Richibi’s Weblog

    “John Philip Kemble as Hamlet“ (1801)

           Thomas Lawrence

                ___________

if I’m to compare Beethoven’s 32nd
Piano Sonata, his opus 111, with 
anything else you might be familiar
with, it would be Shakespeare’s 
epochal contemplation, “To be, or
not to be“, both are, first, and 
briefly, soliloquies, one performer
alone is on stage, both are 
implicitly meditations, that will 
augur, inspire, note, a new age 

let me propound, for a moment, on 
the Shakespeare, an introspective 
piece set on resolving an existential 
dilemma, To be, or not to be, that is 
the question, it is pungent, forceful, 
arresting, if only even rhythmically,
so much so that many still 
pronounce the first line of that 
trenchant aria with verily stentorian  
conviction, without realizing that the
several concluding movements are 
abysmally dire, indeed they 
investigate, with improbably literate 
fervour, a life and death situation  

    Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
    The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
    Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
    And by opposing end them

should one, after contemplation, 
bear the onslaught of life’s most 
unacceptable tribulations, or, 
most efficiently, cut all of it off

     … To die – he says – to sleep,
     No more; and by a sleep to say we end 
     The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
     That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
     Devoutly to be wished 

I’ve often been there

      ... To die, to sleep;
      To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub:

the rub, which is to say, the problem,
what’s up once you’ve done yourself 
in  

      For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
      When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
      Must give us pause

indeed, there’s the respect, the angle, 
the conundrum one must consider

      that makes calamity of so long life 

one ‘s stuck between the devil and the 
deep blue sea

       For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
       Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely
       
the demeaning disrespect a proud man ‘s 
made to suffer

       The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
       The insolence of office, and the spurns 
       That patient merit of the unworthy takes

which is to say, life’s multifarious, and
beleaguering struggles

        When he himself might his quietus make 
        With a bare bodkin?

quietus, silence, extermination 
bodkin, a knife

        … Who would fardels bear, 

fardels, hardships

       To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
       But that the dread of something after death,
       The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
       No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
       And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
       Than fly to others we know not of?

we keep on grunting, in fear that 
what comes after could be worse

a man considering his own demise,
his quietus, at the time of Shakespeare 
would’ve been, only a generation earlier,
an heretic, one deserving of unforgiving,
and gruesome, censure, Hamlet was,
not incidentally, however, a prince, a  
role model, though evidently controversial

but the Reformation had occurred, 
a loosening of categorical strictures

in France, Descartes had, in his quest 
for the true God, concluded, Cogito,
ergo sum, I think, therefore I am,
eclipsing the Catholic God as the 
final arbiter, personal metaphysical
options were up for grabs, out in 
the open, though yet not entirely 
secular

which would happen, out loud,  in 
the Age of Reason, when God, as 
we knew Him, lost His, by now 
scattered, authority, among 
Lutherans, for instance, Calvinists, 
Anglicans, and a proliferation of 
sprouting others, not to mention, 
still, the stalwart, ever, Roman 
Catholics 

the Romantic Period needed a new 
ethic, a personal evaluation of one’s
metaphysical position, Beethoven, 
in a word, or in his 32nd Piano
Sonata rather, delivers, a piece no 
less intense than Shakespeare’s 
profound interrogation

briefly, there are two movements
here, merely, which demand your 
attention, it isn’t music that one 
listens to with just one ear, this 
is Jesus on the Mount of Olives, 
Gethsemane, not much different 
from Shakespeare’s existential 
soliloquy

war, peace, rebellion, resignation,
black, white, fast, slow, explosive,
extended, man, woman, yin, 
indeed, yang, short, long, 
irascible, submissive, all 
paradoxical dichotomies, all 
eventually, manifestly, 
transcendent, all a subjugation, 
a private prayer, eventually, 
however fraught, however 
nevertheless archetypal,
two movements that still 
haven’t exhausted their 
philosophical potential for 
being assuaging, inspirational 

R ! chard