{"id":172855,"date":"2015-01-10T15:43:53","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T15:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/01\/10\/hamlet-is-about-the-precise-kind-of-slippage-the\/"},"modified":"2015-01-10T15:43:53","modified_gmt":"2015-01-10T15:43:53","slug":"hamlet-is-about-the-precise-kind-of-slippage-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/01\/10\/hamlet-is-about-the-precise-kind-of-slippage-the\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming…” <\/a><\/p>\n

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I returned over and over to key speeches as if they were prayers or clues. I\u2019d always thought of Hamlet\u2019s melancholy as existential. His sense that the world \u201cis out of joint\u201d came across as vague and philosophical, the dilemma of a depressive young man who can\u2019t stop chewing at big metaphysical questions. But now it seemed to me that Hamlet was moody and irascible in no small part because he is grieving: his father has just died. He is radically dislocated, stumbling through the days while the rest of the world acts as if nothing important has changed.<\/p>\n

For the trouble is not just that Hamlet is sad; it is that everyone around him is unnerved by his grief. When Hamlet comes onstage, his uncle greets him with the worst question you can ask a grieving person: \u201cHow is it that the clouds still hang on you?\u201d Hamlet\u2019s mother, Gertrude, tries to get him to see that his loss is \u201ccommon.\u201d No wonder Hamlet is angry and cagey; he is told that how he feels is \u201cunmanly\u201d and unseemly. This was a predicament familiar to me. No one was telling me that my sadness was unseemly, but I felt, all the time, that to descend to the deepest fathom of it was somehow taboo. (As my dad said, \u201cYou have this choice when you go out and people ask how you\u2019re doing. You can tell the truth, which you know will make them really uncomfortable, or seem inappropriate. Or you can lie. But then you\u2019re lying.\u201d) I was struck, too, by how much of Hamlet<\/em> is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming, the uncertainty about how the inner translates into the outer, the sense that one is expected to perform<\/em> grief palatably. (If you don\u2019t seem sad, people worry; but if you are grief-stricken, people flinch away from your pain.)<\/p>\n

– Meghan O\u2019Rourke,\u00a0The Long Goodbye<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming…” I returned over and over to key speeches as if they were prayers or clues. I\u2019d always thought of Hamlet\u2019s melancholy as existential. His sense that the world \u201cis out of joint\u201d came across as vague and philosophical, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading ““Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming…””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[3786,2589,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}