W. Shakespeare’s "Hamlet" in context of E. Levinas’s philosophical concept of man: discovering "the other" as a meaningful subtext of the tragedy

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Germanic Philology and Foreign Literature Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University

W. Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in context of e. Levinas's philosophical concept of man: discovering `the other' as a meaningful subtext of the tragedy

Natalia Astrakhan

Doctor of Science in Philology, Professor Department

Анотація

Стаття присвячена дослідженню взаємозв'язку між літературно-художнім та філософським дискурсами в процесі вербалізації загальнокультурних смислів буття, побудови цілісної концепції людини як надзавдання творення та відтворення (інтерпретації) літературного твору на прикладі трагедії В. Шекспіра «Гамлет».

Метою статті є прочитання трагедії В. Шекспіра «Гамлет» в контексті ідей французького мислителя Е. Левінаса, одного із засновників філософії діалогу. Завдання студії - характеристика значення діалогічного бачення особистості для сучасного прочитання класичних творів світової літератури, розкриття важливості діалогу між художнім та філософським дискурсами у процесі пізнання людини у її взаємодії зі світом, розгляд образної системи трагедії В. Шекспіра «Гамлет» у світлі філософії «іншого», розробленої в працях Е. Левінаса «Час та інший», «Гуманізм іншої людини». Основними методами дослідження стали культурно-історичний та герменевтичний методи, застосовані на тлі засадничих ідей філософії діалогу.

У статті трагедія В. Шекспіра «Гамлет» розглядається як прототекст філософської праці Е. Левінаса «Час та інший». Шекспірівські ремінісценції характеризуються як важливі в плані становлення левінасівської концепції людини. За Левінасом, сутність людини розкривається у діалогічній взаємодії з Іншим, що дає можливість вийти за межі теперішнього як своєрідного полону, віднайти зв'язок з майбутнім, у якому суб'єкта вже не існує, досягти подієвої повноти буття, яка веде до гармонії, відкриває шлях до трансцендентного суб'єкта та вічності.

Побудова образної системи трагедії В. Шекспіра «Гамлет» дозволяє зіставити головного героя з різними варіантами Іншого, які набувають особливого значення для нього в ході реалізації волі Привида. Розгортання дії може бути інтерпретоване як таке, що має у смисловому підтексті встановлення діалогічної взаємодії між батьком і сином. Означена взаємодія реалізується на подієвому рівні як повнота особис- тісного буття персонажів (передусім Гамлета і Привида), що виявляє себе у подоланні бар'єру між життям і смертю, відновленні нормального руху історії, ствердженні необхідності переваги добра над злом. Значущими та метонімічно еквівалентними батьку-королю варіантами Іншого для Гамлета стають Гора- ціо, актор (мається на увазі Перший актор), та блазень Йорик (позасценічний персонаж - герой спогадів принца), кожен з яких актуалізує умови досягнення істинної діалогічної взаємодії (належність до традиції, здатність до емпатії, карнавальна свобода та зумовлена нею фамільярність контакту з іншою людиною).

Ключові слова: В. Шекспір, Е. Левінас, концепція людини, трагедія, філософія діалогу, метонімічні варіанти Іншого, карнавальне світосприйняття, традиція.

Abstract

Shakespeare, W. (1994). Hamlet. New York: Penguin Popular Classics.

W. SHAKESPEARE'S "HAMLET" IN CONTEXT OF E. LEVINAS'S PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT OF MAN: DISCOVERING 'THE OTHER' AS A MEANINGFUL SUBTEXT OF THE TRAGEDY

Natalia I. Astrakhan, Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University (Ukraine)

Key words: William Shakespeare, Emmanuel Levinas, concept of man, tragedy, philosophy of dialogue, metonymic variants of the Other, carnival worldview, tradition.

The article concentrates on the study of the relationship between literary-artistic and philosophical discourses in the process of verbalizing universal cultural meanings of existence and building a holistic concept of man as an uppermost task of creation and re-creation (interpretation) of a literary work through the example of W. Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet".

The article aims to interpret W. Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" in the context of ideas of the French thinker E. Levinas, one of the founders of the philosophy of dialogue. The tasks of the study are to characterize the significance of the dialogical vision of personality for the contemporary interpretation of the classics of world literature, to reveal the importance of dialogue between artistic and philosophical discourses while cognizing the human being in his interaction with the world and to consider the system of images in W. Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" with regard to the philosophy of the Other, developed in E. Levi- nas's works "Time and the Other" and "Humanism of the Other". The main research methods include culture-historical and hermeneutic methods applied in addition to the fundamental ideas of the philosophy of dialogue.

The article deals with the tragedy “Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare as a prototext for E. Levinas's philosophical work "Time and the Other". Shakespearean reminiscences are characterized as important in terms of the development of the Levinasian concept of man. According to Levinas, the essence of the person is revealed in the dialogical interaction with the Other, which allows one to go beyond the present as captivity, discover the connections with the future in which the subject no longer exists, and achieve the eventful fullness of being, which leads to harmony and opens the way to the transcendental subject and eternity.

