Tuesday 19 November 2019

Invictus . . . Mother Courage . . .

          My shoe is old ; its story’s told,
          whatever shall I do?
          There’s no foothold ; the world is cold,
          I’ll walk without my shoe.


See also . . .
Grim Secrets of Room 101 which traces the horrors of the Ministry of Truth to their source in the works of the Hungarian,  George Tabori, whose autobiographical My Mother’s Courage records how his mother escaped the deportation of 4000 Jews from Budapest to Auschwitz in July 1944. (Tabori was a Brecht expert and author of The Brecht File.) 
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2018/06/grim-secrets-of-room-101-is-it-time-to.html
See also a student of Brecht, Horst Bienek . . .
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2013/04/immured-mustard-field-found.html

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 
see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

Monday 4 November 2019

Dramatick Verse, a Fragment : Horatius Holds the Bridge

             HORATIUS :       A rout no child would own!
                                      You speak catastrophe.
  
             MESSENGER :  They milled around in great alarm.
                                      No thought but for our missing.

             HORATIUS :      Scum!

             MESSENGER :  Sire!

             HORATIUS :      Animal invertebratum!
                                      Your duty was to find them!


The hero, Horatius, a junior officer in the army of the early Roman
Republic, who famously defended Rome at the Tiber Bridge from the
invading army of Etruscans in the late 6th century BC. By defending
the narrow end of the bridge, he — together with commanders
Herminius and Lartius — was able to ward off the attacking army
long enough to allow other Romans to destroy the bridge behind him,
blocking the Etruscans’ advance and saving the city. According to
Livy’s History of Rome (ii. 10.), Horatius’s ‘own men, a panic-stricken
troop, were deserting their posts and discarding their weapons’;  how-
ever, Horatius's courage manages to rally the defence of the bridge.