Skinflakes

 

 

It’s only skin,

fat and flakes,

and germs

and that little scar

you received your fourth

birthday—just below the eye.

A piñata error, faltering flies

the bat, the swing:

only skin.

 

 

“Leda and the Swan;” “The Gyres”

For Lonely Goth:

This is a rough draft of a rather-polished essay I wrote last year. This isn’t the one I had originally intended on displaying (I had written an essay before on “Leda and the Swan” exclusively) to Lonely Goth, but it does, at least, present my primary conception of Yeats’ primary theme: subjective salvation.

Here are the two poems being discussed:

http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/865/

http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/The_Gyres.htm

Salvation: The Consequence of a Radical Acceptance of Life and Its Transformation of Ourselves through Its Difficulties

            It has often been said that the most notable characteristic of W.B. Yeats’ style and artistic theory was his conception of life as innately and unavoidably tragic. Salvation, then (in Yeats’ conception of such), is a personal, subjective affair and takes place through the embrace of this chaotic indeterminability and Dionysian frenzy—an acceptance of tragedy and poor circumstances, an acceptance of the inevitability of chaos, disorder, and decay. This notion of the celebration of life as tragic and salvation occurring through the affirmation of the subjective over objective is found in “Leda and the Swan” particularly (which appears in The Tower). And, especially, this embrace of chaos or merely the subjective circumstances in which one finds oneself appears in one of Yeats’ last and final poems: “The Gyres.” Salvation, for Yeats, is a subjective conquering by the individual over circumstances through a radical acceptance of chaos and the inner core and final end of life: tragedy. Both of these poems embody this theme—indeed, they stand apart as wholly emblematic of this markedly Yeatsian conception.

“Leda and the Swan” is a retelling by Yeats of the Greek myth wherein Zeus, taking the body of a swan, rapes a young woman named Leda. Much attention in the poem is given to her vulnerability to the force of this divine swan: “he holds her helpless breast upon his breast.” She is utterly and entirely unable to stop the assault. Indeed, Yeats makes the entire experience utterly vulgar—the swan’s male extension is referred to as a “feather’d glory.” The swan’s strong distinction from what is human in Leda stands out—this feathered glory stands in contrast to her own “loosening thighs.” The event ends in orgasm, describing as a “shudder in the loins,” and consequently, Helen of Troy and the tragedy of Agamemnon (a character mentioned explicitly): “A shudder in the loins engenders there / The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead.” The broken wall is, of course, referring to the siege of Troy and the various related tragedies and painful situations which were caused by this initial act of lust: the rape of a mortal woman by a god. The rape of Leda can be seen as “being symbolical of the initiation of a chaotic and destructive civilization, which consumes itself with the flames of uncontrollable passions” (Billigheimer 65).

Yet, this cannot be read solely as a tragic situation. As is common for Yeats, there are mixed results, positive and negative, that are rumored to have come out of this tragic experience. Out of the generations to follow from this rape, a new Greek civilization was born—one marked by the entrance of the gods’ blood again into the world in the form of Helen (and Castor and Pollux, though irrelevant in this subject treatment). Likewise, the last stanza’s meaning places the entire poem in a new light. What does it mean to “put on” the knowledge of Zeus? The feminist critic Janet Neigh in “Reading from the Drop: Poetics of Identification and Yeats’ ‘Leda and the Swan’” reads it as an instance of the psychoanalytic concept of “identification” (Neigh 147). “Identification” is defined as “the detour through the other that defines the self” (Neigh 148). Leda, then, is violently faced with a force entirely opposed to her being—in having faced this, she carries away some of the power of the one who has made her an object, an Other (in Beauvoir’s sense of the term), a slave. Through undergoing this pain, shame, and humiliating experience, she has captured something of the essence of a god.

These can be seen as case of “tragic joy,” defined by the critic Jahan Ramazani in “Yeats: Tragic Joy and the Sublime” as “the emotive structure and ambivalence of the sublime, since the sublime involves the conversion of affects from defeat and terror to freedom and joy” (Ramazani 164). Yeats, though reticent of the use of the term “sublime” (being critical of the Romantics in his later years), once penned “the nobleness of the arts is in the mingling of contraries, the extremity of sorrow, the extremity of joy” (qtd. by Ramazani 165). Leda’s final state at the end of the play thus invites a comingled interpretation and psychological integration of a traumatic and tragic event—though it would be difficult to claim that Leda’s state approaches or should approach anything resembling the feeling of joy, the comingled elements in the post facto understanding of the event serve to empower her and find her center (which is not an objective metaphysical principle that one can cling to; rather, being a subjective self-mastery and self-transcendence) while caught in a whirlwind of poor happenstance and pain.

