British and American Literature. Учебно-методическое пособие

the one hand we see cruel nature, darkness, sea-storm, cannibals, riot, mob, Iago, hatred, lust, egoism; on the other hand there are Venice, law, friendship, Desdemona, altruism, love and faith. Othello is between these two worlds. The colour of his skin is also symbolic: his spiritual world doesn’t correspond to his appearance. This device was first used in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet falls in love with a man from another camp, and when she knows the name of her lover, she says:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet

Contradiction between Light Harmony and Darkness is the key image of Othello. All troubles are away when Othello meets Desdemona:

Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,

The gutter’d rocks, and congregated sands,

Traitors ensteep’d to enclog the guiltless keel,

As having sense of beauty, do omit

Their mortal natures, letting go safely by

The divine Desdemona.

Othello is a superbly constructed piece, fast, clean of line, free of all irrelevance. Perhaps this is because it is the least political, the least social of the tragedies. Here we are concerned not with the health and proper functioning of the state, but with the health and proper functioning of a marriage. The tragedy is without any hope for the future either: at the end of the tragedies of state, a new generation may pick up the pieces and make a new start. With the murder of Desdemona and the suicide of Othello there is total desolation, without hope of any new beginning.

Othello is sometimes interpreted as a tragedy of misunderstanding: Othello does not understand Desdemona, so he doubts her fidelity; he does not understand Iago and trusts him; Iago is not capable to understand the nature of true love and it destroys him as well as Othello or Desdemona. Misunderstanding manifests Shakespeare’s eternal theme of appearance and reality.

Though Macbeth, too, has a marriage at its centre, it in every other way differs from Othello – a tragedy of state, a tragedy in which eternal forces are engaged. It was written as a sort of compliment to the new king, James VI of Scotland who had in 1603 become James I of England: not only is his ancestry hailed, the fact that he was a fierce opponent to witchcraft, is doubtless the cause of the dramatic stroke which begins the play – the appearance of three witches, amid thunder and lightning, and their assigna-

31

tion with Macbeth. The witches also personify the evil, which is one of the main themes of the play. It is interesting that they are no male or female thus symbolizing the diseased universe in the tragedy.

Macbeth is a very different kind of tragic hero to Othello. He is the personification of evil. Macbeth at the beginning of the play has just fought loyally though brutally in support of his king; he is near enough to the throne to be ambitious, yet his ambition is checked by a politician's hesitations and a fear of consequences. That step is the murder of King Duncan while he is on a visit to Macbeth's castle of Glamis – a doubly damned treachery, since he violates not only the duty of a subject but also the duties of a host. To accomplish it, Macbeth needs the prophecies of the witches and their help. Somehow he sells his soul to the Devil.

After he murders the king he gains a fearsome confidence from the success and starts open slaughter. The crown has been an end, not a means to him: he has aimed to be king, not to do anything with his kingship. He murders not only real enemies but everybody he suspects, in an attempt to make his throne secure for himself and for the heirs he will never have. If Brutus was noble, but enjoyed contemplating his own nobility, Macbeth is evil and, horror-stricken because he understands the monstrousness of his own conduct. We are struck by the terrible paradox of a sordid deed committed by a great mind, which later reduces Macbeth to a common tyrant in the latter half of the play. It is the brief revival of this mental range in the monologue 'Tomorrow and tomorrow' at the end of the play that ensures that among our emotions at Macbeth's downfall will be a sense of waste, of fine qualities dissipated and destroyed. After the murder of Duncan he destroys all equilibrium in the kingdom: Nature itself protests, in storms and unnatural happenings. The God-ordained nature of the institution of kingship is stressed in the scene in which we hear of King Edward the Confessor's 'touching' the sick, acting – like Christ – as the healing emissary of God. But Macbeth is not like glamorous Milton's or Byron's rebels against God, and as we watch the increasing monstrousness of his deeds, we also become conscious that those very deeds are ensuring that forces will combine as a reaction against this terrible reign, that the social and spiritual health of the kingdom will be restored under the dead king's son, Malcolm.

Macbeth is also a play about Scotland, about the bond of trust between a ruler and the ruled, the ties, which knit together the commonwealth into a fruitful, mutually dependent unity. The bonds are ragged even at the beginning of the play: it is typical of Macbeth that he should take advantage of another's rebellion, rather than initiate one himself.

