{"id":3815,"date":"2012-01-01T18:50:04","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T18:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=3815"},"modified":"2012-01-01T18:50:04","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T18:50:04","slug":"hamlet-by-the-moskva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/hamlet-by-the-moskva\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamlet by the Moskva"},"content":{"rendered":"

The re-assignment last week of Vladislav Surkov, formerly Chief of Staff for the Russian President, following the opposition protests, reminded me of the fascinating\u00a0profile of Mr Surkov<\/a> in the London Review of Books<\/em> by Peter Pomerantsev two months ago.\u00a0 The profile ended with a sinister\u00a0interpretation of Hamlet<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Life in Russia,\u2019 the journalist told me in the democratic bar, \u2018has got better but leaves a shitty aftertaste.\u2019 We had a drink. \u2018Have you noticed that Surkov never seems to get older? His face has no wrinkles.\u2019 We had more drinks. We talked about Surkov\u2019s obsession with Hamlet<\/em>. My companion recalled an interpretation of the play suggested by a literature professor turned rock producer (a very Moscow trajectory).
\n\u2018Who\u2019s the central figure in Hamlet<\/em>?\u2019 she asked. \u2018Who\u2019s the demiurge manipulating the whole situation?\u2019
\nI said I didn\u2019t know.
\n\u2018It\u2019s Fortinbras, the crown prince of Norway, who takes over Denmark at the end. Horatio and the visiting players are in his employ: their mission is to tip Hamlet over the edge and foment conflict in Elsinore. Look at the play again. Hamlet\u2019s father killed Fortinbras\u2019s father, he has every motive for revenge. We know Hamlet\u2019s father was a bad king, we\u2019re told both Horatio and the players have been away for years: essentially they left to get away from Hamlet the father. Could they have been with Fortinbras in Norway? At the end of the play Horatio talks to Fortinbras like a spy delivering his end-of-mission report. Knowing young Hamlet\u2019s unstable nature they hired the players to provoke him into a series of actions that will bring down Elsinore\u2019s rulers. This is why everyone can see the ghost at the start. Then when only Hamlet sees him later he is hallucinating. To Muscovites it\u2019s obvious. We\u2019re so much closer to Shakespeare\u2019s world here.\u2019 On the map of civilisation, Moscow \u2013 with its cloak and dagger politics (designer cloak, diamond-studded dagger), its poisoned spies, baron-bureaucrats and exiled oligarchs who plan revolutions from abroad, its Cecil-Surkovs whispering into the ears of power, its Raleigh-Khodorkovskys imprisoned in the Tower \u2013 is somewhere near Elsinore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reference<\/em>:
\nPeter Pomerantsev [2011]:\u00a0 Putin’s Rasputin. London Review of Books, <\/em>33 (20): 3-6 (2011-10-20).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The re-assignment last week of Vladislav Surkov, formerly Chief of Staff for the Russian President, following the opposition protests, reminded me of the fascinating\u00a0profile of Mr Surkov in the London Review of Books by Peter Pomerantsev two months ago.\u00a0 The profile ended with a sinister\u00a0interpretation of Hamlet: \u2018Life in Russia,\u2019 the journalist told me in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,64,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-politics","category-shakespeare","p1","y2012","m01","d01","h18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}