If you did not shoot arrows with your hidden gaze,
I would not let your love into my heart.
You were fascinated by my path,
You became a gardener planting flowers,
Like an angel on right and left of path,
You would stand guard as a soldier.
When the heartbeat increases,
I’m out of breath, I’m suffocated
When i realize the love,
It’s like I was born again.
Refrain:
Soothing my heart,
Falsely or truly,
You have always been,
The one who made me understand love,
Oh faithful kind sweetheart!
Elmaya Jabbarova was born in Azerbaijan. She is a poet, writer, reciter, and translator. Her poems were published in the regional newspapers «Shargin sesi», «Ziya», «Hekari», literary collections «Turan», «Karabakh is Azerbaijan!», «Zafar», «Buta», foreign Anthologies «Silk Road Arabian Nights», «Nano poem for Africa», «Juntos por las Letras 1;2», «Kafiye.net» in Turkey, in the African’s CAJ magazine, Bangladesh’s Red Times magazine, «Prodigy Published» magazine. She performed her poems live on Bangladesh Uddan TV, at the II Spain Book Fair 1ra Feria Virtual del Libro Panama, Bolivia, Uruguay, France, Portugal, USA.
Do you think that Macbeth is a victim of his own ambition? Or do you think there are other factors contributing to his downfall? Elaborate.
Macbeth is a victim of his own ambition in close reading upon examination of the following verses, herein Macbeth declares, “Sleep no more! Macbeth Glamis hath murdered sleep and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, and, Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep, “Will all great Neptune’s Ocean wash this Blood clean from my hand, This my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.” Macbeth is a character filled with pity rather than a character of despicable detestations in readers judgment. His peripeteia from exalted nobility’s glory to decadence of degenerative inhumanity contributes to his downfall. Macbeth as a poignant character is transformed into a punitive protagonist in the readers’ and spectators’ deriving satisfaction through revenge or retributive justice.
Bravehearted, valiant and worthy gentleman, Duncan endears epithets of his noble entitlement which ironically obscures into oblivion aftermath of ignominious treachery of murdering Duncan in sleep as his invited guest of honour. Notwithstanding Macbeth’s vacillation and procrastination before the assassination is thus the best evidence we have of vindictiveness in the vein of cathartic plight of the dilemmatic soul. Macbeth is tormented before the prospects of his own crime in declaiming to have chosen kingship over the murder. “Will plead like angels, trumpet tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off.” “We shall proceed no further in this business” to “I am settled….this terrible feat” surmounts the trajectory of procrastination to resolution and therefore, parallel the progression from great goodness to great wickedness.
Macbeth’s murdering of Banquo and Lady Macduff along with the inheritor prince grimaces striking horror and terror which vividly portrays crime at its pinnacle. Absence from her husband, the loving banter of her son and her stand against the murderers makes her as admirable as the little boy himself, who dies in defense of his father’s name. Then maneuvering to England to witness the atrocity on Macduff, our active pity for Macbeth’s victims is at the high point of the play. These terrible feats are remote and impersonal to Macbeth as they are personal and immediate to the audience. These crimes were followed by suffering scenes of self-torment and thus, the bloody execution of regicide in civilian life and past military life , he does not understand his own character-he does not know what will be the effects of the evil act on his future happiness. Macbeth is a brave warrior, a moral coward and a brutal murderer who is racked by feelings of guilt.
Write a brief note examining the significance of witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Witches’ materialistic and cannibalistic ritual of womb-like cauldron’s mouth and flinging of poisonous and ravenous beasts (toads, snakes, dragons, wolves, sharks and tigers) and parts representing the erotic and sensory powers of non-Christian (Jew’s liver, Turk’s nose, Tartar’s lips) -and those lowers senses of smell and taste involved in feeding. Witches in Macbeth are loathsome and malevolent and their magical powers causes tempests that afflict voyagers, and they are associated with murderous treachery, tyrannical butchery, slaughtering violence and unnatural disturbances of many kinds. These are wayward weird sisters, Goddess of destiny or some fairy nymphs in otherworldly and wild apparels. The witches are grossly unnatural in their appearance, being female but bearded; they relish blasphemy, infanticide and filth; and they inflict storms and disruptions. Witches walk of the hurly burly of the battle and their distorted gender creating a murky atmosphere of blurred distinctions and mingled opposites wherein the masculinity arches and contends over femininity of moral ambivalence and of chaos: ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ , and ‘things hover through the fog and filthy air’. The witches cauldron, this hell-broth betokening of chaos and destruction, is an antithesis of the fertile womb producing poison and death instead of health and new life.
