Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus
Please Watch Belle's Youtube video on her Chinese "King Lear," a graphic novel in the making
I wrote this as a comment to Matthew Biberman's post, "Shakespeare's Music."
In my lifetime, I’ve cried violently on three occasions while watching movies. The first was a Korean film, “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring,” the second, Sam Shepard’s “True West,” and the third, “Titus Andronicus.”
Hath lopp’d and lew’d, and made thy body bare
Or her two branches, those sweet ornaments
I choke up each time I come to the horror of Lavinia’s rape and mutilation--NOT from seeing Lavinia’s weeping stumps in the film with Helen Bonham-Carter but the text itself.
Interesting you inform me Titus and Coriolanus “stand supreme in capturing in advance our current reality.” Harold Bloom said Titus should be categorized comedy. As a daughter, I found Bloom’s comments stupid and took personal offence. As a daughter, a woman who has been the quarry of male violence after leaving the protection of my father’s house, I know Titus to be of the most wrenchingly real, heartbreakingly tender father-daughter narratives. Tender, not as in gentleness but a tenderness that arises from the very "frisson" of which you speak: terror and Titus's controlled responses to it.
Titus comes much earlier than Lear. Cordelia-Lear pathos stirs me deeply—more than deeply--but Titus-Lavinia bond consumes me. Titus is the apex of fatherhood's power and father-consciousness in a man's tenure as the defender of his brood (and Lear, as everyone knows, is a father’s descent into infancy). Only a man who has daughters in the world could possibly write Titus.
If you take Lavinia out of the story, and retain his bond with his sons, Titus is still powerful enough to hold my attention.
I’ve read every word in your post and understand 95% Chiasmus has gone over my head but I’ll worry about it later.
(Btw, you and your motorbike looks Shakespearean. Like a still from the production of Titus Andronicus in the above mentioned productiion with Anthony Hopkins.)
A question: In your courses, do you teach Emily Dickinson next to Shakespeare, or is Dickinson a specialty of other colleagues and feminists? She has skimmed and ingested a great deal imagery and words directly from him.
Btw, I am writing my graphic novel as a Chinese “King Lear.” I am fascinated by men and their descent from power. I have always had a tender spot for old men as they ripen like pears ;) Even better, my editor at Norton is Alane Mason who worked with Steven Greenblatt on “Will In the World.” Below, my great grandfather, a King Lear figure to me.
Go to Belle Yang graphic novel-in-progress, "Forget Sorrow: A China Elegy."
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Jessica Barksdale Inclan says:
This is not my play, yet
I read this play only once in graduate school, so I don't feel at all proficient in it. Yet, I think I will rent it now, Netflix ahoy! Though I will wait for the bloody stump scene in horror and anticipation.
I just finished writing up my syllabi for next fall, and I didn't make the break to King Lear. I think it would mean going back to hard study, and this summer I'm teaching too much to do so. But I am still threatening.
Love the grandfather photo!
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Belle Yang says:
I envy you
if you're seeing "Titus Andronicus" for the first time. It is GOOD.
Jessica, I think the missing father in your life may make Lear and Titus both interesting and terribly sad for you.
Eric Nichols says:
Speaking as one ripening
Speaking as one ripening like a pear :)
Hmm....I had a profound thought, but I seem to have misplaced it. :)
Eric
Matthew Biberman says:
deleted
somehow posted same comment twice. Sorry.
Matthew Biberman says:
Titus on film
Jilie Taymor's "Titus" is stunning, esp on the big screen. The BBC's earlier Titus is also worth watching and Taymor's version is clearly influenced by it, especially in the prominence given the youngest son.
Matthew Biberman says:
Titus (Again), Harold Bloom, Emily Dickinson
Fantastic post Belle. I had to mull it over some more before adding a final thought or two. But I could blog endlessly on Titus and never see it as you do here, what insight.
On Bloom’s comment that Titus is comedy: to me this is a softened version of the traditional rejection of Titus. The argument really is that it is so bad it is good, camp, something in the vein of The Evil Dead or Darkman. It is really a question of stylization, a kind of distancing of the violence. This may sound odd, but to me Mel Gibson’s The Passion is the film closest to Taymor’s Titus. It is fascinating to watch Titus in class and then stop the film at points and listen to students try to characterize the play—is it a comedy, a parody, a horror film, a tragedy, what?? Your reading of the play when placed against Bloom’s illustrates again your observations about Shakespeare’s reception in America. But in that respect I can’t help but feel that you are ahead of the curve—I mean, after Abu Ghraib, I would hope America has caught up.
Your understanding of Titus and Lear in relation to fathers and daughters is brilliant. I never really thought through the connection you draw. A few years ago I wrote a piece on Lear called “Three Folds”—a real orgy of theory on my part. I had been given the green light by the editors and did my best impersonation of a continental theorist. The focal point of my argument was Jacques Lacan’s observation that Lear is not just a father reduced to infancy but a man who has had a mental breakdown and is clinically psychotic. Now I habitually link Hamlet to Lear as case studies: the first (Hamlet) is neurotic (e.g. normal), the second (Lear) psychotic (this is Lacan’s point). Now I am thinking about how to expand this binary into a triangle that would include Titus.