The system of images in W. Shakespeare's tragedy “Hamlet" allows one to associate the title character with different variants of the Other, which become significant for him as he fulfils the Ghost's will. The unfolding of the action can be interpreted as such that it features the establishment of dialogical interaction between the father and the son in its meaningful subtext. At the level of events, the achieved interaction is seen as the fullness of the characters' personal existence (above all, that of Hamlet and the Ghost), which manifests itself in overcoming the boundary between life and death, restoring the normal course of history and asserting the necessity for the superiority of good over evil. Horatio, the actor (i.e. the First Player), and jester Yorick (an offstage character in the prince's memories), each of whom represents the conditions necessary for genuine dialogical interaction (belonging to a tradition, empathy, carnival freedom and, therefore, the familiarity of contact with another person), become significant variants of the Other to Hamlet, metonymically equivalent to his father the king.

W. Shakespeare's tragedy “Hamlet” has been an important object of various kinds of literary studies, provoking researchers to look for new methods and approaches to its analysis and interpretation, new contexts to expand the horizons of knowledge and deepen understanding. While actively exploring the achievements of other, primarily English-speaking, countries [Москвітіна, 2014; Торкут, 2003], Ukrainian literary criticism is developing its own coordinate system for interpreting this “literary Sphinx” [cited by Торкут, 2015, p. 148]. Shakespeare's tragedy is considered not only in connection with the study of English literature of the late Renaissance [Лазаренко, 2011] but also against the background of the entire Shakespearean and, in particular, “Hamletian discourse” and its Ukrainian version [Черняк, 2011; Торкут, 2015], in the context of analyzing the influence of “Hamletism” [Торкут, 2015, p. 165] on the processes of philosophical and artistic self-knowledge [Бандровська, 2012; Торкут, 2015], in the situation of existential choice, setting the benchmarks for national self-determination [Лановик З., Лановик М., 2016]. Ukrainian Shakespearean studies are represented by the works of O. Bandrovska [Бандровська, 2012], H. Horenok [Горенок, 2004], D. Lazarenko [Лазаренко, 2011], Z. and M. Lanovyk [Лановик З., Лановик М., 2016], I. Limborskyi [Лімбор- ський, 2010], V. Marynchak [Маринчак, 2011], N. Torkut [Торкут, 2003; Торкут, 2015], Y. Cherniak [Черняк, 2011] and other researchers.

Along with numerous sources devoted to W. Shakespeare's oeuvre, from classic to the newest ones such as D.S. Castan's [Castan, 2001], L. Erne's [Erne, 2003], J. Kingsley-Smith's [Kingsley-Smith, 2003] and H. Klein's [Klein, 2019], to mention but a few, and with works addressing Levinas's philosophical legacy ([Derrida, 1978], Dukhan [Духан, 2010], Eselev [Еселев, 2012]), there are also studies defining the connections between the two authors' creative worlds [Leh- nhof, 2018; Gold, Goodhart, Lehnhof, 2018]. Attention should be paid to J. Robbins's “Altered Reading. Levinas and Literature” [Robbins, 1999], which links Levinas's philosophical views and ethical concepts to the experience of reading the classics of world literature. The study characterizes the concept of “altered reading”, which is relevant in the context of the dialogical interpretation of the phenomenon of a literary work. However, the problem of Shakespearean motifs in Levinas's texts and the interpretational potential of the dialogical approach to Shakespeare's works leave much room for research. K. Lehnhof [Lehnhof, 2018] focuses on this, emphasizing the importance of a pluralistic interpretation of a classic literary text, which makes the text alive in accordance with its dialogical nature, openness and interest in every person's opinion.

The article aims to interpret W. Shakespeare's tragedy “Hamlet” in the context of ideas of the French thinker E. Levinas, one of the founders of the philosophy of dialogue. The tasks of the study are to reveal the importance of dialogue between artistic and philosophical discourses while cognizing the human being in his interaction with the world and to consider the system of images in W. Shakespeare's tragedy “Hamlet” with regard to the philosophy of the Other, developed in E. Levinas's works “Time and the Other” and “Humanism of the Other”. The main research methods include culture-historical and hermeneutic methods applied in addition to the fundamental ideas of the philosophy of dialogue.

