File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0110, message 150


From: "Jud Evans" <Jud-AT-sunrise74.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Shakespeare
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 17:04:43 -0000



----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Elden" <stuart.elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
To: <heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2001 12:13 PM
Subject: Shakespeare


Even Shakespeare's well known:
"To be or not to be" is a rhetorical and poetic ellipsis of:  "To be
alive -
or not to be alive, that is the question."

I, at least, am glad that Shakespeare didn't feel a need here to add 'alive'
twice in this line. For one thing, it would spoil the poetry. For another it
needlessly limits the scope of the line. I read and studied Shakespeare long
before I did the same with Heidegger, and even then did not feel the line
needed to be 'explained'.

Stuart

Jud:
The reason that I mentioned the line was because it often crops up in
people's responses to my messages, particularly because of the two hanging,
predicate-less BEs, a phenomenon which I am often asked to explain in the
light of my explanations of the functions of BE..[ a construction which only
happens twice in the whole of Shakespeare's works.].

Seems that old Bill was an AITist too!
There is no question that William Shakespeare was haunted and obsessed with
time. As one of his biggest fans, [Shakespeare is my bed-time reading,] with
an interest in the concept of time, I am intrigued with the vehemence with
which he endows time with an almost devilish anthropomorphical
vindictiveness. In Shakespeare's sonnets alone it is a constantly
reoccurring theme, and in almost every instance time is reified into a
mortal enemy who constantly seeks to undermine the happiness of mankind with
a malevolent glee. Shakespeare's hypostatisation of time puts one in mind of
man's follies and sins with the inevitable pay-off of time's revenge
awaiting with the pitchforks, like Hieronymus Bosch's hideous devils
pricking the tortured souls as they cower naked in Beelzebub's cooking pots.
For Shakespeare it is as if  Time is Hell's bagman in the upper world - the
domain of the transient human attendance-mode during their pathetic, cruel,
brutal and short dalliance with existence.
With our greatest poet, swift-footed Time is a slut, the bringer of disease,
the giver that takes away, a deceiver, this bloody tyrant, a place of
wastes, a wielder of the scythe, a devourer, a thief and a tyrant.

There is not ONE instance of the word 'BEING' as used in the Heideggerian
sense in the whole of Shakespeare's work's.
In every instance the word 'being' is used in the normal grammatical
employment, as the present continuous tense of the modal processant 'to be.'
It is interesting from the sample below that Shakespeare thought quite
differently about 'Being' to Heidegger  which is amply indicated by
Shakespeare's coupling of 'being' with 'extant'
Here is an example from Shakespeare's Sonnets:
Sonnet 83.

I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set,
I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,
That barren tender of a poet's debt:
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you your self being extant well might show,
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.


In the following excerpt from THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH
we can see that Shakespeare understands that 'being' is simply a mode of
existence - in this case the existential modality  of Humphrey's dead body.

"For Humphrey being dead, as he shall be,
And Henry put apart, the next for me."

I  see that you studied Shakespeare as I did at University [probably many
years before you were born.] and whilst it is true that in the light of your
superior education in this area of literature, this particular brilliant
little gem of Shakespeare's and the reasons for its employment needs no
explanation in your case, that is not to say that everyone on this list has
studied Shakespeare in such detail.  It is probably prudent therefore on my
part not to shape my output in strict conformity with what the good Doctor
Stuart Elden may know or may  not know - or to go to the trouble of mailing
you privately before posting to the group in order to ascertain whether
something in my proposed posting will already be known to you.  Surely that
would be too time consuming on both our parts?  It is also true that there
are many things that you have written in the past that myself and doubtless
other members of the group have already known about - in fact on a list such
as this there must be many instances of this kind.  If you have time to
spare perhaps it would help if you forwarded an extensive  list of all the
things you  already know, so that I and other list members can consult your
list in advance, so that we can delete any items of which you are already
aware or shape our contributions in another way less onerous for you to
read, and  in order not to offend your sensibilities by the  needless
repetition of facts already known to you? :-)

Best wishes,

Jud.





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