Showing posts with label the problem of ugliness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the problem of ugliness. Show all posts

11 Dec 2013

Caliban

Mirrors don't reflect flesh, only history
and so his own face made him rage.

Ah Caliban! You task me, moon-calf, you task me! For what am I to make of you; malevolent monster and would-be child rapist, or indigenous subject dispossessed of your native land and enslaved and brutalized by European colonialism?

It's impossible to hate you: my liberalism won't allow it. But it's also difficult not to find you repugnant. For you fail to reflect my image and my values and you suggest the pre-dawn or twilight of my own kind. Your ugliness is both sign of a thwarted development and symptom of degeneracy compounded by cambionic origins. 

Indeed, for the ancient Greeks your hideous aspect would constitute a telling moral objection in itself and the fact that you spoke with a certain lyrical power on occasion would do little to redeem you in their eyes: As the face, so too the soul.