32

Many critics say that the text of Macbeth does not reflect what Shakespeare originally wrote, because the play is rather short; the speed of action suggests that some scenes may have been left out. The Hecate scenes are thought to have been added at some later stage. As we know the only two poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, were personally supervised by Shakespeare for publication. Nineteen plays were published during his lifetime, some of the texts being taken from the actors and not from Shakespeare’s own writing. There is no literary manuscript, which is known for certain to be in Shakespeare’s own handwriting. The first printed folio of his plays was published by his colleagues after his death in 1623, so Shakespeare could not supervise the identity of the texts.

On the whole it is necessary to say a few words about the astounding flexibility of Shakespeare's dramatic language. The day of Shakespeare was an unsettled period in the history of the English language, it was in a state of fluctation; it was an age of experiment. But even for his time Shakespeare’s style was exceptionally bold and individual. He uses the language more freely than some contemporary writers. He was fond of compounds: “My furnaceburning heart”. Words often acquire a new aspect of meaning: in Hamlet the ghost of old king appears before his son in a “questionable shape” (“questionable” here means “inviting question”). Age and hunger are called “weak evils” in As You Like It not because they are weak, but because they weaken people. Shakespeare is always ready to coin a new word: he forms a diminutive “smilet” from a known word “smile”. In his later plays Shakespeare’s syntax becomes very complicated. It approaches the irregularities of spoken language. Constructions are mixed, grammatical links are dropped, and several sentences are often compressed into one. Shakespeare’s language is infinitely richer in words than that of Marlowe and of his other predecessors. In fact he freely introduced the colloquial idiom of his day. The wealth of Shakespeare’s vocabulary is in figurative use of words and the flexibility of the semantic element.

And of course, it is necessary to mention the sonnets, written by Shakespeare throughout his whole life. A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. The events reflected in Shakespeare’s sonnets are very dramatic. It is a love triangle: a Poet, his close Friend and the Dark Lady. The Poet is in love with the Dark Lady. The Dark Lady and the Poet’s Friend love each other. The relationship between the Poet and his Friend become more and more complicated but the Poet values friendship more than love. Here the main difference between Shakespeare’s sonnets and the sonnets of his European contemporaries lies.

33

Shakespeare's last plays were like Indian summer for him as a playwright (1608–1612). In the most notable and magical of these plays, The Tempest, Prospero – who with his daughter has been exiled from his dukedom, and found refuge on an island – is fortuitously offered revenge on his usurper brother and his court, but he puts it aside in favour of forgiveness and reconciliation, symbolized by the marriage of his daughter and his enemy's son. Prospero is a figure half-human, half-God, the philosopher possessed of magic powers. Caliban is a savage who lacks all the benefits of civilization. Some critics say that he symbolizes basic mankind or what all of us can be if we forget the norms of civilized behaviour. Others regard him as a symbol of oppressed minorities, and the relationship between him and Prospero – as the reflection of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. The love between Miranda and Ferdinand and the love of Prospero to Miranda show its redeeming force. Another regenerating force is patience. The play is considered to be Shakespeare’s poetic will. When in the course of his play Prospero meditates on his magic, and finally forswears his powers, it is difficult not to read into his words a personal meaning:

Our revels now are ended: these our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind: We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

It is impossible to imagine a more beautiful or more serene farewell – to his art, his theatre (the Globe itself), to the world of his imagination, to life.

As it has been mentioned, the first collection of Shakespeare’s works was published in 1623 but it was incomplete. Throughout his life the great playwright wrote 37 plays, several long poems and 154 sonnets. All of them contain a rich vocabulary of over 15 000 words and wide historical, literary and general knowledge. Alexander Pope, a well-known poet him-

34

self and one of the earliest commentators on Shakespeare’s works in England, wrote: “William Shakespeare addressed the whole nation”.

