well Corelis seems pretty attached to a pretty old and essentialized
'justification' and not so unprettily so; a little tentativeness:
1. Orlando becomes 'compassionate', as you say (though I contest this),
only when it is revealed to him as one about to murder his fellow men for
a snack, that his fellow men are in fact ex-courtiers and nobles like
himself. Hence, "Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you": it's not
omnes gentes that get such a response from one wielding their slaughter,
but GENTLES certainly may. "I pray you" is not for a pig. For a king,
perhaps. It's the nobles' SPEECH that saves them from the blade of a
desperate intruder, not their humanity; I can only suppose that Orlando
had recognized the latter as soon as he saw food and men eating it. Had
they spoken 'savagely', he'd have slit their throats.
2. "It is the quality of being spoudaios which for instance at certain
magical moments in theatre makes an intense breathless quiet descend on
the audience, because you know that something is happening which you
really absolutely no shit have to care about." Really absolutely no shit:
vehemence won't make your point for you, even if it's happy to deck it.
What happened to Brecht? This intense breathless quiet is interrupted
backstage (listen carefully) by the stabbing of finger at till. Like a
whisper from Dionysus. Having to care is little more than a sentimental
locution, or is no more here anyhow. Try smoking dope before you sit
comfortably.
3. "being a mortal human being is a privilege, and that we must make
ourselves worthy of it. Doing this is what great poetry is good for."
Mortality is a queer privilege, I think suddenly of Beckett in submerged
hysterics, and CONFERRED by what? Privilege is more akin to licence than
to ability; what we can make ourselves worthy of is a more lucid and
penetrating ontology than this one. Being a mortal being. I'll be one,
thanks. "...is good for": Good for? As in, good for one ride? Good for
greasing baking tins? Good for a laugh? The idiom sits rather lazily or
slumps. If great poetry is good for something, how exactly is its
relation of -being for- (which is a GOOD relation), qualitatively
different from its -being- (GREAT)? What values are these?
af'ernoon, k
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