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hamlet is perhaps shakespeare's most classic tragedy. "to be, or not to be, that is the question", this is not only hamlet's inner struggle when facing the predicament of life, but also the inevitable soul-searching of everyone in life. this play is like a mirror, allowing us to reflect on eternal propositions such as human nature, morality and the value of life.

harold bloom is probably the most influential literary critic in the world today. in his autobiography, memories of the past, he uses the tragic character of hamlet to put forward his unique insights into shakespeare's "self-othering". "this kind of chilling self-othering is the way to understand universal life and individual life."

the following text is excerpted from "lingering memories" and is authorized by the publisher.

hamlet's questioning of shakespeare

Hamlet’s Questioning of Shakespeare

to what extent do shakespeare's great protagonists exercise their own alter ego more intensely than most of us do in real life?we all get shocked from time to time by things that happen to us or by actions that were clearly not our intention.we ask afterwards: are these real events or hallucinations? are they behaviors that happen in other people’s lives?

those characters of shakespeare's which most excite our contemplation, such as falstaff, hamlet, iago, and cleopatra, are also his greatest creations; and therefore, as we begin with falstaff, pass through hamlet, to iago, and to cleopatra, we find the gift of other-seeing ourselves growing stronger in them. as i have elsewhere said, and i shall hereafter prove with more particulars, the real sublimity of lear and macbeth renders their contemplation particularly difficult.driven by forces within and outside the universe, they develop a self-perception of others when they are about to become something else.

whether we regard the globe production as the second quarto of 1604-1605 or the first folio of 1623, hamlet breaks out of the container that shakespeare prepared for him. in fact, the more original first quarto of 1603 does not include the melancholy prince at all. in the graveyard of act 5, scene 1 of the second quarto, as hamlet watches the horrible gravediggers dig a grave, we encounter a powerful burst of self-othering:

hamlet another; who knows if it is not the skull of a lawyer? where has all his skill with the pen, his eloquence in turning right and wrong gone? why did he let this insolent fellow hit him on the head with a dirty spade, instead of charging him with assault? humph! this fellow may have bought a lot of land in his lifetime, and he always used those words such as clauses, recognizances, fines, double guarantees, and compensation to scare people; now his head is full of mud, is this the fine and final compensation he has obtained? can't his double guarantor guarantee him to buy more land, leaving him only a piece of land as large as the two-part deed? this little wooden box, which was originally used to hold the documents of his land, is probably too small to hold it, and now the landlord himself can only have this little land, huh?

shakespeare was often involved in lawsuits, so he often mocked lawyers in his works. but as wallace stevens said, the lawyer here has become an ordinary person, performing a duet with the gravedigger. hamlet talks about the mortality of each of us with a cheerful and cruel tone. now when i recite this passage, i replace the lawyer's skull with a professor's skull, and feel the uneasiness of hamlet, the questioner.

there are several ways in which shakespeare's self is viewed from another's perspective.the most common way is to temporarily believe that what one sees is the appearance of what others glimpse.more obscure is macbeth's approach, which is an illusion that even leads macbeth to ask such an extreme question: "is it not a knife that is dangling before my eyes?" the most subtle consciousness in shakespeare's works is hamlet, who often sees things that others cannot see, including the split others in himself.

as the gravedigger dug out the skeletons one by one, what did hamlet see from his own perspective?rather than saying that the dead are coming to us one after another, it is better to say that the purpose of all life from ancient times to the present is empty and hollow.。this kind of cold and chilling self-perception is the way to understand universal life and individual life.：

clown armor ...here is another skeleton; this skeleton has been buried in the ground for twenty-three years.

hamlet whose skull is it?

clown armor it's a crazy kid born of a bitch; guess who it is?

hamlet no, i can't guess.

clown armor this damned lunatic! he once poured a bottle of wine over my head. this skull, sir, is the skull of euric, the king's trickster.

hamlet this is him!

clown armor it's him.

