Ontology of Suicide

Ontology of Suicide

Doubt in Hamlet In today's world, where young people seek their identity amidst a manipulated protesting mass led by a demagogue or within ideologies promising to define their sensibility, Hamlet continues to assert the right to independence, uniqueness, freedom, rebellion, and above all, the will to exist during the adolescence of all men and women. After the tragedies that atoned for the hubris of Greek families, the ethnic amalgamation that constituted the Roman Empire, and the brotherhood of the medieval church, Shakespeare and Cervantes formalized individuality in literature. Ontology of Sincerity When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern approach Hamlet to inquire about the cause of his melancholy, the Prince rebukes them for wanting to pluck out the heart of his mystery. HAMLET Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery. Hamlet is the prince who refuses to act like one. Like Saint Thomas, he knows that humans possess all talents, and his greatest frustration lies in discovering in his beloved Ophelia and in his potential father-in-law Polonius the characteristics typical of worldly men and women: cautious in speech, flatterers, accommodating, opportunistic, seemingly patient, and content. While university education is, above all, an education in the art of hypocrisy or, as Rochefoucauld would put it, in the art of confining one's disquiet within the heart[i], Hamlet chooses, by contrast, madness and, through it, the unmasking not only of the pretence of his contemporaries but also of his own frivolity. In the dialogue he maintains with his old school friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet torments the audience with his frankness about his melancholy and his contempt for those who, like the majority, practice the art of lying. HAMLET Anything but to th’ purpose. You were sent for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to color. I know the good king and queen have sent for you. ROSENCRANTZ To what end, my lord? HAMLET That you must teach me. But let me conjure you by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer can charge you withal: be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no. ROSENCRANTZ, to Guildenstern What say you? HAMLET, aside Nay, then, I have an eye of you.—If you love me, hold not off. GUILDENSTERN My lord, we were sent for. HAMLET I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen molt no feather. I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. The eulogy to humanity is refuted by Hamlet himself when contextualized under the anvil of reason: What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. Now whether it be Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th’ event (A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward), I do not know. These dilemmas arise throughout Shakespeare's play and reflect the variations we experience in our lives on essential topics such as what we are, what we should be, what we should believe, the reason for our existence, and more. Ontology of the paranormal The presence of the ghost, far from being a dramatic device, confronts readers and viewers with the invisible and immaterial world. Even before the ghost's appearance, Hamlet was already reflecting on God, angels, demons, hell, limbo, paradise, and the possibility of immortality. In contrast to the heroes of Spanish sacramental plays, Hamlet is not a devout believer. Like Kant, he acknowledges his incapacity to prove or refute the transcendental, the thing in itself. However, everything changes when, confirming the suspicions expressed by Hamlet at the beginning of the play about the illicit relationship between his mother and his uncle, the ghost of his father appears to him. The scene in which King Hamlet cries out for revenge is the epiphany that shapes Hamlet's destiny: HAMLET Oh, my prophetic soul! My uncle! GHOST Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts— O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. O Hamlet, what a falling off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage, and to decline Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine. But virtue, as it never will be moved, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, So, lust, though to a radiant angel linked, Will sate itself in a celestial bed And prey on garbage. But soft, methinks I scent the morning air. Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, My custom always of the afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole With juice of cursèd hebona in a vial And in the porches of my ears did pour The leprous distilment, whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body, And with a sudden vigor it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine, And a most instant tetter barked about, Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust All my smooth body. Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched, Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled, No reck’ning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!" Engaging in a dialogue with ghosts does not necessarily imply belief in them. Prince Hamlet reflects almost immediately on the supernatural nature of this appearance. Like Buñuel, Hamlet does not get entangled in debates about the paranormal; rather, he acknowledges the existence of the ghost he converses with and treats it with the same caution as the living. GHOST 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. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part, And each particular hair to stand an end, Like quills upon the fearful porpentine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love— Educated with a background in the Bible and classical Greek and Roman literature, Hamlet questions his father's intentions for revenge, especially when the ghost itself, in his view, endures the torments of limbo. His doubts provoke in the sensitive Hamlet questions about the true nature of the apparition, even leading him to question if he has made a pact with a demon assuming the form of a deceased person: The spirit that I have seen May be a devil, and the devil hath power T’ assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps, Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me. Today, it has been presumed that these verses from Hamlet refer to the curse directed at Claudius, although they could also be understood as the resentment or desire for revenge of his father. Such ambiguity is never accidental in great poets. The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite That ever I was born to set it right! Based on the traditional interpretation of these verses, Goethe characterizes Hamlet as "hesitant" ("schwankend"), due to his indecision and internal conflict between two worlds, which prevents him from seeking revenge and carrying out the murder of his stepfather.

