Henry Miller's Hamlet Letters by Michael Hargraves
 
Digital Download

Capra (1988) 

Written between 1935 and 1938, these letters to Michael Fraenkel (the model for Boris in Tropic of Cancer) are only ostensibly about Shakespeare's play; their real subject is Miller's distinction between intellect (the province of abstract reasoning) and intelligence. Fraenkel was a brilliant dialectician, seemingly trapped in the labyrinths of his ideas, and Miller spoke for poetic and spiritual insight and truth. Fraenkel, said Miller, "set up the pins and I [knocked] them down as best ... I could." He admired Fraenkel as one who was "possessed," but thought him imprisoned by his ideas and, therefore, like Hamlet, unable to act. Only Miller's share of the correspondence is included in this edition, and although it is generally clear which pins he is knocking down, it is also like reading a novel in which every other chapter is missing. Still it is good to have this much, for there are passages that are among Miller's best work.