The features as reflected by the looking-glass betray that he is stripped of every possibility of a second or super-body — of the pompous body politi… - Ernst Kantorowicz

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The features as reflected by the looking-glass betray that he is stripped of every possibility of a second or super-body — of the pompous body politic of king, of the God-likeness of the Lord's deputy elect, of the follies of the fool, and even of the most human griefs residing in inner man. The splintering mirror means, or is, the breaking part of any possible duality. All those facets are reduced to one: to the banal face and insignificant physis of a miserable man, a physis now void of any metaphysis whatsoever. It is both less and more than Death. It is the demise of Richard and the rise of a new body natural.

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About Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz (May 3, 1895 – September 9, 1963) was a Jewish German historian of medieval political and intellectual history and art, known for his 1927 book Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite on Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and The King's Two Bodies (1957) on medieval and early modern ideologies of monarchy and the state. He was an elected member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz
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The jurists had claimed that the king's body politic is utterly void of "natural Defects and Imbecilities." Here, however, "Imbecility" seems to hold sway. And yet, the very bottom has not been reached. Each scene, progressively, designates a new low. "King body natural" in the first scene, and "Kingly Fool" in the second: with those two twin-born beings there is associated, in the half-sacramental abdication scene, the twin-born deity as an even lower estate. For the "Fool" marks the transition from "King" to "God," and nothing could be more miserable, it seems, than the God in the wretchedness of man.

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In late antique art, we often find the halo bestowed on such figures as might impersonate a supra-individual idea or general notion. This special mark of distinction indicated that the figure was meant to represent in every respect a continuum, something permanent and sempiternal beyond the contingencies of time and corruption.

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