Sunday, June 09, 2013

Point of View

The spectre of death in a marriage educes differing fears;  Here is Golde, wife of Tevye the Dairyman in the Scholem Aleichem story (not the bowdlerized Broadway version):

I am dying, Tevye; who will cook your dinner?


--Scholem Aleichem. Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Location 255). Penguin Classics. Kindle Edition.


Compare Cleopatra, informed that Antony has committed suicide:

Noblest of men, woo’t die? Hast thou no care of me?

--William Shakespeare,  Antony and Cleopatra,  Act IV, Sc. 15.  Cleopatra goes on to say of Antony:
Oh, withered is the garland of the war.
The soldier’s pole is fall’n! Young boys and girls
Are level now with men. The odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
...which may or not be true of Antony, but no one would have said of Tevye.





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