lunes, 31 de octubre de 2022
Hegel on Wilde
José Angel García Landa
The avatars of mind in Hegel's monumental Phenomenology of Spirit include some paragraphs on the witty spirit—as a mode of reaction of the individual subject in the face of the dominance of money interests as a criterion of value. A picture on the deep signification of verbal irony in the age of high accumulation, or perhaps a portrait of a skeptical flâneur in the age of mechanical capitalism, exposing its contradictions in polished pellets of expression. One cannot but feel that in the following account Hegel is referring to Oscar Wilde—not in 1807, but now.
§520. Just
as self-consciousness had its own language with state power, in other
words, just as Spirit emerged as actively mediating between these
extremes, so also has self-consciousness its own language in dealing
with wealth; but still more so when it rebels. The language that gives
wealth a sense of its essential significance, and thereby gains
possession of it, is likewise the language of flattery, but of base
flattery; for what it pronounces to be an essence, it knows to be
expendable, to be without any intrinsic
being. The language of flattery, however, as we have already observed,
is Spirit that is still one-sided. For although its moments are indeed
the self which
has been refined by the discipline of service into a pure existence,
and the intrinsic being
of power, yet the pure Notion in which the simple, unitary self and the in-itself,
the former a pure 'I' and the latter this pure essence or thought, are
the same—this unity of the two sides which are in reciprocal relation
is not present in the consciousness that uses this language. The object
is still for consciousness an intrinsic
being in contrast to the self, that is, the object is not for
consciousness at the same time consciousness's own self
as such. The language of the disrupted consciousness is, however, the
perfect language and the authentic existent Spirit of this entire world
of culture. This self-consciousness which rebels against this rejection
of itself is eo ipso
absolutely self-identical in its absolute disruption, the pure
mediation of pure self-consciousness with itself. It is the sameness of
the identical judgement in which one and the same personality is both
subject and predicate. But this identical judgement is at the same time
the infinite judgement; for this personality is absolutelly dirempted,
and subject and predicate are utterly indifferent, immediate beings
which have nothing to do with one another, which have no necessary
unity, so much so that each is the power of a separate independent
personality. The being-for-self [of this consciousness] has its own
being-for-self for object as an out-and-out 'other'; not as if this had
a different content, for the content is the same self in the form of an
absolute antithesis and a completely indifferent existence of its own.
Here, then, we have the Spirit of this real world of culture, Spirit
that is conscious
of itself in its truth and in its Notion.
§521. It is this absolute and
universal inversion of the actual world o thought: it is pure culture. What is learnt in
this world is that neither the actuality
of
power and wealth, nor their specific Notions, 'good' and 'bad', or the
consciousness of 'good' and 'bad' (the noble and the ignoble
consciousness), possess truth; on the contrary, all these moments
become inverted, one changing into the other, and each is the opposite
of itself. The universal power, which is the Substance,
when it acquires a spiritual nature of its own through the principle of
individuality, receives its own self merely as a name, and though it is
the actuality of power, is
really the powerless being that sacrifices its own self. But this
expendable, self-less being, or the self that has become a Thing, is
rather the return of that being into itself; it is being-for-self that
is explicitly for itself, the concrete existence of Spirit. The thoughts
of these two essences, of 'good' and 'bad', are similarly inverted in
this movement; what is characterized as good is bad, and vice-versa.
The consciousness of each of these moments, the consciousness judged as
noble and ignoble, are rather, in their truth just as much the reverse
of what these characterizations are supposed to be; the noble
consciousness is ignoble and repudiated, just as the repudiated
consciousness changes round into the nobility which characterizes the
most highly developed freedom of self-consciousness. From a formal
standpoint, everything is outwardly
the reverse of what it is for itself;
and again, it is not in truth what it is for itself, but something else
than it wants to be; being-for-self is rather the loss of itself, and
its self-alienation rather the preservation of itself. What we have
here, then, is that all the moments execute a universal justice on one
another, each just as much alienates its own self, as it forms itself
into its opposite and in this way inverts it. True Spirit, however, is
just this unity of the absolutely separate moments, and, indeed, it is
just through the free actuality of these selfless extremes that, as
their middle term, it achieves a concrete existence. It exists in the
universal talk and destructive judgement which strips of their
significance all those moments which are supposed to count as the true
being and as actual members of the whole, and is equally this
nihilistic game which it plays with itself. This judging and talking
is, therefore, what is true and invincible, while it
overpowers everything; it is solely with this alone that one has truly
to do with in this actual world. In this world, the Spirit of each part
finds expression, or is wittily talked about, and finds said about it
what it is. The honest individual takes each moment to be an abiding
essentiality, and is the uneducated thoughtlessness of not knowing that
it is equally doing the reverse. The disrupted consciousness, however,
is consciousness of the perversion, and, moreover, of the absolute
perversion. What prevails in it is the Notion, which brings together in
a unity the thoughts which, in the honest individual, lie far apart,
and its language is therefore clever and witty.
