Book, What I Learned From Hamlet - by Leandro Karnal

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. A combination of the experience of a man from the 16th century and another from the 21st century: Shakespeare and Karnal All the world is a theater, wrote William Shakespeare, and men and women are but mere actors. In Leandro Karnal's new book, actor-readers are invited on a journey through their own consciousness: the journey of learning from the person who has the most to teach in the world's theater – the creator of Hamlet. What I learned from Hamlet, in this way, reveals the teachings left by William Shakespeare's main play in a combination between the experience of a man from the 16th century and another from the 21st century. Having read and re-read the work many times, Karnal reflected on the lessons that his protagonist, the melancholic prince of Denmark, left and, even in this era of happy selfies, continues to leave. With the collaboration of Valderez Carneiro da Silva, translator and specialist in Shakespeare, the author crosses passages from the play as a kind of coaching – a curation of life. “The itinerary of living is obligatory_x000B_until the end, and Hamlet is a_x000B_company for him. Shakespeare_x000B_is the feast of the senses and I_x000B_am the penetrating guest who, without being able to match the brilliance of English, comes to say just this: here Hamlet gave me his hand and helped me, held the candle and illuminated my ordinary life”, says Karnal. “What Hamlet tells us: we only interpret scenes, etiquettes and formalities because we cannot bear to know that we are all part of a theater. What Shakespeare tells us: this is Hamlet, a chance for you to be or not to be, it all depends on your will and ability to climb the mountain of consciousness”, he adds. Each chapter of What I Learned from Hamlet describes an act_x000B_of the tragedy and, like this one, takes_x000B_an original look at the human species and society – then and today: the world of Shakespeare and of authors and readers, the difficulty in diluting oneself in world, the affective duplicities (“I love you and I hate you”), the impulses and violence, the meaning and consciousness of life (to be or not to be?), the plots of power and the contradictions of all of us – heroes with traits of villainy. And, as a last lesson, it reworks our worlds and our conceptions of what we are, what we shouldn't be and what we aspire to be.