The Ghost of Hamlet's Father

In the past several days, I have been reading Shakespeare's Hamlet, not only to experience again the power of a creative genius of unequalled talent, but in order to reflect on the ghost of Hamlet's father, one of the characters in that play that has always fascinated me. Ever since I watched a film version of Hamlet, in which Laurence Olivier played the role of Hamlet, I have remembered the ghost of Hamlet's father. This was in 1971, when I was a student at Mkwawa High School, Tanzania.

The ghost's eerie appearances in that film, and his voice,  have continued to haunt me, so to speak. The encounters between the ghost and the sentries and between the ghost and Hamlet are among the most memorable moments in the play. I remember most of all the tale the ghost tells Hamlet which begins this way:

     I am thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.... (Act 1: Sc. V)

In subsequent years, reading Alex la Guma's novella, A Walk in the Night, set in apartheid South Africa, I encountered the ghost of Hamlet's father in a memorable way. One of the characters in this novella, Uncle Doughty, is an old, poor Irishman, who lives in a poverty-stricken place, "dying of alcoholism, diabetes and old age". We see him with Michael Adonis, a troubled black man, having an agitated conversation while drinking liquor. The topic of their conversation is life's troubles, and Michael Adonis thinks that, being a white man, Uncle Doughty cannot have troubles.

"Worry? Worry? the old man whined. We all got something to worry about." He mustered himself for a moment and shook a dried twig of a finger at Michael Adonis. "We all got our cross to bear. What's my white got to do with it? Here I am, in shit street, and does my white help? I used to be an actor. God bless my soul, I toured England and Australia with Dame Clara Bright. A great lady. A great actress she was." He began to weep, the tears spilling over the sagging rims of his eyes and he reached for the bottle again. "We're like Hamlet's father's ghost. I played the ghost of Hamlet's father once, London, it was."
   "You look like a blerry ghost, you spook," Michael Adonis said bitterly. He jerked the bottle from the old man's hand and tipped it to his mouth and took a long swallow, gagging and then belching as he took the neck from his lips. His head spun and he wanted to retch. (25)

Every time I teach A Walk in the Night, I point out the presence of the theme of the ghost of Hamlet's father as a clear example of the inter-textual dimension of this novel. I also invoke Richard Wright's Native Son, pointing out the striking similarity between the difficult living conditions of the people in the two novels and the suspenseful police pursuit of Bigger Thomas in Native Son and Michael Adonis in A Walk in the Night.

Contemplating the ghost theme in Hamlet and A Walk in the Night reveals interesting connections. I note, for example, how murder features in the two situations. The ghost of Hamlet's father tells Hamlet the story of his father's murder and urges him to take revenge. Uncle Doughty, the "ghost" in  A Walk in the Night, is eventually killed, accidentally, by Michael Adonis. The shock that Michael experiences as a result can be compared to the shock that Hamlet feels at the news of his father's murder. I wish I could write more, but this is a simple blog post, not a scholarly essay.

Thinking About Hemingway

I constantly think about Ernest Hemingway. Yesterday, thinking about his reference to the hot springs at Lake Manyara, Tanzania, I picked up his Green Hills of Africa, intending to read his actual words.

I randomly opened the book and found myself on page 108, which is not what I was looking for. I started reading it anyway, and was engrossed by it, as usually happens when I read Hemingway. Although I had read and taught this book several times, it seemed as if I was reading his words for the first time:

P.O.M. was reading Spanish Gold, by George A. Birmingham, and she said it was no good. I still had the Sevastopol book of Tolstoi and in the same volume I was reading a story called "The Cossacks" that was very good. In it were the summer heat, the mosquitoes, the feel of the forest in the different seasons, and that river that the Tartars crossed, raiding, and I was living in that Russia again....

I finished this page and read the next, from which I wish to quote the following section:

A country, finally erodes and the dust blows away, the people all die and none of them were of any importance permanently, except those who practiced the arts, and these now wish to cease their work because it is too lonely, too hard to do, and is not fashionable. A thousand years makes economics silly and a work of art endures for ever, but it is very difficult to do and now it is not fashionable. People do not want to do it any more because they will be out of fashion and the lice who crawl on literature will not praise them. Also it is very hard to do. So what? I would go on reading about the river that the Tartars came across when raiding, and the drunken old hunter and the girl and how it was then in the different seasons.