Further Reading and Works Consulted
Macbeth As A Tragic Hero Wayne C. Booth, Source: The Journal of General Education, October 1951, Vol. 6, No. 1 , October 1951, pages: 17-25 Penn State University
Macbeth’s Three Murders Robert Lanier Reid pages: 117-130 Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare’s Literary Criticism
Macbeth Piotr Shadowski pages: 151- 161 Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth Modern Literary Criticism
Examine the opening scene of Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth.
Act I celebrates Macbeth as a military leader, but the subtler dramatic value is in his struggle to deal with temptations that high public honours will place on his integrity and personal honour. His soliloquies show him struggling with something strangely unfamiliar. Hudibrastic language and burlesque meter of the superstition and magical fantasy characters-the genderless witches are introduced within the opening scene of Macbeth “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air.. Their prophecy of Macbeth’s future dukedom, earldom and kingship of Cawdor and Scotland after his eventual crowning of Glamis strikes him and Banquo with the procrastination in meditative contemplation. Banquo’s and Macbeth’s soliloquy can be interpreted in the vein:
“The instruments of darkness tells us truths,
Wins us with honest trifles, to betrays,
In deepest consequence.”
Puzzlement springing forth into moral anxieties of those malicious agents of wickedness in Banquo’s presence of referencing Macbeth’s uncertain future: strangeness of the calamitous situation.
“Cannot be ill, cannot be good, if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth?
Unraveling mysteries inclines to antithesis, Macbeth soliloquises the certainties of psychological truth between horrible imaginings. Duncan’s humanizing kingship with his subject, “The Prince of Cumberland ” endowment to establish his political hegemony can be critiqued to a detailed entrenchment.
“Stars, hide your fires,
Let that light never see my black and deep desires,
The eye winks at the hand. Yet let that be,
Which the eye fears when it is done to see.”
Goodness itself is too frail to challenger the world of darkness and the horror Lady Macbeth is invoking, “Come you spirits…Come to my woman’s breast…Come, thick night!”
“The raven himself is hoarse,
That croaks the entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.” and further “Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, Greater than the both by the all -hail hereafter.
Banquo’s continuance of ominous foretellings inferring natural imageries of martlet and birds to Jacobites engenders deceits and hypocrisy, “Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed the air most delicate. False face must hide, what the false heart doth know.”
Dr Samuel Johnson’s shrewd observance of Shakespare’s Macbeth reads: “This play is deservedly celebrated for the propriety of its fictions, and its solemnity, grandeur, and variety of its actions; but it has no nice discriminations of character, the events are too great to admit the influence of particular dispositions, and the course of the action necessarily determines the conduct of the agents.” Having evoked the play’s distinctive atmosphere Bradley exclaims, “From this murky background stands out the two very great terrible figures, who dwarf all the remaining characters of the drama. Both are sublime, and both inspire, fare more than the other tragic heroes, the feelings of awe.” Bradley felt that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth after great pain, tumult and loss and the play’s ending give a sense that the order has been restored.
Terry Eagleton’s observation of the weird sisters of sorcerers and witchcraft in the language: They are poets, prophetesses and devotees of the female cult, radical separatists who scorn male power and lay bare the sound and fury at its core.
Cambridge Student Guide Shakespare Macbeth Stephen Sidall
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
……………………………………….
Making the green one red.”
These are magnificent poetic lines extracted from Macbeth Act II Scene II Lines: 59-62 immediately after the horror striking and terror thundering slaughter of Duncan by Macbeth. The regicide grimaces grimy staining of Macbeth as a traitorous villain and disloyal minister to the government of the monarchy. Macbeth’s character assassination cannot be salvaged by the multitudinous seas taken together with reference to its innumerable waves and the countless masses of water on the surface of the globe(Malone). “The long latinised verbs preceded and followed by monosyllables gives the effect of a boundless sea.” (Wilson) And “the imagination of Macbeth dwells upon the universal conversion of the red one into green. (Elwin). The hyperbole of hysteria culminating in the pinnacle of the drama reflects Macbeth’s aghast and agonized soul at its moral defeat-a hallucination of greater emotional power than that of the dagger.
Here’s Macbeth’s soliloquy in full:
She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Analyze Macbeth’s soliloquies in relation tot he development of his character in the course of the play. [Calcutta University Honours. 1989]
Macbeth’s soliloquies manifests the interior dramatic monologue revealing thoughts, feelings, emotions and sentiments surrounding the happenings on stage and off stage by the subsequent pursuit of consecutive murders. His poetic lyrics embellish the subconscious state of mind and soliloquies are the best means of presenting the essential self of the character which is disintegrated and disrupted by the temptation.