In fact, that can be interpreted as the primary theme of The Tower as a whole: a demonstration of the bankruptcy of the phallus (or center) as a symbol or metaphysical principle upon which a person (or society) can ground him or herself. Janet Neigh writes:

…in The Tower as a whole Yeats argues that it is impossible to resurrect the phallus as the transcendental signifier in the symbolic order. The version of “Leda and the Swan” in The Tower makes it the climactic version, or perhaps more aptly it is the anti-climax, because this is where the phallus goes missing in action: “The broken wall, the burning roof and tower.” The tower’s walls break in this poem and the roof starts on fire, which symbolizes the inability of the phallus to signify (Neigh 149)

On the other hand, Neigh also notes that the phallus has a temporary signifying power in the poem (Neigh 149). Nevertheless, Leda overcomes (in part) the phallic signifier which represents an Absolute, a center, through her overcoming and identification with her assailant’s person (and through inner integration of the traumatic experience).

In Yeats’ later poem (composed 14 years later), “The Gyres” (which appears in New Poems), these primary themes are carried over. In it, a full and rather final formulation of his artistic theme of the essentially tragic nature of life and history is given an excellent exposition. The inability to find a lasting and final center in life and one’s perspective is the primary theme: “Things thought too long can be no longer thought / For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, / and ancient lineaments are blotted out.” This notion is connected with Yeats’ formulaic and symbolic conception of the “gyres,” conceived of as revolving cones representing various dichotomies (the objective and subjective self, masculine and feminine, god and mortal, etc.) that collide, finding no lasting and final resolution and, rather, fluctuating between both cones—with one cone in a gyre dissolving and losing its identity in the other at a particular point in the cycle and vice versa. For Yeats, these violent confrontations are just a part of life, wholly necessary in the collision of cones and ideals in the unfolding of the cosmos and history. The notion of the gyres also helps to make sense of Leda’s taking-away of Zeus’ knowledge through his power—in destroying her and making her fully an object, entirely obedient to him as subject, he is behaving akin to the same collision of cones—the point at which one disappears wholly into the other is but a temporary resolution. The process begins again (without ceasing), and the gyres spin on and on, forming complex webs of relations.

But who is “Old Rocky Face?” In the article “Yeats’s ‘The Gyres’: Sources and Symbolism,” the critic Norman Jeffares argues that it is a marked influence from Shelley (Jeffares 91). “Old Rocky Face” is meant to represent the philosopher or seer: the one who overcomes and sees through the process of time into the other-worldly, spiritual processes that govern reality. In Autobiographies, Yeats states that his mind “gave itself to gregarious Shelley’s dream of a young man, his hair blanched with sorrow, studying philosophy in some lonely tower, or of his old man, master of all human knowledge, hidden from human sight in some shell-strewn cavern on the Mediterranean shore” (Jeffares 91). His “Old Rocky Face” character, then, is a seer: an outsider, but one who sees reality clearly and distinctly without an outward bias or acceptance of erroneous influences from outside the interiority of soul and mind.

At any rate, the first stanza of this poem ends with the unnamed observers observing the “irrational streams of blood…staining earth.” This can be read as an acknowledgment that life is highly irrational—violence is senseless and irrational, though still the ordinary course of things in the perpetual revolutions of the gyres which mark the unending process of time. The last line reads: “We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.” This is an explicit reference to the tragic joy previously mentioned—a realization that there is no lasting and final center in the world of corporeality: the attainment of a seer-like vision that enables one to live and rejoice and be well. The pronoun “we” refers to those who have attained to the vision of a seer: one who can fully see the catastrophic nature of reality and rejoice nonetheless.

The repeated phrase, “What matter,” deserves a close reading. The first two lines represent the shared plight of humanity in the face of the “blood and mire” which stains the “sensitive body.” The phrase “What matter?” is likewise the only answer Yeats can give in his hinted-at Romanticism in a desire for a “greater, a more gracious time” which has disappeared: it is over. What matter?