The experience of reading classic works of literature, particularly those of W. Shakespeare, O. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, M. Gogol, F. Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy, played an essential role in the development of the concept of man within Levinas's philosophy. Although the philosopher treated art with caution and considered artistic representation a duplication of the world, which disorientates the subject and drags it into a dangerous game with the realness of being [Духан, 2010, p. 204], he remained an interested reader of literary classics [Robbins, 1999]. The masterpieces of classic literature became the basis for his reflections and conclusions and provided numerous illustrations of various philosophical assumptions. The dialogical nature of literature and the very existence of a literary work as an intentional object comply with Levinas's fundamental attitudes about the dialogue between the ego and the Other. Although Levinas repeatedly argued that a work of art denies the very possibility of dialogue with its completeness and cannot be a tool of cognition and understanding because it seems to dissolve the subject matter and strip it of reality, he gave special attention to imaginative literature in general and poetry in particular. Levinas introduced criticism of art that seems to contradict both the apologia of poetry set forward by Heidegger in his philosophical views on being and the experience of avant-garde art, with its extreme subjectivity and wilfully experimental approach to living reality. The philosopher's mind always remained open. This openness meant not only reference to other philosophers - his predecessors and contemporaries (Socrates, Parmenides, Plato, Plotinus, Descartes, I. Kant, G. Hegel, A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, H. Bergson, M. Buber, E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, J. Derrida, M. Merleau-Ponty, G. Marcel, J. P. Sartre, S. Freud and many others), not only turning to the Bible and its careful re-reading, but also taking into account the “experience of art”, as H.-G. Gad- amer would have said, albeit as “negative dialectics” [Духан, 2010, p. 208].

This multi-vector nature of dialogical thinking led to the philosophical comprehension of the essence of culture in general and the discovery of universal grounds for understanding the “integral man” in the inseparability of his ontological, cognitive, existential and ethical manifestations. Despite Levinas's well-considered doubts about artistic cognition, the philosophical synthesis he sought was to some extent focused on the literary-artistic synthesis, in its classical models capable of representing the fullness of human existence and intersubjectively valid interpretation of it. Even if Levinas was wary of visual arts, spirituality and openness of images created by literature afforded him less ground for accusing art of quasi-temporal numbness and lack of dialogical prospects. According to Levinas, the best literary works of the past bring artistic discourse closer to the philosophical one, actualizing the path of the subject to the cognition of the truth. In this regard, W. Shakespeare's artistic heritage is perceived as model and incomparable since it is this “conceptual” for Levinas author who combined the medieval past and modern age present, individually-personal and historical existence, “invented the human” [Bloom, 1994] in the modern sense, having achieved such level of artistic perfection and philosophical depth that his works remain relevant even nowadays not only for artistic discourse but also for the philosophical one. It is not unexpected that following the main aspects of Levinas's dialogical interaction with Shakespeare and the vectors of the thinker's interpretation of Shakespearean works, modern philosophers discover essential clues to the possibility of solving topical philosophical problems [Lehnhof, 2015].

Emmanuel Levinas's (1906-1995) life and philosophical thinking developed at the crossroads of various cultures: he grew up in Lithuania and Ukraine (during the collapse of the Russian Empire as a result of the turbulent events in the late second decade of the 20th century); his views were shaped under the influence of Russian literature studied by him alongside with learning Hebrew and entering the world of biblical stories and their Judaic interpretations. He studied in Strasbourg, where French and German cultural traditions intertwined, and Freiburg, with E. Husserl and M. Heidegger among his teachers, and taught at Sorbonne and other universities in France. The peculiarity of Levinas's philosophy lies in the fact that it arises from the meeting place of different cultural traditions: religiously biblical, philosophically metaphysical and artistic; there appears particular humanistic pathos inherent in the philosopher's theoretical thought due to the essential interchange among these traditions.

Levinas's philosophical anthropology builds a specific concept of man based on the dialogical interaction with another person. The philosopher conceptualizes man through dialogue with the Other, which is attributive to any subject. If the ego (“the I”) cannot overcome its brutal egoism and become personally concerned about discovering and cognizing the Other through the process of dialogue, the subject remains insensitive to the world and trapped in its present, destined to fruitless solitude. Dialogical relationships are endowed with universality since they incorporate ontological, epistemological, existential, ethical and religious aspects. According to Levinas, being, cognition (the discovery of truth/love), the experience of existence as being in time, and the responsibility for actions, service, and revelation cannot be conceived without focusing on and moving toward the Other. Other (autre), which is not identical to the ego, is discernible behind the Other (autrui); it represents the subject's coming to the level of the infinite, transcendental. First of all, these Levinas's reflections follow Plato and his work “The Sophist”: there appears the image of the Stranger who is deemed “divine”. The transcendental reveals itself, and verity becomes visible through verbal interaction with the “divine” man [Еселев, 2012, p. 109].

Levinas's “Anthropology of the Other” not only evolved into a significant factor in the construction of the post-structuralist philosophical paradigm with its retreat from the classical metaphysics of the subject but also became relevant to various humanities and contemporary human- itaristics in general. Crucial to Levinas's philosophical worldview, his criticism of the discourse of power argued for a humanistic attitude towards the Other, incompatible with any practices of violence against the individual, which can be introduced by society or any form of totalitarianism. The rejection of totalitarianism and violence against people resulting from it came from the philosopher's own experience: being of Jewish origin, he miraculously survived during the Second World War when he was taken captive by the Nazis with other soldiers of the French army. According to Levinas, the inability to participate in the dialogue with the Other and understand the world as a polylogue, each participant of which has an undoubted right to express themselves, becomes the ideological basis of political violence. True justice is born when a community of people involved in communication subordinates its existence to the search for truth: this is how ethics prevails over politics, cancelling the discourse of power, imposed by it. Even ontology within the European tradition of philosophizing from Aristotle to Heidegger was perceived by Levinas as a potentially totalitarian style of theorizing because it does not presuppose a personal event of meeting with the Other face-to-face against the background of the prospect of infinity.