hamlet let me see. (takes the skull) oh, poor eurik! i knew him, horatio; he was a most joking fellow, with a very rich imagination. he has carried me on his back a thousand times; now when i think of it, i can't help but feel sick in my chest. there were two lips here, and i don't know how many times i have kissed them. - can you still make fun of people now? can you still jump and make people laugh? can you still sing? can you still make up some jokes at random and make everyone laugh? don't you have a joke left to laugh at yourself? are you so depressed? now go to the lady's boudoir and tell her that she will become like this in the end no matter how thick her makeup is; tell her this and see if she laughs.

hamlet is the most avant-garde and confusing play i have ever read. if i had to choose the most prescient focus of the play, i would probably have chosen somewhere other than the graveyard scene, but the image of hamlet brooding over the skull of euric has been a staple of western spirituality since the late eighteenth century. shakespeare would have approved of that choice. hamlet, shakespeare’s most well-rounded hero, would have approved of that choice, too.

this is a wonderful scene that not only highlights hamlet’s character, but also incorporates our chilling realization that the protagonist of western consciousness has already strayed from the right path at the beginning of act 5. how can we be close to a person who can hold the skull of the “real father” who carried you on his back so many times when you were a child and kissed you so many times when your bellicosity father and lustful mother were absent, and you feel only disgust and disgust? many people do react this way to hamlet, but most of us do not, perhaps because, as william hazlitt said, “we are all hamlet.”

we prefer the gravedigger's scathing description of yurik as a "mad boy" who "once poured a bottle of wine on my head." for the gravedigger, yurik is still alive, just as he is for us, but for hamlet, the person he once loved most is dead again. so, too, for hamlet, even the most powerful conquerors in history are dead:

hamlet ...horatio, please tell me something.

horatio what is it, your highness?

hamlet do you think alexander looked like this underground?

horatio that's the same.

hamlet does it stink the same way? pah! (throws down the skull.)

horatio it has the same stink, your highness.

hamlet who knows what abject things we may become, horatio! if we let our imaginations run wild, who knows that alexander's noble corpse is nothing but mud stuck in the mouth of a wine barrel?

horatio that's wishful thinking.

hamlet no, not at all. we may reasonably and without surprise imagine how he came to that state; for instance: alexander died; alexander was buried; alexander turned to dust; people made mud from dust; why then was the mud, which alexander had turned into, not used to stuff the mouths of beer barrels?

caesar is dead, your dignified corpse

maybe it turned into mud to fill up the broken wall;

ah! what a hero he was,

now i can only protect people from the rain and wind!

hamlet challenges us to speculate that the noble corpses of william shakespeare or me, harold bloom, or you, the reader, will eventually turn to mud and be stuffed into the mouth of a beer barrel. perhaps horatio's best line is: "that is too much to imagine." this typical caution is the opposite of hamlet's spirit and helps explain why horatio loves hamlet so much that he does not want to live after hamlet is dead. hamlet is as funny as euric, who happily speculates about alexander's fate after his death, and we will join him in speculating about caesar's fate after his death.

the alterity of the self acquires its most convincing form here, as hamlet foretells his own passive waiting for death, his own death:

hamlet no, we should not be afraid of any omen; the life and death of a bird is predetermined by fate. if it is destined today, it will not be tomorrow. if it is not tomorrow, it will be today. if you escape today, you will still be unable to escape tomorrow. just be prepared at any time. since a person can only have nothing when he leaves the world, isn't it better to get out early? let it go. (act 5, scene 2)

the othering of the self could not be more complex than this. there are, of course, textual complications. the first folio emphasizes possessions rather than knowledge. the second quarto reads: “be ready at all times. since a man can only leave the world with nothing, is it not better to leave early? let it go.” here, i prefer the eclectic text edited by harold jenkins quoted above. as jenkins suggests, i interpret this passage to mean that since no one knows anyone else, does it matter when we leave the world? although you can generalize this to knowledge of all life, for hamlet, his real sadness is that language cannot express emotion without distorting and destroying self and other. nietzsche tells us in the twilight of the idols:“we can find words for what is dead within us. there is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.”when nietzsche said this, he must have had hamlet in mind.

