Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 22:58:18 +1000 Subject: Re: Marx on Timon of Athens From: Rob Schaap <carob at dynamite.com.au> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com CC: marxism-thaxis at buo319b.econ.utah.edu Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
G'day Chris,
In *C1* Marx refers to Timon's speech, in which money is described as the 'common whore of mankind': "Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions." He then goes on to quote, of all characters, Creon (Sophocles's Antigone) on the evil of filthy lucre - and then gives us a bit of Athenaeus on greed. All to show that we have, under capitalism, lost the common-sense insights of yore.
>>Marx would never have posited a "normal" attitude to money.
What is (importantly) meant then is: *normal for western precapitalist societies* - from 460BC to 1601AD, anyway.
Take a peek at S.S. Prawer's *Karl Marx & World Literature* - as Timon doesn't directly rate a mention in the index, try pp329-331 of the 1976 edition (perhaps, alas, the only edition of a terrific book). Marx also muses about Timon in the Paris Manuscripts somewhere.
Cheers, Rob.
>>I was surprised, looking through a second hand copy of "Some Versions of
>>Pastoral" by William Empson (1935), to see the first chapter entitled
>>"Proletarian Literature".
>>
>>This seems to flirt archly with marxist ideas. He *claims* the book
>>examines "a form for reflecting a social background without obvious
>>reference to it".
>>
>>There is only one reference to Marx. In the chapter on Gay's "Beggar's
>>Opera" (inspiration for Brecht's "Threepenny Opera"), he writes:
>>
>>"Every reference to money in the Opera carries a satire on the normal
>>attitude to it no less complete than those of Timon of Athens which Marx
>>analysed with so much pleasure."
>>
>>Marx would never have posited a "normal" attitude to money.
>>
>>But the purpose of my post is to ask:
>>
>>does anyone have a reference to (date, not just volume) or better an
>>extract from, Marx on Timon of Athens?
>>
>>Chris Burford
>>
>>London