'La vida es un sueno' is it not, Jeffrey?
Except that I don't agree with that viewpoint, life certainly can be like
'an after-dinner sleep', dreaming of both youth and age, 'cept that it
ain't, we are contingently real, whatever our smoking away into the horizons
qualities, and real actions have real effects, like bombs on Afghan cities.
I always end up at the Matthean Sermon, where life does matter but no
answers are forthcoming, 'elohim, elohim, lama sabacthani'. If I quote
aright.
Never quite 'bought' the Gnostics. Who would claim to 'wisdom'.
Dunno what to say beyond that.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Jullich" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: A Gnostic Lesson - Life is a dream - Calderon De La Barca
> A new translation of the ~other,~ lesser-known, Auto Sacramentale Calderon
> ~Life is a Dream~ was performed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine
here in
> Upper Manhattan, a couple of years ago. Coincident with another thread on
> PoetryEtc here, it was directed and co-translated by a young Jesuit, Fr.
George
> Drance, who'd traveled extensively with Andrew Serban's Greek tragedy
> productions.
>
> This other ~Life~ was the ~really~ religious-philosophical one: Fall of
Adam,
> but (perhaps unique in this omission) an Adam and Eden without an Eve!
The
> temptation and Fall takes place directly between Adam the the Serpent.
(Adam's
> pre-figleaf, pre-"God made coats of skins and clothed them" innocence
[Gen.
> 3:21] in paradise made a perfect vehicle for casting a drop-dead GQ
model's
> body actor in the role, appropriate to Manhattan ~Naked Boys Singing~
theater
> tastes [title of a musical revue, later staged at Australia's Glebe
> Valhalla].) God appears in trinitarian form: George staged these three
> mysterious God figures beautifully, with gigantic Bread & Roses-type
puppets
> manned with poles, almost fifty such puppets, towering over the audience
under
> the cavernous cathedral ceiling. He used the full gamut of "post-modern"
> theater techniques on this: morphed celestial electronic voices for the
three
> "Gods," "site-specific" features such as entering toward the performance
space
> along the cathedral's long walkways where hooded "living statues" stood
> motionless much like in Cocteau's ~Belle et la Bete,~ etc.
>
> In some ways, this other ~Life~ is more startling and impressive than the
> familiar masterpiece
>
>
> http://waukesha.uwc.edu/ur/news2001/news_01252001.htm (on the puppeteer)
> http://www.fordham.edu/theatre/faculty.html (drance [scroll down])
>
>
............................................................................
...........................................
>
> Erminia Passannanti wrote:
>
> > Caldero De La Barca(January 17, 1600) : Life is a Dream
> >
> > http://www.tsufl.edu/library/7/literature/life_is_a_dream.htm
> >
> > This is the site where you can find in translation Calderon De La
Barca's
> > masterpiece, Life is a dream, (a Spanish play of deep religious and
> > philosophical meaning, where in a farsesque way the reality of the
senses -
> > and its dirt - is presented as a shadow.)
> >
> > Erminia
>
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