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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

I was in a bookstore, the other night, buying a copy of Sophocles
and someone asked me if I thought that the tragedies of Shakespeare
are more tragic than the tragedies of the ancient Greeks. This seems an
interesting, imaginative question, so I thought I would post here, and see
what others think.

Title lines are not always large enough to accommodate a title which will
truly do justice to a topic.

The title of this thread is Is Shakespeare "more tragic" than the Greeks?
but perhaps a fuller title, to do justice, would be:

Is Shakespeare "more tragic" than the Greeks, and are modern tragedies
most tragic of all, in light of Existentialism's definition of freedom and
responsibility?

In other words, can we detect, from ancient through medieval to modern
drama an ongoing progression away from fate and God and religion and
predestination and towards a humanist vision of freedom and
responsibility?

As a little aside remark, regarding freedom and responsibility, I would
like to quote to you an anecdote related to my by a long-time pen-pal
living 2 hours journey North of Kuala Lumpur.

She grew up on a rubber plantation. One day, she complained to her
father asking him why he would not give her more freedom. He wisely
answered "I am happy to give you all the freedom you desire once you
have shown me that you are capable of shouldering all the responsiblity
which such freedom entails."

1. a. A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to
ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic
flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable
circumstances.

b. The genre made up of such works.
c. The art or theory of writing or producing these works.

2. A play, film, television program, or other narrative work that portrays
or depicts calamitous events and has an unhappy but meaningful ending.

3. A disastrous event, especially one involving distressing loss or injury to
life: an expedition that ended in tragedy, with all hands lost at sea.

4. A tragic aspect or element.

With lots of committment, I have managed reading all of the tragedies
(and comedies) of William Shakespeare, and quite a few tragedies from
the ancient Greeks. Whether one can term Shakespeare's tragedies
more "tragic" than Oedipus Rex, for example, seems more a matter of
opinion than fact.

Shakespeare really wrote some tragic material (read Hamlet, MacBeth,
and Titus Andronicus, for example), but a reader can see where he may
have had some influence from some of the ancient Greeks, including
Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus; but, no doubt, those brilliant Greek
playwrights gained inspiration and influence from other sources also, but
perhaps not as much from literature.

Interesting question. Thanks, Sitaram.

The question "are Shakespearean tragedies more tragic than Greek
tragedies" arose during a conversation about
fate/destiny/necessity/predestination/election vs. freedom. And that
discussion arose because I am trying to help the person who posted in
the Sophocles sub-forum regarding fate/destiny in Antigone and Oedipus
Tyrannis.

What I had been saying (to the person in the bookstore) is that there is a
kind of spectrum which ranges from the gods of Hesiod and Siddhartha
Gautama, who are subject to fate and necessity and karma, ranging to
Allah, who is not even bound by Allah, but may abrogate*** and revoke
and change rules, and ranging all the way to a godless world of Sartre in
which we are CONDEMNED to be free, and condemned in the sense that
we must take total responsibility for all actions and consequences. SO,
the idea is that, somehow, for the Greeks, someone like Oedipus is
predestined or fated to suffer certain things, and there is nothing he can
do to escape it,.... whereas for Shakespeare, there is perhaps MORE
freedom of choice available to his characters, and hence MORE TRAGIC in
the sense that those who suffer COULD have conceivably acted
otherwise... so, when something tragic is unavoidable, then perhaps it is
less tragic and more inevitable that something which COULD have been
avoided. This is more or less where the question is coming from. I don't
know if all this casts the question in a different light, or sheds more light.

<=============F O O T N O T E S==============>
***

Surah 2 verse 106
(There is a noticible difference in these three translators' interpretation,
but I think that the underlying idea is the same, when stripped of all
rhetoric.)

YUSUFALI: None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be
forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou
not that Allah Hath power over all things?

PICKTHAL: Nothing of our revelation (even a single verse) do we
abrogate or cause be forgotten, but we bring (in place) one better or the
like thereof. Knowest thou not that Allah is Able to do all things?

Mentor Books Pickthall from 1970

When I look at my old copy from 1970, I find that it reads "Surah 2,
verse 106, "Such of Our revelations as We abrogate or cause to be
forgotten, we bring (in place) one better or the like thereof. Knowest thou
not that Allah is Able to do all things?

SHAKIR: Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be
forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that
Allah has power over all things?

He who is master of himself is slave to himself. Hence a Deity who is
bound by its own word and is therefore voluntarily self-limiting (think of
Tsimtsum, the divine contraction, which we encounter in the Life of Pi by
Yann Martel), is not quite as powerful as a Deity who is not even bound or
limited by its own words but may abrogate or change anything.

Compare and contrast with the Judaeo-Christian portrait of the Deity

Bible

"with Whom there is no shadow of turning" (James 1:17),

Who is "the Lord, who changeth not" (Malachi 3:6),

Whose Word "endureth forever" (I Peter) 1:23-25

for God cannot lie (Heb. 6:18),

What I had been saying (to the person in the bookstore) is that there is a
kind of spectrum which ranges from the gods of Hesiod and Siddhartha
Gautama, who are subject to fate and necessity and karma, ranging to
Allah, who is not even bound by Allah, but may abrogate and revoke and
change rules, and ranging all the way to a godless world of Sartre in
which we are CONDEMNED to be free, and condemned in the sense that
we must take total responsibility for all actions and consequences. SO,
the idea is that, somehow, for the Greeks, someone like Oedipus is
predestined or fated to suffer certain things, and there is nothing he can
do to escape it,.... whereas for Shakespeare, there is perhaps MORE
freedom of choice available to his characters, and hence MORE TRAGIC in
the sense that those who suffer COULD have conceivably acted
otherwise... so, when something tragic is unavoidable, then perhaps it is
less tragic and more inevitable that something which COULD have been
avoided. This is more or less where the question is coming from. I don't
know if all this casts the question in a different light, or sheds more light.

Wow, Sitaram, I never thought of it that way, but I certainly see what you
mean - how fascinating!

How true that in Shakespeare's plays (and even in contemporary plays),
there seemed a decreasing trend in advising oracles, and knowing one's
future, though inevitable (as in Oedipus' case, for example). Out of all of
the Shakespearean tragedies, I feel most familiar with Macbeth and Titus
Andronicus, and, in neither of them, no characters knew what trouble
followed.

Whether this makes Shakespeare plays more 'tragic' necessarily than the
ancient Greek plays, I still question, but I see how the events' spontaneity
could contribute to its tragedy. Thinking of it: what would you feel would
make a larger tragedy in your life - knowing something approaches that
would forever and inevitably ruin your life (even if you attempted
escaping it), or something entirely unpredictable that would additionally
ruin your life?

What happened to Lavinia in Titus Andronicus seemed absolutely out-of-
the-ordinary, unpredictable, and very tragic, which anyone can admit;
yet, no doubt, what happened to Oedipus seems also tragic, but,
according to his oracle and Tiresias, the future king proved doomed to
such a fate, no matter how diligently he tried avoiding it.

How interesting to think about - which sounds more tragic: being doomed
to an inevitable fate, or catching tragedy by chance?

Such a question, I think, may really depend on a person's beliefs and

psychological disposition. Julian Rotter in the 1960's formed the

psychological theory of the "Locus of Control," in which a person tests
either with an internal locus of control or external. Someone with an
internal LOC tends to believe he/she determines fate and/or destiny
through determination, diligence (basically, that one has control over
his/her life); on the contrary, someone with an external LOC tends to
believe that external forces (fate, destiny, luck, chance) have control over
his/her life.

Knowing this, some of the playwrights' beliefs, I think, shine through.
Could the characters of Macbeth have made wiser choices to avoid their
tragedy? Perhaps. Could Oedipus have made wiser choices? No,
Sophocles made his fate unavoidable.

Wow, this thread will keep my head wandering all evening.
__________________

Could'a Should'a Would'a

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I am so glad if I can come up with a thread which is "unsettling", not that
it is my wish to bother people, but I would like to come up with a good
question once in a while. And to unsettle a mind of Mono's calibre is
something of a feather in my cap (aside to the audience, I admire Mono's
posts).

