Rosenberg, Character Change and Drama

7/28/2019 Rosenberg, Character Change and Drama

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C H A P T E B 1 1

"We have already seen Bernard cbange; passions maycome that will modify him still more."ANDRE GWE, The Counterfeiters

I.AN ECG WITH .AN .ANCESTRY, DEVELoping, changing its form, maturing; later, d e g e n e r a t i n ~

dying, decaying, again changing its form; always in a slowgradual way except for the shocks of birth and death-suchis the broadest metaphor of the human personality developed by the organic point of view and expressed in suchstudies of mutation as biology, biography, history, psychology. Whatever unity an organism maintains at the baseof its transformations is something mysterious: the singlebeing may be compared with other organisms which i tresembles, it may be classified, accounted for statistically,'subsumed under a type; but its individul,lJibr can only be


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WAR OF PHANTOMS

IIIIndividuals are conceived as identities in systems whose

subject matter is action and the judgment of actions. Inthis realm the multiple incidents in the life of an individualmay be synthesized, by the choice of the individual him-seH or by the decision of others, into a scheme that pivotson a single fact central to the individual's existence andwhich, controlling his behavior and deciding his fate, be-comes his visible definition. Here unity of the "plot" be-comes one with unity of being and through the fixity ofidentity change becomes synonymous with revolution.

Of this dramatic integration religiOUS conversion, ofall human conditions, supplies the most complete example,although only an example. Through conversion the individual gains an identity which revolves upon a fact that issu1>jective in. its. l l ~ i y i n g . effect upon him yet gtra-:e.ersonal in its relationf:o.his..:world. In all converts, regardless of what they are converted to, there comes into beingthat surface coherence which is the sign of the dramaticcharacter. To other individuals unity of action may beattributed;t the convert claims his one-ness to be himseHand compels his life to conform to his interpretation.

It is recognition of the individual as an identity thatestablishes the fundamental connection between religiousand dramatic thought. In both, the actor does not obey hisown will but the rules of the situation in which he findsbimseH. In both, change (and escape from the plot) can bet nus is rarely done by biographers, who stress the "'human" aspectsof a character. But contrast Prince Mirsky's bioaraphy of Lenin asa man who had almost no perscmal life.

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Character Change and the Drama~ accomp1ished through one means alone, t h ~ L ~ s o l u t i o n of

- - ~ , identity and the reappearance of the i n d i v i d u a n ~ - a re-. b o ~ " state. In thus reflecting the limits i m ~ s e d by action,II the unnatural" processes of religion and drama correspond\' i to those of actual life.

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Rosenberg, Character Change and Drama

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