King Arthur & Odysseus & Albert Camus

 I have been a King Arthur fan since reading T.H. White in high school. I even read Le Morte d'Arthur back then.

The Case for King Arthur (History Today )

None of this excludes the possibility that the later legend might have been based on a fictional character – that remains a strong argument – but the evidence demonstrates that there are several possibilities for a historical Arthur which can withstand the rigours of contemporary source-criticism. Asserting that Arthur was certainly a myth is, therefore, no longer credible.

It is not true that I bend my ear every time Joyce Carol Oates speaks, but maybe it comes close?

Joyce Carol Oates Defends 'The Odyssey' After Translator's Viral Slam 

In general, Oates said she liked Nolan’s film: “[I] highly recommend both Nolan’s film and the 1997 miniseries co-produced by Francis Coppola. The adaptations are notably different: one American, with the brooding middle-aged-boy-hero Matt Damon; the other very Mediterranean, with charismatic Armand Assante who more naturally inhabits the role … no reason why Nolan, or anyone else, should not re-imagine/re-envision a classical hero through the prism of his own invention.”  

 I have eaten dinner, a big bowl of soup, have finished watching Tulsa King and Strange New Worlds. The former works, if you forget the sociopathy of mobsters exposed by The Sopranos. The Trek show has grown on me, as has Anson Mount. The real Trekkers I guess are not happy with its experimentation. That I find its most interesting aspect.

The Absurdity of Albert Camus (History Today)

The key, Camus believed, was to differentiate between rebellion and revolution. As he saw it, revolutions sought to protect freedom and humanity against injustice by creating a perfect social order – in other words, by putting an end to history. The problem is that in trying (and failing) to create an ideal society, revolutions end up crushing the freedom and humanity they purport to be defending. This was especially true of the French Revolution, but no ‘revolutionary’ regime was any better – or worse – than any other. In this respect, Camus believed, the Soviet Union was indistinguishable from Nazi Germany.

Rebellion, by contrast, should respond to injustice by emphasising a shared humanity and by clinging doggedly to the value of human life. It required not just individual commitment, but solidarity with others. As Camus pointed out in Neither Victims, nor Executioners (1946), it should not aim to end history, but to ‘fight within History, to preserve from History that part of man which is not its proper province’.

Camus gave vivid expression to this in The Plague (1947). Set in Oran, in Algeria, during an outbreak of the plague in the 1940s, the novel has been widely recognised as an allegory of the German occupation of France and is, in many ways, a blueprint for his concept of rebellion. As Ronald Aronson has argued, it ‘conveys the unheroic determination to do what must be done in the face of a total threat’. Although the journalist Rambert, for example, initially tries to flee, he eventually resolves to stay and – realising that the plague can only be combatted through solidarity – accepts the risks that entails.

 

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