BLOOM, Harold. The tempest (and other parts of Shakespeare: the invention of the human)

Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz - UESC

Departamento de Letras e Artes - DLA

Projeto de Extensão Dinamizando o Ensino da Língua Inglesa na UESC

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BLOOM, Harold. The tempest. In: Shakespeare: the invention of the human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. p. 662-684.

A – General Considerations:

1. In my personal dilemma as an author before Shakespeare’s grandeur: I think Bloom depicts Shakespeare in a way that fits his Foucauldian enemy: the death of the subject; the death of the author. Because Bloom’s Shakespeare is a god, a divine function in the name of the literary sublime. [ !!!! ]

2. Bloom’s appraisal of Shakespeare is utterly, radically positive.

3. Bloom takes every opportunity to criticize cultural studies; he also despises Caliban, especially because this personage has been used as a symbol by cultural studies scholars; check Bloom’s ironic tone here and there…

4. Below, excerpts from 4 other parts of Bloom’s book can be found: “To the reader”, “Shakespeare’s universalism”, “Coda: the Shakespearean difference”, and “A word at the end: foregrounding”.

5. In Bloom’s book, The tempest is placed in Part IX – “The late romances”

6. The Faustic lineage starts with Simon Magus, who changed names – to Faustus – when he went to Rome. “In a contest with Christians, this first Faustus attempted levitation, and crashed down to his death. Most subsequent Fausts sell out to the Devil, and pay with spirit, the grandest exception being Goethe, for his Faust’s soul is borne off to heaven by little boy angels whose chubby buttocks so intoxicate Mephistopheles with homoerotic lust that he notices too late the theft of his legitimate prize. (…) Simon Magus was, like Jesus the Magician, a disciple of John the Baptist, and evidently resented that he was not preferred to Jesus, but again we have only Christian accounts of this.” (p. 667-668). [Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus; Ferando Pessoa’s; …]

7. Notes from the back cover and critics: Á landmark achievement – expansive, erudite, and passionate - Shakespeare: the invention of the human is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare. (…) At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarship – that Shakespeare not only reinvented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.”

8. For the concept of “human” in BLOOM, go to excerpt on page 733.

9. For considerations on DEATH (p. 733-734)

10. Lígia Telles salienta a importância de COMPAGNON para o curso. Acrescenta, dele: de Aristóteles a Auerbach não houve descontinuidade no uso conceito de MIMESIS no pensametno ocidental. Auerbach ainda entende MIMESIS como Aristóteles o fazia.

11. O que hoje conhecemos como gêneros era chamado de espécies por Aristóteles (p. 37).

12. Quanto mais mimese, mais literário, mais literariedade (formalistas russos)

13. Margites ou Louco enfatuado de si mesmo, poema satírico que Aristóteles atribui a Homero, perdeu-se. Aristóteles vê nele a origem da comédia, e na Ilíada e na Odisséia a origem da tragédia.

B – Key vocabulary:

i·ma·go n., pl. -goes, -gi·nes 1. Entomol. an adult insect. // 2. Psychoanal. an idealized concept of a loved one, formed in childhood and retained unaltered in adult life.

fore·ground n.1. the ground or parts situated, or represented as situated, in the front; the portion of a scene nearest to the viewer (opposed to background). // 2. a prominent or important position; forefront.

back·ground n. 1. the ground or parts, as of a scene, situated in the rear (opposed to foreground).

2. Fine Arts. a. the part of a painted or carved surface against which represented objects and forms are perceived or depicted: a portrait against a purple background. b. the part of an image represented as being at maximum distance from the frontal plane. // 3. one's origin, education, experience, etc., in relation to one's present character, status, etc.

4. the social, historical, and other antecedents or causes of an event or condition: the background of the war.

5. the complex of physical, cultural, and psychological factors that serves as the environment of an event or experience; the set of conditions against which an occurrence is perceived. //

—Syn.4. environment, circumstances, upbringing, milieu, element, sphere, medium.

child·ish (ch#lÆdish), adj. 1. of, like, or befitting a child: childish games.

2. puerile; weak; silly: childish fears. —Syn. CHILDISH, INFANTILE, CHILDLIKE refer to characteristics or qualities of childhood. The ending -ish often has unfavorable connotations; CHILDISH therefore refers to characteristics that are undesirable and unpleasant: childish selfishness, outbursts of temper. INFANTILE, originally a general word, now often carries an even stronger idea of disapproval or scorn than does CHILDISH: infantile reasoning, behavior. The ending -like has pleasing or neutral connotations; CHILDLIKE therefore refers to the characteristics that are desirable and admirable: childlike innocence, trust. —Ant. mature, adult.

child·like like a child, as in innocence, frankness, etc.; befitting a child: childlike trust.

