I doubt I will have the time or energy to write a post today, so allow me to share with you a piece of my Tamburlaine paper. This small section was written a while ago, in that state of immersion that I am attempting to return to now, and quite frankly, I am surprised by its energy.
Although assured of his own success and role, Tamburlaine exhibits a strange tension between his Scourge-ness and the awareness of himself as such. As a Scourge, his highest duty manifests precisely the moment he is completely enraptured with worldly desires; however, this immersion is always in tension with his awareness of being a scourge, or rather, a man who is called to be a scourge.
For Tamburlaine to “abrogate his particularity so as to become the universal,” he must immerse himself in worldly desires—which for the moment will be left vague—however, his particularity, the temptation, the break, is in Zenocrate who herself oscillates between being a particularity and a structural position in the Scourge’s larger universalizing sweep (Kierkegaard 83).
As Zenocrate pleas for her release, the tension between her structural role as to-be-empress of the East and her particularity that breaks Tamburlaine’s “telos in the universal” is placed in high relief (Kierkegaard 83). Tamburlaine’s response to her plea demonstrates the logic of this tension through both the obvious content and the formal construction of his speech. Genuinely insulted that Zenocrate and her company will not follow him, he replies, “not all the gold in India’s wealthy arms shall buy the meanest soldier in my train” (I, ii. 85-6). Insofar as his soldiers are aids to his role as Scourge they are indispensable and like his generals become a part of himself. Tamburlaine’s effort to woo Zenocrate immediately follows this declaration, and demonstrates a parallel logic but one that ruptures at speech’s end. Worth “more to Tamburlaine than the possession of the Persian crown,” Zenocrate is sought as a structural object that must “grace his bed that conquers Asia” (I, ii. 90-91, 37). That is, in his role as Scourge, Tamburlaine will become emperor and needs an empress, and as such she will be a part of Tamburlaine’s drive toward the universal. However, at speech’s close Tamburlaine offers himself to Zenocrate asserting, “this is she with whom I am in love,” a gesture that simultaneously ruptures Zenocrate’s merely structural value and Tamburlaine’s alignment with the universal; Zenocrate is made particular as his single choice for empress, and because the role is merely structural with respect to Tamburlaine’s responsibility as Scourge—it does not advance his telos in the universal—choosing her asserts his particularity and suspends his connection with the universal. The paradoxical oscillation in Tamburlaine’s relationship with Zenocrate can be better understood when contrasted with his martial relationships.
Immediately after Tamburlaine briefly suspends his universality by singling Zenocrate, he relegates her again to a structural element by using her as proof of his larger mission’s destined success. Seeking to win over Theridamas, Tamburlaine evokes both celestial imagery and the more grounded proof of his recently won spoils, including Zenocrate. “[S]ooner shall the sun fall from his sphere than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome” because “Jove himself will stretch his hand from heaven to ward the blow, and shield me safe from harm” (I, ii. 175-6, 179-80). His mission’s divine sanction manifests itself on earth in the “heaps of gold in showers” and the “Egyptian prize,” including Zenocrate whom “[Jove] sends” to be his “queen and portly empress” (I, ii. 181, 189, 185-186). Her particularity dissolves in her twofold structural function as the wife to “the monarch of the East” and as Jove’s assurance of Tamburlaine’s success (I, ii. 184). Zenocrate fills a vacant position and serves as a messenger, neither role invoking her particularity; she is simply a part of the martial spoils. Overcome by all this evidence, Theridamas agrees to join Tamburlaine whose joyous response further distinguishes Zenocrate from his generals.
“Thus shall my heart be still combined with thine, until our bodies turn to elements, and both our souls aspire celestial thrones” (I, ii. 234-236). The metaphor of cosmic ascendance links back to the divine sanction of Tamburlaine’s mission and also usurps Theridamas’ particularity in its universalizing sweep; the latter becomes the former’s appendage, a “partaker of [his] good or ill” (I, ii. 229). Theridamas never again breaks from or even challenges Tamburlaine, but like the other generals simply becomes the Scourge’s aid. At times, Zenocrate too is simply his aid, his “empress,” a structural role that necessitates nothing of her particularity.
As Bajazet and Tamburlaine prepare to meet each other at battle, their respective partners are placed to engage another theater of war, that of words. Zabina and Zenocrate, wearing their partners’ crown, trade insults and prophesy their potential futures as slaves. At this moment, Zenocrate becomes a pseudo-general, an aid to Tamburlaine by giving verbal battle to her structural counterpart Zabina. Moreover, Zenocrate defends herself against Zabina’s insults by foregrounding her connection and allegiance to Tamburlaine rather than invoking her own particularity; “Call’st thou me concubine, that am betroth’d unto the great and mighty Tamburlaine?” (III, iii. 169-170). Once her partner has secured victory, Zenocrate falls silent as her structural role is completed for the moment while Zabina mourns the loss with Bajazet. However, before and after her battle with Zabina, Zenocrate’s structural value is complicated, unlike Tamburlaine’s generals, and oscillates with her particularity.
Indeed, even as Tamburlaine places her next to Zabina, she is called to wear his crown “as if [Zenocrate] wert the empress of the world,” as the “vaunt of [Tamburlaine’s] worth;” however, these structural roles immediately follow his more problematic declaration that she is his “only paragon” (III, iii. 125, 130, 119). Although the speech in which these contradictions are housed serves to posit Zenocrate as Zabina’s structural equivalent, Tamburlaine’s “paragon” reference reveals a more nuanced image of his partner. If the word is used as a noun, then Tamburlaine sees Zenocrate as a model, complicating both Zenocrate’s structural role and the hierarchy of their relationship. She would simultaneously become an ideal, perhaps for her virginal status , and a creature that ruptures Tamburlaine’s heretofore adoration of war and—because his role as Scourge necessitates violence––his connection to the universal as a result. More likely, however, paragon is deployed as transitive verb that places Zenocrate as Tamburlaine’s parallel and rival; this is a double play, calling attention to her role as “empress” and her ability to rupture his mission, an ability predicated on her (mis)understanding of Tamburlaine’s actions as unethical. Zenocrate, in this reading, is not Tamburlaine’s ideal but rather a voice that questions the ethics of his actions, a voice that has power precisely because it is particular and not structural, a voice that is loved and loves.