After four years of St.Johns-Annapolis-seminars-on-the-great-books, I
became quite frustrated that there seemed to be no answers, but only
unanswerable questions. I even came up with the notion that the
unanswerable question is the unmoved mover of the soul.

I apologize that this thread, this train of thought on which I am about to
embark, may seem not so related to Shakespeare. But I ask the readers'
indulgence, since I feel for several reasons that the Shakespeare
sub-forum is the best place for this thread. Shakespeare's tragedies are
midway, historically between the ancient Greek tragedies and modern
tragic novels and movies. People with a broad foundation and interest in
Shakespeare may likely be drawn to this forum. And I would really like to
see a discussion develop which could clearly integrate our understanding
of a Shakespearean tragedy with the ancient Greek understanding and
the modern understanding, and perhaps tie it all in with free choice versus
fate/necessity.

I think I remember Could'a Should'a Would'a being the title of some
popular self-help book on Cognitive Therapy, the brand of therapy where
you learn to see your glass as half full rather than half empty.

Some people waste their lives, tormenting themselves with:

I could have majored in this field,

I should have married that person,
I would have done more traveling if it were not for my mother's neediness.

I have always been haunted by the underworld scene in the final pages of
Plato's Republic, where all the souls draw lots to choose new lives to be
born into. Each soul is driven to choose what it assumes to be something
opposite to the sufferings of its former life. A tyrant chooses to become a
peaceful swan. A slave chooses the life of a tyrant, only to discover in
horror that he is destined to eat his own children. Only Odysseus, who
chooses last, chooses wisely by choosing a middle of the road citizen in a
free society.

I suppose one might call "Death of a Salesman" a modern tragedy. I'm
not sure. I am "in over my head" in these matters.

I am thinking of recent movies I have seen on DVD. One in particular,
sticks in my mind as a modern tragedy; "Damaged" with Jeremy Irons.

What I am about to write is a

S * P * O * I * L * E * R

for anyone who has not seen this movie,
so read on at your own risk.

It seems to me that there are three figures in the movie which might be
potentially called tragic, but for me it is only Jeremy Irons, in the closing
scene, who is the real "tragic figure". I just now intentionally avoided the
word "hero" because what Jeremy Iron's character does is considered by
society to be heinous and despicable. Jeremy Irons plays a very
successful, respected, well-to-do, high ranking government official with a
wonderful attractive wife and a fine grown son. The son is involved in a
serious relationship (marriage bound) with a young woman. It is the
young woman who is "damaged", which we learn as the story develops.
As a child, she was involved in an incestuous relationship with her brother
for literally years and years. In her late teens, she developed an interest
in other men and wanted to break off things with her brother. She locks
him out of her bedroom one night and he spends hours outside her door
wailing and moaning with inconsolable grief, because he is totally addicted
to her. Then, there is only silence. She comes out of the room to discover
that the brother has committed suicide. It is this incest/suicide which
forever damages the young woman in the sense that it makes her
addicted to the thrill of very dangerous reckless forbidden incestuous
behavior and also makes her quite amoral and unfeeling, perhaps amoral
to a psychopathic degree.

When this "future fiancée" first sees the strikingly handsome and
distinguished Jeremy Irons, from across a crowded room, she instantly
sets her sights upon him as her victim of prey.

It is the nature of the male to be very vulnerable to any slight chance for
sexual pleasure, especially of the forbidden variety, and opportunistic in
circumstances which appear to lend themselves to success.

No words pass between Juliette Binoche (the "damaged" voluptuous young
woman) and Jeremy. She makes eyes at him, he is somewhat shocked,
his mouth dropping ever so slightly, but senses that there is willingness
and opportunity. Later, he receives a mysterious phone call requesting
that he come to her apartment. He unhesitatingly complies and goes to
see her. Again, no words are spoken. They instantly commence to violent
love-making.

I suppose Jeremy reasons that it is just a secret fling of excitement and
that no one will ever find out. One could hardly imagine that Jeremy would
choose this course of action with his eyes wide open IF he could foresee
that it would mean his own son's death, his public scandal, loss of home
and job, divorce from a wonderful wife, and a wretched life in a remote
village, brooding daily on a wall-sized enlargement of a photograph of
Juliette, his son, and himself.

At one point, Jeremy approachs Juliette with an offer of marriage. He
naievely assumes that somehow his son will one day understand. Juliette's
response is so interesting: "You mean to say, you want to marry me, and
wake up every morning with me beside you, and sit with me each
morning at the breakfast table, reading your paper, before work?" "Yes,
of course!" he answers. "But," Juliette continues, "you already have that
with your wife. And it bores you. What we have is exciting, forbidden,
unspeakable, hidden..." I am paraphrasing all this from memory, but I
think you get the gist and drift of it.

For me, Jeremy Irons plays the tragic figure, because, although he does
have the freedom to choose to at least try to forget and move on with his
life, he remains mesmerised before that photographic enlargment, which
fills the wall of his single room, in his remote village. The character played
by Juliette moves on with hardly a thought. She has gone beyond
equanimity and become truly psychopathic, with a little black hole vortex
in place of a soul, where each an every monstrous act and thought can
dissapear with never a twinge of guilt, remorse, regret. She reminds me
of Daisy in Gatsby, who can walk away from the guilt of vehicular
homicide without a second thought. At least, Lady MacBeth has the
common decency to go mad and scream "Out damn spot!".

One of the greatest wisdoms expressed in the Bhagavad-gita is the
wisdom of equanimity, the well-tempered, even-keeled spirit, which does
not lose its balance in the face of great joy or great sorrow. But, there is
such a thing as too much of a good thing. As Nietzsche said, "Beware,
when you stare into the void, the Void begins to stare back into you."

It is a measure of guilt and shame which keeps us decent in the face of
indecent desires and impulses.

Balance seems to be key. The middle way is essential. Too much guilt and
conscience and we become melancholy, neurotic, mawkish, maudeline,
hopeless and depressed. No guilt or conscience at all and we become
psychopaths, serial killers, Hannible Lechters, smacking our lips at the
thought of eating someone's liver. with some fava beans and a nice
chianti.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I suppose this rambling that I am engaged in demonstrates one way to
make the classics come alive as part of our daily life and thoughts.

Modern drama, at least some of it, is the product of people who have
been at some point students of Shakespeare and the classics.

And what can we see in history which constitutes "tragedy"? Our word
"tragedy" has taken on such broad dimensions. Mass genocides, mass
suicides such as in "Jonestown, Guyana", suicide bombings and the threat
of nuclear or biological world war are certainly some of the lyrics to the
theme songs of modern tragedy.

If human life ends as a result of global warming, or an ice age, or an
asteroid impact, then we would deem that a tragedy, but not so tragic as
an avoidable tragedy, let us say, our irrevocably upsetting the delicate
balance of the ecosystem through the wanton tampering of our genetic
engineering. The real fuel to the flames of any hell is our eternal regret,
that we could have avoided so much suffering if only we had acted
differently.

What is the last tragedy? Will the last tragedy even have an audience to
applaud or boo it, or critics to give it rave reviews or a "thumbs down"?
What is the ultimate tragedy?

The thought occurred to me yesterday that the ultimate tragic figure is an
omniscient and omnipotent deity who fails in his creation. But then, the
merest hint or suggestion of such a tragic deity is blasphemy in any
religion. God is beyond good and evil!

Another good movie to consider as an example of tragedy is Forbidden
Planet

S * P * O * I * L * E * R

A scientist lands on a deserted, dead world, once inhabited by the most
godlike, technologically advanced race the universe has ever known, the
Krell. The Krell discovered how to harness limitless power to be at the
beck-and-call of their own thoughts, but they forget about the "monsters
of the id", and hence they destroyed themselves. The scientist, with his
daughter, taps into this same power and technology. A rescue party fails
to heed the warning not to land, and the entire tragedy is reenacted.
Though there is the element that the scientist himself was not aware of
"the monsters of the id". It is only the dying words of the ship's officer
which reveal the terrible secret.

