Kierkegaard at the Opera

C. Stephen Evans, the Christian philosopher, summarizes one of the ways to "despair" according to Kierkegaard.( Despair in the way Kierkegaard uses the term basically means to sin by avoiding your identity as a sinner before God---by avoiding what you really are.) In his book on Soren Kierkegaard's Christian psychology. Evans writes of a certain kind of intellectual or artistic type: 

"The 'fantastic' knower is the person who somehow thinks that knowing a lot about astronomy, the Greek philosophers, or world history is sufficient to make him or her a genuine self. It is possible, though to know an encyclopedia's worth of facts and never have an inkling of what life is all about." 

In other words, one of the many ways of being a false self is to develop a knowledge of things for the purpose of being known as one who knows about those things. Got that? This is like the person who knows about art or history or theology in order to be known as someone who knows a lot about art or history or theology, not as someone who really loves those things and wants to know them deeply and personally. Lots of university professors are like that. Lots of people who get into "culture" are like that. (And lots of people who are into religion or "spirituality" are like that.)  

This is one of the things that puts off others from developing a love for things like novels or painting or opera. If you've met one of those insufferable prigs who blathers on about this or that mainly to demonstrate how much he or she knows about this or that, then you've encountered the "fantastic knower." Fantastic in this sense has more to do with fantasy--that is, I've built up a fantasy image of myself as a knower, rather than a true image of myself as a sinner before God, someone who loves the things of creation because of God the Maker. 

In the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, a scene takes place at the opera. Some of Europe's ultra elite, ultra wealthy, are watching Puccini's  Tosca while the bad guys nefariously  plot their nefarious plots. Bond, of course, isn't there to watch a ridiculously overpriced production; he's there to stymie the wealthy crooks who want to get wealthier. But it is the opera goers, those who are unaware of the plotting around them, that I want to look at. They are portrayed, without the director realizing it, of course, as "fantastic knowers," as people who have bought their identities and support them by attending the right sort of thing in the right sort of way, not because they genuinely love Puccini.

Hey, isn't that the Princess of Monaco in seat 12B?

Rich people who love opera are o.k. I'm not criticizing them. The scene deliciously if briefly shows another kind of person, one whose very real existence is part of the reason lots of people don't want to do "culture"--the hyper-stuck ups for whom certain versions of art certify that they are the right kind of people. 

Why does one delight in music, whether Johnny Cash or Mozart? Why does one crave good story-telling, whether Stephen King or William Faulkner? Why does one enjoy good theater, whether Romanian marionettes or English Shakespearean blokes? These things matter, and they can be conduits for a rightly ordered love of the manifold aspects of God's good creation. Or they can be merely opportunities for constructing a self in defiance of God, a self that rests all too easily in a smug satisfaction of knowing the right kind of things so that the right kind of people will rub shoulders with them. 

Shakespeare and the Rubes

One of the interesting--and highly problematic--aspects of art during  the past century and a half, or so, is the multiple fragmentations among "high" art, "low" art, "popular" art, "folk" art, and so on. Art forms like opera or theater, for instance, are now taken to be the purview only of the elites of society. Who goes to see a Shakespeare play willingly? If it isn't for a high school assignment, then who in his right mind would pay money for such boring stuff? Only geeky college educated, progressive, urban elites, right?   

Unfortunately, this has become all too real; the stereotype has arisen from growing aesthetic bifurcations between social groups, bifurcations that either didn't exist at one time or that were not nearly as  difficult to bridge then as they are now.  

Take Shakespeare, for example. On the American frontier (keeping in mind that this meant different things at different times--e.g., Illinois was once the Wild West), scenes from Shakespeare's plays were one of the most popular forms of entertainment--right up there with juggling, magic tricks, and stand-up comedy (as it was practiced then). 

This short article, "Shakespeare in America," gives a good overview of how popular Shakespeare was in various venues--from fully produced stage plays to reconfigured scenes  that were full of puns and comedy for the entertainment of ruffians in small mining towns. 

This longer and more footnoted article goes into much more depth about the way the Bard was played, often with purposefully hilarious results. But the point of both articles is the same--Shakespeare was massively popular at one time in America, regardless of urban or rural locations, or upper or lower class, ruling elites or workers, mayors, trappers, cowboys, ranch owners, factory workers, or factory owners.