Shakespeare in Swahililand: what explains the appeal of Shakespeare around the world?

In a blog post from 2013, Himadri (Argumentative Old Git) wrote: 

“It is demonstrable that people who have grown up in very different cultures tend to hold very different values, and think very different thoughts: we are all inevitably products of the societies in which we grow up.

[…] And yet, we can and do respond, often very deeply, to works written in past times, when the values of society were very, very different from those we currently adhere to; we do respond to contemporary books written in countries with very different cultures. So how can this be possible? We tend to claim that these books still “relevant”, and they are “relevant” because, underneath it all, human nature remains the same; but unless we can specify clearly what we mean by “underneath it all”, I don’t know this is a very meaningful thing to say. 

[…] So the question that should be our starting point is not so much “Can we respond to works created in times and cultures very different from our own?”, but, rather, “Given that changes over time, and differences across cultures, are by no means superficial, how can we account for the fact that we do respond, often very deeply, to works from other times and from other cultures?”.” 

Under the comments, Tom (Wuthering Expectations) wrote: 

“I am skeptical of timelessness. Talking about the survival of “Shakespeare” conceals a lot of messiness. How do we know that different audiences, scattered through time and space, found the same aspects of King Lear valuable? Perhaps it is not the universality of a work of art that is important but its complexity. Since everyone, or every time, or every culture, is responding to something different in a work, the more meaningfully complex the work, the more likely it is to have something for everyone.”  

In the English-speaking world, I think the consensus is that Shakespeare’s greatest plays are King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Twelfth Night—at least that’s my impression—and the most performed plays are A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night (now for this I do have evidence). In Vietnam, Shakespeare is mostly associated with Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. In East Africa, I have no statistics but the plays most mentioned in Shakespeare in Swahililand are Richard II, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice. But you know what, I want statistics about which plays are most popular in each country, and I want the lists of the plays most performed vs the plays most written about. 

Anyway, to go back to the main point, Edward Wilson-Lee writes: 

“What, then, might be the nature of this universalism, this peculiar quality that repeatedly drew readers to his works? Part of this, of course, has to do with the breadth of Shakespeare’s canon and the relentless unmoralizing tone that can be found across his works, meaning that everyone can, to an extent, find their own Shakespeare. Stanley, Steere, Blixen, Farah, Nyerere and Tsegaye all turned to different plays or read the same plays in markedly different ways, in pursuit of a particular Shakespearean voice that spoke to them. This might be said to constitute a very weak form of universalism – a universalism born not of a shared and distinct experience but of mutual contemplation of something so vast and varied as to accommodate every point of view.” (ch.9) 

There is a Shakespeare for everybody: some people (like me) prefer the tragedies, some prefer the comedies, some prefer the histories or more political plays. I have always said that Shakespeare appeals to so many people, and such different people, because the plays themselves depict such a vast range of characters and present such a wide variety of views—it is because Shakespeare cannot be pinned down that readers and theatregoers keep getting drawn to his works.  

Edward Wilson-Lee also says: 

“For Auerbach, Shakespeare represents a pivotal moment in the history of the ‘mixed style,’ which adamantly refuses to separate the comic from the tragic, the everyday things of life from the sublime events by which we define our existence. […] Shakespeare seems a semi-divine ‘creator of man,’ as Pushkin and Haile Selassie suggested, because his writings never turn aside from the messy mixture of life; and in seeming like life itself, his works open themselves to as varied a reaction as life does.” (ibid.) 

There is always something comic in the tragedies, even in the darkest plays like King Lear, Timon of Athens, or Troilus and Cressida. There is always something dark in the comedies, even in the lightest plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, or A Comedy of Errors. And to this day, I still don’t know how Shakespeare achieves what he does at the end of Antony and Cleopatra: how the shallow, self-centred, tempestuous, theatrical, manipulative Cleopatra is turned into a quasi-mythological being in the final Act of the play.  

Shakespeare in Swahililand by Edward Wilson-Lee

 

Shakespeare in Swahililand is an interesting read—I don’t know a lot about Africa—and looks to me to be a good response to the foolish notion that Shakespeare’s status is merely due to institutions of power and colonialism. 

Here’s an interesting fact: 

“… one of the first books printed in Swahili was a Shakespearean one. Not a play, mind you, but a slim volume of stories from Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, published as Hadithi za Kiingereza (‘English Tales’) on the island of Zanzibar in the 1860s.” (Prelude) 

Oddly enough, the 4 stories include are The Taming of the Shrew (unusual choice), King Lear (great), The Merchant of Venice (great), and Timon of Athens (why???). 

As I don’t know a lot about Africa, the book is full of surprises like that. Did you know, for example, that the love of Shakespeare in East Africa was spread by Indian settlers? 

“… the Indian settlers also brought with them their love of Shakespeare – or rather, it should be said, their two loves of Shakespeare, equally intense but not quite the same. The first of these, which would come to East Africa later, was a scholar’s love of Shakespeare, which came about through long hours of intensive reading of the works and which led to a nineteenth-century cult of Shakespeare that placed him on the level with the Sanskrit poet Kalidas and saw him venerated by (among others) the Bengali poet and novelist Rabindranath Tagore. […] 

The other love of Shakespeare, the theatregoer’s love of his plots and characters, developed alongside the official culture in the popular theatres of northern India, beginning with the Parsi theatres in Maharashtra and accumulating (according to one commentator) 6000 different versions of Shakespeare plays in Indian languages. […] It was this Shakespeare that arrived with the travelling theatre troupes, which began including Mombasa and Zanzibar on an itinerary which had already included stops in other British colonial hubs such as Aden…” (ch.4) 

Edward Wilson-Lee writes at length about the Indian productions and the changes—let’s say the Indianisation of Shakespeare’s plays—and also some contemporary reviews of these productions in British papers (which were negative). 

“… it is these very liberties taken with Shakespeare’s texts, the liberties which so dismayed the reviewers from the Standard, that meant Shakespeare was a living voice to these audiences and not being watched simply to venerate some lifeless idol.” (ibid.)

