Six Etudes

I

A haiku is a
Glass of water knocked and spilled -
An image di-stilled.

II

Rainy lullabies
The piano of the roof
Rhythms of a dream.

III

Civilization
Is a mechanical womb
Holding a dead child.

IV

Loveless evening
Saliva overflowing
An orgasmic gloom.

V

There is no love if
There's no time past or future,
Memory or will.

VI

I ran towards the
Shade of my beloved, which
Turned out to be me.

Christmas Haiku

A white Christmas
Is a joke in Vancouver...
Well, this year at least.

The Trope of the Pastoral in Shakespeare’s As You Like It

Shakespeare’s As You Like It is arguably a play about life without social constraint in a pastoral setting. We have various characters banished from courtly life, but all of them are happy to take up the pastoral life: Duke Senior comments that everyone lives like brothers, and hears “books in running brooks”. Rosalind and Orlando find each other in the forest and in each other find true love. Adam and Corin, two old men, also find happiness in serving their new masters. The play ends in four marriages, and even Hymen, the god of marriage, comes and sings for them. From these facts, one can perhaps draw the conclusion that pastoral life is possible, if only human beings are willing to give up their courtly life style. This reading, however, is insensitive to Shakespeare’s real treatment of the pastoral trope. The play appears to have a happy ending, but as always, happy endings in Shakespeare are almost never happy. And upon closer examination of the play, one finds that Shakespeare is making the opposite statement about the pastoral ideal: instead of men living in a state of nature, the pastoral trope is actually a reflection of men in society. In other words, men are not escaping society in the Forest of Arden; rather, they are rebuilding the society they left, only they do a better job of it and all conflicts are resolved in the end. Through a careful reading of the play, we realize that the problems the shepherds and shepherdesses encounter are exactly the same as those in the courtiers.

Duke Senior’s opening speech in Act II, scene i describes the pastoral fantasy of equality between all men and the pleasure of being in touch with nature. Amiens immediately responds by saying that he “would not change it”. One can detect a tone of bitterness (and one can certainly perform this line that way) in Amiens’ reply, suggesting that courtly life is full of power struggles and hierarchies. But classism is not a problem that any of the shepherds escaped; in fact, the problem is still very subtly embedded in the speech of the Duke. For example, in Act II, scene vii, when the Duke is weary of Jaques’ melancholic contemplation of a fool, he switches his address to Jaques from “you” to “thou”, as if he is his servant. The same thing applies in the same scene when Adam is carried in by Orlando. Adam also receives the Duke’s “thou”. The Duke certainly may say that there is no class struggle in the forest because he is the one in charge – he can drop and reclaim his title whenever he wants.

Corin is also keenly aware of the economic aspect of the pastoral life. In Act II, scene iv, when Rosalind asks for hospitality, Corin tells the travelers that he has no means of providing hospitality. Corin is also very aware of the economic situation of his farm. He knows that the farm he is working on is a good farm and that it would sell for a good profit. By insisting on mentioning the soil condition he shows his consciousness of him as his former master’s agent and servant. Later in Act III, scene ii, we hear from Corin that he passively accepts his misfortunes. One cannot help but note certain sadness in his condition: being a servant, he cannot help but imagine what his master might demand of him and what he must helplessly reproduce for his master. Of course, this is purely textual speculation; on the other hand, it could be the case that Corin is just trying to convince himself that he is happy as a servant. Hence in the pastoral setting of As You Like It, the problem of class and power hierarchy is not dispelled; rather it is dutifully reproduced, but behind the wonderful disguises of a seemingly magnanimous Duke and a resignedly happy shepherd.