This poem should not be read as a pessimistic nihilism or endorsement of the evil things that happen in the world. Rather, it is a humble submission to Fate—what is outside one’s control—leading one to the only estimable conclusion: “…Out of Cavern comes a voice / And all it knows is that one word ‘Rejoice.’” Salvation in the Yeatsian conception, rather, exists in acceptance of this process, this chaos, this world of ideals and ideas that cannot find a lasting resolution in a world of things-to-be-and-become.

The third stanza establishes that those who die will never truly be lost—they find their identity in process, in acknowledgment of these passing and “unfashionable” gyres, and through Rocky Face’s affirmation of those he holds dear. There is no escape from this process, no escape for “the workman, noble and saint.” All are perpetually caught up in the revolutions of these gyres which form the lynchpin of existence. As Janet Neigh notes, Yeats always strayed from the notion that a metaphysical principle of sameness lies at the source of reality (other poems in The Tower display this tendency even more succinctly) (Neigh 150). Related to this, these later poems of his are marked by his disavowal of Neoplatonism (though it can assuredly be said that he maintained the notion of pre-existing hierarchies and an alternate world of Forms and Archetypes which form our world—A Vision can be seen as solid evidence of such a maintained and borrowed conception from the Platonists and similar thinkers). The critic David Perkins, in his book A History of Modern poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode, states: “at the end of “The Tower,” [Yeats] does not tamely ‘disagree’ with Plotinus or deny Plato’s philosophy, but, ‘I mock Plotinus’ thought / And cry in Plato’s teeth’” (Perkins 593).

These two poems, “Leda and the Swan” and “The Gyres,” form a fine gestalt and representation of Yeats’ central theme and source of spiritual overcoming through the radical acceptance of a world that is in motion and which does often not make sense, the subjective salvation that has been returned to incessantly. This entire conception of life as such can be summed up in Nietzsche’s famous proclamation on the spirit of philosophy (a strong influence on Yeats): “I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his ‘divine service’” (The Gay Science 131). It is this final embrace of the dance that Yeats endorses and presents in each of these poems. Readers would do well to embrace his conception of life as tragedy and chaotic: when one has given up hope for any sort of permanent consolation in this world, one can find one’s center by throwing away the notion of a center. Subjective salvation lies in the eternal dance and the acceptance of such, and it is a thing hard-toiled after and often only a gift to the souls which have endured the most in the collision between the successive incarnations and the ever-changing personage that is our selves (the “suchness” of our being) and the diabolical machinations which mark the catastrophic and tumultuous onslaught of the rapidly-spinning gyres, formers and harbingers of time and process.

Works Cited

Billigheimer, Rachel V. “‘Passion and Conquest’: Yeats’ Swans.” College Literature 13.1 (1986): 55-70. JSTOR. Web. 5 May 2011.

Jeffares, Norman. “Yeats’ ‘The Gyres’: Sources and Symbolism.” Huntington Library Quarterly 15.1 (1951): 87-97. JSTOR. Web. 1 May 2011.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006. Print.

Neigh, Janet. “Readings from the Drop: Poetics of Identification and Yeats’ ‘Leda and the Swan’” Journal of Modern Literature 29.4 (2006): 145-60. JSTOR. Web. 3 May 2011.

Ramazani, Jahan. “Yeats: Tragic Joy and the Sublime.” PMLA 104.2 (1989): 163-77. JSTOR. Web. 2 May 2011.

The Magic Pixie Dream Girl

Link to article here.

My unproven and unsourced thesis:

Men want the MPDG to express their repressed feminine side. Due to cultural conditioning, they can only conceive of their creative and emotional side being properly (in the socially-acceptable sense) expressed through being hopelessly tethered to a careless female partner.

Update

I fail at posting updates!

I’ve been very busy. I’m here for a month, of course. The summer camp is split into two two-week groups of kids. The last two weeks went great–camp ended for those kids last Saturday. Today was my first day teaching the new class. There’s much less this time: only about 30 kids whereas there was nearly a hundred before. These new students also speak English very well. This means that I’m able to cover much more material in my classes.

Thoughts on Chinese education:

Kids don’t ask questions. Many teachers here are pretty unsavory government bitches, it seems, and are very authoritarian and discourage asking questions, preferring to label kids as slow or stupid if they don’t understand something. I hope that I’ve shown some of these kids that school doesn’t just have to be about numbers and job-training, and that there are other opportunities for them out there beyond accounting, business management, and engineering.