This is an important point. And over the past 400 years, different cultures have adapted Shakespeare and created new works based on his plays. Verdi for instance created the operas Macbeth, Otello, and Falstaff. Kurosawa made Throne of Blood and Ran based on Macbeth and King Lear respectively. Disney’s The Lion King was inspired by Hamlet. 

Edward Wilson-Lee also writes about how Shakespeare speaks to people: 

“Ngugi [wa Thiong’o] remarks that even as a schoolchild he mapped the Shakespeare he was watching and reading onto contemporary African politics, imagining the band of woodland exiles in As You Like It were the Mau Mau rebels with whom his brother was encamped in the northern highlands.” (ch.6) 

The plays resonate with people, regardless of background. Milton Obote (later prime minister and then president of Uganda) acted in Julius Caesar at Makerere University at the time when he “was forming a political organization to stage protests against the Ugandan Lukiko elite as puppet-tyrants for the colonial overlords.” (ibid.) 

Another example: 

“I have come to Dar [es Salaam] on the trial of Julius Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania, who translated Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice into Swahili in spare evening moments during the very years that he was taking his country from British colony to independent nation and then to grand experiment in African Socialism.” (ch.7)

One of the interesting things the book shows, which the haters of Shakespeare and Western culture don’t seem to know or don’t want to acknowledge, is that Shakespeare does speak to people from different backgrounds and across the political spectrum, even people in the anti-apartheid movement and national independence movements. 

“The most famous case of this is perhaps on Robben Island, a penal colony off Cape Town, where in the late 1970s Nelson Mandela and thirty-three other political detainees marked their favourite Shakespearean passages in a copy of the Works that was passed around among the prisoners and became known as ‘The Robben Island Bible’.” (ch.6)  

I have heard of “The Robben Island Bible” before, though I forgot its name. This is Mandela’s favourite passage: 

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; 

The valiant never taste of death but once. 

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, 

It seems to me most strange that men should fear, 

Seeing that death, a necessary end, 

Will come when it will come.” 

(Julius Caesar) 

When some people speak about the “blind reverence” for Shakespeare and try to reduce his popularity and influence around the world to “power structures” and all that, they don’t seem to understand how condescending they sound and, more importantly, that it betrays an embarrassing lack of imagination—just because they themselves don’t particularly like Shakespeare, they cannot imagine that others could genuinely love his works—like all those who call others pretentious for expressing love for classical music or Ulysses or Ingmar Bergman (related: see my letter to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust). 

As Edward Wilson-Lee says: 

“Hard as it is to argue against this explanation (especially as a white man of British descent), it is less than wholly satisfying for all who have read Shakespeare with little feeling that they are being forced into it or trying to coerce others, and rather belittling for all those who aren’t white and male and British, whose passion for Shakespeare was in danger of being written off as mere craven pandering to the overlord.” (Prelude) 

I’ve been reading this book as a part of Shakespeare Day celebrations. Many of you may find it interesting. 

PS: I recently listened to an audio recording of Antony and Cleopatra, with David Harewood and Frances Barber. Frances Barber is Cleopatra! What a woman. What a performance. Check it out, folks. 

The amateur’s freedom

By Claude Monet.

Recently my friend Himadri asked, if I were a literary academic, which area of literature I would specialise in. Probably Shakespeare or 19th century novels, British or Russian.

But as I told Himadri then, I’m so glad that literature is not my profession. 

Not a book reviewer or literary critic, I don’t have to read bad books, keep up with the currently hottest writers, or even pay attention to contemporary fiction. Not an academic, I don’t have to read jargon-heavy and ideology-driven critical texts or badly-written and barely-read literary works related to my field of study. Not a Shakespeare scholar, I don’t have to read Harold Bloom. 

A Twitter friend whom I have met in person studies female novelists before Jane Austen (or something like that), and has to read so much crap. My professor and literary critic uncle has been so used to reading for work that even now, when he has retired, can no longer read for pleasure. And I have read George Orwell’s essay about the miserable job of book reviewing (and the rush through books for a review). 

I’m happy for them but happy about my own freedom—the amateur’s freedom! I read the 1200-page The Tale of Genji and some other works of Heian literature because I felt like it. I read all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets and also Shakespearean criticism because I felt like it. I explored 17th century playwrights—not only Shakespeare’s contemporaries in England but also Molière and Spanish Golden Age playwrights—because I felt like it. And when I got bored, I stopped. And now, having noticed a gap in my own reading, I’ve been exploring 18th century novels since last year, but—look at the length!—have no intention of reading Clarissa anytime soon. Who can force me?  

What’s more, the amateur doesn’t have to write about every single book she reads.

Literature sustains me, reading helps me keep my sanity in this increasingly insane world, my library’s dukedom large enough, but that’s only the case because of the absolute freedom I’ve got. 

_____________________________________________________

My photo.

On a side note, a few weeks ago, Himadri and I went to an exhibition of Sienese art (14th century) at National Gallery, London. Not a fan, I’m afraid (some of you are probably puzzled). Looking at the art, I was also thinking that I’d been more or less going back in time in my reading—first contemporary fiction, then the 20th century, then the 19th century, then Shakespeare and the 16th and 17th centuries, then the 18th and more of the 17th—but to go back to literature before Shakespeare’s time, I might make a big jump all the way back to Ancient Greece and Rome. If we look at the period in-between—I’m talking about Western literature—nothing particularly interests me—I know, some of you might gasp in shock and horror, but not even Chaucer or Dante. The only literary works in this long span of time that arouse (some of) my interest are East Asian—Tang poetry, Heian literature, and Water Margin. You might convince me otherwise (though I doubt it). 

23/4

Today is meaningful for two reasons. One, it’s Shakespeare Day. Two, it’s 16 years since my mum and I moved to Norway (which means that I have now lived longer outside Vietnam than in Vietnam).

I never thought about it, but it’s interesting that the day my life turned to a new chapter—everything has been different since—was Shakespeare Day, the day celebrating the writer with whom I’m most obsessed. 

Anyway, here are some recent photos of me, taken by my bf. 

L’Avare and Le Bourgeois Geltilhomme—reading Molière, thinking about Shakespeare

I read L’Avare (The Miser) and Le Bourgeois Geltilhomme (here translated as The Self-Made Gentleman) in the translation by George Graveley. The latter is also known as The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Middle-Class Aristocrat, or The Would-Be Noble. 