"Shakespeare, in this case, wanted to portray the effects of a great action on a soul that is not prepared to carry it out (...) A charming, pure, and highly moral nature, but lacking the nerve strength that makes a hero, sinks under a burden it cannot bear or cast off. All duties are sacred to him; the present is too overwhelming. The impossible was demanded of him, not impossible in itself, but impossible for him. He twists and torments himself, advances and retreats; he is constantly lost in his thoughts, absorbed in his thoughts; finally, his goal almost escapes his mind, without, however, regaining his inner peace[ii]."

Goethe does not write without acuity. Hamlet finds his first opportunity to avenge the ghost when he discovers Claudius alone in the chapel praying and considers the possibility of staining the altar with blood. However, in the England of Saint Thomas Becket, this would be considered desecration. Although Hamlet is determined at first, he hesitates when he thinks about the blessing it would give to his fratricidal uncle. HAMLET Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying, And now I’ll do ’t. He draws his sword. And so he goes to heaven, And so am I revenged. That would be scanned: A villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. It could be argued that Hamlet's character is not wavering but transcendentally cautious, as demonstrated by Hamlet's boldness in fatally wounding Polonius, whom he mistakes for Claudius in the royal chamber. POLONIUS (behind the arras) What ho! Help! HAMLET Who's there? A rat? Hamlet kills Polonius by thrusting a rapier through the arras. HAMLET (continuing) Dead! For a ducat! POLONIUS Oh, I am slain! GERTRUDE Oh, God! What have you done? HAMLET (continuing) Nay, I know not. Is it the King? Hamlet murders Polonius but is immediately filled with remorse. Later, he torments himself for having triggered Ophelia's madness as a result of his actions. This sense of guilt leads him to reproach himself and seek forgiveness from Laertes in the prelude to the final scene. His lyrical and compassionate nature increasingly distances him from violence. In fact, in one of his most touching soliloquies, Hamlet tells Horatio not to fear death, even in the midst of an imminent ambush. HAMLET We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be. Ontology of nihilism The sensitivity of a man from the era of great military strategists is challenged today by Shakespeare himself, who is closer to our global age. Goethe, like Gabriel García Márquez, admired dominant and conquering personalities such as Napoleon, who destroyed his world in pursuit of fleeting power. "Voilà un homme" ("Here is a man") was the admiring welcome Goethe gave to the French Emperor after he had massacred his compatriots. If most modern leaders were like Napoleon or Fidel Castro, the world would have already erupted in a nuclear cataclysm. On the other hand, Hamlet's character is more universal: "charming, pure, noble, and, above all, of moral nature," in Goethe's own words. His insights were already contrasted by Oscar Wilde in "The Decay of Lying":

"Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterizes modern thought, but Hamlet invented it. The world has become sad because a puppet once was melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product[iii]."

