Great conversation. I'm not convinced that Romeo and Juliet don't love each other. It seems to contradict the text and makes it all one sided. Doesn't it work better when there is the tension of opposites love/hate life/death separation/connection etc.? Anyway, the comment sparked my imagination so it was interesting all the same. I would have liked to hear more about Trinidadian English and what would make it a great Shakespeare project.
Thank you and thanks to Tyler Cowen for a great discussion.
Thank you both for this marvelous conversation! Sorry, I don`t know you yet, dear H.O. - but someone who makes Tyler talk like that, must be one of the good ones!
As someone who grew up with the Schlegel-Tieck translations of Shakespeare, I wonder how Tyler would feel about the much more modern attempt by poet Erich Fried.
Romeo&Juliet: As much as I hated DiCaprio in Titanic, I loved him as Romeo. Because he excels in evil roles, and I did not believe for a minute his Romeo really cared for Juliet. Best Shakespeare movie I saw was Greenaway's "Prospero's books". Hamlet: The Soviet film (b-w) was fine, I liked Branagh's take, too - but no film or play can do justice to all the "thinking" that goes on in the text (and I am not talking about Hamlet's musing!). The parts about the sheer absurdity of war - most often cut out even on stage - today Ukraine ... . And the bad guy wins in the end.
Will have to read the Henriad et al. the two of you praised, esp. Ende gut, alles gut ;) (Hamlet, I read several times; others only watched, some not even that, to my shame). Thank you for making me!
COWEN: When will Shakespeare require a translation?
MCWHORTER: Today.
McWhorter goes on to explain "It’s that every 10th word, and especially late Shakespeare, means something different than what we think it means."
I think McWhorter was specifically referring to the concept of "semantic drift" in which the meaning of words changes over time, so even when Shakespeare uses a word we are familiar with, the meaning or nuance may have been different when he wrote it.
Totally with you on the novel's 'liberal-democratic' kinship. Maybe Richard Rorty influenced me as a young person too much? He wrote in multiple places that development of moral sentiment via fiction reading was hugely important for the broader pursuit of justice in the west. So the Uncle Tom's Cabins type novels, and the orphans in Dickens, etc, made strange people knowable, people we might had previously seen as being outside our moral universe. The weird de Guermantes and the Karamazovs too. As I was listening to Tyler saying '19th-c novelists probably more reactionary than liberal' I thought waittaminute Zola, Hugo, Sand, Eliot, Hardy, Dumas, Balzac, the Brontes obvi and even Flaubert all wrote novels that you could describe as 'liberal' ie focusing on an individual facing and overcoming or not various obstacles on his/her picaresque path. (Btw, are you familiar with Moretti's The Bourgeois? A finely tuned Marxist analysis of the novel as a lit form... thick descriptions in novels = voice of accumulation and stability, whereas individual adventures = the disruptive side of capital - something to that effect. I wouldn't go that far, but it's an interesting theory.)
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil. Not that the novelist utterly denies that moral judgment is legitimate, but that he refuses it a place in the novel. If you like, you can accuse Panurge of cowardice; accuse Emma Bovary, accuse Rastignac–that’s your business; the novelist has nothing to do with it.
Creating the imaginary terrain where moral judgment is suspended was a move of enormous significance: only there could novelistic characters develop–that is, individuals conceived not as a function of some preexistent truth, as examples of good or evil, or as representations of objective laws in conflict, but as autonomous beings grounded in their own morality, in their own laws. Western society habitually presents itself as the society of the rights of man, but before a man could have rights, he had to constitute himself as an individual, to consider himself such and to be considered such; that could not happen without the long experience of the European arts and particularly of the art of the novel, which teaches the reader to be curious about others and to try to comprehend truths that differ from his own. In this sense E. M. Cioran is right to call European society “the society of the novel” and to speak of Europeans as “the children of the novel.” A
Thanks to you and Tyler for a very interesting interview!
When people ask me what my favourite Shakespeare play is, I tell them 1 Henry IV -- but I will stridently and vociferously assert that Shakespeare's most underrated play is Love's Labour's Lost.
There was about two years in high school that I hardly read at all, but one of the books I read was Hamlet. That was a horrible mistake. I hated it and didn't understand it at all.
Tyler and I have had the opposite Shakespeare experience. It was only after seeing a bad amateur production of Love's Labor's lost that he clicked for me. I could finally say for myself, "those were some of the worst actors I've seen in my life, but there was really something that script."
To this day the only way I can understand Shakespeare is by reading it aloud and trying to perform all the parts myself. It's not the language itself (I can read Chaucer without too much trouble), it's that it's a play.
