I gave you all.

And in good time you gave it.


They told me I was everything; 'tis a lie[.]

There's little respect for the old where I come from. My personal bias being what it is, it's taken some time for me to look past my individual justification to the broader scope of human beings inheriting power from human beings. Land, fealty, divine right. Once you held sway over three begotten children. Now authority has turned contumely and you seek to divest it and its bloodsuckers into the hands of those you trained. Between then and now, did you invest in concepts such as integrity, humanity, and a ban on converting any and all, both the living and the dead, into the basest essence of commodity? Or did you put such a premium on survival of the fittest that you forgot rape and betrayal and genocide does little good when you die before your fertile time because no one would deign to hold your hand and lead you from the cliff.

If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
It will come,
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep.

Take physic, pomp,
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.

Someone who has faith might do a better job at this than I, for in place of force of habit they have an unyielding fear. The most beloved and god-blessed ruler, winner of a thousand trails and sanctifier of every course of action, has lost their holy stuff. The moral scales of good versus evil have sunken under the whatever works works of natural selection, and the promises of the afterlife do nothing for the wretch that cannot die. What, then, does it mean for a world of mortals for whom justice is never a guarantee, regardless of their afterlife? Do you pray to an absolute that has, for whatever reason, just for a moment, fallen asleep. Become distracted? Grown bored? Or do you recognize that there may come a time when the ethics of flies must serve as the laws of creed. If they are there, one may hope to teach the gods a lesson of greater life of means of own example. The marvelous thing about yes this will surely work, no this surely not, is no one alive can ever know.

[T]he laws are mine, not thine.
Who shall arraign me for't?

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.

In the eyes of science, the breeding of purity weakens the stock, which coupled to a systematic severing of all bonds not weighed in the imagined idols of paper and coin makes gamblers of us all. It renders us worth as much as the axes we hang over the necks of others, which when handed off for reasons of age and infirmity quickly swings to our own if new found freedom translates to new found revenge. Death's a fine rectifier in many a community of woe, and perhaps it is my lack of culturally bound prayer that makes me perverse, but much, much, much can be tested and found lacking before divine retribution must stretch its claws. Fealty, piety, legitimacy, misogyny, the king before the beggar, the sane before the mad, the ripest mix of genetic fertility before the mewling puking old. This is how we've kept our power for centuries, so of course it must always work.

We have seen the best of our time.

Hark in thine ear:
change places, and handy-dandy, which is the justice,
which is the thief?

Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes up a hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.

If balancing's a fickle thing within the realms beyond, the means of heaven and hell are left to us. Make of it what you will.



P.S. I still like Hamlet better, if only because it keeps up the development wherein Lear would insist on a climax. Again, though. This is said without having seen the storm in its flesh and blood.

---

3/6/15

FOOL

He that has and a little tiny wit—
With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain—
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.

A longer, less menacing variation on this song was sung by the Fool at the end of Twelfth Night, as the curtain set on its "happy ending" and I was left to ponder how easily those swiftly married and more swiftly avenging characters could turn on their comedy in an instant. The quoted occurs near the middle of King Lear within a hovel in the midst of a storm, when the line is drawn on the life of a king and how a kingdom should be ruled. I am more comfortable surrounded by the tragedy than at the end of the comedy, for there were one too many times when the mandate of laughing was tested and found disturbing. Black humor, perhaps, but pardon my intolerance for gaslighting and the frittering away of female lives; too many philosophical points have made use of such fuel and been the worse for it.

GONERIL

…a moral fool, sits still and cries,
“Alack, why does he so?”

I wouldn't have minded the moral qualms of TN so much if I had been allowed room to move. Tragedies may have the strictures of sadness, but there is so many more ways of thinking and poking and watching things bleed when you don't have to worry about "taking it too seriously" or "ruining the humor" or any such reactions from those who cannot tolerate discomfort. That doesn't make the genre easier to deal with on a more complex level if the response to Goneril and Regan by classmates and professor are anything to go by. So you hate the two women who aren't interested in fucking their father and adhering to the usual patriarchal pomp. Big whoop. Compare and contrast the main with other ongoing narrative of filial piety gone wrong, question your thoughts of Iago versus bitches and whores, and maybe you'll start getting somewhere.

GONERIL

Milk-livered man
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs—
Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honor from thy suffering; that not know'st
Fools do those villains pity who are punished
Ere they have done their mischief.

I could write essays on this quote. Essays. It's why I'm not too concerned about the right and wrong of this because of how impossible the labeling would be. Edmund lays all his motives on a steaming plate of "I am villain hear me roar!" and so we cling to him like every other white serial killer that came before and ever after. Sympathy for Lear's a popular thing, but that's what so many of the other characters are for. What I'm interested in is who desires power, who desires a certain person in power, whose madness is met with praise and whose belying the bond of blood as contract of unsanctioned loyalty is met with mewling scorn.

CORDELIA

Had you not been their father, these white flakes
Did challenge pity of them.

Not as strong, but still applicable to either end of a delicious argument.

EDMUND

…my state
Stands on me to defend, not to debate.

A father's duty encompasses his children so long as they will fit. The rest can go hang.

I'm giving Lear 3 stars, not because it wasn't well written, but just because its too hard for me to get on board with a story that makes you feel so hopeless :(

honestly albany is a noodle even when he finally gets his shit together

I am a man
More sinn’d against than sinning.

^ Lear is pathetic and wrong! His need for power (even when he's voluntarily given it up) is a trait that he's surely handed down to his daughters, which is why most of this happens in the first place. I adore the writing here, and the contrasting narrative with Edmund's betrayal enriches the themes greatly!

هملت رو بيشتر دوست داشتم و فكر ميكنم به خاطر ترجمه ى بهتر بود.


(قرض از بوكتاب تهران)

Se mi segui su Twitter dal 2007 e hai un’ottima memoria forse ricorderai che, quando i tweet si scrivevano in terza persona, a ogni piè sospinto scrivevo “invoca la fine del mondo durante una tempesta”. Questa uscita drammatica deriva da una scena di King Lear che mi è stata proposta in fotocopia in terza liceo.
Ci sono voluti più di dieci anni, con altre opere di Shakespeare in mezzo, prima che ritrovassi la scena originale in tutta la sua integrità (e quindi non più il re che sbraita agitando il pugno contro il cielo mentre il servo, che in realtà è il Matto, che gli dice: ma magari rientriamo, ché ora piove): è dall’atto terzo, scena seconda.

Storm still. Enter Lear and Fool.
LEAR.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once
That makes ingrateful man!

FOOL.
O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, ask thy daughters blessing. Here’s a night pities neither wise men nor fools.

Al contrario dei fulmini e delle saette che mi hanno portato a leggerlo, quello che mi resta di questa tragedia sono i momenti di quiete.

You must bear with me.
Pray you now, forget and forgive.
I am old and foolish.