nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw imagine liking hollywoodslop so much that you wrote something like this. You guys must remember that Oppenheimer did nothing, they got their data from the Germans. He was just a retarded jew like Einstein who deserved to be killed at a moment notice. I thought you're smarter than this lol but you can't even think beyond what's portrayed by the media.
nostr:npub1u5tpktgc8gv8jw22cyjyh5gy5nr07v88hmrvtut7zkr06q0py6fs30xmf3 nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw You know, I actually agree with this, in a way. It’s what I find so tragic about science. These “greats” were romanticized but the discoveries would have happened without them, give or take a few years. Ideas seem to arise from their own mechanics and then animate the people who later claim credit for them. I think Hegel’s dialectic is meant to be a theory of how humans are just the avatar of ideas working themselves out, but I can’t speak to that. In the movie (as in real life) the Germans *are* ahead at first, and that is *why* America must try hard tk build the bomb. This is the flip side of Mutually Assured Destruction which often goes unappreciated.
This lack of agency is something I deeply identify with. Kill Oppenheimer, kill Einstein, hell, kill all the proponents of Judenphysik, kill the Nazi geniuses, kill the Soviet megaminds, kill all of them - you cannot stop the “next big thing”, the new “one weird trick”. Someone will do it because the field is ripe and the market is efficient. Einstein tried to stop quantum mechanics but it was already “in the air.”
It’s also why I find beauty in things like Kekule’s story. Benzene is canonical, it follows from the laws of our universe, it came before humans and it will exist long after. But it is because Kekule thought of it first that we associate it with the ouroboros.
nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 nostr:npub1ecj3mfr9lzvx7wh6fmh59vz6eet324mdtdlp9qxzqvwuvpglwnxqv6fchy nostr:npub1u5tpktgc8gv8jw22cyjyh5gy5nr07v88hmrvtut7zkr06q0py6fs30xmf3 Good Will Hunting is great but it needed another 1 or 2 hours
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw nostr:npub1u5tpktgc8gv8jw22cyjyh5gy5nr07v88hmrvtut7zkr06q0py6fs30xmf3 nostr:npub1ecj3mfr9lzvx7wh6fmh59vz6eet324mdtdlp9qxzqvwuvpglwnxqv6fchy homesick for a director’s extended cut which I never knew existed
nostr:npub1u5tpktgc8gv8jw22cyjyh5gy5nr07v88hmrvtut7zkr06q0py6fs30xmf3 nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw It's worth pointing out that mist is a mathematician and so the bar for "movie talking about my field" is set abysmally low.
nostr:npub1ecj3mfr9lzvx7wh6fmh59vz6eet324mdtdlp9qxzqvwuvpglwnxqv6fchy nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw nostr:npub1u5tpktgc8gv8jw22cyjyh5gy5nr07v88hmrvtut7zkr06q0py6fs30xmf3 Good Will Hunting is my favorite math movie and I don’t care that the math in it is not research level
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw Because it’s too easy. The power of an atomic blast is so often compared to that of the stars, the heavens, the gods - right down to the name of the first detonation test, “Trinity.” Oppenheimer’s famous quote about becoming “death, destroyer of worlds,” is quoted from the words of Shiva the Destroyer in the Baghavad Gita iirc. The movie is based on a book, American Prometheus, and Prometheus *stole* fire to give to humans - he didn’t create it. The sense that it’s a “trick” comes from the feeling that this great power wasn’t meant for us, that we are “cheating” the universe, that we are tresspassing the domain of God
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw For obvious reasons, 137 is one of my favorites on Science Fiction
nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 WHYS IT A WEIRD TRICK IT SEEMS LIKE A BIG EXPLODER TO ME
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw Because it’s too easy. The power of an atomic blast is so often compared to that of the stars, the heavens, the gods - right down to the name of the first detonation test, “Trinity.” Oppenheimer’s famous quote about becoming “death, destroyer of worlds,” is quoted from the words of Shiva the Destroyer in the Baghavad Gita iirc. The movie is based on a book, American Prometheus, and Prometheus *stole* fire to give to humans - he didn’t create it. The sense that it’s a “trick” comes from the feeling that this great power wasn’t meant for us, that we are “cheating” the universe, that we are tresspassing the domain of God
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw oh, and I watched oppenheimer today. I’ve always seen the manhattan project as something very significant. One of the greatest “one weird tricks” ever, by which humanity may be measured. So I had a natural weak spot for the movie and it destroyed me. Sometimes I think that the manhattan project was the last thing that ever mattered.
