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Karl Kraus and
Aug. 14th, 2014 10:31 amKarl Kraus withheld publication of Die Dritte Walpurgisnacht for fear of recrimination against friends, and famously wrote only that "Gewalt kein Objekt der Polemik, Irrsinn kein Gegenstand der Satire sei." (Those unable to parse this could paste it into a reputable translation program as I did to make sure I was understanding it rightly.)
The times are not propitious for writing about many of my favorite topics, and have not been for some time now. So I have written a number of posts and then chosen not to post them.
But I must remark that I feel at the moment as though I have fallen into a condensed version of John Crowley's Ægypt cycle: we have learned thanks to current events that the Gnostics are beleaguered both as supporters of repression and victims of it. The secretive Cult of the Peacock Angel is a topic of daily newspaper headlines, except that many of its practitioners have cellphones and wear T-shirts bearing contemporary slogans, making one speculate whether secularity has eroded religious passion among its practitioners as it has in so many other religions. The sense of social instability that accompanies this, when reinforced by economic instability, makes a revived fundamentalism seem plausible to multitudes. (And this insight also is found in Crowley's four Ægypt novels, exercises in fantastic realism with an emphasis on the "realism.")
I would say, as Kraus did, that all this brings nothing else to mind, but it would not be true, as he knew it was not for him when he made the statement.
The times are not propitious for writing about many of my favorite topics, and have not been for some time now. So I have written a number of posts and then chosen not to post them.
But I must remark that I feel at the moment as though I have fallen into a condensed version of John Crowley's Ægypt cycle: we have learned thanks to current events that the Gnostics are beleaguered both as supporters of repression and victims of it. The secretive Cult of the Peacock Angel is a topic of daily newspaper headlines, except that many of its practitioners have cellphones and wear T-shirts bearing contemporary slogans, making one speculate whether secularity has eroded religious passion among its practitioners as it has in so many other religions. The sense of social instability that accompanies this, when reinforced by economic instability, makes a revived fundamentalism seem plausible to multitudes. (And this insight also is found in Crowley's four Ægypt novels, exercises in fantastic realism with an emphasis on the "realism.")
I would say, as Kraus did, that all this brings nothing else to mind, but it would not be true, as he knew it was not for him when he made the statement.
