Who is manfred

Recall W. The French stand out only because of their droll custom of taking to the streets every few years, whereas in other countries the struggle is carried on more discreetly. To be sure, many people, pace Gilbert, are perhaps not clearcut conservative or liberal, but, because of simplification, sensationalism, and commercialization, the political culture of democracies is dominated by a "Crossfire" mentality, which monopolizes the dialogue, enhances frequent verbal clashes between the two sides, and vitiates all nuances.

As a result, on issue after issue, people predictably seem to line up on one side or the other, while theoreticians build the creedal scaffolding, satirists impale the adversary, and politicians lead the troops and implement the philosophy.

Yet it can be argued that the interesting thing about conservatives and liberals is not what separates them but what they have in common.

And much of that reveals the foolish side of human nature. We are born intellectually naked. The universe is at first to each of us chaotic. The numberless apparent facts do not coalesce automatically into a theory. To make our way, to mature, to become acculturated, we need to bind together the multifarious data of existence.

The gathering of enough facts leads to a generalization; the gathering of enough generalizations results in a theory or a system of thought; and the gathering of enough theories from different areas of human endeavor issues in an ideology. Thus we evolve—or, more accurately, we have handed us by parents, teachers, and peers—a religion, a philosophy, a morality, and a politics.

Such ideologies are our intellectual clothes or shelter. However crude and ramshackle, they make existence bearable, predictable, even comfortable. As explanations of events, especially of adverse ones, they provide us with a grip on the world. They enable us to clamber out of the slough of despond into which experience often casts us.

Making the universe intelligible and, by extension, malleable, they give us a sense of mastery and provide the fulcrum with which we think we can affect events. The shelter created by such explanations is, then, certainly beneficial. But a price is paid for that advantage, even if payment for it is long postponed. By simplifying and inevitably distorting events, the sheltering theory cuts us off from the vast, complex reality.

Though it saves us from chaos, ignorance, paralysis, and intellectual nakedness, it imprisons us in its own limited scope. It performs as a sieve or filter to screen out unfriendly facts. The resulting pseudoknowledge, becoming a sort of intellectual blinkers, bolsters mere partisanship. This is no minor dereliction. Looking at history, one can see some unduly weird or mischievous theories which have rampaged explosively around the world and projected millions of people—both followers and victims—to their premature death.

Though usually unconscious of this Faustian bargain, we are willing accomplices in it. We would rather entertain a bad theory than have no theory at all. He gets rest, commodity and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. Angrily and violently do many of us therefore react to those—Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Sadat, Rabin—who would enlighten and liberate us by reopening that "door of truth," or who would at least enlarge the shelter, the scope of our theory.

As a sage put it, we ostracize, exile, or execute those who have not reformed us or whom we have not reformed. Theories are not only blinkering but also unreliable even within their limited scope. For one thing, the most objectively constructed generalizations cannot reflect all relevant data. There are always many more facts than thought can reach, and much of reality remains undiscovered by the searchlight of a theory. What are determined to be facts, moreover, are themselves at issue, themselves the product of theory.

Yet a third problem is that generalizations deal with events in the past but are useless as guides to the future. Take the maxim beloved of stock brokers, economists, and business school teachers: "Buy low, sell high! As a prescription for you or me to do likewise, it is futile—and will remain so until someone discovers a broadly applicable magic formula for determining what is low and when is high. The tenuous grip on reality of all ideologies actually forces us to confront the venerable philosophical question, "What do I know?

That we are swathed with mystery on such old historical puzzles as who shot Kennedy or why Hitler gratuitously declared war on the U.

But even on those issues about which we feel sure, we are really no wiser. Take any of the items on the recent national agenda: abortion, Nafta and GATT, welfare, the health delivery system, the deficit, the Medicare cuts. About which ones do we as individuals have information which we know definitively to be true? In the debate a few years ago on Nafta, for example, one school of thought said that Nafta would provide more jobs for Americans, while the other school said that it would take jobs away.

