Posted on

The Silence Camus Refused to Domesticate: Hazel Barnes, The Myth of Sisyphus, and the Cost of a Sympathetic Misreading

Hazel Barnes was one of the most careful American readers of French existentialism in the twentieth century. She translated Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in 1956, a labor that shaped how generations of American students encountered Continental thought. When she turns to Camus, though, something interesting happens on the page. Her summary of The Myth of Sisyphus is partly accurate and partly an act of quiet translation in the other direction, pulling Camus toward a Sartrean humanism that Camus himself spent the last decade of his life resisting.

Continue reading → The Silence Camus Refused to Domesticate: Hazel Barnes, The Myth of Sisyphus, and the Cost of a Sympathetic Misreading

Posted on

The Finite Lens: How a Fragile Life Gives Shape to an Infinite Universe

The question arrives early and stays late: what does it mean to live a finite, fragile life inside an infinite, eternal universe? Every serious person encounters this problem, usually around the age when the body first betrays its limits, and no one resolves it cleanly. Theology dissolves the question by denying its premise. Science measures the mismatch with such precision that the human side of the equation vanishes into decimal places. And the popular existentialist answers, the ones printed on coffee mugs and quoted in commencement speeches, have been sanded down so thoroughly that they function as anesthesia rather than analysis.

Continue reading → The Finite Lens: How a Fragile Life Gives Shape to an Infinite Universe

Posted on

Liviu Ciulei and Marlon Brando: Recoiling the Mortal Coil!

The great international stage and screen director and designer, Liviu Ciulei, and the divine stage and screen actor Marlon Brando both share something disturbing as it is true: They both believed in bringing coiled drama into an explosion on the live stage. If the purpose of the Dramatic Arts is irrevocable change, they reasoned, then coiled detritus is the user agent that propels forward the story to the tragic, if not always cathartic, end.

I was fortunate to purchase authentic photographs of both Liviu and Marlon and I appreciate this moment of sharing them with you. Here’s the caption for Liviu’s photo:

International director Liviu Ciulei has been named Artistic Director of The Guthrie Theatre beginning Sept 1. 1980.  The 57-year-old former head of Rumania’s leading repertory theatre, the Lucia Sturdza Bulandra Theatre, has earned an international reputation as a stage and screen director, actor, designer, and architect. His directing and design credits include productions throughout Europe, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States.

Continue reading → Liviu Ciulei and Marlon Brando: Recoiling the Mortal Coil!