The problem of gender also reproduces itself in the play. Gender is a social expectation of what the sexes should do. The obvious romantic courtly trope is reproduced comically in the relationship between Silvius and Phoebe. Silvius is the romantic lover who loves Phoebe so much that any one of her negative facial reactions would kill him. (This is the same for Orlando, who, in Act IV, scene i, claims that Rosalind’s frown would kill him. Rosalind immediately replies that no man in the history of the world has died for his love.) Silvius, of course, has the entire tradition of courtly romantic poetry to back him up. And we should note that this is a courtly tradition. Silvius, then, is doing exactly what the male courtly lover should be doing: woo the “beautiful” lady. Phoebe, in turn, is in her bound as the courtly beloved who rejects the lover. Much of the time romantic poetry is about love unattained. But when Ganymede enters the scene and Phoebe actively seeks out Ganymede’s love in a letter delivered by Silvius in Act IV, scene i, Phoebe, who is no longer abiding to the rules of courtship, must be punished. And she is punished in the end by giving her unwillingly to Silvius.

Shakespeare makes a far more severe criticism of the problem of gender in a patriarchal society with the character Rosalind. Shakespeare seems to be ahead of the world by half a millennium when he realizes that gender is, as Butler argues in Gender Trouble, performative, and that they become essentialized only because of severe punishment on those who step outside of their bound (e.g. Phoebe). Rosalind shows that anyone, with enough courage and ability to “counterfeit”, can perform a gender role. Whether Orlando knows by the very end of the play that Ganymede is a woman is up to interpretation; but we can certainly see that Orlando has no idea that Ganymede is Rosalind. In Act IV, scene i, Rosalind – “uncommonly tall” – takes her performance to uncommon height by imitating misogyny in her speech; she does such a good job that even Celia complains of her misuse of her sex. Rosalind’s mimicry becomes a mockery of the misogynists. Of course, Rosalind is an exception; we have seen that every other character in the forest conforms to the gender role as given by courtly society.

Other aspects of courtly life are not absent in the pastoral setting of this play. They are either reduced to humour, not taken seriously or safely symbolic. In the first instance, I am referring to Touchstone’s threats to William in Act V, scene i. Touchstone, in order to scare William the shepherd off from Audrey, threatens to kill him in various and many ways. We are, of course, meant to laugh at this; on the other hand, this shows that even in the Forest of Arden human violence is still possible. The second instance refers to Jaques’ comment in Act IV, scene ii, referring to a lord who has killed a deer. Jaques suggests that the lord should be celebrated like a Roman conqueror. Again, Jaques’ remark is meant to be funny and not taken seriously, but it does show that for these lords, hunting is a conquest of nature. These lords are not living like Robin Hood; they are imperialists making conquests; contrary to Robin Hood’s gang, hunting is an aristocratic game, not a means of survival. The final instance refers to Orlando’s rescue of his brother Oliver from a green snake (representing envy) and a lioness (representing pride). In the Forest of Arden, these forces are externalized, and hence they could be fought off. But these same forces are the ones that plague Oliver in his courtly life. In this instance, we can see that courtly and pastoral lives are the same in its essence; the only difference is that in a pastoral tale these forces are to be read only symbolically.

Indeed we can see that Shakespeare’s usage of the pastoral trope is a reversal of its typical meaning. As You Like It is not a play about the beauty and wonders of the pastoral life; rather it is a reflection of the courtly life in comic disguise. The play ends with four marriages, but if we examine these marriages carefully, we can see that apart from Rosalind and Orlando’s marriage, the other three are potentially mishaps. Celia and Oliver’s marriage is unconvincing (and even Orlando raises such doubt in Act V, scene ii). Phoebe’s marriage is her punishment. Audrey’s marriage to Touchstone does not suggest a happy ending; Touchstone attempts to scam the marriage in the play, and one wonders if he is going to abandon her in the near future. In As You Like It Shakespeare raises his critical concern for the problems of social and gender politics.

Mozart's The Magic Flute

I am very please with the UBC Opera emsemble's production of Mozart's last opera, Die Zauberflöte. There really isn't much to comment with regards to the production by UBC students - obviously they are not professionals, so one should not be too harsh to some of the miscues, misnotes or "unintended synopations". But there is a lot to say about the opera itself. Mozart is such a smart man, and in his last opera offers much fertility to those who wants to take the opera seriously (in the academic sense).