Spokes-people for either viewpoint inflicted on us charts, exotic arguments, and the other accoutrements of expertise. They blithely dismissed their opponents as ignoramuses or liars. But on what basis did the many citizens who lined up with one or the other school arrive at their conclusions? Could they understand all the esoteric graphs and arguments, or were they led by tendencies, velleities, rhetoric?

Feelings are not facts. Surely the strange spectacle of Jesse Jackson on the far left, Pat Buchanan on the far right, and Ross Perot on the far center agreeing in opposing Nafta and of Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and others all along the spectrum supporting it should have sensitized people to the elusiveness of the truth.

Because the Nafta matter did not fit the pattern of most issues and because the consequences of the proposed agreement were more uncertain than is usual, the Jackson-Buchanan-Perot convergence was a rare deviation from the normal entrapment in conservative or liberal cloisters. With run-of-the-mill political issues, our partisanship and our ignorance flourish in equal measure.

Written in by the British poet Lord George Gordon Byron, Manfred is a closet drama, meaning that Byron never intended it to be produced onstage despite writing it in the style of a play in verse, with dialogue parts for various characters. The work centers on the guilt of the eponymous Manfred over his tragically flawed romantic relationship with a woman named Astarte.

Whether or not Manfred has this autobiographical level of meaning, it has been recognized for exemplifying key themes of the Romantic literary movement, and for the dark and tortured protagonist Manfred. This guide references the Cambridge Scholars Publishing edition of Manfred.

Manfred is a lord living in a castle in the Alps. He is brooding and reclusive, convinced that he has committed some sort of sin connected to his beloved Astarte, who is now deceased, and seeks to erase his memory of the crime. Manfred uses magical powers he has developed to summon seven spirits. He asks for the power to forget because he is wracked with guilt. The spirits tell him that it is beyond them to grant the power of forgetting, and that the only way they know for him to erase his guilt is to die.

Manfred sends the spirits away, dissatisfied with their answer. Victor refuses to deal with the consequences of his work and remains in denial for almost the next two years until the creature decides to approach him. His guilty conscience, however, manifests in his illness and nightmares. Manfred also desperately wants to forget what he did to Astarte. Instead of accepting his mistakes and trying to move on he decides to omit the laws of nature and manipulate his memory.

He refuses to admit his failure and tries to undo it with the help of the spirits instead. As a consequence the spiritual world curses him. In General, every major theme mentioned above can also be found in Frankenstein.

Besides the similarities in the personalities of Victor Frankenstein and Manfred a very important issue in both literary pieces are human boundaries and the consequences for those who dare to cross it.

Both characters try to accomplish deeds that are beyond the sphere of action of human beings. While Manfred's attempt to manipulate his memories fails, Victor Frankenstein accomplishes his goal of creating life, but nevertheless has to face the consequences of betraying nature.

The creature becomes the embodiment of Victor's doubtful victory over nature that starts to haunt and punish him for his impudence.

In this sense the creature in Frankenstein equals the disembodied voice in Manfred. Both represent epitomizations of nature's payback for trying to surpass boundaries of humankind. Victor Frankenstein and Manfred become "haunted men" desperate but incapable to undo their deeds and powerless to control the events that are happening as a result of their wrongdoing. While Manfred, after Astarte's death, just has to face consequences for himself in form of the curse that prevents him from committing suicide, Victor Frankenstein has to witness how the creature bit by bit destroys his whole family.

Byron, Lord. Damrosch, David, and Kevin J. New York: Pearson Education Inc. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. New York: Pearson Education, Mary Shelley Wiki Explore. Yale UP, Byron, George Gordon, Lord. The Complete Poetical Works. Edited by Jerome J. McGann, Clarendon Press, Manfred: A Dramatic Poem. Cheeke, Stephen. Byron and Place: History, Translation, Nostalgia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cochran, Peter. Cambridge Scholars, Cox, Jeffrey N.

Cambridge UP, Eilenberg, Susan. Oxford UP, Gamer, Michael. McGann, Jerome. Martin, Philip. Byron: A Poet before His Public.