Cleopatra: the Image of Indian Sati : Immortal Longing and Social Stigma
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概要
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Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is the most complex and profound portrayal of tragic love.Most critics assert that Cleopatra dies in a Roman fashion, appointing herself to the role of a wife to a Roman Emperor. However, some Eastern elements invade her death scene that makes it difficult to see her death purely as a Roman suicide. My paper compares the nature of Cleopatra’s death with that of Sati, the Indian Hindu custom of “voluntary death of a widow.” The custom of Sati was not completely unknown to early modern Europe. For example, Francisco Pelsaert (1595-1630), a Dutch Merchant, writes that“Sati goes and bathes, according to the daily custom, puts on her finest clothes, her jewels, and the best ornaments she has, adorning herself as if it was her wedding day.” The same symbolic gesture of Sati isrevealed in the rituals of Cleopatra’s self sacrifice. Cleopatra dramatizes her own death as a ceremonial preparation of a royal marriage. She wears her best attire and puts on her crown to meet Antony. Cleopatra’sdeath is the prelude to new pleasures of ‘immortal longings.’ Her declaration, “I am fire and air; my baser elements / I give to baser life,” might not sound strange if it came from a ‘faithful wife’ who ‘becomes Sati’ through self immolation on the funeral pyre of her husband. The drama ends in death but anticipates union of the lovers in the Elysian Fields just as a faithful Indian wife was supposed to be united with her husband as she threw herself on his funeral pyre.
- 2010-03-31