a Utopian, I think I might be slightly paranoid of having fun because I might risk public scorn by accidentally do something wrong.

            In spite of these qualms, I completely agree with the Utopians in their understanding of health as “the greatest of bodily pleasures.” (pg. 565)  Before reading “Utopia” I always valued my health very highly, but I never thought of health as a pleasure before.  More describes it this way: “The second kind of bodily pleasure they describe as nothing but the calm and harmonious state of the body, its state of health when undisturbed by any disorder.” (pg. 565) 

This is such a simple concept, with which I think anyone would be inclined to agree, but our materialistic, consumerist society keeps us so busy hopping from one physical stimulus to the next that we eventually forget the foundation of all our enjoyment in this life.  In our quest for tastes, sights, smells and touches we often neglect the very vessel (our bodies) which allows us to experience anything at all. 

As an illustration, I reference my recent trip to New York City.  On my first day out exploring downtown Manhattan, I spent hours looking at shops, tasting all sorts of food, inhaling all sorts of smells both lovely and foul and buying way too many things that I never knew I needed before I saw them.  I can honestly say I got a lot of pleasure out of the experience, but afterwards my mind felt disoriented, my feet were sore and my stomach ached from too many rich foods.  I had to spend the rest of the day recovering on the couch.  Unlike the Utopians, I neglected the supreme pleasure of bodily health and harmony for scattered sensual pleasures.  To one extent or another, we’ve all done similar things and, according to Utopian logic, squandered one ultimate pleasure for a few minutes of passing sensation.

I’ve been so much more appreciative of my health ever since I read this section of “Utopia”.  Not only is taking our health for granted potentially dangerous to that health, but it also makes us miss out on enjoying the wonderful and perfect way our bodies work and allow us to experience the simple things in the world around us.  We too often wreck ourselves on quests for bigger and better and more when we already have sources of perfect pleasure literally right under our noses and at our finger tips.

Creative Engagement - Utopian Art Gallery

   I've been reading the current discussion going on about the potential for More's "Utopia" to be translated into a play and I'm inclined to think it's possible, but not at all probable.  However, I started thinking about other mediums which would be more condusive to depicting "Utopia".  This lead me to discovering a whole slew of art (paintings and scupture especially) that are entitled "Utopia" or have obvious references to "Utopia".  It's really interesting to see the variety of art that stems from this one concept.  Some are colorful and optomistic while others are extremely macabre and weird.  And,of course, there's everything in between as well.  Every artist has THEIR ideal world. 
   I've posted a few of the pieces that most intrigued me below.  They're not at all famous, but the point is that someone is trying to show us their idea of what "Utopia" is or should be.  My commentary is just my personal interpretation.  I have a lot of fun figuring out what art means.  The stranger and more avant-garde the better, really.  I'd like to invite you to have some fun doing the same.  Do a little searching and add your own discoveries either directly here, or perhaps post the art to your blog and then post a link below this post.  Hopefully, we'll end up with a "utopian art gallery" of sorts highlighting as many incarnations of the concept as possible. 



"Utopia" by Barbara Mendes

   This painting, like Mendes' other work is vibrant and full of life sprouting from practically every crevice.  Behind the main woman in the front, the rectangular gardens remind me of the tidy gardens of the Utopian's in More's book.  I get the impression that Mendes' idea of a utopia would be full of beauty, art and a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.  Also, since the only figures I see here are women, she would probably wan't women to be in charge (most graciously and wisely) of just about everything.

"Communist Utopia" by Tom Hornung

    Definitely dark!  This painting puts me in mind of the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwel. The artist lived for years under a communist regime in what used to be Czechoslovakia and admits on his blog that this influences much of his art.  A "communist utopia" requires everyone to submit to the will of the state "for the greater good" but this requires that the eyes of the government be everywhere and in everyone's business. Suspicion runs rampant (all the eyeballs) and the individual (the lone figure) is cruely suppressed.



"In the Grave of Intergalactic Utopia" by Basim Magdy

    I'm sure you all can find lots of other meanings for this one.  It's modern art and pretty out there, but still, I think, more thought provoking than it is purely strange.  I've always found it interesting that some people are so excited at the possibility of the human race leaving earth, living on other planets and populating the universe.  They don't realise that we're just going to take all of our problems and vices with us.  I think this is at least part of what this peice is trying to say.  For example, if we're tied to our TVs here, we'll probably do the same if we lived on Mars.  What do you think of the cage and the dogfood bowl?  Is this saying we'll become like animals compared to the alien life forms we meet...?




