I just finished writing my final blog for the emergent class so this in fact is my last blog for a Sexson class at MSU. Unfortunately that means the last time to communicate to those of you who I don't normally share many words with in person. I hope you take the following words as the believers take communion-- with the understanding that you do it in the remembrance of me. Like I said in my last blog for emergent I'm not the best at being elegiac but I will try to provide some sort of closure... even if the best closure I can provide is open ended.
This class was different than what I expected. I came into it thinking that it was going to be the greatest class I had taken at MSU... well, I'm not sure if it was the greatest but it was surely a solid way to go out. I've enjoyed all of my time spent listening to the ideas of Dr. Sexson and the talk of you all. Each of your perspectives has supplemented a missing piece of the puzzle and it will be a shame to be departing from you in what now seems like such a hurry. I just got here didn't I?
I think that during the course of this class my favorite text was... wow, this is harder than I thought. I simply loved Wind in the Willows, Araby and The Dead, and Hamlet is just a classic if not THE classic. Out of all those I would probably have to suggest that The Dead was my favorite. It was fascinating to look at Joyce in his more lucid narrative style in this story while also looking at Finnegans Wake in the Emergent lit. class. Also I had done some background research into some of the criticisms behind The Dead which made the reading more rich.
I enjoyed everyone in the class as well. I do wish that the class had been smaller and was in a more round-table discussion format. It would have been kind of nice to hear from you all in a different format than the blogs and the few times that we had presentations or other reasons to stand up in front of the class and talk. Everyone's perspective and individual passion helped make up for those of us who weren't always the most impassioned about some of the reading. Having the rest of the class there was always someone who managed to be super stoked about what we were talking about which made the rest of us pay more attention and learn more. It makes me sad that perhaps I won't hear from many of you anymore and I have no idea what you are all going off to do besides participate in the eternal fight of the English major.
To give you an idea of what I will be doing this summer I will be going on a bike trip across the U.S. with specific attention to this region-- Wyoming, Montana, Idaho maybe, Utah maybe, and other places like that. I'm excited to get out and to re-discover the greatness in America that I feel like I have been detuned from. My only solid companion will be Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass or, as some critics consider it, "The American Bible". It should be pretty easy for us in a class about epiphanies to understand why I would choose this text to bring along with me. Hopefully the hospitality of people, the sights on the road, and Whitman will bring epiphanies at every turn.
I guess this class and this blog are like the final pages of a novel I've been in for the past four years. It has taken many twists and turns. Many characters have come and gone leaving only me up on the stage pushing a tassel across to the other side of the cap. In that moment where I push my tassel across the breadth of my forehead is supposed to symbolize the last four years. One moment summing up all the moments of time spent here at MSU. This surely is a novel or at least a story of some sort and there is only one fitting way to end any story-- The End.
Yesterday I finished reading Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino. It was a really enjoyable book and did some excellent work exploring various ways of "seeing" the world. For those of you who don't know Italo Calvino borrowed the name from the observatory in Spain. The choice of name was perfect because Mr. Palomar is much like this telescope, or rather, he could be interpreted as the eye and even the "mind's eye" looking through the telescope. This work deals mostly with the ways to view things- in both the simple sense of viewing and the complex, meaning-filled sense of viewing.
The work is set up in three overall sections of setting-- Mr. Palomar on Vacation, Mr. Palomar in the City, and The Silences of Mr. Palomar. Within each of these settings are three more sets of three narratives. In the index Calvino even broke down the work further to explain that the sections of each subset are ordered purposefully to depict progression from strict observance into philosophical narrative. For example sections denoted with 1. are typically written with Mr. Palomar observing the topical sense of what he is observing. Sections marked 2. deal with his observance of something taken in a cultural or anthropological sense. Sections marked 3. take his observations and apply them internally to Mr. Palomar himself.
This was a really nice work to read after Under the Jaguar Sun. While Under the Jaguar Sun dealt with three of the five senses (touch and sight missing) Mr. Palomar focused almost completely on sight filling the gap left in one of the missing senses. It was interesting to consider how Calvino may have completed his novel of the senses had he had the chance to finish it-- I assume that he would have taken many of the themes from Mr. Palomar if not direct lines. Now that I've read a couple of Calvino stories I think I might move on to something else... most likely Fury by Salman Rushdie or Collected Novellas by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm kind of thinking Collected Novellas because I haven't read any Marquez since Christmas and it's kind of nice to read shorter narratives when the end of the semester is here. But If you are really interested in reading some Calvino for yourself here is a link for the full textMr. Palomar online!
I thought that both groups did an excellent job presenting today! Of course I was in one of them so I guess my judgment may be a tad skewed. The first groups use of spatial effect to make a truly cool presentation was very fun. I enjoyed having the "chanters" saying various quotes standing around all of us. Sam was closest to me and I believe that she was doing Finnegans Wake lines. The effect made me feel like I do during the day with all those thoughts of various things flying and colliding in my head. Also, I really enjoyed taking a "communion" of the petite madelines and juice. It was an excellent liturgy and really came off as being very audience interactive. Finally, I was really struck by the conclusion where they all left. We all sat there for a little bit wondering what to do and it was wonderful. To be absent for a portion of the presentation was a bold yet successful move.