Of course, not everyone did a seminar on opera and literature, and still fewer watch operas to offer critical interpretations. This is especially true for a Mozart audience: his music is so gracious, so beautiful, that it takes extra energy just to be conscious and be aware of the critical issues the opera (and more importantly, the music) is raising. From the overture to its final chorus, the music is uniquely Mozartian - it is balanced between form and content, classicism and romanticism; it is as cool as the frolicking leaves of autumn, but as warm as the spring rain on the verdant fields. There are a few moments of melancholy, and one see the gray winter clouds blocking the sun; but there are also the sunny moments of the opera, and one just cannot help but smile along, as the chamber force of Mozart's orchestra gently carry away one's consciousness along the musical current. Each moment of silence is a moment for breath; of laughter, of release; of applause, of catharsis.

Critically, my interpretation of the opera is that Mozart is criticizing the institution of marriage of the church of his time. We are told on the surface (and in the libretto) that the Queen of the Night and the black dude Monostatos are the evil characters who are prevent the marriage of Pamina and Tamino the prince. Sarastro is the head of a church (an Egyptian one? They worshop light, but they worship Osiris?) that "kidnapped" Parmina but eventually helps the couple united after a series of trials for Tamino. Papageno is a birdcatcher who is thrown into the prince's adventure; all opera long he just wants a wife; he fails at the trials, but is given his Papagena and a whole bunch of kids. There is a magic flute in the opera: it is the prince's weapon to defend himself; Papageno gets a bunch of bells. The surface interpretation of the opera would be to go to place of the light (the temple), withstand the trials (of religious laws), and you will win your true love. Those who violate the laws (e.g. the Queen of the Night) are dangerous and must be rejected. The Prince in the end gets his girl, and supposedly they live on happily ever after.

A lesser composer might take the libretto and set this surface interpretation into the music. And what we will get is a conservative, misogynist opera about the how men are superior to women, and that the only way to live a good life is under church doctrines. A less intelligent composer would have written a less lively and warm Papageno. Mozart's music given to Papageno, I would argue, is the only way to understand Mozart's criticism of marriage in this opera. In Mozart's opera, Papageno - a man full of vanity and sin - is the true hero of the drama. It is he who gets the last say of the happiness of marriage. Papageno's music is very intimate, very heartwarming; the following final chorus in contrast seems cold and superficial. The prince might have been given a magic flute, but it is in Papageno's songs (especially his final parts just before the Chorus) that is full of the usages of the flutes; the final chorus, on the other hand, is dominated by the strings. By this choice of orchestration and melodic invention, I think Mozart is pointing out the fact that it is Papageno whom we should embody (but not imitate); the prince sticks far too close to the temple's doctrines, and while his marriage might seem happy, it is difficult to image a happy life for the couple after the empty proms and circumstances. What the temple priest sanuctions to be "holy" caused unnecessary pains; it also creates unncessary silences between the couple (the prince and Pamina). On the contrary, Papageno and Papagena may not be the purist, the holiest; on the contrary, they are the happiest with their children. Earthly paradise can be achieved without earthly institutions; what really matters is purity in heart, simplicity in life, and humour in love. The "magic flute" is not an actual instrument that one holds and plays; it is, like the orchestra to the characters on stage, an aura of happiness and understanding of the world within the individual.

Of course, one can always ask if this is just MY reading and unintended by Mozart. I would answer by citing Mozart's other operas, where he makes similar criticism of his society. In Don Giovanni, Mozart makes us question conventional morality: certainly we're not supposed to Don Giovanni; on the other hand, Don Ottavio is not any better. It is a question to be raised, but not necessary to be answered. In Cosi Fan Tutti, Mozart turns a misogynist play into a satire that makes fun of everyone. And his The Marriage of Figaro is without question one of the most successful satires of all time. I will also cite Mozart's treatment of this flute. Papageno, in this UBC production, gets an almost primitive pipe, but the actor actually plays it live; the Prince, on the other hand, does not really do anything with the flute - his music comes straight from the orchestra. The problem with that is the sound then is not authentic, because the orchestra is in a pit, and the sound is muffled (in fact, initially I thought the orchestra was a recording! It wasn't until the intermission that I went to the front and found out that there was actually an orchestra! The muffled sound really surprised me!). The prince does not get an authentic sound; nor the prince gets flute accompaniments in his moment of triumph (the final chorus); Papegeno, as I've mentioned before, does. Mozart is absolutely brilliant in the subtle games he play with the audience. One really has to think about his wonderful music before one sees another more intellectually critical interpretation of Mozart's music.