§522. The content of what Spirit says about itself is thus the perversion of every Notion and reality, the universal deception of oneself and others; and the shamelessness which gives utterance to this deception is just for that reason the greatest truth. This kind of talk is the madness of the musician 'who heaped up and mixed together thirty arias, Italian, French, tragic, comic, of every sort; now with a deep bass he descended into hell, then, contracting his throat, he rent the vaults of heaven with a falsetto tone, frantic and soothed, imperios and mocking, by turns' (Diderot, Nephew of Rameau). To the tranquil consciousness which, in its honest way, takes the melody of the Good and the True to consist in the evenness of the notes, i.e. in unison, this talk appears as a 'rigmarole of wisdom and folly, as a medley of as much skill as baseness, of as many correct as false ideas, a mixture compounded of a complete perversion of sentiment, of absolute shamefulness, and of perfect frankness and truth. It will be unable to refrain from entering into all these tones and running up and down the entire scale of feelings from the profoundest contempt and dejection to the highest pitch of admiration and emotion; but blended with the latter will be a tinge of ridicule which spoils them' (ibid.). The former, however, will find in their subversive depths the all-powerful note which restores Spirit to itself.
J. N. Findlay's account of the following paragraphs is as follows:
§523. Plain sense and sound morality can teach this disintegrated brilliance nothing that it does not know. It can merely utter some of the syllables the latter weaves into its piebald discourse. In conceding that the bad and the good are mixed in life, it merely substitutes dull platitude for witty brilliance.
§524. The disintegrated consciousness can be noble and edifying but this is for it only one note among others. To ask it to forsake its disintegration is merely, from its own point of view, to preach a new eccentricity, that of Diogenes in his tub.
§525. The disintegrated consciousness is, however, on the way to transcending its disintegration. It sees the vanity of treating all things as vain, and so becomes serious.
§526. Wit really emancipates the disintegrated consciousness from finite material aim and gives it true spiritual freedom. In knowing itself as disintegrated it also rises above this, and achieves a truly positive self-consciousness.
In Hegel's words—here's where he comments on Wilde, and on the self-transcending vanity of wit:
§525. But in point of fact, Spirit has already accomplished this in principle [i.e. its own dissolution, winning for itself a still higher consciousness]. The consciousness that is aware of its disruption and openly declares it, derides existence and the universal confusion, and derides its own self as well; it is at the same time the fading, but still audible, sound of all this confusion. This vanity of all reality and every definite Notion, vanity which knows itself to be such, is the double reflection of the real world into itself: once in this particular self of consciousness qua particular, and again in the pure universality of consciousness, or in thought. In the first case, Spirit that has come to itself has directed its gaze to the world of actuality and still has there its purpose and immediate content; but, in the other case, its gaze is in part turned only inward and negatively against it, and in part is turned away from that world towards heaven, and its object is the beyond of this world.
§526. In that aspect of the return into the self, the vanity of all things is its own vanity, it is itself vain. It is the self-centred self that knows, not only how to pass judgement on and chatter about everything, but how to give witty expression to the contradiction that is present in the solid elements of the actual world, as also in the fixed determinations posited by judgement; and this contradiction is their truth. Looked at from the point of view of form, it knows everything to be self-alienated, being-for-self is separated from being-in-itself; what is meant, and purpose, are separated from truth; and from both again, the being-for-another, the ostensible meaning from the real meaning, from the true thing and intention. Thus it knows how to give correct expression to each moment in relation to its opposite, in general, how to express accurately the perversion of everything; it knows better than each what each is, no matter what its specific nature is. Since it knows the substantial from the side of the ddisunion and conflict which are united within the substantial itself, but not from the side of this union, it understands very well how to pass judgement on it, but has lost the ability to comprehend it. This vanity at the same time needs the vanity of all things in order to get from them the consciousness of self; it therefore creates this vanity itself and is the soul that supports it. Power and wealth are the supreme ends of its exertions, it knows that through renunciation and sacrifice it forms itself into the universal, attains to the possession of it, and in this possession is universally recognized and accepted: state power and wealth are the real and acknowledged powers. However, this recognition and acceptance is itself vain; and just by taking possession of power and wealth it knows them to be without a self of their own, knows rather that it is the power over them, while they are vain things. The fact that in possessing them it is itself apart from and beyond them, is exhibited in its witty talk which is, therefore, its supreme interest and the truth of the whole relationship. In such talk, this particular self, qua this pure self, determined neither by reality nor by thought, develops into a spiritual self that is of truly universal worth. It is the self-disruptive nature of all relationships and the conscious disruption of them; but only as self-consciousness in revolt is it aware of its own disrupted state, and in thus knowing it has immediately risen above it. In that vanity, all content is turned into something negative which can no longer be grasped as having a positive significance. The positive object is merely the pure 'I' itself, and the disrupted consciousness in itself this pure self-identity of self-consciousness that has returned to itself.
Hegel's account of the self-transcendence of wit probably owes something to Friedrich Schlegel's notion of the reflexive and self-critical "romantic irony" in Athenäum. However, it might be argued that its main inspiration comes from the future—from the as yet imperfectly realized odyssey of the spirit in the work and personality of Oscar Wilde.
—And as a reminder, here follow some examples of paradoxical brilliance from the Wilde side:
There is only one thing in the world that is worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
One should always be in love; that is the reason one should never marry.
A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
All art is quite useless.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
I am not young enough to know everything.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.
-Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning to a friendship, and it is far the best ending to one.
-Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
-Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Peole say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
-Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Science is the record of dead religions.
Only the shallow know themselves.
