I AM BUT MAD NORTH-NORTH-WEST - HAMLETS S IMULATED MADNESS

Whereas science refers to the real world existing independently and co nditioned by cause and effect, the world of literature is fictitious, created by the artist in our imagination by means of language, an arte fact conditioned by aesthetic laws, a world sui generis. Accordingly, Hamlet is no person, but a literary figure, doing, saying, thinking an d feeling only what the poet dictated him word for word. The essential difference between the two worlds is often overlooked. That ''blind s pot'' has a long-standing tradition in European intellectual history a nd goes back i.a. to the German ''Hamlet experience'' in the eighteent h, the ''Hamlet fever'' and the felt spiritual kinship (Seelenverwandt schaft) in the nineteenth century. Teleological literary criticism, ce ntering around Hamlet's ''character'' and isolating his psychologicall y evaluated monologues cognition the boundaries between real person an d literary figure (e.g. Freud, Jones) and assisted in reducing a drama tic role to a medical case history. Speaking of Hamlet, one has to sta rt from Shakespeare's text, our subject matter. A dramatic play being a plot turned into dialogue, the poet's vocabulary used (but indirectl y also the vocabulary not used) is particularly informative. When refe rring to Hamlet's ''antic disposition'', Shakespeare uses a wide range of over 20 different terms, the most frequented being mad/madness (44 times). Evidence of primary importance are the five occasions after t he apparition of his father's ghost, when Hamlet speaks of his ''madne ss'' as an assumed role. In Act I ''madness occurs first as a mere pos sibility when Hamlet informs his friends, he might ''put an antic disp osition on''; in Act II vis-a-vis Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (''I am but mad north-north-west'') it is his deliberate action under certain conditions; in Act III it occurs thrice, first in his declaration of intent (''They are coming to the play, I must be idle'' (i.e. ''mad'') , next in answering the king (''I fare of the chamaeleon's dish''), an d once again in a particularly explicit distinction for his mother ('' I am essentially not in madness, but mad in craft''). The evidence of all other instances of mad/madness represented here corroborates these findings: madness as an adopted role and not as a character trait. - It should also be noted that Shakespeare's main source (Belleforests a daptation of the Amleth-story from Saxo Grammaticus) already knew of t he motiv of simulated madness as a cover for revenge. Hamlet assumes t he role of a ''madman'' in order to have full scope for action, first, to test by help of the,play in the play'' the truth of his father's a pparition as a ghost demanding revenge as well as the actual guilt of Claudius and, when that is established, for preparing and executing hi s revenge. By acting himself, Hamlet becomes guilty and (Shakespeare h aving chosen the dramatic genre of tragedy) pays for his succes with h is life. Considering the constant border-crossings between the spheres of real persons and fictive literary figures in psychological approac hes to Hamlet, we stressed the essential difference of a literary work of art from real life. At the same time, the inherent limitations of that difference must be shown as well. Although the world of belies le ttres is fictive and non-existent in reality, it does not play in a va cuum. It is fed, in many ways, by the peer's experience of his own day s as well as by the work's position within the realm of literary tradi tion (genre, sources, etc.). It is perhaps easy, to insist on the self -contained nature of literature, making literary criticism an arcane a ctivity of a few elected professionals. The price to pay would be, as Laurence Lerner points out, that great literature will no longer tell us anything about life, and the poet's subtle insights, his wisdom, hi s understanding of the soul and of the world cease to enrich the gener al reading public. My paper would have served its purpose, if it contr ibuted to sharpen the understanding of the difference between fictitio us literature and literary figures on the one hand and real persons on the other, and to render border-crossings in psychological approaches to literature less inconsiderate and rash. All our scholarly studies are asymptotes, continually approaching the infinite curve of literatu re, though failing to meet it within a finite distance. Provided, the point of departure and reference in Hamlet-studies remains Shakespeare 's text (for there is no other existence of Hamlet), psychological and psychoanalytical approaches have a merit of their own, not least in s aving Hamlet its (not his) fascinating ambiguity and mystery with whic h Shakespeare endowed it.