Far More, Actually

“The whole modern dogma of the absolute separation between great poetry and intelligence is one of the consequences of our blindness to the role of mimetic desire and victimage in great literature. The ultimate implications of Julius Caesar seem almost too dangerous to pursue. Our own rationality cannot teach the founding role of mimetic victimage because it remains tainted with it. Narrow rationality and victimage lose their effectiveness together. Reason itself is a child of the foundational murder. As our own mimetic crisis worsens, we plunge into nihilism and madness, and cannot afford to disregard the thinkers who preceded us on this road; we need the real William Shakespeare more than we need any modern philosopher” (Girard, A Theater of Envy, p. 208).