I didn’t stay long with the “Sonnets”. As intense as
my occasional encounters with poems had been already in the past, I have never
had enough patience for them. But as the unexpected success made me want to go
on with Shakespeare I got the idea to start reading the plays and watching the
film versions I could get on dvd, which I thought might be fun. And that was
about the time I realized that it was a “Shakespeare year”. Which meant that
there were a lot of recent productions of his plays by the RSC and the Globe
Theatre actually “on” in the cinema. And that was, of course, just a treat for
me! I had never before realized this as a possibility to “go to the theatre”
without having to book a flight to London and stay in some shabby hotel because
I cannot afford a nice one. Great! 18 Euros instead of several hundred to see
the RSC or “The Crucible” – 20, if you want to see Benedict Cumberbatch, as,
obviously, everybody else does as well … And I even think it was the Shakespeare
year that brought this on big time because, before that, there was mostly
opera. So I was really, really lucky! (This year there is much less Shakespeare
of course, but still some.)
The first play I read was “Henry V” because I had the
Kenneth Branagh film on dvd, and I remembered that it made a big impression on
me when I saw it in the cinema. And there were two productions of the
“histories” on schedule in the cinema: “Henry IV” and “Richard II” (with David
Tennant), both by the RSC. This reminded me that I had always wanted to read the
“histories” completely, which I did. And, reading them, I realized that I had
already done it, a long time ago, but didn’t remember anything about my motives
or my reading them at the time. Apart from being bored with “King John” and
“Richard II”. Whereas now, after having seen different productions of the play,
I consider “Richard II” to be one of the most intriguing plays Shakespeare has
written. And I certainly wasn’t bored reading any of the “histories” in the
first place! So, obviously, something had happened in the meantime, as I had
made significant progress reading Shakespeare without actually reading any of
it. And this was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.
Some of it can be explained by the fact that I had now
the productions and films on dvd to watch, which adds a whole new dimension to
the reading. But I noticed the change already when I first read them, without
having seen anything acted. And by the fact that I did something clever, which
was to read the Wikipedia articles about the English kings at the same time. If
you have some clue about who all these strange people might have been the
reading gets much easier. And being able to compare the historical facts with
Shakespeare’s version of them got really interesting as well. Mostly I was
astonished how much his “stories” are based on historical facts and on who
these people actually might have been. (Sometimes not at all, apparently, as in
the case of “Richard III”. But this might very well be because of how this king
was perceived and judged by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, not because he
“wanted” him to be that “monster”. Of course, that nobody really knew how Henry
VI died, and what happened to “the princes”, came in handy, I suppose.) And
that they were much less about “good” and “evil” than about how politics really
works and about the people and motives behind it. Same as, for example, in
“House of Cards” – in my opinion the best tv series ever made, and the greatest
“version” of “Richard III” for our own time! It is just that, in fact, a series
might be a better format for this particular type of story because what appears
crude and “forced” and partly ridiculous in “Richard III” is due to the
necessity to “squeeze” such a complex historical process into one play. A
general problem, concerning the “histories”, but if we are not too particular
about timelines and “probability” they are basically a very “true” and
life-like dramatic picture of a long period of English history.
Being able to make this kind of comparison all the
time was a big part of the fun. But it still doesn’t explain how reading
Shakespeare had suddenly become such a DIFFERENT experience from reading
anything else. Because even from the beginning my relationship with his texts
was equally intense as the relationship with a text I was WRITING. Which means
it “belonged” to me, and I to it, much more than anything else I had read, or
any other fictional world that wasn’t “my own”. And it meant that I had to BE
there practically all the time. And I had no idea how to explain this,
especially because it isn’t really a “nice place” to be! (And even though I distinctly
prefer some of Shakespeare’s characters (like Richard III, Iago, or Queen
Margaret) to others I really loathe (like Hamlet or Lear – and most of the
characters in the comedies!) I cannot say that I like them, or love them, like
I did, for example, Tolkien’s dwarves.) But I knew that something must have
happened in the meantime that enabled me to have this experience with
Shakespeare. And of course I knew what that must have been. As it was right after
this year of writing it must have had something to do with a new and different
“method” of “perceiving text” I had developed through writing. Although I
couldn’t really explain what “happened”, exactly. But I remember exactly what
the process of writing was like, and that the most important, time-consuming,
and enjoyable part was in fact READING. Reading and reading and reading my
chapters all over again, and of course rewriting them, clarifying, understanding,
in the first place!, approving what was beautiful already and how other parts
were still deficient, getting closer and closer to the TRUTH already contained
in that story! And doing this has changed my relationship with any other text I
have read since then! The thing itself is probably just some kind of “fan
fiction” for anybody else but myself, and I know I wouldn’t read something like
this if anybody else had written it. But what I must have learned doing this
for the first time on such a big scale cannot be overestimated. It obviously
enabled me to take text I was reading as “personally” as if it was some text I
was writing. And this literally changed EVERYTHING.