1. Representação/Representar: o mesmo que mimesis/imitar?. (p. ?) // “o conceito aristotélico de mimese não significa mera imitação ou reprodução da ‘realidade’” (COSTA, 2003, p. 53).

2. deus ex machina = em teatro greco-romano, ator representando um deus que vem por meio de mecanismos; evento que traz desenlace inesperado e feliz a uma situação grave

3. Tragédia: (Dicionário de Termos Literários, de Massaud Moisés): Grego tragoidía, canto de bode (grupo de cantores vestidos de bode, sátiros, portanto), em honra a Baco. Para Aristóteles, a origem da tragédia seria do ditirambo. // Praticamente olvidada no curso da Idade Média, a tragédia voltou a ser apreciada e estudada com o Renascimento, graças à onda de Classicismo que o acompanhou. P.495 // A partir do século XIX, com a recusa da pureza dos gêneros e das regras clássicas, a tragédia quase desapareceu por completo, (...) mercê do surgimento do drama. P.496 // A tragédia clássica apresentava a seguinte estrutura: 1) prólogo, em forma de diálogo, 2) párodo, ou entrada do coro, 3) episódios, em número de três, separados pelos estásimos, ou intervenções do coro, 4) êxodo, ou desfecho. E conforme Aristóteles (...), seis partes a constituiriam: fábula, ou ação, personagens, elocução, pensamento, espetáculo e música. P.498 // A rigor, a tragédia saiu de circulação no século XIX; no entanto, algumas peças de Ibsen ou o moderno teatro do absurdo têm sido ocasionalmente rotulados como tal. P. 498 // ler mais em Massaud Moisés.

4. Comédia: (Dicionário de Termos Literários, de Massaud Moisés): Grego komodía. ler mais em Massaud Moisés.

5. Drama: (Dicionário de Termos Literários, de Massaud Moisés ): Grego drama, ação. // (...) como a ação se afigurava exclusiva do teatro, passou a conter um significado específico. Aristóteles, na Poética (...), distingue a imitação, ou mimese, “na forma narrativa” daquela em que as “pessoas agem e obram diretamente”, ou seja, em que se processa a imitação da ação. Ao segundo tipo confere o apelativo de drama. Portanto, em sentido amplo, a qualquer peça destinada a representar-se caberia análoga denominação. P.161

6. A peripécia é a mudança da ação no sentido contrário ao que parecia indicado e sempre (…) em conformidade com o verossímil e o necessário.

7. Verossimilhança: Unidade ou coerência dentro da obra: personagens e enredo plausíveis. // (Aurélio): ou verosimilhança: 1. Qualidade ou caráter de verossímil [ou verossimilhante: 1. Semelhante à verdade; que parece verdadeiro. 2. Provável.]; 2. Liter. Coerência interna da obra literária no tocante ao mundo imaginário das personagens e situações recriadas. [Verossimilhança X Verdade] “critério fundamental do conceito aristotélico de mimese, responsável pela distinção entre a obra do poeta e a do historiador. Representar o verossímil, na mimese, significa que o objeto da representação do poeta não o que realmente aconteceu, mas o que poderia acontecer, isto é, o possível.

8. Catarse: * (Dicionário de Termos Literários/Massaud Moisés): Aristóteles colocou-a pela primeira vez, ao proceder à exegese da tragédia, afirmando que esta, “suscitando o terror e a piedade, tem por efeito a purificação desses sentimentos” (...). p.79 // As várias propostas em torno do vocábulo “catarse” podem ser resumidas em duas principais: ora se entende que a purgação constitui a experiência da piedade e terror que o espectador sofre perante a tragédia que contempla, de molde a “viver”a situação infausta do herói e aprender a distanciá-la de si; ora se julga que a visualização do tormento alheiro proporciona à platéia o alívio da próprias tensões, ao menos enquanto dura o espetáculo. P.79 // A noção de catarse, indispensável em toda discussão acerca do valor ético da Arte, assemelha-se à idéia de “sublimação” como a compreende a Psicanálise de Freud: na medida em que o impulso sexual, ou sua energia (libido), é canalizado para ou transformado em Arte, de maneira a tornar-se socialmente aceitável, o mecanismo da catarse equivaleria ao da sublimação. P.79-80 *(Aurélio): 1. Purgação, purificação, limpeza. 2. Méd. Evacuação, natural ou provocada, por qualquer via. 3. Psicol. Efeito salutar provocado pela conscientização de uma lembrança fortemente emocional e/ou traumatizante, até então reprimida. 4. Teat. O efeito moral e purificador da tragédia clássica, conceituado por Aristóteles (...), cujas situações dramáticas, de extrema intensidade e violência, trazem à tona os sentimentos de terror e piedade dos espectadores, proporcionando-lhes o alívio, ou purgação, desses sentimentos (...).