1/ Why do people ignore plays? And neglect the 17th century? Molière is very good and very funny. Laugh-out-loud funny even on paper. 

If we compare him and Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s sense of humour tends to be puns, wordplay, and bawdy jokes (the man’s English after all); these things aren’t in Molière, at least not in the plays I’ve read; his comedy tends to heavily focus on satire, stock characters, farcical elements, fast-paced dialogue, mishearing or misunderstanding, etc. I admit that Molière is funnier, but, because of the nature of their comedy, Shakespeare has more funny lines that can be standalone quotes. 

Another difference is that Molière—not just in these plays but I believe in general—tends to adhere to the classical unities: unity of action (one principal action), unity of time (no more than 24 hours), and unity of place (a single location). Shakespeare doesn’t give a toss.  

2/ I don’t have much to say about The Miser. It’s a delight. One thing I’m gonna note is that even though Molière and Balzac both depict misers in the characters of Harpagon and Felix Grandet, The Miser has not only the light-heartedness of a comedy but also the warmth of a man who makes fun of human foibles but still likes humanity, whereas Eugenie Grandet presents a rather cynical view of the world.  

Molière makes me think of Henry Fielding. 

3/ Like Shakespeare, Molière was also an actor. I just didn’t realise that he gave himself the main roles (Harpagon in The Miser, Jourdain in The Self-Made Gentleman). 

So he’s like Orson Welles. 

4/ Reading these plays—one is about a miser and the other is a social climber—I’ve realised that, unlike Molière, Shakespeare doesn’t really do satire. His comedies are a wide range of genres: farce (The Comedy of Errors), slapstick (The Merry Wives of Windsor), romcom (Much Ado About Nothing), pastoral comedy (As You Like It), and others that are harder to categorise (what kind of comedy is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example?), but not satire—one counter-example I can think of is Malvolio in Twelfth Night, but he’s not the central character and more importantly, he may have been initially created as a satire of the Puritans but became an individual, not just a type. 

(My view of Malvolio is heavily influenced by the performance of Richard Briers—he gives the character tragic stature).

Another thing is that Shakespeare has more variety, at least that’s my impression. When I got the Shakespeare bug a couple of years ago, I was reading one play after another—not all his plays at once but still many in succession—and it was all fine. Now I’m exploring Molière—Britannica says he wrote 31 plays (presumably that includes the one-act plays)—the third play, The Self-Made Gentleman, starts to feel a bit samey—it’s still very funny, but I can see the similarities. 

5/ The Self-Made Gentleman is hilarious though. Molière is a bit hard to quote because often the humour is some back-and-forth that goes on for a page or two, but here’s a funny line when Jourdain (the social climber) meets a Marquise: 

“M. JOURDAIN Madam, it is a great honour for me to see myself so fortunate as to be so happy as to have the pleasure that you have had the kindness to accord the favour of doing me the honour of honouring me with the privilege of your presence; and if I had only the merit to merit a merit such as yours, and Heaven, envious of my good fortune, had accorded me the joy of seeing myself worthy… to… to…” 

(Act 3) 

6/ In both plays, Molière gives the strong impression that he pokes fun at different types of people but still likes people—there’s no malice in his laughter—Jourdain is ridiculous, yes, but aren’t we all? In our own ways? 

Don Juan, my first encounter with Molière

Sooner or later, I had to read France’s most important playwright, so here we go. The translation I read was by George Graveley. 

1/ I will again quote Salvador de Madariaga: 

“Don Quixote, Sancho, Don Juan, Hamlet, and Faust are the five great men created by man. Resembling in this the great men made directly by the Creator, their forms have been covered in each generation by a new over-growth of legends, opinions, interpretations, and symbols. Such is the privilege of those living beings of art who by sheer vitality impress their personality on the collective mind of mankind.” (Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology, chapter “The Real Don Quixote”) 

The character of Don Juan originates in the 1630 Spanish play The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest by Tirso de Molina, which I read last year when exploring the Spanish Golden Age. The curious part is that the original is barely known—if you look at the other figures, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are original, and Goethe’s Faust may be the most famous and influential version but Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is also a celebrated play—not only is The Trickster of Seville nowhere near as famous as Molière’s 1665 play Dom Juan, and the 1887 opera Don Giovanni by Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, but I also think that very few people know about its existence, or recognise the name Tirso de Molina. 

2/ Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan is a sociopath, who stops at nothing once he desires a woman, including disguising himself and pretending to be her lover in the dark, which is obviously rape but which also is cheating—that’s not exactly a seduction, is it? Molière’s Don Juan is more like the Don Juan in my head and in popular culture: a womaniser and manipulator. 

“DON JUAN So you think we should be tied for ever to the first object that takes our fancy, forswear the rest of the world, and have no eyes for anyone else? […] Constancy is only for fools. Every pretty woman has the right to attract us, and the mere accident of being seen first should not rob the others of their privilege of making prey of our hearts. Beauty delights me wherever I find it, and I fall a willing slave to the sweet force with which it seeks to bind me…” 

(Act 1) 

That’s an excellent depiction of the mind of a womaniser. And when we see him at work, well well well… the scene of him and the two peasant girls, Charlotte and Marthurine, is hilarious. 

3/ Molière is hilarious. There’s a funny scene where Don Juan tells his servant Sganarelle that he doesn’t believe in anything—not God, not hell, not the devil, not even medicine. 

“SGANARELLE You must have a very unbelieving soul. But look what a reputation emetic wine has got in the last few years. Its wonders have won over the most incredulous. Why, only three weeks ago, I saw a wonderful proof myself. 

DON JUAN What was that? 

SGANARELLE A man was at the point of death for six whole days. They didn’t know what to do for him. Nothing had any effect. Then suddenly they decided to give him a dose of emetic wine. 

DON JUAN And he recovered? 

SGANARELLE No. He died. 

DON JUAN An admirable effect, truly. 

SGANARELLE What? For six whole days he couldn’t die; and that finished him off at once.” 

(Act 3) 

Hahahahahahaha. 

