Edmund Kean — How Can a Man Have Real Self Expression?
Edmun Kean's acting and his life can help us answer that question. First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that men will have real self-expression when we go by our deepest desire, there from birth: to like the world, to see meaning in what is not ourselves—and this very much includes other people.

The thing that stifles and chokes expression is also explained by Aesthetic Realism. "The greatest danger or temptation of man," stated Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism," is to get a false importance or glory from the lessening of things not himself; which lessening is Contempt." Men think they express themselves by beating out other people and feeling superior, but this is fallacious and inevitably makes a man feel empty, constricted and like a failure.

I'll speak in this paper about what I have learned and about a young man who is studying Aesthetic Realism in consultations.

And I'll discuss instances from the life and work of the great English actor who, in the early 1800s, electrified audiences with his passionate, intelligent performances of Shakespeare's characters and others: Edmund Kean. Kean's acting stands for the expression men want today—to be unfettered, all out, and tremendously exact, too.

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