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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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No comment on this enormous topic, for now. I sympathize. Have a galkovsky.

«...The ancient sages prized military valor to an extreme degree. Abilities for painting or versification were valued much less. Even back then it was understood that an artist or writer is, if nothing else, a pampered, weak, and often immoral person. Such people were loved. They were very strongly loved. But they were loved with the love they deserved. The entire Rome was pining for the pantomime actor Mnester, for his silky hips and lanquid eyes. He was the most popular man in the state; Mnester's glory competed with the glory of the emperor [Caligula] himself, who obsequiously sought his love. The modern "decay" of art is, in fact, a natural and explicable development: to each his own. Nowadays, it is already direct pornography. And it is beautiful. This is the way it should be. This resolution is the destruction of an ugly fairy tale of the 19th century, which turned temples into theaters and theaters into temples. The theater is a temple, but a temple that is not Christian nor even pagan. And now, in the second half of the twentieth century, it was deprived of this status. People come to the theater to giggle. Comedians became comedians in earnest, not hierophants or priests. The theater became again what it was in the Roman Empire - a joy house. The theater is also a joy house in its development: "The theater begins with a hanger". The destruction of the myth of "holy art" is, I think, not a crisis of Christian culture, but a crisis of tacit shadow paganism. Although, in the West, "holy art" was just a fragment of the world, a trend; it is our mythology of genius that has become the center of our malnourished secular culture.»

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