The Enigma of Awareness (of Awareness)
Retropost, 2012:
Consciousness as simplification, of decision, of making
the world manageable. (See my theory on Attention). And then, the
mystery of our awareness of this process, the reflexivity of the whole.
With Zizek:
"The subordinate mediator becomes the subject". That seems to be a
quite general law governing human action and attention, or, to be more
precise, what becomes the subject (and the object of attention) is a successful subordinate mediator.
In this respect, we might consider Malabou's reading of Hegel's
linguistic anthropology: "Chapter 3 [of The
Future of Hegel]
then raises the question: if humans are not the only animals that
develop habits, what is it that gives us a capacity for
self-determination that other animals lack? Chapter 4 responds that the
use of language differentiates human beings from other animals and
makes our habitual behavior unique: "Man is exemplary because the human
formative power can translate the logical process into a sensuous form"
(74). This, Malabou concludes, makes each of us capable of plastic
individuality, of transforming our own singular essence in
unforeseeable ways by incorporating what was formerly accidental."
Note btw that Malabou's reading is consistent with my own view of Hegel
as a demythologizer in religion, and as a philosopher who acknowledges
the productive dimension of reflexivity.
____
Zizek: "History means there is no metalanguage" —you cannot stand on
your own shoulders, cognitively speaking, and any panorama of
philosophy, any reading of another philosophy, is done from a
situated philosophical standpoint. For Hegel, the meaning of an act
arises through the act itself; meaning is not pre-existing: it is
created retroactively. History is one big process of exaptation.
sábado, 29 de octubre de 2022
Julián Gallego sobre el teatro
Sobre su definición, teatralidades diversas, protodrama, y sobre las primeras escenografías.
Fecha: 22/09/1992
viernes, 28 de octubre de 2022
Una escena de Stage Beauty
Retropost, 2012:
Primero un trailer, y luego un par de reseñas preliminares de la película Stage Beauty (Belleza prohibida) escritas por los usuarios de IMDb, antes de comentar la escena que me interesa:
'Without beauty, there's nothing. Who could love that?' (Ned Kynaston, Stage Beauty)
Don't expect an elegant historical
romp from Stage Beauty; it's much more than that. Director Richard Eyre
(Iris) and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher have loosely interpreted true
events to deliver a passionate, romantic journey of gender-bending
self-realisation set in the bawdy world of the British Restoration,
circa 1660.
In a time when women are banned
from acting on stage, King Charles II is on the throne, accompanied
everywhere by his vulgar but merry mistress, Nell Gwnn. Meanwhile Ned
Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is the most celebrated leading lady of his
time. He is adored…by his audiences, by his lover and patron the Duke
of Buckingham, and secretly loved by his dresser Maria (Claire Danes).
But when aspiring actress Maria's illegal performance as Desdemona in
Othello triggers royal permission for women to act on stage, Kynaston's
fall from grace is swift.
This
is an actors' film, where the talents of Danes and in particular,
Crudup, shine. (Their remarkable relationship triggered an off-screen
romance.) Crudup is taut as the bisexual Kynaston, trained to be a
calamity and actress since early adolescence, and emotes powerfully as
he struggles with his sexuality and identity in an unfriendly new
political landscape. He is alternately a catty drag queen, angry young
man and committed thespian, without ever straying beyond credibility.
In contrast, Danes is luminous but unsure as Maria. A talented
supporting cast includes Rupert Everett, providing comic relief as the
languid King, while Ben Chaplin is sensual as the self-serving Duke.
Stage Beauty has been compared to Shakespeare in Love, but although it's less successful, it's far less contrived. Although Stage Beauty
is a love story, you don't know how things will resolve. The pace is
less brisk than in a more manufactured film, but it's also more
realistic, enhanced by production design and costuming which depicts
both the grit and the sumptuousness of the time.
While at first the on stage acting grates, it is deliberate. As Stage Beauty
progresses, the acting technique evolves to resemble 19th Century
Naturalism – not true to life, but faithful to the emotional journey of
the characters. It's a special film that will take you on an emotional
journey too.
"All the world's a stage," wrote the Bard, "and all the men and women merely players that strut and fret their hour upon the stage."
"Stage Beauty" is set in the world of seventeenth-century Restoration theatre, but the stage serves as a microcosm for life itself, and the roles played by the actors before the public mirror the roles they play in their private lives. The question is, do they create their roles, or do their roles create them?
Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is an actor who takes on women's roles, since real women are not permitted to do so. He has been thoroughly trained and schooled in the then highly stylized technique of portraying women -- to such an extent that any trace of masculinity seems to have been drummed out of him.
His dresser Maria (Clare Danes) yearns to be an actress herself, but is prevented from doing so by the narrow conventions of Puritan England -- until Charles II is restored to the throne and decrees that, henceforth, real women shall play women's roles on the stage. A whole new world opens up for Maria, but it looks like curtains for Ned.
What happens next is pure anachronism: Ned and Maria are able to rise above the limitations and constraints of their era. Not only do they transcend their gender or sex roles, but they overcome their classical training and, in effect, engage in Method acting, a technique still three hundred years away in the far-distant future. When he teaches Maria how to break the mold and play Othello's Desdemona in a whole new, natural way, Ned becomes a seventeenth-century Stanislavsky.
But, by George, it works. Their performance of the celebrated death scene from "Othello" sends shock waves through an audience accustomed to pantomime and exaggerated gestures -- and it electrifies us as well.