In reality, Hamlet does not commit a second murder. As I demonstrated in my adaptation of Shakespeare's work to the film "Hamlet Unbound" (2012), Claudius commits suicide out of remorse for accidentally poisoning his beloved Gertrude; Hamlet merely encourages and supports him in his decision. The stage direction indicating that Noble Hamlet gives him poison to drink was added—like all of Shakespeare's stage directions—by later editors after his death. HAMLET Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damnèd Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Forcing him to drink the poison. Follow my mother. Wilde understood Hamlet's indifference to revenge better than Goethe and explained that Hamlet's social function was not assassination but the universal expression of a feeling for therapeutic purposes—just as the catharsis of Greek tragedy was for Aristotle:

“Have you a grief that corrodes your heart? Steep yourself in the language of grief, learn its utterance from Prince Hamlet and Queen Constance, and you will find that mere expression is a mode of consolation, and that Form, which is the birth of passion, is also the death of pain[iv].”

The Homo Sentimentalis that Milan Kundera would analyse in a chapter of his novel "Immortality" also takcles the consequences of such legacy in Western culture:

“Homo sentimentalis must be defined not as a person who experiences feelings (because we are all capable of experiencing them), but as a person who has established them as values. As soon as feeling is considered a value, the world wants to feel it; and as we are all proud of our values, the temptation is great to show off our feelings[v].”

This line of exposing our feelings is the culmination of the precept prescribed by Horace in his "Ars Poetica" (The Poetic Art):

Si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum tibi est[vi]

Which translates as "If you want me to cry, you must first feel pain yourself." To move others with his words, the ancient poet had to sincerely experience and express the emotions himself. Authenticity and empathy in artistic creation were, since ancient Rome, established as a sine qua non requirement of Western art. By contrast, Albert Camus creates a character that is also reflective but active, contrary to any outbreak of nihilism, in his play "Caligula." Assuming violence as a consequence of the meaninglessness of life, the fourth Roman emperor maintains his terrifying heroism even as he is stabbed:

"I am still alive!" ("Je suis encore vivant![vii]").

Ontology of suicide and revenge Albert Camus achieved literary fame by presenting suicide as the raison d'être of philosophy for the post-war generation of the 20th century tormented by the guilt of having patronized Jewish and homosexual extermination in Nazi concentration camps:

“There is only one really serious philosophical problem: suicide. Judging whether or not life is worth living is answering the fundamental question of philosophy. The rest, if the world has three dimensions, if the mind has nine or twelve categories, comes later. These are games; first you have to answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche wants, that a philosopher, to be estimable, must set an example, we understand the importance of this response since it will precede the definitive gesture. These are obvious facts that are sensitive to the heart, but must be explored more deeply to make them clear to the mind [viii].”

Centuries before, Hamlet already asked himself whether or not it is better to commit suicide in his famous monologue, a brief philosophical treatise that posits fear of the afterlife as the main cause of our existence: "To be or not to be—that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep— To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life." The greatest battle for Hamlet is not for revenge but for the prolongation of an existence that should be one part action and three parts reasoning. Although he is obsessed with the familial duty of avenging his murdered father, Hamlet's life would have been short due to his melancholic and rebellious nature. However, Hamlet is more than a nihilist; he is a poet, as evidenced by the verses he composes for the group of actors who visit him. This makes him Shakespeare's alter ego, as Wilde also astutely points out:

"Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square, but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion. They were elements of his nature to which he gave visible form, impulses that stirred so strongly within him that he had, as it were, perforce, to suffer them to realize their energy, not on the lower plane of actual life, where they would have been trammelled and constrained and so made imperfect, but on that imaginative plane of art[ix]."