These students really don’t know much about American history, so they’re very glad I’m teaching US History! I’ve had great success in incorporating Powerpoints with my history classes–there are many open-source teaching resources as well to use on various topics, and I edit them on my own/sometimes make my own Powerpoints.

Psychology went OK the last 2 weeks. I’m not teaching it again–only 12 out of the 40 kids who started the class actually kept attending. It’s just too hard to teach psychology to 13-year-olds or those who only speak a few words of English. Even with a translator it’s just about impossible, because the terms don’t translate well (Chinese psychology has taken different approaches to things), and even if they do, it’s psychology. There’s a reason that most kids in the U.S. don’t take it until college.

It’s interesting to be watched at all times. People stare at me all the time. It can be frustrating some days, but it’s definitely forced me to work on my self-confidence/get over my fear of being watched by others. I’ve danced here, and I’ve sung karaoke, too. Never thought I’d really do that.

I have great friends here. Just about everyone has been tremendously kind. My host family is very fun, and I invited their kid, Yung Li (*sp?) to visit New York sometime.

My cellphone broke. Pretty annoying, but my host family gave me a Chinese phone for local calls.

I went to a museum here that had a 2000+ year old mummy and a number of really old artifacts. I took some pictures–I’ll try to upload them soon, or possibly when I get back. I’ll  returning to the U.S. on the 14th, staying with my SO for the 15th, and going back to the five one “hate” late that night. I’m going back to Syracuse on the 19th to attend a meeting for my Writing Fellow job that I’ll be starting this fall, and I’ll be staying there at my school until classes start (the end of August, I think).

I miss everyone quite a lot despite the fun times I’ve had here, and I look forward to seeing my family and friends!

No Facebook

Just a reminder that Facebook is blocked in China. I can see your comments if you’re commenting from there, but I can’t reply.

China – Day 3

No posts because I’ve been so busy! Bullet points for this post because I’m a bit rushed for time.

Anyway, I am teaching in Changsha. The school is huge! It’s about the size of my college campus, and it has a number of very well-kept gardens, basketball courts, tennis courts, badminton courts, a soccer field, outside tennis tables, and apparently has a stuffed panda hidden on campus somewhere. I’m teaching US History and Psychology to 14-17 year olds. I originally was only planning on teaching US history and only had Psychology as a possible elective if enough kids signed up (most weren’t before camp started), but it turns out I will now definitely be teaching Psychology as the girls here think I’m cute and switched their schedules so they could take all their classes with me, ha.

I’m staying with a host family. They are enormously kind. According to my conversations with my TA and director, they are also very wealthy by Chinese standards (they would be back home as well, I imagine). Their family is composed of a mother, father, a son (Liung Lee, 16), a daughter, ~6 (Shaong-Mei is about the closest approximation of her name I can come up with, although they giggle whenever I try pronouncing it), and a dog.

Changsha’s known for their spicy food–it’s great!

Going to try and take some pictures of where I’m living. I have the entire upper floor (their home has 5 or 6 stories), and I have my own bathroom that’s nearly the size of my room back home, an enormous closet and storage space the size of a medium-sized hallway, and a balcony with a vegetable garden on it and a view of the countryside. My host family also has a car, and I’ve lucked out in this regard–the other English teachers are living rather far away and have to rely on public transportation.

There are a few observations I have made on two controversial topics (pohl-ih-ticks and ruh-lidgeon) of this area, but I don’t wish to talk about it on here until I’m home.

My TA has been tremendously helpful and is just a year younger than me. He went to high school in Vermont for three years, and he’s going to Purdue University this August. Another TA here has a scholarship with ASU for football–he picked the sport up in 4 months when he was in high school in California for a year. Awesome guy!

That’s it for now–the mother here is going to show me how to make watermelon juice!

Reading list

My bags are packed, and I’m on my way to Long Island to see my SO before leaving.

Reading list for the month:

1. Finish “Meditations on the Tarot” by Valentin Tomberg.
2. “All Hallows Eve” by Charles Williams
3. “Descent into Hell” by Charles Williams
4. “The Iliad”–by Lonely Goth’s suggestion and due to the fact that I will be taking a class on Homer in the fall and need the refresher.

