amimetobios

The last class this semester. Cleopatra and her dreams of Antony.  Her death.  Ass unpolicied vs. lass unparalleled.

We continue going through the play, to Antony's loss of himself ("the heart of loss"), his botched suicide, and his reunion with Cleopatra.

Beginning of Act IV.  More on Antony vs. "an Antony."  The latter is an object in the world, has worldly being.  The former is the extravagant, isolated subjectivity which is the tragic waywardness which is more and more where he is: in "the heart of loss." If extravagance -- waywardness, wandering outside of any world which is one's own, Binswanger's Verstiegenheit -- weren't more intense than worldliness, if things didn't get more intense as one loses everything, tragedy would be of no aesthetic interest.  A brief adumbration of the difference between daemonization (for Macbeth) and extravagance (for Antony).

We conclude Act III, and discuss how well people know Antony, and how well Antony can know Cleopatra.  His anger at her, and his recovery from that anger.  Enobarbus' loyalty, and then his planned defection.  Enobarbus compared with Horatio, Kent, and Banquo.

Antony's insistence on fighting by sea: his loss, and anger at Cleopatra

"I am so lated in the world that I..."

("Have lost my way forever.")

"Fall not a tear, I say."

This is where the play starts getting to be Shakespeare's greatest play.

We continue close reading of Act III, but then the last half hour, in response to a series of questions, is about how to interpret drama: what freedom and what constraints are there on how actors interpret? How should we interpret? Taking Dworkin's dictum that we should interpret in a way that makes the work the best possible work it can be, how does that apply to Shakespeare?  What is the meaning of canonicity?  Something like: a work that is open to lots of possibility for great interpretation. I thought that last half hour or so was interesting.

I am team-teaching a class on Wittgenstein this term.  The person I team-teach with, a philosopher, is too careful about how to put things to want the class podcast. The class largely consists of us disagreeing.  He thinks (like lots of Anglo-American philosophers) that Wittgenstein was sloppy and couldn't make his case in a systematic and well-organized way.  I defend Wittgenstein, and I usually do it in the spineless liberal way that I was brought up in: "Even accepting everything you say..." after which I try to say that LW is still great.  There may be a little of that in this, but in any case, in class the other day, I found myself talking non-stop for a bit, defending my Wittgenstein against his idea of Wittgenstein as a brilliant failure, and more generally against the idea of some systematized exposition of Wittgenstein, even Cavell's. I should say that in calling him my LW I am also very much indebted to a teacher of mine's LW, as you'll hear if you listen.  Anyhow, this short post is the non-stop portion of the class.

We continue reading through the play: Pompey disappoints Menas; Ventidius comments on who gets credit; Menas, Agrippa, Ventidius, and Enobarbus are represented as belonging to the same type (so that Menas's turn away from Pompey will adumbrate a very intense later scene); the love between Octavian and Octavia; her contrast with Cleopatra; Cleopatra's news management; Charmian's encouragement.  Alexandrian vs. Roman Feasts.  We're now well into Act III.

We continue with Act II.  The treaty between Pompey and the Triumvirate.  Cleopatra and the messenger who reports Antony's marriage.  I should have said that her relation to the messenger is a version of the third person imperative force of the play: she demands what can't be demanded, that the truth be different from what it is.

News for Pompey.  Characterization of Antony in his absence, again.  Delicate negotiations.  Octavia.  Enorbarbus predicts what Antony will do: his amazing description of Cleopatra.  Antony confirms that he'll go back to Alexandria.