[lbo-talk] From another thread

[Carrol Cox]

I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with Ted and Dennis tht "Such
"universality" is his [Shakespeare's] genius." There were probably quite
a few of Shakespeare's contemporaries that had exactly the same view of
Money. Shakeespeare's "genius" was that he expressed it in such a
memorable way and created a fiction in which that expression could be
decorously embodied. I really don't think Shakespeare added much if
anything to humanity's stock of "truths." Moreover, I doubt that anyone
reading _Timon of Athens_ smacks her forehead and says, Gee, I never
realized that about money." When I read (or, now, listen to a CD of it)
Book 24 of the Iliad I don't say, gee, until I read this I didn't know
that politicval loyalty need not be dependent on kinship!

That said, Dennis's comments on Marx's sentences is interesting. I tend
to agree. Except that it is hard to find sentences that  are _not_ "full
of mutibple meaning." Consider how often Polonius is quoted as
Shakespeare: "To thine own self be true..." Perhaps Polonius errs in not
noticing that his words have multiple meaning??? Was "self" a simple
word in Elizabethan English or was it packed with all the mystery it has
accrued since? Or am I choosing the wrong path of all those paths that
lead to one or another of the multiple meanings here? Susanne Langer
remarks that just because sugar is so nice it doesn't foolow that one
shoudl pour an  extra pound of it into one's cake batter. How many
multiple meanigns are desirable? Is there a limit to the number
ofmeanings you want?

See, you've just achieved universality. Your sentence has multiple
meanigns.

Carrol

Dennis Claxton wrote:
> 
> At 10:07 AM 11/27/2009, Ted Winslow wrote:
> 
> >I quoted Marx saying that.
> >
> >Shakespeare on "money" - on "avarice" - is "universal"; as is, so Marx
> >claims, Balzac.
> >
> >Such "universality" is his genius.
> 
> I wouldn't disagree.
> 
> >Marx "appropriates"  Greek drama in the same way:
> 
> This is where I would disagree.  Even though you put it in quotation
> marks, I think appropriate misses the mark.  Marx *studied*
> Shakespeare and philosophy and his immersion in such things helped
> make the sentences he wrote as full of multiple meaning as lines from
> Shakespeare.
> 
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