The conflict of Macbeth’s mind between the impulse to action and conscience. His mind is working on two planes as he is getting his reasons and motives hopelessly wrong. Wilson Knight notes of Macbeth’s interior dilemma as soon as he proceeds to murder Duncan, “Macbeth whose conscience revolts from the crime persuades himself that he is a most cold-blooded villain and fears of the actual and personal punishment.”
Macbeth contemplates the immediacy of the action and procrastinates the approach stepping to resolution and the implications of a future life. Justice is impartial and our crimes recoil upon us. Duncan is Macbeth’s blood relation and monarchical courtier which are the strong reasons against his contemplated regicide. His bindings to the sacred pledge of hospitality succumbs by the temptation to gain power by affording to bear the dagger himself.
Duncan whose acclaimed nobility and renowned eminence can be appertained to his exercise of power with modesty and meekness. “Will plead like angels, trumpet tongued , Against the deep damnation of thy soul” Overambition vaults unsurpassingly and overreaches itself just as a reckless rider may overleap and miss the saddle. Macbeth is afraid of his vaulted ambition and the soliloquy reveals “a mind trying to get its own motives clear”. Macbeth cannot pronounce murder which sticks in his throat and Macbeth fears eternal the intended crime, knowing that Duncan would be pitied as a ‘newborn babe’ and Duncan’s virtues are like angels who will proclaim the horrid deed and will be condemned through the sightless couriers of the air.
Helen Gardner in a fine analysis of the last art of the soliloquy remarks: “It is not terror of heaven’s vengeance which makes him pause; but the terror of moral isolation. The babe image merges into the cherubim, not because Shakespeare means Macbeth to be feeling both pity and fear of retribution at the same time but because Shakespeare believes in the holiness of the heart’s affections. It is the judgment of the human heart that Macbeth fears here, and the punishment which the speech foreshadows is not that he will be cut down by Macduff, but having murdered his own humanity, he will enter into a world of appalling loneliness, of meaningless activity, unloved himself and unable to love.”
“Beware of Macduff Beware the Thane of Fife”. Bring out the effect of this warning on Macbeth’s character and conduct in the last two acts of the play. [Calcutta University Honours 1994]
Macbeth’s desperate and belligerent actions of slaughtering England fled Macduff’s family including mistress and children demonstrate his inhumane character flawed by the frailties of temptation to the throne’s accession. Superstitious witches proclaim Macbeth’s fatal plight endangered by the prophecy, “Beware of Macduff….Thane of Fife”. “Each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face”
…dead butcher Macbeth’s foreboding damnation incidents as soon as the English soldiers are ready to help the Scottish nobles who have deserted Macbeth. Macbeth acknowledges his impulses with the dread, and submits to them half knowing the consequences and watches himself destroying himself in a long suicide of the soul. His heartsickness and restlessness will not submit to the mounting tempo of rebellion and retribution, he fortifies his castle against his rivals.
Eventually, Macbeth’s deteriorating heartsickness turns into a malicious malady of “My way of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf.” Macbeth knows that Scotland is ruined, and the doctor cannot ‘purge it to a sound and pristine health’. In his desperate recklessness and the brink of despairing heartsickness-he has been led by illusions-each tomorrow comes and goes, each to-morrow becomes a yesterday befooling man and leading him to death. He has come to realize the vanity of vanities by the ‘juggling fiends’ In the course of his degeneration and downfall, the retains the spirit of grandeur and his weariness, his despair, and his sense of utter loneliness touches us pity while his defiance and fury strike us with awe.
Discuss the dramatic presentation of Macduff in the play, Macbeth.
Or
Attempt an analysis of the character of Macduff and discuss his role in the play, [Calcutta University Honours 1985]
Or
“Least our old robes sit easier than our new!” Examine the character of Macduff as the contrasting foible to Macbeth.
Or Macduff is the antihero to make the time free from tyranny and nightmare for Scotland. Explain and elaborate.
Or
“O Banquo O Banquo/Our royal masters murdered.” “O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive or name thee.” Examine the character of Macduff in the light of this speech
Or
Macbeth is a dwarfish thief in a giant’s robe. Macduff presents the beheaded head of Macbeth to Malcolm and establishes the restoration of the divine rights of king. Examine the character sketch of Macduff.
Macduff’s noble integrity and patriotic spirit makes him an ideal foil and antagonist to lead the army against Macbeth. Macduff in the banks and shoal of banqueting discovers the grotesquery of gothic regicidal bloodshed- villainy and hypocrisy of Macbeth as reflected in the words, “Wherefore did you so?” This happens as soon as Macbeth’s murders the chamberlains and thereafter the innuendo suggests of falsely implicating Malcolm and Donalbain as the suspected perpetrators of the heinous crime since they have fled to England. Here Macduff’s stalwart pledge to the allegiance of monarchy disenchants him from the banqueting coronation of the unholy king and thereafter seeks assistance from the holy king of England (Divine Rights of King).