We may, in theory, repent of sin, and perhaps even be forgiven or forgive
ourselves, but can we ever repent of tragedy?

Socrates debates whether the same person might be the master of both
comedy and tragedy.

It seems to me that tragedy is at it's most tragic when someone is the
sole author of their own tragedy, and had the means to foresee such
tragedy and destruction from the very begining, and yet chose to proceed
with their destructive course of action in spite of their knowledge of the
consequences.

The River of Fire

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As Kierkegaard once said, “Life must be lived forwards, but can only be
understood backwards."

Is great literature our portal to understanding life in retrospect?

Happiness is such a fragile bubble, such a delicate balance of having what
we want and wanting what we have. Upset that balance, burst that bubble,
and we have tragedy inchoate.

Was Pharoah of Egypt, drowning in the Red Sea, a tragic figure?

To this day, Jews commemorate the suffering of the Egypt in the Passover
Haggadah with ten drops of wine from the goblet, one drop for each of
the ten plagues and mourn the suffering and loss of the Egyptians.

There is an obscure but fascinating "river of fire" theology among the
Greek Orthodox Christians which suggests that heaven and hell are the
same place, the same divine love of God, which simultaneously comforts
the righteous and torments the wicked.

Zoroastrian eschatology describes a "lake of fire" which is soothing to the
righteous, like warm milk, but scalds the wicked.

Can heaven and hell be the same place?

(Can the tragic and the comic unite?)

God is a consuming fire. (Heb. 12:28-29)

The three children in the firey furnace, in the Book of Daniel, are joined
by a forth, angelic, figure, nor are they consumed or harmed by the
flames, but the kings guards who approach the furnace door for a closer
look are instantly burned to a crisp by the inferno.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage...er=7&version=50

The Book of Daniel, Chapter 7, verse 9

Vision of the Ancient of Days

"I watched till thrones were put in place,
And the Ancient of Days was seated;
His garment was white as snow,
And the hair of His head was like pure wool.
His throne was a fiery flame,
Its wheels a burning fire;
A fiery stream issued
And came forth from before Him.

How does one exctract an entire theology from this short passage?

Yet, in Exodus, we read that ten times, Moses came to Pharoah and said
"Let my people go" but God hardened Pharoah's heart.

Why does God harden Pharoah's heart if he desires that all be saved?
What can this mean. Why doesn't God soften Pharoah's heart and lead
him into the wilderness with Moses?

http://www.christiansonline.cc/foru...39&page=4&pp=10

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Hardening of the Heart
This does not mean that God on purpose made Pharaoh sinful. For God to
make it impossible for a man to obey Him, and then punish him for his
disobedience, would be both unjust and contrary to the fundamental
Jewish belief in Freedom of the Will. The phrase most often translated
'hardening of the heart' occurs nineteen times; ten times it is said that
Pharaoh hardened his heart; and nine times the hardening of Pharaoh's
heart is ascribed to God. There thus seem to be two sides to this
hardening. When the Divine command came to Pharoah, 'Set the slaves
free,' and his reply was, 'I will not,'; each repetition of Pharaoh's
persistent obstinacy made it less likely that he would eventually listen to
the word of God. For such is the law of conscience: every time the voice
of conscience is disobeyed, it becomes duller and feebler, and the heart
grows harder. Man cannot remain 'neutral' in the presence of Duty or of
any direct command of God. He either obeys the Divine command, and it
becomes unto him a blessing; or he defies God, and such command then
becomes unto him a curse. 'It is part of the Divinely ordered scheme of
things that if a man delibertately chooses evil, it proceeds to enslave him;
it blinds and stupefies him, making for him repentance well-nigh
impossible.' (Rabbi Raihm) Thus, every successive refusal on the part of
Moses froze up his better nature more and more, until it seemed as if God
had hardened his heart. But this is only because Pharaoh had first
hardened it himself, and continued to do so. The Omniscient God knew
beforehand whither his obstinacy would lead Pharoah, and prepared
Moses for initial failure by warning him that Pharaoh's heart would become
'hardened.'

We are created from dust, and the dust becomes clay, and the clay
becomes hardened and irrevocably shaped by our every freewill choice,
and then placed in the furnace for eternity.

Quote:
Originally Posted by from Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Existence precedes essence.

From a Judaeo-Christian perspective, God, who is outside of the temporal,
foreknows the outcome of all of our freewill choices and yet that
foreknowledge in no way robs us of our freewill at the moment we make
the choice.

It is sort of like Shroedinger's famous quantum cat, which is neither dead
nor alive, until it is observed.

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. ~ Joseph Stalin

The quality of mercy is not strained, but can the quality of tragedy be
amplified; a million Oedipus here, a billion Hamlets there, six billion
Romeos and Juliets?

And who shall be left to draw the stage curtains upon the final scene?

Quote:
Originally Posted by James Cagney
It's curtains for ya all, SEE! Curtains!

(exit stage left)...
__________________

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Emerson on Fate

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http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?o...d=25&Itemid=203

Take a look at Emerson's essay on Fate

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Secret of the World
People are born with the moral or with the material bias; -- uterine
brothers with this diverging destination: and I suppose, with high
magnifiers, Mr. Frauenhofer or Dr. Carpenter might come to distinguish in
the embryo at the fourth day, this is a Whig, and that a Free-soiler.

The secret of the world is, the tie between person and event. Person
makes event, and event person. The "times," "the age," what is that, but
a few profound persons and a few active persons who epitomize the
times? -- Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, Calhoun, Guizot, Peel,
Cobden, Kossuth, Rothschild, Astor, Brunel, and the rest. The same
fitness must be presumed between a man and the time and event, as
between the sexes, or between a race of animals and the food it eats, or
the inferior races it uses. He thinks his fate alien, because the copula is
hidden. But the soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is
only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is
always granted. The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your
skin. What each does is proper to him. Events are the children of his body
and mind. We learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz sings,

Alas! till now I had not known,
My guide and fortune's guide are one.

Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If we thought men were free
in the sense, that, in a single exception one fantastical will could prevail
over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's hand could pull down
the sun. If, in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature,
-- who would accept the gift of life?

Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, which secures that all is
made of one piece; that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal
and planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In astronomy, is vast space,
but no foreign system; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as
to-day. Why should we be afraid of Nature, which is no other than
"philosophy and theology embodied"? Why should we fear to be crushed
by savage elements, we who are made up of the same elements? Let us
build to the Beautiful Necessity, which makes man brave in believing that
he cannot shun a danger that is appointed, nor incur one that is not; to
the Necessity which rudely or softly educates him to the perception that
there are no contingencies; that Law rules throughout existence, a Law
which is not intelligent but intelligence, -- not personal nor impersonal, --
it disdains words and passes understanding; it dissolves persons; it
vivifies nature; yet solicits the pure in heart to draw on all its
omnipotence.

__________________

Wow, Damaged and Forbidden Planet both sound like some interesting
films; I will have to search around for them.

In an odd manner, I think this thread haunted me yesterday and this
morning, and I still cannot deviate Shakespeare's tragedies from those of
the ancient Greeks, besides, what you suggested, Sitaram, the immense
involvement of fate and destiny in Greek plays, as opposed to the more
abrupt, but not unexpected, events of Shakespeare's plays.

Even more odd, you read my mind when you printed this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sitaram
Existence precedes essence.

From a Judaeo-Christian perspective, God, who is outside of the temporal,
foreknows the outcome of all of our freewill choices and yet that
foreknowledge in no way robs us of our freewill at the moment we make
the choice.

It is sort of like Shroedinger's famous quantum cat, which is neither dead
nor alive, until it is observed.

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. ~ Joseph Stalin

The quality of mercy is not strained, but can the quality of tragedy be
amplified; a million Oedipus here, a billion Hamlets there, six billion
Romeos and Juliets?

