CW: suicidal thoughts

ENOBARBUS  I am alone the villain of the earth,

And feel I am so most. O, Antony,

Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid

My better service, when my turpitude

Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.

If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean

Shall outstrike thought; but thought will do’t, I feel.

I fight against thee? No, I will go seek

Some ditch wherein to die. The foul’st best fits

My latter part of life.

Exit                  (4.6.30-39)

 

Utter devastation, exhaustion, loss from Enobarbus: I am alone the villain of the earth, and feel I am so most. I’m the worst person in the world, and I feel that more than anyone. I’m an awful person, and a total loser too. (Enobarbus, life and soul of the party, left alone to castigate himself.) O, Antony—a cry from the heart—thou mine of bounty, generous to a fault, unstoppable giver of gifts—how wouldst thou have paid my better service, when my turpitude thou dost so crown with gold! How much more you would have rewarded my loyalty—my friendship—my standing with you still, shoulder to shoulder in battle—when you send me such riches, a golden reward for my betrayal? Such magnanimity; such love. Turpitude is an excellent word, suggesting not just great wrong, but complete moral failure; it can be spat out, hoicked up like a horrible taste in the mouth. This blows my heart: he means that his heart is full, swollen, but not in a good way; it’s bursting, but also blown like a flower past its best, or like something dead left in the sun. My heart.

 

If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean shall outstrike thought; but thought will do’t, I feel. Will his melancholy, his rock-bottom mood lead to apathy and prevent him from taking any action? No, he can still act decisively, without much more thought at all (what Hamlet called ‘thinking too precisely on the event’). He can still kill himself, that is, more or less immediately, and get ahead of the turmoil of his brain—but that’s where his thinking would lead him, anyway. I fight against thee? Against Antony? (And against his own desire to die?) Never, I could never do it. Utter incredulity. I see that now. I will go seek some ditch wherein to die, a lowly, common, anonymous, wretched death. Mud, rubbish, filth. The foul’st best fits my latter part of life. That’s all I’m worth; that’s where I’ve ended up. I disgust myself, and I don’t want to live any longer.

 

The alliteration in the last few lines adds to a sense of bitterness, I think, lazy, laid-back Enobarbus, given to prose as much as to verse, rattling out these stark statements of self-loathing. Half a world away from the poet of the burning barge, but not unrelated, imagining only ugliness, darkness, death where once he painted a scene of glowing, dazzling desire.