In the context of the active development of post-post-structuralism, which takes place today, Levinas's ideas and the philosophy of dialogue as a whole take on new significance. The movement toward the Other appears to be in harmony with New Humanism and utopianism, opening a way out of the dead end the subject was led into by the crisis of postmodernism, which severed its ties with other subjects and left it lost in complete solitude of the present, turned into a maze.

The focus of philosophical thought on both philosophical and artistic classical traditions becomes the key to its ability to comprehend the realities of today, to avoid the surrender to the new quality of contemporary existence, which generates a complete negation of previous traditions and easily refuses to preserve them in the future. According to Levinas's ideas, the discovery of the Other becomes a prerequisite for self-knowledge: when interpreting Shakespeare's works in view of the thinker's philosophical reasoning, we not only understand the origins of Levinas's concept but also get the opportunity to see the great English author's oeuvre in a new light. In terms of the philosophy of dialogue, Shakespeare's legacy reveals additional meaningful planes that are important in today's search for answers to the most urgent existential questions.

When meditating on W. Shakespeare's works, placed at the centre of the “Western canon” by H. Bloom, Levinas most often referred to “Hamlet”, “Macbeth” and “King Lear”. The reminiscences from Shakespeare's tragedy “Hamlet” gain particular significance in the work “Time and the Other” (« Le temps et l'autre ») (1947), in which the thinker's philosophical ethics matured. Noting that “the whole of philosophy arises from the meditation of Shakespeare” [Levinas, 1987, p. 72], Levinas directly refers to his own philosophizing and the tragedy “Hamlet” as a prototext for the work created. The Shakespearean play seems to set the basic parameters and vectors of philosophical conceptualization of the being of the ego in the world, carried out by Levinas. Being is perceived primarily as tragic, but not because the subject is forced to die at the moment of the victory of fate over freedom. This train of thought would have been too predictable in the 1940s when a great number of people were doomed to experience the absurd tragedy of existence turned into death during World War II. According to Levinas, the triumph of fate is imaginary since the hero escapes death because “not to be” is impossible. Hamlet is beyond tragedy, which, as a result, turns into the tragedy of tragedy, as being is irremissible and has no exit; “being is evil not because it is finite, but because it is without limits” [Levinas, 1987, p. 51].

The idea of the inevitability of being, which is identified as evil after becoming a fact of human consciousness, clearly correlates to Hamlet's famous soliloquy, “To be or not to be ..." Despite being paradoxical, the intention of the dilemma outlined by the Prince of Denmark is clear to all people: “we want both to die and to be” [Levinas, 1987, p. 78]:

...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 [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 81]

This is where Levinas's idea of consciousness as the power to sleep [Levinas, 1987, p. 51], i.e. to cease working and realizing for some time, originates. In Hamlet's soliloquy, not-being appears as a desirable sleep, lapse of consciousness, the opportunity to escape wakefulness and stop self-reflecting. In Levinas's philosophical meditations, the Shakespearean metaphorical analogy not-being - sleeping was probably supplemented and highlighted by the Cartesian analogy thinking - being. Thus there appeared the Levinasian antinomy existing - being-toward-death (which requires “a supreme lucidity and hence a supreme virility” [Levinas, 1987, p. 70] and leads to overcoming death).

Hamlet becomes a symbol of the subject of being and consciousness for Levinas, the main feature of which is solitude. Within the tragedy's action, the hero begins feeling particularly solitary after the Ghost tells him the truth about Claudius's crime. Checking this truth, building up the whole picture of the situation, and its all-embracing perception make the character's being subordinate to the search for answers to life and existential questions, giving substantial significance and responsibility to his existence. Hamlet perceives the terrible truth about the murder of his father not only as a distortion of the natural flow of time, a violation of the ordinary laws of interaction among the past, the present and the future, but also as the severing of ties with other people: with his mother, who is suspected of being involved in the murder; Ophelia, used as a spy tool by Polonius; friends, who do not hesitate to start supporting his enemies. As a result, ties such as family, love and friendship, which are the most significant for every person, appear to be artificial and, as such, severed. The text of the tragedy indicates their significance for Hamlet, who addresses all his interlocutors with words expressing love or the need for it. The prince considers love a cornerstone of his interaction with all Danish subjects:

ALL: Our duty to your Honour.

HAMLET: Your love, as mine to you: farewell [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 39-40];

Love for a woman implies maximum sincerity, requires generosity of heart and absolute mutual trust:

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers: I have not Art to reckon my groans: but that I love thee best, O most Best, believe it [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 63].

From Hamlet's point of view, friendship is also love, incompatible with self-interest and disloyalty:

HAMLET: That you must teach me: but let me conjure you by the rights of our fellowship, by the con- sonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear, a better proposer could charge you withal; be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for or no.