.
Regarding what you posted, this morning, I began thinking of George
Berkeley (bishop and philosopher in existentialism and metaphysics). In
essence, the whole of two of his corresponding works (Principles of
Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus)
state that "for everything perceived, there must exist a perceiver"
(slightly different from what John Locke wrote). You read my mind in
mentioning "existence precedes essence," the concept of a temporal
Superior Being, Schrodinger's cat, and the quote from Stalin (which
sounds especially true, much like the question: "if a tree fell in the woods,
and no one heard it, would it make a sound?").

Indeed, neither Romeo nor Juliet's death would have mattered had
someone never noticed - the same for Hamlet, Banquo, Macbeth.
However, I find it interesting that Tiresias and the oracle consulted by
Oedipus already perceived what would inevitably occur in the future;
tragedy, in their minds, had happened before the actual event. How
painful that must have felt, but what would feel worse - the psychological
turmoil of some tragic upcoming event, or the event in itself?

Surely, at the end of your quote, several representations of Oedipus,
Hamlet, Romeo, and Juliet could all die, but there must always subsist
someone who carries the burden, calling it a tragedy, as the word
'tragedy' proves man-made, but death humankind can cause, yet never
make; there always persists a perceiver of the event, because death
proves Absolute, creating the tragedy in one's mind. In the latter parts of
Oedipus Rex, one could call the "perceiver" Antigone, and in Romeo and
Juliet the remaining Capulets and Montagues had to cope with such an
event.

Well, I think that makes all my strange mind can type for now, but, no
doubt, my head will persist its whirring on the subject, and I will probably
type more. Thank you, again, Sitaram, for such a thought-provoking
thread.

__________________

Forbidden Planet came out in the late 1950s and was the very first movie
to have a sound track composed entirely of electronically synthesized
music (e.g. moog synthesizers, I suppose)...

.....

All these things could make for a very interesting paper, since the subject
involves literature, religion, philosophy, and even physics (quantum)... as
well as political theory I suppose....

I am thinking of Hume's "gap" between "IS" and "Ought", that there is no
fact which undeniably dictates some moral imperative..... (perhaps I am
mistating Hume's gap)

.....

I want to see if I can dig more deeply into these matters.

I just did a google search on : shakespeare hamlet macbeth
psychoanalysis philosophical theological

and came up with this worthwhile link:

http://www.designwritingresearch.or...Continuum-3.doc

Quote:
Originally Posted by Julia Reinhard Lupton
is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of
California, Irvine, where she has taught since 1989. She received her
Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Yale University. She is the author (with
Kenneth Reinhard) of After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis
(Cornell 1992), and the author of Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography,
Typology, and Renaissance Literature (Stanford 1996) and Citizen-Saints:
Shakespeare and Political Theology (University of Chicago 2005). In
addition to specialized articles in scholarly journals, Lupton has
contributed to three MLA Approaches to Teaching volumes, and to the
Bedford Companion to Tragedy (2005) and the Cambridge Guide to
Marlowe (2003). Current projects include an essay on the sexualization of
thinking for Alternative Shakespeares III.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thinking WITH Shakespeare

Macbeth is as much about the cognitive causes and psychological
after-effects of murder as it is about the crime itself. Shakespeare’s
dramas of jealousy, Othello and The Winter’s Tale, stage the failure to
think, its tragic husbands avoiding the risks of thought by hiding behind a
screen of paranoid images.

...

Thinking “with” or alongside Shakespeare about matters of continuing
urgency: Thinking is not an object of historical study or thematic
representation, but rather an ongoing possibility for human being.
Thinking “with” Shakespeare means using the plays as a means of
approaching such issues as sexuality and subjectivity (Hamlet), minority
and majority (The Tempest), autonomy and group membership (The
Merchant of Venice), and politics and personhood (Measure for Measure) –
in each of these plays, but also in our current moment.

Quote:
Originally Posted by the relation of minds to bodies, and of thought to
desire
In the play’s excruciating turning point (Act Three, Scene Three), Othello
first resists, and then finally succumbs to, the “monster” lurking in Iago’s
“thought,” “too hideous to be shown.” Shakespeare diagnoses jealousy as
a monster of thought, a figment of the imagination that assumes a virtual
reality in Othello’s mental world, directing his actions and ultimately
destroying himself and his beloved. When Othello allows this monster to
take root within his consciousness, he does so by accepting a debilitating
image of himself as racially inferior and sexually inadequate:

Haply for I am black
And have not those soft parts of conversation

That chamberers have, or for that I am declined
Into the vale of years – yet that’s not much –
She’s gone, I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. (III.iii.267-71).

How interesting it is to compare this monster with the "monsters from the
Id" in Forbidden Planet.

The ancient Greeks seemed more concerned with gods and fate, while
Shakespeare and modern drama seems more concerned with "self".

The Bhagavad-gita says that the self can be the best friend or the worst
enemy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gita Ch. 6, v.5-7
"Let a man lift himself by himself. Let him not degrade himself. Certainly
self is friend to the self and self is also the enemy of the self.

"He who has controlled his self by his self, certainly his self is his best
friend, but for him who has not conquered his self his self is his enemy.

"The self-conquered peaceful person is but the Supreme Self. For him cold
or heat, happiness or sorrow, respect or disrespect are the same.

The hero's tragic flaw is a flaw of self, in self.

The mind is a good servant but a cruel master.

The mind is its own beautiful prisoner. - e.e. cummings
__________________

Milan Kundera on Tragedy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This morning, I would like to touch upon something Milan Kundera brings
up, regarding tragedy, both in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and also
in The Art of the Novel.

We shall be striving to articulate the nature of tragedy in modern drama,
and how it differs (if it differs) from the tragedy of Shakespeare, and how
they both differ from the tragedies of Sophocles.

As a preface to our exploration of what Kundera said, let us consider our
own choices in a hypothetical scenario in which we are the victim.

Imagine yourself and your child being held prisoner by a madman who
has total control over you both. Now, some who read this will be male and
others, female, some shall be old, some shall be young, some with
children of your own. You are free, in this what-if scenario, to imagine
yourselves as a mother with a daughter, or with a son, or as a father with
a daughter or a son.

Now, this mad man, who presently has you in his clutches, is quite well
known. He always operates in exactly the same fashion. He is absolutely
notorious for keeping his word in the bizarre offers of alternatives that he
makes to his prisoners. Since it is a given that the madman will abide by
his word, you must not allow into your reasoning that if you make a
certain choice, that the madman will fail to live up to his word.

Consider this exercise a moral calculus, a what-if scenario in the
spreadsheet of the imagination. It is an interactive
create-your-own-tragedy in which fate, necessity, and your freewill all
interact.

The madman has you and your child both securely bound. You see before
you a surgical table with instruments, and next to it a bed. The madman
tells you that you have several choices. Once you both make your choices
and agree to it, he will makes certain that your choice is carried out, and
then you will both be free to go, with no further harm. This scenario is a
modern day Oedipus with a Sophie's Choice twist.

Here are the two broad choices that he presents to you.

Either, (1) You will choose between you which of you will climb upon the
operating table and have your eyes surgically removed,

OR (2) you will both elect to climb upon the bed and perform some
incestuous act.

Within the framework of these two main choices, you have some leaway
of permutations and combinations of who suffers what and who does what
to whom.

Your captor tells you that you will have one day to discuss your options,
and then he will return and ask for your decision, and see that it is carried
out.

He warns you that if you both fail to agree, and fail to make a choice, then
you will both be tortured in the most hideous fashion imaginable, a fate
worse than death, which shall last for weeks before you finally die.

If we really wanted to make this interesting, we could give our madman a
weapon of mass destruction. He could tell you that if you refuse to
choose, then he shall destroy the entire world together with all humanity
and human culture. If we allow this, then you place yourself in a
Christ-like position, as savior of the world, if you choose, at the price of
taking sin upon yourself (for it is said that Christ literally became sin
taking upon himself all the sins of all mankind, past present and yet to be
born).

