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| How Cleopatra looked like, according to reference.com |
When Maggie appreciated my
last post, Cleopatra’s
Lovers, I commented about Cleopatra’s tragedy. “Her tragedy was that
the entire spectrum of her character was passed through a kind of reverse prism
that reduces all the vibrant colours into just one prurient shade. Look at how
the Romans describe her in Shakespeare’s play. Lustful gypsy, Egyptian dish,
and whore. Those are some of the phrases used by the Romans. They brutally
stifled Cleopatra’s vibrant colours. That is the real tragedy.” Maggie yawned
and said, “Will this (pointing at me) tragedy go and take bath so that
we can have dinner?” It was past eight in the evening.
As I stood
under the shower, a reverse prism haunted my thinking. An infinite variety of
colours dancing like an intoxicated peacock was forced by some invisible force
through a prism and what emerged was a grey ray as bland as a moral science
class.
“If Cleopatra’s
nose had been shorter, the whole history of the world would have been
different,” 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote. Really?
Was it all about her physical charms? Come on, Cleopatra must have been
infinitely more than her nose.
Plutarch, Roman
philosopher and historian who lived just a century after Cleopatra, wrote that “her
actual beauty was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with
her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact
of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her
person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that
attended all she said or did, was something bewitching.”
What happened
to all those charms? The reverse prism that grey-fied them is the hypocritical middle-class
morality that Bernard Shaw constantly mocked. It is a morality “that conceives
virtuous indignation as spiritually nutritious, that murders the murderer and robs
the thief, that grovels before all sorts of ideals…” [Shaw’s Preface to Caesar
and Cleopatra] That sort of morality will refuse to see the entire spectrum
of a person’s character. Instead it will choose to look at one thing. Like
Cleopatra’s lust. And then Cleopatra’s peacock transmogrifies into a raven.
I have seen
this happening to a lot of people. It happened to me too. Done by well-wishers
and missionaries. All moralists who love to peep into the whore-side of a woman
even if she has umpteen better charms. This is the real tragedy of Cleopatra
and a lot many others.
I finished my
shower and joined Maggie for dinner. But Cleopatra refused to leave me. Hence
this post.
Indeed we never look at the entire spectrum of a person's character. Most humans, especially Indians zero in on the one or two negatives and amplify them instead of looking at a person's character as a whole. The world and especially Indians suffer what is called tunnel vision.
ReplyDeleteIt's a serious problem indeed. It leads to unwarranted judgement of others. If we see the many aspects of an individual's character, we won't be quick to judge. There will be more compassion.
DeleteI did a poem on Cleopatra's nose during my history series for A to Z. The nose is also compared to her dominating quality, as is with most people who have long noses. But of course, these are all conjectures. Cleopatra was a woman of great intellect and genius and the easiest way to downsize her genius is to bring forth her physical attributes.
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember your poem though vaguely. Cleopatra wouldn't have been a Queen without some qualities other than physical charm.
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