Harmonia

A Forum for and the Background of the Mediation of Dialogue in Ancient and Modern Academies

Tuesday 14 November 2017

Fruits of Patience

While the fall term was establishing itself in its frantic rhythms, and I was feeling more of a machine than a ghost, Stratford Ontario offered me the marvellous opportunity to experience two Shakespeare Classics again, and taste life's topsy-turviness from the comic and the tragic perspective: Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. With all due respect to living the present moment and taking a delight in doing so, the acting was mostly disappointing, but I was motivated to watch some good, older performances with actors and actresses who were acting well instead of shouting lots. So all's well that ends well: Stratford was a (good) means to further good ends. Admittedly it is extremely daring and challenging to stage such classics. But why such a haste to stage Shakespeare? Why, for instance, turn a forty-year old actor into a Lear some years ago? Why such a rush, I am wondering.

And then European beauty entered (or in this case rather flooded) the scene in deed as beauty often does, seemingly suddenly, with a  film masterpiece and love letter to Van Gogh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8xcLdOjX6w



As for now, I am pleasantly anticipating some mesmerizing acting (one does not need more than two minutes to say that), King Lear, by Royal Shakespeare Company with Antony Sher in NYC next year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW4bEi1_RdQ



While the term is coming to its end, I am working on Aristotle on Plato on pleasure (or how one becomes his own man by listening to another man), and, what a delight, on French, among other, much more important wonders. A couple of students amazed me. I am meeting and working with them so that the next steps are taken. I screened Malick's The Knight of Cups; perhaps Kurosawa's Idiot will follow.


PS: Three Women at the Spring, Picasso, and "a line going for a walk" (Klee's definition of drawing), or else, Portrait of an Equilibrist, Klee, MoMA NYC)







PPS: Avant-garde is alive, and not only to be found in museums. See, for instance, how a young Greek artist, Fikos, marries byzantine art and ancient Greek motives with street art, which he calls "contemporary byzantine art":


His Earth and Sky
(for more consider: http://fikos.gr/portfolio/?lang=en)


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