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw It was a great movie because of how it leaned into the greatness of its source material. The portrayable was portrayed well, including the experience of scientific discovery (which is abstract - a lot of science films miss this, while the kekule story gets it right), and what was unportrayable was appropriately left unportrayed. Oppenheimer staring into a close up shot, distorted by the frame into seeming to look both directions at once, is so frequent that it’s become a meme but it’s used well
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw oh, and I watched oppenheimer today. I’ve always seen the manhattan project as something very significant. One of the greatest “one weird tricks” ever, by which humanity may be measured. So I had a natural weak spot for the movie and it destroyed me. Sometimes I think that the manhattan project was the last thing that ever mattered.
nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw hey, how’s it going? I’m sorry life’s got you as a cross eyed sisyphus. I was supposed to be asleep hours ago but merc’s post got me interested and I’ve been reading about the “real numbers countable” thing. I’ll maybe post some thoughts tomorrow
nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 The parameters I gave were quite lax. I'm left to wonder what the best bacon cheeseburger/shake is.
nostr:npub1ecj3mfr9lzvx7wh6fmh59vz6eet324mdtdlp9qxzqvwuvpglwnxqv6fchy I'm a huge fan of Elvis Burgers
nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.
nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 ACT V
>That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow!
>What are they that do play it?
Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labored in their minds till now,
And now have toiled their unbreathed memories
With this same play, against your nuptial.
i think often one who hasn't labored in one's mind might produce something more wonderful than one who spends all their time doing nothing but that. it can be that labor stops one from becoming neurotic; what they produce will certainly be more innocent and genuine in a sense:
>I will hear that play,
For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.
also, something that's 'so bad it's good' can never come from a cynical place or one where to be seen as bad is the intended effect. it has to be a completely genuine failure to achieve that.
>O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans
For parting my fair Pyramus and me.
My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones,
Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.
they really really love this wall.
>O Pyramus, arise!
Speak, speak. Quite dumb?
Dead? Dead? A tomb
Must cover thy sweet eyes.
the quality of this play-within-a-play's writing contrasted with the quality of the rest of the play reminds me of reading an excerpt from a gnostic text and contrasting that with the bible
>For when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy
oh wow.
>So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be,
And the blots of Nature’s hand
Shall not in their issue stand.
though the world often tries to prevent love from taking its course, in the end things tend to work out.
>That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
nicely tying into the name and general themes of the play. all fiction is a dream that we use to distract ourselves and enjoy the feeling of these stories playing out, things we'd rarely or never experience firsthand. and when they do happen, life itself starts very much start seeming like a dream. a very sweet conclusion to the play.
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nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq Reply for ACT V:
How nasty of Theseus to say those nice words about duty and then make fun of their play the whole time. But then, it was truly a terrible play. Alack, alack, alack! It would be a better world if everyone said “die die die die die” at the moment of their death.
I found it poignant how Robin ends the play. It parallels the humorous “disclaimers” of the play-within-a-play, but it’s serious. Not “forgive me for roaring too loud” but “forgive me if I’ve wasted your time.” The parallel makes you wonder if we, too, are just a make-believe audience in another play.
It reminds me of Zhuangzi’s parable of hunting a beautiful bird in a forest and then feeling like, even as he is aiming at the bird, something else might be aiming at him. And the way in which House of Leaves and other books like that try to evoke “textual horror” by portraying a monster which breaks out of a narrative-within-a-narrative.
With this play, I feel like the comedic torturing of the characters (at the hands of the fairies or their own incompetence) also tortures us because it shows us the arbitrariness of our own fates. Like, say you fell in love tomorrow. Who’s to say it’s not more arbitrary than when Robin fucked up with his love potion? Say you want to hang out with your friends but they’re avoiding you. How can you be sure you’ve not been arbitrarily changed (into an ass)?
