Caliban (Shakespeare)

Caliban is a character from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest .

Until the end of the play he is the slave of the wise magician Prospero . Caliban is the son of Sycorax, who was accused of sorcery and banished from Algeria. She was left on an island pregnant with Caliban and died before Prospero's arrival. Caliban points out that Setebos was his mother's god.

Franz Marc , Caliban

Prospero, who controls his instincts, can be interpreted as the epitome of culture . The wild Caliban (whose name is an anagram of canibal ) represents a contrast to culture: He embodies nature as uneducated, instinctual energy, “incapable of free self-determination and therefore essentially designed to be controlled and used - a conception that has provided ethical arguments for the subjection of "savage" peoples since the Renaissance ”(cf. Kindler's literary dictionary ). However, Caliban changes his character during the play and finally sees with a willingness to serve that can be trained to give preference to the master Prospero over the alcoholic Stephano.

Prospero justifies his harsh treatment of Caliban by accusing him of Caliban attempting to rape (or seduce, his daughter Miranda, this is not clear from the text). Prospero enslaves Caliban and tortures him on the assumption that his allegations are true. As a result, Caliban chooses the shipwrecked Stephano as god and new lord after drinking wine from him. Caliban asks Stephano to kill Prospero in order to become master of the island. But finally Caliban learns that Stephano is neither a god nor a match for Prospero and takes up his (involuntarily) obedient attitude towards Prospero again.

Even if Prospero sees him as a brutal savage, Caliban is given one of the most moving speeches of the entire piece:

“Be not afeard; the island is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me that when I waked, I cried to dream again. " - Act 3, Scene 2

“Don't be scared, the island is full of noises, tones and graceful melodies that bring joy and not pain. Sometimes a thousand jingling instruments sound over my head - and sometimes I hear voices which , if I woke up after a long sleep, would make me sleepy again; then it seems to me in the dream The clouds would open and reveal treasures, ready to rain down on me, that when I wake up I would scream and cry because I want to dream again. " - 3rd act, 2nd scene

References in media

• In the Penny Dreadful series, Frankenstein's first creature is named Caliban.
• Caliban is the name of the wild homeworld of the Legion of (knightly) Dark Angels in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. They have a lot in common with Shakespeare's Caliban: She plays a role in the Horus heresy (including in the novels Descent of Angels and Fallen Angels), at the end of which he is destroyed. It is (apparently) tamed and ruled by the union with the empire, but in the eyes of some residents it is also exploited. During this time, a group of Dark Angels also fall away and turn to the gods of chaos. After a short split, the remains of the destroyed planet become part of the empire again. Prospero is also the name of a homeworld of another legion that is also destroyed during this time.
• Robert Browning wrote one of his dramatic monologues from the perspective of the Caliban: Caliban upon Setebos. Or, Natural Theology in the Island , in which he regards Caliban as a Rousseauian "natural man". Caliban gives long Henry James- style monologues from WH Aden's long poem The Sea and the Mirror , a meditation on the themes of The Storm .
• Arno Schmidt's 1964 story Caliban about Setebos ties in with Shakespeare and Browning's treatment of the figure .
• In his preface to the novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray , Oscar Wilde connects the character Caliban with the aversion to realism and romanticism in the 19th century.
• Fantasy writer Tad Williams tells the story of Caliban from his point of view in the short story Caliban's Hour ( 1993 ).
• Caliban can also be reminiscent of other mythical, deformed figures that take various human-like forms in Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian versions of male fertility or nature spirits, such as trolls and orcs .
• Caliban is the religious name of the American publisher Briton Hadden in the fraternity Skull & Bones .
• In John Fowle's novel The Collector , an emotionally incompetent employee captures an art student in order to satisfy his propensity for possession. He is called Caliban by her, her name is Miranda.
• The German metalcore band Caliban has named itself after him.
• A cycle of 3 novels by Roger MacBride Allen , based on the robot stories by Isaac Asimov , revolves around a robot called Caliban , among other things .
• Schopenhauer describes Hegel in Die Welt as will and idea as "spiritual caliban".
• In Dan Simmons ' novel cycle Ilium and Olympos , Caliban appears as a character from a parallel universe that was created by the creative power of an author like Shakespeare and into which accesses were made in the distant future.
• In Heinz-Joachim Heydorn's main work The Contradiction of Education and Rule from 1970, "Caliban's appearance" stands for a death instinct that appears in the guise of progress, paired with the highest rationality and madness, the self-hatred of a failed class (a bourgeoisie that fails in the ideal of human progress) symbolize.
• The London 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony , called Isles of Wonder , quoted the story of The Storm . So the title of the piece of music that was played when the Olympic flame was lit was Caliban's Dream and Caliban's monologue from the third act (see above) was recited by Kenneth Branagh as Isambard Brunel at the beginning of the ceremony. The music piece And I Will Kiss by the band Underworld , written especially for the opening ceremony, is also a quote from Der Sturm (2: 2: 148-149).
• In the film Tatort: ​​Born in Pain , the foreman of a murdered criminal is nicknamed by his new boss.
• Silvia Federici makes reference to Caliban in "Caliban and the Witch. Women, the Body and Original Accumulation", in which she describes the history of the female body in the transition to capitalism.
• "Caliban's War" is the name of the second novel in the science fiction series " The Expanse ".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Silvia Federici: Caliban and the Witch. Women, the body and the primordial accumulation. Ed .: Silvia Federici. 5th edition. Mandelbaum Critique & Utopia, Budapest 2018, ISBN 978-3-85476-670-4 .