Now remember, Oedipus hears a prophecy that he shall kill his father and
marry his mother, and when he discovers that it has come to pass, he
puts out his own eyes.

One instructive assignment would be for you to write this as a story, and
compose the dialogue which transpires between parent and child.

Sometimes, life itself is our cruel captor, forcing upon us terrible choices.
Consider the expectant mother who is told that her fetus is seriously
abnormal and the child will be born into a dreadful, pointless life of
suffering and misery. You are then offered the choice of terminating the
pregnancy or giving birth to the child.

I personally knew a man in his eighties who was diagnosed with cancer.
He had the choice of undergoing very uncomfortable chemo and radiation
therapy, in the hope that he might gain several extra years of life. He
chose instead to take his one year of life expectancy, in relative comfort.
During that year, he was able to do a little traveling, eat well, take a drink
or two.

While you are pondering your predicament with your madman, I will now
tell you what Milan Kundera says about Oedipus.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unbearable Lightness of Being (TUL0B)- page
177

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are
exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal
regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they
had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so
valiently that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became
clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore
murderers.

I am always mindful of Socrates point that no person willingly desires
what is bad. Everyone by nature desires what they deem to be good
(even madmen).

I am also always aware of Plato's Euthyphro problem: "Is the good good,
ipso facto, by fiat, simply because God loves it, OR is there something
objective, some inherent quality, in the nature of Goodness that inspires
God to choose it. God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Sarah asks
Abraham to father Ishmael. Madmen try to play God, but God never plays
the role of madman.

Another movie I am going to suggest for consideration in this exploration
of tragedy is Indecent Proposal. I shall mention more about that movie
later, and it will be a SPOILER, so, forewarned is forearmed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Did they really know
TULOB page 176 -

Then everyone took to shouting at the Communists; You're the ones
responsible for our country's misfortunes...

And the accused responded: We didn't know! We ere deceived! We were
true believers! Deep in our hearts we are innocent!

In the end, the dispute narrowed down to a single question: Did they
really not know or were they merely making believe?

...

Is a fool on a throne relieved of all responsibility merely because he is a
fool?

...

It was in this connection that Tomas recalled the tale of Oedipus:

Oedipus did not know he was sleeping with his own mother, yet when he
realized what had happened, he did not feel innocent. Unable to stand the
sight of the misfortunes he had wrought by "not knowing," he put out his
eyes and wandered blind away from Thebes.

When Tomas heard Communists shouting in defense of their inner purity,
he said to himself, As a result of your "not knowing," this country has lost
its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps, and you shout that you feel no
guilt? How can you stand the signt of what you've done? How is it you
aren't horrified? Have you no eyes to see? If you had eyes you would
have to put them out and wander away from Thebes!

The analogy so pleased him that he often used it in conversation with
friends, and his formulation grew increasingly precise and eloquent.

I will now turn to what Milan Kundera says about Oedipus in The Art of the
Novel

Afterwards, I will try to gather my thoughts and bring some of this to bear
upon our original question regarding the nature of Tragedy (ancient,
Elizabethan, and modern) and the connection between Tragedy and Deity,
fate, destiny, predistination, necessity, chance and freewill choice.

Since each post is limited in string length to something like 100,000
characters, I shall continue this in a new post.

(continued as post #14 "The Art of the Novel" - Milan Kundera below)
__________________

The madman has you and your child both securely bound. You see before
you a surgical table with instruments, and next to it a bed. The madman
tells you that you have several choices. Once you both make your choices
and agree to it, he will makes certain that your choice is carried out, and
then you will both be free to go, with no further harm. This scenario is a
modern day Oedipus with a Sophie's Choice twist.

He warns you that if you both fail to agree, and fail to make a choice, then
you will both be tortured in the most hideous fashion imaginable, a fate
worse than death, which shall last for weeks before you finally die.

If we really wanted to make this interesting, we could give our madman a
weapon of mass destruction. He could tell you that if you refuse to
choose, then he shall destroy the entire world together with all humanity
and human culture. If we allow this, then you place yourself in a
Christ-like position, as savior of the world, if you choose, at the price of
taking sin upon yourself (for it is said that Christ literally became sin
taking upon himself all the sins of all mankind, past present and yet to be
born).

That is not a tragedy! That is an ordinary, low budget Hollywood action
movie! The only thing tragic about it would be actually watching it.

__________________
.

A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything,
should conceal it as well as she can.

Aren't you slightly curious about what Kundera has to say, and where this
inquiry might lead in the minds of various readers who take up the
challenge? My suspicion is that it could be quite rewarding for some, say
Mono.

But the secret to success is to hold our judgment in abeyance and not
jump upon one detail in isolation and make some judgment or
pronouncement regarding it. We must try to see the forest for the trees,
and not commence to chopping wildly at the first tree we encounter which
does not suit our fancy.

Even if it is the case that what I write each day is wrong or foolish or in
bad taste, at least I make an extreme effort each and every day of my
life to think hard and write hard and at least try to come up with
something new. There must surely be some socially redeeming merit,
earning me an "A" for effort, if nothing else. And when we crawl out on
that limb, ever day, trying to come up with something new, we face
criticism from many. It is a risky business to try and be original. But, at
least, it is a business, if only monkey-business. It is preferable to idleness
and burying our one talent in the sand, like that fellow in the parable.

Perhaps, one day, there shall be a mighty Judgment Day in cyberspace,
and a virtual Shakespeare or Socrates will float down from heaven, click
on our profiles, one by one, and sort each and every post in the scales of
a balance, the worthwhile and interesting on the right, and the vacuous
and trivial on the left. And on that fearful day, shall we see those ill-fated
words "You have been weighted and found wanting" being traced by some
divine finger upon our monitor?

Here we are, arch-enemies, dueling in cyberspace with our light-sabers.
The fate of the entire universe is at stake! But which of us is Darth Vader?
The real key to victory does not lie in chopping off one hand, because the
cyborg surgeons just sew on a new, better hand. Anyone who feels like it
may post in this thread, and single out one sentence or paragraph or
comment, and disagree with it, and disagree violently. But the real victory
will not be for someone to take their hachet and chop down one tree in
the forest, and fashion it into a fancy coffee table. The real victory will be
with the person who posts one single link. And that link will point to their
entire work, where they do it right, the way Sitaram should have done it
but failed, analyzing tragedy and fate and necessity and freewill from
ancient to modern times, in one breathtaking night of power where we
soar up to the highest heaven of heavens and bargain with Moses, and
soar down to the lowest hell to learn unspeakable mysteries. Yes,
imagination is the highest form of blasphemy. But I shall share in their
victory, for my poor thoughts and failures will have served as their
jumping-board of inspiration.

This is kind of a fun thread, is it not? We allow our minds freedom to
wander far and wide over many things.

But then, Nabokov warns us that "Curiosity is the highest form of
insubordination."

Mono, what do you say, since you are in on this.... shall we continue with
our inquiry and allow our minds to range freely over the centuries, over
all the many volumes in Borges "Library of Babel", or... is this curiosity of
ours too insubordinate?

I will grant you that my what-if scenario does not fit the classical definition
of Tragedy, and I do not claim that it has the makings of a literary
masterpiece. It is an exercise, to get people to think long and hard about
what is really important to them. Even silly mental exercises can lead to
profound results, occasionally. As a teenager, Einstein imagined himself
riding on a beam of light. Some people might see that as preposterous.
But somehow, his armchair experiment led him to his more serious
theories.

I just did a google search on : "sophie's choice" tragedy

and I come up with over two thousand links where people have chosen to
speak of it as a tragedy. Perhaps it is not a tragedy by classical definition,
but nevertheless a number of people have used the words tragedy to
describe it, and you must admit, my example bears more than a little
resemblance to the scenario in "Sophie's Choice". My example, by design,
bears some resemblance to Oedipus, since it involve incest and
self-inflicted blindness, and murder (patricide), if you add in the option of
world destruction.