In Pyramus and Thisbe, the comical Moonshine and Wall meddle in the lovers' lives, showing or hiding them from each other. In the play itself, Diana and Cupid and all the fairies meddle in the lives of ancient Greek nobility. The play is a comedy to us only because we are granted the ability to see what lurks in the characters' dreams. So, too, is Pyramus and Thisbe a comedy because the audience's discernment so exceeds the players' own. Being trapped in the waking light of my own life, the light of consciousness, must make it seem more tragic than it really is. And I wonder who meddles in it.
nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 short notes on ACT IV
>So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
a surprisingly apt comparison. there are different types of vines as well, from strangler figs to vanilla orchids. they affect the tree they latch on to in better or worse ways, like when some people describe another's love as suffocating.
>But, my good lord, I wot not by what power
(But by some power it is) my love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow, seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud
Which in my childhood I did dote upon
imagery of spring, fitting with when the play takes place and with the lunar/solar theme in connection to love.
>These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.
often how love appears after the fact.
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nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq Reply for ACT IV:
> imagery of spring, fitting with when the play takes place and with the lunar/solar theme in connection to love.
I think this is spot on. It also ties back to how the Fairy King and Queen’s conflict was causing the seasons to be messed up. With the dissolution of Demetrius’s love for Hermia, we also have the “correct” seasons back
When Demetrius says
>But like a sickness did I loathe this food.
it reminded me of when Helena was saying she wished that Hermia’s looks could be contagious, so that she could catch them too and thereby catch Demetrius
nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 ACT III opens with some funny moments as the performers think of disclaimers to put before their play, like saying the lion isn't really a lion or that the person playing the role of pyramus doesn't actually die, to avoid scaring the ladies. they settle on the lion speaking and politely introducing himself as the man playing him before making a million other changes. lions actually used to live in greece even after the classical period ended... anyway i have a feeling the play they're writing is going to suck
>The moon, methinks, looks with a wat’ry eye,
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,
Lamenting some enforced chastity.
what a beautiful characterization and association, once again.
>We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds
Had been incorporate. So we grew together
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
so hermia and helena were very close, now drifted apart by circumstances of love
>And made your other love, Demetrius,
Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,
To call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare,
Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this
To her he hates?
"i love you!"
"who put you up to this?"
>Away, you Ethiop!
>Be certain, nothing truer, ’tis no jest
That I do hate thee and love Helena.
in this play hate is presented as the opposite of love; if you don't actively love someone you must hate them. in reality the opposite of love is indifference, and in fact love necessarily carries much hate within itself, and the two are inextricable.
>“Little” again? Nothing but “low” and “little”?
Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?
Let me come to her.
not often you see some teasing on physical attributes like height, at least not conducted like it is here among the two women.
>And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,
At whose approach, ghosts wand’ring here and
there
Troop home to churchyards. Damnèd spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
night is a magical time. it came to mind here that reading a play has an advantage over seeing one performed. when you go to see one the set-designers are responsible for creating the places where the play takes place, but reading it you can imagine it detached from any physical stage, any hall, any audience. the actors aren't actors, they simply are the characters, and portray themselves; grassy fields and castles and towns, you can imagine these places that could never perfectly be recreated on a stage in your own head.
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nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq This is all I wrote for Act 3:
"brb calling everyone I don't like an Ethiop and a tawny Tartar"
nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq Now for Act II:
---
The fairies occupy an interesting place in this semi-mythological world: they do not decide fate (as Cupid and Diana do), but they meddle in it. Their magic is the magic of small coincidences, mistakes, misplaced things.
I read that this is a reference to fairy circles - caused by fungi growing in rings in wet grass:
> To dew her orbs upon the green.
This is hilarious. Also, the way the fairies and hobgoblins subtly 'become' parts of the environment reminds me of what I found unique about The Last Unicorn. But the fairies 'become' things in a more 'negative' way - through humans' folly and not through their perceptiveness.
> The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
> Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
> Then slip I from her bum, down topples she
> And “Tailor!” cries and falls into a cough,
And they are also responsible for the moods of the seasons, though not the seasons themselves which are the domain of the real gods:
> The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
> Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
> And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
> An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
> Is, as in mockery, set.