It is in weighing his revenge that Hamlet finds reasons to exist, postponing it indefinitely for several years until his potential victims become aware and conspire on two occasions to kill him. Hamlet also discovers, through poetry and Theatre, that forgiveness is preferable to killing. Shakespeare would mature this concept to embody it in Prospero, the magician and sage of "The Tempest": PROSPERO: Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further. "Hamlet Unbound" begins with Hamlet's existential monologue, a practice that London Theatre directors have emulated in their productions. My motives were purely dramatic; the monologue is not read as a litany of grievances but as an independent and universal compendium of the struggles that, after renouncing suicide, humanity must face throughout its existence. "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death?" Suicide is a privileged human act, since there is no other animal species that prefers to give up life due to suffering or anguish. There are so many reasons why people can commit suicide, as expressions of humanity, from honour , pride, remorse, love, shame, public execution or stupidity. All the reasons are valid from an ethical point of view, so can we blame someone for being born physiologically stupid? One of the most difficult tasks of writers is to portray suicide, by virtue of its ability to express the deepest emotions of the human being. Dostoevsky in “The Demons” portrays Kirilov as a rebel against the values of the bourgeoisie who commits suicide to honor the creed to which he has subscribed by transferring his zeal to die for the country to a nihilistic ideology. Kirilov's rebellion is a rejection of the restrictions and social conventions imposed by tsarism and traditional morality, an existential and philosophical challenge and a direct political or revolutionary act:

“Kirilov, in the greatness of his soul, could not compromise with an idea and shot himself; but I see, of course, that he was a great soul because he had lost his mind. I can never lose my mind and I can never believe in an idea as much as he does. I can't even get that interested in an idea. “I will never, ever be able to shoot myself.”

Sylvia Plath addresses the topic of suicide in "Lady Lazarus," in which the author compares herself to Lazarus, the biblical character who rose from the dead:

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. … This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade

. In this poem, the poet confesses her repeated attempts to commit suicide, while she promises that she will succeed next time. But Plath's most revealing poem about suicide is "You Are.":

Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fools’ Day, O high-riser, my little loaf!

In this poem, the poet expresses the pain she felt over the loss of a baby. Plath's death, like that of so many other poets who committed suicide, is not tragic, but epic. The cause of Plath's suicide should not be found in his personal problems, but in his incompatible sensitivity with the harshness of the world, a cause of sadness and despair. Plath, like Kirilov, was a woman tormented by her own inner demons. She suffered from depression, anxiety and bipolarity, according to psychologists, but the greatest evil in the world is awareness. The mistreatment of her husband, also a poet, and the death of her baby was a devastating blow to her. Her work is a beautiful testimony of human suffering, a compendium of poems as heartbreaking as they are honest. Plath didn't mince words; She sang to her darkest emotions openly, as every suicide does before us with her final gesture, as expressed by a contrite Fernando Pessoa:

“When they told me yesterday that the tobacconist's employee had committed suicide I felt it was a lie. Poor thing, it also existed! We had forgotten that, all of us, all of us who knew him in the same way as all of us who didn't know him. Tomorrow we will forget it better. But if there was a soul, there was one to kill. Passions? Distress? Without a doubt... But for me, as for all humanity, all that remains is the memory of a silly smile on a mixed coat, dirty and uneven on the shoulders. That's all I have left, of someone who felt so much that he killed himself from feeling, because, at the end of the day, you shouldn't kill someone for something else...[x]”