You ask some other great questions: about your great love--Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare. No I don’t usually teach ED. I could request a special topics course and do it but I usually just teach british literature, the stuff I have been teaching. My English department, like most, is structured very conventionally, via historical fields and geography. To me the structure is a corpse, really. I could write a lot about how truly medieval the University remains.
I love ED too. And Harold Bloom is a fascinating figure. I took one class with him when I was at NYU on American poetry where we read, among others, ED. Bloom presented ED very much as the American Shakespeare. He loves to bash theorists now, but he is still theoretical himself, he just doesn’t see it. Anyway, if I closed my eyes, Bloom’s rap on ED would not sound out of place coming from a French feminist theorist such as Julia Kristeva. Shakespeare is the male field (the expanding symbolic) while ED is the female (the retraction to the edge of silence, the gesture toward maternal chaos fenced out by logos).
And about the Vincati: I got the bike featured in Cycle World (that was the hook to the book deal) and my blurb was “Engine by Shakespeare, Chassis by Michelangelo” because the bike is made up of a Vincent motor (the pinnacle of the Brit bikes) in a Ducati (the top of the Italian bikes).
I read the pages from your graphic novel too. Before I wrote the post, actually. I love them and look forward to reading the whole thing.
Belle Yang says:
Thank you!
Thanks for the comments to my comments. I feel well rewarded.
I have a terrible urge to say this:
I ABSOLUTELY dislike most free verse. Okay, so you are going
to tell me you write free verse. I will still say verse libre does very little for me. If you have read the Lake Poets, Shakespeare, E.D. Chaucer, Blake, all the glories of English poetry with poetic meter and poetic form, how can
you possibly love mere typography? Why not learn form and meter so you can hang the meat on music, give it body and dimensionality. There are a lot of poets in RR and I had to get this off my chest. I'll dig a hole and shout,"I hate free verse," then bury it. Free verse: too easy.
And I have to also say, every time I read Shakespeare, I cry for the brevity of my life -- our lives. Not enough time to read and reread and fall deeper in love with the language. I love English. Okay, I love Chinese, too.
B
Eric Nichols says:
Dear Belle
I must concur.
I was on an on-line poetry forum for a while....one of the supposedly elite ones....and they immediately dismissed any rhyming poetry from their "For Serious Poets Only" critique section....period. Now, though there is some free verse that I like, such as that of Alan Ginsberg (I submitted my own Ginsbergesque poem "Off Beatnik" somewhere back on this forum).....I far from consider it the only "Serious" poetry.
I agree that "forced rhyme' from an inexperienced poet can be horrendous, but you don't throw out the whole genre bacause of a few (or even many) poetic hacks.
Eric
Belle Yang says:
Non-Rhyming
but metered is my preference. Thank you for another avenue to approach the Bible. You are the first person to bring the Bible to me through its poetry and not dogma.
Eric Nichols says:
My Dear Belle
I wish that I encountered as many multi-generational Americans who loved English as much as you. It's truly a shame. But perhaps it's such a powerful testimony to the power of English is becoming the de-facto "default" language around the world. I think of all the marvelous Indian writers who are so facile with English, even though Rudyard Kipling and British India are long gone.
By the way....if you want to read the best work on the brevity of life, you need to read the book of Ecclesiastes. King Solomon is my favorite author, and Shakespeare borrowed a lot from him....if not in form, than at least in theme.
Blessings and hugs upon thee...
Eric
sonshi (not verified) says:
Cool Great Grandfather Photo
Due to our need to travel light escaping from Vietnam, we only have one photo of my grandfather. Since he died young, the picture was probably taken when he was about 30, which is not nearly mature enough to grow a dignified beard. He does have a high forehead, which most Vietnamese view as a sign of intelligence; I always kid my Mom that it's merely a receding hairline! :-D
I actually took an entire class at the University of Washington analyzing Shakespeare's last play The Tempest. I'm not familiar with Titus Andronicus but The Tempest is a story of redemption and freedom, despite the fact that the main character Prospero wielded great powers over all the other characters and arguably had every right to demand revenge. I believe this is the philosophy of Sun Tzu as well.
If someone were to ask what is my favorite film, I'll say Akira Kurosawa's Ran (means "chaos" in Japanese). I first saw it when I was in junior high school and was mesmerized by it -- I have never seen any movie more beautifully shot and written in my life. It is Kurosawa's version of Shakespeare's King Lear.
Belle Yang says:
Luan in Chinese
What's "chaos" in Vietnamese? I agree with you, the Kurozawa Ran is an unbelieveable feat of interpretation and creation.
It's hard to imagine an entire semester's course on one play. I will have to reread The Tempest. It didn't hit me very hard, but every Shakespeare's play all resonate, now in middle age.
Thomas, it would be interesting for you to watch Taynor's film version of Titus Andronicus since so much of it is about agression, war and revenge.
sonshi (not verified) says:
Quarter not semester
The University of Washington went by the quarter system, not semester, so it's a bit shorter. Still, we studied The Tempest in-depth for three full months. And I loved every time we met for class.
I'll check out Taymor's Titus.