I like that the fairies, who are trickster spirits, are identified with the weather, which is 'chaotic' in a scientific sense. Systems become chaotic through the exponential magnification of tiny errors. It's fitting that the fairies are the "gods of the gaps" even in this ancient world which is populated with the great gods of old.
I find it poignant that a mortal human could form such a friendship with the queen of the fairies and that - despite winning the queen's favor - she could suffer so mundane and tragic a thing as dying during childbirth.
> Would imitate and sail upon the land
> To fetch me trifles and return again,
> As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
> But she, being mortal, of that boy did die,
> And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
> And for her sake I will not part with him.
It highlights our desire to be worthy of the little spirits we see in the world, and those spirits' powerlessness against the mortal realities of life and death. Was the queen of the fairies unable to save her human friend, or - true to fairies' nature - did she capriciously decide not to?
I have to admit that, when I read about bulging sails being likened to pregnant bellies, in my mind flashed the infamous meme pic of pregnant clippy.
I liked this part:
> But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
> Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon,
> And the imperial vot’ress passèd on
> In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
> Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
> It fell upon a little western flower,
> Before, milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
> And maidens call it “love-in-idleness.”
Again the moon is the suppressor of love. I read that the goddess of the moon, Diana, also symbolizes virginity. In Act I, Theseus's wedding to Hippolyta must wiat for the moon to change, and Hermia (if she renounces Demetrius) will be doomed to become a nun at Diana's altar. The wedge between Titania and Oberon's love causes the rivers to flood, and the moon is the "governess of floods" because it controls the tides.
I also read that the description of the flower, "now purple with love's wound", is a reference to the loss of virginity (de-flowering) and the breaking of the hymen. Obvious in hindsight, yes. I see no shame in admitting that, for Act 2, I found some of the notes here helpful: https://myshakespeare.com/midsummer-nights-dream/act-2-scene-1
In any case, this part also supports the idea that the domain of the fairies consists of the gods' mistakes and what they have forgotten. Cupid only misses because of Diana's influence. The fairies' love potion relies on Cupid's original power.
nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq Act II cont'd:
---
Helena is such a fucking yandere
> I am your spaniel, and, Demetrius,
> The more you beat me I will fawn on you.
> Use me but as your spaniel: spurn me, strike me,
> Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave
> (Unworthy as I am) to follow you.
The fairies' lullaby for their queen is adorable. The idea that bugs and snakes could be threats to them really underscores how small they are. It looks like Titania uses discarded snake skins as sleeping bags?
> And there the snake throws her enameled skin,
> Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
The part where Lysander says "One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth." feels like classic Shakespearean wordplay. It seems like three meanings of "lie" are at play: to lie down and sleep with someone, to lie by not telling the truth, and to lie in death (which meaning reappears later when Hermia wakes up Lysander *because* she worries that he might be dead).
My absolute *favorite* part of Act 2 comes at the end, where Lysander, under the influence of the love potion, falls in love with Helena and attributes it to his now-fully-matured *reason*. It is an obvious truism that reason is more often used to 'rationalize' an irrational opinion than to 'be rational' in the first place, and nowhere else is this more clear than when someone tries to 'rationally' explain why they are in love. It is the logical conclusion of all the 'comparing between Hermia and Helena' which has gone on in this play. What an amazingly fitting end to an act which is all about the capricious spirits of the unreasonable and unreasoned.
I haven't read ahead or read any spoilers. I want to lock in a prediction: the 'foul beast' which Titania falls in love with will be Snug the joiner, "slow of study", whose only part in the play is to roar like a lion.
---
nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq cont'd:
Funniest line in the whole play so far:
> SNUG Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it
> be, give it me, for I am slow of study.
> QUINCE You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but
> roaring.
I read that this is a joke about syphilis, which was associated with the French in those days, and which (if untreated) will make your hair fall out:
> Some of your French crowns have no hair at
> all, and then you will play barefaced.
!!! Transphobic comment detected !!!
> FLUTE Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a
> beard coming.
> QUINCE That’s all one. You shall play it in a mask, and
> you may speak as small as you will.