ROSENCRANTZ: What say you?

HAMLET: Nay then I have an eye of you: if you love me hold not off [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 69].

The impossibility of a dialogue filled with love for the Other means the loss of a happy perception of life, meeting with its deadly disharmony. Imprisonment in the bonds of the present, resulting from the lack of interaction with the necessary Other, objectively reflects the maleficence of power, which leads to the wickedness of the social medium and the disastrous and destructive nature of human coexistence. The felonious king makes people betray their personal essence for the sake of benefits, which come as a reward for their acceptance of crime, consent to conceal evil deeds and add to them. Therefore, everyone in the felonious king's environment becomes a co-perpetrator and rejects their personality under his influence. The hypocritical and deceitful discourse of power is essentially opposite to the dialogue based on love and equality of its participants and aimed at finding out the truth. The criminal regime disrupts the normal flow of this dialogue and severs natural ties among people, thus causing the destruction of the pillars of human coexistence and making the just organization of society impossible; it results in the malignant nature of intersubjective interaction by depriving people of the freedom to think and act independently and implementing the strategies of violence. The criminal nature of power forces those aware of this criminality to establish the truth/verity in order to ensure the restoration of justice and joint efforts toward the common good. It is Hamlet who takes on this role in Shakespeare's tragedy:

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 54-55].

In the context of Levinas's reflection, the solitude of a person under these circumstances appears to be productive. It marks the “freedom of beginning” the subject does not exist without; therefore, not only “a despair and an abandonment, but also a virility, a pride and a sovereignty” [Levinas, 1987, p. 55] are connected with it. These are the psychological coordinates of Hamlet's solitary existence - “proud, aristocratic and genial” [Levinas, 1987, p. 55]. For the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, his solitude turns into not only ontological but also anthropological doubts, i.e. reflection that acquires special significance and depth:

“What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so” [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 69].

In this regard, the focus on the image of Hamlet allowed Levinas to move beyond the “terms of despair” proposed by existentialists and the analysis of solitude they carried out. The nobility (that is, absolute disinterestedness) of Hamlet's actions directs him to the future in which he is personally absent. This future, harmonized through tragic efforts, which exceed any capabilities, leading the hero to death and at the same time freeing him from it, is revealed at the end of the play.

Hamlet's solitude is both highlighted and questioned by his dialogical interaction with others, whom he has to look for and manages to find beyond the bounds of ordinary existence. Thus, while verifying the truth revealed by the Ghost, Hamlet extends the boundaries of his being, moving beyond the conventional. This pushing of the limits stands in paradoxical contrast with the image of imprisoning Denmark and the constraints imposed on the hero by his role of avenger, which he nevertheless voluntarily accepts upon reflection.

The others who open for Hamlet a prospect of dialogical interaction, which is necessary for learning the truth, are his friend Horatio, the actor hired for the production of “The Mousetrap”, and “poor Yorick”, whose skull the prince “talks to” at the churchyard. All the interlocutors are the representatives of other “worlds”, each having its own spatial-temporal coordinates and chronotopic peculiarities; they unclose the existence of the central character, making the play in its entirety artistically open and, as a result, ontologically multidimensional. Horatio represents the universe of the distant antique past; the actors are the representatives of the world of art, apparently isolated from reality; “poor Yorick”, who died a long time ago, having crossed the border between life and death, represents the space of eternity and afterworld being/non- being, which can be conceived very differently depending on the worldview of the recipient of Shakespeare's work. Hamlet finds himself in a situation where most of the people closest to him, in particular, his relatives, turn out alienated and distant, dissolved in the hypocrisy of the criminal regime, whereas the seemingly impassable boundaries of the fundamentally different existential planes become transparent and relative. The hero discovers the “unexpected” others and, by starting a dialogical interaction with them, reaches a new level of communication, which opens up the prospects of approaching the truth.

Levinas reflects upon the dependence of the ego on itself, upon the subject of consciousness being burdened with its materiality, which makes the body be perceived as a grave and a prison. This way of thinking makes it clear why not only the whole of Denmark but also the whole world is a prison for Hamlet: being destined to be preoccupied with oneself and based on oneself when reaching after the truth correlates with being captured by the present “I”. Escaping this captivity is possible only into the future where there is no ego and through finding the diachronic Other; within the context of “Time and the Other”, it is a son for the father. Levinas's interpretation of relationships between sexes and generations acutely challenges the psychoanalytic approach to the image of Hamlet, suggested by Freud. The high level of this character's reflexivity, his honesty in his thoughts and actions, and his noble neglect of pragmatic interests and goals meet the standards of ethical height and purity, defined by Levinas's concept of dialogical interaction with the Other.