C – Excerpts from “To the reader”. p. xix - xxii

D – Excerpts from “Shakespeare’s universalism”. p. 1-17

E – Excerpts from “The tempest”. Chapter 33. p. 662-684

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Excerpts

(…) ideology drives the bespoilers of The tempest. Caliban, a poignant but cowardly (and murderous) half-human creature (his father a sea devil, whether fish or amphibian), has become an African-Caribbean heroic Freedom Fighter. (…) Marxists, multiculturalists, feminists, nouveau historicists – the usual suspects – know their causes but not Shakespeare’s plays. //

The play is fundamentally plotless (…). If there is any literary source at all, it would be Montaigne’s essay on the Cannibals, who are echoed in Caliban’s name though not in his nature. [ !!!! ] Yet Montaigne, as in Hamlet, was more provocation than source, and Caliban is anything but a celebration of the natural man. The tempest is neither a discourse on colonialism nor a mystical testament.

(…) Prospero is Shakespeare’s anti-Faust, and a final transcending of Marlowe. (…)

Another modern tradition – now, of course, prevalent – has cast black actors in the role. (…) Fashions tire; the early twenty-first century may still have mock scholars moaning about neocolonialism, but I assume that by then Caliban and Ariel will be extra-terrestrials – perhaps they are already.

What Browning sees is Caliban’s childishness, a weak and plangent sensibility that cannot surmount its fall from the paradisal adoption by Prospero. Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda is readily explained away by his current academic admirers, but I wonder sometimes why feminist critics join in Caliban’s defense. (…) Half a Wild Man, half a sea beast, Caliban has his legitimate pathos, but he cannot be interpreted as being somehow admirable.

Prospero’s Platonism is at best enigmatic; self-knowledge in Neo-Platonic tradition hardly should lead on to despair, and yet Prospero ends in a dark mode, particularly evident in the Epilogue that he speaks. (…)

Prospero is not more a representation of Shakespeare himself than Dr. Faustus was self-portrait of Christopher Marlowe. (…)

Prospero, unlike Hamlet, does not end saying that he has something more to tell us, but that he must “let it be”.

Since Prospero’s story is not tragic, but somehow comic, in the old sense of ending happily (or at least successfully), he appears to lose spiritual authority even as he regains political power. (…) the authority of a counter-Faust, who could purchase knowledge at no spiritual cost, abandons Prospero. (…)

The tempest is more Ariel’s play than Caliban’s, and much more Prospero’s. (…)

Prospero, the anti-Faust, with the angel Ariel for his familiar, has made a pact only with deep learning of the hermetic kind.

No audience has ever liked Prospero (…). Why does Shakespeare make Prospero so cold? (…)

There is not much geniality in The tempest, or in other later plays by Shakespeare (…).

Unlike [Giordano] Bruno, Prospero the anti-Faust is not heretic; he is indifferent to the Christian revelation (…).

Is Prospero’s art, like Shakespeare’s, aesthetic rather than mystical? That would make Prospero only the enlargement of a failed metaphor, and belie our experience of the play. (…)

Freud, speaking to his disciples, liked to call himself a conquistador, which seems to me a suggestive epithet for Prospero. Like Freud, Prospero really is the favored one: he is bound to win. (…) Prospero exults as he approaches his total victory, and then he becomes very sad. (…)

The dynastic marriage of Miranda to the Prince of Naples will unite the two realms and thus prevent further political troubles from outside. But what occult powers, if any, does Prospero still possess after he breaks the staff and drowns his book?

Prospero does perform that suicidal act, one that needs to be clarified if we are to see The tempest more for what it is and less for the legendary auras it has accumulated. // (…)

Ariel [a spirit of the elements fire and air] is our largest clue to understanding Prospero, though we no similar aid for apprehending this great sprite (…). Plainly a contrast to Caliban, all earth and water, Ariel comes into the play before Caliban does, and finally is dismissed to his [??] freedom – his last words to Prospero are “Was’t well done?” an actor speaking to a director.

I have only rarely heard anyone laugh at a performance of The tempest, but that is because of the directors, whose moral sensibilities never seem to get beyond their politics. The Prospero-Ariel relationship is delicious comedy, together with much else in the play (…). What is not at all comic is the mutual torment of the Prospero-Caliban failed adoption (…).