It's crazy to me that they'd have young boys playing all the women's parts in that time, because women weren't allowed to. I associate this with the ancient Greek practice of pederasty, which is fitting because of the setting of this play. I bet it'd be disturbing to see the 'female' lead of a play speaking the whole time from behind a mask ...
There is of course an obvious parallel between Lysander and Hermia and the play-within-a-play of Pyramus and Thisbe, and I find it clever that this conceptual parallel is being set up as a meeting in real physical space too. I find this play-within-a-play meta-commentary to be surprisingly modern. Bottom's Herculean 'poem' also reminds me of something I've often heard: it takes a very good actor to be able to play the character of a bad actor.
---
nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq Now for Act II:
---
The fairies occupy an interesting place in this semi-mythological world: they do not decide fate (as Cupid and Diana do), but they meddle in it. Their magic is the magic of small coincidences, mistakes, misplaced things.
I read that this is a reference to fairy circles - caused by fungi growing in rings in wet grass:
> To dew her orbs upon the green.
This is hilarious. Also, the way the fairies and hobgoblins subtly 'become' parts of the environment reminds me of what I found unique about The Last Unicorn. But the fairies 'become' things in a more 'negative' way - through humans' folly and not through their perceptiveness.
> The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
> Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
> Then slip I from her bum, down topples she
> And “Tailor!” cries and falls into a cough,
And they are also responsible for the moods of the seasons, though not the seasons themselves which are the domain of the real gods:
> The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
> Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
> And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
> An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
> Is, as in mockery, set.
I like that the fairies, who are trickster spirits, are identified with the weather, which is 'chaotic' in a scientific sense. Systems become chaotic through the exponential magnification of tiny errors. It's fitting that the fairies are the "gods of the gaps" even in this ancient world which is populated with the great gods of old.
I find it poignant that a mortal human could form such a friendship with the queen of the fairies and that - despite winning the queen's favor - she could suffer so mundane and tragic a thing as dying during childbirth.
> Would imitate and sail upon the land
> To fetch me trifles and return again,
> As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
> But she, being mortal, of that boy did die,
> And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
> And for her sake I will not part with him.
It highlights our desire to be worthy of the little spirits we see in the world, and those spirits' powerlessness against the mortal realities of life and death. Was the queen of the fairies unable to save her human friend, or - true to fairies' nature - did she capriciously decide not to?
I have to admit that, when I read about bulging sails being likened to pregnant bellies, in my mind flashed the infamous meme pic of pregnant clippy.
I liked this part:
> But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
> Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon,
> And the imperial vot’ress passèd on
> In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
> Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
> It fell upon a little western flower,
> Before, milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
> And maidens call it “love-in-idleness.”
Again the moon is the suppressor of love. I read that the goddess of the moon, Diana, also symbolizes virginity. In Act I, Theseus's wedding to Hippolyta must wiat for the moon to change, and Hermia (if she renounces Demetrius) will be doomed to become a nun at Diana's altar. The wedge between Titania and Oberon's love causes the rivers to flood, and the moon is the "governess of floods" because it controls the tides.
I also read that the description of the flower, "now purple with love's wound", is a reference to the loss of virginity (de-flowering) and the breaking of the hymen. Obvious in hindsight, yes. I see no shame in admitting that, for Act 2, I found some of the notes here helpful: https://myshakespeare.com/midsummer-nights-dream/act-2-scene-1
In any case, this part also supports the idea that the domain of the fairies consists of the gods' mistakes and what they have forgotten. Cupid only misses because of Diana's influence. The fairies' love potion relies on Cupid's original power.
nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq and I just read A Midsummer Night's Dream. We thought it'd be nice to post our notes here.
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> Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
> Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
A clever parallel to the title of the play, where 'midsummer' makes you think of day, and then there is 'night' and 'dream' in sequence.
The next line, "and then the moon, like to a silver bow," gives a nod to Hippolyta's warrior nature but also brings to mind Cupid's bow. The image is transformed later, when Lysander speaks of Phoebe's silver visage and Hermia speaks of Cupid's golden arrow.
I didn't know the word "gauds", but I figured that it's where "gaudy" comes from.
