|
Friday, 11 September 2009
Arthur Schopenhauer located the transcendent experience in the work of
the artist and the saint; in those two figures, he said, there is
demonstrated the ability to catch a mere glimpse of the Will that lies
behind all phenomenal experience of the world: through suffering and
discipline to ecstatic knowledge. In the below quote from the rare essay,
"Saintliness, Death and the Perfect Family," published only as a preface
to the 1994 publication of Hated Nightfall, Howard Barker extends
the concept to the consideration of the possibility of hope and love in
the world of representation, which requires necessary deception. At
the same time (especially in the concept of the repudiation of the
world), he provides a potential bridge between Schopenhauer and
Adorno's conceptions of the art work in contemporary culture:
If the sign of the saint is sacrifice, it is a sign
illuminated by the vehemence with which he repudiates the world. For the
saint finds the world lacking, and his desire is focused on what can never
be satisfied. His passion can discover no worthwhile object, and the more
searching his gaze, the more contamination is revealed. For Dancer [the
protagonist of Hated Nightfall], all is transparent, and this
transparency is appalling pain, for we require to be deceived, it is the
condition of social acceptance. Without deception there is perhaps no hope
... the saint is lured by human love only to discover its inadequacy ...
the saint is first and foremost his own work of art, exhibited primarily
to himself. But neither saints nor works of art are socially desired, for
they are disruptive to the bourgeois and the collectivist alike.
|
|
Superfluities
Redux home page
George Hunka
home page
theatre
minima home page
Theory and polemic
95 Sentences About Theatre (2007)
Organum I (2006-2007)
Organum
II (2008-2009)
Critique of
Tragedy (2010-continuing)
Notes
Howard Barker
1
Howard
Barker 2
Samuel
Beckett 1
Samuel
Beckett 2
Bertolt
Brecht
Richard
Foreman 1
Richard
Foreman 2
Je Suis
Sang
Sarah
Kane
Music
Marilyn
Nonken
Saint Oedipus
Contact
geh@panix.com
Copyright © 2003-2010
by George
Hunka
|