This Macduff fears his life because by the time Macbeth has become a tyrant Macbeth has Banquo killed and so, Macduff flees to England to arouse the rebellion in association with Malcolm beleaguring the Scottish nobles. Macduff later reveals to Macbeth that he is, “even that thy wizards have told thee of who was never born of my mother, but ripped out of the womb.”
In the meanwhile of the capturing of Dunsinane Castle, Macduff’s wife and children bravehearted lionizes themselves with audacity before the tyrant Macbeth’s interview. Lady Macduff’s feelings for Macbeth appear in her spirited reply to the murderer’s questions: “Where’s your husband?” “I hope in no place so unsanctified where such as thou may’st find him.” To the murderer’s remark that Macbeth is a traitor the lad gives an angry reply: “Thou lies, thou shag-haired villain.” The sweet and affectionate family bliss of Macduff and Lady Macduff can be contrasted with the harsh and cruel life of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
Macduff’s reaction to the news of the family’s slaughter throws him in sheerness grief and lamentation in poignantly brief words, “My children too?…And I must be from thence!” “My wife killed too?…”all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop.” He must be afflicted with tormented by pathetic anguish of his soul after the bereavement of his dearly family and ‘his voice is in his sword’/’Front to front/ Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself.”
Discuss the character of Duncan. What dramatic purpose is served by Shakespearean characterization of Duncan.
Duncan was a true legend of humanist monarch of Scotland whose conscience always worked for the welfare of the subjects. The beginning of Duncan’s reign was a peaceful sovereignty without notable chaos, but after it tumultuous turmoil caused dissenters and protestants occasion thereof to disrupt the peace and quiet state of the commonwealth.
Shakespeare makes Duncan honest and noble in order to intensify the tragic irony through the vivid impression of his angelic innocence and least life span. Jesus College Fellow and Master E. M. W Tillyard’s criticism can be justified in the estimation of Macbeth: “Shakespeare has consciously refused to allow Duncan to become an individual.” Both Macbeth and Macduff have optimistic critical reception appreciative of Duncan’s character proclaiming, “Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office, that his virtues will plead, like angels trumpet tongued…” and “Thy royal father was a sainted king.”
Duncan’s naivety and innocence makes him a double victim of both the Thane of Cawdor and Macbeth. His trustworthiness of “honoured hostess” is staked to be betrayed in case of Lady Macbeth’s devilish cloaked hospitality. Duncan’s humility, nobility, generosity and strength are to be historic charismatic qualities of justice. He wishes to reward Macbeth in proportion to his achievements and thank Lady Macbeth more than he is able to. There is a strain of sentimentality in traits since this is manifested in his exuberance and sentimentality to proclaim gratitude of the hospitality of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Though he sheds tears upon receiving Macbeth and Banquo yet he is firm and resolute in declaring the heir apparent Malcolm to the throne. He is contrasted with Macbeth whose tyranny will unleash the forces of disorder and disloyalty in the country.
Duncan’s spirituality and royalty is perennial presence of Macbeth’s mind, and he remembers his meekness, humility and fairness and procrastinates to dagger him but later his masculinity was provoked by Lady Macbeth to commit the most sacrilegious murder. He harps on the word hostess and kisses Lady Macbeth’s cheek in gratitude-a fine ironic touch because Lady Macbeth has already by persuading Macbeth to murder given him the kiss of death. He is painted in angelic terms to emphasize his ideal kingly qualities and to highlight the enormity of the crime of Macbeth. No human sympathies are aroused at his murder although Lady Macbeth grieves of her father figure upon this execution of the terrible feat. Audience is more interested in the murderer than in the murder.
Write a note on the significance of the porter’s speech in Scene III, Act II. Point out the contemporary topical allusions in the speech. Examine in this connection the arguments of those who object to the porter’s monologue and to his following dialogue with Macduff. [Calcutta University Honours 1990]
After committing the heinous crime -the most blasphemous murdering of Duncan following Act II Scene II Macbeth hears voices and sees visions. He is unsure whether these voices and visions being real or imaginary .
The porter in his drunkenness fancies himself to be ushering the sinners of hell including farmer, jesuit equivocate and an English tailor. The first candidate is in expectation of hoarding corn to earn abnormal profits, later discovers that prospects of good harvests have dwindled his profits into unexpected loss. Jesuits were accused of alternately swearing and foreswearing. And the English tailor cut cloth out of a French hose which is a traditionally close-fitting. The porter imagines all these under the influence of wine and hen his drunkenness goes off, his visions fades, and as the cold bites him, he comes slowly into an awareness of the reality around him.