Hamlet overcomes his own present and opens the way to the future because he recognizes himself as the Other with regard to his predecessors (Horatio, Yorick and the characters from the actor's monologue), who belong to three different existential planes connected with different cultural traditions of the past. Firstly, this involves the antique cultural tradition, essential for Hamlet as a representative of the Renaissance and marked by the image of the most “just” [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 87] of all men, Horatio:

...dost thou hear,

Since my dear soul was mistress of my choice, And could of men distinguish, her election Hath seal'd thee for herself. For thou hast been As one in suffering all, that suffers nothing. A man that Fortune's buffets, and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks. And blest are those, Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger, To sound what stop she please. Give me that man, That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 87].

Hamlet's friend admits that he does not belong to the present, seeing himself rather as an inhabitant of Ancient Rome (“I am more an antique Roman than a Dane” [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 154]. Therefore, he can be a calm and unbiased witness of the present day who can evaluate it on the basis of the antique value system that has stood the test of time.

Secondly, this involves the actor, who can make the audience cry over the fall of Troy, i.e. construct an emotional bridge in the fictional dimension of the scenic art, making sympathy and compassion possible despite spatial-temporal distortions. Hamlet meditates on the empathic abilities of the actor, who is to play the king in “The Mousetrap”, blaming himself for his lack of emotional response to the events in Elsinore:

Is it not monstrous that this Player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, That from her working, all his visage wann'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms, to his conceit? and all for nothing? For Hecuba?

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 77].

As to the jester Yorick, the familiar carnival contact with him (through laughing over his remains at the churchyard) means entering the blasphemous tradition, fraternization with a fool, “who feels and bespeaks with lucidity the unsubstantiality of the world and the absurdity of its situations” [Levinas, 1987, p. 59], i.e. seeks the truth by destroying the conventional traditions of its representation - deeply-rooted formulas and static images in which the truth dies.

However, what is most important here is that Prince Hamlet assumes the responsibility to be the diachronic Other in relation to the murdered King Hamlet, that is, to be his own father's son. The hero could see his father with the eyes of his soul even before he met the Ghost:

HAMPLET: My father, methinks I see my father. HORATIO: Oh where my Lord?

HAMPLET: In my mind's eye, Horatio [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 37].

The dialogue with the Ghost, in which the request “Mark me” [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 48] is heard and during which Hamlet literally follows his father (“...I'll follow thee” [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 47]), ends with a demand to remember, addressed from the dead to the living, from the Ghost of the father to his son. Furthermore, the son makes his father's memory, that is, a profound dialogue with him, the motto of his life:

...now to my word;

It is; Adieu, adieu, remember me;

I have sworn't [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 51].

Importantly, Horatio, whose name is associated with the age of the great kings of Rome, the actor capable of playing the king on stage, and the jester as a trickster of the king metonym- ically enhance the meaningfulness of Hamlet's dialogue with his father as a core of the tragedy. According to Anikst, “there would have been no tragedy” without the Ghost; “from the beginning and to the end, he or, more precisely, his image floats over it” [Аникст, 1986]. It is how Levinas could probably understand the dialogue between Hamlet and his father when he laid the foundation of his philosophy of dialogue. Levinas believes the dialogue between the father and the son has the potential of overcoming the dependency on the present, liberating the subject of consciousness from the captivity of the ego and discovering the Other, who brings the promise of defeating death and finding out the truth. In the context of Levinas's philosophical meditations, attentive listening to the voices of the past opens, paradoxically, the way to the future, liberating the solitary subject's consciousness from the captivity of individual existence and letting it into the dialogue with the Other.

Certain aspects of the dialogical discovery of the Other, illustrated by such characters of Hamlet as Horatio, the actor and the jester, are of great importance. The name “Horatio” is perceived as a link between people who belong to different epochs; it represents the tradition denoted by the specific person's face. In this regard, the name is a sign that stands for a face. It leads to the event of meeting the Other face-to-face (le face-a-face), to “the encounter with a face that at once gives and conceals the Other” [Levinas, 1987, pp. 78-79]. In the case of the name “Horatio”, balancing between giving/concealing also applies to the particular person, Hamlet's friend, who seems to disappear through association with the ancient Roman poet, stating that he does not belong to his own present, and to the poet himself, who is only slightly visible due to his name in the personality of the character of the Shakespearean tragedy. In any case, the dialogue that breaks the boundaries of space and time, connecting different epochs, requires the face denoted by the name, which seems to show through the dark secret of death/nothing- ness. In this regard, Horatio does appear as Hamlet's alter ego: he is the same interlocutor and descendant of antiquity, represented by the name and face of Horatio, as Prince Hamlet is King Hamlet's interlocutor and descendant. Due to their efforts, the past goes beyond its present and finds itself in its future. Horatio, a scholar, leads Hamlet to the encounter with the Ghost and is the first to start the conversation with the latter. The tradition peculiar to many peoples to name a child in honour of another specific person should be perceived as an invitation to the dialogue, which ties together different time planes, complementing blood kinship with the spiritual one, and maintains cultural traditions and passing on cultural experience “from hand to hand”.

