Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

What can Shakespeare show us—everyone, about what it is we’re most hoping for?

How can the people of our country—and the world itself—be just to one another, in all our differences? And what in a person may be against that new justice?

This issue of The Right Of, “Shakespeare—and Our Own Lives,” is about greatness, and has greatness. And it’s about our lives. It has solid, deep, and even humorous understanding.

You’ll be moved, you’ll meet perception you’ve been looking for, as you read this latest issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

Here is part 2 of the lecture by Eli Siegel that we have begun to serialize: A French Critic Looks at Shakespeare, 1860. The lecture, of 1973, while eminently learned, is also eminently human (as Mr. Siegel’s scholarship always was). Our lives right now are in it.

This amazing talk has two big subjects, or elements, and I’ll comment in a while on the relation between them.

One is the meaning of something the world needs so much at this time, sanity, and what Shakespeare has to do with it. At the beginning of his talk, Mr. Siegel said he regarded the work of Shakespeare, in its entirety, “as the greatest therapeutic guide in the field of mind, chiefly because the world is seen so variously and seen with some wholeness.”

Then there’s the second element of the lecture. Throughout, Mr. Siegel looks at writing about Shakespeare by a French critic whom he respects: Alfred Mézières (1826-1915). Mézières comments on Shakespeare, in French, and also quotes passages of Shakespeare, which he has translated into French. And Mr. Siegel explains something big and new: that there is a quality in the French versions that can have one feel in another way, an important way, the value of Shakespeare—and value in the world. While the French translations may not be as great as Shakespeare’s English original, they bring to it qualities, effects, that are good for Shakespeare, for beauty, and for us…Read more