"Utopia" by Gregor Ziolkowski

    This one is a bit harder for me to interpret, but I think that the artist is trying to say that the concept of utopia is just a kind of flimsy poster that we put up to cover over the reality of the world as it is.  The girl in the painting looks ragged and distraught.  She sits in the rubble of the stone wall and looks up at what she thought was the blue sky and finds it torn apart.  Yes, the wall (society?) might be crumbling, but the birds (natural order of the universe?) still find a way to break through the facade and continue on with there existence.  Can you think of a different interpretation?
 

Letter: My First Trip to New York City

Clever Conceits in Donne’s “Elegy 19. To his mistress going to bed”

This poem revels in its magnificent bawdiness and poetical explicitness.  Donne renders this age-old theme of admiring a woman and calling her to bed enthrallingly and entertainingly new through his use of extended metaphor or “conceit.”  Even though we know from the first two lines (“Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy/ Until I labor, I in labor lie!”) that the poem is about the poet calling his mistress to come and have sex with him, we keep on reading because he pours so much lushly descriptive language into every line. 

The poem starts off with a bunch of playful couplet similes describing the mistress’ attire and body with lines such as “Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glistering, /But a far fairer world encompassing” (5 and 6) and “Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals /As when from flowery meads th’ hill’s shadow steals.” (13 and 14)  But these are mere enticing comments compared to the full poetic force of Donne’s conceits that follow soon after his description of his mistress taking off her clothes.

The first conceit compares the experience of caressing his mistress to discovering and conquering a previously undiscovered land:

License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America!  my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
There where my hand is set, my seal shall be. (25-32)

He is incredibly explicit here.  He obviously is having sex with this woman, but that’s not the extraordinary part.  The extraordinariness of this conceit is that he compares having sex to exploring a new country and claiming it for one’s own.  Even now, the metaphor retains its freshness among the million other trite euphemisms and metaphors constantly appearing and reappearing in love (and lust) poetry.   

This conceit is followed almost immediately by another which strangely uses religious references:

Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings, made
For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
 (Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed…(37-41)

                Women, according to the poet, are like religious books made “for laymen.”  They may have “gay coverings” (clothes), but laymen (all men) won’t truly know them unless they are “revealed” (naked).   This very oddly juxtaposes the carnal with the sacred.  I’m sure this wasn’t a poem that Donne talked about very much after he became a clergyman.  I would guess that quite a few of his fellow clergymen would think it profane.  I think, though, that this extended metaphor is very witty.  Donne does an excellent job of displaying his cleverness without distracting us from the main point of the poem.  I would read this one again and again, not because it has any deep truths about life and death as some of his later poems do, but because it’s so full of wit.  It’s impossible to appreciate and enjoy all of it after reading it only once.

Another Exhortation to Make Good Use of Youth

Sonnet 3 reminded me of another, perhaps more famous, poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674), one of Shakespeare's contemporaries:

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME.

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,     Old time is still a-flying : And this same flower that smiles to-day     To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,     The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run,     And nearer he's to setting. That age is best which is the first,     When youth and blood are warmer ; But being spent, the worse, and worst     Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time,     And while ye may go marry : For having lost but once your prime     You may for ever tarry.

Making Use of Youth in Shakespeare's Sonnet 3

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 3 talks about using your youth unselfishly by creating children in your image to go on after you.  “Now is the time that face (the youthful you in the mirror) should form another” the speaker says.  This sonnet caught my interest because it goes so much against what our culture impresses upon us about how to best make use of our youth.  Young people in America are generally told to use their teens and twenties to get an education, have fun and “discover themselves”.  It’s a proven fact that people in our country are choosing to have children later and later in life. 

There is definitely a big difference between Shakespeare’s time and our own on the subject of when (and if) one should have children.  For one thing, back in the 15 and 1600s, people usually lived a good thirty or forty years less than the average middle-class inhabitant of the western world today.  Shakespeare was very much acquainted with death not just as an amorphous poetic idea, but an everyday reality.  For instance, he isn’t squeamish when he talks about dying in Sonnet 71 in quite graphic detail: “…I am fled/ From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.” (lines 3 and 4)  Yuck!

The speaker in Sonnet 3 sees youth has a precious and fleeting thing to be used very wisely and not wasted on selfish pursuits.  Lines 7 and 8 ask the young man “Or who is he so fond will be the tomb/ Of his self-love, to stop posterity?”  In other words, the speaker asks rhetorically, “Are you so self-absorbed that you won’t use your youthful beauty and strength to carry on the human race?  If you don’t have children, you will die alone with nothing but your own narcissism to keep you company.”