4/ Compared to Tirso de Molina’s play, this one is tightly controlled—The Trickster of Seville has a four-page speech about Lisbon that adds nothing to the plot (to this day, I still don’t know what that’s about). 

Molière also gives us a much more interesting and memorable character. Both Don Juans are scoundrels, of course, but Molière’s has more charm and seductive power. The playwright humanises him by letting us see his perspective—Don Juan sees himself as open and generous, an appreciator of beauty, a lover of women—he also has some honour and courage, such as when he saves a man from robbers. Molière also depicts a warm friendship between Don Juan and his servant Sganarelle—they talk and banter and argue, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza—Sganarelle is repulsed by Don Juan’s actions and afraid of losing his job but at the same time also charmed by him—so we too are charmed by Don Juan, or at least we can see his charm.

(Jane Austen would have liked this play, I think). 

5/ My friend Himadri said: 

“Molière makes more of Don Juan than just as satyromaniac. He is a man wedded to rationality, to reason. But the irrational is also an aspect of life, whether Juan accepts it or not. And it’s precisely this irrational aspect that destroys him.

One may even consider the statue to be symbolic of the irrational in Juan’s own psyche, but which he refuses to accept.”

Excellent play.

On revenge tragedies and Shakespeare

Revenge tragedies were all the rage in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. The Spanish Tragedy marks the beginning. ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore marks the end (or at least, I believe it was one of the last ones). So lately I’ve been reading a few and thinking about them.  

If you’re looking for depth or complexity or big ideas, I would say you won’t find any. Revenge tragedies are about excitement and ingenuity of plot and violence. Revenge tragedies are about shocking and sensational stage effects, like someone biting off his own tongue and spitting it out, or kissing and getting killed by a skull, or appearing with a bloody heart on a dagger. The modern equivalent would be Korean and Japanese revenge films. I have seen Audition, Lady Snowblood, Confessions… from Japan; Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Pietà, Montage, The Housemaid (remake), The Handmaiden… from South Korea. You watch these films for the violence and the ingenuity of the revenge. Sometimes I may find a revenge film entertaining and clever, like The Handmaiden, but often I’m just disgusted by the excessive violence and savagery—Pietà is probably the best example of a film with a disturbing delight in its depiction of cruelty and depravity—it left me thinking, all right that’s a picture of extreme barbarity, now what?—all it gave me was strong disgust and a bad taste in my mouth. 

The most profound revenge film I have seen, if it counts as a revenge film, is Ran. It’s not only about revenge but revenge is a big part of it and it’s something Kurosawa adds that isn’t in King Lear. 

And that brings me to another point, about Shakespeare. When my friend Himadri read these revenge plays 10 years ago, he wrote: 

“If Shakespeare’s audiences really did crave revenge tragedy – and the existence of so many plays by his contemporaries in this genre indicates that they did – then Shakespeare seems on the whole to have been swimming against the popular tide in refusing to satisfy them.”

That’s an interesting observation. The only proper revenge play Shakespeare wrote was Titus Andronicus, and even then I’m not sure what he was doing—was it serious or tongue-in-cheek? was it a genuine attempt to out-Seneca Seneca? or a parody? or just an early paid job before he could write what he wanted? (or, was it even Shakespeare at all? I always say Oxfordians and other loonies are welcome to claim that one).  

Once Titus Andronicus was over and done with, Shakespeare didn’t seem to particularly care for the revenge genre. His only interest was in parodying it or playing with it. Hamlet is a clear example—it’s a play about revenge, but most of it is about Hamlet not doing anything—instead, he ponders about the nature of revenge, the point of revenge, the point of existence, and when he finally kills Claudius, it doesn’t happen as a result of Hamlet’s plan. Coriolanus has revenge in the latter half of the play but it’s arguably not about the revenge itself—Shakespeare seems more interested in why a hero such as Coriolanus would go to the enemy and bring destruction upon his own city—the central difference is that revenge tragedies (at least those I have read) are about the how of revenge whereas Shakespeare is more fascinated by the why. The Tempest is another parody of the genre—it starts off with Prospero speaking of revenge and ends with him forgiving his enemies. 

Clearly Shakespeare isn’t interested in the spectacle of violence, but in people’s minds—and that is why his plays have a kind of depth that the revenge tragedies don’t have. 

 

Disclaimer: I very much enjoyed The Revenger’s Tragedy, which should be better known, and The Spanish Tragedy was also good fun. 

’Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford

Performed sometime between 1629 and 1633 and published in 1633, the play thus came out a while after Shakespeare’s death (1616) and the publication of the First Folio (1623).

1/ ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore is one of the most well-known plays of 17th century England, and one of the most controversial. 

“GIOVANNI I marvel why the chaster of your sex 

Should think this pretty toy called maidenhead 

So strange a loss, when, being lost, ’tis nothing, 

And you are still the same.” 

(Act 2 scene 1)  

Giovanni is talking to his own sister Annabella (yuck)—the play is about incest. 

Listen to Annabella’s tutoress/ guardian: 

“PUTANA […] Fear nothing, sweetheart: what though he be your brother? Your brother’s a man I hope, and I say still, if a young wench feel the fit upon her; let her take anybody, father or brother, all is one.” 

(ibid.) 

Ugh. She quickly changes the tune though, when Annabella’s pregnant.

This conversation between Annabella’s father Florio and Richardetto (who’s pretending to be a doctor) is funny: 

“RICHARDETTO […] You need not doubt her health; I rather think 

Her sickness is a fullness of her blood – 

You understand me? 

FLORIO I do – you counsel well – 

And once within these few days will so order’t 

She shall be married, ere she know the time.” 

(Act 3 scene 4) 

Florio doesn’t know that she’s pregnant. Whether or not Richardetto knows is not made clear, though I think it works better for the story if he does.  

According to the notes in my copy (New Mermaids’ Four Revenge Tragedies), “fullness of her blood” means “sexual ripeness”.

“This was believed to be an ailment of female virgins; the usual remedy was for the young woman to have sex as soon as possible.”

Hmm, interesting. 

2/ ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore is a play about incest and begins with the Friar talking about “devilish atheism”, but John Ford slowly shows that it’s the clergy that is immoral and hypocritical. 

