GB SHAW: True Love=Freedom
2-21-06 GBS: Promulgator of LIBERTY
WB Yeats the poet tells this story. Mr. Yeats attended an opening of a Shaw play in London. GBS was in attendance & was asked to address the audience after the performance was over. As the great man approached the microphone he was greeted with a thunderous ovation---with one exception. A single Boo came trembling out of the crowd. Mr. Shaw took the mike gazed at the Boo-Bird & immediately said: "I agree with YOU, Sir---but who are we two against so many?" Yeats goes on to state how completely natural this spontaneous response was in the whole career of George Bernard Shaw.
I mention this now because GBS is in my mind as The singular Genius of his age (1856-1950). A man totally caught up in The Public Good---like no other writer on record. It is estimated that Shaw gave approximately 2,000 free lectures throughout London. He was also a truly potent music & film critic & wrote brilliant book reviews for major London papers---all of these for pay. His debating prowess was notorious throughout the great city of London. He took on all comers and never once lowered himself to the levels of the stupid, the irrational, or the fanatical. He actually believed the True & the Good & the Beautiful & the Just will triumph over ignorance & greed & barbarianism. Because he BELIEVED it he he also practiced it & held up his standards as paradigms to be imitated by his opponents. And it is recorded that GBS had the respect of every man or woman who faced him in debate or in any rational discussion. This man knew the city of London like the back of his own hand. He studied its most mundane municipal details in the London Library & the British Museum.
And in all respects GBS was a completely self-educated man. He elevated The Universal Discourse. This man who identified himself to The Shelley Society whom he addressed as: 'a socialist an atheist & a vegetarian.' He knew The Bible inside out. And he lived a more genuinely 'Christian' life than any of the stuffed shirts who went to church mainly out of fear of punishment & had memorized huge passages of scripture to prove their prejudices. GBS was on a lifetime mission to bring Intelligence & Health & Equality & Freedom into the world. He fought for Equality of Income his whole life this brilliant playwright who became himself quite wealthy. Why should a big shot banker or real estate agent make more money than a garbage collector, he reasoned. Who is doing the most for SOCIETY? GBS believed all unearned income ought to be TAXED. AMEN! And he was a one-man gang against corruption in government. Welcome, to America, G.B. Shaw, 21 Feb 2006. We need some of your pure trail-blazing SOUL in our dead greedy land of polluters & corrupers & haters of EDUCATION & of real honest freedom & fairness of Opportunity.
GBS's greatest literary work MAY have been the love letters he wrote to several beautiful talented actresses whom Shaw was wooing to play the heroine in one or another of his plays. He kept up a lifetime of Romantic interest in always at least one of these actresses even after his marriage. And his passionate feelings for each of them was returned in kind. He also fought for Equality in sexual relations simply because he noted early how women sold out to the marriage license & then were relegated to the kitchen or to the shelf & suffered though 40 or 50 years of interminable boredom often with husbands out sleeping with other women. GBS was a foe of sentimentalism. Are WE over sentimentalism? Obviously not. It is all over America. The sentimentalization of religion, politics, marriage & family, money---things things things. You name it. We have yet to come to our senses. Well, maybe we ought to try some of Shaw's ideas. They cannot possibly be any worse than the ideas that have brought us to the present state of nightmare government, schools going to rot, & the family in limbo. The Idea that true love leads to marriage which will fulfill the desires of true love obviously needs to be profoundly considered & reflected upon. Since half the marriages in California end on a dead end street named Divorce Boulevard.
I believe that Romance is a Necessary human Characteristic. We cannot LIVE without it. We die when we have no Romance in our lives. So the question is HOW do we negotiate this precious substance? How do we live in a world that threatens to undermine our truest purest Passion? That is the Subject that most interests me. As I have said I believe my whole task in life is to Keep Love Alive (as Author or Singer or Inspirer). To keep True Desire Alive. Or, rather, to bring it back into Life from the grave where it has been buried all these years---or is it centuries? This to me is the whole task of The Creator. I see no separation between being a Creator and being a Lover. The function of art is to discover once more the presence of Eros. And that also means rediscovering The Comic. Which seems to have escaped so many of us---it certainly is doing its damnest to elude me! What else is the sexual but a manifestation of Comedy. An occasion for Laughter. Not anxiety & jealousy & selfishness or fear. As most of us have been programmed to expect. Yes, we can all use a good dose of Intelligence & liberation from the ignorance that clings to us & holds us hostage to fairy tales and other superstitions concerning love & "happiness" & our ability to change our situations from stagnant to LIVING.
This is not a sermon but an appeal for wit & invention & an occasion for Courage!