John Donne (1572–1631) is still another great representative of English Renaissance. He also lived through the reign of three monarchs: Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I. He was born into a stern Catholic family, but in his early twenties he renounced his faith. He traveled much, even took part in hunting the Spanish treasure ships off the Azores. Later he reflected the voyages in the poems The Storm and The Calm. He is regarded as a founder of the metaphysical school of poetry. In general metaphysical poetry is marked by such things as: intense feeling combined with ingenious thought; elaborate, witty images; an interest in mathematics, science and geography; an overriding interest in the soul; direct, colloquial expression even in sonnets and lyrics. Donne’s works are close to modern readers. He seems to talk to us as if we were his friends; he addresses us in his various tones of voice. In the following lines we can hear the intimate wonder of a lover:

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved

Donne’s poetry is characterized by a wide use of conceit – an unexpected comparison between two apparently dissimilar things or ideas. The most familiar example can be found in his poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, where he compares love and a pair of geometric compasses:

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

35

And makes me end where I begun.

The love for the speaker is not only like gold, which is precious and does not break when it endures stresses, but thanks to its malleability can cover much space when hammered; love for the speaker is like an instrument for drawing perfect, “just,” circles. According to the Renaissance beliefs, God created the universe using a pair of compasses. And Donne’s lovers become that God’s instrument for creating their own universe of love. Also, like the two “feet” of that instrument, the lovers cannot be completely disjoined from one another. It is impossible not to appreciate this comparison.

One more example of a metaphysical conceit in another Donne’s poem is his comparison of his beloved woman to an outstretched rich land in need of exploration. When his speaker exclaims, “O my America! My new-found land,” he is employing a metaphor easily recognizable by English readers in the early 17th century. America itself had been “discovered” more than a century earlier and was often personified as “female” to a European audience. The relationship between the human body and the world goes back at least as far as the Middle Ages. The microcosm, the little body of man, was thought to replicate the macrocosm or large world around him. Cartographers at times animated their maps with allegorical features, so that the mapped land resembled a human figure. Thus, many of John Donne’s metaphysical conceits reflect the beliefs and philosophy of his century.

Donne’s main preoccupation in poetry is love in almost all of its forms: from sexually explicit to religiously devotional. It can be said that Donne or his successors – adherents of this literary trend, had nothing to do with metaphysics. In fact they playfully used scholasticism, popular superstition, classical learning and the tone of the poems seldom became dull or heavy. Main features of content and tone of Donne’s poetry may be illustrated by his poem The Sun Rising:

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows and through curtains call on us?

The sun here is not the source of warmth but a voyeur, trying to peep into someone’s bedroom.

36

But love poetry is only a part of Donne’s poetry. His most famous creation is Holy Sonnets. This collection is complex and erudite, touches upon various topics.

King James I urged Donne to enter the Church and made him a chaplain. John Donne became an adherent of religious pluralism, the author of well-known sermons.

Another well-known poetic group of that time is the group of Cavalier poets. Carew, Herrick, Lovelace, Suckling belonged to it. They wrote mainly in the time of Charles I. Cavalier poetry is concerned with love, employs many lyric forms, though paid little attention to the sonnet; their lyrics are distinguished by short lines, idiomatic diction, sometimes by elegant cynicism. The group has also the nickname “Tribe of Ben” because these poets were under the strong influence of the famous Renaissance poet and playwright Ben Jonson who raised the drama to a new level of literary respectability. His major plays are Every Man in his Humour, Every Man out of his Humour and Volpone. Elizabethans believed in four humours in the human body: choler, blood, phlegm and melancholy which being properly mixed make a person healthy and good. Usually humans have an imperfect mix. In his comedies of humours Ben Jonson delineated dominating features of a man’s character. The play Every Man in his Humour was first staged by the Lord Chamberlain’s company, with Shakespeare in the cast.

The XVII century poetry is incomplete without John Milton (1608– 1674). He started writing in the period of late Renaissance and died in the Age of Sensibility. At the time of the Commonwealth the new government left him in peace, because he had written in support of the execution of Charles I. From 1641 he even abandoned poetry in favour of prose propaganda for the Protestant and Parliamentary causes, was appointed Latin secretary to the newly formed Council of State. By 1652 he became totally blind. After the Restoration Milton was arrested but then freed at the request of his influential friends. He returned to poetry. His main works include Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. He had had thoughts to write a national epic on the basis of the legends about King Arthur, but the time he lived in made him reject this idea. Only the biblical subjects could match the massive struggles over the issues of conscience.