Not since Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love" have an actor and actress so shimmered and shone simultaneously on stage and screen. One hopes that Billy Crudup and Clare Danes will be remembered for their luminous performances at the 2005 Academy Awards.
Aquí está también la reseña positiva pero no entusiasta de Roger Ebert.
La película es excelente para ilustrar los primeros momentos de Shakespeare como clásico, en el siglo XVII, y sirve para hacerse una ligera idea del ambiente teatral de la Restauración, aunque si nos atenemos a ella no se representaba otra cosa que Shakespeare, idea que sería altamente inexacta, es pena que no haya alguna pequeña escena alusiva a la comedia de la Restauración, aunque por ser justos está ambientada, supuestamente, en una fase muy temprana en la que el teatro está básicamente reviviendo los éxitos anteriores tras la prohibición puritana. Esto no deja de introducir una contradicción de base en la película—pues a la vez nos muestra un mundo teatral experimentado y establecido, mientras que se nos habla de los dieciocho años en que los espectáculos han estado prohibidos… El interregno republicano 1642-60 supuso una interrupción de la profesión teatral mucho mayor de la que nos permite suponer esta película. Y la carrera de Edward Kynaston, con la edad con la que aparece en la película, es una imposibilidad en la Inglaterra de los años 1650. En fin, quédese esto a título de "tiempo teatral" indeterminado y de ficción poética.
Para lo que sí sirve la película modélicamente es como reflexión sobre la teatralidad del sujeto y de los roles de género, para mostrar el continuo teatro/vida que se da en los papeles que asumimos en la comedia de las relaciones entre los sexos. Y también para mostrar cómo el efecto de realidad está interpenetrado por el juego de representaciones semióticas, de ilusiones dramáticas, y de esquemas y de marcos ficcionales.
La escena que me interesaba comentar es la representación final de Otelo, en la que la nueva actriz Maria Hughes representa el papel de Desdémona, en el que antes había triunfado Kynaston, mientras que Kynaston hace de Otelo. A lo largo de la obra se nos ha preparado para esta escena, con Maria primero como la discreta ayudante de cámara de Kynaston, a la vez enamorada de él y de la posibilidad de ser actriz un día. Su frustración al descubrir la homosexualidad (o bisexualidad) de Kynaston. Luego, el triunfo de Maria como actriz, el favor real, y el resentimiento de Kynaston, maltratado por el rey y apaleado por los aristócratas. En un episodio se dedica al strip-tease de barrio bajo, y lo rescata de allí Maria, que también hace lo posible por reconvertirlo a la heterosexualidad, sacándole las posibilidades teatrales a los roles eróticos ("hacer de hombre" o "hacer de mujer" en la cama). Por allí parece que se le puede atacar a Kynaston, que en una interesante conversación con Pepys explica que la masculinidad se experimenta por contraste con la feminidad—no ya en el comportamiento social, sino en la experiencia interna, y que en su caso incluso cuando se comporta como un "hombre" está actuando, representando un papel deliberado (algo familiar a la experiencia de muchos gays en la teatralidad de la vida cotidiana):
Ned Kynaston: You know why the man stuff seemed so real? Because I'm pretending. You see a man through the mirror of a woman through the mirror of a man. You take one of those reflecting glasses away, it doesn't work. The man only works because you see him in contrast to the woman he is. If you saw him without the her he lives inside, he wouldn't seem a man at all.
[pause]
Samuel Pepys: Yes. You've obviously thought longer on this question than I.
La tensión entre Kynaston y Maria Hugues es un modelo de comedia rómántica "guerrera"; el erotismo es ambivalente e incierto, dada la bisexualidad de Kynaston, y la rivalidad profesional adquiere a veces tinte de pelea entre verduleras. Así pues hay una incertidumbre ambiental sobre el final de la obra, que si bien parece comedia muy bien pudiera derivar en tragedia como sucede en Otelo. Y aquí es donde la obra usa inteligentemente una vuelta de tuerca sobre una vieja convención dramática—el drama que se vuelve real. Un ejemplo clásico de este recurso se ve en La tragedia española de Kyd, donde los asesinatos supuestamente fingidos sobre la escena resultan ser reales. La escena final del duelo-espectáculo de Hamlet también tiene algo de esto. Esta escena de Repo! The Genetic Opera recurre a un episodio análogo, y el público representado en la obra queda desconcertado. Y una variante más inquietante, donde la ficción teatral se rompe de verdad y la muerte en escena desconcierta no sólo al público ficticio sino al real, la comento en esta nota sobre Edipo de Dryden, otra obra que un día tuvo un final inesperado. El asesinato del presidente Lincoln en un teatro también parece tener algo de teatral, por ponerlo suavemente, y de irreal. Sale en Intolerancia, de Griffith.
La escena dramática que resulta volverse real es un recurso intensamente teatral, es algo que parece pedir la propia idea del drama: el teatro es el sitio donde pasa lo imprevisto, donde la presencia física incontestable de los actores en un espacio que a la vez es el mismo que el del público, y otro, permite esa tensión de incertidumbre donde el guión podría escapar de control en cualquier momento. Fernando Savater lo dice muy bien en esta conferencia sobre La utopía teatral.
