Lord Byron - Friedrich Nietzsche - Paul Cézanne - Storyville TV - William Shakespeare - Percy Bysshe Shelley -
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more. Lord Byron, Child Harold’s Pilgrimage
Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority – where he may forget ‘men who are the rule’, as their exception; – exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain. Paul Cezanne
It all started with a hijacking in November 1972. I was flying home to Mexico City from an anthropological conference on the history of violence when suddenly a group of terrorists took over the flight. It was too good to be true. Storyville: The Raft, BBC 2019
All my life I had wanted to know why people fight … I realised that if I could create a similar situation it would be the perfect laboratory to study human behaviour, but where can you isolate a group of people and expose them to danger? Then I had the idea … ibid.
May 1973 Las Palmas Spain: Tonight the ten volunteers arrive in the Canary Islands. It was the first time they met. Ten brave strangers who are about to spend the next three months together isolated on the raft. ibid.
Captain Maria is the only professional sailor on board. ibid.
43 years later there’s only 7 of us still alive. ibid. survivor
The roaring noise of the ocean took over. Finally we are at sea. ibid.
Is violence something that is built into our genes or is it something we learn? ibid.
Instead, we witness a clear example of crowd frenzy, people no longer act as individuals but as part of a dangerous collective. ibid.
The most important question of our time: can we do without war? ibid.
He was a master manipulator. ibid. survivor
I feel completely misunderstood. ibid.
I realised that the only one who has actually showed any kind of violence or aggression on the raft is me. ibid.
Stepping ashore was a very strange feeling. It was 101 days that we had been at sea. ibid. survivor
We started out them and us and became us. ibid.
For I am best
When least in company. William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I iv 36-37, Orsino
I love all waste
And solitary places. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo