I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I
expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one
after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and
Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I
felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I
was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by
the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or
whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the
works of Shakespeare was itself senseless. My consternation was
increased by the fact that I always keenly felt the beauties of poetry
in every form; then why should artistic works recognized by the whole
world as those of a genius--the works of Shakespeare--not only fail to
please me, but be disagreeable to me! For a long time I could not
believe in myself, and during fifty years, in order to test myself, I
several times recommenced reading Shakespeare in every possible form, in
Russian, in English, in German and in Schlegel's translation, as I was
advised. Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical
plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion,
weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, being desirous once
more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read
the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys,"
"Troilus and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," and I have felt,
with even greater force, the same feelings--this time, however, not of
bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the
unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and
which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and
spectators to discover in him non-existent merits--thereby distorting
their esthetic and ethical understanding--is a great evil, as is every
untruth.
[Footnote 52: From "A Critical Essay on Shakespeare," published in
1907.]
Altho I know that the majority of people so firmly believe in the
greatness of Shakespeare that in reading this judgment of mine they
will not admit even the possibility of its justice, and will not give
it the slightest attention, nevertheless I will endeavor, as well as I
can, to show why I believe that Shakespeare can not be recognized
either as a great genius, or even as an average author....
However hopeless it may seem, I will endeavor to demonstrate in the
selected drama--"King Lear"--all those faults equally characteristic
also of all the other tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare, on
account of which he not only is not representing a model of dramatic
art, but does not satisfy the most elementary demands of art
recognized by all.
Dramatic art, according to the laws established by those very critics
who extol Shakespeare, demands that the persons represented in the
play should be, in consequence of actions proper to their characters,
and owing to a natural course of events, placed in positions requiring
them to struggle with the surrounding world to which they find
themselves in opposition, and in this struggle should display their
inherent qualities.
In "King Lear" the persons represented are indeed placed externally in
opposition to the outward world, and they struggle with it. But their
strife does not flow from the natural course of events nor from their
own characters, but is quite arbitrarily established by the author,
and therefore can not produce on the reader the illusion which
represents the essential condition of art.
Lear has no necessity or motive for his abdication; also, having lived
all his life with his daughters, has no reason to believe the words of
the two elders and not the truthful statement of the youngest; yet
upon this is built the whole tragedy of his position.
Similarly unnatural is the subordinate action: the relation of
Gloucester to his sons. The positions of Gloucester and Edgar flow
from the circumstance that Gloucester, just like Lear, immediately
believes the coarsest untruth and does not even endeavor to inquire of
his injured son whether what he is accused of be true, but at once
curses and banishes him. The fact that Lear's relations with his
daughters are the same as those of Gloucester to his sons makes one
feel yet more strongly that in both cases the relations are quite
arbitrary, and do not flow from the characters nor the natural course
of events. Equally unnatural, and obviously invented, is the fact that
all through the tragedy Lear does not recognize his old courtier,
Kent, and therefore the relations between Lear and Kent fail to excite
the sympathy of the reader or spectator. The same, in a yet greater
degree, holds true of the position of Edgar, who, unrecognized by any
one, leads his blind father and persuades him that he has leapt off a
cliff, when in reality Gloucester jumps on level ground.
These positions, into which the characters are placed quite
arbitrarily, are so unnatural that the reader or spectator is unable
not only to sympathize with their sufferings but even to be interested
in what he reads or sees. This in the first place.
Secondly, in this, as in the other dramas of Shakespeare, all the
characters live, think, speak, and act quite unconformably with the
given time and place. The action of "King Lear" takes place 800 years
B.C., and yet the characters are placed in conditions possible only in
the Middle Ages: participating in the drama are kings, dukes, armies,
and illegitimate children, and gentlemen, courtiers, doctors, farmers,
officers, soldiers, and knights with vizors, etc. It is possible that
such anachronisms (with which Shakespeare's dramas abound) did not
injure the possibility of illusion in the sixteenth century and the
beginning of the seventeenth, but in our time it is no longer possible
to follow with interest the development of events which one knows
could not take place in the conditions which the author describes in
detail. The artificiality of the positions, not flowing from the
natural course of events, or from the nature of the characters, and
their want of conformity with time and space, is further increased by
those coarse embellishments which are continually added by Shakespeare
and intended to appear particularly touching. The extraordinary storm
during which King Lear roams about the heath, or the grass which for
some reason he puts on his head--like Ophelia in "Hamlet"--or Edgar's
attire, or the fool's speeches, or the appearance of the helmeted
horseman, Edgar--all these effects not only fail to enhance the
impression, but produce an opposite effect. "_Man sieht die Absicht
und man wird verstimmt_," as Goethe says. It often happens that even
during these obviously intentional efforts after effect, as, for
instance, the dragging out by the legs of half a dozen corpses, with
which all Shakespeare's tragedies terminate, instead of feeling fear
and pity, one is tempted rather to laugh.