Perhaps the tragedy of Tragedy itself is that it has evolved into something
second-rate for the general consumer public. Music becomes Muzak.

Which work do you feel most worthy to be called a modern Tragedy? I am
sure there are several worthwhile candidates to consider. Perhaps Death
of a Salesman?

Which movie in the past 50 or so years comes close to a classic definition
of tragedy (and no fare citing movie version of Shakespeare or
Sophocles)?

After all, this is just a thread, not stone tablets coming down from Mt.
Sinai. We are just having some fun, at least I am.

These posts get into the search engines and potentially attract a wide
audience of readers. Even poor posts of foolishness, like mine for
example, can be good showmanship in the sense that they lure
unsuspecting readers with poor taste to the forum, but then, little by little,
they wake up to the foolishness of what I write, and move on to be
genuinely educated by the posts of the truly knowledgeable. Think of it as
Plato's Noble Lie, which ultimately makes good citizens out of everyone.

__________________
"The Art of the Novel" - Milan Kundera

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(a continuation of Milan Kundera on Tragedy from post # 11 above)

We have seen what Milan Kundera says about Oedipus in The Unbearable
Lightness of Being (TULOB).

Oedipus is a figure who becomes aware of his crime and then seeks his
own punishment of self-inflicted blindness.

Now, let us look at what he says about crime and its punishment in The
Art of the Novel (TAOTN).

Kundera discusses the Comic and the Tragic in the world of Kafka.

We may see Kafka as that elusive fellow which Socrates spoke of in the
Symposium, the one who is master of both Comedy and Tragedy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Art of the Novel, Part 5 "Somewhere Behind" -
page 106

(In The Castle) it is a small consolation to the engineer to know that his
story is comic. He is trapped in the joke of his own life like a fish in a
bowl; he doesn't find it funny. Indeed, a joke is a joke only if you are
outside the bowl; by contrast, the Kafkan takes us inside, into the guts of
the joke, into the horror of the comic.

In the world of the Kafkan, the comic is not a counterpoint to the tragic as
in Shakespeare; it's not there to make the tragic more bearable by
lightening the tone; it doesn't accompany the tragic, (the Comic) destroys
(and annihilates the Tragic) in the egg (while it is still inchoate and
nascent) and thus deprives the victims of the only consolation to be found
in the (real or supposed) grandeur of tragedy. The engineer looses his
homeland and every body laughs.

(Sitaram experiments with adding a soundtrack of applause and laughter
to Silence of the Lambs)

Quote:
Originally Posted by TAotN, Part 5 "Somewhere Behind" - page 105

Raskolnikov cannot bear the weight of his guilt, and to find peace he
consents to his own punishment of his own free will.

In Kafka, the logic is reversed. The person punished does not know the
reason for the punishment. The absurdity of the punishment is so
unbearable that to find peace the accused needs to find a justification for
his penalty: the punishment seeks the offense.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s70778.htm

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Bible as Shakespeare before Shakespeare

David Zane Mairowitz: Well of course Jews in Prague at that time are Jews
anywhere in Eastern Europe at that time who were always considered to
be the outsiders and did not have all the rights that non-Jews had, and
couldn't work wherever they wanted and so on. And for someone like
Kafka, who immediately accepts the moral judgement of society against
himself, if somebody points to him on the street and said, 'Dirty Jew',
instead of defending himself, he takes that upon himself. One thing we
know about Kafka is that he was always fascinated by animals. You find
animals in his stories all the time. Of course he transforms himself into a
cockroach and a dog, and a mouse, and so on. And a lot of this has to do
with real epithets that were used against Jews at that time on the streets.
Someone would see a Jew and say, 'You dirty dog', or 'You're nothing
more than a cockroach', or something like that. For Kafka, this became a
kind of literal condemnation which he accepted into himself. OK. 'You point
a finger at me and call me a dog, the next thing I have to write is a story
about a dog,' in which a dog has human qualities; or he transforms
himself into a cockroach. A lot of this has to do with the anti-Semitism that
was absolutely rampant all around him at the time.

...

the mythical Bible, that is, the (Old Testament) is a huge book of stories
where man is ... totally rotten, it's not at all like the New Testament. In
the Bible you see no-one is saved, the (essential nature of man) is to fail,
to be evil; David is an adulterer... So I think Kafka knows about that but
he has the freedom that Jews have (this is my opinion of course, it's not
at all something that I can theorise in a way that would be orthodox). I
think there's a kind of freedom that Jews have because there's no dogma.
You know, the Bible is Shakespeare before Shakespeare; it's just a mass
of Macbeths, of King Lears, of Richard IIIs, but it's a vision of mankind
which is absolutely merciless, and so it's true to reality. So I think that it
gives Jews the freedom to look at human beings as being tempted.
They're tempted beings. They're not saved, they're tempted.

http://spurious.typepad.com/spurious/tragedy/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Abandonment - Blanchot:

The tragic heroine is thrown against necessity; she is abandoned to what
she cannot know and cannot determine. Freedom, necessity: the former
breaks against the latter. The grandeur of tragedy lies in her rebellion.
She is dashed to pieces - but for a time, she brought herself into a
splendid freedom.

...

Hamlet is a mutation of the violent revenge tragedy, a play focused on
dilemma and not revenge. Its protagonist does not have the reassurance
of the mastery of thought or of action; Hamlet vacillates – not because he
is planning perfect actions; when he acts, he does so rashly and his
actions miscarry. Nor is it to give him time to think for he allows thinking
to fall back to that region where decision is impossible, to a madness of
indecision, a yes-no without resolve.

‘To be or not to be …’ Hamlet longs for death, but he fears hell; he will not
take his life for fear of what will happen to him after death. But if he
cannot make an alliance with death, he cannot live, either. He cannot
open a path to resolute decision; he does solitary combat with the absurd.

...

Hamlet ‘understands that the “not to be” is perhaps impossible and he can
no longer master the absurd, even by suicide’. ‘Hamlet is precisely a
lengthy testimony to this impossibility of assuming death’; ‘To be or not to
be’ is a sudden awareness of this impossibility of annihilating oneself’.
Hamlet cannot escape; to exist, not to exist are each as impossible as one
another. In the third act of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet cries ‘I keep the
power to die’; Hamlet does not have this power. Freedom does not
triumph over fate, but is overwhelmed by it.

...

What can be retrieved of Greek tragedy today? Schelling and Hölderlin
understood each in his own way the fatedness of the tragic for our age.

‘Our age’: but what does this mean? Schmidt, to whose excellent On
Germans and Other Greeks I am indebted here, gives a clue: Kant argues
that limits do not merely belong to human experience but are its
condition; then it is possible to write what might be called a ‘tragedy of
reason’. See the opening sentence of the first Critique with the reference
to the ‘peculiar fate of reason’.

By the way, take a look at what L. James Hammond has to say about
Tragedy and "the desire to die".

http://www.ljhammond.com/cwgt/02.htm#33
__________________
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 756
Oedipus' Tragic Choice

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you did choose to do the exercise of the "what-if" scenario, and if you
chose self-inflicted blindness, then it seems to me that you choose to
imitate Oedipus in his horror at the thought of incest. Why does Oedipus
blind himself. Does Oedipus have a choice?

For me, the greatest tragedy in Oedipus is that he chose to blind himself
when he could have chosen to get on with his life.

If I were in the what-if scenario, I would definitely choose incest over
blindness, and if faced with the choice of blinding myself vs. the
destruction of the human race, I hope I would have the courage to
preserve the human race at any personal cost to myself.

Hamlet resists the temptation to harm himself, and in the end, he gains
revenge and justice, even if it costs him his life.

There are honorable and valiant ways to sacrifice ourselves, and then
there are tragic and selfish ways.

