And after we have felt these, no nature remains quite the same
as before. There has entered into us a power of imaginative sympathy
which Art alone can inspire and only when it most inwardly reveals
Life itself. Of all things, the "Too late" and the "Might have been"
are the most sorrowful, and the divine possibility, cruelly realised
too late, gives the sharpest edge to Othello's mental agony, when the
whole truth of Desdemona's life--an "objectification" of loyalty,
love, and purity--is only revealed to him as she lies there dead
before him, killed by his own hand. All that it means rushes then like
a torrent on his soul; when Othello falls on the bed, by Desdemona's
body, the remorse and love that rend him with their talons are beyond
even Shakespeare's power of expression.
With groans scarcely uttered, Othello gives the only outlet possible
to the blinding, scathing storm of passions within him. There is one
touch, and only the intuitive artist of humanity and of life could
have known it, and given it--only one touch of consolation that could
be left him, and it comes to Othello as he is dying! "I kiss'd thee,
'ere I kill'd thee."
He fastens on this as a starving man fastens on a crumb of bread.
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