Class Notes 3/24

Why are we reading Hamlet & the Bhagavad-Gita in tendem?
...hesitation to act...
niether Hamlet or Arjuna can do anything because of an epiphanic revelation...

something rotten in the state of Denmark....Denmark stands for the world...something wrong with the very soul of the world......ontoligical difficulty

traumatic loss of Hamlet's father leads to a dark epiphany...

Hamlet imagines his mother and Uncle in the wedding bed....it is all too much for Hamlet.

Arjuna doesn't want to go to war and kill his kinfolk and teachers....Krishna, avatar, ........divinity that appears to humans, adopts human form as charioteer.

Hamlet and father's ghost

Kernel of wisdom in Hindu thought...Ajuna/Hamlet, ontologically problematic.

Dhritarashtra - Blind King...
Sanjaya....is the poet, the teller of the story...

opening lines, very important......Kuru, name of the Battlefield....metaphor for the inner sturggle.....Kuru is THE battlefield.....not only people are in battle here.........battlefield of life......becomes dharma........sacred duty.

- on average, how many books have people in America read this year......ZERO! shocked?

Bhagavad-Gita....reminds some reader of the Bible.....Sanjaya starts listing off warrior names....like in the Bible, so and so begat so and so.......

The Infinity of Lists by Umberto Eco......cool book. If anyone wants to see it I will bring my copy in to class.

But why all these boring lists??
perhaps a way of getting into the endless story...you have to train yourself.....the mysterious mental maneuver to read the entire list, aware,
*allows us to understand that the long boring list is not boring..........we are..............
Nick, list some birds......purple finch, magpie...

after the list, get back to the story itself.

battle is a metaphor.....

Krishna's first advice to Arjuna....go kill people....

Why in the world would Ghandi use the Bhagavad-Gita where a god incites Arjuna to kill people?
because he understood, the violence Krishna is inciting, is to engage the metaphorical violence.

action as sacrifice...to make sacred.

Hamlet can't act.....whining. Break through seeming into being. life is a stage.
Arjuna can't act....

one thing that must happen i nlife? death.
(taking off in an airplane is usually optional, but landing is never optional. That plane is coming down one way or another.)

"old men look like babies, bald, mewling and puking again." thank you Dr. Sexson

is this all just a game? rhetorical question.
of course it's a game
have to play the game....

what is this hour? the entire human life.

Arjuna and Hamlet cut out of the same fabric.

do what you are supposed to do.
What am I supposed to do?
warrior thing

Rian
learn by going where you have to go,,,,

March 31!! DUE
thesis statement.....put it on your blog!
also: see Jennie Lynn's blog with paper requirements.....

epiphany of the class.