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Mar. 19th, 2012
1984 (2,7) Luminous Dream
Mar. 19th, 2012 12:17 pmThe chapter begins with our lovers lolling sleepily in bed at their love nest. Winston had a disturbing dream. It is about his lost mother and his feral childhood. Political instability and civil war had reduced life to its most base form, leaving little reality for human dignity and the higher feelings and sympathies, a condition which Big Brother and the Party will build on. This is our theme and subject matter for the chapter.
_ _ _
Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Julia rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something that might have been 'What's the matter?'
'I dreamt -' he began, and stopped short. It was too complex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his mind in the few seconds after waking.
He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into interminable distances. The dream had also been comprehended by -- indeed, in some sense it had consisted in -- a gesture of the arm made by his mother, and made again thirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on the news film, trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets, before the helicopter blew them both to pieces.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed I had murdered my mother?'
'Why did you murder her?' said Julia, almost asleep.
'I didn't murder her. Not physically.'
-- 1984
_ _ _
The news film and the Jewish woman refers back to the first chapter. I did not cover it, but when Winston first opens his new diary, he was having difficulty about what to write, and he just started writing about going to the movies. I will put that material in the comments section of this post.
_ _ _
Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Julia rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something that might have been 'What's the matter?'
'I dreamt -' he began, and stopped short. It was too complex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his mind in the few seconds after waking.
He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into interminable distances. The dream had also been comprehended by -- indeed, in some sense it had consisted in -- a gesture of the arm made by his mother, and made again thirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on the news film, trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets, before the helicopter blew them both to pieces.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed I had murdered my mother?'
'Why did you murder her?' said Julia, almost asleep.
'I didn't murder her. Not physically.'
-- 1984
_ _ _
The news film and the Jewish woman refers back to the first chapter. I did not cover it, but when Winston first opens his new diary, he was having difficulty about what to write, and he just started writing about going to the movies. I will put that material in the comments section of this post.
Hamlet (2,2) Note (Dangerous)
Mar. 19th, 2012 05:05 pmBefore we get back to the text of the play, after our little exegetical detour, I thought it would be nice to get back in the spirit of things with this passage from Rosenberg. We are getting ready to resume act two, and Hamlet is pacing through the court, as has become his practice, and Polonius is going to approach him, to see if he can glean some more insight into Hamlet’s strange turn of moods and behavior.
_ _ _
The time has come to re-evaluate Hamlet’s objectives: He is not the same man we experienced before the meeting with the Ghost. It may seem - and some have said - that he has no objectives: that his “madness” serves no purpose: that he is caught in an eddy of inaction, and events must stimulate him. But does not the actor-reader know better? We-Hamlet are on the way somewhere, and our body, our emotions, and our minds are at work. We do not walk here every day for no reason: we are watching, we are listening, we are seriously disturbing Claudius, we are trying to work out a strategy we can pursue. We are reading for that purpose. Hamlet is, as Empson observed, successfully keeping a secret by displaying that he has one.
The design of this act, building steadily in tension to the soliloquy, depends on Hamlet’s ever intensifying frustration, ever closer approach to explosion. [...]
Empson writes brilliantly of Hamlet’s “dream-like though fierce quality, … all his behavior must be startling.” We-Hamlet are a revenge hero: we can kill, we will kill, we are getting to know how much now we want to kill. We are trying to loosen and throw off unidentifiable inner bonds with as much energy as we would try to free our bodies from constricting ropes. Above all, always: we are dangerous.
-- Marvin Rosenberg, “The Masks of Hamlet”
_ _ _
The time has come to re-evaluate Hamlet’s objectives: He is not the same man we experienced before the meeting with the Ghost. It may seem - and some have said - that he has no objectives: that his “madness” serves no purpose: that he is caught in an eddy of inaction, and events must stimulate him. But does not the actor-reader know better? We-Hamlet are on the way somewhere, and our body, our emotions, and our minds are at work. We do not walk here every day for no reason: we are watching, we are listening, we are seriously disturbing Claudius, we are trying to work out a strategy we can pursue. We are reading for that purpose. Hamlet is, as Empson observed, successfully keeping a secret by displaying that he has one.
The design of this act, building steadily in tension to the soliloquy, depends on Hamlet’s ever intensifying frustration, ever closer approach to explosion. [...]
Empson writes brilliantly of Hamlet’s “dream-like though fierce quality, … all his behavior must be startling.” We-Hamlet are a revenge hero: we can kill, we will kill, we are getting to know how much now we want to kill. We are trying to loosen and throw off unidentifiable inner bonds with as much energy as we would try to free our bodies from constricting ropes. Above all, always: we are dangerous.
-- Marvin Rosenberg, “The Masks of Hamlet”
storming early in the evening
Mar. 19th, 2012 08:08 pmI'm glad I listened to the weather report. This afternoon, the sky seemed to be getting clear and sunny, and I was thinking about letting the cats go. But it has started storming early in the evening, even going electrical. We've played these last two days well.
'scheduled posting'
Mar. 19th, 2012 08:55 pmI've started using LJ 'scheduled posting' feature more than I thought I would. Instead of just using it for midnight posting, I have come to like laying out my finished posts on the queue, instead of just letting them sit on my scribble blog until the appropriate time.
This complicates matters with my rough-draft posts on my scribble blog, though, with timing now being out of sync.
It has gotten me to re-think my blogging strategy. My scribble blog has become very cluttered, and I should be able to clear a good part of that out by not double-posting. I should keep my scribble blog more centered on the personal blurts, and the showy stuff, such as news items and macros and gifs, for the show blog. I should accept that I am never going to develop a following on my scribble blog, so that there is no need for the showy fun stuff to be on it. It is true that I hardly have much of a following at LJ, but I certainly have more of a base established there.
Of course, I have not been blurting much lately, but I expect the mood to come and go. It has been ebbing lately, but I sense a new flow coming.
This complicates matters with my rough-draft posts on my scribble blog, though, with timing now being out of sync.
It has gotten me to re-think my blogging strategy. My scribble blog has become very cluttered, and I should be able to clear a good part of that out by not double-posting. I should keep my scribble blog more centered on the personal blurts, and the showy stuff, such as news items and macros and gifs, for the show blog. I should accept that I am never going to develop a following on my scribble blog, so that there is no need for the showy fun stuff to be on it. It is true that I hardly have much of a following at LJ, but I certainly have more of a base established there.
Of course, I have not been blurting much lately, but I expect the mood to come and go. It has been ebbing lately, but I sense a new flow coming.