We are Miranda, who is adjured to “Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.” (…)

No one is harmed in the play, and forgiveness is extended to all by Prospero, in response to Ariel’s most human moment. (…) personality seems no longer to be a prime Shakespearean concern, and is inapplicable anyway to the nonhuman Ariel and half-human Caliban. (…) Misteriously, [The tempest] seems an inaugural work, a different mode of comedy (…).

The tempest provokes speculation, partly because we expect esoteric wisdom from Prospero, though we never receive any.

The apparent influx of myth and miracle that scholars celebrate in the last plays is more ironic and even farcical than we have taken it to be. (…) // Authority seems to me the play’s mysterious preoccupation. I say “mysterious” because Prospero’s authority is unlike anyone else’s in Shakespeare.

We hardly recognize that The tempest is a comedy whenever Prospero is on stage. That may be only a consequence of our acting and directing traditions, which have failed to exploit the contrast between the anti-Faust’s authority and the antics of his hapless enemies.

Comedy returns in the meeting between Caliban and King Alonso’s jester, Trinculo, and his perpetually intoxicated brother, Stephano. Poor Caliban, hero of our current discourses on colonialism, celebrates his new freedom from Prospero by worshiping Trinculo as his god.

Shakespeare, inventing the half-human in Caliban, astonishingly blends together the childish and the childlike. (…) Far from the heroic rebel that our academic and theatrical ideologues now desire him to become, Caliban is a Shakespearean representation of the family romance at its most desperate, with an authentic changeling who cannot bear his outcast condition.

[Prospero’s] anger is not just with “the beast Caliban” [with his plot to kill Prospero], discarded foster son, but with himself for failing in alertness, in the control of consciousness.

[The tempest; IV.i.146-63] A tradition of interpretation, now little credited, read this as Shakespeare’s overt farewell to his art. (…) Whether or not there is a personal element here, Prospero’s great declaration confirms the audience’s sense that this is a magus without transcendental beliefs, whether Christian or Hermetic-Neo-Platonic.

“I’ll drown my book.” [The tempest; V.i.57]

The poetic strength of The tempest, perhaps even of Shakespeare, touches a limit of art in this apparent kenosis, or emptying-out, of Prospero’s mortal godhood.

Which book will be drowned, out of the number in Prospero’s library, or is this not his own manuscript? // Prospero’s abjuration sounds more like a great assertion of power than like a withdrawal from efficacy. (…) Why do Antonio and Sebastian, who express no repentance whatsoever, take no action against Prospero, if he no longer commands spirits? (…) Sebastian only mutters, in an aside, “The devil speaks in him,” and indeed from the perspective of the villains, the devil does inhabit Prospero, who terrifies them. Prospero may yet attempt to abandon his art, but it is not at all clear that his supernatural authority ever will abandon him. His deep melancholy as the play closes may not be related to his supposed renunciation. (…)

Most of what we hear in the remainder of The tempest is triumph, restoration, some reconciliation, and even some hints that Prospero and Caliban will work out their dreadful relationship, but much also is left as puzzle. (…) The thought of Caliban in Italy is well-nigh unthinkable (…). well-nigh

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(welÆn#Å), adv. very nearly; almost: It's well-nigh bedtime.

Gonzalo, in a remarkable speech, tells us that Ferdinand: “found a wife / Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom / in a poor isle, and all of us ourselves / When no man was his own.” [V.i.210-13] Gonzalo encompasses more than the intends, for Prospero’s true dukedom may always be that poor isle, where “no man was his own”, since all were Prospero’s, and only he was his own. How can the magus, whatever his remaining powers may be, find himself his own in Milan?

ke·no·sis (ki n$Æsis), n. Theol. the doctrine that Christ relinquished His divine attributes so as to experience human suffering.

change·ling (ch!njÆling), n. 1. a child surreptitiously or unintentionally substituted for another.

2. (in folklore) an ugly, stupid, or strange child left by fairies in place of a pretty, charming child.

3. Philately. a postage stamp that, by accident or intention, has been chemically changed in color.

4. Archaic. a. a renegade or turncoat. b. an imbecile.

F – Excerpts from “Coda: the shakespearean difference”. p. 714-735

G – Excerpts from “A word at the end: foregrounding”. p. 737-745

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But the foreground [of The tempest] begins with Shakespeare’s subtle choice of a name for his protagonist, Prospero, which is the Italian translation of the Latin Faustus, “the favored one”.

It seems appropriate that I conclude this book with Falstaff and with Hamlet, as they are the fullest representations of human possibility in Shakespeare. (…) When we are wholly human, and know ourselves, we become most like either Hamlet or Falstaff.

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