RLG
WB Yeats the poet tells this story. Mr. Yeats attended an opening of a Shaw play in London. GBS was in attendance & was asked to address the audience after the performance was over. As the great man approached the microphone he was greeted with a thunderous ovation---with one exception. A single Boo came trembling out of the crowd. Mr. Shaw took the mike gazed at the Boo-Bird & immediately said: "I agree with YOU, Sir---but who are we two against so many?" Yeats goes on to state how completely natural this spontaneous response was in the whole career of George Bernard Shaw.
I mention this now because GBS is in my mind as The singular Genius of his age (1856-1950). A man totally caught up in The Public Good---like no other writer on record. It is estimated that Shaw gave approximately 2,000 free lectures throughout London. He was also a truly potent music & film critic & wrote brilliant book reviews for major London papers---all of these for pay. His debating prowess was notorious throughout the great city of London. He took on all comers and never once lowered himself to the levels of the stupid, the irrational, or the fanatical. He actually believed the True & the Good & the Beautiful & the Just will triumph over ignorance & greed & barbarianism. Because he BELIEVED it he he also practiced it & held up his standards as paradigms to be imitated by his opponents. And it is recorded that GBS had the respect of every man or woman who faced him in debate or in any rational discussion. This man knew the city of London like the back of his own hand. He studied its most mundane municipal details in the London Library & the British Museum.
And in all respects GBS was a completely self-educated man. He elevated The Universal Discourse. This man who identified himself to The Shelley Society whom he addressed as: 'a socialist an atheist & a vegetarian.' He knew The Bible inside out. And he lived a more genuinely 'Christian' life than any of the stuffed shirts who went to church mainly out of fear of punishment & had memorized huge passages of scripture to prove their prejudices. GBS was on a lifetime mission to bring Intelligence & Health & Equality & Freedom into the world. He fought for Equality of Income his whole life this brilliant playwright who became himself quite wealthy. Why should a big shot banker or real estate agent make more money than a garbage collector, he reasoned. Who is doing the most for SOCIETY? GBS believed all unearned income ought to be TAXED. AMEN! And he was a one-man gang against corruption in government. Welcome, to America, G.B. Shaw, 21 Feb 2006. We need some of your pure trail-blazing SOUL in our dead greedy land of polluters & corrupers & haters of EDUCATION & of real honest freedom & fairness of Opportunity.
GBS's greatest literary work MAY have been the love letters he wrote to several beautiful talented actresses whom Shaw was wooing to play the heroine in one or another of his plays. He kept up a lifetime of Romantic interest in always at least one of these actresses even after his marriage. And his passionate feelings for each of them was returned in kind. He also fought for Equality in sexual relations simply because he noted early how women sold out to the marriage license & then were relegated to the kitchen or to the shelf & suffered though 40 or 50 years of interminable boredom often with husbands out sleeping with other women. GBS was a foe of sentimentalism. Are WE over sentimentalism? Obviously not. It is all over America. The sentimentalization of religion, politics, marriage & family, money---things things things. You name it. We have yet to come to our senses. Well, maybe we ought to try some of Shaw's ideas. They cannot possibly be any worse than the ideas that have brought us to the present state of nightmare government, schools going to rot, & the family in limbo. The Idea that true love leads to marriage which will fulfill the desires of true love obviously needs to be profoundly considered & reflected upon. Since half the marriages in California end on a dead end street named Divorce Boulevard.
I believe that Romance is a Necessary human Characteristic. We cannot LIVE without it. We die when we have no Romance in our lives. So the question is HOW do we negotiate this precious substance? How do we live in a world that threatens to undermine our truest purest Passion? That is the Subject that most interests me. As I have said I believe my whole task in life is to Keep Love Alive (as Author or Singer or Inspirer). To keep True Desire Alive. Or, rather, to bring it back into Life from the grave where it has been buried all these years---or is it centuries? This to me is the whole task of The Creator. I see no separation between being a Creator and being a Lover. The function of art is to discover once more the presence of Eros. And that also means rediscovering The Comic. Which seems to have escaped so many of us---it certainly is doing its damnest to elude me! What else is the sexual but a manifestation of Comedy. An occasion for Laughter. Not anxiety & jealousy & selfishness or fear. As most of us have been programmed to expect. Yes, we can all use a good dose of Intelligence & liberation from the ignorance that clings to us & holds us hostage to fairy tales and other superstitions concerning love & "happiness" & our ability to change our situations from stagnant to LIVING.
This is not a sermon but an appeal for wit & invention & an occasion for Courage!
RLG
posted by rlg at 1:45 PM
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