Oedipal ontology Hamlet's quasi-incestuous relationships with his mother Gertrude lead Freud to diagnose Hamlet as the quintessential sufferer of the Oedipus complex. According to Freud, his delay in avenging Claudius lies in Hamlet's secret admiration for Claudius, who poisoned his father to sleep with his mother. The son's jealousy towards his mother's new lover is evident in the famous scene after Polonius's death. GERTRUDE Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this! HAMLET A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother, as to kill a king and marry with his brother. GERTRUDE As kill a king? HAMLET Ay, lady, it was my word. (…) GERTRUDE What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? HAMLET (fierce) Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty; Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows As false as dicers' oaths. O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow. Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at. GERTRUDE Ah me! what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index? Let us not forget that Hamlet is a teenager prone to passionately denounce injustices. Prudence, if anything, is a gift of maturity. Just as a baby refuses to breathe until it receives a slap that makes it aware of its new reality, so does the adolescent shout upon discovering the world's intrigues until "the whips and scorns of outrageous fortune" force them to hide their thoughts and emotions. Ontology of Art and Theatre The doubts that arise in Hamlet's mind due to the nature of his father's ghost are precisely what lead him to engage with poetry and dramatic art. Polonius considers this inclination harmless, so he persuades Claudius to subsidize the stay of a Theatre group at court and make it available to young Hamlet: KING With all my heart, and it doth much content me To hear him so inclined. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge And drive his purpose into these delights. Hamlet is compelled to write a short play in which he will unravel the motivations and actions of his father's supposed murderers: his uncle, the now King Claudius, and his mother Gertrude, who is in mourning but newly married at the same time. His original purpose, as naive as the frankness and teenage dramatics of Hamlet, is to catch Claudius off guard, making him a victim of his own conscience. However, during the process of staging his play, the Prince gains a renewed understanding of the story. Before executing his dramatic trap, the actors perform before Hamlet the death of Priam at the hands of Pyrrhus, in front of his wife Hecuba. This scene is the response from ancient times to the questions posed in the "To be or not to be" soliloquy. If in the 17th century, Shakespeare laments the hypocrisy of civil society, in the 11th century BC, poets could only denounce the brutality and cruelty of the victors, who violated and enslaved defeated queens. Compared to the Achaean warriors, Claudius appears as a gentleman who had the delicacy to seduce his defeated brother's queen, allowing him, through their marriage, to maintain the throne. FIRST PLAYER But who, ah woe, had seen the moblèd queen— … Run barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flames With bisson rheum, a clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, About her lank and all o’erteemèd loins A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up— Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped, ’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounced. But if the gods themselves did see her then When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs, The instant burst of clamor that she made (Unless things mortal move them not at all) Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven And passion in the gods. Hamlet also realizes that an individual's or a social group's worst calamity acquires meaning before an audience. Those who expect permanent happiness and tranquillity run the risk of falling into monotony. Hamlet's own inaction, as Goethe and Wilde pointed out, takes on a leading role that makes him the precursor of characters like Bartleby, K., Molloy, Malone, and the Unnamable. Kafka takes to the extreme the inaction and despair present in Hamlet. In his story "Before the Law" ("Vor dem Gesetz"), a man must wait decades, until his old age, for a door to be opened that allows him to reach the Law; The guardian who protects it does not allow it and warns him that if he passes through it there will be more doors with guardians more powerful than him, who will not let him access the Law either. Already almost blind, and in the midst of his agony, the man asks the guardian why no one else wanted to enter, like him, through that door, to which the guardian responds that this forbidden door had been designed only for him, and that after his death it will be closed. The oppression and helplessness we feel in those two pages make an indelible impression on the reader. However, we can wonder if this waiting is absurd or, on the contrary, necessary for a Czech writer of Jewish descent to give us this short story about the importance and meaning of frustration. Like Hamlet, the man before the law does not commit suicide but waits day after day, year after year, with the firm belief that someday he will find a solution to his dilemmas. Despite having the King and the law against him, Hamlet also prefers to exist because he understands that it is better to be than not to be, that to fight is preferable to sleep, and that to suffer is better than to rest. In the final lines of the play, Shakespeare makes a reference to his profession as a playwright. Throughout the play, Horatio evokes the great Roman poet, author of the "Eclogues," as well as the poet Virgil, his literary friend. Like Virgil in Dante's "Divine Comedy," Horatio is the counsellor and guide to the protagonist on his journey through the underworld. Following Friedrich Schlegel's definition of the ideal spectator, Horatio also embodies the role that the chorus played in Greek tragedy, an element absent in the secularized Elizabethan Theatre. It is to Horatio that Hamlet entrusts the task of writing his story for future generations: HAMLET O God, Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story. Writing is indeed to absent oneself from happiness to construct, through the pain of reliving the past, life itself. Homer had sung in The Odyssey: The gods gave suffering to men, So that poets would have something to sing. In the Theatre arena, Shakespeare broadens the perspective: spectators must relive the greatest sufferings on the stage, sharing the certainty that they themselves could represent them: HORATIO Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, … And let me speak to th’ yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall’n on th’ inventors’ heads. All this can I Truly deliver. 

