Deleuzian hit man, spilling hot takes against a backdrop of a Roman criminal with lithe visions and a German secessionist multiple times over
The set up:
Nietzsche:St Paul as
DH Lawrence:Saint John of Patmos
Rising action:
In truth, it is Christianity that becomes the antichrist; it betrays Christ, it forces a collective soul on him behind his back, and in return, it gives the collective soul a superficial individual figure, the little lamb. Christianity, and above all John of Patmos, founded a new type of man, and a type of thinker that still exists today, enjoying a new reign: the carnivorous lamb, the lamb that bites and cries, “Help! What did I ever do to you? It was for your own good and our common cause.” What are curious figure, the modern thinker. These lambs in lion’s skin, with oversized teeth, no longer need either the priests’ habit or, as Lawrence said, the Salvation Army: they have conquered many other means of expression, many other popular forces. What the collective soul wants is power(POUVOIR).
[. . . .]
With the Apocalypse, Christianity invents a completely new image of power: the system of judgment. The painter, Gustav Corbet. (there are numerous resemblances between Lawrence and Corbet) spoke of people who woke up at night, crying “I want to judge! I have to judge!” The will to destroy the will to infiltrate every corner, the will to forever have the last word long – a triple Will, that is unified and obstinate: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Power singularly changes its nature, it extension, distribution, its intensity, its means, and its end. A counter power, which is both the power of nooks and crannies, and the power of the last men. Power no longer exists except as the long politics of vengeance, the long enterprise of the collective soul’s narcissism. The Revenge and self glorification of the weak, says Lawrence- Nietzsche.
The deferral of the denouement:
Saint Paul is the ultimate manager, while John of Patmos is a laborer, the terrible laborer of the last hour. The Director of the enterprise must prohibit, censure, and select, whereas the laborer must hammer, extend, compress, and forge a material…. That is why, in the Nietzsche-Lawrence alliance, it would be wrong to think that the difference between their targets - Saint Paul for one, John of Patmos for the other - is merely anecdotal or secondary. It marks a radical difference between the two books. Lawrence knows Nietzsche‘s arrow well, but in turn, he shoots it in a completely different direction, even if they both wind up in the same hell, dementia and hemoptysis, with Saint Paul and John of Patmos occupying all of heaven.
The drone, with a video camera, hovering over a man in uniform whose options do not include escape or survival, dignity in death or privacy in annihilation.
Of the five plastic eggs holding hidden candy, the children found only four. Wet wipes were distributed afterward.