The image of the actor reciting a monologue fragment devoted to the fall of Troy emphasizes the importance of emotional unity with the Other in the course of dialogical interaction. The dialogical discovery and understanding of the Other are impossible without this empathic (as W. Dilthey would have called it) intersection of personalities founded on sympathy and compassion. What is important here is the objective detachment from the subject to which the emotional response is addressed, the absence of any particular connections with it, which is focused on the present, and any self-interestedness. The presence of these connections imposed on Hamlet today in the pointedly “revealing” and “unconventional” wilful readings of the tragedy [Фролов, 2017] openly negates the meanings important in the context of the philosophy of dialogue. “The other is known through sympathy, as another (my)self, as the alter ego,” notes Levinas [Levinas, 1987, p. 83]. “What's Hecuba to him?” Hamlet is surprised by the actor's approach to the Other. It is important that Hamlet asks to recite a passage that illustrates the catastrophe of the legendary ancient state. The death of the King and suffering of the Queen of Troy, Priam and Hecuba, which resulted from perfidy, marks the beginning of an overall tragedy, the fall of the whole country. Hamlet sympathizes with the ancient catastrophe because he perceives history through the prism of the crime he witnessed and became the victim of and the tragedy he is experiencing. By contrast, the sympathy for the suffering of humiliated Hecuba is strengthened by the fact that the prince is aware of Gertrude's guilt and feels wounded by his mother's betrayal of his father's memory. Unlike the wife of the King of Troy, Queen Gertrude did not share death with the murdered king but joined the felonious king. Having turned a blind eye to the terrible truth, she became an accomplice in crime and made it necessary for her son to take revenge on his mother in the fight for justice restoration. So, art makes emotional unity, compassion and sympathy possible in the space of historical existence, shared by all people and accompanied by the constant disbalance between good and evil and the activity of ruthless evil, which makes people suffer, bringing misery and death. Under the rules of artistic generalization, the mythical name of Hecuba and the artistic image associated with it point at a large number of other sufferers, victims of history; they personify our sympathy, unite it in one “face” and serve as a reminder of the historical catastrophe. According to Levinas, “the situation of the face-to-face would be the very accomplishment of time”, the condition of time presupposes the “intersubjective relationship” and “lies in the relationship among humans, or in history” [Levinas, 1987, p. 79]. Similar to the actor who recites the passage about the fall of Troy in Shakespeare's tragedy, Levinas builds a bridge to the in the same way tragic nature of contemporary history through his philosophical play on the image of Hamlet. The philosopher talks about contemporary victims of historical crimes and hints at the criminals with their hypocritical anti-human Nazi ideology - the deceitful discourse of power, which is always criminal and, therefore, constantly hypocritical. Looking for the Other in the future, the thinker himself is looking for the path to liberation from the present, which literally turned out the prison for many people and himself in the mid-1940s. Naturally, finding this Other in the future presupposes sympathy addressed to the past. Without this sympathy, the history of humanity falls to pieces, and the continuity of times breaks. According to Shakespeare's artistic logic and Levinas's philosophical logic, the lack of compassion for the victims of crimes of the past is, in its turn, a moral crime.

In this respect, art and its creators perform an important universal cultural function that does not exist for the philistines, which is focused solely on their selfish interests. The contradictions between the creative and philistine views on history and artistic reflection on it represent the contradictions between the progressive and regressive historical trends. Let us recall the novel “Ulysses” by James Joyce, with “Hamlet” being one of its central prototexts, along with Homer's “Odyssey”. It is painful for Stephen Dedalus to see the inability of his students to sympathize with historical figures and their lack of interest in historical events. The name of the general Pyrrhus Stephen is telling his students about is associated with the “hellish Pyrrhus”, also mentioned in the monologue of Shakespeare's actor, hinting at the character's sensitive issue of his mother's death. This indifference to the tragedies of the past, demonstrated in the history lesson, threatens with distortion of historical events. When people lose the ability to sympathize with those who lived in previous eras and suffered from the tragedies of the past, they also lose vigilance about the present day: they do not draw any conclusions from the mistakes of previous generations, do not learn from their experience, ignore the suffering of their fellowmen and do not notice current ominous trends. The lack of a strong sense of connection between the present and the past, which originates in art, poses the threat of creating new tragedies and losing the future.

Hamlet's address to “poor Yorick” emphasizes the equality of dialogue participants in the face of life and death, which corresponds to the carnival worldview. As is well known, when illustrating the origins of carnivalization in Renaissance literature, M. Bakhtin [Бахтин, 1990] convincingly described the ability of the medieval carnival culture to bring the representatives of different social strata together in the space of festive freedom. According to Bakhtin, carnival excuses the human body, permits familiar contact in the hustle and bustle of the feasting crowd and welcomes the neglect of socially approved ethical norms and rules of conduct, imposed by the strict social hierarchy. Hamlet is holding Yorick's skull, whereas, in the past, Yorick held little Hamlet in his arms:

HAMLET: Let me see. Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent fancy, he hath borne me on his back a thousand times: and now how abhorred in my imagination it is, my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips, that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my Lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that... [Shakespeare, 1994, pp. 138-139].