I don't really have a lot to say about our presentation. I hope that everybody found it pretty entertaining and got some good perspective out of our farcical interpretation of Hamlet's college life. It was great getting some laughs out of people and getting to perform something with a bunch of silly characters who reflect serious questions of duty and such.
The two presentations each did a different thing but each did it wonderfully. The first group did a very artistic and interactive approach to the themes of the class while we took a much more "laid back" and traditional approach. They both worked well!
The dual substance of Christ—the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain to God or, more exactly, to return to God and identify himself with him—has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. This nostalgia for God, at once so mysterious and so real, has opened in me large wounds and also large flowing springs—Nikos Kazantzakis in “Prologue” to The Last Temptation of Christ
Suddenly I remember being a child in the cathedral. We, my mother, father and I, enter the oak doors with three windows each set into the wood and come into the coat room where another set of doors, these solid and smaller, are propped open creating a frame around the old women hanging heavy coats in the distance and the young married couple in the forefront on each side of the frame handing out pamphlets and greeting the newcomers. We walk past them and my parents say something and they say “blessed is the lord” and hand them a pamphlet. The man squats down, staring at me face to face, with a wide grin on his face and says, “blessed be the lord”. I see his thumb compress and decompress on the button of a silvery object held in his hand. The object clicks and a number changes, going up by one.
We turn the corner out of the vestibule and the church lies before me. The walls are made of bricks colored like peaches and the wooden pews are a deep brown lacquered and shiny. Up above is the vaulted ceiling where I presume God lives and below, where we sit, is a soft carpet tinted rich red like wine ran down from the altar to the back of the furthest pews where we stand now.
My dad leads my mom down the isle and I follow behind. We take a seat in the third pew from the front right by the edge of the isle. More and more people flow in, the older people wearing suit jackets and the younger people in t-shirts, until most of the congregation has arrived. For a while there is chatter and waving at people sitting across the room, but soon, as if on cue, everyone gets quiet. The pipe organ rumbles the floor with a pounding chord and the processional begins.
For a child much time seems to pass with sitting and standing, listening and singing, the peaceful shaking of hands and the passing of plates. The candle flicker distracts me up in the altar. Later, during the sermon, the brass radiators that surround the pews began to knock with a metallic thud and hiss and I think that someone must be trying to get in through the pipes. My mom hands me a minty-candy and for a while I just sit, suck, and stare at all that is around me.
Finally, I see the time I love, has arrived when the priest holds up the bread eclipsing the face of Jesus on the stained glass windows above the altar. Everyone is quiet and he sounds out “the body of Christ, given for you and for many” and with a tug he tears the bread in two pieces. Then he holds up a silver goblet and the bowl is transposed over the head of Jesus and the stem covers his neck and the body. “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation”. And with that the first rows begin to filter into the central isle, funneling up towards the altar. My isle stands and walks out. We step up the two steps and are in the middle of the choir sounding like stereo up past the pulpit and the organ to the railing guarding the sanctuary like the picket fence around a mown lawn. We kneel on the blue cushions with the golden thread etched in crossed keys. A balding older man with a gray beard and round glasses approaches and hands me a wafer. Each person who receives the sacrament can either dip the wafer into the goblet or take a drink from its brim. I cup the piece in my hands waiting for him to leave so I can gobble it up before the woman carrying the wine comes. I eat the wafer and roll the thick chewed-up bread-body across my tongue and swallow. The woman bearing the wine comes over to me now. She smiles and places the cold silver of the goblet onto my lips holding the wiping cloth underneath my chin. The bearer tips up the vessel and I look deep into the bottom and see the sweet wine rushing toward me like the gentle tide of the ocean.
On the grave of author Nikos Kazantzakis’ in Crete is an epitaph reading “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free” (“Nikos Kazantzakis”). For the critically acclaimed twentieth-century writer life this quote embodies attest to the struggles and the successes of a man who was constantly involved in a philosophical struggle between nourishing the desires of the body or the desires of the spirit. Kazantzakis often took this characteristic from himself and set it into the characters he would write about. Sometimes he would create new characters to search for the correct path and other times he opted to choose preexisting characters that were potentially occupied by similar questions. The two most famous works of Kazantzakis— Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ— both embody this theme with Zorba being centered around a fictional character[1] rediscovering the glories of the flesh and The Last Temptation centered around an interpretation of Jesus and his temptations to succumb to the desires of the flesh and forgo his duty as the messiah. While Zorba was welcomed as one of the most beloved characters in twentieth century literature The Last Temptation of Christ was met with much more friction. Because of the representation of Jesus as being tempted by base human desires, Kazantzakis’ portrayal of the betrayal by Judas as necessary, and the complex love—largely romantic—Jesus held for Mary Magdalene the book was protested and banned from many reading lists and led to Kazantzakis’ excommunication from the Greek Orthodox church. However, Kazantzakis did not wish to undermine the figure of Jesus. Kazantzakis’ hope for those who read The Last Temptation is evident in the ending of his prologue where he states “I am certain that every free man who reads this book, so filled as it is with love, will more than ever before, love Christ” (Kazantzakis 4). Although taken by many as a book deploying a front on the authority of Jesus Kazantzakis’ had the opposite in mind— exalting him even higher in the minds of man.