Give me another performance and I can go on forever with this. Mozart is just so good! How anyone can be so ingenius with his art and at the same time be so subtly critical absolutely baffles me! But I do know of another artist who is just like Mozart - a master of her art and criticism: Jane Austen. I probably have said this before, but I will say it again: there has never been such a close parallel between two artists than Mozart and Austen. Professor Lee Johnson once said that reading an Austen novel is like watching a Mozart opera. Well, there is a grain of truth to that!

Tired - insightful comments: to be announced

School really drains my energy. Right now, catching a little break from my final exam. I really have nothing insightful to say; nor am I particularly creative.

Well, we'll see if I will produce anything substantial this holiday.

Doing Justice to Aeschylus' Oresteia

I may have mentioned before that my Greek tragedy professor Toph Marshall declared that Aeschylus' Oresteia (The Story of Orestes) is the single more important event in the history of Western civilization. The Oresteia is both the literary and the philosophical origin of the West. Having reread this massive trilogy again, I now believe this claim even more. The artistic and philosophical innovation of this work is absolutely divine.

One of the things that amazes me about this trilogy is its ability to bring the mythic to the real. For the majority of the play the action is set in Argos, the home of Agamemnon. (Those of you who know your mythology would realize that Aeschylus changed Agamemnon's home from Mycenae.) In the final trilogy, The Eumenides, the play then all of a sudden shift to Athens, addressing to the Athenian audience directly. Old mythic murders (of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by Orestes) are now judged in modern, Athenian system of justice. What Aeschylus brings together is the old and the new, the mythic and the real, the personal and the universal.

Structurally, the play is almost constructed to perfection. The first and the second plays of the trilogy parallel almost exactly to each other: in Agamemnon, Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon by gile; in The Libation Bearers, Orestes does the same thing. Agamemnon sets up the story of Orestes in the last two plays; at the same time, it also give Orestes the historical burden of his murder - Orestes' murder belongs to a chain of murders starting from Atreus' generation. The mythic world is one that is dominated by the Earthly goddess, the Furies, who considers revenge as the only method of resolving conflict. But clearly in the case of the house of Atreus, revenge does not resolve conflict; rather, violence begets violence. Revenge is not restorative but destructive, and it must be stopped. Aeschylus points out that only by civilization, with laws, can this cycle of murder be stopped. The first two plays then are a perfect set up for the final, restorative play.

Aeschylus' treatment of the chorus is done with mastery. I have so much respect for his use of the chorus (unlike Euripides). Both the chorus of old men and maids in Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers are very much involved with the action. The old men openly challenge Aegisthus, while the maids actively persuade the Nurse to change her message to Aegisthus. The chorus of The Eumenides, the Furies, however, deserves a special note. It is absolutely ingenius to have a chorus fully involved in the action of the play and to treat them as if they are one crucial character. For the most part, Greek tragedies (especially the late ones) can be played without the Chorus (e.g. Sophocles' Philoctetes). In The Eumenides, however, the chorus becomes absolutely essential. Not only are they essential, they are also casted such that their actions are emotionally intense. Their emotions become the key to the resolution of the trilogy. The old gods felt cheated by Athena, and their anger threatens to collapse Athenian civilization. This is the point when we realize The Oresteia is not so much about how Orestes is acquited of his murder of his mother, but how a civilization comes together: the old, savage ways of "natural justice" has to give way to the modern justice of law. In the play, the Furies are essentially bought off by Athena and kept underground forever. If we wish to read this psychoanalytically, the pleasure principle (of uncontrolled desires) must give way to the reality principle (of justice and law).

