I like it. It has... a Shakespearean ring to it, you know. ;-) Times are rolling around for tragedy again. It's gonna come back into style. I wonder why...
Think about it. "Romeo and Juliet" is so much more class than... I'm wracking my brains to come up with a nice BOURGEOIS title with a similar subject... Three or four years ago I saw Tchaikovsky's "Evgeni Onegin" at the Aix opera (spelling ? I'm not Russian). Bourgeois "drama" just can't hold a candle to the Ancien Regime stuff, you know. It lacks a lot of luster and charm. The quintessance of bourgeois theater is "théâtre du boulevard". The classic love triangle. A little piece on the side. Adultery as a substitute for metaphysics... Ho hum. Give me "Romeo and Juliet" any day. LOL. Freud said once that the goal of psychoanalysis was to transform the high tragedy of hysteria into banal unhappiness. Over MY DEAD BODY. That's one of the reasons I've given up on psychoanalysis, by the way. I don't want MY high tragedy transformed into banal unhappiness...
How did we get on to RnJ? It's a decent enough warm up to Othello, Lear, and, of course, Hamlet. Freud was full of quite a few interesting and provocative insights that upon further examination do not necessarily hold up as anything but clever quips that skim the surface of the truth. But here, and with pardons to you and your training, I tend to somewhat agree with Papa Freud that the goal of therapy is to help folks shed unhelpful and torturous phantasmagorias- because most of us learn our lessons not wisely, but too well- and that part of that process involves leaving the formerly tortured with a greater awareness of the tragedy and pain of everyday life that "mental illness", broadly defined, has very little, if anything to do with.
Tsss tssss.. a WARM UP ?? That's not nice at all. I think we might even argue that it is one of the most tragic of Shakespeare's tragedies. For sheer waste of young lives. For the grinchy pseudo bourgeois elders who stare at each other like the gingham dog and the calico cat and thwart young love. I'm not sure I understand your point about Papa Freud and mental illness. (Some of) the people who I am hanging out with would love to lead ordinary lives, but, well... delusions keep getting in the way. They suffer unspeakably. From themselves, and from the stigma society attaches to their condition. That is not my case (I think... lol). But if you're talking about the tragedy of the human condition, I agree. For me... it is tragic getting older, as it turns out. Declining. It's not because it happens to most of us that it is banal. It's just basically... tragic for everyone. More or less, I guess. In my experience, at least.
You might argue that, but I'm not aware of any serious Shakespeare scholar, from Harley Granville Barker to Harold Bloom, to Frank Kermode, or Germaine Greer, who would. The primary reason I suspect that RnJ is not on the same plane as, say, Hamlet and Lear, is that the protagonists simply aren't as compelling as they are in the other tragedies. And frankly, at least for me, neither is the story.
"But if you're talking about the tragedy of the human condition, I agree."
Yes, that was the gist of what I was saying.
And the fact that Shakespeare kills off Mercutio when he does leaves the play a bit bereft.
-But if you're talking about the tragedy of the human condition, I agree.
6 comments:
I like it. It has... a Shakespearean ring to it, you know. ;-)
Times are rolling around for tragedy again. It's gonna come back into style. I wonder why...
Thanks for the kind words, and yes, there's a strong whiff of doom in the air, especially if one lives in The Gulf.
Think about it.
"Romeo and Juliet" is so much more class than... I'm wracking my brains to come up with a nice BOURGEOIS title with a similar subject...
Three or four years ago I saw Tchaikovsky's "Evgeni Onegin" at the Aix opera (spelling ? I'm not Russian).
Bourgeois "drama" just can't hold a candle to the Ancien Regime stuff, you know.
It lacks a lot of luster and charm.
The quintessance of bourgeois theater is "théâtre du boulevard". The classic love triangle. A little piece on the side. Adultery as a substitute for metaphysics...
Ho hum.
Give me "Romeo and Juliet" any day.
LOL. Freud said once that the goal of psychoanalysis was to transform the high tragedy of hysteria into banal unhappiness.
Over MY DEAD BODY.
That's one of the reasons I've given up on psychoanalysis, by the way.
I don't want MY high tragedy transformed into banal unhappiness...
How did we get on to RnJ? It's a decent enough warm up to Othello, Lear, and, of course, Hamlet. Freud was full of quite a few interesting and provocative insights that upon further examination do not necessarily hold up as anything but clever quips that skim the surface of the truth. But here, and with pardons to you and your training, I tend to somewhat agree with Papa Freud that the goal of therapy is to help folks shed unhelpful and torturous phantasmagorias- because most of us learn our lessons not wisely, but too well- and that part of that process involves leaving the formerly tortured with a greater awareness of the tragedy and pain of everyday life that "mental illness", broadly defined, has very little, if anything to do with.
Tsss tssss.. a WARM UP ??
That's not nice at all.
I think we might even argue that it is one of the most tragic of Shakespeare's tragedies.
For sheer waste of young lives.
For the grinchy pseudo bourgeois elders who stare at each other like the gingham dog and the calico cat and thwart young love.
I'm not sure I understand your point about Papa Freud and mental illness.
(Some of) the people who I am hanging out with would love to lead ordinary lives, but, well... delusions keep getting in the way. They suffer unspeakably. From themselves, and from the stigma society attaches to their condition.
That is not my case (I think... lol).
But if you're talking about the tragedy of the human condition, I agree.
For me... it is tragic getting older, as it turns out.
Declining.
It's not because it happens to most of us that it is banal. It's just basically... tragic for everyone. More or less, I guess.
In my experience, at least.
You might argue that, but I'm not aware of any serious Shakespeare scholar, from Harley Granville Barker to Harold Bloom, to Frank Kermode, or Germaine Greer, who would. The primary reason I suspect that RnJ is not on the same plane as, say, Hamlet and Lear, is that the protagonists simply aren't as compelling as they are in the other tragedies. And frankly, at least for me, neither is the story.
"But if you're talking about the tragedy of the human condition, I agree."
Yes, that was the gist of what I was saying.
And the fact that Shakespeare kills off Mercutio when he does leaves the play a bit bereft.
-But if you're talking about the tragedy of the human condition, I agree.
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