Beyond Disillusion (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

William Norman Guthrie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330903706 ISBN 13: 9781330903704

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2020

Synopsis

Excerpt from Beyond Disillusion

Briefly put then, this play is an effort to present vitally, through the actions and reactions of human beings, under sig nificant conditions, what seems to the writer a constructive sug gestion, a valid consecration, a worthy conception of sacrifice. Just because the individual is sacred the individual must cheerfully endure whatever hardship is requisite to keep him true to his highest ideal of human relationship.

It would be incorrect to say that this play was conceived and written with the view to pressing home a particular doctrine. Rather, it was an effort at a synthetic vision of the human strug gle which had been, with keen, sometimes aching sympathy, ob served as presented fragmentarily in a number of cruel cases which fascinated the author. The judgments reached upon attain ing to this synthetic vision were not clearly foreseen when the material was first decided upon and the preliminary efiorts at its subdual for artistic uses undertaken.

A preface is always a precarious undertaking. It tells too much or too little. It is apt to confuse the artistic issue with personal considerations. The writer, in this case, has no apology to make. He but desires to share his creative joys and pains with the like minded, whoever they may be, and to present to those who differ from him his own best effort at dramatic thinking - thinking that is not abstract, but human; a thinking that proceeds not from syllo gism to syllogism, but through actual human souls and destinies the only sort of thinking that in the long run can help to solve any question as human as this one, which baffles alike the advocate of authority and the unmystical rationalist in our age.

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Product Description

Excerpt from Beyond Disillusion No question is more interesting to us in America than that of the perpetuation of the family. With the constant insistence upon the rights of the individual, not only to life, but to happiness, we find ourselves forgetting the value of hardship and discipline to the individual himself. We are disposed to regard all higher engagements and contracts in the light of their immediate reaction, gauged in terms of pleasure. There is with us still operative a goodly amount of the old utilitarian philosophy, which mingles most singularly with a popularized Darwinism. No wonder then our ideals of marriage are somewhat vague. And yet withal we are a conservative people, loyal and very sentimental. We are not prepared to jeopardize the old home virtues, at least not to confess that we do. So our conscience is divided and our mind confused, in all that concerns the hearth and the cradle. Most of the discussion of marriage which has taken dramatic form has seemed to be, on the whole, negative and destructive, not only because it is far easier to criticise than to create, but because the art form of drama itself makes any positive presentment of human interests, which cannot come to adequate expression in sudden acts or explosions of passion, extraordinarily difficult, not to say impossible. Even an Ibsen, past master of the craft, and a genius to boot, can carry his argument successfully to the slamming of the door and the exit of the lady and the bewildered reaction of the husband, as in the Doll's House, but he is not able to make himself anything like so well understood when he struggles with the subtler problem of the master builder's soul, or even John Gabriel Borkmann's; and much less yet can he make his point when, as in When We Dead Awaken, he suggests through unconventional and futile rebellion a reconsideration of the requisites for an honorable and psychologically and sociologically valuable marriage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books

About this edition

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 1330903706
• ISBN 13: 9781330903704
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 130