Things I wish I'd never done...
...sent this email (reproduced verbatim) to my tutor at university while very drunk and all kebabed up. Obviously republishing it here makes it all ok.
Firstly, the essay on Mariam in all probability was mine - but seeing as you sent it to me, with the normal explosive marking at least a week ago, in -1st week I think all is sorted. But, however, me 'n' XXX were talking this evening over an Achmeds, about faustus and all that, and we thought you might know. You see, on the one hand, Faustus is just a wee metaphor for what we can never achieve, and what we must always wait for, yet on the other hand, it would be interesting, in a purely literary sense, to know whether he was eternally damned. You see, if he was then, like Giovanni, he commited no other sin than wanting to know, or possess through knowledge, too much. Yet, if he had the cognitive power to realise the insufficiency of his thought, doesn't he deserve, in a humanist vs solifidianist sense to achieve that potential? Is the tragedy of Faustus the ephemerality of his sensual experience, or the fact that he, as an individual with free choice, chooses that over eternity? - the old, 'I believe in the freedom of the will. I have no choice.' Is 24 years a metaphor to Faustus, or does it in fact seem like a sufficient amount of time in which to engage in whatever the world (metaworld, whatever) has to offer, thus can we desire comprehension beyond Edenic assurance? And would we want to? The problem with Faustus is the humanity of his questions. He meets a devil (a devil! what I would say to a devil!) yet merely asks who made the world. Yet surely he is questioning who made his world. If, as I reckon, the play reveals an insight into Faustus' psyche, then the absense of God, renders his syllogism true - he obtains no Grace because Grace requires faith, faith requires legitimate yet inconclusive thought which Faustus doesn't possess because he cannot accomodate it within his reductive pseudo-humanist ideology then Faustus is merely questioning who made his world, not just the world he lives in which is a culmination of renaissance influences, but the world which his interior self inhabits, a world constructed of books without a meaning which transcends brevity. Also, doesn't God say that you cannot see his face? So the absence of God / Christ is necessitated by the grandiose divinity of his existence, thus the devil, however realistic in presentation, is always going to represent the eternal over the existant?
Just wondering.
Have a good/ very good weekend
You know what, I really don't know. Nor do I expect an answer.
Firstly, the essay on Mariam in all probability was mine - but seeing as you sent it to me, with the normal explosive marking at least a week ago, in -1st week I think all is sorted. But, however, me 'n' XXX were talking this evening over an Achmeds, about faustus and all that, and we thought you might know. You see, on the one hand, Faustus is just a wee metaphor for what we can never achieve, and what we must always wait for, yet on the other hand, it would be interesting, in a purely literary sense, to know whether he was eternally damned. You see, if he was then, like Giovanni, he commited no other sin than wanting to know, or possess through knowledge, too much. Yet, if he had the cognitive power to realise the insufficiency of his thought, doesn't he deserve, in a humanist vs solifidianist sense to achieve that potential? Is the tragedy of Faustus the ephemerality of his sensual experience, or the fact that he, as an individual with free choice, chooses that over eternity? - the old, 'I believe in the freedom of the will. I have no choice.' Is 24 years a metaphor to Faustus, or does it in fact seem like a sufficient amount of time in which to engage in whatever the world (metaworld, whatever) has to offer, thus can we desire comprehension beyond Edenic assurance? And would we want to? The problem with Faustus is the humanity of his questions. He meets a devil (a devil! what I would say to a devil!) yet merely asks who made the world. Yet surely he is questioning who made his world. If, as I reckon, the play reveals an insight into Faustus' psyche, then the absense of God, renders his syllogism true - he obtains no Grace because Grace requires faith, faith requires legitimate yet inconclusive thought which Faustus doesn't possess because he cannot accomodate it within his reductive pseudo-humanist ideology then Faustus is merely questioning who made his world, not just the world he lives in which is a culmination of renaissance influences, but the world which his interior self inhabits, a world constructed of books without a meaning which transcends brevity. Also, doesn't God say that you cannot see his face? So the absence of God / Christ is necessitated by the grandiose divinity of his existence, thus the devil, however realistic in presentation, is always going to represent the eternal over the existant?
Just wondering.
Have a good/ very good weekend
You know what, I really don't know. Nor do I expect an answer.
posted by Pudsk | 4:59 AM
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