Crisis 22
The Time is Out of Joint
Overview - At the Tea Table - The Play’s the Thing
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Overview
On the next several pages I’ll illustrate my literary approach using works from the three main genres of literature — Hamlet (drama), “The Shield of Achilles” (poetry), and “The Overcoat” and Dead Souls (prose fiction, i.e, the short story and novel). I briefly bring in epic poetry as well as four 20th century novels (Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and Rushdie’s Shame). Throughout, I assume that the three literary genres are fluid, overlapping with painting, sculpture, film, TV, videos, etc.
On this page I note that Gogol's Dead Souls lets us see a 19th century Russian swindler up close. We see him as a real person, and we see in detail that his arguments are so faulty and amoral that they start to sound like those of Putin and Lavrov and Peskov, who insist that their war is a special operation, their enemy is a vile Nazi, and their goal is for the good of Russia. If only someone would play for them a scene in which they could see themselves as clearly as Shakespeare’s Claudius sees himself — for the fratricidal, regicidal king he is. In the famous play within a play, Hamlet directs a scene in which a king kills his brother, after which Claudius stumbles screaming from the room. If only the same thing could happen to Kremlin leaders intent on grabbing power through violence.
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At the Tea Table
Like film and TV (which I see as modern extensions of drama), literature has the almost magical virtue of putting us into someone else’s shoes, so that we can develop understanding, sympathy, compassion, and empathy. Even for our enemies. Even, perhaps, one day — if the Heavens teach us a greater mercy — to the rulers of nations that wage war on their brother nations.
By putting us into situations we wouldn’t otherwise experience, literature unlocks a personalized perspective on culture, history, and politics. This literary ‘experience’ is of course vicarious and second-hand, yet it allows us to see the historical moment in our mind’s eye. Although we may be centuries and thousands of miles apart, we feel we are there, hearing the words, even thinking the thoughts of Hamlet as he prevaricates, Iago as he schemes, and Juliet as she sighs on the balcony in Verona.
How else can we be around a tea table in rural 19th century Russia, where an old lady is being conned by a man that Gogol names Chichikov, but for our present purposes we might also name Vladimir Putin?
How else, but through reading Gogol’s novel or watching some theatrical version of it, can we feel the frustration of this con man when the lady’s incessant concerns about his plan start to turn against the greater design of his plan, sending him into an impatient rage? How else can we laugh at the comic simplicity of her logic and yet also guess at the insidiuos way her concerns might lead to Chichikov’s undoing? How else, but through the grinding penetration of literature, can we see that he’s caught psychologically in the trap he set for himself?
And how is it possible not to be amused when the con man insists that his plan is acceptable, commendable, even noble! And yet, how easy it is, even for the simplest old lady, to ask questions which uncover its immoral roots — while yet the con man points with increasing anger to the branch, laden with fruit. Finally, we imagine Vladimir Vladimirovich Chichikov shouting into the rafters of this rural drawing room, a quaint room he thought so easy to master: All you have to do is pluck it, you stupid old bitch, from the branch above your head!
As we read Gogol’s novel, we’re there around the tea table with the con man and with the infuriating woman who threatens to inadvertantly unveil his scheme. We see the bigger picture of rural life and Russian institutions, yet we see it all from individual perspectives, from the point of view of a person, or a group of people, caught up in the whirl of human relations.
One might object that this vicarious experience is subjective and mediated, rather than objective and immediate. Yet we live life subjectively, not just through objective logic or truth. We identify with Chichikov and the old lady, more than we do with the logical arguments and objections they make. And we understand the larger world through the images and narratives that circulate in our media landscape (the Net, books, film, etc.), not just through direct experience. While we’ll never meet Gogol or his crazy characters, they become part of our thinking and feeling.
Who better to illustrate this point in detail than the bard, the greatest dramatist the world has ever seen?