But this is already jumping far ahead, as I didn’t
realize any of this a year and a half ago. I didn’t know then that this would
be about the “big question” – the question I had to answer to be able to “move
on” after everything that had happened. But it was there already, in the bud,
and the preliminary form it took was something like: Why is reading Shakespeare
so special for me, and why the hell do I want to be in that world?
I was delighted about how I finally found out how to
answer the second part of the question – which only partially answered the
first one. Because reading Shakespeare is quite a complex process, and I
suppose much of the immediate “fun” is about structure and beauty, which is at
the bottom of most of our experiences with fictional “texts” of any kind (as
written fiction, poems, plays, films, paintings, songs, or music). And this is
never an isolated experience but depends on the content which makes us realize
what the structure and beauty is about. If I am not interested in the content
at all a work of art is lost on me – as in fact most of them are. So, partly
reading Shakespeare is so special because his writing is so beautiful, firm and
exact, always so much better than my own thoughts that I usually cannot “wander
off” into my own world. I understood this from the beginning, but it took me a
while to ask the second question: why I was interested in the “content”. And even
what I thought this content to be. Which is of course different for any of the
plays, and there are very few of them where I have already “been there”. I
think only “King Lear”, “Richard II”, and “The Taming of the Shrew”. All of
them plays I hadn’t liked before, and in all three cases either through
something an actor had done or by the “turn” a certain production did take. In
“The Taming of the Shrew” it was both – and “personal involvement” of course,
something I have already dealt with in the first chapter of my blog. In the
case of “Richard II” it was just Derek Jacobi explaining to me with every
sentence he spoke what his character was about. Concerning “Lear” I had seen
two productions that really touched the heart of the matter, one of them by the
RSC with Simon Russell Beale. And there it was the moment he says: “No, not
mad!” which was probably the greatest single “theatre moment” I can remember
and which made me realize that this play is in fact partly about dementia and
the loss of the self, which is probably the greatest fear of most people
approaching old age. The second revelation of this kind was the production with
Ian McKellen who was playing Lear completely differently from anything I had
seen before, “humanizing” him in a way, and I think, basically, “got it right”.
And the whole production is “different” in the same way, showing how much this
play is about human and inhuman behaviour and about what it means to be a human
being. Which question Shakespeare answers, as most questions, in an
incomparably cynical way. Because so much in this play is actually about
NOTHING – not only my absolute favourite quote from Shakespeare: “Nothing will
come of nothing.” And nothing is what we all are, basically, if all the things
that can be lost are taken away. And nothing is what we’ll all come to, in the
end. And all these great efforts as well, to act like a human being and “turn
the wheel”, will be for nothing! - So this production did not only explain to
me why this was the only play by Shakespeare, apart from “Hamlet”, I had always
hated – although I couldn’t even remember to have seen or read it! (I think, I
saw the opera on tv a long time ago.) And this was great. But even greater that
it explained to me something I had always found so annoying about tragedy,
especially Shakespeare (“Lear”, “Hamlet”): that everybody has to die in the
end. Because this is the basic truth about life every tragedy contains:
EVERYBODY has to die in the end. I know this is not a very new or sophisticated
discovery about Shakespeare, or tragedy – nor life, for that matter. But it is
certainly not what most of the stories we are fed as entertainment nowadays
tell us about life and death: that if you are brave and clever and good enough,
or young and sexy of course, you will “get away”. So Shakespeare might not be a
very good place for “escapism” after all?
