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Melodrama, Pantomime, and the Communist Manifesto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Coral Lansbury
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Extract

At the heart of all great religion and art there is a mystery that expresses an ineluctable paradox: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (I Cor. 15:51–52). The bass aria of Handel's Messiah confounds the natural world and all its laws to affirm the divine power that will make the corruptible incorruptible and the mortal immortal. For Marx the transformation of humankind does not wait upon a seraphic clarion; it will be accomplished when the industrial proletariat overthrows the capitalist classes in revolutionary struggle. That in itself is a mystery which has not been demonstrated historically; but that greater mystery conceals another, which required the specific revisions of Lenin. The problem is stated very clearly by the late Alvin Gouldner.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 14 , Spring 1986 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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