Hamlet
The din
has ceased. I enter the stage
While
leaning on the post
I capture
from the distant echo
What
in my time will come to pass.
The
dark descends and eyes are focused
through
a thousand opera glasses
all
at me. Oh, may you, Abba,
let
this cup pass from me.
I
love your fixed idea,
am
willing to take on this role.
Yet,
now, another play is staged.
and
this time, may you let me go.
The
plot, however, is preordained,
And
ineluctable the journey´s end.
I am
alone, all drowns in falsehood.
And
Life is not a walk across a field.
The speaker of the poem has just gone on the stage in order to play the
role of Hamlet in the tragedy by William Shakespeare. In his dual identity as a
dramatis persona and an actor, a
person in his life and times, he takes in the house with its stalls and
galleries from the vantage point of a post or column. For the actor the
atmosphere in the theatre is vital, as it tells him about the response of the audience
and thus about his future life.
With their eyes gazing through opera glasses they seem to him to be keen
observers who are not only interested in his acting, but also in him as a
person. The lighting with its focus on the stage leaves them in the shadows, so
that their faces are unrecognizable. This constellation is reminiscent of a
surveillance situation with its sinister atmosphere and threatening overtones.
Given the socio-historical context of the Soviet Union, Pasternak´s poem
can be interpreted as a dramatization of the position of the individual in a totalitarian
state. Like an actor the individual plays the role ascribed to him or her. Deprived
of the freedom of speech and of self-determination he realizes that his future
is preordained, which is not to say that it cannot suddenly be rewritten in
mid-action due to the arbitrariness of autocratic rule.
In Shakespeare´s Hamlet the
protagonist is likewise faced with demands to play certain roles, and he pauses
to check out the implications first and to set a trap of his own. He hesitates
to fulfil his father´s command to take revenge and contrives to escape his
uncle´s plot to murder him. In the end, however, he consents against his better
judgment to play his part in a court entertainment staged by his uncle, in the
course of which he is fatally injured. It almost seems that in the end he has
no real choice whether to play along or not. The prince´s fate is not in his
own hands.
In Pasternak´s
poem the Hamlet actor and speaker´s agony finds expression in the invocation ‘Abba,
let this cup pass from me’, the words of Jesus Christ, another
son who has doubts
about the role assigned to him by his father. The quote is from the Gospel of
Matthew, chapter 26, which relates Christ´s experiences in the
garden of Gethsemane. Jesus pleads
with his father to release him from their covenant, but finally yields knowing that he can´t escape his destiny and
that a traitor is close by waiting to deliver him to the authorities. The
reader gets very close to Christ´s experience of great fear, reluctance and
finally resignation.
The existential situation
of being at the mercy of a higher power is at the core of both the poem,
Shakespeare´s play and the passage from the Gospel. Whereas Jesus can be confident
that his sacrifice has a purpose and that he´ll ascend and sit beside God as
his son, there is no redemption for the speaker. Instead the plot ends with the
consolidation of autocratic power propped up by contemporaries, who might be
eager to denounce any divergent behavior to the regime.
Julian Barnes quotes Pasternak´s poem ‘Hamlet’ in The Noise of Time, his fictional biography of the Russian composer Shostakovich
published in 2016. It is told from the
point of view of Shostakovich but in the third person with
the composer´s relationship to the Soviet state under Stalin and later under
Khrushchev as its predominant theme. The Noise of Time deals with the experience of collaborating under the constant threat of
attracting the displeasure of the authorities. Acting against his conscience by
making concessions, Shostakovich was so humiliated that living was an agony and
death seemed preferable.
‘He knew he would be allowed to live, and receive the best medical
attention. But, in a way, that was worse. Because it is always possible to
bring the living to a lower point. You cannot say that of the dead.’ (135)
‘And this, perhaps, was their final triumph over him. Instead of killing
him, they had allowed him to live, and by allowing him to live, they had killed
him. This was the final, unanswerable irony of his life: that by allowing him
to live, they had killed him.’ (177)
When there is no freedom of expression and when the state ropes art in
and misuses it as a propaganda tool, it can still become a vehicle of
resistance as in Boris Pasternak´s public readings of Shakespeare´s Sonnet 66:
When Pasternak read Sonnet 66 in public, the audience would wait keenly
through the first eight lines, eager for the ninth:
And art made
tongue-tied by authority.
At which point they would join in – some under their breath, some
whisperingly, the boldest among them fortissimo, but all giving the lie to that
line, all refusing to be tongue-tied.
Barnes, 93-94.
According to Barnes, Shakespeare´s plays Hamlet and Macbeth were
considered as potentially subversive.
‚But even
more than poetry, tyrants hated and feared the theatre. Shakespeare held a
mirror up to nature, and who could bear to see their own reflection? So Hamlet was banned for a long time;
Stalin loathed the play almost as much as he loathed Macbeth.’ (88)
The dictator could not
help but compare himself with the kings represented in these tragedies. Neither
was in any way a flattering image of a ruler. In both plays, the king has come
to power by means of regicide, plots murders to consolidate his rule and is
killed in the end. The spectators could
recognize in them traits of their own rulers, and the indirect criticism likely
induced a grim sense of satisfaction. Thus, these old texts were able to
communicate over a distance of approximately 350 years and to produce a
cathartic effect. Pasternak´s poem is an allusion to this experience. Due to
the socio-political circumstances, however, speaker has even less room for
manoeuver than Shakespeare´s Hamlet.
Translation
by Gudrun Rogge-Wiest and Julia Yakovleva
Appendix 1: Sonnet 66 by William Shakespeare also quoted in
The Noise of Time
Sonnet 66
Tir´d with all these, for restful
death I cry
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm´d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac´d
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully
disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly – doctor-like – controlling
skill,
And simple truth miscall´d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain
ill;
Tir´d with all these, from these would
I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love
alone.
William
Shakespeare (1609) Die Sonette, Insel
Taschenbuch, 1993
‘When
Pasternak read Sonnet 66 in public, the audience would wait keenly through the
first eight lines, eager for the ninth:
And art made tongue-tied by authority
At which point they would join in – some under their
breath, some whisperingly, the boldest among them fortissimo, but all giving
the lie to that line, all refusing to be tongue-tied.’
Julian Barnes The Noise of Time, London, Vintage, 2016. S. 87
Appendix 2: 'Hamlet' by Boris Pasternak in the Russian original.
Hamlet
Гул
затих. Я вышел на подмостки.
Прислонясь к дверному косяку,
Я ловлю в далеком отголоске,
Что случится на моем веку.
На меня наставлен сумрак ночи
Тысячью биноклей на оси.
Если только можно, Aвва Oтче,
Чашу эту мимо пронеси.
Я
люблю твой замысел упрямый
И
играть согласен эту роль. ,
Но
сейчас идет другая драма,
И
на этот раз меня уволь.
Но
продуман распорядок действий,
И
неотвратим конец пути.
Я
один, все тонет в фарисействе.
Жизнь прожить - не поле перейти.
Appendix 3: Extract from Matthäus 26 from which the quotation in 'Hamlet' was taken.
Jesus
Prays in Gethsemane, English Standard Version, Matthäus 26
36 When Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to
his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.”
37 And taking
with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and
troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death;
remain here, and watch with me.” 39 And going a little farther he fell on his
face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from
me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” 40 And he came to the
disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not
watch with me one hour? 41 Watch and pray that you may not enter into
temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 42 Again, for
the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass
unless I drink it, your will be done.” 43 And again he came and found them
sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44 So, leaving them again, he went away
and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. 46 Then he came to
the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on.
e See, the hour is at
hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
47 Rise,
let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”
