Word: existentialist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Martin D' Arcy, S.J., suggested that Existentialism could lead to Christianity, in the Cardinal Newman Lecture last night. "By all means start off as an Existentialist if you move on," he advised...
...mean. At the risk of contradicting the author, I suggest that his statement is not quite accurate, because if the play makes no definite point, it at least embodies a point of view. While a follower of Joyce as far as style is concerned, apparently Beckett is an existentialist by belief. Whatever else he may be doing, the playwright very successfully projects the existentialist disgust with the absurdity, the pointlessness of life. In Vladimir and Estragon he presents two symbols of humanity bravely living on even though Godot--the word at least suggests God if that is not its meaning...
...problem of the 19th century was the death of God," say France's existentialist intellectuals. "The problem of the aoth century is the death of man." Most of the writings of 50-year-old, Paris-dwelling Irish Expatriate Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) are opaque obituaries of humanity. Written in a kind of Joycean code, they are further complicated by a neo-Cartesian quest for identity, the logic of which runs: "I cannot think and do not know, therefore I am-or am I?" In his play Waiting for Godot, this intellectual razzle-dazzle bewildered theatergoers, delighted highbrows...
...other words, Herzen knew the Animal Farm that Russia was to become. The astonishing thing is that this half-forgotten philosopher was as modern as an existentialist, and warned against "modern man, that melancholy Pontifex Maximus" i.e., every man his own pope. Herzen's message, supported by brilliant observation of a Europe which was grandfather to today's discontents, is the simple one that no man is fit to be the master of another, whether his rule is imposed in the name of privilege or brotherhood. Today Herzen makes clear what the world lost when Russia turned...
Rene Char is a Frenchman with a great, hulking frame (6 ft. 3 in.) and a jaw like a duck press. By almost unanimous consent of his countrymen, he is the greatest French poet of his time. Existentialist Author Albert Camus spoke for the French intelligentsia when he saluted Char as "the great poet for whom we have been waiting." But English-reading people must take a French poetic reputation, like the credentials of ambassadors, largely on trust. In this bilingual sampler of his work, U.S. readers will be able to decide for themselves that measure for measure...