Elizabethan tragedy introduces comic relief to the tragic tension and terror and the Calvinistic fashion of damnation depicted by the porter’s scene is no further exception. He is indeed the porter of the hell gate and Macbeth is the Devil residing in his castled Hell. His ramblings effectively delay the discovery, so that his lascivious humour and his stumblings and natural comic effect, a degree of tension is built up in the audience and the readers. Instead of providing mere comic relief, it increases the horror of the situation. We are never allowed to forget of the bloody execution and this emphasises the horror by the grimness of the contrast. The farmer, equivocator and the tailor are symbols of Macbethwho has overreached himself like them and so go to hell.
Porter’s scene can be integral theatrical part of the drama engrossed in exemplification as the comical relief and comical contrast. Professor Hales defends the scene and gives reasons for justifying its genuineness. Belzebub, Devil and Hell are painted in the porter’s imagination and De Quincey’s famous exposition has silenced the challenging critics: “The knocking at the gate is heard and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced, the human hath made its reflux upon the fiendish, the pulses of life are beginning to beat again and the reestablishments of the goings on of the world in which we live makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them. (On the knocking at the gate).
The porter’s monologue and dialogue were supposed to be actor’s interpolations intended for the entertainment of the groundlings apart from the necessity of transitioning to apparel and costume timing. Proasic language with bawdy and vulgar colloquialism the porter’s speech provides antithesis between appearance and realty, purpose and fulfillment, conception and execution. The allusive reference to the poor condition of high yielding corn merchant sunken poverty of 1606. Henry Garnet, a jesuit was hanged with the treason of gunpowder plot in the reign of James I and these Jesuits were objects of attack by preachers in Elizabethan England for their oath of swearing and forswearing.
.
Analyze the banquet scene and discuss its importance (Act III Scene IV). What light does it throw on the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? [Calcutta University Honours 1964, ‘78, ‘80, ‘86, ‘93]
Or
Scenically, the ghost of Banquo is not a pure hallucination like the dagger. The reailty of air drawn dagger is questioned by him. The ghost was visible objectivity of the stage directions. Justify the argument of the passage.
Macbeth invites the noble lords, earls and dukes of Scotland to the ceremonial feasting of his coronation banquet. The guests have graced except Banquo’s son Fleance escapes and Macduff flees to England. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are further examined in depth in the light of this scene. The banquet scene shows that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are ‘yet but young in deed’. Banquo’s ghost appears as visionary ironical illusion and Macbeth’s nervous tension and mental tortures by the nemesis of his own imagination. As a result, Lady Macbeth unceremoniously dismisses the party wishing these invitees happy good night.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are left alone. Macbeth is out of the world while Lady Macbeth is fatigued by wearisome dread. Macbeth’s conscience stings him and he is full of scorpions. He resolves to defend crime by crime and entrust the nemesis to the witches. The irony is that only Macbeth sees the vision. [‘What sights, my Lord’, asks Rosse] and the scene is saturated with irony when Banquo complies to Macbeth’s wishes “Fail not our feat”, to which Banquo replies, ”My Lord, I will not.” “Shakespeare took ghosts as he took witches from popular superstitions and psychologised them, so far as the conditions of the stage allowed. The ghost is indeed real but “of all Shakespeare’s ghosts it is the most ghostly.” [Grierson] W Rosen speaks of another irony which consists in the discrepancy between Macbeth’s expectations and the occasion’s actuality: “When Macbeth chafes at Banquo’s absence, when he would drink to Banquo’s health knowing well the man is dead, he confidently expresses the unuttered belief that he is capable of controlling his own destiny. But the audience, aware that Banquo’s spirit has risen, knows this belief to be an illusion. It is this moment of ironic reversal that establishes a close bond between actor and spectator, and accounts for pity and terror, for Macbeth’s situation is typical tragic human destiny. At the moment of his supreme confidence, we see the precariousness of the human condition.” [Shakespeare and the Craft of Tragedy pp. 88-89]
Miah Persson and Roderick Williams in Blank Out (photo courtesy of Michel van der Aa)
The Trauma of Memory
Blank Out
Cal Performances
Berkeley
How many of us have ever been caught in a lie? Or caught others in a lie? Or caught ourselves in a lie – to ourselves?
It’s likely few can say, to any of these questions, “Not me. No. Not ever.”
Though when it comes to a trauma – an accident, a crime, a moment of misjudgment with catastrophic consequences – there may be many who adamantly assert, “No! Not me! Not ever!”
Blank Out, a compelling chamber opera by the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa, who conceived, directed and developed its libretto, probed these and related matters in a violently imaginative way – enigmatic at first, sometimes mystifying, but in the end deeply moving – at a performance I saw at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on a recent April evening.
