To live or to Die - Hamlet's Debate

One of the most quoted lines from literature is 'To be or not to be' from Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

Yet few of us actually realize what Shakespeare was talking about when we quote this line. In this soliloquy from Scene 1, Act II of the play, Hamlet is debating the question of whether to live and bear with patience all the injustices of this world, or to die and go to another world whose conditions you know nothing about, whether they'd be better or a thousand times worse.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

I came across a wonderful line-by-line explanation of this soliloquy from Stevepavlina.com:

To live or not to live, that is the question.
Is it better to stay, and suffer all of the ridiculous highs and lows of life?
Or to leave, and avoid the trials and tribulations altogether?
We cannot answer this.
Even after you die you still might dream. And who knows what you'll dream?

Click here to read the complete explanation!

Cologne

by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

IN Köhln, a town of monks and bones,

And pavements fang'd with murderous stones

And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;

I counted two and seventy stenches,

All well defined, and several stinks!

Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,

The river Rhine, it is well known,

Doth wash your city of Cologne;

            But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine

            Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/10/b4/1fe977ca4d828d4dabebfa485aeb.jpeg

A Silly Poem

by

Spike Milligan


Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B? 

Source of Image: http://www.william-shakespeare-quotes.info/images/shakespeare-cartoon.gif

Allen Ginsberg - Challenging the Norms

Today the English language celebrates many famous poets and among those stands the name of the 20th century poet Allen Ginsberg. His claim to fame is the controversial and norm-changing poem "Howl." Using extremely crass yet day to day vocabulary Ginsberg tried to illustrate the true meaning of the phrase "freedom of expression."

This poem, and other works by Ginsberg, became so controversial that it all led to a famous trial where the publisher of Howl was charged with spreading non-literary works. The trial was eventually won by the publisher when the judge declared that the poem definitely had literary merit and just becasue someone uses a different set of words to express their feelings does not necessarily mean it is wrong.

You may end up disagreeing with Ginsberg's lifestyle or choice of words but you will accept one thing: He was a brave fellow, ready to take matters into his own hands. His poem Howl is a commentary on life and how an ordinary person goes about it.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, 

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, 

angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection 

to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

Maybe out there, somewhere among our readers there is someone like Ginsberg who realizes that he has what it takes to not only say what is right, but to challenge others who conform to the society's norms and are afraid to step out.

Here is an interesting poem by Allen Ginsberg:

Homework

Homage to Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean 


Adil Majid 

Source of Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp1-iIp1UB7f1SoBmBjlDGmh6M-9q61gEal64h6eBe7cVdlZbyoe4pESxpS5QEKD-V5IKftGQoHRcetr0RBzwgIp9QTh20O3eKL7570GDXqekQWoT_D_qbg9HpIqKNzaUOUQ2PuNZYPpE/s1600/AllenGinsberg.jpg

A Poison Tree

by

William Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

William Blake (1757 - 1827) was an English poet of the pre-Romantic Age, also known as the Transition Period. Though not much widely read during his lifetime, he has since become one of the most popular poets of that age.