' But
with Shakespeare the transformation had reached the State also. The
King, the Father, the representative of the Consummate Self, the maximum
of all life, the symbol of the consummate being, the becoming Supreme,
Godlike, Infinite, he must perish and pass away. This Infinite was not
infinite, this consummation was not consummated, all this was fallible,
false. It was rotten, corrupt. It must go. But Shakespeare was also the
thing itself. Hence his horror, his frenzy, his self-loathing.
The King, the Emperor is killed in the soul of man, the old order of
life is over, the old tree is dead at the root. So said Shakespeare. It
was finally enacted in Cromwell. Charles I took up the old position of
kingship by divine right. Like Hamlet's father, he was blameless
otherwise. But as representative of the old form of life, which mankind
now hated with frenzy, he must be cut down, removed. It was a
symbolic act.
The world, our world of Europe, had now really turned, swung round to a
new goal, a new idea, the Infinite reached through the omission of Self.
God is all that which is Not-Me. I am consummate when my Self, the
resistant solid, is reduced and diffused into all that which is Not-Me:
my neighbour, my enemy, the great Otherness.
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