The fascinations of Othello are many; perhaps most essential and foundational is Iago’s corruption of Othello’s mind, mainly by inflaming his erotic fantasies. This happens the more readily because Othello is a very passionate man, a man of appetites for battle and sexual play. He loves “not wisely but too well” he says poignantly but incorrectly, proving the side of the Renaissance debate that insists that erotic love undermines the warlike manly spirit.

But the main point for our studies of Western poiesis, particularly the link between idealization, image-weaving and the wasteland is that Iago functions in the play (with Roderigo, Cassio and others as well as Othello) like Lady Macbeth and Macbeth’s own ambitions: he displaces fact by plausible fictions embedded in erotic desires. The conquest of life by images, like Macbeth’s “fatal dagger” or Edmund’s vision of being Earl of Gloucester and even King of Britain is the core fact of Western creativity and culture; it is the antechamber and womb of virtual reality, the displacement of life by phantoms. Read the rest of this entry »

This study of Western poiesis has examined the idealization and doubling of identity.  Based on analysis of great texts, it has proposed that the drive of Western poiesis to idealize itself in imagery is rooted in the metamorphic impulse of Greek culture and in the hybrid (Hellenic – Hebraic), self-irritating nature of this culture. Further, I have found and sought to explain that this drive to idealize often is rooted or involved in erotic trauma and follows a distinctive tragic trajectory. The dream of idealized being, the early stages of image formation (doubling) is an idyllic or pastoral phase in the process. As the image is formalized, separates, possesses and confronts its source an apocalyptic stage ensues resulting in the death or madness of the individual or cultural body. Sometimes this is matched by disillusionment with the image: it is unattainable (Narcissus), it is dead, it is a delusion (Camelot, Kurtz), and its subsequent collapse or petrifaction. Idealism, by its nature contains its own collapse for, as etymology tells us, idol worship and the dream of an idyll inevitably is idle. Thus, the apocalyptic awareness of the doubling, attenuation and displacement of self into ideal elicits an elegiac phase where the death and or disillusion, the realm of lies and phantoms is mourned. In Western poiesis the elegiac phase often includes forging a new idyll meant to last forever, the testament or shrine of the dead that because it is an idyll (eidellion from eidolon) is a lie. Thus Marlow says to Kurtz’s fiancee, “the last word he spoke was… your name.” A culture of imagery is a culture of lies and of horror. Even Marlow who “hates and detests a lie” must lie to save the illusion because the darkness of false idols are so horrible. The process is self-perpetuating and irreversible as the economy, pop media and political discourse show. Read the rest of this entry »

History shows that the great powers do not want peace: in the 20th century they perfected the art of contriving wars of attrition which ‘require’ or ‘justify’ management by the diplomatic-military cadres of the powers and UN to “secure lasting peace.” In Orwellian fashion, this War Process is defined as “security.” It is the kerua shalom whose numeric values equals that of Esav and that grows in the rotting of integrity (shaleim) from whose kindness and truth alone genuine peace can spring. Read the rest of this entry »

British NGO’s, academics and media specialize in reports claiming to predict or describe Israeli military plans. The effect of these reports is to slander Israel as aggressive and by publicizing the slander to preempt the slender chance that Israel might crush its declared enemies before it is hit. These people love dead Jews; not even thousands of rockets or flaming forests and Jewish towns are a “humanitarian crisis” to them. They all want ‘peace,’ that is, to expel Jews from their homes and land. It is suave Nazism, intrinsic to the War System and a continuation of Augustine’s dicta that Jews should be scattered and degraded to show the truth of Esau’s god… Read the rest of this entry »

When her term to bear grew full, then behold! There were twins in her womb. The first one emerged red, entirely like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau… but Jacob was an honest man, abiding in tents.

A world of pain and history of torture, dispossession and identity-theft has been built around Esav’s sale of his birthright to Jacob. But for our purposes, the fact that the brothers are twins and in various ways reflections and completions of each other is the central feature of the narrative; that and the fact that Esav’s nature is linked by etymology to goats, blood, soil and the food he demanded in exchange for his birthright. Read the rest of this entry »