However, to eventually lift up the figure of Jesus to the capstone of existence Kazantzakis first had to set him in an opposing symmetrical point— equally low as his ascension is high— to create space for narrative movement and discovery. This idea appears in the epigraph to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets that read, “the way up is the way down” (Eliot 10). Potentially, this may disturb logical systems of thought but to the mind turned toward the divine this notion is wholly acceptable; after all, this portion of The Last Temptation is pulled from the Bible with God sending Jesus down before his eventual ascension. Traditionally, readers of the Gospels focus on the divine nature (the “high” point) of Jesus all the while forgetting that being made man encompasses more than the experience of physical pain during the Passion. It is in this obscured aspect of Jesus, the experience of being man, which the “low” point is shown. In The Last Temptation of Christ this low point is typically captured by metaphors tying Jesus to “the earth”, “the flesh”, “the kingdom of man” or any other synecdoche used to embody the broad concept of human existence. With human existence acting as the low point and Christ’s ascension being the high point, the space between the two extremes becomes a battlefield where it is a struggle to ascend through this zone. What becomes Jesus’ gift— what he brings to humanity— is a model of action and knowledge able to transcend the attractive temptations of human existence for the discovery of individual sacred duty.
The novel begins with Jesus at one of the lowest points on his journey. He appears to the reader as weak, full of fear and doubts, and reluctant to assume the path he is meant to tread. In an early moment of push-and-pull between Jesus and God Jesus counters the will of God by saying the he does not “’care about the kingdom of heaven. I like the earth. I want to marry… not the earth, not the kingdom of this world—it’s Magdalene I want to save’” (Kazantzakis 28). Despite his awareness of needing to “save” “the kingdom of this world” he rejects the call to action and opts to care for his earthly concerns embodied here in his desire to wed Mary Magdalene. At this stage in his journey Jesus’ character counterpart is his mother Mary who claims, “’I don’t want my son to be a saint… I want him to be a man like all the rest. I want him to marry and give me grandchildren. That is God’s way.’ ‘That is man’s way,’ said John softly…’the other is God’s way’” (Kazantzakis 169). Mary, whose woes in this novel truly embody the mater dolorosa[2], is largely focused on familial concerns and the continuing of the lineage. The desires of Jesus in this case echo his mother’s desires. Also, we see that the attachment of Jesus to the flesh occurs as a result of the presence of Mary Magdalene suggesting that women are potentially the harbors of this desire and are Jesus’ biggest foil to his journey. Later in the novel, during the final temptation, Mary (Lazurus’ sister) even says, “I don’t seek God’s mercy. I’m a woman; I seek mercy from my husband. And I don’t knock at God’s door either, asking like a beggar for the eternal joys of Paradise. I hug the man I love and have no desire for any other Paradise. Let’s leave the eternal joys to the men” (Kazantzakis 472). Mary’s generalization of women practically establishes this concern for romantic love— more largely understood as an earthly subject— as something that detracts from concern for the “eternal joys of Paradise”, the path that Jesus must follow.
Another group of people in The Last Temptation who reject the call to the divine are the masses of commoners who listen to Jesus’ sermons and follow him around the landscape. However, unlike the women, who seemingly know that they are rejecting the path to the divine by their attachments to the earth, the commoners appear to be unaware that they are making this rejection and forgoing their duty to follow Jesus’ words. After being inspired by one of Jesus’ sermons they quickly diminish to their previous state when “their daily cares crushed down on them again. This was a flash of lightning—they had let themselves be swept away, but now it had passed and they had been recaptured by the wheel of everyday need” (Kazantzakis 191). These people, farmers, merchants, carpenters, mothers, fathers, etc. heard the sermons and were truly filled with inspiration for doing their own duty but quickly regressed into the worries of their jobs and families. In the “Burnt Norton” section of Eliot’s Four Quartets he sums up these people who are seemingly “distracted from distraction by distraction/ filled with fancies and empty of meaning” (Eliot 17). Unable to sacrifice the stuff that dominates their ordinary lives the commoners are much like the conflicted Jesus— able to see what their duty is but unwilling to act and give up those attachments that make pursuing their duty impossible.