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The Play’s the Thing
In Shakespeare’s famous play, Hamlet suspects that his uncle Claudius has killed his father, yet he isn’t completely sure. He therefore gets his theatre friends to play a scene in which a king kills his brother and then marries the queen, as Claudius has done. He hopes that the play will be “the thing / To catch the conscience of the king.”
In coming up with this plan, Hamlet recalls that “guilty creatures sitting at a play / Have, by the very cunning of the scene, / Been struck so to the soul that presently / They have proclaimed their malefactions.” Hamlet’s reasoning turns out to be effective: Claudius is so disturbed by the performance (often referred to as the play within the play) that he shouts at the actors to stop, and he runs madly from the stage.
If only someone could play such a play for Putin, to get him to see that he isn’t just a villain to us, but also that he is his own worst enemy. What would it take for him to see himself in a work of art, rather than to see how he could turn each plot to his own ends?
After Claudius realizes that Hamlet’s play was meant just for him, he sends his son-in-law to England. He also sends instructions (in a letter carried by his old school mates Rosencranz & Gildenstern) that Hamlet is to be killed by the English king. Hamlet intercepts Claudius’ letter and replaces his name with the names of his two false friends. The English king kills the messengers instead.
Applying this scenario to Ukraine remains a fantasy, for Putin comes from the world of spycraft and subterfuge, wine poisonings and Novichok. In other words, he can’t be so easily ‘hung by his own petard.’ The only way to stop him may be through the means he has himself insisted on: violence.
At least, this is what happens to Claudius, who resorts to violence when his initial violence gets him into trouble, and whose insistant violence ultimately leads to his violent end. In the final duel scene (between Hamlet and Laertes) Claudius poisons the wine which he intends for Hamlet to drink during the duel. The love of his life, Hamlet’s mother — the woman Claudius says is ‘so conjunctive to his soul’ that he couldn’t live without her — offers unexpectedly to drink the wine. Claudius is petrified, yet still willing to see her die in front of his eyes rather than admit to having poisoned the wine. Hamlet also drinks the wine, and Laertes is poisoned by the tip of the sword that Claudius intended for Hamlet. Finally, when Claudius’ villainy is exposed to everyone, Hamlet stabs Claudius and shoves the poisoned wine down his throat.
Like Claudius, Putin is killing what he loves — Russia itself. We all see what he’s done: the Novichok is on the tip, Grozny is rising from the rubble, the journalists are out the window (or out of the country), Prokrovsk is on the brink, Georgia is feeling the squeeze, Navalny has perished in the Stalinesque North. The poison is held aloft for all to see.
The situation has got so bad that Putin must control the words around him, lest someone say out loud that the Emperor has no clothes. Everyone in Russia must call it a “special military operation” and not a “war,” lest they go from subject to modifier, from “war” to “war of aggression,” to “war of aggression against a sovereign neighbour.” If they mispeak, then to jail they go.
The West has its many faults, no doubt, yet there is clearly something rotten in the state of Russia. Whether or not it can be set straight is another matter. I imagine Zelensky at night, telling his wife, “Oh, curséd spite / That ever I was born to set it right.” The main difference between Hamlet and the Ukraine Crisis here is that Hamlet prevaricates, while Zelensky is resolute.
It’s the West, with its never-ending ifs and buts, that prevaricates. It refuses to commit to self-defensive air-cover for Ukraine. Why on earth doesn’t the West help Kiev to raise an iron dome above it, to protect it from glide bombs amd worse? Unlike Isreal, Ukraine hasn’t taken land from its neighbour. It hasn’t denied nationhood to those who live right next to it. To the contrary, Ukraine has given up its nuclear weopons — to Russia, in exchange for sovereignty! — and not acted to acquire them serruptitiously. Israel is given all the help it needs to protect itself, while Ukraine must cope with the continual destruction of its infrastructure. How long will it take for the West to act resolutely — not to attack Russia, but to provide Ukraine with the defense it needs?
Until then, the time remains — as it was at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, with the ghost walking the castle walls — “out of joint.”
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Next: 📺 Vicarious Experience