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Scherezade posts:

Have you got children of your own, Sitaram?
__________________
.
Sitaram

Is this a personal attack? I feel you are singling me out unfairly, and I
think I have something to offer to many people. My "what if" scenario is
hardly any different from the "Would you..." thread, and the "Have you
ever thread..." except that mine has some useful purpose behind it,
whereas those threads are motivated by amusement and idle curiosity. I
posed the scenario to dramatize that Oedipus blinding himself is possibly
of his own free will, and possibly the most tragic aspect of the drama,
rather than the fated incest and patricide.

What I notice is that you never post anything positive towards me, but
you do post things which seem negative or critical. Is it really the case
that you personally feel that I contribute nothing worthwhile to anyone in
what I write?

Your first post to this thread seems to be saying that I have "poor taste".
If someone posted that their favorite novel is one that you dont care for,
would you tell them they have poor taste. America is a nation that dines
at McDonalds and watches sitcoms. Poor taste is not a crime, and perhaps
to understand classic tragedy, we must see it in the context of the poor
drama of today.

The Bible is about things like Lot impregnating his daughters, which is
incest. And Oedipus is about incest and patricide. I am merely trying to
explore via a "what if" scenario, what people would choose if their back is
against the wall.

Obviously, you and I are not equals, for you have the power of a
moderator, to ban, to delete, to lock threads. For that reason alone we
cannot really argue as equals.

So why is it, since you have such power, that you sometimes exert
yourself to stress your own tastes values and beliefs? Is that the function
of a moderator. We didnt get along together in your monthly book club, so
fine, I stay clear of that since that is your territory.

Am I in some violation of forum rules?

I do not inquire into your personal life, nor do I inquire into any other
forum members personal life. It seems to me to constitute a form of ad
hominem.

If I my contributions are not welcome here, then I would appreciate it if
Admin or Logos would contact me and explain.

But with all due respect, I do not feel that it is appropriate for any forum
member to inquire into the age, gender, marital status, address or other
personal information of another member.

If you want to punish me for standing up for what I feel are my rights of
freedom of expression, then there is little I can do about it. But I feel that
it is a loss to at least some forum members who have thanked me, if you
single me out and make me feel unwanted and uncomfortable.

What more can I say?

Please explain why my gender or marital or parental status has anything
to do with my posts. No one is forced to read my threads, and as Logos
mentioned once, anyone is free to place a member on ignore. I have
never tried that option.

I am trying to be fair and civil and respectful to others. So forgive my
candor.

Old 07-20-2005, 10:18 AM #18
Scheherazade

Sitaram,

What 'poor taste' is depends on personal interpretation... I think in this
context, whether you have children are quite relevant as you offered a
what-if scenario (and this is no game thread) related to children and
answered it in a way that, in my honest opinion, no 'healthy' parent would.
I cannot imagine any parents (considering that we are no Lot or Oedipus)
who would opt for incest rather than getting blind themselves...Which why
I asked if you had children...

As for Oedipus... He did not know about his incest till after too late... And
upon discovery, he chose to blind himself because the act is that
unacceptable... He thought he deserved punishment even though he was
unaware of the fact that he was marrying his own mother. So your
scenario is not really similar to his predicament. He was not given a
choice (and if he had been, it is obvious what he would have chosen).

Lastly, I cannot see what my Moderator status has got to do with any
discussions. I do not act on a whim or twist the Forum rules in a way to
suit my ideas or interpretations. I am a member of this Forum just like
anyone else but if you have any problems with this, there is nothing I can
do.

Old 07-20-2005, 10:25 AM #19
Jay

Sitaram, I can't see why Scher being a mod and you not should make you
unequal, do you feel threatened in any way? It seems like that to me. A
moderator bans, locks, deletes and the like... what does that got to do
with anything? Have any or your threads been closed unreasonably? As
far as I can tell thread closing is not that frequent thing here if you don't
count some of the book forum threads like nominations and when things
get out of hand or break the rules of the forum. There has never been a
thread closing caused by personal reasons such as not getting along with
a member and you're a poor character judge if you think Scher would do
what you're hinting at. Either that or I'm paranoid and seeing things.

Your point regarding inquiries about sex/age/location/marital status are all
voluntary and no one is forced into revealing anything about themselves
if they don't want to. If you don't want to reveal that kind of information
about yourself there's no reason why you should. To me Scher's question
about you having children or not had nothing in common with her wanting
to pry into your personal life but it was a kind of... an expression of
surprise.

Again, if you think Scher would punish you for having an opinion... we're
talking entitlement here (if that rings any bells).

Old 07-20-2005, 10:48 AM #20
Sitaram

This entire thread has to do with Tragedy (ancient, elizabethan and
modern) in relation to fate, destiny, predestination, necessity and freewill,
and it arose because of my involvement with another thread in
Sophocles.

It is perfectly reasonable for me to point to a modern work like "Sophies
Choice" as an example of something we call "tragic". It is perfectly
reasonable for me to pose a general what-if scenario to the general
readers (which, by the way, is totally impersonal... I do not single out any
individual and cross examine them).

In what sense to Sher's posts relate to the questions and problems raised
in this thread? It seems to me that Scher is not even interesting in these
issues. If someone has some profound point to make about tragedy, or
fate, or necessity, or murder or incest, it seems to me that they should be
able to do so without bringing it to a personal level.

I am a work now, but I would like to discuss these matter in a civil fashion
at some later point in time.

I have my reasons for feeling as I do, and I shall discuss them at a future
point, if I am given that opportunity.

Thank you for your time and interest and giving me the benefit of the
doubt.

Old 07-20-2005, 11:13 AM #21
mono

Wow! I left the thread alone for a day, and chaos broke loose!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sitaram

Mono, what do you say, since you are in on this.... shall we continue with
our inquiry and allow our minds to range freely over the centuries, over
all the many volumes in Borges "Library of Babel", or... is this curiosity of
ours too insubordinate?

Yes, Sitaram, I would love to continue this discussion, without absolutely
purposeless arguing so that the thread does not deserve a lock for
out-living its purpose.

-----

Unfortunately, as of yet, I have not had the pleasure of reading anything
by Milan Kundera, despite after many recommendations. The metaphor,
nonetheless, sounds very intriguing, though it places a character like
Oedipus into more of a voluntary and decisive state, where, in a way, he
perceives the "upcoming attractions," or lack thereof, of his future. In
Oedipus Rex, the truth catches him by surprise that he murdered his
father, married his mother, and had children through incestuous relations;
and, sadly, he experiences both of the consequences, spawning family
from his family and crudely causing himself blindness.

Regardless, if given the choice, it brings quite a discussion between
Immanuel Kant's idea of 'deontological ethics' (The Groundwork for the
Metaphysic of Morals) and John Stuart Mill's 'utilitarianism' (partially based
on, his teacher, Jeremy Bentham's 'Hedonic calculus'). In the analogy,
either intentionally losing sight or having incestuous relations (or, in
essence, the end of humankind), it sounds like quite a dilemma. The more
utilitarian mind would insist on promoting what Mill called the 'greater
good,' so ending humankind never seems an option, and going blind
never sounds inherently beneficial, so incest seems the choice; on the
contrary, the more deontological mind more insists on making just
intentions and performing one's duty - again, ending humankind never
sounds like an option, if given in one's control, and, granted that, to the
average person, incest seems morally and subjectively (if not objectively)
wrong, one would feel it seemed his/her duty to compel blindness.

I feel, however, that Oedipus, and most of the other tragic Greek
characters, had far less of a choice to succumbing to their fates than the
Shakespearean tragics, who, mostly, seemed more autonomous from the
divine polytheistic gods and goddesses (like in Rotter's idea of the internal
vs. external locus of control - human choice, determination vs. fate,
luck).

No doubt, if Macbeth had not obsessed so much over power, and taking
others' lives in the process, he would never met his own chosen fate.
Does the desire for power, however, sound more or less just than the
desire and obsession of love in other Shakespearean tragedies (like
Romeo and Juliet)? The immense deviation between utilitarianism (Mill,
Bentham) and deontological ethics (Kant) one could apply here, too. Yet,
as you quote E.E. Cummings, Sitaram, and very wisely:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sitaram
The hero's tragic flaw is a flaw of self, in self.