I googled it but didn't find anything. What I found seemed to be about speed reading, but as I understood what you were saying it was not about how you read one book, how you read multiple books
I am so happy to learn that Cowen also can't comprehend Shakespeare on stage. I feel the same.
And to reply to the comment below: I can normally follow almost anything spoken super well, but there's something weird about the language in Shakespeare that I find impossible in a performance.
I'm the opposite. I hated reading Othello in school, then they took us to a performance and I was blown away. Ever since then I only Shakespeare if it's in advance of a performance or at least a filmed adaptation. Like how plotlines build up and then at the end they come together. That kind of feeling, things come together when I watch.
Orson Scott Card staged translations into modern English. I wish he'd publish them because I think they've got a good chance of being good. Not "Hollywoodized".
Great conversation. I only wanted to "interrupt" once to say that Mantel's Cromwell trilogy is wonderful on the seductions and limitations of power. Pinpoint relevant to the "court" of Trump or any modern imperial presidency. Plus exquisite writing.
Guess you don’t recall that Barrack O. started DOGE? He ran on reducing cost and waste and fraud! He “PROMISED “ to “PAY” for Obama Care from his savings. I guess you forgot? Also, you gave him a “PASS” when he did nothing. Oh wait, he did. He increased the debt for our children and grandchildren. Make sure you donate to his Presidential library, it is in a cost overrun situation today. Oops! Not supposed to criticize BO, he and Joe are the “nice” guys. At least Donald and BO had a good laugh at Jimmy C’s funeral.
Tyler's disarmingly deep-cut questions makes him one of my favorite interviewers—it's good to hear him on the other end of things! Great conversation, Henry.
Can you link to Tyler's article for Bloomberg in which he describes Trump as a Shakesperean fool, please? I struggle to accept the idea that Trump is a great orator!
This was a great way to start the new year,
:)
Thanks Henry and Tyler for the erudite conversation.
Great conversation. I'm not convinced that Romeo and Juliet don't love each other. It seems to contradict the text and makes it all one sided. Doesn't it work better when there is the tension of opposites love/hate life/death separation/connection etc.? Anyway, the comment sparked my imagination so it was interesting all the same. I would have liked to hear more about Trinidadian English and what would make it a great Shakespeare project.
Thank you and thanks to Tyler Cowen for a great discussion.
Thank you both for this marvelous conversation! Sorry, I don`t know you yet, dear H.O. - but someone who makes Tyler talk like that, must be one of the good ones!
As someone who grew up with the Schlegel-Tieck translations of Shakespeare, I wonder how Tyler would feel about the much more modern attempt by poet Erich Fried.
Romeo&Juliet: As much as I hated DiCaprio in Titanic, I loved him as Romeo. Because he excels in evil roles, and I did not believe for a minute his Romeo really cared for Juliet. Best Shakespeare movie I saw was Greenaway's "Prospero's books". Hamlet: The Soviet film (b-w) was fine, I liked Branagh's take, too - but no film or play can do justice to all the "thinking" that goes on in the text (and I am not talking about Hamlet's musing!). The parts about the sheer absurdity of war - most often cut out even on stage - today Ukraine ... . And the bad guy wins in the end.
Will have to read the Henriad et al. the two of you praised, esp. Ende gut, alles gut ;) (Hamlet, I read several times; others only watched, some not even that, to my shame). Thank you for making me!
I very much enjoyed this conversation—If I followed up on all the books mentioned, it would be practically a lifetime reading plan!
Tyler Cowen asked John McWhorter about the translation matter in 2020 (https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/john-mcwhorter/)
COWEN: When will Shakespeare require a translation?
MCWHORTER: Today.
McWhorter goes on to explain "It’s that every 10th word, and especially late Shakespeare, means something different than what we think it means."
I think McWhorter was specifically referring to the concept of "semantic drift" in which the meaning of words changes over time, so even when Shakespeare uses a word we are familiar with, the meaning or nuance may have been different when he wrote it.
I noticed Tyler Cowen’s (Straussian?) weighing in on the value of secondary literature!