Later in the novel we see Jesus finally beginning to renounce the world of flesh and heeding his call to action and going out in search of his destined path. Jesus leaves home and sets out towards a monastery in the desert. Along the way he is given bread by a woman who tries to talk him out of going through with his plan. After leaving her behind and continuing on his way he says, “’I can’t stand the sight of men… I don’t want to see them; even the bread they give you is poison. Only one road leads to God: the one I chose today. It passes amidst men without touching them, and comes out in the desert’” (Kazantzakis 73). The meaning of the bread, a form of nourishment, should be taken metaphorically as meaning that even the nourishment given by men is still of men thus attracting attachment and desire rather than focus on helping one along their path— a road taken to the desert; in other words, the place where mans presence is absent leaving Jesus to focus only on his duty.
In the same way that the women and the commoners reflected Jesus’ early state the character of Judas, the Redbeard, mirrors Jesus at this stage in his journey. We learn from Judas that he’s “working for a great purpose… and whoever works for a great purpose, even if he’s the humblest of the lot, he becomes great” (Kazantzakis 116). An overwhelming sense of purpose and desire to act flows from Judas evident even his symbolic red beard, the colors of which, are typically representational of passionate disposition.
In addition to being a follower of Jesus Judas also belongs to a secret brotherhood intent on the liberation of Israel. It is from this association that we are able to uncover the catalyst behind Judas’ willingness to act. Judas is largely nationalistic placing his whole being towards the realization of the liberation of Israel from the Romans. The flaw in Judas’ character appears in a lesson from the Bhagavad-Gita, a sacred text to the Hindu faith largely concerned with questions of sacred duty and action: “truly free is the sage who controls/ his senses, mind, and understanding,/ who focuses on freedom/ and dispels desire, fear, and anger” (Bhagavad-Gita 63). Although Judas’ deepest wish is to free Israel from Rome he himself is acting without freedom from desire thus making himself not a free man. At times Jesus also acts but in the bounds of desire. His disciples witness his sermons of love only to have him change and embrace fire and the axe— the tenants of John the Baptist. It seems that Jesus desires the role of being the messiah so much that he does not use discretion in following the way set before him and instead pursues the role with a fervor that misleads him.
This notable characteristic also becomes the reason that Judas is purposefully chosen to play the role of the betrayer. Close to the hour of the betrayal Judas asks Jesus “’why did you choose me?’” to which Jesus answers “’you know you’re the strongest. The others don’t bear up” (Kazantzakis 411). The “others” Jesus refers to are the disciples who do not show the same inclination to action that Judas does and when he states that Judas is the “strongest” it is simply for his strength of commitment to act towards anything that may free Israel. Perhaps Judas can be considered a sort of tragic hero. By being flawed with a mind that disallows him from acting for that which is beyond desire Judas is actually performing his sacred duty, as laid out by God, to betray Jesus in order that Jesus will be crucified and mankind saved; it is this flaw of desire that both holds him back from ultimate transcendent ability but also allows him to perform his part in the journey of Jesus.
Finally, towards the end of the novel, Jesus finally makes that mysterious mental maneuver leading him towards the highest state of ascension. Jesus reflects that “suddenly he again heard the mysterious footsteps which had been mercilessly following him for such a long time… but now they were not behind him; they were in front, guiding him” (Kazantzakis 304). All through the novel prior these footsteps, tied to what he calls his “curse” but can be also understood as his destiny, have been behind him as he has been attempting to act without proper guidance. However, in this moment he finally allows the footsteps of his destiny to be in front of him and assume the role of guide meaning that finally his action has adopted proper guidance. In this he has gained something that he did not have prior which now allows him to not only perform action but right action. The main difference between action and right action is the extent of the discipline of the performer of the action. Discipline, as we learn in the Gita, is “when his controlled thought/ rests within the self alone,/ without craving objects of desire,/ he is said to be disciplined” (Bhagavad-Gita Gita 67). The main tenant of discipline is the absence of these “objects of desire”. To reiterate, this is the flaw of Judas that Jesus shares at some pints; he performs action but does not perform action with correct discipline and is instead focused on the fruits of action. Thus right action can be loosely defined as action performed only for the reasons that they must be performed and not for any worldly gain.
But where did Jesus’ transcendence into right action come from? The Gita points us to the lesson that “action imprisons the world/ unless it is done as sacrifice; freed from attachment, Arjuna, perform action as sacrifice!” (Bhagavad-Gita 44). When we consider the roots of “sacrifice” means “to make sacred” it becomes evident that action must not be full of the concerns of man but rather full of that which is sacred. We find that acts become sacred when “free from attraction, fear, and anger,/ filled with me, dependent on me,/ purified by the fire of knowledge, many come into my presence” (Bhagavad-Gita Gita 52). So, to make human action sacred it is necessary to somehow evoke a presence of the divine. Possibly the most common evocation of the divine is what appears in the Hamlet passage where he has just talked to the Ghost and resolves to act:
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? Oh fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter
(I.v 93-105)
The key to this passage is memory. Through a remembrance of the divine action becomes full of divinity thus making the maneuver to right action. In order to convert his action to right action he must keep his mind on a remembrance of God. In the Gospels Jesus confirms this belief when at the last Passover supper he breaks bread and drinks wine asking the disciples to “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). It is in this lesson of the remembrance that we find the salvation Christ brought to the world— divine knowledge of how to rediscover the divine in the world.