> I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:
> As she is mine, I may dispose of her,
Damn, Egeus must be Canadian because he's really into MAID - Mediterranean Athens-induced Disposal
I thought this part was beautiful:
> To live a barren sister all your life,
> Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
> Thrice-blessèd they that master so their blood
> To undergo such maiden pilgrimage,
> But earthlier happy is the rose distilled
> Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,
> Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
The moon at odds with love, as it seems to be throughout Act I.
These lines highlight for me the loneliness and beautiful solitude which has always been a part of my experience of life. He is right, I think, to compare it to being a fruit unpicked, withing on the vine. Being alone feels timeless, as if you could hold on to your self and your memories forever, ignoring the passage of time which withers you and everything you have known.
> Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena,
Archaic usage of 'made love' is always hilarious
> Upon this spotted and inconstant man.
I am now picturing Demetrius as a dalmatian
> Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
> War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
> Making it momentany as a sound,
> Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
> Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
> That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth,
> And, ere a man hath power to say “Behold!”
> The jaws of darkness do devour it up.
> So quick bright things come to confusion.
Do you think that every extraordinarily bright thing necessarily makes the world look darker around it?
Could it be that the darkness lends beauty and depth and contrast to the light which we are lucky enough to find?
A world of life without death, light without contrast, would be a setting for a horror story, generation upon generation piling up to excess in a humid greenhouse world, teeming with things past their time, all crammed into every corner. In contrast, the grief of loss and death seems characterized by *emptiness*, echoes, voids, strong winds in caverns. The tragic element in that last verse makes me think of your review of Blood Meridian, actually, and how evil is a necessary and inescapable part of life.
I chuckled at this little stab:
> By all the vows that ever men have broke
> (In number more than ever women spoke),
This pivot in Helena's speech is interesting to me:
> Sickness is catching. O, were favor so!
> Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go.
> My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye;
As I understand, she is saying that "sickness is contagious" and she wishes that Hermia's traits (which have stolen Demetrius from her) could be equally contagious, so that she could 'catch' them too. Interesting to compare beauty to sickness. But in Helena's eyes, Hermia's beauty is 'wrong', it is against (what she believes is) fate.
Also FUCK HELENA she's being SO DUMB. All she has to do is let her friend and her star-crossed lover escape, and she will literally have Demetrius all to herself. This kind of frustrating dramatic tension reminds me of Othello, where audience gets to see Iago scheming against him in private, while Othello is just hilariously oblivious.
> Quince the carpenter, and Snug the joiner, and
> Bottom the weaver, and Flute the bellows-mender, and
> Snout the tinker, and Starveling the tailor.
These names are amazing.
I once took a class with a classmate who was *exactly like Bottom*. He acted as if he were the teacher's right-hand-man and had to get a word in whenever the teacher said a sentence. He would raise his hand and then go off on digressions to prove he 'understood' the material, just like Bottom ranting about the color of his beard. And, like Bottom, this motherfucker had no idea what was going on in the class.
nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq cont'd:
Funniest line in the whole play so far:
> SNUG Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it
> be, give it me, for I am slow of study.
> QUINCE You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but
> roaring.
I read that this is a joke about syphilis, which was associated with the French in those days, and which (if untreated) will make your hair fall out:
> Some of your French crowns have no hair at
> all, and then you will play barefaced.
!!! Transphobic comment detected !!!
> FLUTE Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a
> beard coming.
> QUINCE That’s all one. You shall play it in a mask, and
> you may speak as small as you will.
It's crazy to me that they'd have young boys playing all the women's parts in that time, because women weren't allowed to. I associate this with the ancient Greek practice of pederasty, which is fitting because of the setting of this play. I bet it'd be disturbing to see the 'female' lead of a play speaking the whole time from behind a mask ...
There is of course an obvious parallel between Lysander and Hermia and the play-within-a-play of Pyramus and Thisbe, and I find it clever that this conceptual parallel is being set up as a meeting in real physical space too. I find this play-within-a-play meta-commentary to be surprisingly modern. Bottom's Herculean 'poem' also reminds me of something I've often heard: it takes a very good actor to be able to play the character of a bad actor.
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