I see echoes in this passage of Hemingway's Nobel Prize speech and of his reflections, in other contexts, on writing. I admire Hemingway for many reasons, one of which being his philosophical insights, although people rarely talk about Hemingway as a philosopher. Yet he has a unique perspective on various subjects, from women to drinking, hunting, and writing. His meditations on life in the second passage I have quoted above is a case in point. It reminds me of Shakespeare's Macbeth who, upon being told that his wife has died, responds as follows:

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
(William Shakespeare, Macbeth. V, V, 19-30).

All this happened yesterday. I better return to Green Hills of Africa, to read Hemingway's words about the hot springs ("maji moto") at Lake Manyara.

Reading "The Kalevala"

I have started reading The Kalevala, the Finnish epic, in preparation for teaching it in my Folklore course. It is proving to be a most enjoyable learning experience. How I wish I had read this epic years ago, when I first heard about it. I would have cited it again and again in my Folklore and Literature classes, since it offers much food for thought and for comparative studies.

I always start my Folklore course with discussions of the origin and evolution of language, which goes hand in hand with the origin and evolution of storytelling and folklore as such. I enjoy sharing with my students what the experts have been saying about the evolution and diversification of the functions of language and storytelling  from the earliest  beginnings. I enjoy sharing the theories about the interface between orality and literacy as discussed so eloquently and insightfully by people like Walter Ong.

In view of all this, I have been moved by how The Kalevala presents the issue of the power and magic of language. The Kalevala exemplifies the art of storytelling in a masterful fashion. It weaves together  adventure, suspense, and unexpected outcomes.

I am intrigued by Old Vainamoinen, the central character and magician par excellence. He patiently listens to an opinionated young man who would measure his knowledge against Old Vainamoinen's and then, by the sheer power of speech, punishes the young man in a manner he will never forget. After the young man begs for mercy, Old Vainamoinen frees the young man, again through the sheer power of words.

When asked by a young lady he desires to accomplish a series of seemingly impossible feats, Old Vainamoinen does so, but, in the end, gracefully admits that he is unable to make the Sampo. He tells the young lady that he will get in touch with Ilmarinen, the peerless master smith, who will surely make the Sampo.

That is what happens. Old Vainamoinen travels from the young lady's home in the remote northern lands back to his home and contacts Ilmarinen with the news of the young lady and what she wants before she will consent to marry any man.

Ilmarinen travels all the way to the young lady's home and, after much effort, succeeds in making the Sampo. Here is what follows:

          Then the smith Ilmarinen
               went to beg the girl.
          He uttered a word, spoke thus:
          'Will you marry me, maid, now
          that the Sampo is finished
               and the bright-lid fair?'

          But that fair girl of the North
               put this into words:
               'And who here next year
               who the third summer
          would set the cuckoo calling
               set the birds singing
          if I went elsewhere and came,
          a berry, to other lands!
          If this hen were to be lost
          if this goose were to wander
          mother's offspring were to stray
          the cowberry went away
          all the cuckoos would be lost
          the joy-birds would move away
               from the peaks of this
          knoll, the shoulders of this ridge.
          Nor am I free otherwise
          cannot leave my maiden days
               these jobs to be done
               in the summer rush--
          berries on the land un-picked
               the bay shores unsung
          untrodden by me the glades
          the groves unplayed in by me.'

      The Kalevala, 117-118.

Ilmanarinen, crestfallen and sorrowful as he is, gracefully takes his leave and prepares to go back home, out of this "dark" and "dreary" place, as the poet/narrator describes it.

Reading this, I recalled the words inscribed in the casket the Prince of Morocco chooses in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in his unsuccessful bid to win Portia's hand in marriage:

          All that glitters is not gold--
          Often have you heard that told;
          Many a man his life hath sold
          But my outside to behold;
          Gilded tombs do worms infold:
          Had you been as wise as bold,
          Young in limbs, in judgement old,
          Your answer had not been inscrolled.
          Fare you well, your suit is cold.
                             
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, II, VII, 66-74.

I have read only about one fifth of the epic, but this has whetted my thirst for more. I look forward to going through the rest of the epic, full of admiration for the enormous effort and skill Elias Lonnrot put into creating this epic, and truly impressed by Keith Bosley's translation of it.