In this way The Last Temptation of God is largely Gnostic with the belief that Christ’s gift is knowledge (“gnosis”). The knowledge that the divine must be considered during all action is largely spurred on by the realization of Jesus that “Everything is of God, he reflected; everything has two meanings, one manifest, one hidden. The common people comprehend only what is manifest. They say, ‘This is a snake,’ and their minds go no further; but the mind which dwells in God sees what lies beyond the visible, sees the hidden meaning” (Kazantzakis 150). Interestingly, this idea was highly integrated into the lives of Paleolithic hunters who thought:
“anything, however lowly, could embody the sacred. Everything they did was a sacrament that put them in touch with the gods. The most ordinary actions were ceremonies that enabled mortal beings to participate in the timeless world of ‘everywhen’. For us moderns a symbol is essentially separate from the unseen reality to which it directs our attention, but the Greek symballein means ‘to throw together’: two hitherto disparate objects become inseparable…when you contemplated any earthly object, you were therefore in the presence of its heavenly counterpart. This sense of participation in the divine was essential to the mythical worldview: the purpose of a myth was to make people more fully conscious of the spiritual dimension that surrounded them on all sides and was a natural part of life” (Armstrong 16).
However, Jesus knows that the common people have become out of touch with the presence of the divine so integrated in past times like the times of the Paleolithic hunters. Jesus laments, “the world had gone astray. Instead of ascending to heaven it was descending to hell. The two of them together, God and the Son of God, would have to toil to bring it once more onto the correct road” (Kazantzakis 281). Thus, we see the point of Jesus’ descent to earth— to once again reveal that God is present in all objects. He transmutates more than the bread and the wine; he transmutates all objects to reveal their divine inner presence.
Unfortunately, the common people appear to be guilty of having “had the experience but missed the meaning” (Eliot93). The divine knowledge brought by Jesus although necessary to complete transcendence is not the only part of the equation. For one to gain “true” knowledge one must assimilate the tenants of right action into sacred duty and this is very difficult. One of the more notable discussions on the pains of achieving true knowledge occurs in the mind of Mr. Ramsey in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse:
“if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had not sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q… But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation” (Woolf 34).
We also hear echoes of this struggle in the statement “one man among thousands/ strives for success,/ and of the few who are successful,/ a rare one knows my reality” (Bhagavad-Gita Gita 73). For what Woolf calls “Z” and the Gita considers “{Krishna’s} reality” the path is difficult. This difficulty in actual achievement of the sacred knowledge is perhaps why Kazantzakis chose “‘IT IS ACCOMPLISHED!’” as Jesus’ final words in the novel (Kazantzakis 496). We see that the grand accomplishment of Jesus has been to ascend to “Z” and truly know the reality of God something that we must do in order to truly be Christ-like.
In the prologue Kazantzakis highlights his understanding of Jesus as a model human: “every obstacle in his journey became a milestone, an occasion for further triumph. We have a model in front of us now, a model who blazes our trail and gives us strength” (Kazantzakis 4). The model of Christ is largely summed up by the “struggle between the flesh and the spirit, rebellion and resistance, reconciliation and submission, and finally—the supreme purpose of the struggle—union with God: this was the ascent taken by Christ, the ascent which he invites us to take as well, following in his bloody tracks. This is the Supreme Duty of the man who struggles—to set out for the lofty peak which Christ, the first-born son of salvation, attained. How can we begin?” (Kazantzakis 2). How can we learn from the model of Kazantzakis’ Christ and begin to be Christ-like? While rejection of the fruits of the earth is an eventual state of mind along this path this does not mean to completely separate oneself from society and live like an ascetic. Rather, we need to fully comprehend what life on earth means: “’to eat bread and transform the bread into wings, to drink water and to transform the water into wings. Life on earth means: the sprouting of wings’” (Kazantzakis 493). The question we must ask ourselves, religious or not, is how can we begin to tread the path of Jesus, Arjuna, and all others who attempt to apply the sacred knowledge and transcend to the place where we sprout wings.
The last trickles of sangria flow into my mouth and I pull the glass away from my lips. I re-center my reading glasses on the bridge of my nose, rock myself gently in the blue chair, and turn the page to the final paragraph of The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. As my eyes pass over the final ink marks the momentum of the five hundred-page novel comes at me. After those last tense seconds I close the book and place it on my lap while I ease back in the recliner. I have finished reading the book no doubt but I still do not feel that the book is truly done—I feel that it still has more to tell me. I pick up the book again and look at the cover staring beyond the picture deep into the soul of the book itself waiting for it to speak. As I hold the book I see how it is like the cathedral itself; the covers holding the book together like brick and mortar, the white paper spread out like holy space, and the words being the robes, the alter flowers, the candle flames, the priest, the bread and the wine, the body and the blood. The whole book, this church, shines through my cornea, the lens, onto my retina, and shoots like lightning along the optic nerve towards the entanglement of God. Suddenly I remember being a child in the cathedral… and in one space all these memories, words, and ideas converge upon one another until all are made manifest in a spinning whirlwind igniting my minds tinder like wildfire on the silhouetted treetops of the mountains.
