It is
kind of funny that I keep writing introductions for the theoretical part of my “treatise”
and always get distracted from dealing with the rest of it. Now, this new one
came to me when I suddenly couldn’t stand the boredom anymore and reviewed what
I have written about “Antony & Cleopatra” – and I must say: it is quite a
VOLUME! This time, I became fascinated how COMPLETELY I documented my reading,
and, basically, in the order it actually happened.
There wasn’t
much about foreplay this time though I know there was one. There almost always
is one, with Shakespeare - mostly the not very inviting kind consisting of
failed readings, prejudices, reluctance, and incomprehension, as in this case. I
just DISLIKED these characters, especially Antony … But there definitely must
have been something in it that made me WANT to read the play. (External
inducements - like Ralph Fiennes playing Antony - augment the chances for
really reading by a lot but cannot make it HAPPEN.) In this case it was probably
the one sentence which I loved and which, I knew, held the potential to connect
me to the play: “Think you there is or may be such a man …” But I had seen three
productions already (on DVD) and it never happened. I think I had not
unreasonable hopes that Sophie Okonedo might be the one to make it happen - and
she actually did! (See my first post on January 16th about seeing
the play in London.)
So, I
got “connected” in the Olivier Theatre, but really reading apparently didn’t
begin until I saw the recorded production in the “Cinema” in February –
although I am certain the sentence WAS important. (As is foreplay. Even though
I like playing with them I never use metaphors lightly! 😊) It was rather similar as it had
been with “The Crucible”, just not as disruptive. There I had my personal
“juvenile” short-version of the play without even knowing this, obviously sitting
very close to quite important personal stuff, and kind of condensed into this
one sentence I was waiting for … and which didn’t come! And, I think, this
personal link got me started on the “grown-up” version I got to see in 2015. Kind
of like: O shit – I am a grown-up now! Which was, I believe now, what made for
the not so enjoyable aftermath. I might actually have done a bit of growing-up
that escaped me (at almost fifty!) SEEING the play! Harsh … but this is the
kind of thing that can happen – and happens ONLY! - in the theatre.
My
“Apologies!” post after having seen A&C in the “Cinema” already contains a
good deal of analysis – getting deeper into the text. But then I GOT STOPPED
again, and there is indeed something fundamental that usually happens to
reading at some point – even repeatedly, in this case! I guess the main (and only) reason why I envy directors
and actors – or am sorry that I am not writing fiction anymore – is that you
cannot be stopped until you are done. Until you “have” your PERSONAL best
version of a text. (Apart from what I am constantly aware of hearing these
people tell us how much “fun” they have at their jobs - how hard it is to make
a career, or, when you “have” one, to get anything WORTH playing - seeing “Tea
with the Dames” recently alerted me to another suppressed aspect of being an
actor: the amount of FEAR you have to deal with, and which I know - just from
my tiny bits of experience of performing music - I would never be able to
stand. I always knew why I value my stupid desk job!)
On the
other hand, it is rather difficult to consider reading a SERIOUS occupation
that can be put BEFORE other things on the list of necessary or worthwhile
occupations that, miraculously, appears to become longer by the day. Therefore
I always get stopped BEFORE I AM DONE at some point, usually because there are
other things. There are always other things(, like – worst of all: great TV
series produced at such a rate). There always are so many new things to get
into the way of REALLY reading anything, and therefore there is nothing like
SHARED READING to make me stay with a text. It happened before, but never on
this scale!
