Re: Verse and Universe
patrick flaherty (pfkw@email.msn.com)
Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:49:44 -0400
-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Kozusko <mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 6:56 PM
Subject: Verse and Universe
>patrick flaherty wrote:
>
>> What is it that has caused the work of Shakespeare to remain universal,
>> excuse me, "widely accepted" four hundred years later?
>
>Please--at this level or point in the discussion, the distinction
>between "universal" and "widely accepted" is not merely gratuitous. In
>the immediate context, it is of fantastic importance. Shakespeare is
>not universal.
>
>Shakespeare is widely read, accepted and appreciated because the key
>themes (for lack of a more incisive term) in his major works match up
>with many of the key themes that form the cornerstones of western
>experience and western thinking. And also because Shakespeare has been
>invoked as the guardian or representative of many important
>(consequential, at least) movements of political, social, economic (etc)
>thought since the Renaissance. We see ourselves in Shakespeare because
>we believe--have been taught to believe--that what he tells us about our
>human experience is true and accurate, approaching universal. I don't
>mind this. Perhaps it's only in retrospect, but I am glad I have been
>thus acculturated.
>
>This idea intriguing, but I haven't really worked through it yet.
>Nonetheless: Shakespeare's plays--we'll use _Hamlet_ as an
>example--offer reenactments of feasibly real human experiences on
>stage. Stories--tellings or retellings, figurative or literal, of
>situations in which people experience this or that aspect of life. This
>is where it gets a little sticky. The tellings and retellings, the
>dramatizations, if you like, tend to focus (by necessity, really) on
>certain parts of that experience. The result is themes. The words in
>_Hamlet_ focus on certain parts of the characters' experiences, such as
>Hamlet's disappointments in his inability to take action or in his
>mother's failure to mourn longer for her dead husband.
>
>Some of Holden's themes--people are phony, little kids are great--are
>very important to many of us, but they aren't as universal (God save me)
>as themes in Shakespeare. I'm not prepared to say why, exactly, but
>think of it this way: you can find the Shakespearean analogue for more
>general human experiences in the west than you can the Salingerian
>analogue. Some reasons for this are that hat Shakespeare wrote more
things,
>more people read them and have been reading them for many more years,
>and Shakespearean themes are somehow less specialized and local than
>Salingerian themes.
>
>Hamlet ponders suicide and life after death. "To be or not to be" is
>probably the best-known speech in the play. And it's sort of a focal
>point; it ties the play together. People think of "to be or not to be"
>when they think of _Hamlet_ in the same way we might think of "phonies"
>or Stradlaters when we think of _Catcher_. But there are more people
>who have had experiences in life (thoughts, fears, etc) that correspond
>to "to be or not to be" and all that goes along with it than there are
>people who have had roommates like Stradlater or who have mourned the
>phoniness of urban people in post WWI America. Western thinking and
>living isn't likely to change such that the experiences of Salinger's
>characters will be as widely available to as many people as
>Shakespeare's are today.
>
>The only reason, of course, that "to be or not to be" isn't an
>opportunity for a universal touchstone is that perhaps not all people
>ever have happened upon feelings similar to Hamlet's.
>
>
>--
>Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu
Very well said, Matt. Your comment that "Shakespeare wrote more things"
really stirred something in me as a reader. I still haven't gotten over
the fact that Salinger has published such a small body of work. I can
remember thinking that it was somehow cool that the guy who wrote _Catcher_
was this sort of mysterious, gothic, shady person sitting in an apartment in
Manhattan smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey, and exposing his sole
through the words he wrote. Then, around my senior year in high school, I
discovered his other stuff and read it as fast as I could get my hands on
it. To read all of it, of course, didn't take long. Of course, this
experience is, I am sure, quite familiar to most of us on this list.
Anyway, I fear that I might begin to ramble. With four pints in me I think
I must get to the point before it is too late. IT PISSES ME OFF THAT
SALINGER ONLY WROTE ONE NOVEL AND THE THREE OTHER BOOKS OF STORIES. I guess
this anger stems from the fact that I am an obsessive reader. When I like
an author, I read all of their stuff as quick as I can. I don't know. I'm
not at all saying that I feel hateful towards JD Salinger himself. Who am I
to judge another human being I have never laid eyes on? I am just saying,
as a reader, I am disappointed in Salinger's very small number of published
words. Can help me get past my anger? I'm looking for a little therapy, I
guess.
Patrick