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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4073 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023

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Reading more about the 1916 Rising (got distracted from reading The Seven and I've just picked it back up). Seems relevant to discussions on LARPing and aiming for real change, what if you self-consciously LARP so hard it works?

Hobson had 'hot arguments' about [the planned insurrection] with Pearse, arguing that guerilla tactics had a better chance of success than gambling everything on one throw, but Pearse said what mattered was to have a sacrifice, and it had to be a sacrifice of high theatrical impact. As Conor Cruise O'Brien put it, 'What he was aiming at essentially was the staging in Dublin of a national Passion Play, but incorporating a real life-and-death blood sacrifice'.

Pearse is one of the best Irish nationalist writers, but he is also absolutely crazy. As Yeats said to Ezra Pound, "Pearse was half-cracked and wanting to be hanged. He has Emmet delusions same as other lunatics think they are Napoleon or God."

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