Then it is over. The moment could not last forever. It came and was gone in the plummet of one grain of sand down an hourglass. Shocked and disoriented I look around and feel the commonness of the room. Common bed, common chair, common book, common reader. The fraying knot in my chest leaves me desperate to again be in the glorious presence where these things, these common things, are transformed into gold. I strain to recall the revelation of a moment before. At first there is nothing but the silence of the bedroom. Then, far off, on the fringe of perception, swaying over the abyss of all that is unnoticed, I faintly hear an echo of waves breaking on the shore. Burning everything else but the sound I can imagine the tide washing in flooding the beach with infinite droplets of water and then quickly rescinding back out into the ocean. In the distance over the saltwater some gulls are flying circles through the sun. I have to shade my eyes and squint to see their graceful bodies passing into the fire, burning away, and reemerging on the opposite side of the circle, born anew. The waves break again and I imagine walking over the beach. Each step I take leaves a delicate imprint where my foot had been. I stop walking and dig my toes into the sand finding the presence of the flood, still there, but buried deep down. The cold water washes my toes and I know that the sudden shiver is divine but eternal submersion would be unbearable. As I watch the push and pull of the tide, each curl and splash, I now see the affectionate movement of the divine, coming and leaving with protective urgency, and it is then that I hear the butterfly whisper of God, almost imperceptible now, reminding me “easy, you know, does it, son.”
Works Cited
Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. New York: Canongate, 2005. Print.
Bhagavad-Gita. Trans. Barbara Stoler Miller. New York: Bantam Dell, 1986. Print.
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt Inc., 1943. Print.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. The Last Temptation of Christ. Trans. P.A. Bien. New York:
Scribner, 1960. Print.
“Nikos Kazantzakis” bookrags.com, Encyclopedia of World Biography, n.d. 18 Apr. 2010. Web.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Eds. David Bevington & David Scott Kastan. New York:
Bantam Dell, 2005. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1927. Print.
[1] Supposedly Kazantzakis actually did base the character of Zorba on a man he had met but the character of Zorba and the accompanying story were largely fiction.
I've been writing my paper for the last two days which has been really painful because the weather outside is gorgeous right now and I think I'm getting carpal tunnel. My wrists have hurt pretty bad after I get done typing. I type a lot at work and then I've been on my home computer quite a bit with minimal carpal tunnel protection. It makes me feel kind of wussy. I have a hard time accepting that a 21 year old male is getting "hurt" from typing on the computer. More evidence of technology aiding in the demasculization of modern man... oh well.
Other than the great weather and "writers wrist" the paper has been coming along... slowly, but assuredly. I've been rolling the organization around in my head for a while trying to figure out how I want to set it up to be most effective. I've finished the frame that will surround the academic portion of the paper and am specifically focused on how to develop the innards. Fortunately/unfortunately the paper appears like it's going to be longer than 13 pages or so. Perhaps around 15-20 which is appropriate for a capstone paper, but, it's so nice outside!
I think I've changed my thesis once again, well, sort of. I'm going to keep the part about gnosticism but include it in a different way than my thesis. Basically, my updated thesis is going to say something like "Nikos Kazantzakis' portrayal of Jesus reexamines what is considered divine and ways to reach the divine". Something like that. It should be good.
I hope to get it done tomorrow or tuesday leaving myself some time on wednesday and thursday to edit it a little and hammer through the revisions. Oh, and if anyone knows any good remedies for carpal tunnel please tell me!
Once again the presentations were fantastic! Craig, Doug, Kari, and Jennie Lynn all had great ideas that sounded really cool. I was especially intrigued with Doug's and Kari's papers. Each of them reminded me of one of my favorite authors-- Italo Calvino. For Doug's paper the connection of the tarot to Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies was obvious because Dr. Sexson pointed it out. In The Castle of Crossed Destinies a group of travelers converges on a castle where, after a long journey, they are too tired to relate their stories, so instead of vocal relations they use tarot cards to tell their stories. I haven't read the book yet but I plan on it for this summer! On monday I'm going to bring the book for Doug to borrow and read.
