Sunday, March 14, 2010
14th March. About to start production week. (Week 5)
One of the difficulties of the play, I think, is that it's my most explicit attempt to write a play exploring the 'other' dimension - that place which, by definition, has no words to describe it.
For the programme, we put in a that bit from Corinthians - that bit about love.
I have since discovered that Corinth was a port much frequented by sailors whose principal industry was brothels. So this might have something to do with St Paul's preocupation with 'love' here.
Anyway.
I've been re-reading Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" and came across this passage:
“No, it isn’t fame. It is what I call eternity. The pious call it the kingdom of God. I say to myself: all we who ask too much and have a dimension too many could not contrive to live at all if there were not another air to breathe outside the air of this world, if there were not eternity at the back of time; and this is the kingdom of truth.
The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no-one knows of it or sees it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity.
The pious know most about this. That is why they set up the saints and what they call the communion of saints. We are on our way to them all our lives long in every good deed, in every brave thought, in every love.
The communion of the saints, in earlier times it was set by painters in a golden heaven, shining, beautiful and full of peace, and it is nothing else but what I meant a moment ago when I called it eternity. It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for.
There you will find your Goethe again and Novalis and Mozart, and I my saints, Christopher, Philip of Neri and all. There are many saints who at first were sinners. Even sin can be a way to saintliness, sin, and vice.
Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no-one to guide us. Our only guide is our home-sickness”.
Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, Penguin, 179-180.
.... which describes it very well.
And which I gave to a dear loved companion and friend today because it seemed to me to ring true to her situation, as she escapes froma state of oppression.
And then "home", I understand, matters so much towards the end of the play too.
One of the difficulties of the play, I think, is that it's my most explicit attempt to write a play exploring the 'other' dimension - that place which, by definition, has no words to describe it.
For the programme, we put in a that bit from Corinthians - that bit about love.
I have since discovered that Corinth was a port much frequented by sailors whose principal industry was brothels. So this might have something to do with St Paul's preocupation with 'love' here.
Anyway.
I've been re-reading Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" and came across this passage:
“No, it isn’t fame. It is what I call eternity. The pious call it the kingdom of God. I say to myself: all we who ask too much and have a dimension too many could not contrive to live at all if there were not another air to breathe outside the air of this world, if there were not eternity at the back of time; and this is the kingdom of truth.
The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no-one knows of it or sees it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity.
The pious know most about this. That is why they set up the saints and what they call the communion of saints. We are on our way to them all our lives long in every good deed, in every brave thought, in every love.
The communion of the saints, in earlier times it was set by painters in a golden heaven, shining, beautiful and full of peace, and it is nothing else but what I meant a moment ago when I called it eternity. It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for.
There you will find your Goethe again and Novalis and Mozart, and I my saints, Christopher, Philip of Neri and all. There are many saints who at first were sinners. Even sin can be a way to saintliness, sin, and vice.
Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no-one to guide us. Our only guide is our home-sickness”.
Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, Penguin, 179-180.
.... which describes it very well.
And which I gave to a dear loved companion and friend today because it seemed to me to ring true to her situation, as she escapes froma state of oppression.
And then "home", I understand, matters so much towards the end of the play too.
Labels: week 5: production week about to begin
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