Now for the wonder of wonders, – when Mrs. Thrale, in a coaxing voice, suited to a Nurse soothing a Baby, had run on for some Time, – while all the rest of us, in Laughter, joined in the request, – two Crystal Tears came into the soft Eyes of the S. S., – and rolled gently down her Cheeks! – such a sight I never saw before, nor could I have believed; – she offered not to conceal or dissipate them, – on the contrary, she really contrived to have them seen by every body. She looked, indeed, uncommonly handsome, for her pretty Face was not, like Chloes, blubbered; it was smooth and elegant, and neither her Features nor complexion were at all ruffled; – nay, indeed, she was smiling all the Time.
"Look, look!" cried Mrs. Thrale; "see if the Tears are not come already!"
Journals and Letters, 2001, by Frances Burney, ed. Lars E. Troide: from a letter to her sister Susanna, dated 12 October 1779. 'S.S.' is Sophia Streatfeild, "a noted beauty," according to Troide's footnote, "called 'the Fair Grecian,' because of her knowledge of Greek. Able to cry at will." 'Chloe' is a reference to Matthew Prior's (1664–1721) poem A Better Answer, which starts with, "Dear Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty face!"
Official Communist critics, however, immediately branded Chekhov's interpretation as decadent and reactionary. Evidently, they could not endure the "suffering and deathly horror in his eyes" as he moved "with nervous, wavering steps to meet his doom." Although he emphasized his duty of revenge, "he appeared so crushed with grief and despair for himself and mankind that his consciousness seemed to disintegrate." After an outburst of activity in the last scene, culminating in the killing of Claudius, Hamlet accepted his own death peacefully, with a lucid mind, "as if laying carefully his body by." "The more impotent Hamlet's body became, the brighter and more all-consuming became his inner life, which was abetted by the stage lighting."
Shakespeare and Eastern Europe, 2000, by Zdeněk Stříbrný. 'Chekhov' is the actor Michael Chekhov (1891 - 1955).
Monday, December 28, 2015
abetted by the stage lighting
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snowing heavily now, the black firs starkly outlined in a depressed sky. the shadows and the brightness seem to combine to make the peculiar conflation we know as weather; maybe all life is governed by galactic moods; the encroaching andromeda galaxy casting a portentous gloom over the poor old milky way(they're supposed to collide in about 5 million years. i can't wait for the fireworks!)
ReplyDelete"as for the lesser Elizabethans, like Greene or Kyd, the complexities of their plots are so great, that the actors themselves are obliterated and emotions which, according to our convention at least, deserve the most careful investigation, the most delicate analysis, are clean sponged off the slate." v.w. first common reader, notes on an elizabethan play. hence, if black is TOO black, a total nothingness is achieved?...
You could say the same for the Transformers films (though I've only seen the first one): the firm, active noise of the production traps the actors in an arms race against their own media for the currency of the audience's attention, and their creator is working to remove areas of doubt, the free air where they could move. (I think of the actor who plays Othello versus the actor who plays the Ghost of Andrea in Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedie'; they both have adventure stories to tell but only the Othello actor has been given the opportunity to complicate his speech with the ambiguity of boastfulness, whereas the Ghost is supposed to be telling you the simple truth: he really did meet Charon, he really did soothe Cerberus, and so on.) Are the Transformers films total nothingnesses? And what's the role of context in that idea of nothingness? Ryan Trecartin's videos are more hectic than any Michael Bay film but if nobody calls them nothingnesses then is that because they have been presented and framed as artworks that are aware of their own hyperreality?
DeleteIt's the Player's "Hecuba" speech! What moves us, or fails to, and why? I watched the second of those new "Bond" films (Quantum of Solace, maybe?) and it was an incoherent stream of gunfire, car chases, mumbling and explosions; I had no what any of it signified but it was very active. Two hours later I walked out of the theater and it was as if those two hours hadn't happened at all; there was nothing left of the experience because I couldn't create any meaning from it. I'll bet that's what the Soviet critics felt after Chekhov's "Hamlet." There was nothing there but breast-beating, they whispered, nothing that felt real to me.
ReplyDeleteI was reading it as an inditement of the "official Communist critics" and their fear of appearing to support anything that could be called self-oriented. What would a Communist Hamlet look like: Hamlet himself disgusting, the royal court a degenerate mob of soap opera participants, and Fortinbras the broom coming in at the end to sweep it all away and deliver society back to the people?
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