tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post4118796197539358991..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: The Vulgarity of the Ascetic, Rewarded: Massenet's Thais and Barlam and IosaphatCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-20264492242265440252015-01-03T13:24:50.918-05:002015-01-03T13:24:50.918-05:00I've been thinking about this post a lot, Karl...I've been thinking about this post a lot, Karl, with the ambivalence of its desires: one vector is downward to an absolute ascetism, a repudiation that would resound and find neither reward nor enjoyment; the second is the lush framing of the post itself via Thais (complete with video -- an opera that Wikipedia tells me is "notoriously difficult to sing and is reserved for only the most gifted of performers"), and a reveling in the things of this world transported into the next gained by ("notoriously difficult"?) labors and denials. There's something here in the confluence of ecstatic music (I am assuming opera is an ecstatic experience for those who attend but I admit I don't really know because it isn't my thing) and religious ecstasy conveyed by a world made luminous (placed at the threshold to another world) that intermixes the secular and the spiritual, at least for those privileged to be witnesses. And maybe there is something really worth thinking about here about spectatorship, enjoyment, disdain, the price (money wise and ascesis wise) of access .... but about the best I can for the moment is throw out those notes towards something more coherent, hopefully in time!Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com