I know
that I would never have stayed with the text – not least because there was little
time and really bad distracting things going on in real life just then – if I
hadn’t had this opportunity of sharing my thoughts with my friend and getting input
that made me question and revise my own “readings”. Not least PERSONAL input
that put me in a position to investigate for the first time why people will
always read fictional texts differently, even especially on a “primitive” level
where we “bond” and identify with characters, or reject them. Of course I KNEW
this continually observing the DIFFERENCE actors make to characters. Even “back
then”, before I wrote about it, I observed this distinctly about such
characters as Mister Rochester, Mister Darcy, or John Thornton that have to
trigger a very PRECISE emotional response and call for “specialists” (like
Ciáran Hinds, Colin Firth, and Richard Armitage turned out to be). (As, by the
way, does Marc Antony whom James Purefoy nailed in “Rome”!) But observing the same
dynamics in another person’s reading made me aware of how crucial this is for
the direction our reading takes – and which “parts” of a text we want or don’t
want to read because of this kind of attraction or repulsion. And this time it
wasn’t about the men, for once, but about Cleopatra. She became the reason “women’s
stuff” (and “Gedöns”) became so important and took me to places I have always
been reluctant to go …
Which
brings me to another fundamentally important issue of reading that I have
always been aware of: the way OTHER TEXTS are “kicking in” when I am reading. In
this case, “kicking in” particularly applies to the way “The Favourite” began
to interact with A&C, and how it activated the “feminine” content that is
usually not very dominant in my reading. The connection was RANDOM because “The
Favourite” just came to the cinema and got hyped. So I went to see it, whereas
I watched “Rome” because of A&C and, as I expected, got a lot out of it
regarding the play. But there isn’t really a definition for such a connection
being random or “necessary”. There, I believe, deconstructivism is just so
right. I had a feeling that “Rome” got a lot more out of Shakespeare than meets
the eye – through people just knowing Shakespeare’s version BEFORE they knew
anything else - but this could never be proved. And there couldn’t be a
necessary connection in the opposite direction anyway. On the other hand, there
always is some kind of “real” connection between texts referring to the same
historical facts, and to explore this is always interesting. But, as usual,
this was not my chief interest. I personally think that there IS a parallel:
that Shakespeare was as intrigued by the Roman way of thinking and feeling, and
dealing with things, as the makers of “Rome” were. In both cases this issue is at
the centre of what happens between Marc Antony and Octavius Caesar. And THIS is
something that can be “proved” by describing it.
Nonetheless,
the reason for me to keep the notion of “random” where it comes to text
relationships is that I am always so intrigued by texts that have absolutely
nothing to do with each other interacting just because they got read around the
same time. In this case it was “Berlin Station”
which I
was watching at some point and which yielded specialized input on sexual
relationships from a MALE point of view. Which was actually rather important.
Even though I THINK that I am aware that men ARE different I know that I am
seldom capable of actually taking their point of view. (Male virtual reality –
what would that be like??? I am afraid I’d be rather surprised …) So, basically, I agree with the
deconstructivist view of “random” vs “necessary”: there IS no such thing! Unless,
of course, “thinking makes it so”. So, basically: MY choice!
Even
though I wanted to avoid raising definition issues at this point, “random” and
“necessary” are important for what I am getting at. There are no more or less
important connections or texts, there is JUST TEXT. EVERYTHING is text. And
THERE, of course, deconstructivism has it wrong – from my basically
naturalistic point of view. What philosophers, scientists, and critics always
have to leave out because it is, from their point of view, random is: US. It is
understandable, and quite often leads to viable theories on how people “work”,
but, where reading is concerned, it just DOESN’T work. Consequently every
attempt to USE deconstructivist theory FOR READING results in the kind of
irrelevant nonsense I so hated when I was at uni. WE = THE READERS are the ones
who make choices – or, as it often turns out, GET CHOSEN!
Last but
not least – there was an amount of PERSONAL STUFF from the beginning. In this
case very little of my own. By the way - though it shouldn’t surprise me as to
how thin my personal life has become – it is intriguing how little of the
personal stuff I use when I am reading is actually my own but other people’s. My
personal contribution in this case was more or less limited to my “amimetobion
experience” – about how special it is to be in love at that age. IF it is
finally the right person. And this is, of course, the matter that made me WANT
to read it and not let go – but also may have (mis)informed my reading in a way
it got biased.