For instance, when the Friar is talking to Annabella, now pregnant with her own brother’s child, he talks about hell, about “smoky fogs” and “infected darkness” and “never-dying death” and “damned souls” and “burning oil” and “molten gold” and so on. But then: 

“FRIAR […] Heaven is merciful, 

And offers grace even now. ’Tis thus agreed: 

First, for your honour’s safety, that you marry 

The Lord Soranzo; next, to save your soul, 

Leave off this life, and henceforth live to him.” 

(Act 3 scene 7)  

That has nothing to do with heaven or hell—the Friar tells Annabella to marry Soranzo, thus deceiving him, to save her reputation. 

Even worse is when Grimaldi (one of Annabella’s suitors), intending to get rid of Soranzo, mistakenly kills Bergetto and runs to the Cardinal for help. 

“CARDINAL […] You citizens of Parma, if you seek 

For justice, know, as Nuncio from the Pope, 

For this offence I here receive Grimaldi

Into his Holiness’ protection. 

He is no common man, but nobly born 

Of princes’ blood… 

[…] 

FLORIO Justice is fled to heaven and comes no nearer. 

[…] When cardinals think murder’s not amiss. 

Great men may do their wills, we must obey, 

But Heaven will judge them for’t another day.” 

(Act 3 scene 9)  

All these revenge plays depict society as unfair and unjust—that’s why people must take the law into their own hands. 

3/ Like the other revenge plays I have read, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore is engrossing. John Ford goes further, to excess—whereas The Spanish Tragedy is chiefly about Hieronimo’s revenge for the murder of his son and The Revenger’s Tragedy is about Vindice’s revenge on the Duke’s family for the murder of his betrothed, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore has multiple vengeful characters: Grimaldi wants a revenge on Soranzo for humiliating him and “stealing” Annabella; Hippolita wants a revenge on Soranzo for discarding her and marrying Annabella; her husband Richardetto pretends to be dead in order to take revenge on Hippolita and Soranzo for their affair; Soranzo wants revenge after discovering Annabella’s relations with Giovanni, and so on. 

John Ford’s play doesn’t have the great poetry of The White Devil or The Revenger’s Tragedy.

But more importantly, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The play depicts a dissolute, corrupt world, and at the centre of it is the incestuous, lecherous, unreasonable Giovanni: 

“GIOVANNI Shall then, for that I am her brother born, 

My joys be ever banished from her bed?” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

He doesn’t listen to reason and doesn’t care for consequences. Even if you are indifferent to incest when it’s consensual, I doubt I am alone in finding his thinking and actions vile:  

“GIOVANNI Busy opinion is an idle fool, 

That, as a school-rod keeps a child in awe, 

Frights the unexperienced temper of the mind, 

So did it me, who, ere my precious sister

Was married, thought all taste of love would die

In such a contract; but I find no change 

Of pleasure in this formal law of sport. 

She is still one to me, and every kiss 

As sweet and as delicious as the first 

I reaped when yet the privilege of youth 

Entitled her a virgin.” 

(Act 5 scene 3)  

However unlikeable Soranzo is—and John Ford makes sure that we all find him abhorrent—the fact remains that Annabella deceives him into marriage and continues betraying him after the wedding. And when Giovanni foils Soranzo’s plan at the end, he may save Annabella from the awful plot and refuses Soranzo the satisfaction of revenge, but all he does in the final spectacle is degrading himself and his sister, and elevating the husband—nobody knows about Soranzo’s cruelty, nobody knows about the murder plot—all the others see is that the poor husband is wronged.  

“GIOVANNI Father, no. 

For nine months’ space in secret I enjoyed 

Sweet Annabella’s sheets; nine months I lived 

A happy monarch of her heart and her. 

Soranzo, thou know’st this: thy paler cheek 

Bears the confounding print of thy disgrace, 

For her too fruitful womb too soon bewrayed 

The happy passage of our stol’n delights, 

And made her mother to a child unborn.” 

(Act 5 scene 6) 

It is all sordid. 

I feel sorry for people in early 17th century England—they went to Shakespeare’s plays for years but then he died and they went to the theatre and it was ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. 

PS: My favourite plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries so far are The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, and The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur/ Thomas Middleton. 

The Revenger’s Tragedy, a Jacobean play

1/ This is another revenge play, first performed in 1606, and published in 1607. The authorship is disputed: it was long attributed to Cyril Tourneur; some modern scholars believe it’s by Thomas Middleton (who collaborated with Shakespeare in a few plays); but the debate is never settled. 

Whoever it was, it would have been tough for him—1606 was roughly the year of King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra—that’s Shakespeare at his peak. 

2/ It’s harder to read than Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, at first—the language is knottier.

There’s interesting imagery from the very first page though: 

“VINDICE […] Oh that marrowless age 

Would stuff the hollow bones with damned desires, 

And ’stead of heat kindle infernal fires

Within the spendthrift veins of a dry duke, 

A parched and juiceless luxur...” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

Tourneur/ Middleton has some good metaphors: 

“DUKE Duchess it is your youngest son, we’re sorry, 

His violent act has e’er draw blood of honour 

And stained our humours, 

Thrown ink upon the forehead of our state 

Which envious spirits will dip their pens into 

Fater our death, and blot us in our tombs. 

For that which would seem treason in our lives

Is laughter when we’re dead. Who dares now whisper 

That dares not then speak out, and e’en proclaim 

With loud words and broad pens our closest shame.” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

The Duke is talking about the Duchess’s youngest son being a rapist, but the thing that interests me more is that the playwright uses extended metaphors, which Shakespeare also likes (and masters). 

3/ I was surprised to come across the word “dad” in The Revenger’s Tragedy—I don’t remember ever coming across it in 19th century novels, the preferred word is “papa”—but Etymonline says “dad” is recorded from ca. 1500 and could be much older. 

Learn something new every day. 

4/ One of the main themes in the play is lust. The misogyny of some of the characters is revolting. For example, the Duchess’s youngest son is brought to court for raping another man’s wife. A judge asks why he did it. 

