Óle

Comencé a traducir esta entrevista de Leon Kass completamente engañado por su uso de la palabra liberal y su preocupación por los derechos humanos. El tipo es un cerdo. No entiendo como alguien puede considerar al Génesis una lectura edificante, junto con La guerra y la paz, o precisamente, estar comprometido con el movimiento por los derechos civiles y rechazar la eutanasia. Supongo que si me hicieran una entrevista encontrarían tantas contradicciones como esas, pero al menos yo no tengo acceso al poder.

Una joyita como muestra:

We’re teaching the course on courting and marrying, using our anthology, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar. In one of the early readings, an excerpt on relationships from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, the discussion produces remarks like, ’To be married to the same person for twenty-five years is preposterous,’ or a young woman says, ‘You know, we’re not supposed to get married until we’re at least twenty-eight, so all our relationships with men are supposed to be impermanent.’ Another young woman says, ‘Casual sex with men is terrific. It gets the sex thing out of the way so we can now be friends with men in the way women could never be before.’
I’m thinking to myself, God, Where did they get these goofy ideas, and What in the world are we going to do with these people?
Late in the quarter, we come to a colloquy, “On Courtship,” by Erasmus, an eight-page dialog between a young man and a young woman. He is both in lust and in love, whereas she is interested in marriage. This dialog is not about how things are, but how they might be if you wanted to liberate young people from arranged marriage: Courtship could take the spark of love and discipline it in the direction of marriage. In the colloquy, the young woman puts the young man through his paces, gets him to approve everything she wants, then sends him to her parents for their blessing. He says something like, ‘Wouldn’t you, as a little token of your affection, give me a kiss at least?’ And she says something like, ‘Would you like me to bestow my kisses on others?’ He says, ‘No, I’d like you to save them all for me.’ She says, ‘Then I’ll save them for you. Let’s shake hands.’
While I am dreading what students are going to make of this, Amy, inspired, says to the class, “What’s a kiss?” and the same students in rapid succession say, ‘A kiss is the most erotic thing imaginable.’ ‘A kiss is the sharing of the breath, which is the spirit.’ ‘A kiss is a promise.’ ‘A kiss is a small consummation.’
What you realize is that their earlier comments about casual sex and whatnot were just superficial talk, and maybe a defense against taking risks or being betrayed or disappointed in love or in other things that life promises. In truth, the’re all looking for a meaningful life.