(If
you think that this entry may be rather sinister, and flirting with the
macabre, forget about it! This is merely a literary-philosophical rumination
over Shakespeare and Nietzsche…)
Hamlet’s
celebrated soliloquy on man’s irresolution over “to
be, or not to be?” (in
other words, his “suicide monologue”)
seems to have found the perfect answer in Nietzsche, whose genius has given a
rebirth to philosophy and psychology as Siamese twins! Here is
his definitive solution to Hamlet’s dilemma, as given in Jenseits (157):
“The thought of suicide is a powerful comfort: it helps one
through many a dreadful night.”
The
key word here is “thought.” For, now,
here is Shakespeare again: “To die, to sleep, no
more! But that we dread of something after death: the undiscovered country…”
The thought, not the act, this is what makes all the
difference! As long as one thinks about it as an option, but not as a done deal,
one stays clear of the edge beyond which lies “the undiscovered country.”
Like a Colossus bestriding the two worlds, one foot in this world, and
the other foot in the next (which is none other than Hamlet’s “undiscovered
country”), our mind, in the
previously cited Nietzschean aphorism, bridges the chasm between the two: while
pleasantly musing on the easy escape from a ‘thousand natural shocks’ of
our daily existence, it allows us a return, rather than a one-way ticket, that
is, a safe and assured journey back from the unknown.
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