The mind is a good servant but a cruel master.

The mind is its own beautiful prisoner. - e.e. cummings

Making Shakespeare's tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, does obsessive love
necessarily seem a flaw? Not to the so-called "hopeless romantics," but, I
think, both Romeo and Juliet, and their directly involved family members,
could have acted more justly to avoid its dire consequences (as in
utilitarianism, searching for the 'greater good').

Old 07-20-2005, 11:25 AM #22
Jay

Referring to Sophie's Choice - nothing wrong about that, haven't noticed
someone objecting if I remember correctly.

General what-if scenario is ok as well, it was you saying you'd chose
incest before blinding yourself that makes it 'a bit'... not right. No idea
what you not singling out comes to play here. Giving you the benefit of
the doubt and saying I might have misunderstood you about the incest
thing.

Scher's posts are just reactions to your posts. Her ideas and opinions just
aren't the same your are. Anything wrong with that? One doesn't have to
be interested to have an opinion. Are you saying opinions that crash with
yours are not profound? Or that those opinions not being backed up by
intensive google search are not worth mentioning because they're own
and not found on the internet and adopted? Not saying adopting
opinions/thoughts/whatever is a bad thing but people do tend to have
thoughts of their own. I really have no idea what makes you think the
discussion is on personal level (other than the children inquiry but that
was, in my opinion, a reaction of someone who disagreed with your choice
of prefering incest to blinding self).

What makes this discussion in an uncivil way?

Maybe your reasons would explain some things/points in the future but
until then I can't see anything uncivil (if that's a word, I'm too ignorant to
bother right now about 'correctness' of word-formation, blame my young
age if you like)

Old 07-20-2005, 11:27 AM #23

Sitaram writes:

Thanks Mono.

I realized that it would be intellectually dishonest of me to pose the
scenario and not answer it myself. So I did answer it. If it were EXACTLY
as I posed it, I would choose incest over self-inflicted blindness because
things like incest and rape scar emotionally, but CAN be overcome...
whereas blindness or chopping off someones hand is permanent....

I think Oedipus made a mistake to blind himself rather that get up, dust
himself off and move on...

I thing Jeremy Irons made a mistake to not pick up and move on....

I think the victims who survived the Holocaust who did not move on made
a mistake, and rabbi Harold Kushner for one agrees with me, and offers
cogent reasons.

People who choose suicide, based upon some religious belief, are tragic...
I think it is closely related...

Whatever your problem... it is better to make the choice that allows for
survival, for moving on...

Unless your choice means that the human race as we know it will end... in
that case, you it is tragic if you choose your personal health and survival
over that of your species, or your nation.

Old 07-20-2005, 01:17 PM #24
Bianca Fransen

Hmm, Sitaram,
I do not exactly agree with you there that a suicide would be tragic to the
one concerned.. whereas you step over the consequences of incest and
rape rather lightly. Much too lightly to my taste. I cannot talk about
thoughts that go deep, or about books.. without including my feelings and
my personality and life experiences.

I believe that in some cases it might be easier to learn to live without a
hand or with impared sight than with the heavy scars of incest or a
tragedy of that magnitude. You describe yourself very well that in a movie
(it was the first one you mentioned) one woman was so heavily damaged
she became a psychopath. - for good.. to me it seems as a direct effect
of her sufferings. So then the comparison should be: would you rather
loose your hand or your personality? Your sight or all your feeling of what
is good and kind in this world?

Unfortunately I can talk from experience - and looking back I think I
would rather loose my left hand (I write with my right hand ) then change
as much as I have changed by bad experiences. The tragedy to me is
then not having had the choice . I have noticed that even the relatively
light things I have gone through have made me harder and more
insensitive than I wanted to be. They have even made me loose my mind
for a short period. And that is a tough thing to loose.

But maybe you are right. Maybe if I would have chosen loosing a hand it
would have been harder then not having had a choice. Cause then I would
have always looked at that hand and thought "I could still have had it,
had I taken different consequences". Thing is - you know what you've lost
once you've lost it. And if I would have a choice in everything I would
throw my life away pondering about it. Isn't that the tragedy with Hamlet?
Not the actual events, but the fact that he cannot make a decision,
because all the consequences are too great?

Maybe a great sense of loss is the greatest tragedy of all: the loss of
loved ones, the loss of your innocence, the loss of a future..

Old 07-20-2005, 01:46 PM #25
Logos
Moderator

Sitaram, I don't know exactly what's going on here but no, I don't think
that Scher's asking you if you have children is a `personal attack', it does
not go against the Forum Rules.

Yes you do have a lot to offer these forums and you have already. I am
sorry you feel unwanted or unwelcome sometimes.

The thing is we can't tell people how to post, whether as a Moderator or a
Member, (unless of course they're not following the Forum Rules) that's
the beauty of `public' forums, `open' discussion.

Scher also offers a lot to these forums as a Moderator and Member here
and I think they do a fine job of delineating from both positions, and they
are perfectly entitled to participation in discussions.

I think you are doing a disservice to your topic here by derailing it like
this, I hope it can get back onto topic

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sitaram
If I my contributions are not welcome here, then I would appreciate it if
Admin or Logos would contact me and explain.

Old 07-20-2005, 01:53 PM #26

Sitaram writes

Suicide bombers choose the "self-inflicted blindness" side of the coin
every day, around the world, and see themselves as saints and martyrs. I
cannot see the point of putting out your own eyes, when it won’t change
the past. And I cannot see living in a room like Jeremy Irons, staring at a
photo day after day, when the deed is done.

I realize this will come as a shock to all of you (and you will think I am
making this up) but there is actually a major religion in which the holiest
prophet marries a 6 year old and consummates the marriage when she is
nine (but this is not pedophilia by any stretch of the imagination) and that
same prophet receives a divine command, from on high, that his adopted
son should divorce his wife, so that the the father might marry her (but by
no stretch of the imagination is this incest.) My mistake is not turning to
religion to learn good, wholesome family values. Hey, fair is fair. If you
are going to step forward as a model for how everyone should think and
feel and impose that upon me and every else, then it is only fair that I
hold up for everyone to see the culture and heritage and values which
produced such a fine moral specimen. Woah! And while we are on the
topic of divinely revealed scriptures. What did old daddy Lot do in Sodom
and Gomorrah when the sodomites came to abuse his two guests? I will
TELL you what daddy Lot did. He said "I have a young daughter here, and
I will give her to you to do with as you like. Only do not harm these
guests." Hmmm... now how do you fit that into your reasoning about what
decision parents make?! I would be interested to see how you wriggle out
of this one! And Lot was the ONLY ONE to escape, with his two daughters,
from the destruction. Ah, but then those wrong doing kaffirs have
corrupted the scriptures. We really should keep our distance from that can
of worms.

You know, anyone with even the smallest smidgen of intellectual honesty,
reading the above paragraph, would concede that I have really put a
totally different spin on this whole issue.

And as for Schers remark that "this is no game thread", well... I am a bit
confused. You mean it is "OK" for this forum to have threads where
people gratuitously gossip about drug experimentation and adultery, for
no purpose other than idle amusement.... thats OK, BUT ... If you are
discussing literary works where the topic is drug addiction, or incest, or
rape, or pedophilia, and such points WOULD NOT be gratuitous, but would
have some conceivable socially redeeming value, .. why then it is "NOT
OK"... Er? How do you figure all that?

And I am glad you know me so well that you can say what a good
description of me is. I guess ad hominem is something that one only
gradually outgrows.

Of course, Jesus said it is better to pluck out your eye or cut off your
hand, than to go to perdition, which is probably why we see so many
one-eyed fundamentalists.

I suppose the real value of this thread will be to analyze me. I am sure
there are many who feel eminently qualified.

Well, I can’t fight city hall. Sorry to have bother you all. I shall post no
further in this thread.

Old 07-21-2005, 09:35 AM #27
Admin

Thats about enough. I think we should all take a break and remember to
respect the beliefs of others.

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