A work that addresses the psyche’s dialectics of reality and denial in the aftermath of loss, it bracingly incorporates film, music and live action to examine the darker corners of authenticity. In the opening act of what amounts to a three-act drama played without pause, a beautiful young woman (played by Sweden’s celebrated Mozart soprano Miah Persson) takes the stage to sing, in fragments of sometimes surreal verse, of an event long ago at her seaside home – an event she must relive over and again, without end or resolution, in which her young son disobeyed her orders not to go out further in the water than “up to his belly button,” and drowned.
A screen projects at first one, then two images of her as she sings in duet, then in trio with herself. She unwinds a bit of narrow cloth from a spool. She walks to a table at the edge of the stage and manipulates a dollhouse-sized cottage and a fragment of its neighborhood in front of a camera. The image abruptly appears onscreen and she walks and sings before it, creating a curiously uncanny sensation, seeing her blur and blend in with the toy home; memory, fantasy, childhood dream and present-day illusion, enwrapped in a single embodiment.
But there is something off; this is not just an elegy for a lost child, though at one point the woman stops singing and speaks directly to the audience. The lovingly infatuated young mother describes the special joys and oddities of her boy – his games, his little dramas and comedies, his pretending his beach blanket was a flying carpet held to earth by little piles of stones at its corners – with a transparent pleasure that seems to preclude mourning or lament. The lack of tears is both moving and strange. She describes their last evening together, when the television set caught fire and while it was being repaired, they drove in their VW beetle to a nearby eatery for a pizza (his very first).
The screen begins fluctuating between images of the dollhouse cottage and of the real home it is based on, isolated at the far edge of a field and toward which the camera moves as on an angel’s-eye drone. The woman becomes increasingly abstract as images of the boy are seen distantly, just visible turning a corner of the house, when the camera cuts to a close up and the “boy” suddenly dominates the screen – no boy now but a middle-aged man.
The screen projection changes with equal drama: the 3D goggles I was given in the lobby now prove their worth as the film goes three-dimensional, and a dialectical drama between stage and screen – the screen seeming to become an extension of the stage, the stage an extension of the screen – incorporates the drama we are seeing: two fantasies become two realities, two realities two wishful dreams.
The boy’s dream is of what might have been against the overwhelming guilt of reality on that day decades ago: it was not the boy who drowned, but his mother who drowned saving him.
The second act is commanded by the exceptional singing of Roderick Williams as he enacts a dream of loss and remembrance while his young mother fades in and out, sometimes one, sometimes multiple, always alone, on the stage infinitely far away from him: the screen is a wall between them, built of reality and fantasy, of light and stones. He becomes the young boy, playing his carefree games, teasing his mother, tossing melodies back and forth with her, then in anguish remembering his one misstep that led to a loss that cannot be repealed.
The third act is a transcendent blending of the 3D film, the stage, the dollhouse cottage, the actual home and its memories, the music (now combining a chorus with the continuing sampler and electronic accompaniments to the singing), and even the VW beetle, symbol, or perhaps a better word is incarnation of the insouciant joys and silliness of childhood, the happy discovery of pizza, the nightly child’s baths, the boy’s favorite game of jumping from chair to chair in the living room (because touching the “lava-covered” floor would mean instant death), the funny episode with the hot pebbles he once swallowed because he wanted to “taste their heat,” the endless non-tragedies, the exuberant follies, and the one endless tragedy that ended childhood in a rage of flying stones and wrecked car and a storm of autumn leaves and blinding light beneath the silence of the sea.
The choral additions were sung by the Nederlands Kamerkoor. The libretto includes fragments from the writings of the South African poet Ingrid Jonker, who died young of suicide.
_____
Christopher Bernard is a co-editor and founder of Caveat Lector. He is also a novelist, poet and critic as well as essayist. His books include the novels A Spy in the Ruins, Voyage to a Phantom City, and Meditations on Love and Catastrophe at The Liars’ Café, and the poetry collections Chien Lunatique, The Rose Shipwreck, and the award-winning The Socialist’s Garden of Verses, as well as collections of short fiction In the American Night and Dangerous Stories for Boys. His children’s stories If You Ride a Crooked Trolley . . . and The Judgment of Biestia, the opening stories of the Otherwise series, will be published later in 2023.
Welcome, everyone, to Synchronized Chaos’ mid-April issue.
This issue brings everyone along with great energy, with a skip, a jump, and a hop!
