In the next elections–and for succeeding elections in the foreseeable future, the propaganda campaigns of opposing candidates and parties will certainly seek to portray many of the races as a conflict between liberals and conservatives. Perhaps it would not be a waste of time to explore some of the implications.
The play is a veritable choreography of vengeance. A negative appraiser might find the complexities tedious and contrived, but we might, by examining some of the characters, come to a more positive conclusion;
Since there are no questions or comments on Act I of The Revenger’s Tragedy, we can move on to October’s book: Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams. Williams, as I think everyone knows, was a friend of Tolkien and Lewis, and with them he helped both to vitalize Christian fiction and to lend respectability to supernatural tales.
White bread America is gone, and if it is replaced with corn pone, tortillas, and sticky rice, there may be a little room left for scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream.
The search for a rationally perfect society always leads to tyranny. Morality and politics are rooted not in pure reason but in our attachments by love or strife to others. The Greek mystical philosopher Empedocles is a better guide than the abstract reasonings of Descartes and Kant.
America, as we know, is an exception to every rule. Here, all the various ethnicities have blended into a harmonious multi-ethnic nationality that defines itself neither by blood nor religion.
Americans seem to have a growing obsession with the idea of revenge. Popular culture, which is often a better guide to national attitudes than social surveys, has elevated the avenger to the status of hero, and ever since the 1970’s, films like Death Wish and Dirty Harry have glorified the brave man who defied the law and “did the right thing.”
Revenge or vengeance is a personal act of retribution committed against a person who has wrong the avenger or someone close to him. Retributive punishment is normally, at least in civilized societies, left up to what the Italian press like to call “the forces of public order,” but there is no society known to me where revenge, in one form or another, is not sometimes taken by men and women who have been offended.
In seeking power from steroids and microchips, we become their slaves, and in losing our freedom we lose at least a part of our humanity.
Some time ago, I abandoned the regular discussion of selected books. The reason should have been obvious. The cause has disappeared, and we can resume. Working on the second volume of Properties of Blood, I need to rewrite the chapters on revenge. This is a good occasion for looking at the classic work of the English stage, The Avenger’s Tragedy….