most of us would like to argue with hamlet and nietzsche because they do not leave much room for love. hamlet loves no one, not even himself, though he will protest that he loved ophelia, a girl he drove mad and killed herself. the only exception is euric, but we have just seen through his eyes that the memory of the love that once sustained the little prince and his father's fool is dead in hamlet's heart. as for the love between hamlet (a neglected son) and his father (a theoretical father), although hamlet claims that it does exist, we can still be skeptical. hamlet has no love for his mother, gertrude, who is just a freudian prop to turn hamlet into another oedipus. before his death, when his mother cries out "ah, my dear hamlet", hamlet only coldly replies: "unfortunate queen, farewell." these are the so-called oedipus complexes.

the key moment of hamlet's extreme self-esteem comes before his duel with laertes. here is one of hamlet's best moments:

hamlet forgive me, laertes; i have offended you, but you are a man, so forgive me. all who are here know, and you have heard, how madness has afflicted me. whatever i have done, that has wounded your feelings and honor, and provoked your anger, i now declare that i was guilty of my madness. would hamlet have done anything to hurt laertes? hamlet would never do such a thing. if hamlet, in his own delusion, had done anything to hurt laertes, it was not hamlet's doing, and hamlet could not acknowledge it. who then did it? his madness. then hamlet is the injured party, and his madness is poor hamlet's enemy. before all these people, i confess that i shot my brother by an arrow without thinking; and i now ask his generosity to forgive my unintentional crime. (act v, scene 2)

this passage is from the first folio. i prefer the first folio to the second quarto. but in the last sentence, "i wounded my brother," i have used the "brother" in the second quarto instead of the "mother" printed in the first folio. as i have said, hamlet seldom says what he says, but his irony is consistent. to be sure, he is here to be blamed for equivocation, for we suspect his "eccentric disposition," which, as he has previously admitted, is a strategy. there is no way to reconcile the two images of hamlet who first declared eloquently that "i am mad only in the north, north, and west" with his current pretense. but how charming hamlet is! he convinces himself and us that he sees in his own other vision his murder of polonius, his pursuit of ophelia like a mad dog, which really drives her mad and finally drives her to suicide. it is not hamlet but his shadowier alter ego who is mocking gentle ophelia, rushing blindly towards the enemy, hacking and killing whoever they may be.

hamlet's consciousness is so open that he is aware of his escape; at the same time, in his mind's eye, he sees another hamlet who is completely different, a cruel sadist. both he and his audience believe and disbelieve his defense. when laertes leaps from ophelia's grave and grapples with hamlet, the important passage that creates what emily dickinson might have called "a nimble belief and disbelief" follows subtly:

hamlet (enters) whose heart could contain such a heavy sorrow? whose words of mourning could make the planets stop in their tracks? it is me, hamlet, prince of denmark! (jumps down into the tomb.)

laertes the devil has your soul! (he grabs hamlet.)

hamlet: you prayed wrongly. do not take my neck; for though i am not a man of violent temper, yet my temper is dangerous, and i would rather not irritate you. let go your hand! (act v, scene i)

"whose heart can hold such heavy sorrow? whose mournful words can make the planets in the sky stop in wonder?" it is not laertes who utters these noble words, but hamlet. “it is i, hamlet, prince of denmark!” my students and i are all deeply moved by this proud declaration. when hamlet goes on to say that he is not a hot-tempered man, we should be skeptical of his words, but we also realize that his words, “but my temper is dangerous when it flares up,” are directed at us as much as laertes.