“This is thy golden time” says line 12.  That simple phrase taken out of context would be read much differently by the young people of our time.  Our longer life-span and comfortable consumerist society support the pervasive mentality that we have plenty of time to enjoy ourselves now and take on the responsibilities of raising a family later (or not at all).  Unlike the people in Shakespeare’s time, we do our best to forget about death an inevitability.  If we are not confronted with death on a daily basis, why would we see the need to make the most of our limited time?  Why would we desire to create children to carry on after us if we cannot even conceive of a time when we will not be living?  It’s fascinating how much our culture (media, medical advancements, technology, access to goods and resources, etc.) can drastically change how we think about something as basic and essential as having our own children.

  

Sting's "The Soul Cages" as a Lyric Sequence

   Sting has always appealed to me because he can infuse his lyrics with his own experiences.  He then uses those lyrics to delve into his emotions and ultimately his conclusions about the way the world really is and effectively share them with his audience.  It takes some active listening, but all of his albums are accesible to enjoy and discover on many diffenent levels. 

   The Soul Cages, which came out in 1991, is a concept album that Sting wrote in response to his father's death.  Each of the songs follows his personal journey through extreme grief, fond memories, doubts about life and life after death and his eventual acceptance of death and a feeling of redemption and peace.

   The album starts off with "Island of Souls" in which his alter ego Billy thinks about setting sail across the sea with with his father.  However, his father is injured and can't live for very long.  He dies and, in the next song "All This Time", Billy (a.k.a. Sting) expresses his desire to burry his father at sea. I really like the video here.  It showcases Sting's ability to laugh (perhaps ironically) at the absurdities of life and death and ultimately put it all behind him.  It's one of his most entertaining videos as well.

 

   The next couple of songs focus on the town in which Billy grew up and all the people there.  Essentially nostalgic portraits of a his childhood until the introspective "Why Should I Cry for You?".  In "The Wild, Wild Sea" Billy gets lost at sea (metaphoricaly or otherwise) and is guided back home by the spirit of his father.



   For this point on, the tone of the speaker changes bit by bit from darkness, cynicism and despair to peace and acceptance of the way things are.  The lyrics of the last song, "When Angels Fall", end slightly ambiguously, but we get the feeling that Billy has come to some satisfactory conclusions.  The song remains tonaly ambiguous until it finally makes its way to a solid major G chord.  This "return to home" tonally is even more significant because it harkens back to the key of "All This Time", definitely one of Sting's focal points in the album.

   So to tie it all together, the common threads that run through The Soul Cages are: Sting's emotional and spiritual response to losing his father, motifs of the sea and boats etc. as well as various comments about and references to Catholicism which Sting strongly associates with his father.  There are definitely others (more technical stuff about musical motifs and themes etc.), but these are enough to prove that The Soul Cages is definitely a lyrical sequence.  It maintains and develops a certain focused, emotionally driven subject and presents it in first-person poetic narrative.  I love the way Sting continues in this very old poetic tradition to create a very modern and acessible album about his own life experiences. 

Rumination #2 – Wyatt’s Emotional Divergence from Petrarch in Two Sonnets

            Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) is most famous for his introduction of the English sonnet form into the standard poetic repertoire of Western Europe.  Building on the standard Petrarchan model, he employed the traditional “octave” (abbaabba), but changed the ending “sestet” (six line stanza) or “volta” (meaning a “turn” of ideas or emotions) to a cddc ee (or sometimes cdcc dd) rhyme scheme that placed dramatic emphasis on the ending couplet.  This versatile poetic form can prove fascinating to the avid scholar especially when one traces it all the way up to the present day through its many incarnations.  What I find intriguing is not only Wyatt’s divergence from Petrarch’s form, but how he uses this divergence to change the emotional core of his translations.  The change usually becomes most evident at the emphasized ending couplet.

            If the English translation of I find no peace in the Norton Anthology is true to Petrarch’s original, it has a tone, certainly of inner turmoil and contradiction, but of a less self-centered kind than we find in Wyatt’s translation.  Petrarch interprets his confusion as extraordinary and wondrous, ending his poem with an awed, reverential address to his lady: “In this state am I, Lady, on account of you.”  Wyatt ends his poem with a cynical jab at the effects of love by commenting, not to his lady, but about his lady to himself or his audience: “And my delight is the causer of this strife.”  The word “strife” in this case catches the reader’s attention all the more because it is reinforced by the coupled rhyme with “life”.  The speaker of Wyatt’s poem is not only lost in the inner turmoil resulting from his love of the lady, but is somehow at war with her.  He resents the object of his desire “That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison, / And holdeth me not, yet can I ‘scape nowise”, but he finds no escape from her or his passion.

