Yes. Not only embracing the father but slipping a knife between his ribs I susupect is the archetypal demand. I am thinking that Hamlet is the modern version of Oedipus. Our delicate egos cannot accomodate incest and patricide so we invent an uncle to do the dirty dead. Yet the same requirement is there from a psychological perspective. We must kill the father and marry the mother. We cannot avoid that fate, Oedipus already tried. So Hamlet steps back from the drama and thinks he has a choice and that his choice is between the archetypal realm or the civilized realm of the ego. Its hard to choose so his hesitation caused many people to perish. You have to accept the burden of the murder.
In the attached alchemical plates the king has been killed by the son and the son takes his fathers blood to put on his own shirt symbolizing the need to take responsibility for his father's death. Then the son falls into the tomb with his father sacrificing his own life for the process. Hamlet fails to understand the need to own his father's death so himself must die. So he would rather die than grow up?
Challenging and replacing the father seems to be built into the natural world. It is expected in a pack of wolves or a pride of lion or a herd of elk. It is clear that civilization must discourage such brutal instincts in actuality. Yet we have to somehow acknowledge and integrate these feelings and impulses on a psychological level in order to grow.
ReplyDeleteI see the similarity between Hamlet and Oedipus. At least Oedipus got the chance to live after his banishment and perhaps learn the lesson of his folly. But Hamlet does not. Which begs the question: does Hamlet truly learn what he must before he is slain? Or is his denial so sophisticated that he has eluded the call and the challenge?
Good question. Emily Dickinson said that Hamlet wavered for us all. Perhaps we are, by his efforts(or lack thereof),the transformed. It is interesting that actors wish to protray him and he cavorted with actors.
ReplyDeleteI had a dream recently in which I and an actor and the real life person her portrayed were in a car. I am introducing the actor to the person making note of the resemblance between them. The actor was quiet, smiling, smug while the real person was angry and lashed out at the actor. I became incensed and unloaded on the real person, defending the actor and castigating the real person for not appreciating the work that goes into a performance. Am I defending Hamlet "the actor" who could not "...to thine own self be true"?
Ha! So we have reached a point where you are more pro-actor than I, and I am at least as pro-philosopher as you. Truly something alchemical is taking place.
ReplyDeleteI guess, to Hamlet's credit, he takes up the psychological struggle and asks the questions many of us never ask. And by that we are all transformed.
I find it interesting to compare Hamlet to his foil, Laertes. Laertes is about the same age and also has a father to avenge. He does so without hesitation, arguably more heroic. Yet we never sympathize with Laertes. Though he is in pain, he has no self-doubt to intrigue us.
There is something alchemical going on.
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