translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

168). Even when buried, flowers are buried along with her. Gertrude strews
Ophelia’s grave not with “dust to dust” but with “sweets to the sweet” (V,
1, 236). Flowers symbolize innocence; they are pure and easily destroyed,
just like Ophelia.
The presence of the skull in the graveyard scene also leads to a
meditation on death. Beginning with the IVth century, the skeleton became
the accepted Christian symbol of death. (Prosser 1967) The skull reminds
man not of the futility of life, but of the inevitability and the meaning of
death. Hamlet’s contemplation of Yorick’s skull induces a moment of
mourning. When the bones tossed up by the gravediggers are anonymous,
Hamlet is cynical; but his caustic cynicism ceases when Yorick’s skull
comes to the surface and the gravedigger names it. Holding it in his hand,
Hamlet recalls his childhood, even if what is alive in his mind seems
reduced to the decayed skull:
Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of
most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times,
and now-how abhorred in my imagination it is. My gorge rises at it.
(V, 1, 178-182)
There is a contradiction, a clash between what is still vital to one’s memory
and what is dead. Hamlet solves it by projecting the living memory onto
the skull and lips onto the dead’s head. He shifts from commentary to
direct address:
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be
your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your
own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? (V, 1, 183-186)
The Yorick Hamlet used to know, the Yorick in his mind would have
mocked at his own death, because this was his profession: he was a jester.
The Yorick in Hamlet’s hand is somber, “grinning” but quite “chop-fallen”.
The moment of direct address marks Hamlet’s position in front of death;
Hamlet becomes Yorick, the jester mocking at his own grinning. Hamlet’s
speech indicates that he resigns himself to death, but his is not a resignation
of despair. The speech states the fact that man has no reason to fear the death
of the body, but only the death of the soul. In this graveyard scene Hamlet
confronts, recognizes and accepts the condition of man as a mortal being.
The imagery of death is also related to the idea of disease, sickness
and infection. In the Ghost’s description of his poisoning by Claudius, the
process of poisoning is very vividly presented and the spreading of the
disease is very well portrayed. The Ghost presents in this passage how the
poison invades the body during the victim’s sleep and how the healthy
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