China

I will be leaving to work in China on Wednesday for the Hunan Provincial Education Association for International Exchange. The international roaming rates for my provider are ludicrous, so if anyone is inclined to get in touch with me during this time, I can be reached by email (karlhonehundred [with "one hundred" being written with numbers and not letters] at gmail.com). Also, I can be reached on Skype: henchmantwentyfive (same application of numbering required as before).

The following is a short intro video for my students:

Flesh as Payment: Antonio and Shylock’s Relationship Conceived and Examined as Sadomasochistic and Homoerotic in Intent

The following essay was my term paper for a 300-level course on Shakespeare and early English Renaissance theater:

Over the years, there has been a significant amount of critical writing aimed at deciphering and analyzing the nature of Antonio and Shylock’s relationship in The Merchant of Venice, often coming to the conclusion that there are homoerotic and sadomasochistic qualities at the root of it–the very act of demanding flesh as payment and Antonio’s subsequent position as bondsman is emblematic of these tones and are essential to any understanding and formulation of this relationship. Though impossible to objectively ascertain for certain the original intentions of Shakespeare the playwright for his characters and their relationships, there exists an abundant amount of primary source material that can be read in support of this view. Furthermore, a common reading of a number of Shakespeare’s sonnets has been that they are homoerotic and directed towards (and displaying strong feelings felt towards) a young man of an unknown identity–it is not, of course, within the scope of this essay to speculate on the age-old question of Shakespeare’s sexuality (the critical Charles Casey brings up the problems with modern formulations of the question: “homosexuality” did not exist as a concept back then and is a modern construct), but given that a homoerotic reading is reasonable for his sonnets, it is likewise reasonable to consider an application of the same sort of questions in regards to a reading analysis of this particular relationship in the text (Casey 37).

Before any speculation, research and arguments can be considered, clear and lucid definitions over what is meant by “homoeroticism” and “sadomasochism” are in order. In the Shakespeare Quarterly article “Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will’: Melancholy Epistemology and Masochistic Fantasy in The Merchant of Venice,” the literary critic Drew Daniel remarks that “masochism is a term whose reductive familiarity threatens to do as much harm as good when critically invoked” (Daniel 220). Because of the term’s “reductive familiarity,” it is easily too broad of a term when applied to criticism (Daniel 221). He duly advocates a definition that is streamlined–masochism in literature carries the criteria that the punishment “generates a surplus of enjoyment or pleasure…typically, this translation of pain into pleasure is regulated through the impersonal working of a contract or agreement that governs the relations between master and slave” (Daniel 221). It is worthwhile to note that this definition requires no explicit sexual mentions. Rather, this definition is based upon the broad theme of eroticism (another problematic term) and contains the possibility of subtlety and third-person dynamics (such as the impersonal working caused by the contract and the various phenomena, events, and situations that such a contract would effect).

As mentioned, the notion of a “homoerotic” element is a loose and vague one, due primarily to the fact that there was no normative view of homosexuality in Shakespeare’s time, making speculation on his sexuality rather difficult (rending the question “Is Shakespeare gay?” objectively unanswerable), and making speculation on his characters’ features and innate persuasions all the more unanswerable (Casey 37). In a discussion of the relationship between Bassanio and Antonio in the play, critic Steve Patterson suggests another term: “homoerotic amity,” to describe a certain form of friendship that existed between males during the English Renaissance, being a “rather baroque form of male bonding” (Patterson 12). Amity was, essentially, an idealistic and passionate friendship between two men–a David and Jonathan-type arrangement. This established facet of social behavior does not directly apply to Antonio and Shylock’s relationship (more on this later)–they are enemies, but it does reveal how faulty a view is which advocates a quick and absolute dismissal of all arguments on all topics related to homosexuality and the Renaissance on the ungrounded assumption that this confusion and broad discourse on the topic makes discourse on the topic utterly futile. “Homoeroticism,” then, is able to be spoken about–”amity” existed as a social structure, and it was homoerotic in content and highly sexualized in plays and other artistic pieces (Patterson 17). For this essay, a definition and understanding of homoeroticism as a conscious or unconscious desire with latent (or openly evident) sexual undertones (or overtones and activities) will be assumed.