            In The long love that in my thought doth harbor, Wyatt’s deviation in tone is slightly more subtle.  The two major differences I see in his emotional interpretation of Petrarch’s original are his use of the word “pain” in line 10 when he speaks of his love “Leaving this enterprise with pain and cry” and the last line, “For good is the life ending faithfully”, which is once again emphasized through a coupled rhyme with “die” in the preceding line and “cry” in line 10.  The latter could be interpreted as a simple change in syntax from “For he makes a good end who dies loving well.” for aesthetic purposes, but I see more self-justification embedded in Wyatt’s ending.  The speaker in Wyatt’s poem says, “For good is the life” not just “He makes a good end”.  He wants to justify and somehow baptize his whole wretched existence that is steeped in selfish passion by dying in agony for the sake of love.  There is a cynicism and masochism in Wyatt’s poetry that does not exist in Petrarch’s vision of love as a transcendent and wondrous (though often bewildering and frustrating) state of the mind and soul.   

      

Rumination #1 - Beowulf’s Renunciation of Weapons

Beowulf chooses to put aside his weapons when battling Grendel.  I couldn’t help but be impressed and at the same time somewhat incredulous when I read this.  Of course, Beowulf is meant to be a story of mythical proportions, but is this really necessary?  At first, it almost seemed to me as if Beowulf was a bit of a showoff.  After all, there are many other mythical heroes whose fame has certainly not been diminished by their use of weapons.  King Arthur, for instance, can hardly be thought of without his trusty sword Excalibur and (in a more recent myth created by Tolkien) Gandalf is admired all the more for wielding Glamdring, another magical sword. 

I got to thinking that there must be something unique, not just about Beowulf’s abilities, but about his motivations that give him the ability to tear monsters limb from limb with his bare hands.  More importantly than how he could possibly defeat Grendel without weapons, is why Beowulf would have the initial suicidal inclination to try in the first place.  We get a clue the first time he speaks of discarding his weapons before his battle with Grendel. 

“I have heard moreover that the monster scorns

in his reckless way to use weapons;

therefore, to heighten Hygelac’s fame

and gladden his heart, I hereby renounce

sword and the shelter of the broad shield,

the heavy war-board: hand-to-hand

is how it shall be, a life-and-death

fight with the fiend. Whichever one death fells

must deem it a just judgment of God.” (lines 433-431)

Firstly, Beowulf continually seeks to add to the fame of his uncle, King Hygelac.  In Beowulf’s culture, the prowess and fame gained by one person also belongs to his family line.  Ancestry and family ties are very important in this story.  Throughout Beowulf, he is repeatedly referred to, not by his proper name, but as “Hygelac’s kinsman” and other such ancestral terms.  During his battle with Grendel’s mother the text says, “Hygelac’s kinsman kept thinking about/his name and fame: he never lost heart” (lines 1529-1530).  The syntax here allows us to make no distinction between King Hygelac and his nephew Beowulf.  The “name and fame” could rightly belong to either or both.

Secondly, Beowulf puts himself in the hands of God.  With God on his side, Beowulf realizes that it doesn’t matter whether he uses weapons or not.  Here, I can’t help but draw connections to some biblical stories from the Old Testament.  The story of David and Goliath came to my mind almost immediately when I read the lines posted above.  Sure, David could have gone out and trusted in God to help him wield a big sword, but he chose to use a sling instead to show that God was ultimately the one in control.  Beowulf declares in a most David-like manner “…And may the Divine Lord/in His wisdom grant the glory of victory/to whichever side He sees fit” (lines 685-687). 

In renouncing his weapons, Beowulf also renounces both his fear of death and his pride in his own abilities.  Fear and pride are two things that often stand in the way of truly heroic deeds.  The underlying Christian message here is that in order to attain to one’s full potential, one must hand everything over to God.  By not using weapons against Grendel, Beowulf serves as a model of this Christian virtue.

Testing... testing...

Hello everyone!  I'm slowly getting the hang of this blogging thing.  This is my first time, but I'm always up for something new.  I look forward to working with you guys for the rest of the semester!