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The Country of the Blind challenges the reigning conception of
Ibsen as social critic. It offers new and unique interpretations
stressing his preoccupation with the limitations and failings of
humankind that do not change, in particular one's reluctance or
inability to confront unpleasant truths about one's self and the
consequent attempts to conceal those truths from self and from
others. The result, in the plays considered, is that his personae
are not what they appear to be. We shall observe that Mrs. Alving
is not an heroic figure who has sacrificed all for her beloved son;
that the "virtuous" parson Manders may in fact be the father of
Oswald; that neither Gregers Werle nor Dr. Thomas Stockmann are the
idealists they profess to be; that Hedda Gabler and Halvard Solness
are the very antitheses of the persons they imagine themselves.
This gulf between illusion and actuality is evident even in the
case of secondary agents, confirming the supposition that Ibsen
believed self-deception inseparable from the human condition. The
protagonists' stratagems necessarily interact, forbidding each
knowledge of each and all knowledge of the meaning of external
circumstance. They are, and they remain, ignorant of their own
nature, and of the character of their closest associates,
imprisoned by the maze they have jointly fashioned. The book should
be of interest to the general reader, to companies interested in
performing the plays analyzed, to Ibsen scholars, and as a text for
courses in Ibsen.
The Design of The Waste Land offers a detailed, comprehensive
explanation of T.S. Eliot's enigmatic poem. It relates The Waste
Land to earlier and later poems by Eliot, demonstrating that the
major poems describe a continuous spiritual odyssey or quest
undertaken by the same individual, initiated by the moment of
ecstasy in the Hyacinth garden. Blistein's analysis of Eliot's
sources reveals that the protagonist's glimpse of "the heart of
light" is equivalent to drinking from the Grail, or communing with
God. The incarnate deity momentarily transforms the Hyacinth garden
into the likeness of the Edenic paradise. With the inevitable
passing of the moment of communion, the protagonist in effect is
expelled from the paradisiacal garden as mankind was from Eden. By
contrast, the familiar world appears to him a wasteland. The
protagonist seeks to drink again from the divine Source and return
again to the garden as it was when transfigured by the divine
presence. His is a quest for Grail and Homeland.
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