Cataracts And Hurricanoes Poem by gershon hepner

Cataracts and hurricanoes spout
in certain areas only, while elsewhere
the land is parched and dried out in a drought,
while fires burning wildly scorch the air.
The winds blow cruelly, and they crack our cheeks,
but what’s the point of raging like King Lear?
We must face climate boldly, without shrieks,
forgetting all the snows of yesteryear.

Introducing a series of occasional articles in which contemporary writers look back at classic works of literature, Jack Lynch, the author of 'Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright Into the Bard' revisits 'King Lear, ' which continues its run this week at UCLA with Ian McKellen in the title role (LA Times, October 24,2007: “The brutal power of ‘King Lear’”) :

'King Lear' is teeming with sadists - not only Cornwall but Edmund, Goneril and Regan––and we're not allowed to hope for goodness from humankind. But not all the play's misery is produced by villains––an angry universe seems set against the possibility of human happiness, as well. 'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! ' cries the old king in the storm. 'You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout / Till you have drenched our steeples! ' It's a sublime apocalyptic vision of a world in which we are the playthings of the gods: 'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, ' says Gloucester. 'They kill us for their sport.' Lear, the 'poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man' on the heath, embodies the bleakest vision of human nature in the history of the theater - the once-powerful king has been reduced to 'the thing itself.' And in that 'unaccommodated man' we see a kind of tragic dignity, which continues to draw us to the play, despite all its difficulties. 'King Lear' remains a hard play to enjoy, but 'enjoy' may the wrong word ––it's a work we endure in the hope that it will show us something about who we are. No other play has the same tragic power, the same ability to inflict pain on its audience: In the entire history of literature, only Sophocles gives a comparable portrait of suffering.
Audiences have repeatedly turned to it in turbulent ages, as in the aftermath of World War II, and again today. When our own world seems to be filled with the war, torture and gratuitous cruelty that crowded Shakespeare's imagination, we look to 'Lear' to be reminded of what it is to be human.



10/24/07