Una solución utópica a esa imposible decadencia del teatro hoy en día es intermedializarlo y aportarle la energía de otros medios—por ejemplo del cine. El cine es ya teatro intermedializado, pero este cine sobre temas teatrales permite extraer ciertas posibilidades al teatro como tal teatro, no como teatro evolucionado en cine. Es lo que pasa en Stage Beauty con la representación del asesinato de Desdémona, que funciona de manera mucho más efectiva como teatro filmado que como teatro en carne y hueso. En un teatro el público no creerá nunca que el asesinato de la la actriz que interpreta Desdémona ha sido real, por mucho que se esfuerce el director: la única manera en que podría creerlo es si tal cosa se produjese realmente, y el efecto estético no quedaría precisamente intensificado, sino destruido a la vez que la representación de la obra. En la misma escena filmada en una película, en cambio, el resultado es incierto para el público cinematográfico. Esperamos una buena actuación, y experimentamos la incertidumbre sobre si Kynaston va a bordar su papel hasta el punto de matar a su rival con la escena del cojín. (Sobre todo vistas las analogías que se han establecido a lo largo de la película entre el cojín de Kynaston y el pañuelo de Desdémona). A ello se suma la experimentación con estilos teatrales más realistas, que también introduce la película. Kynaston es aquí como el Conde de Rochester en El Libertino, enseñando a actuar a Elizabeth Barry de modo realista. El realismo impacta al público teatral de la película, aunque (para mayor efectividad) no les hace creer en ningún momento que se haya producido un asesinato en la escena realmente. Sólo están impresionados por una actuación inesperadamente intensa. En cambio, el público de la película, más al tanto de la trastienda y de las pasiones descontroladas entre bambalinas, no sabe realmente si la película va a recurrir al truco de la muerte en escena (ver un ejemplo representativo de la incertidumbre lograda, en el foro de IMDb). Por eso la actuación de Otelo y Desdémona es inesperadamente intensa para ambos públicos, el del teatro en 1660 y el de la película en el siglo XXI, si bien por razones diferentes. Y de la experiencia sale un Otelo (y una Desdémona, claro) inesperadamente resucitados, remediados o remediated como dicen en inglés, por el efecto de la superposición de representaciones, el teatro pasado por el cine con un resultado inesperadamente teatral, y cinematográfico a la vez.
Por eso el estilo de actuación que trasciende a la pantomima gestual del principio no es realmente ni el realismo decimonónico ni el method acting de Stanislavsky (como decían las reseñas iniciales) aunque debe algo a los dos—es una actuación filtrada a través de las convenciones del medio teatral y del cinematográfico, y que se basa esencialmente en la ambivalencia compleja entre realidad y representación que permite el juego dialéctico de los dos medios artísticos.
Se aplica aquí a la estética teatral, y a la cinematográfica, la misma lógica que Kynaston aplicaba a las relaciones entre los sexos: vemos el teatro a través del espejo del cine visto a través del espejo del teatro. Si eliminas uno de esos espejos reflectantes no funciona— y por eso no acabo de entender que esta película se base en una obra teatral; lo que está claro es que ese drama pedía ser una película para añadir más tensión genérica a la relación. Al final, como Ned Kynaston en su juego de papeles, ya no sabemos si lo que estamos viendo es teatro, cine, o un juego complejo entre ambos que sería imposible sin su tensión, pero que a la vez los lleva a una complejidad superior que de por sí no alcanzarían.
____________
Stage Beauty. Dir. Richard Eyre. Written by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on his play Compleat Female Stage Beauty. Cast: Billy Crudup (Ned Kynaston), Claire Danes (Maria Hughes), Rupert Everett (King Charles II), Hugh Bonneville (Samuel Pepys), Richard Griffiths (Sir Charles Sedley), Edward Fox (Sir Edward Hyde), Tom Hollander (Sir Peter Lely), Zoë Tapper (Nell Gwynn). Music by George Fenton. Cinematography by Andrew Dunn. Ed. Tariq Anwar. Prod. Des. Jim Clay. Art dir. Keith Slote, Jan Spoczynski. Set Decoration by Caroline Smith. Costume design by Tim Hatley. Exec. Prod. Rachel Cohen, Richard Eyre, Michael Kuhn, Amir Malin, James D. Stern. Coprod. Michael Dreyer. Prod. Robert de Niro, Hardy Justice, Jane Rosenthal. Lions Gate Films / Qwerty Films, Tribeca Productions / N1 European Film Produktions / BBC Films, 2004.* (Spanish title: Belleza prohibida).
jueves, 27 de octubre de 2022
Estamos asistiendo a un teatro, a un escenario, que es imposible
LA CORRUPCIÓN GENERALIZADA DE LA JUSTICIA ESPAÑOLA (Y DE LA PRENSA, Y LOS PARTIDOS QUE LO SILENCIAN):
Kabuki in Print
The Nov 4-5 @UChicagoCEAS @UChiFrankeInst @uchicarteasia symposium “Kabuki in Print” seeks to bring together experts from theater, literature, and art history to explore the relation between page and stage. https://t.co/mH15UXKofB pic.twitter.com/QT4aNxU0kM
— Smart Museum of Art (@SmartUChicago) October 27, 2022
Theaternarratologie
Horstmann, Jan. Theaternarratologie. (Narratologia, 64). Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2018.* (Scenery, semiotics of drama, performance, space, perspective; Roland Schimmelpfennig, Der Goldene Drache, 2009; Nicolas Stemann, Faust; Jette Steckel, Der Fremde; Bastian Kraft, Orlando).