"Justice" is the central theme of The Oresteia, and this is precisely what makes this trilogy so impressive. Aeschylus raised this question at least half a century before Plato, and he did provide us with a comprehensive answer: justice is in the law, which is equal in all situation and to all members of society. Justice is also a Platonic ideal: everyone has the same idea of justice if only one is wise enough to realize it (e.g. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and her best twelve citizens). At the same time, judging by the split vote between the Athenians, we can also see that the interpretation of the Platonic ideal of justice is quite another human matter: we may have the same idea available, but how we interpret it is another thing. Justice then is also a cultural compromise, specific to one place and one time.

It is certainly interesting to see that the Greeks themselves knew that The Oresteia is a rare masterpiece. The Oresteia is the first trilogy that is allowed to be reproduced at the Dionysus festival after the author's death (so it's the first "classic"); it is also the only trilogy to have survived from antiquity (the so call "Oedipus trilogy" is actually just three completely separate plays about one character). It is a play that speaks to both the ancient and the modern: for us, the play is also about justice, but justice is no longer a Platonic ideal, but culturally relative. One can read the play deconstructively, and argue that Athenian justice is white, upperclass and male justice. The Athenian jury is made up of twelve male judges; Apollo privileges Orestes' case over others because he is the son of Agamemnon, the Greeks' greatest hero; Athena herself is explicitly misogynistic, favouring the male over the female; the decisive element of the trial is not whether Orestes is wrong in killing his mom, but whether the true parent of a child is the father or the mother, which is entirely irrevelant to the justice of Orestes' action. In the modern context, The Oresteia functions the exact opposite as what it was supposed to do.

But no matter. Artistically, the play is extremely intense and exciting to watch. (Reading would be difficult because the Chorurses' lines are among the most difficult to understand in theater. I have read the play three times now, and I will honest confess that most of the time I have no idea what the chorus is saying other than the superficial plot stuff.) The structural parallel between Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers is absolutely amazing, for the differences between the two plays also play a huge part in the interpretation of the overall trilogy. It is an absolutely massive piece of drama, and, like Hamlet, The Iliad, The Aeneid, Paradise Lost, Faust, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, Ulysses, The Waste Land and a few other landmark literary works, it belongs to the very identity of Western civilization and must be read at some point of one's life time.

Women in Greek Tragedies

Aeschylus: Agamemnon; Sophocles: Women of Trachis, Electra; Euripides: Medea

For a genre that is written entirely by men, Greek tragedy is surprising in showing much concern for the "woman question": what constitutes a woman? In the four plays that I will be briefly examining, only one of them (Women of Trachis) tackles the question positively; Agamemnon and Medea both look at women who transgress their gender role. Electra is a commentary of the overall problem with the Greek gender of woman.

The central theme of Agamemnon, Women of Trachis and Medea is how a woman should react to an adultrous husband. Clytemnestra and Medea are superficially portrayed as monsters because of their unwillingness to submit to their husbands' will. Both women take drastic measures in order to get back at their husbands: Clytemnestra splits Agamenmon's head in half; Medea kills Jason's new bride, his father in law and his children in order to spite him. Killing one's husband is unconceivable in any patriarchal society; killing one's children is even worse. As Jason says, there is no previous examples of a parent intentionally killing one's offsprings. On the other hand, Deianira tries to win back her husband's heart; she is just very dumb to believe in Nessus the centaur.

As monstrous as Clytemnestra and Medea may be, and as stupid as Deianira is, the key issue really is not about how women should accept their husbands' will; it is about why husbands push their wives to such extremities. The three women all have one commonality: they are actual human beings. I do not mean this as a trivial statement, but patriarchy has a tendency to treat women as exchange objects, with both (to use Marxist terms) use and exchange value. That is to say, a woman can both be an object that symbolizes wealth and power (as in the case of Jason and his new bride, daughter of Creon) and a baby making machine. But we know that all three playwrights conceive women as more than just objects: Clytemnestra, as vile as she may be, is a human being with loneliness (10 years since Agamemnon left for Troy), love (for her sacrificed daughter) and desire (for Aegithus). Medea is a woman of human passion: her love for Jason is so intense that she was willing to betray her family, and when she in turn was betrayed for Jason, her love turns into bitter hate. We know that she loves her children; at the same time, she hates Jason even more. This is not something to be expected from a woman who is just an object of use and desire. Deianira is also a full flesh woman, who longs for her husband and suffers for him in his absence. But because the gender of women calls for passivity, we do not see their human passions manifested in actions.

