Steve Weiner, computer specialist and Aesthetic Realism associate, writes:

“Bright Various Sanity” is the title of the latest issue of TRO. Not only is what this issue says surprising, exciting, and hopeful—it answers a question tremendously important for everyone: what does it mean for one’s mind, our mind, to fare well? Here Shakespeare is seen newly and greatly by Eli Siegel: as embodying, in the wholeness and diversity of his work, the true sanity our lives and nation need now! “Bright Various Sanity“ also explains what, in ourselves, most weakens our minds, and hurts our lives. You’ll experience a new relation of great culture and your own self in this current number of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known!

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

A French Critic Looks at Shakespeare, 1860 is a lecture—a magnificent lecture—by Eli Siegel, and we begin to serialize it here. In this talk of 1973, he states and illustrates the following idea: that the works of Shakespeare, taken together, show what sanity is. He uses that word, sanity, not in any loose or metaphorical sense, and certainly not in any clinical sense. And as the lecture proceeds, he will show some of what is in this thing, sanity—the real thing, which human beings thirst for, yet which they simultaneously spurn because they’re also after something else.

At various times in history people have felt about the world and their nation, “What’s going on is not sane!” That is certainly felt now. Then there’s Shakespeare: it can seem that he’s far away from one’s concerns about one’s nation and oneself. Mr. Siegel shows that this is not so. Shakespeare—art as such, but so much the fullness of art which is Shakespeare’s—has what nations and people today need mightily.

In the present lecture, Mr. Siegel shows this through a critic who writes about Shakespeare in French. He is Alfred Mézières (1826-1915). In the original talk, Mr. Siegel read each Mézières passage in French, then gave a sight translation of it. Here, because of the nature of serialization and the exigencies of space, I am mainly omitting the French, though we feel it through Mr. Siegel’s translations. These sight translations, sensitive and deep, have a non-polished quality, and through them we feel the authentic freshness of Mézières’ perceptions and emotions….Read more