“YOUNGEST SON Why flesh and blood my lord; 

What should move men unto a woman else?” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

Lussurioso, the Duke’s son from an earlier marriage, is not much better. 

“LUSSURIOSO […] I am past my depth in lust

And I must swim or drown. All my desires 

Are levelled at a virgin not far from Court…” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

He wants to “ravish” Castiza and doesn’t realise that the bawd to whom he thinks he’s speaking is actually her brother Vindice in disguise. 

“LUSSURIOSO Push; the dowry of her blood and of her fortunes 

Are both too mean – good enough to be bad withal. 

I’m one of that number can defend 

Marriage is good; yet rather keep a friend. 

Give me my bed by stealth – there’s true delight; 

What breeds a loathing in’t but night by night?” 

(ibid.) 

That frankly makes me puke in my mouth a little. 

But it’s not just men who are full of lust. The Duchess wants to bang Spurio, the Duke’s bastard son. 

5/ The scene of Vindice in disguise acting as a bawd for Lussurioso, as a way of testing his sister Castiza and his mother Gratiana, is excellent. Here’s an example: 

“VINDICE […] Would I be poor, dejected, scorned of greatness, 

Swept from the palace, and see other daughters 

Spring with the dew o’the court, having mine own 

So much desired and loved – by the Duke’s son? 

No, I would raise my state upon her breast

And call her eyes my tenants; I would count 

My yearly maintenance upon her cheeks, 

Take coach upon her lips and all her parts 

Should keep men after men and I would ride 

In pleasure upon pleasure…”  

(Act 2 scene 1) 

Vile indeed, but Vindice is playing the role of a bawd and testing his mother. The entire scene is a fine example of rhetoric, and drama. It then ends with Vindice’s soliloquy: 

“VINDICE […] Why does not heaven turn black or with a frown 

Undo the world? Why does not earth start up

And strike the sins that tread upon it? Oh, 

Were’t not for gold and women there would be no damnation. 

Hell would look like a lord’s great kitchen without fire in’t; 

But ’twas decreed before the world began

That they should be the hooks to catch at man.” 

(ibid.) 

Vindice is the revenger of the play, setting out to destroy the family of the Duke, who are lustful, brutal, and callous, but he too is a misogynist. We’ve seen it from the very beginning: 

“VINDICE We must coin. 

Women are apt you know to take false money, 

But I dare stake my soul for these two creatures, 

Only excuse excepted, that they’ll swallow 

Because their sex is easy in belief.” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

He is here speaking to his brother Hippolita, and “these two creatures” refers to their mother and sister—who talks like that about his female family members? At the end of the same scene, he says “Wives are but made to go to bed and feed.” 

The play presents a rather bleak view of humanity—how many good characters are there in the play?—I can only think of two (chaste Castiza and honest Antonio). Makes me think of Webster. 

6/ There is a passage in The Revenger’s Tragedy that reminds me of Hamlet’s “Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.”  

The revenge scene is probably crazier than anything I’ve seen in Shakespeare, even the eye-gouging scene in King Lear or the headless body in Cymbeline. And then the grand finale—the big killing scene at the end—is quite something. 

As a whole, The Revenger’s Tragedy is a crazy play, a fun and exciting play. Do I think it’s a great work of art? Not really, no—like The Spanish Tragedy, there’s not much depth in it—it’s not a play that makes you think about evil, the nature of revenge, or “the human condition” as such. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a fun, enjoyable play—Tourneur/ Middleton has a good feel for pacing and tension, and his poetry is much better than Kyd’s. 

The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd

The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan play, generally accepted to have been written by Thomas Kyd, sometime between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential at the time, it established the genre of the revenge play. For theatrical context, it’s around the same time as Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus, and Henry VI plays. For historical context, the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588. 

1/ The play begins with the ghost of Don Andrea, killed in the war between Spain and Portugal, here called Portingale (please tell me I’m not the only one who sees that and keeps thinking of nightingales). Don Andrea is killed by Prince Balthazar (son of the Portuguese Viceroy), who not long after surrenders to Lorenzo (son of the Duke of Castile, nephew of the Spanish King, brother of Bel-Imperia) and Don Horatio (son of Hieronimo and friend of Don Andrea). 

Bel-Imperia is Don Andrea’s girlfriend. Prince Balthazar fancies her but she falls for Don Horatio, not long after Don Andrea’s death (frailty, thy name is woman). 

2/ Thomas Kyd likes repetitions. Sometimes it’s awkward. 

“BEL-IMPERIA I know the scarf, would he had kept it still, 

For had he lived he would have kept it still…” 

(Act 1 scene 4) 

But sometimes it works rather well. 

“VICEROY […] My late ambition hath distained my faith, 

My breach of faith occasioned bloody wars, 

Those bloody wars have spent my treasure, 

And with my treasure my people’s blood, 

And with their blood, my joy and best beloved, 

My best beloved, my sweet and only son…” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

(In case you’re wondering, that’s when the Viceroy mistakenly thinks his son Balthazar is dead). 

“BALHAZAR […] First, in his hand he brandished a sword, 

And with that sword he fiercely waged war, 

And in that war he gave me dangerous wounds, 

And by those wounds he forced me to yield, 

And by my yielding I became his slave. 

Now in his mouth he carries pleasing words, 

Which pleasing words do harbour sweet conceits, 

Which sweet conceits are limed with sly deceits, 

Which sly deceits smooth Bel-Imperia’s ears, 

And through her ears dive down into her heart, 

And in her heart set him where I should stand…” 

(Act 2 scene 1) 

You can see for yourself that in terms of poetry, Kyd ain’t Webster. But these passages are interesting nevertheless, in terms of rhetoric. 

I like this: 

“HIERONIMO O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears; 

O life, no life, but lively form of death; 

O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs, 

Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds!...” 

(Act 3 scene 2) 

Kyd gives Hieronimo some rather good speeches, some moving expressions of grief. But that also makes me realise that he doesn’t give such speeches to Bel-Imperia. 

3/ One of the challenges I have set for myself blogging about The Spanish Tragedy is to refrain from comparing Kyd and Shakespeare, so I will not judge the qualities of the play against Shakespeare. However, it’s impossible not to note the parallels between The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet. 