Kari's paper also reminded me of a Calvino book, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, especially the opening. In the beginning of the book the main character "you" are shopping for books in the bookstore and you mention that you end up passing many books that you should read to say that you have read. Also, you must pass by the books that you've talked about with other people but haven't actually read yourself and should read now. Kari's feelings of reading War and Peace to just have read it really reminded me of this. I remember doing a similar thing with Moby Dick when I was in middle school. We had a program called AR (Accelerated Reader) where you would read various books, take a sort of comprehension test on them, and receive full points for the book if you got above a 75% or so. Each book had so many points according to the difficulty and such. A book like Holes was like 4 I think. Moby Dick was 40. With these points you could buy stuff from the school store at the end of the year. I picked up Moby Dick feeling like "I need to read this and get the 40 points! That would be awesome!" I think I made it through about 6 pages before returning it and settling back for the books that were about 8 points, so Kari I kind of know where you're coming from. Maybe I'll read Moby Dick someday just to see if I could get those 40 points:)
Here is a copy of the poem that I was talking about earlier in the semester. The only reason I hadn't published it on here yet was because of the Poetry contest the English Dept. sponsors. I didn't want to post it and cause a conflict of interest... Anyway see if you can spot some of the themes from this class (especially some of the Wakeian language!)
Last night I had a dream. I don't really remember what it was except that I was a Native American and that's about the extent that I can recall after a long day of stuff. But what's really important I do remember. When I woke up (more like being forced up... not by anybody in particular just the various duties of the day) I was really really upset. Actually, pissed off is a much more accurate word to use. I was getting extremely upset with group meetings, papers, my job, and all of that stuff. The whole way up to campus I tormented my girlfriend with series upon series of rants and blatherings about how mad I was and how ready I was for school to be done. After all, I just want the weather to be nice and go ride my bike... is that too much to ask? However, when I really reflected on it I was mostly upset that I had to break the dream and leave it. In The Tempest Caliban utters "When I wake I cry to dream again". This is somewhat what I was experiencing except through more aggressive tones. At the brink of waking up I had a massive internal conflict. I knew that if I quickly went back to bed I could easily slip back into the dream I was having and extend my time in those realms for a little longer. However I knew there was stuff that I had to wake up for. In the end waking won out (albeit begrudgingly) and I came to campus when I was supposed to. However I really felt that I understood how Caliban's utterance felt. The state of dreams is blessed and to leave it is one of the most lamentable states of human existence.
Today I started reading Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino. The book isn't really one continual text but three shorter narratives focused on a similar theme. The theme that threads the book is discussions on the senses. Unfortunately, Calvino died before he was able to incorporate all 5 senses with both sight and touch missing but taste explored taste in "Under the Jaguar Sun", hearing in "A King Listens", and smell in "The Name, the Nose".
So far I have only finished "Under the Jaguar Sun" and am most of the way through "A King Listens" but I can already see how epiphanies and moments of supreme sensitivity are revealed. In "Under the Jaguar Sun" the main character, denoted in the first person "I", contemplates the nature of taste and how human beings (and everything else for that matter) are in a constant pull of devouring each other and being eventually devoured themselves. Much of the story involves some cannibalistic themes but it must be noted that these are more metaphorical than literal acts of cannibalism. Even the story explores the deepening of the understanding of cannibalism from the literal level projected on the ancient altars of Mexico to the more metaphorical levels of consuming another human. In one epiphany the narrator states "the most appetizingly flavored of human flesh belongs to the eater of human flesh". However, the final epiphany comes in the closing paragraph: "Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a riverbank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythym, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intesity of serpents'-- serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la vera cruzana, and enchiladas." Obviously these statements entail a divine revelation about the nature of eating and being eaten contained in the phrase the narrator calls "universal cannibalism". The meanings and metaphors of hunger, food, eating all are at play and really provide a complex look at cannibalism. How's that for a food epiphany!
On another note Esther Calvino makes the point that she believes that Italo was going to eventually compose a "frame" to set these stories in. The resulting product would have had a similar look to If on a Winter's Night a Traveler where the internal stories were surrounded and linked by a larger story. For the frame Calvino said "both in art and in literature, the functin of the frame is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the boundary between the picture and what is outside. It allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the rest; but at the same time, it recalls-- and somehow stands for-- everything that remains out of the picture. I might venture a definition: we consider poetic a production in which each individual experience acquires prominence through its detachment from the general continuum, while it contiains a kind of glint of that unlimited vastness". Obviously then, this story should give us writers some inspiration (and perhaps anxiety) to provide the "glint of that unlimited vastness" that surrounds our papers!
I was really impressed with everyone's paper who presented today. Since it was the first day I thought that maybe everybody's papers would be a little less than amazing but I was very wrong. Even people who seemed to think that their papers weren't as polished as they would have liked had good direction. It was easy to see potential with where they were going.
Probably the paper I identified the most with was Joan's paper. I really enjoyed her discussion of factors that effect duty. Perhaps the most interesting claim I thought she made was that time is the precursor of duty since duty involves acting within a space of time. I also thought it was a pretty interesting assertion she made that gods are outside of duty since they are outside of time... I wanted to ask her some more about that but we ran out of time. Perhaps I will ask her for a copy so I can consult it for some ideas in my paper.