When we do see these actions, they become monstrous because we cannot accept an active woman who will actually be "immodest" and do want she wants. If the genders were reversed, we would not be as surprised and shocked. Part of the extremities of these women's actions have to do with an attempt to show what is being repressed in the mind of the objectified woman. Women have always submitted to men; for the most part they never questioned men's authority. But why should men's authority be unquestioned? The critical awareness of these three plays come from the fact that as monstrous and dumb as these women may be, we are made to sympathize with them. We are not meant to like the men in the plays: Agamemnon is arrogant, Jason is horny and Heracles is whiny. The playwrights point out the problem of the double standard of gender and how it come be hurtful to half of the population.

Sophocles' Electra then can be read as a summarizing statement of Greek tragedies' criticism of gender. A woman who is faithful to the patriarchal order is rendered helpless and identity-less. Electra exists only in relation to other characters: faithful to her father Agamemnon, forever waiting for her brother Orestes, in contrasting philosophy with her weak and submissive sister Chrysothemis, hateful to her mother Clytemnestra and suppressed by Aegisthus. Her sole purpose of existence then is to wait for Orestes to revenge for her father - she does not even do it herself. Electra should be the perfect woman in patriarchal terms, yet I do not think any one of us (male or female) want to be like her. She is also the extremity of femininity (in a very bizarre way - Chrysothemis is actually the ideal Greek woman). And rightfully enough, Hoffmannstal and Strauss' version of Sophocles' Elektra does have Elektra die in the end - Orestes has done his deed; she has served her purpose in life.

But even if we do not want to be like Electra, there is a certain quality of sincerity we admire about her. Her word is her action. She holds no double standard - what is wrong is wrong is wrong. In order to uphold the Father she is willing to go through physical and emotional pains. She is much more than what Jason conceives women as: creatures who only want sex. On the other hand, it is the men who only want sex. Electra is direct and makes no delay of any sort. When Orestes finally got Aegisthus, the first thing Electra tells him to do is kill him - no more words, she says. The men, in contrast, are horrible with words in the play. Orestes and his old servant lie to get what they wish to achieve; Aegisthus uses words to delay his death. Words are spoken by men, and they speak them in doubles: men always excuse themselves with words (e.g. Jason), but if we are willing to examine the words objectively (such as in a theatrical context), we realize that those words are hypocritical - they are bunch of lies. The hypocrisy of masculinity masks itself in a language that is Man made.

Women in Greek tragedies do not usually get good endings. At the same time, they are also the majority of the tragic heroes. Amongst the most famous tragic heroes, we have Antigone, Electra and Medea. When we read or watch the tragedies, we are meant to see the problems with gender in our society. Of course the playwrights (nor I) are proposing that we should completely give up our gender identities and rebel in any and every way possible; on the contrary, gender identities are capable of organizing a society into a functional unit. What the playwrights want us to be aware is the problems with the current gender system, and that we should, if not fix it, at least beware of the pains of others.

A Little Self-Reflection

I used to prize myself for my great ability to consider other people's situations. But after tonight, I have to revaluatethat proposition. I called Charmaine at 10:45pm tonight and her dad did not sound happy at all. He asked me if I know what time it is, and told me that Charmaine is asleep.

The revelation is that during the entire time I have not even considered the possibility of Charmaine being asleep at 10:45pm. I just called and expected her to pick up. I have entirely assume my living standard as that of Charmaine's, and, as it has turned out, it is entirely wrong. I have made the exact mistake I criticize my dad: to assume oneself as the center of the universe. But no human being is ever the center of the universe, and I should have known that. I feel terrible for being such a hypocrite. One can boast oneself; but when one has done something wrong, one should also admit to the mistake.

Perhaps this may seem extremely trivial, but it is in the most trivial moments of life one finds the most profound expression of one's character. Character is never from moments of consciousness and deliberation; it is always from moments of naturalness and non-deliberation, like when one makes a simple call to a friend, or when one eats breakfast.

My apologies, Charmaine. I will do better.