The Spanish Tragedy is about a father avenging his son’s death; Hamlet is about a son avenging his father’s death. 

In Kyd’s play, Hieronimo takes a while to consider how to take revenge on Horatio’s murderers; in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet spends almost the entire play thinking, delaying, doing other things. 

Hieronimo rebukes himself as he sees Don Bazulto, an old man who seeks justice for his murdered son:    

“HIERONIMO See, see, O see thy shame, Hieronimo, 

See here a loving father to his son! 

[…] If love’s effects so strives in lesser things, 

If love enforce such moods in meaner wits, 

If love express such power in poor estates

[…] Then sham’st thou not, Hieronimo, to neglect 

The sweet revenge of thy Horatio?...” 

(Act 3 scene 13) 

Hamlet watches the actors, and thinks “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba/ That he should weep for her?”.

In both cases, there’s a play within a play, though they serve different purposes. 

I was thinking, why did I think The Spanish Tragedy was a much bloodier play? There are 9 deaths in The Spanish Tragedy, 8 in Hamlet (not counting Don Andrea and King Hamlet, appearing as ghosts). But then I realised: only 5 deaths in Hamlet are onstage (the deaths of Ophelia, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz are reported); the deaths in Kyd’s play are also more violent, and there’s a character who bites off his tongue (Kyd, why?). But then Shakespeare outdoes all that in Titus Andronicus: much more violent, much more ridiculous (Oxfordians and other loonies are welcome to claim that one, I don’t care). 

4/ The Spanish Tragedy is without doubt an exciting play. It is packed with action—war, false accusation, torture, abduction, murder, deception, forced marriage, intrigue, revenge, and so on and so forth. What is that Machiavellian villain Lorenzo going to do next? Where is Bel-Imperia? How are Bel-Imperia and Hieronimo going to avenge Horatio’s death? 

Had I just watched it, I would probably have enjoyed it as an equivalent of a Hollywood action, bloody and exciting—it’s not hard to see why the Elizabethan audience loved the play. As it happened, I was reading it over the course of a few days and had time to think about the characters, the poetry, the plot, etc. Why do we see the ghost of Don Andrea but not the ghost of Horatio, for example? Why does the ghost of Don Andrea not seem to care that Bel-Imperia moves on so quickly? Is the play about a revenge for Horatio, or a revenge for Don Andrea? Why is it that Hieronimo seems so passive for a large part of the play until he’s reproached by Bel-Imperia, but he’s the one who comes up with the plan to kill the murderers? Or maybe I overthink, as usual. 

Fun play. Thomas Kyd makes me think of Lope de Vega—not much depth, but they both know how to captivate the audience. 

PS: I have created a tag on my blog for Shakespeare’s contemporaries (restricted to those in England/ Britain). My blog posts about Marlowe, Webster, Jonson... are collected there. 

Some thoughts on Robinson Crusoe [updated]

I don’t have much to say about Robinson Crusoe. Probably won’t have much when I finish reading it either. 

As I explore the 18th century, I can see why Robinson Crusoe was huge at the time and became so influential—it was a new kind of writing; it was an invention of a modern myth; it explored the themes of self-reliance, civilisation, power, colonialism, faith, and so on—but I can’t help thinking that, compared to other 18th century novels I’ve read, it feels more dated, more like a relic of the past. All right, I know that Defoe’s book was published in 1719 and the others were decades later, but it feels very 18th, late 17th century, very much stuck in its time and place. Let me clarify what I mean. Tom Jones (1749) doesn’t feel much different from 19th century literature—if you have been reading 19th century British novels like Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope… and pick up Tom Jones, you wouldn’t feel like there’s a jump even if some words and expressions are more archaic. Gulliver’s Travels (1726) doesn’t feel like the 18th century either, though it’s probably because it’s fantasy/ satire, the same way Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) feel extremely modern, not at all Victorian.  

I’m probably not explaining this very well. More examples. When I read Shakespeare’s contemporaries, I always find that Shakespeare was light years ahead—his psychological insight and power of characterisation and range of sympathies make everyone else seem crude—but I do think that Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610) feels more rooted in its time and place, more dated than, say, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612-1613) or Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (ca. 1592), because it’s much more topical and thick with references to current events and current obsessions—it doesn’t transcend its time and place. 

In a similar way, Robinson Crusoe feels like a relic of the past rather than a timeless work of art, and it’s because of the narrator’s imperialist mindset and his plantations and his use of “Negroes” and his attitudes towards “savages” and his treatment of the “savage” he renames as Friday and his conversion of Friday to Christianity and so on and so forth. Defoe may or may not have shared these views—I don’t know—but his depiction of the simple, loyal, subservient Friday doesn’t particularly help. That is not to say that the book is badly written. After the tedious first 50 or so pages, the book (about 250 pages a whole) became much more interesting—not when Crusoe survives the shipwreck but when he starts his life on the desert island—and it’s much more exciting when Crusoe starts exploring the other side of the island after years of staying in more or less one place. 

Is this a book I want to read more than once? At the moment, possibly not. Do I think you should read it? Let me finish it and see. 

Update on 7/4/2025: 

I have now finished reading Robinson Crusoe. I maintain that Robinson Crusoe, more than other 18th century novels I have read, feels more like a relic of the past. I also think that Crusoe is not a particularly interesting character—or rather, his actions for sustenance and survival have some interest, his mind doesn’t. 

But if you are interested in 18th century literature and/or the development of the novel, it’s a book you should read. The first 50 pages are tedious, but it becomes more interesting, especially the second half, as there’s more conflict. Daniel Defoe is very good at filling the book with details, creating the illusion that it’s a real memoir, a real document of a man’s survival on a desert island, thus pioneering the realist novel. He is also very good at depicting Crusoe’s conversion to Christianity. I can see why the book was immensely popular, and can see why Gabriel Betteredge in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone is obsessed with it and uses it for a kind of divination. 

On “AI art” and the artist’s vision

(An image created by MidJourney that caused controversy a few years ago when winning a photography/ digital art award). 

