Table Of ContentHamlet and the Snowman
American University Studies
Series IV
English Language and Literature
Vol. 192
PETER LANG
New York • Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:127) Boston (cid:127) Bern
Frankfurt am Main (cid:127) Berlin (cid:127) Brussels (cid:127) Vienna (cid:127) Oxford
Benjamin Newman
Hamlet and the Snowman
Reflections on Vision and Meaning
in Life and Literature
PETER LANG
New York (cid:127) Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:127) Boston (cid:127) Bern
Frankfurt am Main (cid:127) Berlin (cid:127) Brussels (cid:127) Vienna (cid:127) Oxford
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Newman, Benjamin.
Hamlet and the snowman: reflections on vision
and meaning in life and literature / Benjamin Newman.
p. cm. — (American university studies. IV,
English language and literature; v. 192)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Literature—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 2. Meaning (Philosophy)
in literature. 3. Meaning (Philosophy). I. Title. II. American university studies. Series IV,
English language and literature; v. 192.
PN49.N518 809’.93384—dc21 99-045332
ISBN 0-8204-4854-0
ISSN 0741-0700
DIE DEUTSCHE BIBLIOTHEK-CIP-EINHEITSAUFNAHME
Newman, Benjamin:
Hamlet and the snowman: reflections on vision
and meaning in life and literature / Benjamin Newman.
−New York; Washington, D.C./Baltimore; Boston; Bern;
Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Brussels; Vienna; Canterbury: Lang.
(American university studies: Ser. 4, English
language and literature; Vol. 192)
ISBN 0-8204-4854-0
Excerpts from the book Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, copyright 1963 by Samuel Beckett; renewed
1988 Samuel Beckett. Used with the permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpts from the book Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, copyright 1954 by Samuel Beckett; renewed
1982 by Samuel Beckett. Used with the permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.
© 2000 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Prologue 1
I. About Questions and Strangeness 3
II. The Snowman and His Friend 7
III. Hamlet on Seemings and Truth 13
IV. A Meeting Between Friends 29
V. Bartleby’s World 35
VI. Some Questions for Melville 59
VII. Reality and Realization 65
VIII. The Two Worlds of Falstaff 71
IX. Forebodings and Silences 77
X. Some Notes from Underground 85
XI. Withinness and Aboutness 95
XII. Beckett’s Figures of Existence 105
VI Contents
XIII. Say Something; Listen 117
XIV. Cycles and Sameness 123
Epilogue 131
Prologue
The years go on and on, round and round they go, one by
one the seasons come and go. Each year, each turn, brings
with it a finality of one kind or another, and then, in the
course of time, a special moment will come to some human
soul when life itself emerges as the finality, a thing to be-
hold, something that is the last of everything. Standing then
as if upon nothing in some vastness looking on, one thinks
and wonders, is that what it is, the whole of it, established,
examined, and final. It is then that literature, like some sub-
servient conspirator eager to join in, comes running, carry-
ing its bundle of delights and all its sundry seemings, call-
ing out its confirmation. Yes, is its cry, I have seen it too, I
know it well, and here is my vision of all that it is. And mean-
ing, where is it to be found? It is the feelings that accom-
pany vision and move us to ask, can it be, is it truly so, and
now. . . .
Existence does not seem to want to be spoken or written
about too openly and freely, and literature, its bosom com-
2 Prologue
panion, does its best to hide right along with it behind a
vast inventory of metaphor and story. In the end, what is
the hiding but a loneliness amid silences. The need to know,
to know and then to know more and more, to say, to listen,
can life be life without it. And that is why I wrote this book,
to talk things over as it were, and pass along reflections and
wonderings that have come to me with the years about the
truth and the meaning of what lies behind literature’s en-
trancements, and dormant or insulated in the hearts and
minds of all the living.
I
About Questions and Strangeness
Life begins with a question. Where am I? The newborn, cry-
ing it, senses the strangeness. What is all this? Life ends with
questions. Oh God, where am I going, where will I be, how
fast or slow will time then go, or will there be no time? And
in-between, after the beginning and before the end. Who
am I, who are we with body and head, and arms and legs
outstretched, where am I to go, what am I to do? Are there
no answers that satisfy? If there is something that can be
said, come, tell us, you who can, whoever and wherever
you are; what is this place we walk upon? The strangeness
of it all!
What are our questions but feelings of the strangeness of
living and of our lives—that I do not know, the fear of what
is there or is to come, a need for something not here, per-
haps there, over there, an absence and a wanting. I turn away
to thoughts of this or that, of anything, persons known, an
empty glass, a painting that intrigues, I think of an event
gone by or to come, pages read, even a single word upon a
4 About Questions and Strangeness
page, it is no use. I have tried to think the thought alone and
cannot. It is so with everyone. Feelings are always there,
strong, deep, lying in wait for idea or initiating it, invading
thought and its words which, thus swollen, carry them for-
ever. There it is, like an ocean over all the land, the feelings
that we are, the feelings in our lives, inseparable from our
thoughts, the questions we ask, the answers we struggle for,
the hopes that are grasped. And finally, all becomes melded
together, a composite, a vision of life that is a summary of
what we find it to be, our life but also sensed as the life that
is mankind’s.
What is such a vision, its make-up, its form? What else
can it be when one speaks of human existence but I went
here, I went there, those are the people I encountered, and
this is what happened to me and how I felt; and enfolding
all of it into its very essence, I will now impart to you my
perception of what it all seems to mean. The nucleus of that
vision comes to us early, takes on a number of refinements
as we go on, and is always with us. Those of the masters are
preserved in the literature they have left for us.
That essence, is there a different one for each of us, so
different perhaps that we can never come close to another’s,
or is there a common core to all that corresponds in turn to a
common impact imposed upon us by existence itself. No
one as yet has come to me wishing to tell me what their life
means for them, and how it probably compares with that of
others; no one except the masters. And so it is to them that
we must now turn if we are to have the courage to speak on
what others have maintained so solid a silence.