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110597868/html
2022
miércoles, 26 de octubre de 2022
Blog de Teatro Inglés
Un blog de mi vieja asignatura de teatro:
Blog de Teatro Inglés (formerly Géneros 1).
https://generos-1.blogspot.com
2018
lunes, 24 de octubre de 2022
London Theatres
London Theatres
around 1600:
—in the age of Shakespeare. From Simon Trussler's Illustrated History of English
Theatre:
London Theatres by José Angel García Landa
—oOo—
The Changeling
Changeling, The, a tragedy by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, printed 1653, but acted as early as 1622.
Beatrice Joanna, daughter of the governor of Alicant, is ordered by her father to marry Alonzo de Piracquo. She falls in love with Alsemero and in order to avoid the marriage employs the ill-favoured villain De Flores, whom she detests but who cherishes a passion for her, to murder Alonzo. To the horror of Beatrice, De Flores exacts the reward he had lusted for. Beatrice is now to marry Alsemero. To escape detection she arranges that her maid Diaphanta shall take her place on the wedding night; and to remove a dangerous witness, De Flores then kills the maid. The guilt of Beatrice and De Flores is revealed to Alemero, and they are both brought before the governor, whereupon they take their own lives. The title of the play is taken from the sub-plot, in which Antonio disguises himself as a crazy changeling in order to get access to Isabella, wife of the keeper of a madhouse. The main plot is taken from John Reynolds's God's Revenge against Murther (1621).
domingo, 23 de octubre de 2022
Shakespeare (5º Curso Filología Inglesa)
Shakespeare (mi vieja asignatura de quinto curso): https://www.academia.edu/1730554/Shakespeare
Encasillamientos genéricos
Encasillamientos genéricos https://www.academia.edu/88815595/Encasillamientos_gen%C3%A9ricos
viernes, 21 de octubre de 2022
martes, 18 de octubre de 2022
Las Dos Leyes
Retropost, 2012:
—según la lectura que hace J. N. Findlay de la Fenomenología del Espíritu de
Hegel. Según Hegel, el primer paso más allá de la ética racionalista
hacia una ética espiritual se discierne en la tragedia griega. Su
análisis es de interés no sólo para una teoría del espíritu o del
conocimiento (en la que se inserta) sino de modo más local en tanto que
es un análisis profundo de la estructura ideológica del drama— sus
esquemas organizativos, o su estructura profunda, si así queremos
decirlo. Es por tanto una interpretación del drama basada en una teoría
cultural de la sociedad, y también una teoría narratológica. Anticipa
también de modo notable la oposición nietzscheana entre el lado
apolíneo y dionisíaco de la tragedia. También es toda una teoría del
género, y resulta ser así una narratología cultural de la diferencia
genérica. En fin, que es una perspectiva sobre la tragedia griega
enormemente sugerente. Así la sintetiza Findlay en su prólogo a la Fenomenología del Espíritu:
—que será ejemplificada por Hegel, en las fases fenomenológicas atravesadas por el espíritu, por el mundo del imperio romano.
Los apartados en que trata Hegel la cuestión de las dos leyes y de los conflictos éticos, con el ejemplo de Antígona, están en la scción VI, "Spirit", de la Fenomenología del Espíritu, especialmente §438-476. Reproduciré aquí no el texto de Hegel, sino su síntesis en el comentario o explicación de Findlay sobre las secciones más relevantes para el drama.
Primero, establece Hegel cómo la vida espiritual de una comunidad se divide en dos ámbitos regidos por dos leyes: el ámbito humano del Estado, la ley y la vida "diurna" de la comunidad, y el ámbito familiar, ámbito divino y más unido a la intuición y a la tradición. El primero es masculino y el segundo femenino, y el primero descansa en última instancia sobre el segundo.
VI. SPIRIT
(...)
§439. The essence of Spirit has already been recognized as the ethical substance, the customs and laws of a society. Spirit, however, is the ethical actuality which, when it confronts itself in objective social form, has lost all sense of strangeness in what it has before it. The ethical substance of custom and law is the foundation and source of everyone's action and the aim towards which it tends: it is the common work which men's co-operative efforts seek to bring about. The etical substance is as it were the infinite self-dispending benevolence on which every individual draws. It is of the essence of this substance to come to life in distinct individuals and to act through and in them.
§440. Spirit is the absolutely real being of which all previous forms of consciousness have represented falsely isolated abstractions, which the dialectic development has shown them to be. In the previous stage of observational and active Reason, Sirit has rather had Reason than been Reason: it has imposed itself as a category on material not intrinsically categorized. When Spirit sees itself and its world as being Reason it becomes ethical substance actualized.
§441. Spirit in its immediacy is the ethical life of a people, of individuality at once with a social world. But it must advance to the full consciousness of what it immediately is through many complex stages, stages realized in a total social world and not merely in a separate individual consciousness.
§442-3. The living ethical world of spirit is its truth, its abstract self-knowledge being the formal generality of law. But it dirempts itself on the one hand into the hard reality of a world of culture, and on the other hand into the inner reality of a world of faith and insight. The conflict between these two modes of experience is resolved in Spirit-sure-of-itself, i.e. in morality. Out of all these attitudes the actual self-consciousness of absolute Spirit will make its appearance.