We invite our readers to join us for the Hayward Lit Hop, a free, all-ages one-day literary festival in Hayward, California where various literary groups will host readings at different venues up and down B Street. Event kicks off at 2pm in Heritage Plaza across the street from the downtown library and continues at various places until the afterparty at 7pm at the Sun Gallery.
Now, for the submissions!
Jazira Mi explores the joy, and the risks, of embracing life with both feet forward. John Culp expresses the joy of a rare moment of the seemingly impossible.
Kumar Ghimire speaks to the dreams that encourage him to push forward in reality. Mahbub Alam illustrates the risks and the joy of banding together with friends, family and neighbors and stepping into the unknown.
Some artists push forward through experimenting with craft and structure rather than through direct assertions within their pieces.
Mark Young contributes rough, surreal, textured artwork that is more about image and color than representation. Tuyet Van Do presents moments of ironic and poignant juxtaposition in her haikus while Jim Meirose presents a surrealist take on a poor sod’s visit to the doctor.
Eddie Heaton takes us on a tour through this life and the underworld through his mythical poetry.
This issue does “look before it leaps,” not ignoring the real difficulties and dangers many face in life.
Chimezie Ihekuna addresses the malaise continual artistic and professional frustration brings. Daniel De Culla comments on the dangers many young people face from predators in a tragicomic poem of advice for students.
Sunil Saroa conveys the loneliness of living among those who don’t understand you. William Hartwick paints a portrait of life with bipolar and Tourette’s and reminds us of the daily discrimination people with invisible or misunderstood disabilities face.
Stephen House relates how he realized the injustice of a dangerous work situation long after it had passed.
Yet, other writers point to hope, even when postponed, or to the possibility of being able to choose to respond to one’s circumstances in a courageous way.
Chloe Schoenfeld encourages people to persevere through difficult times through the metaphor of a butterfly. Maja Milojkovic raises her fist and heart for love in defiance of oppression and death.
Maurizio Brancaleoni suggest that some may tame their fear of global crises by exaggerating them for comedic effect. Whether this is a form of heroic courage or cowardly denial is up to readers to judge.
Anne Hendricks-Jones’ character assumes an alter ego as a heroine to save children from a school shooting. Sandro Piedrahita’s piece celebrates another kind of heroism, patient love and forgiveness amid the violence and fear of drug trafficking in South America.
Tammy Spears shares loving pieces in memory of her personal heroine, her deceased mother, and also honors her sister and soldiers who have chosen a path of courage and sacrifice. These are excerpts from her collection Flutter of an Eye.
Graciela Noemi Villaverde expresses her longing to be treated as a co-creator rather than a muse or a work of art herself, in a piece that could be addressed to a partner or a deity. Film critic Jaylan Salah takes a second look at beautiful bombshell Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of femininity on screen and suggests that it may be more complex and assertive than it appears at first glance.
Many other writers explore the timeless themes of time, change, cycles, love and loss, grief, healing, and renewal.
Laura Marino’s bilingual haiku follows different seasons and times of day through a succession of moments in nature. Noah Berlatsky comments on being in sync, or out of sync, with the passage of time.
Laura Stamps captures a personality, place, and time through chatty postcard poems.
Mashhura Usmonova recollects the tender bloom of first love while Shahnoza Ochildiyeva conveys moments of young, idealistic soul-level happiness. Linda Springhorn Gunther reviews Lisa Scottoline’s novel Eternal, which situates the beauty of pasta and young love among the repression of 1930s Germany.
Brenton Booth captures short vignettes of moments of connection, real and imagined. Wazeed Abdullah reflects on the love and nurturance of families.
Robiul Awal Esa’s heartwarming story illustrates the power of kindness and gratitude for those who have helped us along in life.
Channie Greenberg sends up another gentle photographic submission, this time of beige and orange flowers. Don Bormon celebrates the natural beauty and renewal of spring.
Haze Fry questions whether time alone has the power to heal the wounds of a decayed romance. Zadie McGrath describes the deflation of a youthful romance in a school setting.
Mesfakus Salahin evokes the lingering aftermath of loss, whether death or the end of a relationship.
Azemina Krehic laments the ruins of a beautiful relationship that fell apart after a trip to historic Trieste. Emina Delilovic-Kevric grieves over the loss of her mother’s love, which happened even before her death.
J.J. Campbell addresses and accepts mortality and grounds his answers to life’s big spiritual questions in the here-and-now. Duane Vorhees explores the changing and seemingly arbitrary tides of fate, evolution, and personal destiny.
David Kopaska-Merkel draws on history to show how our personal and collective pasts can remain with us as we move into the future.
Christopher Bernard highlights the transcendent music of the Kronos Quartet that spans space, time, and different generations.
This issue melds the boundaries of space and time as well, representing work from contributors of different generations and nationalities. We hope that it pushes forward your own creative dreams.
