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Karl Jaspers : Hamlet and the Problem of Truth

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Delacroix - Self Portrait As Hamlet (1821)



Karl Jaspers

Tragedy is not enough



The Problem of Truth

Hamlet


An unprovable crime has been committed. The king of Denmark has been murdered by his brother, who has then taken the throne himself and married the slain man's wife. A ghost has revealed this to Hamlet, the murdered king's son, alone, without any witnesses. No one except the criminal himself - the new king - knows of the crime. In the present state of Denmark no one told of the murder would believe it had occurred. The ghost, because he is a ghost, cannot be a conclusive witness for Hamlet. The crime itself cannot be proved, though Hamlet senses it, almost as if he knew. Hamlet's life is now dedicated to a single task: to prove the unprovable, and, after proof, to act.


The whole play is the drama of Hamlet's search for truth. But truth is not only the answer to the bare question of the facts of the case. It is more. The state of the entire world is such that this crime could take place, that it could remain undetected, that it still eludes clarification. The moment that Hamlet realizes his task, he also knows that:


The time is out of joint. 0 cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right!



Any man in Hamlet's place, knowing what no one knows and yet not knowing it for sure, sees all the world in a new and different light. He keeps to himself what he cannot

communicate. Every human being, every situation, every ordinance stands revealed as in itself untrue through its resistance to the search, its subservience to a conspiracy against the truth. There is a flaw in everything. Even the best-intentioned among the good fail in their own way (Ophelia, Laertes). "To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand."


Hamlet's knowledge and his desire for knowledge set him apart from the world. In it, he cannot be of it. He acts the part of a madman. In this counterfeit world, madness is the mask which allows him not to lie about his real feelings, not to feign respect where he feels none. He can speak the truth through irony. Whatever he say, true or untrue - equivocal for all - he can cover with the mask of madness. He chooses madness as his proper role because truth admits of no other.


The instant Hamlet realizes that he is marked as an exception and is fated to exclusion, he is shocked into full recognition of what is happening to him. He addresses his friends as if he were taking leave of all possible sheltered human existence - yet at the same time he conceals from them that this is his farewell:


I hold it fit that we shake hands and part;

You, as your business and desire shall point you,

For every man hath business and desire,

Such as it is; and for my own poor part,

Look you, I'll go pray.


But the mask assumed is only a disguise in daily life. Hamlet must assume an actual role, that of the seeker for truth in a world radically untrue, the role of avenger of the crime committed. This role cannot be carried through without equivocation, impurity, distortion. Hamlet must take upon himself the agony of the tension between his nature and the role assigned him, until he can no longer see himself as he is but must reject himself as someone

warped and twisted. This alone explains his judgments on himself.



Many interpreters have pictured Hamlet as a man unable to make up his mind, nervous, hesitating, and ever late - an inactive dreamer. Many self-accusations seem to confirm such an opinion:


Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John-a-dreams ...

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action . . .

How all occasions do inform against me

And spur my dull revenge! . . .

. . . or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on th' event -