The Identity of Man J, BRONOWSKI

 The Identity of Man   J, BRONOWSKI   

“The point of King Lear and all of literature, tragic and comic, is that there is no such resolution. King Lear is not a blueprint nor a primer of geometry. It does not imply, say (as the brilliant thought of Galois did ), that it is impossible to trisect an angle. It does not even imply that it is impolitic to trisect a kingdom. The plot was not chosen to warn us against the headstrong gesture of Lear’s, even by the way. Instead, we learn to immerse ourselves in the human situation. We become one of the characters because the are alive and therefor like us and like all men and women. We get inside them and thereby understand better how to live inside ourselves; we stretch the skin of isolation inside which each of us lives. But it is by no means evident that we know how to act better in any specific encounter.”