THE TRUE SPIRIT. THE ETHICAL ORDER.
§444. Spirit is a consciousness which intrinsically separates its moments, whether in its substance or in its consciousness. In its consciousness the individual moral act and the accomplished work are separated from the general moral substance or essence: the term which serves as middle term between them is the individual conscious agent.
§445. The ethical substance, i.e. the system of laws and customs, itself reflects the distinction between the individual action or agent, on the one hand, and the moral substance or essence, on the other. It splits up into a human and a divine law. The individual harried by these contradictory laws both knows and does not know the wrongness of his acts, and is tragically destroyed in the conflict. Through such tragic instances, individuals learn to advance beyond blind obedience to law and custom. They achieve the ability to make conscious decisions to obey or disobey.
THE ETHICAL WORLD
§446. Spirit is essentially self-diremptive. But just as bare being dirempts itself into the Thing with its many properties, so the ethical life dirempts itself into a web of ethical relations. Adn just as the many properties of the Thing concentrate themselves into the contrast between individuality and universality, so too do ethical laws resolve themselves into individual and universal laws.
§447. The ethical substance, as individual reality, is the commonality which realizes itself in a plurality of existent consciousnesses in all of which it is consciously reflected, but which also underlies them as substance and contains them in itself. As actual substance it is a people, as actual consciousness the citizens of that people. Such a people is not anything unreal: it exists and prevails.
§448. This Spirit can be called the human law since it is a completely self-conscious actuality. It is present as the known law and the prevailing custom. It shows itself in the assurance of individuals generally, and of the government in particular. It has a daylight sway, and lets individuals go freely about their business.
§449. The ethical substance reveals itself, however, in another law, the Divine Law, which springs from the immediate, simple essence of the ethical, and is opposed to the fully conscious dimension of action, and extends down to the inner essence of individuals.
§450. The Divine Law has its own self-consciousness, the immediate consciousness of self-in-other, in a natural ethical community, the Family. The Family is that elementary, unconscious ethical being which is opposed to, and yet is also presupposed by, the conscious ethical being of the people and their devotion to common ends.
§451. In the Family natural relations carry universal ethical meaning. The individual in the Family is primarily related to the Family as a whole, and not by ties of love and sentiment to its particular members. The Family, further, is not concerned to promote the well-being of its particular members, nor to offer them protection. It is concerned with individuality raised out of the unrest and change of life into the universality of death, i.e. the Family exists to promote the cult of the dead.
§452. The individuality by dying achieves peace and universality through a merely natural process. As regards its timing it is only accidentally connected with the services he performs to the community, even though dying is in a sense the supreme service to the community that a man can perform, in furnishing the Family with its ancestral pantheon, its household Lares. In order, however, that the individual's taking up into universality may be effective, it must be helped out by a conscious act on the part of the Family members. This act may indifferently be regarded as the saving of the deceased individual from destruction, or as the conscious effecting of that destruction, so that the individual becomes a thing of the past, a universal meaning. The Family resists the corruption of worms and of chemical agencies by substituting their own conscious work in its place, by consigning the dead individual solemnly to the imperishable elementary individual, the earth. It thereby also makes the dead person an imperishable presiding part of the Family.
§454. There are in both laws differences and gradations. In discussing these we shall see them in active operation, enjoying their own self-consciousness and also interacting with one another.
§455. The human law has its living seat in the government in which it also assumes individual form. The government is the actual Spirit which reflects on itself, and is the self of the whole ethical substance. It may accord a limited independence to the families under its sway, but is always ready to subordinate them to the whole. It may likewise accord a limited independence to individuals promoting their own gain and enjoyment, but it has to prevent such individual concerns from becoming overriding. From time to time it must foster wars to prevent individual life from becoming a mere case of natural being, and ceasing to serve the freedom and power of the social whole. The daylight, human law, however, always bases its authority on the deeper authority of the subterranean Divine Law.
§456. The Divine Law governs three different family-relationships, that of husband to wife, of parents to children, and of siblings to one another. The husband-wife relation is a case of immediate self-recognition in another consciousness which has also a mainly natural character: its reality lies outside of itself, in the children, in which it passes away.
§457. A relationship unmiexed with transience or inequality of status is that of brother and sister. In them identity of blood has come to tranquillity and equilibrium. As sister, a woman has the highest intimations of ethical essence, not yet brought out into actuality or full consciousness: she manifests internal feeling and the divinity that is raised above the actual. As daughter, a woman must see her parents pass away with resigned tenderness, as mother and wife there is something natural and replaceable about her, and her unequal relation to her husband, in which she has duties where he mainly has pleasures, means that she cannot be fully aware of herself in another. In brother and sister there are none of the inequalities due to desire nor any possibility of replacement: the loss of a brother is irreparable to a sister, and her duty to him is the highest.
§458. The brother represents the family-spirit at its most individual and therefore turned outwards towards a wider universality. The brother leaves the immediate, elemental, negative ethical life of the family to achieve a self-conscious, actual ethical life.
§459. The brother passes from the suzerainty of the divine to that of the human law: the sister or wife remains the guardian of the Divine Law. They have each a different natural vocation, a sequel of the vocation considered above in the 'task itself', a vocation which has its outer expression in the distinction of sex.
