VICTOR HUGO ON OTHELLO

 #OthElokuu

Victor Hugo - Excerpt from William Shakespeare

Translated by Sandra Dermark

22nd of August, MMXXIII

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Who or what is Othello? A beautiful fatal figure! Othello is the darkness of night. This darkness loves the light of day. That is why the Moor loves the fair Desdemona. She is the light and the madness of Othello. How easy it is for him to be jealous! Othello is great, august, he has for an entourage bravery in battle, banners, clangour, fame, glory, and the splendour of one hundred battles... But his skin is dark. And how easy it is for the hero to become a savage monster! How easy for darkness and death to understand one another!

By the side of Othello, the darkness of night, we have Iago, who is Evil. Evil is another form of darkness. The night is only the darkness of Earth, but Evil IS the darkness of the spirit. What darkness that which is sired by wickedness and lies! Isn't it the same to let black ink flow on the page or to let black treachery course through one's veins? Whoever has seen pretenses and wickedness from up close knows. One walks carefully with a liar. Pour out hypocrisy at the crack of dawn, and you will surely blot out the Sun. That has happened to God with corruption of the various Churches.

Iago, by Othello's side, is the chasm by the slippery slope. "Here," whispers the snare set to blindness. The wicked shows the path to the black. Deception is in charge of giving the light that fails to darkness. Jealousy has lies for pathfinders. What a terrible spectacle to behold the dark Othello and the traitor Iago fighting whiteness and purity! The two incarnations of the eclipse conspire, one of them roaring and the other smiling, in order to attain the tragic disappearance of the light.

Othello is the darkness of night. Probe these depths. Being the darkness of night and wanting to kill, what is his weapon of choice? Poison, morningstar, axe, blade? No, it's the PILLOW. To kill is to put to sleep. Maybe Shakespeare himself was not aware of what he did. Such IS the force and such the reality of character types, that their creator gets carried away by them. And thus, Desdemona, united to the darkness-man, dies stifled by the pillow in which she received both his first kiss and her last dying breath.