the dance of human passions (Shakespeare)

It seems to me that in his response to Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, like Tolstoy, was troubled by the absence of that kind of religious perception permeating Shakespeare's plays. Although, I concede, there is no evidence for this in the first passage. "Shakespeare, one might say, displays the dance of human passions. For this reason he has to be objective, otherwise he would not so much display the dance of human passions—as perhaps talk about it. But he shows us them in a dance, not naturalistically" (CV, 36/42). Here we see again the saying/showing distinction; but there is no hint of any criticism of Shakespeare. And yet, I want to suggest that it is just the so-called "objectivity" of Shakespeare that is the source of Wittgenstein's disaffection. It is this that enables us to make sense of the initially puzzling remarks, "I do not think that Shakespeare can be set alongside any other poet. Was he perhaps a creator of language rather than a poet? . . . The poet cannot [End Page 250] really say of himself 'I sing as the bird sings'—but perhaps S. could have said it of himself" (CV, 84/95–96); and, "I do not think Shakespeare could have reflected on the 'lot of the poet.' Neither could he regard himself as a prophet or a teacher of humanity" (CV, 85/96). Here, as George Steiner has shown, Wittgenstein employs a conception of "the poet" (Dichter) according to which the artist is an ethical visionary, whose every word is duly weighed and considered, imbued and "permeated with" (Tolstoy's expression) a distinctive moral perspective.¹⁷ It is here that the contrast with Beethoven is so telling. For Wittgenstein, it was "Beethoven (& perhaps Goethe to a certain extent)" who more than any philosopher, except perhaps Nietzsche, "tackled & wrestled with . . . problems of the intellectual world of the West" (CV, 9/11; written 16th January, 1931).¹⁸ Shakespeare is not, in Wittgenstein's eyes, a poet in this sense: he does not struggle with problems of the meaning of life, he is "not a moral teacher."¹⁹ He is rather "a creator of language," someone who is, brilliantly and ingeniously no doubt, "playing with words" (as Tolstoy put it).

Peter B. Lewis - Wittgenstein, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare ...

- [ 翻譯此頁 ]由 PB Lewis 著作 - 2005 - 被引用 1 次 - 相關文章
In the very first passage from 1939–40, Wittgenstein points out that Shakespeare "displays the dance of human passions," though "not naturalistically" (CV, ...



這一段 是從 Shakespeare: a very short introduction 引發出的
這書的Shakespeare中文可能採用梁實秋的
是平實兒無文彩的散文