Geoffrey Hill, René Girard, and the Logic of Sacrifice
General Material Designation
[Article]
First Statement of Responsibility
William A. Johnsen
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Leiden
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Brill
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
According to René Girard, the logic of sacrifice is scapegoating, the logic of self-sacrifice is self-transcendency true or deviated. Ibsen completed his unfinished epic poem "Brand" by rewriting it as a dramatic poem; dramatization clarified the mutually complicit nature of Brand's useless self-sacrifice to and by his community. Ibsen rewrote Brand with great speed and facility and, ten years later, perhaps with the lesson of Brand's unnecessary self-sacrifice in mind, achieved that regularity of intense focus that produced a play every two years. Geoffrey Hill's stage version completes the process of dramatizing Brand. By his own accounting in a 1979 interview Hill wrote his Brand with great speed and facility; ten years later, he began the current period of unrivalled periodic productivity. According to René Girard, the logic of sacrifice is scapegoating, the logic of self-sacrifice is self-transcendency true or deviated. Ibsen completed his unfinished epic poem "Brand" by rewriting it as a dramatic poem; dramatization clarified the mutually complicit nature of Brand's useless self-sacrifice to and by his community. Ibsen rewrote Brand with great speed and facility and, ten years later, perhaps with the lesson of Brand's unnecessary self-sacrifice in mind, achieved that regularity of intense focus that produced a play every two years. Geoffrey Hill's stage version completes the process of dramatizing Brand. By his own accounting in a 1979 interview Hill wrote his Brand with great speed and facility; ten years later, he began the current period of unrivalled periodic productivity.