Moving along from methodological and terminological concerns, the content of the play must be put in question. In this play, there are a number of lines and points of dialogue between Antonio and Shylock which may be read to support a homoerotic reading. The first and most immediate passages related to this appear in Act I Scene 3–upon first seeing Antonio, Shylock remarks that “If I can catch him once upon the hip,/I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.” The grudge, in this case, is that Antonio is a Christian. The source of mutual disdain that Antonio and Shylock share for one another in this play is often religious in nature. The possibility to charge Shylock as a sadist is obvious and becomes steadily more so as Shylock calls for a pound of Antonio’s flesh as payment and wishes to see him bound by contract. This contract is what introduces a third-party element and, consequently, other characters who are affected by the contract (Antonio’s friends: Bassanio, Gratiano, and Portia and Nerissa through a secondary plot element), to Antonio and Shylock’s tenuous and tumultuous relationship.

Patterson’s reading plays upon this notion of the third-party element: according to him and as already mentioned, he conceives of Antonio and Bassanio’s relationship as representative of that particular “homoerotic amity.” This is relevant to Antonio and Shylock’s relationship in three regards. Firstly, following from the notion that Antonio and Shylock’s relationship is built upon the same principles as Antonio’s and Bassanio’s state of amity though possessing abnormal characteristics, he presents the notion that the contract between Shylock and Antonio represents a conscious decision to enter into “amity,” though suffering from their varying social status, occupations, worldview, and habits (Patterson 22). Shylock couches his plea in the vocabulary of amity (Patterson 22).:

I would be friends with you, and have your love,
Forget the shames that you have stain’d me with,
Supply your present wants, and take no doit
Of usuance for my moneys, and you’ll not hear me,–
This is kind I offer (Shakespeare 37).

Secondly, this notion of a third-party element intrusion through the working of a contract and the existence of a pre-existing friendship of amity between Antonio and Bassanio is relevant in a formulated consideration of Antonio and Bassanio’s homoerotic amity and Antonio and Shylock’s sadomasochistic and flawed amity without idealism and self-sacrifice as two inherently competitive relationships. The ideals of each paired relationship do not match. It does not take an experienced critic to realize that there is a close connection between conflict and passion–this competition only seeks to fuel and deepen the professed love between Antonio and Bassanio, while Antonio and Shylock’s faux-amity is meanwhile laid to ruin and chaotic frenzy, fury, and madness.

The third point of relevance might be seen as a counterargument for this essay’s thesis (though not entirely convincing, only dissuading): Antonio and Bassanio’s orthodox amity might be seen as the lynchpin and starting-point of all considered homoerotic elements in the play–basically, this counterargument is founded upon positing that the reading of Antonio and Shylock’s relationship as possessing homoerotic elements is the result of a personal overextension by Antonio in a misdirection (and overflow of passion) of his love and commitment to Bassanio. The readings in favor of homoeroticism in Antonio and Shylock’s relationship are therefore misguided (or just apparently so) if this counterargument holds true–that Antonio has only undertaken and agreed to this contract because he wishes to further establish and deepen his ties and emotional and personal connection with Bassanio. Such a counterargument does not demolish homoerotic readings concerning Antonio and Shylock’s relationship, but it does provide some ground of evidence to support the notion that critics in favor of such a reading (the homoeroticism between Shylock and Antonio) should be careful to not misread the specific intentions of Antonio’s actions and words, considering that they may be duly directed towards Bassanio and not a convincing demonstration of any reading in support of homoerotic and sadomasochistic elements existing between Shyock and Antonio.

Of especial note in The Merchant of Venice is Shakespeare’s use and employment of the term “flesh.” With Shakespeare being no stranger to punning, the very fact that this term appears so much throughout (from Shylock’s declaration that Jessica is his very “flesh and blood to rebel” to the numerous references and demands on the part of Shylock towards Antonio to give up a portion of his flesh to him) is evidence that there may be something subtle going on here: what is it (Shakespeare 97)? Oxford English Dictionary gives the following as a possible definition for “flesh:” “In euphemistic phrases with reference to sexual intercourse” (Oxford English Dictionary). Such usage is not a contemporary phenomenon; in fact, it is quite dated–the first reference that appeares in the Oxford English Dictionary’s treatment of the subject is an explicit reference from A.D. 1300: “Wit womman knaun and vnkend, I haue my flesh with þam blend” (Oxford English Dictionary).

