Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, SELFHOOD
- 1 Hamlet and failure
- 2 ‘A room … at the back of the shop’
- 3 Egyptianism (our fascist future)
- 4 ‘Become who you are!’
- 5 Hamlet and self-love
- 6 ‘To thine own self be true’
- 7 Listening to ghosts
- 8 Shakespeare's self
- PART II SHAKESPEARE AND EVIL
- PART III SHAKESPEARE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT
- Conclusion: Shakespeare's ‘beauteous freedom’
- Index
- References
7 - Listening to ghosts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, SELFHOOD
- 1 Hamlet and failure
- 2 ‘A room … at the back of the shop’
- 3 Egyptianism (our fascist future)
- 4 ‘Become who you are!’
- 5 Hamlet and self-love
- 6 ‘To thine own self be true’
- 7 Listening to ghosts
- 8 Shakespeare's self
- PART II SHAKESPEARE AND EVIL
- PART III SHAKESPEARE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT
- Conclusion: Shakespeare's ‘beauteous freedom’
- Index
- References
Summary
An Egyptian monk, after fifteen years of complete solitude, received a packet of letters from his family and friends. He did not open them, he flung them into the fire in order to escape the assault of memory. We cannot sustain communion with ourself and our thoughts if we allow ghosts to appear, to prevail.
Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born, 199.For what does one have to atone most? For one's modesty; for having failed to listen to one's most personal requirements; for having mistaken oneself; for having underestimated oneself; for having lost a good ear for one's instincts: this lack of reverence for oneself revenges itself through every kind of deprivation: health, friendship, well-being, pride, cheerfulness, freedom, firmness, courage.
Nietzsche, Will to Power, 486 (Book Four, Para. 918).The problem is how to live authentically and creatively, to discover one's own task and not substitute for it another's. One needs courage and the willingness to listen to oneself. This is Hamlet's challenge. He believes passionately his duty is to remember and avenge his dead father. Claudius's death would constitute success in Hamlet's life. Yet everything in Hamlet leads him away from this ardently held and deliberate goal. He feels how ‘heaven and hell’ prompt him to revenge. Custom, tradition, filial feeling, morality and, of course, he himself all cry out for action. Yet the most remarkable thing about the play is how Hamlet keeps forgetting this sacred duty.
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- Shakespeare's Individualism , pp. 88 - 91Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010