The end of the world is nigh. So what? This doesn’t change things. All my life I’ve been wishing to do something important, go down in history and now I know that it’ll never happen. So let the apocalypse come, who cares. Finally something really democratic. Not even the greats of the past ages are safe, everything will disappear from the face of the earth. Pardon, that’s going to disappear too. The Big Crunch, the return to the singularity: few believed that it would really happen.
I was talking about that with a female friend just yesterday.
– I don’t see why we should get desperate. In any case, each one of us would have to die sooner or later.
– You’re insensitive as usual.
– At least we’ll die together – I said, although my love is unrequited.
– You creep me out – she replied, and started chatting with her friends on Facebook.
I remained at her disposal anyway. Shortly thereafter, she ordered me to go and rent all the disaster movies I could find because she would throw a party that night.
They want to overcome the fear of death, I said to myself, by mocking it, laughing at it. It was a good guess: on my return, I find her making out with two guys in skeleton costumes.
– The best is yet to come – she says.
– I’m partying too?
– There’s always the dog.
That was one of her friends. Soon after other people dressed up as the occasion demands – gravediggers, ravens, worms and whatnot – walk in with crates of beer and any kind of commercially available drug.
Moral: there was little interest for the movies and only I and the “dog”, wearing a tombstone costume, watched them, until she left me to participate in an orgy with two skeletons, a coffin and a mausoleum towards the end of the night.
At dawn they had all sunk into comatose sleep, as in one of those music videos that stage the typical post-party morning of the latest pop star. I walked out in the garden and watched the sun rise.
I’m still here now, contemplating the sky. It won’t be long until the end.
Komm, süßer Tod!
Really, that’s what life was? We could do without it, thanks. Adieu.
Maurizio Brancaleoni has been widely published in several journals and anthologies. He has a bilingual blog where he posts literary gems, interviews and translations. The original version of “Who Cares About The End of the World” was first published in 2012 in an anthology of apocalyptic short stories.
The Survivor
The once healthy cell
Has been invaded like hell
The once healthy hair
Has fallen throughout this fair
Like drifting wood in the river afloat
Winter snow on the ground, melt it connotes
Sunlight cascading to the forest floor
Feeling uncertain, thus, you close the door
The strength you have to surpass them all
Unwavering faith will not falter His call
You fought the illness uncalled for
You’re the greatest survivor of them all.
Life
If life is like picking the right song
Choose the one that bangs the gong
To the rhythm of the beat that is in bloom
Like the windy beat of air in a lagoon
Swiftly flowing, the rhythm in your ear
That’s how smooth you want life to appear
Like trees laid into the sunny rays
Field of dancing flowers full of grace
If life is like picking the right song
Choose your band and favorite song
Trials in reality you cannot shun
Yet after the rain the sun will surely shine
Facade
When I met you decades ago
We were young, free and on the go
Uncaring for whatever it might be
My heart throbs for you endlessly
You got my heart from the start
Yet treated me wrong from the day we start
You tricked me with all the lies
It was long enough for me to realized
What we had were all facade
Made most of my days gloomy and sad
My brain unquestionably says No!
But my heart undoubtedly says Go!
Behind the hidden memories
Lies all the troubles and worries
A painful yesterday
Is now a memory far away
Too many years have been wasted
With all the trials busted
Facing all challenges to pursue
Until one day... I’m so over you
Youth of Yesteryears
Those were the budding days
So young & carefree with your ways
All you do is play the race
Until the beaming sun hides its rays
Those were the youthful times
When life doesn’t have to rhyme
When folks’ counsels do not matter
Never sorry for a dreadful scatter
Those were the blossoming years
Shedding pointless tears
Dwelling on wasted years
For some worthless fears
Those were the years gone by
Treasured mem’ries long gone by
Old secret mem’ries gone by
Reminiscing will give you a little cry
Jazira Munding Ismael aka Jazira Mi
A published poet, photo enthusiast, and an aspiring novelist, she is a registered writer/author with the National Book Development Board (NBDB), Philippines. Her passion for writing awakened her curiosity to explore genres like romance, and fantasy, mystery and dystopia.
Her poetry collection entitled “Poems of Life” speaks for itself as life’s intertwined roads are filled with wonders, challenges, both highs and lows. She also has a booklet on marriage vows called “I Do”, both of which, were published by 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing, Philippines.
She regularly lectures and critics poetry writing contests of Poetry Hub, an international online platform of aspiring poets from countries like Nigeria, India, Somalia, Zambia, and its neighboring countries. She has gained notable following on Instagram (My writing Journey- Jazira Mi) as well as in her photography world: Fotografia y Viaje Alrededor.
