Abstract
In Part II, the anachronistic conclusion is drawn that actors’ exposure on stage, while they are engaged in the creative act, automatically catapults them into an awareness of the pathos of human existence. Actors, creatures of fable in a manner of speaking, affirm this knowledge and give themselves over to it on stage. As a result, actors become accountable for their art. The question becomes more pointed: why would one want to be an actor?
Chapter PDF
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Notes
Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea, trans. James Agee (New York: Harpers, 1998), 184.
Pierre Klossowski, “Nietzsche, Polytheism and Parody,” in Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Français. Vol. 14/2 (Fall, 2004), 82–119, 94.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, trans. Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 20. Hollingdale, whose translation is otherwise used here, translates Fabel more freely as “myth.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Psychology of Actors,” in Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 160.
Friedrich Nietzsche. “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Penguin, 1968), 42–47.
Arthur Rimbaud, “Lettre du voyant” (letter to Paul Demeny), May 15, 1871, in Walter Jens (ed.), Neues Literatur-Lexikon. Vol. 14 (Munich: Kindler Verlag, 1996), 156.
Goethe, J.W. and Eckermann, J.P. Conversations, trans. John Oxenford (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1998), 392.
Plato, Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Dover, 1993), 26.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2016 Susanne Valerie
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Valerie, S. (2016). The Actor: A Creature of Fable. In: Actors and the Art of Performance: Under Exposure. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137596345_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137596345_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59633-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59634-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)