But the way I found out, finally, I loved because it
was through another “text”. A text that had nothing at all to do with
Shakespeare. It was just such an interesting “interface” between texts where
you see how reading actually “works”. It was when I went to the cinema to see
“Calvary” with Brendan Gleeson. And usually, when I have seen a film for the
first time, I don’t have any distinct ideas about it, nor any wish to “shove”
it into some category and “put it away”, like I have often witnessed other
people do, especially film critics. At least not when I had liked the film,
which I had. It is a very beautiful film - and this time I had a distinct idea
about it which took the form of a thought as soon as I left the cinema: “I cannot
believe this! They actually made a film about the Redemption!” And it was even
such a good film that I couldn’t “write it off” as a curiosity but HAD to think
about it. The one curious thing was that, having “been raised” as a catholic, I
had never really understood the concept of Redemption. This isn’t so curious as
such, I think, because I have always entertained the suspicion that most
catholics don’t understand it any better and probably don’t even know that it
is the concept their religion is based on. Somehow, always having been strange
enough to think about this kind of thing, I had got this, and I suppose I had
“stored away” the question as one of the “big questions” that I would never be
able to answer, and for which, maybe, there is no need for an answer. But maybe
I had been wrong because somebody made such a “serious” thing as a really
beautiful film “about” this question. Of course, being a film, and a really
intelligent one, it doesn’t answer the question. It is just telling different
stories about this ludicrous concept through different characters. And most of
them are “hopeless cases”, with a wish – or some absurd hope - that somebody
might “redeem” them. And the main protagonist, in the end, “goes” the way of
redemption, obviously dying a completely pointless death. And as he knew what
would happen to him he took this on intentionally! Nothing gets explained by
this, but this is really to “rub it in”. Maybe I wasn’t right that this was a
useless question … Well, maybe I was, because I still think it is a ludicrous
concept – putting something right through the sacrifice of an innocent life -
and there is no need at all to understand how it is supposed to “work”. And the
only questions in need of an answer are those that have to be answered through
“living”. So, in a way, there was a question “in there”, somewhere, in need of
an answer. It just wasn’t the right one.
Well, the right question was obviously the one which
the film answered, and this is why I still think it to be such a significant
film, apart from the beautiful acting and photography - of course I have it on
dvd now! The film states the question about the concept of Redemption as an
absurd concept because everybody knows from the beginning what will happen, and
you are constantly dealing with the question what purpose the sacrifice of an
innocent life might serve, and the only possible answer is: I don’t know! But
at the same time the film answers the question what purpose the concept of
Redemption serves. Because how are all these miserable people supposed to live
if there isn’t even this kind of absurd hope? But, to cut things short, somehow
I had decided a long time ago that I would have to make do without this. I
still don’t know if this is even possible because if things are basically okay
you don’t know. And I understand why many people couldn’t live without knowing
that there is an answer to this question, somewhere, even if they don’t
understand it. Not even the people with the totally fucked up lives but those
that think that they should be able to help these people – and probably know
from experience that it isn’t possible. Maybe absurd philosophical concepts
only serve one purpose which is to actually ASK a question that cannot be
answered. Because if it cannot be answered the answer cannot be contradicted, and
the process of questioning and answering has to stop there. And so the
existence of this world the absurd concept is a pillar of will not be threatened.
And I would rather do anything else than shake this pillar because, in the end,
it isn’t “institutions” but people who have to deal with the millions of people
that aren’t able to “redeem themselves” – and, more important: try to raise
children to be the sort of people that can! So I certainly wouldn’t lift a
finger to destroy the concept of Redemption if I could – and the reason for that
is exactly what the film is “stating”! – So I know why I have to live in this
world. And still I’d wish I wouldn’t have to live in a world that is so goddam
STUPID!
And it is not that I didn't know this yet, about myself. I just didn't make the connection. I had actually found out about it in 2013 - the year I was writing - through writing my own story and another "text" which helped me clarify this issue, which was obviously the issue at the centre of my story as well. It was a film by Sophie Fiennes, written by the Slowenian marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek: "A pervert's guide to ideology", which is kind of an absurd philosophical treatise that uses film history to prove how much, in a seemingly materialistic age, religious and metaphysical concepts are at the basis of how we (want to) see the world. This is kind of a dry synopsis, but the film is actually fun and partly very sophisticated. I saw it at the Munich "Filmfest" in 2013 and couldn't get the dvd, but most of the stuff I knew anyway. At least I have always known what is "wrong" with "Titanic", and why I have actually never seen the film, (even though I consider Kate Winslett to be one of the greatest actresses of our time). And I certainly don't need any Marxist philosophy to understand this, but what was a real revelation to me was how he explained the "Kinder Surprise egg". I suppose everybody knows what that is - although it is actually a German invention, which I didn't know and which, I must say, totally makes sense. To invent the "model" of a metaphysical object which is visible - and can be eaten and make millions! I think this is really the high point "our" metaphysical philosophy has brought us to! Being able to merchandise the desire that an object should be "more than it is", even if what goes beyond the actual use (=craving vor sweets) is just crap. And we even know that it is going to be crap and buy it and open it nonetheless! Maybe life might hold something good in store which we haven't made or "earned" ourselves, just this once!!! - Well, I knew what a metaphysical object was, obviously, even when I was about fifteen. Because I still have this small round stone of the kind you can open up with a hammer and there will be some kind of crystal on the inside. And I still haven't opened it!