Thinking
about it, I find that this experience might be less contingent on me than on
“Shakespeare”, which is such a “big” world that my – or any person’s – personal
stuff will always be totally insufficient to fill it. This might even be one of
the main attractions for me – as, probably, for actors! – to find this amount
of personal matters and predicaments laid out SO PRECISELY that it WILL draw us
into other people’s issues eventually. In this case, I had the added experience
how it actually helps to expand my consciousness of human relationships IN REAL
LIFE and deal better with them. Within limits, of course. I probably hate “the
bitch” no less than I did before reading A&C, but I got compelled to
perceive her as a complex human being with an UNDERSTANDABLE predicament. MAKING
SENSE appears to be an important category for me to apply to people. I don’t
have to LIKE them – which is something that happens appallingly seldom! – but they
have to make sense to be considered less of a threat and more likely to be
“dealt with” … What I also noticed – and which hadn’t really happened before –
is that personal stuff MIGHT HAVE STOPPED my reading. I just got lucky, and
“real life” shriveled in time for me to read on.
As to
the issue I had with deconstructivism – I recently found the explanation for
it. And an explanation why ANY approach to reading EXCLUSIVELY BASED ON TEXT
must fail. Apparently by chance – walking in my favourite spot in Munich along
the Isar towards the “Museum” cinema, thinking about what I would want to have
on a t-shirt, if I’d get another one printed ... As I just had one made with “Never
engage with Pting!” (and a picture of the pting, of course, otherwise nobody
would know what my t-shirt was talking about 😉 ) something like “Mind the
gap!” wasn’t an option. But I felt a bit sorry that it wouldn’t do because, all
of a sudden, the sentence struck me as this kind of message with a “straight”
second meaning (or ONE precise second meaning), something like: “Remember the
porter!” from “Macbeth”. Just that, in this case, the second meaning just got
created. It struck me that nobody EVER minds the gaps, unless they are in the
London Underground. Well, of course, they don’t – and I don’t! – because the
gaps “between texts” are not dangerous, and there is nothing to see (or play
with). Besides, they can take care of themselves. But their BEING THERE
explains an awful lot.
It does
because everything I ever tried to describe in this blog HAPPENS IN THESE GAPS
between texts, or between text and reader (respectively: the “personal stuff”
that, by being drawn to other texts, exploited by them, itself becomes text). Nothing
ever happens with text OUTSIDE these gaps – with the text itself being, in
fact, this black box. Or the reader, come to that … (Though I am constantly
writing theories about it I will never KNOW what happened with me when I saw
“The Crucible”. The only thing my strange symptoms could tell me for sure is
THAT something out of the ordinary had happened.) But, of course, nothing would
ever happen, no gap would ever open without a fictional text STRONG ENOUGH to
draw other text in this way: that this gap of infinite questions and
possibilities of making sense will suddenly appear. This is what fictional text
DOES.
I
remember the one time when I SAW this happen before my eyes. That was over
fifteen years ago when I started to tell the story of the Ring to my
five-year-old nephew. I had just seen the first film in the cinema and was
enthusiastic. And I must have done it right (as Peter Jackson did!) because I
could see almost instantly how the story “grabbed” him - like no other story
ever had. And in this case I am sure it grabbed him for the EXACT same reason
it grabbed me when I was in the cinema, hearing Cate Blanchett speak these
first lines … (I only read the book after having seen the first film!) I am
sure it was this ONE time I have been on exactly the same page with somebody
else about a fictional text. And it became a ritual that I had to go on telling
the story whenever we met. There was literally NOTHING more important than
that.
Remembering
HOW EXACTLY the story grabbed him, I know that it was because of the tale that
everybody is telling themselves probably from the very beginning of conscious
thinking. Where I am concerned, I “had” it at the age of one and a half because
there is a recording of me, telling a story about the devil living in a hole in
the ground with his family. (For me, of course, crucial evidence that I have
always been telling stories to myself!) It is the tale about the nature of evil
– what we fear, why it is there, why it is so dangerous … And we were both
likewise fascinated by Tolkien’s imaginative and compelling version of it.
It just
struck me that Tolkien might have pulled this off as nobody else did before him
BECAUSE he was such a “text person”. Because he had this superior knowledge
about what text does, how it works – conjuring up things that are not there,
making them interact with each other. How much the Ring metaphor actually might
be this parable about writing and “the gap”: “One ring to BRING them all …” But
this might already be way too deconstructivist …? 😕
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