22 February 2007

"I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery; because we have in ourselves, without being able to know why, wherefore or whence, the need to deceive ourselves constantly by creating a reality (one for each and never the same for all), which from time to time is discovered to be vain and illusory . . . My art is full of bitter compassion for all those who deceive themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to be followed by the ferocious derision of destiny which condemns man to deception."

That's as well as may be, but Pirandello needs to lighten up. At least buffoonery's funny. There’s that bit in Wayne's World where Wayne is complaining to camera about how unfair things are and how it's all falling apart and the audience's pov gradually drifts away from him. It's not about telling The Truth, is it? It's about telling stories; and helping build the constructs that make life compelling.

One of my colleagues is frightened of balloons when they've become slightly deflated. Remembering this yesterday, I took down the balloons we had (they were slightly deflated) and left them on her desk before I met up with her for lunch. Evil or funny?

5 comments:

  1. Evil and funnny.

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  2. pure evil

    pirandello was always too obsessed with that gaping hole in the scenery of his life, wondering what was behind it. all a little too hamlet for the postmodern ...--i was going to write "soul." but that doesn't fit, does it?

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  3. the link takes me to a "failed" page. :-( and andrew sullivan writes twenty posts a day, and i don't have the patience to try to tease out which one you may have picked (your segues are always obscure to me).

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  4. Hi Marianne!

    I'm sorry about that. I've mended the post (the formatting made it hard to copy the whole link) and I'm posting it below.

    Douglas




    Hi Marianne!

    I prefer Peter's verdict, naturally - it offers salvific hope. And I wonder whether, in law, funniness has ever formally been weighed as a mitigating circumstance.

    As for the postmodern soul, the imaginary book title Pirandello and the State of Disillusion is how I'm going to segue here to this, which is for you.

    from Douglas

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  5. while I had never thought of myself as a "global other" before, I like that. You see, some people LIKE the scenery. We don't all want to stand around pondering a the tattered hole in the sky that may not even BE there (at least, it isn't there for me).
    Thanks, Douglas! Miss you!

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