And I don't even mind if somebody makes millions by taking advantage of the emptiness and stupidity of people's lives. I just don't want them to sell ME any of this. but it is not as easy as that because I love stories and I love films, more than that, I NEED them, but you very rarely get the "good bits" without this kind of "metaphysical" crap. (At least if you like "real" acting and stories where there is actually something "going on" - not just what you can see every day on the street, and what anybody who has been through it could "play" better than any actor!) So I had always been prepared to take the good with the bad - and maybe this is the main reason I came to write myself: to actually BE in a world where I wanted to be, making my own rules ... And it is certainly the reason why being in Shakespeare's world became so important to me. And why I like it so much, even though it is basically a dismal place. Where the people who are not able to redeem themselves are irredeemable, where nobody who has made one mistake ever gets a second chance. Where there aren't "good" people and "bad" people but JUST PEOPLE with personal issues, hopes and fears, predicaments, ambitions, fatal flaws ... and where nobody finds any pity - if he isn't able to find it "in himself"! It is a world without the faintest trace of hope - save the hope that, somehow, after a phase of utter chaos and misery, the right order of things might be reestablished for some time ... And still, BEING in this world is such a relief because, for once, I don't have to deal with the "metaphysical" crap but exclusively with interesting and relevant issues about life and people.
I think my best “proof” that this is in fact the main
reason I had to stay with Shakespeare was when I found out who my current
favourite character was. Because it surprised me, and I had to find out why.
Unlike my choice of a favourite play, which is “Macbeth”, it is a very unlikely
one. I even doubt very much that anybody else would choose this person as a
favourite character. And I like it that it is a woman! It is Queen Margaret,
the wife of Henry VI. The story of her adult life is told in the second part of
“Henry VI”, and she has a memorable appearance in “Richard III” where she
curses everybody present for what feels like half an hour. And this is probably
the only scene she is usually remembered for. I was astonished why I liked this
scene so much and why I was fascinated by the way she reacts to every blow fate
is dealing out to her. And apart from the fact that she becomes Queen of
England, even though she is just the heiress of the totally insignificant
miniature state of Naples, without a dowry!, she gets nothing but blows. She is
one of these characters with supreme qualities to fill her place, one of them
being that she is completely ruthless, and she is getting nothing out of it but
misery. And somehow she DOESN’T GET IT! After every single blow she gets on her
feet again in practically no time at all and deals with it. She just doesn’t
get it that her life is fucked up and will never be what she had dreamt it to
be as a young girl coming to England, utterly alone and very brave. And even
when she is an old woman and her life is done she doesn’t give in. Well, there
is nothing she can do, so she curses everybody as long as there is any breath
in her. She even recommends this to her equally unlucky successor as queen,
Elizabeth, as a means to survive this kind of blows! - And I still don’t know
why, but these characters are actually my favourites, and there are quite a few
in Shakespeare’s plays that are like this, just not that extreme. They are the
strange heroes of this world where there is no pity, no justice, no straight
line between “good” and “evil”, and where everybody is fighting for his own
issues and maybe for the few people which are bound to him by fate. And I even
think many of these characters “got into” other fitting contexts, as for
example good tv series (like “House of Cards”, or “The Spooks”) which basically
“operate” with a similar kind of philosophy. As Shakespeare is still so
influential in so many ways – not least by “teaching” actors a “better” kind of
realistic acting, which is not like a “mirror” of life, showing things that life
itself can show much better, but like a magnifying glass, showing what’s going
on “behind” life by making everything as “big”, and as clear and “true” as it
can get. So I think much of the “good influence” on people to produce
significant “text” is still down to Shakespeare. Especially in the
English-speaking world where this influence is much bigger than elsewhere, and
where all these superior contemporary instances of “realistic” text come from.
And I know now what “our” relationship has been throughout so many years I
hadn’t read “him”: because “he” had still been there, as a reference, for which
kinds of text I wanted to read and approved of. For what was actually good for
me. So, in my estimation, Shakespeare cannot be overrated, in an age that is totally
materialistic with a fig leave of metaphysical bullshit, as a means of actually
getting at the TRUTH of human affairs. And this is what I obviously had been
looking for all that time.
