No dialecticians need apply

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Freud's essay "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death" is
included in the Papers on Psychology of Art, Literature,
Love, and Religion--Harper's Torchbooks, 'On Creativity and
the Unconscious' and also included are essays on Poet's and
Day-Dreaming, The Theme of the Three Caskets (Merchant of
Venice) Goethe and Childhood, Virginity, Charater-Types, and
one of my favorites, The Moses of Michelangelo. 

It is not sup rising that Freud, an Agonist who claims to
know little of Art, but who specializes in intra-psychic
agony,  solves the riddle of the Moses statue. You could say
that Freud and Michelangalo (Shakespeare too) are Agonists.
Michelangelo's Vatican Pieta presents a conflict between the
ageless Virgin and the aging and death of her Child. The
David (Michelangelo portrays moments of great crisis)
depicts a moment of confrontation, the Moses, a conflict of
Law and Passion. I wonder what Freud would write about
Pynchon's Enzian. 


"We remember the old saying: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If
you desire peace, prepare for war. It would be timely thus
to paraphrase it: Si vis vitam, para mortem. If you would
endure life, be prepared for death."