the force of wrath

09:54 | 01-04-2014 | Literature, Television | 1 Comment

и все таки “House of Cards” был, может, слишком ироничен — вспомним оригинал, в конце концов? черезчур самодоволен? труслив и тщеславен одновременно? из-под полы, украдкой, в полутьме — меж слов, уступок, лживых обещаний.

все это меркнет в сравнении с по-настоящему шекспировским размахом иной трагедии современных подмостков, многосерийным фильмом “Boss”, — где может, казалось бы, и меньше того самого наркотика, безграничной державы, но тем ярче ее проявления, тем жестче, куда более всепоглощающи.

это рассказ не о жажде власти, как в истории Фрэнсиса Андервуда, но о самой власти, во всей ее кошмарной полноте, множественных ростках, бесконечных мутациях, непомерной тяжести, одиночестве и страдании:

You don’t have a choice. The punishment should always be commensurate to the crime. It should be proportionate. And visible. A punishment is not only an act of retribution, it’s also a signal. It needs to be seen and understood by anyone else who might have flirted with the notion of committing the same transgression.

And it’s a signal that no one is exempt from the consequences of betrayal.

There is a formal aspect to punishment, a ritual nature. It has shape and body. It’s about consequence, accountability, actions having repercussions. Your choice of punishment needs to be seen as fair, proportional and reciprocal. But the nature can only be decided by the punisher himself — you. You decide. The boss.

die men like dogs, give lots like pins, как сказал бы поэт. или даже вот:

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array’d in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch’d complexion, all fell feats
Enlink’d to waste and desolation?
What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?

все так. и месть, и гнев, и жажда власти, что цветком венчает одиночество твое: uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

  

One Response to “the force of wrath”

  1. s says:

    North Side, Lincoln Square: the Germans. Northwest, Division and Ashland: the Polonia triangle, as well as the Czechs and the Jews. The West Side: Chinatown. South Side: the Blacks. All the rest and in between: the Irish. These were tribes, and they hated each other. They fought, maimed, killed, rioted against each other. Cermak weaved a thread through the lot of them, and pulled them in, forming the first truly dominant political force this country had ever seen. He did it because he understood something basic about all people. They want to be led. They want their disputes settled, they want their treaties negotiated, their jobs dispensed, their mutinies punished, and they want their loyalties rewarded. To those who lead them to all they want, they give power. It’s a covenant, unspoken and elemental.

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