Word: bakunin
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...early word on "The Coast of Utopia" was daunting: a nine-hour political debate, freely adapted from Isaiah Berlin's book of essay on "Russian Thinkers." Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Chaadaev, Nicholas Ogarev: discuss their theories of social progress. Anyone? Anyone? Before seeing the plays I boned up on 19th century Russian radicals by reading the fact-packed 88-page program; by the time the lights went down Saturday morning, I felt ready to be a contestant on "Masterminds." Only with Stoppard does the theatergoer have to cram for a show...
...with women, the women play their ace: they say, as Molly Bloom did, "Yes." This is the last word of the first and third "Utopia" plays; in each case it is spoken indulgently, as a mother would to calm a child's questing, questioning spirit. The political theories of Bakunin, Herzen and their coteries were expressions of a dream for universal betterment. As Shaw and Stoppard know, men are the dreamers, women the realists. Women are the land men return to when Utopia has faded or their ship foundered...
...after his table-mate's arrest, "I never liked to sit with him because he wouldn't talk. It was always a very unpleasant, strange experience....He had the look of a guy who didn't fit in." Well, Rich, perhaps you might have tried a conversation about Bakunin...
...liberations have been accomplished, all barriers torn down, all limits abolished. Baudrillard makes the (very French) case that evil, far from being undesirable, is necessary -- essential to maintaining the vitality of civilization. That suggests a refinement of an old argument favored by Romantics and 19th century anarchists like Bakunin, who said, "The urge for destruction is also a creative urge." It is not an argument I would try out on Elie Wiesel or on the mother of a political prisoner disappeared by the Argentine authorities...
...have issued from the warm heart of some Midwestern creative- writing course. Her phrasing (IDEALS ARE REPLACED BY CONVENTIONAL GOALS AT A CERTAIN AGE) is like a Hallmark card rewritten in academe. Holzer may sometimes remind you of Seneca (EXPIRING FOR LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL BUT STUPID) and sometimes of Bakunin (PRIVATE PROPERTY CREATED CRIME). But down deep she is a homebody...