PRE
m
THOUGH IT OCCASIONALLY APPEARED THAT
EXUBERANCE FAR OUT WEIGHED EXPERIENCED the
canoe races during orientation produced a trophy for’Ann
Woods^’s SAS group and a lot of after dinner entaLnent for
everybody else. (Hioto by Rooney Cof&nan)
Orientation: A Memory
Orientation left me
exhausted and feeling my age
(and I only had to deal with
the nightly events!). I extend
my congratulations to those
freshmen who were able to
survive the rugged test we put
to the St. Andrews social life
scene. I would like to thank
Clif Fitzgerald, Craig
Withrow, Anne Hinnant, Steve
Newton, the CUB reps, and the
numerous others that helped
make my Orientation
programs a big success. Be
assured that I’ll be looking for
new blood next year!
Review of Review
(continued)
.. (And, later) Iron ... by going through the storm of three
thousand degree flames, iron ore turns into pig iron, etc.
The rhetoric plainly states not that iron must be put to a
practical use (that ideals must give way to material
considerations) and that this is the way of things (one of the
“messages” of the riietoric of “Julius Caesar”) but that this
unavoidable process is bad, bad, bad.
In this Mishima was never more plainly a romantic — both
worte and life indicate a very real unwillingness to consider the
world as it happens to be, and on this anecaotal level (the pure
rebel, the idealistic example) his legend is going to live.
Whether his woric, particularly the later work, is going to live is
more problematical.
On one level, it was dead the minute it was written. Unless
we interest ourselves in Mishima’s psyche we cannot interest
ourselves in this play. The characters are (by nonpsychodrama
standards) lifeless, their conversations are ploys, they
are moved about like puppets, they spout rather than speak
and since they are all one-sided and obviously constructed for a
purpose, they quite fall to gain our sympathy. Which is perhaps
®hat Mishima intended. He did not want them to gain our
sympathy; he wanted his great idea to gain our sjTnpathy.
Didactic, he is laying down the law — and so, on this level,
play offers no interpretation of the world as it is, but rather
a condenuiation of this world. We are not given the world; we
^ given Mishima’s opinion of the world. The play is
propaganda.
As indeed, on some level, are most plays, are most works of
Hie difference, however, is that the unavoidable
message” is usually not all of the play — something timeless
® hence true, and hence (and here is the leap into faith whidi
requires) good, is also visible and sometimes (as also
J^le and sometimes (as in Shakespeare) becomes the true
or a closer parallel to Mishima one must turn to an entirely
erent playwright—someone like Gabriele D’Annunzio (a
*'iter Mishima admired enough to translate — that long
Wchodrama on St. Sebastian). The Italian symbolist loved the
I' ye life, adored “spiritual purity,” got involved in the
i was quite quixotically implicated in politics. His “II
I (Fame of Life) and “Francesca da Rimini” are now, I
i j guess, quite unreadable, and yet D’Annunzio remains
I wgettable. The anecdote of his life has susperseded all and
romantic hero — Byron without the talent,
’laire without the doubts — he continues to live.
Book III of
RON BAYES’
Umapine Tetralogy
TOKYO ANNEX
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