§460. The human and ethical orders require one another. The human law has its roots in the divine order, whereas the Divine law is only actual in the daylight realm of existence and activity.
§461. The ethical system in its two branches fulfils all the perfect categories that have led up to it. It is rational in that it unites self-consciousness and objectivity. It observes itself in the customs which surround it. It has pleasure in the family life and necessity in the wider social order. It has the law of the heart at its root which is also the law of all hearts. It exhibits virtue and the devotion to the 'task itself'. It provides the criterion by which all detailed projects and acts are tested.
§462. The ethical whole is a tranquil equilibrium of parts in which each finds its stisfaction in this equilibrium with the whole. Justice is the agency which restores this equilibrium whenever it is disturbed by individuals or classes. The communal spirit avenges itself on wrongs done to its members, wrongs which have the mechanical character of the merely natural, by equally natural expedients of revenge.
§463. Universal self-conscious Spirit is chiefly manifest in the man, unconscious individualized Spirit in the woman: both serve as middle terms in what amounts to the same syllogism uniting the divine with the human law.
A continuación ejemplifica Hegel, aludiendo al ejemplo de Antígona, el surgimiento del acto moral (y trágico) como consecuencia del conflicto entre las dos leyes, entre el ámbito del Estado y el ámbito de la familia. Es un conflicto surgido de la acción individual:
§465. The individual's self-alignment with one law does not, however, involve internal debate and arbitrary choice, only immediate, unhesitant, dutiful self-commitment. There is no quarrel of duty with duty. It is one's sex, Hegel suggests, which decides which law one will obey.
§466. In self-consciousness the two laws are explicit, not merely implicit as in ordinary ethical life. The individual's character commits him to one law. The other seems to him only an unrighteous actuality (será el punto de vista de Antígona sobre la orden de Creonte) or a case of human obstinacy or perversity (es así como ve Creonte la obstinación de Antígona).
§467. The ethical consciousness cannot (like the consciousness that preceded it) draw any distinction between an objective order and its own subjective order: it cannot doubt that the law it obeys has absolute authority. Nor is there any taint of individuality left over that can deflect it from the path of duty. (Así pues, la acción de Antígona no se debe a un impulso individualista o de aserción de su propio yo). It cannot conceive that the duty could be other than what it knows it to be.
§468. None the less the ethical consciousness cannot divert itself of allegiance to both laws, and so cannot escape guilt when it opts for the one as opposed for the other. Only an inert, unconscious stone can avoid incurring guilt. The guilt is, however, not individual, but collective. It is the guilt of a whole class or sex.
§469. The law violated by an individual's act necessarily demands vindication, even though its voice was not at the time heard by the violator. Action brings the unconscious into the daylight, and forces consciousness to bow to its offended majesty.
§470. The ethical consciousness is most truly guilty when it wittingly rejects the behests of one law and holds them to be violent and wrong. Its action denies the demand for real fulfilment which is part of the law, and so involves real guilt.
§471. The individual cannot survive the tragic conflict in him of the two laws, neither of which he can repudiate. He cannot merely have a sentiment (Gesinnung) for the one. His whole being is consumed in pathos, which is part of his character as an ethical being.
§472. In the fateful conflict of two laws in different individuals both individuals undergo destruction. Each is guilty in the face of the law he has violated. It is in the ethical subordination of both sides that absolute right is first carried out.
§473. A young man leaves the unconscious natural medium of ethical life to become ruler of the community and administer the human law. But the natural character of his origins may show itself in a duplicity of existence, e.g. Eteocles and Polynices. The community is bound to honour the one who actually possesses power, and to dishonour the mere claimant to state power who takes up arms against the community. This dishonour involves deprivation of burial rights. (Es la forma que toma el conflicto en la Antígona de Sófocles).
§474. The family-spirit, backed by the Divine Law, and with its roots in the underworld waters of forgetfulness, is affronted by these human arrangements. The dead man finds instruments of vengeance by which the representatives of the human law are in their turn destroyed.
§475. The battle of laws, with its inherent pathos, is carried on by human agents, which gives it an air of contingency. The atomistic family has to be liquidated in the continity of communal life, but the latter continues to have its roots in the former. Womankind, that eternal source of irony, reduces to ridicule the grave deliberations of the state elders, and asserts the claims of youth. The communal spirit then takes its revenge of feminine anarchy by impressing youth into war. In war the ethical substance asserts its negativity, its freedom from all existing arrangements. But since victory depends on fortune and strength, this sort of ethical community breaks down, and is superseded by a soulless, universal ethical community, based on limitless individualism.
§476. The destruction of the ethical world of custom lies in its mere naturalness, its immediacy. This immediacy breaks down because it tries to combine the unconscious peace of nature with the self-conscious, unresting peace of Spirit. An ethical system of this natural sort is inevitably restricted, and gets superseded by another similar system. Spiritual communal life necessarily detaches itself from such tribalism, and erects itself into a formally universal 'open society' (term not used by Hegel) dispersed among a vast horde of separate individuals.
Sobre la lectura hegeliana de Antígona, puede verse también la interpretación de Slavoj Zizek, que enfatiza la dimensión retroactiva de las acciones morales de Antígona.
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Retropost, 2014: Leyendo estos días tanto los Ensayos de Montaigne como La Construcción Social de la Realidad, de Berger y Luckmann, he o...