How then does this term appear? The next instance in this play wherein sadomasochism and homoeroticism might be said to be present (and with the use of the word “flesh” bearing a possibly euphemistic meaning) is Act I Scene 3. Gratiano, Antonio and Bassanio’s friend, asks Shylock what he will gain out of his desire for flesh as payment. “To bait fish withal” is Shylock’s chilling response (Shakespeare 97). Much might be made of this–earlier, in Act I Scene 1, Gratiano had employed the same fishing metaphor in reference to Antonio’s melancholy, referring to his “melancholy bait” (his habit of baiting people into inquiring about the source of his unhappiness) (Shakespeare 13). Shylock’s statement is interesting, then, as it marks a reversal or full exchange. Rather than Antonio playing the part of a melancholic baiter looking for sympathy or simply an ear to listen to his woes and angst, Antonio becomes the bait.

This process of a victim becoming a physical representation of some sort of misfortune or grievance belonging to him or her is not foreign to Shakespeare’s canon. In one of his earliest plays, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, an allusion to Ovid’s tale of the rape of Philomela is presented (after the failed attempt to rape the main protagonist, Sylvia). In Ovid’s story, Philomela is turned into a nightingale after her rape, destined to wander the earth and singer her laments. This expected exchange of Antonio from a baiter to bait represents the same notion–his habit of melancholy baiting has led him to make a terrible choice (the decision to accept this contract and give up a pound of his flesh as payment if the terms aren’t met), and if he was to actually be used for bait, he would literally be the bait of his own melancholy. This subtle allusion to rape and the transformation of flesh can be easily tied to the possibility for latent homoerotic and possessively sadistic properties (on the part of Shylock) to be at work in these lines and through this allusion and metaphor.

By Act III Scene 3, Shylock has utterly committed to extracting a pound of flesh as payment–by this time, he has already lost his Jessica and begun to descend in a possible madness or blinding rage. He meets Antonio who tries to reason with him. Shylock replies, “I’ll have my bond. Speak not against my bond./I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond” (Shakespeare 125). Antonio has no other choice but to submit to the situation (he does this with only a short comment of grievance) and expresses his only desire that Bassanio might be able to watch the exaction of payment and loss of Antonio’s pound of flesh. Additionally, the word “bond” deserves a closer examination. It is arguable that it could also be interpreted as a minor allusion or pun on the fact that during Shakespeare’s time, wedlock and matrimony were respectively referred to as “bonds” (Oxford English Dictionary). Such usage can be found in the play Julius Caesar by Shakespeare: “Within the Bond of Marriage” (Oxford English Dictionary).

This theme of submission to the demands of Shylock continues in Act IV Scene 1:

Out of his envy’s reach, I do oppose
My patience to his fury, and am armed
To suffer with a quietness of spirit
The very tyranny and rage of his (Shakespeare 141).

Therefore, if a reading of homoeroticism and sadomasochism is admitted between Shylock and Antonio, this language only seems to deepen their pathological attraction (and outward repulsion). This continues in the dialogue between Shylock and the Duke. The Duke is perplexed over the matter of Shylock’s rejection of a sum three times the debt owed in place of the exchange of flesh. Shylock replies, “I’ll not answer that,/But say it is my humor” (Shakespeare 143). He then adopts a vocabulary of desire to explain, obliquely, the source of his desire–according to him, the desire has no source and is rather a part of his nature, akin to the fact that some cannot contain their urine (a sordid example) when hearing the sounds of bagpipes, others do not love roasted pig, and others go mad if they see a cat. These are actually rather poor examples and reveal little except through an attempt at reading it in the most esoteric sense–namely, that Shylock has descended into a madness and blinding fury and, as revealed through the following lines, feels affection towards his cause (the exaction of flesh as payment): “…for affection/Master oft passion, sway it to the mood/Of what it likes or loathes” (Shakespeare 143). Shylock cannot put his reasoning into words precisely because, as he admits, it is bound to an innate desire of his–one that cannot be analyzed in the same way that one cannot analyze why one likes pork (or, perhaps, why one prefers a rough tumble in bed or a lover of the same sex or a gluttonous woman–Shylock’s argument reads a bit like a proto-psychological treatment of the characteristics of desire and non-essential characteristics of a personage).