[i] “La constance des sages n’est que l’art de renfermer leur agitation dans le cœur”. La Rochefoucault, Maximes, 20. [ii] Goethe, J. W. (2007). “In diesen Worten liegt, so glaube ich, der Schlüssel zu Hamlets ganzem Vorgehen. Für mich ist es klar, dass Shakespeare in diesem Fall die Auswirkungen einer großen Handlung auf eine Seele darstellen wollte, die für die Ausführung dieser Handlung ungeeignet ist. . . . Eine liebliche, reine, edle und höchst moralische Natur, ohne die Nervenstärke, die einen Helden ausmacht, sinkt unter einer Last, die sie nicht tragen kann und nicht ablegen darf. Alle Pflichten sind ihm heilig: die Gegenwart ist zu schwer. Unmögliches wurde ihm abverlangt - nicht an sich unmöglich, aber für ihn unmöglich. Er windet und wendet sich, quält sich; er schreitet voran und schreckt zurück; er wird immer in Gedanken versetzt, versetzt sich selbst in Gedanken; endlich verliert er fast sein Ziel aus den Gedanken, ohne jedoch seinen Seelenfrieden wiederzuerlangen.” Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Aegypan, 234. [iii] Wilde, O. (2020). The Decay of Lying. Penguin UK. [iv] Ibídem. [v] Kundera, M. (1990). “Il faut définir l’homo sentimentalis non pas comme une personne qui éprouve des sentiments (car nous sommes tous capables d’en éprouver), mais comme une personne qui les a érigés en valeurs. Dès que le sentiment est considéré comme une valeur, tbut le monde veut le ressentir ; et comme nous sommes tous fiers de nos valeurs, la tentation est grande d’exhiber nos sentiments.” L'immortalité : roman. Paris: Gallimard, 236 -237. [vi] Horatius Flaccus, Q. (1564). Ars poetica Horatii, et in eam paraphrasis, et parekbolai, siue Commentariolum Ioannis Sambuci Tirnauiensis Pannonij. ex officina Christophori Plantini. National Central Library of Rome, 8. [vii] Camus, A. (1969). Caligula. Gallimard. [viii] Camus, Albert (1967). “Il n’y a qu’un probléme philosophique vraiment sérieux : c’est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d’étre vécue, c’est répondre à la question fondamentale de la philosophie. Le reste, si le monde a trois dimensions, si l’esprit a neuf ou douze catégories, vient ensuite. Ce sont des jeux ; il faut d’abord répondre. Et s’il est vrai, comme le veut Nietzsche, qu’un philosophe, pour étre estimable, doive précher d’exemple, on saisit l’importance de cette réponse puisqu’elle va précéder le geste définitif. Ce sont là des évidences sensibles au coeur, mais qu'il faut approfondir pour les rendre claires à l’esprit.” Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Essai sur l'absurde. Gallimard. [ix] Wilde, O. (1997). The Critic as Artist. Green Integer. [x] Pessoa, F. (2013). “Quando ontem me disseram que o empregado da tabacaria se tinha suicidado, tive uma impressão de mentira. Coitado, também existia! Tínhamos esquecido isso, nós todos, nós todos que o conhecíamos do mesmo modo que todos que o não conheceram. Amanhã esquecê-lo-emos melhor. Mas que havia alma, havia, para que se matasse. Paixões? Angústias? Sem dúvida... Mas a mim, como à humanidadeinteira, há só a memória de um sorriso parvo por cima de um casaco de mescla, sujo, e desigual nos ombros. É quanto me resta, a mim, de quem tanto sentiu que se matou de sentir, porque, enfim, de outra coisa se não deve matar alguém...” Livro do Desassossego. Luso Livros, § 317.