Totally with you on the novel's 'liberal-democratic' kinship. Maybe Richard Rorty influenced me as a young person too much? He wrote in multiple places that development of moral sentiment via fiction reading was hugely important for the broader pursuit of justice in the west. So the Uncle Tom's Cabins type novels, and the orphans in Dickens, etc, made strange people knowable, people we might had previously seen as being outside our moral universe. The weird de Guermantes and the Karamazovs too. As I was listening to Tyler saying '19th-c novelists probably more reactionary than liberal' I thought waittaminute Zola, Hugo, Sand, Eliot, Hardy, Dumas, Balzac, the Brontes obvi and even Flaubert all wrote novels that you could describe as 'liberal' ie focusing on an individual facing and overcoming or not various obstacles on his/her picaresque path. (Btw, are you familiar with Moretti's The Bourgeois? A finely tuned Marxist analysis of the novel as a lit form... thick descriptions in novels = voice of accumulation and stability, whereas individual adventures = the disruptive side of capital - something to that effect. I wouldn't go that far, but it's an interesting theory.)
Milan Kundera agrees with you:
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil. Not that the novelist utterly denies that moral judgment is legitimate, but that he refuses it a place in the novel. If you like, you can accuse Panurge of cowardice; accuse Emma Bovary, accuse Rastignac–that’s your business; the novelist has nothing to do with it.
Creating the imaginary terrain where moral judgment is suspended was a move of enormous significance: only there could novelistic characters develop–that is, individuals conceived not as a function of some preexistent truth, as examples of good or evil, or as representations of objective laws in conflict, but as autonomous beings grounded in their own morality, in their own laws. Western society habitually presents itself as the society of the rights of man, but before a man could have rights, he had to constitute himself as an individual, to consider himself such and to be considered such; that could not happen without the long experience of the European arts and particularly of the art of the novel, which teaches the reader to be curious about others and to try to comprehend truths that differ from his own. In this sense E. M. Cioran is right to call European society “the society of the novel” and to speak of Europeans as “the children of the novel.” A
Thanks to you and Tyler for a very interesting interview!
When people ask me what my favourite Shakespeare play is, I tell them 1 Henry IV -- but I will stridently and vociferously assert that Shakespeare's most underrated play is Love's Labour's Lost.
Good pick
There was about two years in high school that I hardly read at all, but one of the books I read was Hamlet. That was a horrible mistake. I hated it and didn't understand it at all.
Tyler and I have had the opposite Shakespeare experience. It was only after seeing a bad amateur production of Love's Labor's lost that he clicked for me. I could finally say for myself, "those were some of the worst actors I've seen in my life, but there was really something that script."
To this day the only way I can understand Shakespeare is by reading it aloud and trying to perform all the parts myself. It's not the language itself (I can read Chaucer without too much trouble), it's that it's a play.
What do you mean by cluster reading?
Reading a bunch of related books together?
I googled it but didn't find anything. What I found seemed to be about speed reading, but as I understood what you were saying it was not about how you read one book, how you read multiple books
Tho maybe I misunderstood
Tyler has talked before about how he clusters his reading by topic, for non-fiction
I see so it’s basically what I surmised
Nothing more complex than that
👍👍
yep
I am so happy to learn that Cowen also can't comprehend Shakespeare on stage. I feel the same.
And to reply to the comment below: I can normally follow almost anything spoken super well, but there's something weird about the language in Shakespeare that I find impossible in a performance.
I'm the opposite. I hated reading Othello in school, then they took us to a performance and I was blown away. Ever since then I only Shakespeare if it's in advance of a performance or at least a filmed adaptation. Like how plotlines build up and then at the end they come together. That kind of feeling, things come together when I watch.
Orson Scott Card staged translations into modern English. I wish he'd publish them because I think they've got a good chance of being good. Not "Hollywoodized".
Great conversation. I only wanted to "interrupt" once to say that Mantel's Cromwell trilogy is wonderful on the seductions and limitations of power. Pinpoint relevant to the "court" of Trump or any modern imperial presidency. Plus exquisite writing.
Thanks! I agree with you that Mantel is very very good on the nature of power.
Guess you don’t recall that Barrack O. started DOGE? He ran on reducing cost and waste and fraud! He “PROMISED “ to “PAY” for Obama Care from his savings. I guess you forgot? Also, you gave him a “PASS” when he did nothing. Oh wait, he did. He increased the debt for our children and grandchildren. Make sure you donate to his Presidential library, it is in a cost overrun situation today. Oops! Not supposed to criticize BO, he and Joe are the “nice” guys. At least Donald and BO had a good laugh at Jimmy C’s funeral.
Tyler's disarmingly deep-cut questions makes him one of my favorite interviewers—it's good to hear him on the other end of things! Great conversation, Henry.
Can you link to Tyler's article for Bloomberg in which he describes Trump as a Shakesperean fool, please? I struggle to accept the idea that Trump is a great orator!
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-06-20/forget-caesar-shakespeare-has-another-role-for-trump