1/ I once saw a tweet saying “the brain is literally a computer and there are a lot of people who deny this for some reason.” In response, someone called Duncan Reyburn (@duncanreyburn) wrote:  

“Amazing inability to see the difference between an analogy and an identity here. Left-hemispheric overreach. Computers have no intentionality, for one thing, and also no capacity to feel their own being, to sense their own life, to transcend their own limitations, to be porous to vibes, etc.

To reason properly, you have to be able to spot not just similarity but also difference. You need to assume that your own immediate, conscious assumptions are shutting the door to some pretty important aspects of meaning.” 

I thought of that exchange when I was talking to my friend Himadri recently about “AI art” and he said: 

“It’s an interesting question: given all the possible uses for AI, why are so many people so insistent that it can produce art, and that, some day AI will produce works of the level of Caravaggio, Mozart, Tolstoy? I think the reason is this:

There are many who are very deeply wedded to the idea that humans are no more than machines. Incredibly sophisticated machines, but machines nonetheless. They absolutely hate the idea that humans can have souls - that is, that humans can have some element in them that are beyond rational analysis, beyond rational explanation. If AI can replicate the greatest works of art, they will be proved right. Even Caravaggio and Rembrandts were mere machines.”

But why? I don’t understand. The enthusiastic cheering for “AI art” is deeply anti-art and anti-human. 

2/ A couple of years ago, I had a discussion with someone, also on Twitter, who said that there’s no difference between “AI art” and art made by humans, because “all art is a mash-up of previous art.” 

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the way all AI-loving tech bros think. But as I pointed out back then, artists don’t just take something from other artists, they have something of their own—their own experiences and vision of life and obsessions and antipathies and regrets and fears and desires and hangups—artists may also break the rules and do something new and transcend the boundaries—all these things are beyond AI. 

Apart from a profound misunderstanding of art and its creation, I can’t help thinking that some people have had their thinking distorted by decades (or perhaps a century?) of sci-fi (a genre I have never particularly liked) and it has made them believe that AI (such as we currently have) could be conscious. It is not. And if you use AI to generate something, you’re not the artist—you’re the equivalent of a commissioner. 

3/ When I read, I’m not only interested in characters, details, imagery, metaphors, motifs, language, style, etc—I’m also interested in the author’s vision. 

When people say that a reader is either a Tolstoy person or a Dostoyevsky person, for example, it’s because they don’t just have different writing styles but also have different visions of life: Dostoyevsky writes about the abnormal and the extreme, Tolstoy writes about a wide range of “normal” people; Dostoyevsky believes in free will, Tolstoy believes in determinism; Dostoyevsky depicts life as made up of dramatic moments and great decisions determining the trajectory of one’s life, Tolstoy sees life as formed by all the little decisions one makes every moment; they are opposite. Then you read Chekhov and he again has a different vision of life: Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are both religious whereas Chekhov is a humanist (if you’re new here, I’m a Tolstoy and Chekhov girl). 

These things fascinate me. Chekhov, Jane Austen, and Flannery O’Connor all strike me as having no illusions about human nature, for instance, but Chekhov looks at people with warmth and compassion, Jane Austen laughs at them, and Flannery O’Connor coldly dissects and studies them. 

It’s also because I’m interested in the artist’s vision that in painting, I have zero interest in photorealism: the skills are impressive, but so what? All I see is someone painstakingly reproducing what the camera “sees”. Most of my favourite artists are not realistic as such—Egon Schiele, Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, Turner, etc.—even the more “realistic” ones such as Rembrandt or Sargent, I like them not because they depict people with great accuracy, but because their subjects feel alive and because I love Rembrandt’s use of lighting and Sargent’s way of focusing on the face but using broad brushstrokes and a more impressionistic style for the clothes and surroundings. 

But it’s not just me. Who would be interested in “art” made by machine, made by something that doesn’t see the world, doesn’t experience things, doesn’t have feelings? I don’t think most people are. The only people (I see) enthusiastically promoting and cheering for “AI art” are the tech people who are not really interested in art in the first place. 

The various subspecies of philistines

Left, right, everywhere we’re surrounded by philistines. 

On the left are the philistines who see everyone and everything through the lens of identity politics, who divide the world neatly into oppressor vs oppressed, who reduce literature to stories and perspectives, who do not believe in universal appeal and the test of time, who think that Shakespeare’s status as the greatest writer of all time is thanks to nothing but colonialism and “structures of power”. These are people who speak of relatability, as though we can only relate to characters with the same sex or skin colour. These are people who speak of relevance, as though only contemporary books can resonate with readers. These are people who associate classic books with “white supremacy” and replace them with contemporary books, as though other countries don’t have their own classic literature. 

There are philistines who call for trigger warnings and sensitivity readers, who want to censor racist or otherwise offensive words, who think writers shouldn’t write about characters from a different community, who think novels should only be from the perspective of the victim rather than the perpetrator, who cannot distinguish the narrator from the author. There are also philistines who demand “moral purity” and “the right opinions”, who cannot separate the art from the artist. Related to such puritans are the philistines who think that a work of art with “an important message” is worthwhile and important. 

On the right are the philistines who constantly say Western culture is under attack but cannot say which classical works they cherish and why, who bemoan modern architecture and praise Disney-style castles, who think representational art is the peak and Hitler is a better artist than Egon Schiele, who applaud vulgar and soulless works such as the sculptures of Luo Li Rong or Jago. These are people who lose their minds over the casting of a Shakespeare production, but neither read nor watch Shakespeare themselves. These are people who are incapable of looking at culture except through the lens of the culture war. These are people who affect to be living in the past but know next to nothing about it. 

There are also conservative philistines who want books removed from schools—not only sexually explicit, borderline-pornographic books (which is understandable) but also serious literature such as The Bluest Eye, or important documents such as Anne Frank’s Diary. 

And now, beyond politics, beyond the right and the left, are the philistines who happily cheer for “AI art”, who praise AI-generated videos not realising their emptiness and vulgarity, who draw (false) parallels between AI-generated images and photography, who think human beings are nothing but sophisticated machines, who believe AI can one day produce a Shakespeare or a Rembrandt, who have no idea what art is or why human beings engage with it, who dismiss others as reactionaries refusing to be with the times.

All these people have no idea what art is—they either attack art, or produce slop. 

It’s infuriating.