Bob Dylan gives us an accurate description of the world we live in. We live in a moment of human history that calls for the deepest wisdom and spirituality. We live in a world where violence and aggressiveness have invaded man's private space. We live in a world in which the power of love has lost its meaning, a world which requires courage and struggle on behalf of all creation to resist chaos.

It is easy to retire from the vulgar reality into some isolated and private paradise where we can reflect on the questions of the time, the injustice of the age, and live like moles in the heart of a twisted world. We can ignore and accept things as they are, or we can choose to struggle with them. We can run away from the call to contemplation, or we can embrace it with both wisdom and action, because the world is unfinished and it is our responsibility to keep building and creating. We can gather our strength – our spiritual strength – to see beyond ourselves and take the first step toward a new life.

In our search for wisdom and spiritual strength we should turn to works of literature and authors who show new possibilities. Since literature, as Lionel Trilling puts it, deals with truth, meaning “the truth of the self, and also the truth about the self, about the conditions of its existence, its survival, its development” 1 , it is necessary that we devote all our energies to works of literature which sharpen our awareness and expand our consciousness.

In a world where the quality of literature is so often said to be rapidly diminishing, it is important to draw our attention back to some of the true classics and appreciate their works from the point of view of our own time. It is important to pay attention to William Shakespeare, whose works have a timeless quality.

A master of writing skills, Shakespeare based majority of his works on universal human truths and moral choices. His ability to capture the essence of life gives us a spiritual direction of what it means to be really human.

Harold Bloom, the great lover of Shakespeare, said:

“We have to read Shakespeare, and we have to study Shakespeare. We have to study Dante. We have to read Chaucer. We have to read Cervantes... We have to read certain authors...They provide an intellectual with a spiritual value which has nothing to do with organized religion or the history of institutional belief. They remind us in every sense of re-minding us. They not only tell us things that we have forgotten, but they tell us things we couldn't possibly know without them, and they reform our minds. They make our minds stronger. They make us more vital. They make us alive...” 2

In short, Shakespeare takes us beyond our limited experience of life and the moral blindness we live in to show us the lives of other people at other times. He stirs us intellectually and emotionally; he deepens our understanding of our history, our society, and our own individual lives. Shakespeare expands our views and gives us strength to resist harsh reality. That's why it is impossible for him to slip into the tragic oblivion of old age.

 

1 L. Trilling, Freud: Within and Beyond Culture, in BEYOND CULTURE (Penguin Books, 1967), p. 99 .

2 Interviews with Harold Bloom, http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/interviews.html