The prior-mentioned submission continues on even further with the famous line of “Let me have judgment and the Jew his will” (Shakespeare 147). Shylock begins to speak of Antonio’s flesh as already belonging to him: “The pound of flesh which I demand of him/Is dearly bought;/’tis mine and I will have it” (Shakespeare 147). Antonio has the last word before the entrance of Nerissa (disguised as a lawyer’s clerk): “I am a tainted wether of the flock,/Meetest for death” (Shakespeare 149). The psychoanalytic critic Drew Daniel has read this as a example of Freud’s “‘female masochism:’ he imagines himself as already castrated and thereby weakened and unfit to live” (Daniel 226). He also points out something inherent to masochistic sexuality: “[masochistic] sexuality obtains in the ritualized threat of pain as much in the experience of it: the ‘to be’ of the castration-to-come must always be imminent but never arrive” (Daniel reads the pound of flesh exchange as symptomatic of a ceremonial castration and castration fetish).

This view of Antonio as the one-to-be-castrated is not without challenge or difficulty, however. In arranging a psychoanalytic reading of this play, one might also come to the conclusion that it is Shylock who is the only already castrated. This theme has appeared in critical literature before (Hadfield 413). This view of Shylock as the one castrated is built on the fact of his circumcision (and, consequently, it might be argued that the cutting-off of flesh marks a reversal of societal norms and a symbol of circumcision–a forced conversion of Antonio from Gentile to Jew or mark of the Jew’s mastery and primacy over Christians). Of course, these readings are much more speculative and theoretical than Daniel’s reading–Daniel’s argument is stronger because it refers to a specific act that the play revolves around rather than the extended cultural metaphors necessary for portraying the Jew as feminine and castrated. Of course, it is also conceivable that both views might work together and form some new synthesis of analyses.

Shylock continues his pleas, naming the pound of flesh as his own forfeiture and receipt of payment (Shakespeare 155). Thus, the theme of ownership of flesh continues. There is one last and final item in this exchange that deserves further examination–the fact that Shylock endeavors to take the pound of flesh from Antonio’s bosom above his heart. The possibility for a thematic element of desire and strong passion through the use and employment of a physical heart as metaphor for a more subtle and mental heart (e.g., the sentence: “I love you with all my heart”) is strongly apparent with this sentiment, even possibly backed by Antonio’s statement of “For if the Jew do cut but deep enough,/I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart” (Shakespeare 161). This might be seen as evidential of the masochistic sexuality to which Daniel refers–Antonio is willing to play with the “to be” aspect of his fantasy, the potentiality of punishment and loss of flesh, but has no desire to actually submit to the very act, only the fantasies surrounding it.

Though we will never really know if Shakespeare intended for there to be homoerotic and sadomasochistic elements in Antonio and Shylock’s relationship (terms which, of course, did not exist back then), it has been displayed that there is a plethora of evidence and speculative reasoning that easily lends itself to such a reading. Finality and objectively-verifiable conclusions are no friends to literary criticism. Regardless of this, speculation must and should continue, especially in the application of gay reading and related approaches as there is a great avenue of possibilities for exploration in such an arena. An understanding of the possibility of homoeroticism and sadomasochistic elements between Shylock and Antonio contributes to the reading, putting this work in a new light, and continues the dialogue that has been long-occurring between Shakespeare, psychoanalysis, and psychology. Therefore, do these homoerotic and sadomasochistic elements exist between the two characters? Well, maybe. It is, perhaps, better to simply ask: “could a reading of Shylock and Antonio’s relationship be formulated in which homoerotic and sadomasochistic elements might be argued for, speculated upon, and formulated?” Yes, this is true undoubtedly, and there is evidence available to support such a reading.

Works Cited

“bond, n.” OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press, n.d. 27 April 2011.

Charles, Casey. “Was Shakespeare gay? Sonnet 20 and the politics of pedagogy.” College Literature 25.3 (1998): 35. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 27 April 2011.

Drew, Daniel. “‘Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will’: Melancholy Epistemology and Masochistic Fantasy in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.2 (2010): 206-234. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 30 April 2011

“flesh, n.” OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press, n.d. 27 April 2011.

Hadfield, Andrew. “Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in The Merchant of Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly 61.4 (2008); 1422-1423. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 27 April 2011.

Patterson, Steve. “The bankruptcy of homoerotic amity in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Quarterly 50.1 (1999): 9-32. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 27 April 2011.

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.