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Saturday, January 06, 2007

Theater of the Absurd

The anti-spirit in art walks the stage in the Theater of the Absurd, in the plays of Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Adamov; it slouches on campuses in those who hold that it is the business of society to support the universities until the students know enough to overthrow society. It genuflects in the sanctuary with anti-liturgy balloons, contrived prefaces and bare feet; in literature, the anti-hero acts out his emotions of cruelty, despair and remorse because he has lost his way and in the Church, by contempt of the Pope, and the damnation of the Church as an "institution." These anti-moods are like mountains on which humanity clings to "cliffs of fall." Security seems to be a dream, and disaster a certitude to those who know this anti-mood.

~ Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Servant of God

Does this sound like anything familiar? U of M, anyone? Pope and the Witch, anyone? I think we can add Dario Fo to the list of hall of shamers noted above, slouching about in college campuses...the director acting out his emotions of cruelty, despair, and remorse...

4 comments:

Cathy_of_Alex said...

Could that be a MORE appropriate quote?

I love Archbishop Sheen. I pray he is canonized one day.

Anonymous said...

What a great quote. That man was a prophet.

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I've been planning a post about Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday and its relationship to surrealism and the Theater of the Absurd, both of which developed some time after Chesterton wrote most of his novels.

Anonymous said...

Add Beckett too.