as an adventurer of his own otherness, this hamlet beside ophelia's tomb is not only disturbing to prince hamlet himself, but also to us. the parodic power he had previously exerted on poor polonius now slides down in an exaggerated tone, from the sublime to the absurd, and finally bears grotesque fruit:

hamlet well, let me see what you can do. can you cry? can you fight? can you fast? can you tear your own body apart? can you drink a vat of vinegar? can you eat an alligator? i can do it. have you come here to cry? are you jumping into her grave to humiliate me to my face? if you are buried with her, i will be buried with her; and if you want to boast about mountains and ridges, let them pile millions of acres of dirt on us until our ground is high enough to be scorched by the "fiery sky" and make the majestic mount osa look like a tumor in comparison! why, you can blow, can't i blow?

such a savage outburst is itself a dangerous gift. hamlet is a master of all styles of language, both high and low, and this outburst is extremely low. boldness and transcendence are a mark of hamlet's sensibility. if he is scolding laertes for his affectation, then he is also aware of his own hidden belief that speaking from the heart is tantamount to stripping a whore. but since this outburst by the tomb is so unbearable, it is necessary to pay attention to it. as a thorough ironist and self-questioner, hamlet implies that he is aware of the gradual weakening of his concept of the other, which for him means consciousness. to give up all self-viewing of others is similar to his transformation in act 5, where his superb performativity gives way to a nihilism that can be called highly original:

hamlet ... i am dead, horatio. farewell, unfortunate queen! you who have seen this unexpected tragedy and shuddered and turned pale, speechless spectators, if it were not for the arrest of death that does not allow people to stay for a moment, ah! i can tell you - but let it go. horatio, i am dead, and you are still in the world; please tell the world the whole story of my actions and dispel their doubts.

earlier in this scene of hamlet’s farewell, he lamented, “let it be,” and here the “let it be” reappears like a refrain. wallace stevens in his poem “the emperor of ice cream” acutely completes this phrase: “let it be finale of seem.” hamlet gives up his phantom life and finally pays homage to the “being” that may transcend the world of appearances.

hamlet’s last words are memorable: “the rest is silence,” and the word “rest” here means “peace” rather than “remainder.” with these words, the most expansive mind shakespeare ever created ends his lifelong pursuit, bids farewell to us, “the silent spectators who see this scene,” and revokes everything that might have meaning in our lives. however, we are also “unsatisfied with the truth of all things” and will not accept hamlet’s self-surrendered nothingness. most readers and audiences refuse to see hamlet as a villain hero, a positioning that has now become fashionable among academic critics. because there is a shadow of hamlet in all of us, we do not approve of this stigmatization. but our dissent is actually disturbing, and it makes us question whether the power of our own self-viewing is constantly weakening.

coleridge said that hamlet thought too much. i always agree with nietzsche's wonderful answer: "hamlet did not think too much, but too deeply, and therefore he thought his way to the truth." but this truth is the truth that drives us to destruction.

hamlet's self-perception is so grand, like his irony, that it is sometimes hard to discern. i accept the judgment of early shakespeare lovers that hamlet is his own falstaff. but he is also his own iago, and even his own macbeth.

i like to retell olson wells's charming vision: danish prince hamlet comes to england, helps shakespeare stage the beheading of the poor sycophants - rosencrantz and guildenstern - and then takes up residence in the globe theatre, growing fat and eventually becoming sir john falstaff. in this way, he can avoid the final massacre at elsinore castle and get away with the ongoing affair between his mother gertrude and his possible father claudius, and not care about it. shakespeare does not tell us when the affair between gertrude and claudius began, but it is not impossible that gertrude seeks comfort from claudius while old hamlet is in the snow and killing poles and the king of norway at his expense. a fat falstaff hamlet would certainly not care about all this.

i am joking, no doubt, but it is in the spirit of the fool, "eric," who was a good influence on hamlet's childhood playmate.hamlet has endless possibilities, which is consistent with a mind so vast that it includes all human self-perceptions.

this article is excerpted from

"memories"

author: harold bloom

publisher: citic press

producer: dafang

subtitle: bloom's literary memoirs

original title: possessed by memory: the inward light of criticism

translator: li xiaojun

publication year: 2024-9