to calm them, or to hold them, or even to cling to them.
NOW I KNOW that the quotation comes from
Macbeth
and that Shakespeare places that particular simile in the mouth of Lady Macbeth, shortly after Macbeth has returned from murdering Duncan while he slept. It's just one of a string of desperate arguments, or rather disconnected phrases, that Lady Macbeth keeps interjecting in order to minimize the importance of what her husband has done or has just done and which is now irreversible and, amongst other things, she says that he shouldn't think "so brainsickly of things", which is difficult to translate, since the word "sickly" means both weak and ill, although here it's used as an adverb; so, literally, she's saying to him both that he shouldn't think about such things with so sick a brain and that he shouldn't think so weakly, I don't quite know how to say it in my own language, but fortunately, on that occasion, those weren't the words the Englishwoman quoted. Now that I know that the quotation comes from
Macbeth,
I can't help but realize (or perhaps remember) that also behind us, at our backs, is the person urging us on, the person who whispers in our ear, perhaps without our even seeing him, his tongue at once his weapon and his instrument, like the drop of rain that falls from the eaves after the storm, always on to the same spot so that the earth becomes softer and softer until the drop penetrates and makes a hole, perhaps a channel. Not like a drip from a tap that disappears down the plughole without leaving the slightest trace in the basin, or like a drop of blood that can be instantly soaked up by whatever is to hand, a cloth or a bandage or a towel or sometimes even water, or if the only thing that is to hand is the hand of the person losing the blood, assuming that person is still conscious and the wound not self-inflicted, the hand raised to stomach or breast to stop up the hole. The tongue in the ear is also the kiss that most easily persuades the person who appears reluctant to be kissed, sometimes it isn't the eyes or the fingers or the lips that overcome resistance, but simply the tongue that probes and disarms, whispers and kisses, that almost obliges. Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what's going on, our ears don't have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can't hide from what they sense they're about to hear, it's always too late. It isn't just that Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth, it's above all that she's aware that he's committed a murder from the moment he has done so, she's heard from her husband's own lips, on his return: "I have done the deed." She hears his confession of this deed or act or exploit and what really makes her an accomplice is not that she instigated it or that she prepared the scene beforehand, nor that she collaborated afterwards, that she visited the newly dead corpse and the scene of the crime in order to make the servants look like the guilty parties, but the fact that she knew about that deed and its accomplishment. That's why she wants to diminish its importance, perhaps not so much in order to calm the terrified Macbeth by showing him her bloodstained hands, but so as to minimize and banish her own knowledge, her own thoughts: 'The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures"; "You do unbend your noble strength to think so brainsickly of things"; 'These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad"; "Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts". These last words she says after she had gone boldly out and then returned having smeared the faces of the servants with the blood of the dead man ("If he do bleed ...") to make them seem the guilty parties: "My hands are of your colour," she says to Macbeth, "but I shame to wear a heart so white," as if she wished to infect him with her own nonchalance in exchange for infecting herself with the bloodshed by Duncan,
NOW I KNOW that the quotation comes from
Macbeth
and that Shakespeare places that particular simile in the mouth of Lady Macbeth, shortly after Macbeth has returned from murdering Duncan while he slept. It's just one of a string of desperate arguments, or rather disconnected phrases, that Lady Macbeth keeps interjecting in order to minimize the importance of what her husband has done or has just done and which is now irreversible and, amongst other things, she says that he shouldn't think "so brainsickly of things", which is difficult to translate, since the word "sickly" means both weak and ill, although here it's used as an adverb; so, literally, she's saying to him both that he shouldn't think about such things with so sick a brain and that he shouldn't think so weakly, I don't quite know how to say it in my own language, but fortunately, on that occasion, those weren't the words the Englishwoman quoted. Now that I know that the quotation comes from
Macbeth,
I can't help but realize (or perhaps remember) that also behind us, at our backs, is the person urging us on, the person who whispers in our ear, perhaps without our even seeing him, his tongue at once his weapon and his instrument, like the drop of rain that falls from the eaves after the storm, always on to the same spot so that the earth becomes softer and softer until the drop penetrates and makes a hole, perhaps a channel. Not like a drip from a tap that disappears down the plughole without leaving the slightest trace in the basin, or like a drop of blood that can be instantly soaked up by whatever is to hand, a cloth or a bandage or a towel or sometimes even water, or if the only thing that is to hand is the hand of the person losing the blood, assuming that person is still conscious and the wound not self-inflicted, the hand raised to stomach or breast to stop up the hole. The tongue in the ear is also the kiss that most easily persuades the person who appears reluctant to be kissed, sometimes it isn't the eyes or the fingers or the lips that overcome resistance, but simply the tongue that probes and disarms, whispers and kisses, that almost obliges. Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what's going on, our ears don't have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can't hide from what they sense they're about to hear, it's always too late. It isn't just that Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth, it's above all that she's aware that he's committed a murder from the moment he has done so, she's heard from her husband's own lips, on his return: "I have done the deed." She hears his confession of this deed or act or exploit and what really makes her an accomplice is not that she instigated it or that she prepared the scene beforehand, nor that she collaborated afterwards, that she visited the newly dead corpse and the scene of the crime in order to make the servants look like the guilty parties, but the fact that she knew about that deed and its accomplishment. That's why she wants to diminish its importance, perhaps not so much in order to calm the terrified Macbeth by showing him her bloodstained hands, but so as to minimize and banish her own knowledge, her own thoughts: 'The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures"; "You do unbend your noble strength to think so brainsickly of things"; 'These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad"; "Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts". These last words she says after she had gone boldly out and then returned having smeared the faces of the servants with the blood of the dead man ("If he do bleed ...") to make them seem the guilty parties: "My hands are of your colour," she says to Macbeth, "but I shame to wear a heart so white," as if she wished to infect him with her own nonchalance in exchange for infecting herself with the bloodshed by Duncan,
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