- Hello, I recently made a post to Gornahoor, here:
http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=4338
(I see someone from this list was very upset with Gornahoor, but I am not aware of any other currently running publication that would accept an article like this.)
I feel like my post has only just scratched the surface of traditional and modern views of the actor. I gave a few examples but did not read on the subject in detail. Is anyone aware of Evola or someone from his school having written on this subject? - The issue you have just brought up in this study has been of deep interest to us for years as one of the most blatant symptoms of the crisis of the modern 'West', as the line between the political schemer, a precipitate of the politician, himself a caricature of the stateman, and the 'actor', the 'performer', is growing thinner and thinner, so much so that the very terms used by Cicero, Ovid, Livy - who claimed that theatre was alien to those who were warriors by nature and, thus, to the Roman spirit-, and Tacitus - who considered the 'Greek' theatrical tradition as a corrupting influence on Rome - in their criticism of the 'actor' apply perfectly to the modern figure of the political schemer. While actors were banned from standing elections to magistracies in ancient Rome, it seems that only 'actors' can become "representatives of the people" under democratic conditions. In this respect, they do represent the 'people'. It is known that Aristotle related the rise of the actors (hupokriticai) to the growing importance of performance in the democratic political system ("... and just as now the actors have greater power than the poets there, so it is likewise in political contests, owing to the depravity of polities", Rhetoric, 3.1.4)
Still historically speaking, it should be stressed that, in France, civil and political rights were bestowed to actors - as well as to public executioners and butchers - two years before, in 1791, the abbot Grégoire and his villains would see to it that they would be granted to Jews. The collusion, the complicity between these 'actors' was well seen by the author of a pamphlet called 'Événements remarquables et intéressants, à l'occasion des décrets de l'auguste assemblée nationale, concernant l'éligibilité de MM. les comédiens, le bourreau et les juifs' (Remarkable and Interesting Events on the Occasion of the Decrees of the August National Assembly Concerning the [Political] Eligibility of Messrs. the Actors, the Hangman, and the Jews' (http://books.google.fr/books?id=WOkCUTE3D1cC&pg=RA1-PA289&lpg=RA1-PA289&dq=%22%C3%A9venements+remarquables+et+int%C3%A9ressants%22&source=bl&ots=99MHu3xu5K&sig=SK1xpQM637zdADZ8sr5dNeI7Bmw&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=y5rYT6WEEoKwhAfn5N3vAw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22%C3%A9venements%20remarquables%20et%20int%C3%A9ressants%22&f=false), which was published precisely in december 1789.
Acting (hupokrisis) became a socially accepted professional occupation in the early nineteenth century England, while the rise of the actor actually started in the Victorian, Shylockian, period, where "distinguished Jewish actors and actresses" were not scarce on stage (see 'Essays in Jewish history', L. Wolf, C. Roth). Actor was, together with trading merchant, painter, singer, tailor, beggar, butcher, poet, smith, the main occupation of the Jews of Rome before the fourth century ('Geschichte der Juden in Rom, von der Aeltesten Zeit bis zur Gegenwart', A. Berliner). In the 'Middle-Ages', many Jewish actors performed and enjoyed favours in ducal and even royal courts ('The History of the Jewish People : The late Middle Ages', M.A. Shulvass), and the Jews excelled as clowns, mimes, dancers, jugglers, storytellers, acrobats, singers, etc. These performing arts and their bearers seem to have converged in the setting-up of Hollywood in the early twentieth cenuty (see 'An Empire of Their Own : How the Jews Invented Hollywood', N. Gabler)
"One might see them [the Jews] virtually as a world-historical arrangement for the production of actors, a veritable breeding. And it really is high time to ask : What good actor today is not - a Jew ? The Jew as a born 'man of letters,' as the true master of the European press, also exercises his power by virtue of his histrionic ['histrio' means 'comedian' in Latin]gifts ; for the man of letters is essentially an actor : He plays the 'expert,', the 'specialist' [also known today as 'technocrats']. Finally, women. Reflect on the whole history of women : do they not have to be first of all and above all else actresses ?..." ('The Gay Science', 361)
- Here is an insightful reading of the Greek tragedies which is closely akin, albeit in a more analytic manner, to the view expressed in the section 361 of 'The Gay Science', and into which we will have the opportunity to delve in an upcoming study on freedom as experienced by ancient Indo-Europeans and the Judeo-Christian concept of freedom :
"Women, if we are to believe these tragedians, not only invented personal freedom but brought something special about its expression, beyond the primal desire for the removal of brute constraint, as the male slaves and the freed persons of the classical and later periods would come to define it. In all Greek drama, both tragic and comic, women stand powerfully, and exclusively, for personal independence... for universal and natural, as distinct from man-made, justice, and for the freedom to worship their gods and to love whom they choose to love.
"It is significant that the tragic heroine is also often a slave : Cassandra in 'Agamemnon', the loyal Techmessa in Sophocles' 'Ajax', and, most powerfully, Euripides' 'Andromache' and 'Hecuba'. This is even more true of many of the minor female roles, but perhaps most important of all is the role of the female slave chorus in many of these dramas, especially the captive Trojan women in 'Hecuba' and 'Trojan women'... In Greek myth [which, as showed by R. Graves, can be read, in a nutshell, as an account of the transition of Greece from a matriarchal Pelasgian society to a patriarchal Aryan society], in Greek life, and Greek drama, we find not only that "servile power and female power are linked", but also that the two are linked with the strong desire for, and dangers of, complete personal freddom... Nearly all of the women of tragedy, especially those who are slaves, express a powerful drive for personal freedom... Now, the remarkable thing about the chorus [Aeschylus' 'Liberation Bearers''] is that it consist of slave women who have joined in a conspiracy to murder their master and mistress with the objective of achieving what they explicitly state to be freedom, both for their free and half-free coconspirators and, by implication, for themselves." (O. Patterson, 'Freedom in the Making of Western Culture')
I have extracted at http://critiquehistorique.blogspot.fr/2014/01/the-christian-origins-of-show-business.html a few pages from Gregorovius' reference book "History of the City of Rome in the Middles Ages" which detail how the popes and the prelates during the "Renaissance" used and favoured various types of spectacles and, in general, acting.
evola_as_he_is@{{emailDomain}}