Page 32 - VICTOR HAGEA : Amazing

Chronos is, one might speculate, the to one another, and pull us with opposite
personification of the “chronological man,”
a body machine governed by the God-time
and its infernal machinery. This might be
also visualized in the image. But there is no
doubt that we are in a dramatic setting in the
picture, and this is obvious from the joints
of the puppet-like body of our hero, and the
strings falling out from some undisclosed
source. This might be an allusion to the
primal condition of human being described
by Plato in his dialogue The Laws. The
secret of our origins is according to Plato
that the human was conceived as a kind of
puppet, to be a companion of gods. The
fact that man has been constructed as a toy
(paignion) for God, possibly as a plaything
(hos paignion), or possibly with some more
serious purpose, is “the finest thing about
him:” “We may imagine that each of us
living creatures is a puppet made by gods,
possibly as a plaything (hôs paignion) or
possibly with some more serious purpose.
That, indeed, is more than we can tell, but
one thing is certain. These interior states
are, so to say, the cords, or strings, by
which we are worked; they are opposed
Victor
HAgeA
32
tensions in the direction of opposite actions,
and therein lies the division of virtue from
vice.” (Plato, Laws I 644d-e).
And thus, the choice of man in his original
performative nature is two-folded: man
could become god-like through his sublime
play (dance), or remain a mere plaything
in the hands of the God-puppeteer moving
the strings of fate. According to Plato, one
should choose the serious play and not
waste life on trifles. One must celebrate
the gift given by the gods and make play
as perfect as possible: “All of us, then, men
and women alike, must fall in with our role
and spend life in making our play as perfect
as possible...”
On a long term, the deep meaning of The Children
of Chronos touches exactly upon this ontological
free choice open to man. But for Victor Hagea,
freedom has an uncompromising dimension. In
his own words, freedom is a state of mind and
“being outside the chronological time,” “zen-like,
by which man in his finite form can communicate
with the infinite (the Absolute).”
Nicoletta Isar,
Copenhagen, 12th April 2008