/* PRIVILÉGIOS DE SÍSIFO 反对 一 切 現代性に対して - 風想像力: O MANEQUIM PAPAL

PRIVILÉGIOS DE SÍSIFO 反对 一 切 現代性に対して - 風想像力

LES PRIVILÉGES DE SISYPHE - SISYPHUS'PRIVILEGES - LOS PRIVILÉGIOS DE SÍSIFO - 風想像力 CONTRA CONTRE AGAINST MODERNISM Gegen Modernität CONTRA LA MODERNITÁ E FALSO CAVIARE SAIAM DA AUTOESTRADA FLY WITH WHOMEVER YOU CAN SORTEZ DE LA QUEUE Contra Tudo : De la Musique Avant Toute Chose: le Retour de la Poèsie comme Seule Connaissance ou La Solitude Extréme du Dandy Ibérique - Ensaios de uma Altermodernidade すべてに対して

2007-03-09

O MANEQUIM PAPAL


















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Segundo o filósofo inglês Carlyle:

the opening chapter of the third book of Past and Present, uses the fact of an "amphibious Pope" to epitomize what has happened to Christianity. When the pope's rheumatism made kneeling during the Corpus Christi processions difficult, his cardinals constructed "a stuffed cloaked figure, of iron and wood, with wool or baked hair; and placed it in a kneeling posture. Stuffed figure, or rump of a figure; to this stuffed rump he, sitting at his ease on a lower level joins, by the aid of cloaks and drapery, his living head and outspread hands: the rump with its cloak kneels, the Pope looks, and holds his hands spread; so the two in concert bless the Roman population on Corpus-Christi Day, as well as they can" (10.138). According to Carlyle, the pope thus sums up the entire "Scenic Theory of Worship": "Here is a Supreme Priest who believes . . . that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax-candles, organ-blasts, Gregorian chants, massbrayings, purple monsignori, wool-and-iron rumps, artistically spread out, -- to save the ignorant from worse" (10.138). Admitting the pope's charities, the bravery of his priests during a recent plague in Naples, and his wish to protect the poor and ignorant from unbelief, Carlyle nonetheless mocks him as an embodiment of "worshipping by stage-machinery" (10.139) in order to protect the established political order from proletarian rage. Such "Gregorian Chant, and beautiful wax-light Phantasmagory" hide "an Abyss, of Black Doubt, Scepticism, nay Sansculottic Jacobinism" (10.139). Carlyle thus reveals that the way the pope's infirmities were accommodated one feast day can tell us what we most need to know about the spiritual and political infirmities of the age as well. His sage's vision has in fact transformed an apparently trivial contemporary phenomenon into a Belshazzar fire-letter that warns his readers that they cannot hope to survive by using an obsolete religion to prop up an obsolete political system.

posted by Miguel Drummond de Castro | 13:44