It is impossible to reduce the distance in time and break down the barrier between the already lost “today” of one person and the yet unfound past/future of another without this personal equality marked by familiar carnival contact. It is not accidental that Hamlet mentions Alexander the Great, realizing that even his body decomposed after his death like the body of any other human being. According to the coordinate system of carnival culture, its peculiar festive worldview is accompanied by an ambivalent, foolish (blasphemous) laugh, which can bury and resurrect at the same time. Hamlet not only laughs at the churchyard, i.e. laughs a carnival laugh, but also introduces the motif of the body, which is corruptible and, at the same time, immortal in the life of humankind. If an individual is mortal, individual death can be overcome within humankind as a biological species. There is an infinite prospect for development and the continued existence of humanity in the future due to the torch passed from generation to generation and due to new births. It should be noted that marked by the figure of the jester, the tradition of telling the truth to a king's face and addressing a suzerain in the manner of carnival laughter, ignoring the rules of etiquette, social roles and social hierarchy is used by Hamlet in his search after truth. According to the ambivalence of carnival laughter, the mask of a madman behind which Hamlet hides his real intentions brings the tragic and the comic together. Since madness was a characteristic motif of the antique Menippean satire from which European carnival culture derives its origin, what is of interest here is the transformation of this motif within the Renaissance tragedy. Shakespeare constructs the image of Hamlet at the intersection of madness and blasphemy, thoughtful circumspection and extreme sincerity incompatible with any social role. Paradoxically, acting a fool combines with Hamlet's tragic mission caused by the dialogue with his father as with the Other and, as a result, is enriched with a wide range of feelings typical for a Renaissance man, who supplements carnival freedom with the heroic spirit of responsible actions, compassion and gratitude, open-mindedness, noble selflessness and willingness to sacrifice oneself. “Poor Yorick”, the King's jester, can also be considered an antinomic metonymy of Hamlet senior, made possible by the carnivalesque tradition, the image connected with Hamlet's lost father in the hero's perception. The jester alongside the king is his reverse reflection: if the king is primarily a spirit, the jester is a body; the former is majesty and responsibility, the latter is humiliation and freedom. If the king- father was the prince's model of “a man, take him for all in all” [Shakespeare, 1994, p. 37], the jester, while playing with young Hamlet, carried him on his back, giving him bodily warmth and offering a temporary liberation from his social role. literary being tragedy

Hamlet's “twins,” Laertes and Fortinbras, whose presence Anikst relates to the influence of Baroque poetics [Аникст, 1986], though being in the same situation of necessity to avenge their fathers (Polonius and Fortinbras senior), are in the captivity of the present. Laertes's present is limited to his family affairs, and Fortinbras's present is limited to state and political matters. Despite the defeat of one and the victory of the other, these characters are similar as they make no choice and follow the circumstances, which are favourable for one and unfavourable for the other; both stay within only one existential plane. Laertes is not the reason for his own defeat; neither is getting the Danish throne “victoriously” Fortinbras's accomplishment. They represent “lowering the bar” of personal self-development/realization of the Renaissance man, set by the image of Hamlet, and deviation from the profound philosophical problems of the tragedy, that is, introduce profanation, which, according to Levinas, does not negate the mystery of personality and being, but is “one of the possible relationships with it” [Levinas, 1987, p. 86]. Materialized in the text of the tragedy, the verbal dialogue between Polonius and Laertes and the eventful dialogue between Fortinbras and his father, whose defeats he seeks to turn into victories, are full of calculating self-interest. In the context of these considerations, it can be assumed that only a genuine dialogue with the Other allows a person to rise to the level of a tragic hero and devote oneself to high service (liturgy), the meaning of which goes beyond the present day into the space of history, its great time and the meanings it causes.

In Levinas's work “Humanism of the Other”, the face of the Other reveals the presence of God in the world, without whom the unity of the world is lost. The philosopher points out that this loss is “consecrated against the grain” by Nietzsche's commonplace paradoxical judgment about the death of God. The world that lacks “the sense of all, the Rome to which all roads lead, the symphony in which all meanings sing, the song of songs” [Levinas, 1996, p. 47] is destined for the absurd. Instead, the discovery of the Other, which requires overcoming selfishness and going beyond the odyssey of constant self-absorbed returning to oneself, presupposes selfless service and hermeneutic efforts aimed at interpreting the integrity of the existence of another person, initiates activity and responsibility, correlates with the idea of infinity. According to Levinas, the face of the Other addresses the ego with its order to do what cannot be postponed or transferred to anybody else, revealing the entire immensity and infinity of the “absolutely other that escapes ontology” [Levinas, 1998, p. 185]. Thus, the task resulting from the movement toward the Other appears to match the sublime presence of the Absolute Being, indicated by a trace - the imprint of the transcendent. As Levinas notes, “the trace qua trace does not simply lead to the past but is the very passing toward a past more remote than any past and any future which still are set in my time - the past of the Other in which eternity takes form, an absolute past which unites all times” [Levinas, 1996, p. 63].