The poem Paradise Lost is about the loss of two paradises: Adam and Eve’s lost of Paradise of Eden and Satan’s loss of Heaven. Dryden said

37

that “the devil” was Milton’s hero “instead of Adam”. Later Blake and Shelley stuck to the same opinion.

Paradise Lost opens with a vision of Hell terrible and at the same time majestic in its horror. This is a long poem in twelve books, inspired by the Bible and written to “justify the ways of God to men”. Satan lies in Hell in the burning lake, after having been cast down from Heaven. The grandeur of the descriptions of eternal fire, perpetual torment is highlighted by the moments of simplicity. Milton is a great master of such transmissions. The figure of Satan is powerful and immense, with the last flickers of heavenly radiance and the traces of his ruined greatness. At the same time the scenes between humans are very convincing on a human level. In the scene of the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) Milton underlines that Adam “was not deceived, / But fondly overcome by Female charm”. Ultimately beautiful and humanly deep is the scene when Adam and Eve make their way out of Paradise into the world of fallen men:

The World was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

The language of the poem is quite easy for modern readers, though Milton didn’t simplify anything for himself or for his readers.

Though the poem has a religious subject, it is not a religious poem, as it does not inspire religious devotion. The author asserts the power of mind rather than of the feelings. Besides, the events, described in the poem, have symbolic significance, though it will be a great mistake to see Cromwell or Charles I in Satan. Satan includes, of course, all these allusions, but on the other hand he is as varied as the nature of hell in the poem.

Paradise Lost is a poem with such scale, vision and dramatic sweep, that it has no parallel in English literature outside Shakespeare.

Tasks

1. This is an extract from Macbeth: Macbeth is planning the murder of Duncan. Pay attention to the flexibility of Shakespeare’s dramatic language, which mirrors the mind of one who can affrightedly contemplate the wrath of God at his crime, the universal order that it wounds, at the very moment of committing it:

38

this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off;

And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind . . .

Find the stylistic devices that manifest this flexibility.

2. Many well-known poets translated Shakespeare’s sonnets into Russian, Valery Bryusov, Tatyana Schepkina-Kupernik, Boris Pasternak. Samuel Marshak was the first to translate the whole collection of the sonnets. Many sonnets were translated by A. Finckel and N. Gerbel. Here there is Sonnet 73 with several variants of translation. Compare them and say whose translation you like better and why.

73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceives!, which makes thy love

more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

To время года видишь ты во мне, Когда один-другой багряный лист От холода трепещет в вышине – На хорах, где умолк веселый свист.

Во мне ты видишь тот вечерний час, Когда поблек на западе закат И купол неба, отнятый у нас,

39

Подобьем смерти – сумраком объят. Во мне ты видишь блеск того огня, Который гаснет в пепле прошлых дней, И то, что жизнью было для меня, Могилою становится моей.

Ты видишь все.

Но близостью конца Теснее наши связаны сердца!

Перевод С. Маршака

Ты видишь – я достиг поры той поздней года, Когда на деревах по нескольку листков Лишь бьется, но и те уж щиплет непогода, Тогда как прежде тень манила соловьев.

Во мне ты видишь, друг, потемки дня такого, В котором солнце лик свой клонит на закат, А ночь уже спешит над жизнию сурово

Распространить свой гнет, из черных выйдя врат. Ты видишь, милый друг, что я едва пылаю, Подобно уж давно зажженному костру, Лишенному того, чем жил он поутру, И, не дожив, как он, до ночи, потухаю.

Ты видишь – и сильней горит в тебе любовь К тому, что потерять придется скоро вновь.

Перевод Н. Гербеля

Во мне ты видишь, друг, то время года, Когда рвет ветер желтый лист ветвей, Когда уныло стонет непогода, Где прежде пел так сладко соловей. Во мне, мой друг, ты видишь свет

прощальный На западе погаснувшего дня.

Тот свет – предвестник полночи печальной,

Угрюмой смерти близкая родня. Во мне огня ты видишь угасанье...

Он умереть не хочет под золой, Но вырваться смешны его старанья: Его задушит пепла мертвый слой. Во мне ты это видишь, и разлуку

Предчувствуешь, и крепче жмешь мне руку...

Перевод С. Ильина

40