An amazing reaction to the “Chiasmus Jubilee”

An amazing reaction to the “Chiasmus Jubilee” August 20, 2017

 

The Church's oldest functioning temple
The St. George Utah Temple is the oldest still-functioning temple in the Church.
(LDS Media Library.)

 

This afternoon, we saw a good production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The audience really liked it.  And then, this evening, we watched what I considered a very, very good version of As You Like It.  The play is an uneven one; there are wonderful passages but also some parts that, in my view at least, drag just a bit.  But this production was about as good as one could make it, I think.  In several respects, at least.  I was particularly struck, if you will, by the diction:  The acting was extraordinarily clear.  I think that a child could have followed it.  And there were some passages that were quite well done.  The speech on the “Seven Ages of Man” given by “melancholy Jacques” in Act II, Scene 7, was done, I think, about as well as I’ve ever seen it done.  And — I won’t give the details away — it was the first time that I had seen it focused sadly (and significantly) on the speaker rather than tossed out simply as a specimen of Jacques’s melancholy and cynicism:

 

JAQUES All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances; 140
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 150
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, 160
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 

***

 

The latest installment of the biweekly Hamblin/Peterson Deseret News column went up this morning:

 

“Martin Luther’s history-changing translation of the Bible”

 

I’ve been busy all day Saturday, and am only just now getting to a computer.

 

I apologize, too, for the typo in the article.  Not my fault.

 

***

 

I’ve posted several items about Wednesday night’s remarkable “Chiasmus Jubilee”:

 

“A first report on Wednesday evening’s gala event”

 

“Presenting the new book to Jack Welch”

 

“‘Elder Holland Speaks at Book of Mormon Chiasmus Conference'”

 

The latter blog entry  is important because it supplies a link to the actual text of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s remarks at that celebratory event.

 

In the wake of that event, and having heard those remarks, I was astonished, genuinely astonished, to read the following, posted by a very vocal proponent of the so-called “Heartland Theory” of Book of Mormon geography:

 

“Elder Holland’s powerful talk to a room full of unbelievers”

 

If this man is right, Elder Holland came down to Provo on Wednesday night not so much to honor Jack Welch or to join in a celebration as, so subtly as to have gone unnoticed by everybody except one “Heartlander,” to rebuke everybody else in attendance there, including Jack Welch, me, and a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy who also spoke that evening.  (Along with several others, we’re all expressly named as among Elder Holland’s alleged targets.)

 

Really, truly, amazing.

 

Posted from St. George, Utah

 

 


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