Vol.3, No 1, 2004 pp. 57 - 72
UDC 821.111-02.09 Shakespeare W.
CHARCOALS OR DIAMONDS?
ON DESTRUCTION OF MORAL AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
(OR SOUL MURDER) IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS
Ljiljana Bogoeva Sedlar
Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade
This paper was presented at the First British Shakespeare Association Conference,
held at De Montfort University in Leicester in August of 2003. It was part
of the seminar on "Shakespearean Childhoods: Representing and Addressing
Children in Shakespeare's Work and Afterlife". It highlights the process
of instruction children are subjected to by various figures of authority,
in order to point out that the effect such instruction has on them is equivalent
to the destruction of their moral and emotional intelligence, or murder
of their soul. Shakespeare exposes the deadliness of this traditional 'for-your-own-good'
pedagogy by showing in his plays how children, belonging to different historical
epochs and geographical locations, have to 'give themselves up to be commanded',
and how the triumph of the will of the adults over them comes to be complete.
Forced, or seduced into self-betrayal, children are raised not to become
who they potentially are, but what they are expected to be, to fulfill
prescribed social roles and expectations. Shakespeare does not merely illustrate
the fact that 'dumb waiters' such as Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Polonius,
Laertes, Osric, Oswald, etc. exist; he shows how they are created out of
the same humanity that is Horatio's, Hamlet's, Edgar's, Kent's, Cordelia's.
This approach to Shakespeare has been taken up and explored by John
Herbert's Fortune and Men's Eyes, Heiner Muller's Hamletmachine, Edward
Bond's Lear, Howard Barker's Seven Lears, the Women's Collective's Lear's
Daughters. The plays Faust (Faust is Dead) by Mark Ravenhill and Far Away
by Caryl Churchill are also seen as 'Shakespearean' because their central
preoccupation is the treatment of the child. In the first part of this
paper the playwrights' Shakespearean concerns are compared to the findings
of Victor Frankl, Bruno Bettelheim, and Alice Miller, psychoanalysts who
have worked with children most of their lives. The second part examines
Shakespeare's King Lear and Howard Barker's Seven Lears: The Pursuit Of
The Good (the reconstruction of the process through which Lear, the child,
is turned into the King we meet in Shakespeare's play). The subtitle, The
Pursuit Of The Good, places Berker's approach in the tradition of Socrates
and Nietzsche (from whose Twilight of the Idols the title of the paper
is taken). In different ways Socrates, Shakespeare, Nietzsche and Barker
built their work on a 'heretical' conception of personal development, founded
on the belief in the child's innate sense of justice, the godlike authority
of the private soul, and questioning as the method that leads to the unfolding
recognition (and love) of the Good. Their works show how care-givers guided
by such assumptions have been replaced in our culture by promoters of the
'put-money-in-your-purse' poisonous pedagogy, which cripples and dehumanizes
the child.
GRAFITI ILI DIJAMANTI?
O UNIŠTAVANJU MORALNE I EMOCIONALNE INTELIGENCIJE
(ILI UBISTVU DUŠE) U ŠEKSPIROVIM KOMADIMA
Tekst predstavlja deo izlaganja sa osnivačke konferencije Britanskog Šekspirovog
društva, održane na Demonfor univerzitetu u Lesteru, avgusta 2003. godine.
Rad povezuje drame u kojima Šekspir prikazuje 'pedagoške' situacije (kontakte
u kojima ljudi od iskustva i autoriteta uče mlade vrednostima na kojima
društveni poredak počiva) sa pedagogijom koja je proizvela nemački nacizam,
i sa nepromenjenom pedagoškom praksom koja danas školuje kadar za najnovije
epizode tragične i sramne istorije prosvećenog i tehnološki nadmoćog Zapada.
Nasuprot onima koji takvu tradiciju svojim autoritetom i silom nameću,
rad ističe tradiciju drugačijih učitalja, kojoj pripadaju Sokrat, Sofokle,
Šekspir, Niče, i brojni novi, savremeni nastavljači istinske brige o mladima.
U tom svetlu rad pominje dramska dela Kerol Črčil, Marka Rejvenhila, Šile
Stivenson, Hajnera Mjulera i Hauarda Barkera, i knjige koje su o svom radu
sa mladima napisali psihijatri Viktor Frankl, Bruno Betelhajm i Alis Miler.
Da li će mladi postati grafiti koji se pod svakim pritiskom lome, ili nesalomivi
dragulji, (dijamanti, kako Niče u Sumraku Bogova priželjkuje) zavisi u
mnogome od razvojne paradigme, odnosno pedagogije, kojoj su podvrgnuti.
