Kronenberg Castle. Google Images
Kronenberg Castle. From members.virtualtourist.com
What is a place? What gives a place its identity, its aura? These questions occurred to the physicists Niel Bohrs and Werner Heisenberg when they visited Kronenberg Castle in Denmark. Bohr said to Heisenberg:
Isn't it strange how this castle changes as soon as one imagines that Hamlet lived here? As scientists we believe that a castle consists only of stones, and admire the way the architect put them together. The stones, the green roof with its patina, the wood carvings in the church, constitute the whole castle. None of this should be changed by the fact that Hamlet lived here, and yet it is changed completely. Suddenly the walls and the ramparts speak a quite different language. The courtyard becomes an entire world, a dark corner reminds us of the darkness in the human soul, we hear Hamlet's " To be or not to be." Yet all we really know about Hamlet is that his name appears in a thirteenth-century chronicle. No one can prove that he really lived, let alone that he lived here. But everyone knows the questions Shakespeare had him ask, the human depth he was made to reveal, and so he, too, had to be fund a place on earth, here in Kronenberg. And once we know that, Kronenberg becomes quite a different castle for us.
Yi Fu Tuan. Space and Place. P. 4. University of Minnesota Press. 2007
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