Kevin's paper was also really fun to listen to. I enjoyed his discussion of being an English major. As much as I have told myself in the past that it's all going to work out and be ok I've wondered if that's really the case. I also enjoyed his discovery/epiphany that hanging out with the meth-head landscape crew wasn't really the life path he belonged on. Part of the process of finding what you do want to do involves ruling out the things you don't want to do.
Yesterday Kari and I met at the library and discussed some of the characteristics of Gnosticism (as well as other things). It was really helpful to ground myself with some knowledge before I set out to write this paper as it's never very much fun to write about something you know nothing about. I guess that writing is also a process of discovery so I should be able to gather more knowledge about Gnosticism while I write this paper.
One of the most interesting things that we talked about was the existence of the demiurge creator God and the Supreme God. From what I understand the demiurge God is the "angry" creator God of the old testament and possibly even understood as a lesser god or non-deity. The Supreme God however is all powerful and . The demiurge reconcilles the existence of evil with the existence of a Supreme omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God because it is in fact the demiurge who propagates the evil forces rather than the Supreme God. Well, I guess the omnipotent Supreme God SHOULD be able to control the demiurge. Anway this demiurge is prone to fits of passion, jealousy, and the like. Basically, the corporeal world, the world one experiences without the inclusion of gnosis, is the world of the demiurge while when one attains gnosis one is experiencing the world of the Supreme God. In that way Jesus was actually bringing gnosis to the world and allowing the
Also I was highly intrigued by the Gnostic interpretation of corporeal matter as being base and somewhat of a distraction for the hidden gnosis behind it. I would like to talk about Docetism-- philosophy that Jesus was never really made man but truly a spirit with an illusory body-- and relate that to how the Bhagavad Gita dissuades Arjuna from doing his duty for corporeal rewards. It would be interesting to talk about how Jesus is transcending his earthly state through his increasing gnosis. I have a lot of other ideas such as theophanies, dreams, epiphanies of gnosis and other things that should make for a good paper.
To sum up my meeting with Kari was very helpful and will provide not only a good basic introduction to gnosticism but also ways to assimilate the topic into my paper. Hopefully I gave Kari some things to think about in her future studies as well!
So, last night I watched Sherlock Holmes with Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. I thought the movie was... ok. I had to keep reminding myself that I shouldn't get mad about changes in plot, characters, or fabricated events that never happened (even though I will begrudgingly admit the books aren't "real" either).
First critique-- Watson. I will admit that Jude Law was a much more "true" visual depiction of Watson than the portly and bumbling Nigel Bruce. It was nice to see that the casting people had actually done some research and consideration to save Watson's reputation from the dungeon of ineffective sidekicks. However I was slightly surprised at the personality in which Law portrayed the doctor. To me, Watson seemed much more aggressive with Holmes than he ever did in the books. He repeatedly makes Holmes the butt of his jokes and seems to take everything in stride as if he has seen it all before. This really upset me because I felt that Watson NEVER took anything Sherlock did for granted. His utter amazement each time that Holmes is able to perform his deductions and disguises is what makes the relation to the reader so wonderful. While they did hint at Watson being Holmes' eventual biographer I thought they tried too hard to portray him almost as superior to Holmes'. To give them a final good remark it was pleasant how Watson was as bullheaded and direct as he was in the books.
Second critique-- Holmes. Downey Jr. was eccentric. He was cocky. He "solved" the crime. But he just wasn't Holmes. I don't blame him however I really blame the screenwriter and the director. They obviously approached the character of Holmes with some knowledge of Doyle's character but they seemed to only want to flash that knowledge in quick moments rather than have it define the character. Holmes is no doubt an extremely complex character. In the book Holmes is always trying to entertain himself with his theatrics and the reader just falls in awe of the man. In the movie Downey Jr. was trying to hard to entertain the audience. Holmes doesn't give a damn about the audience but only crafting the perfect puzzle so the crime is revealed as if by his own slight of hand. Holmes is proactive, Downey Jr. was reactive. Also, I was really annoyed by the mopey depiction of Holmes throughout the whole movie. Holmes does get extremely down and depressed when in need of case (this is when he seems to succumb to his cocaine addiction the most) but he does not ever seem to shed his dignity; he always commands the others respect. In the movie I felt he was like a character who had lost all his dignity and was to be pitied more than revered.
Third critique-- Irene Adler. Hollywood NEEDED love story. They pretended to have found one in Irene Adler so they exploited it exponentially. In the books she is not a perpetual thief but once got away from Holmes' trap and for that becomes known to Holmes as "the woman"-- a title denoting the utmost respect from a misogynistic man. I felt their treatment of Adler was largely off base and by far their most distasteful move of the whole movie.
Overall I would say that they took the focus off of the true anomaly of Holmes and placed the focus too much on his action figure side. Oh well... it is Hollywood after all and what is a good movie anymore without explosions, fights and the like. To sum up, it didn't ruin my perception of the books as much as I thought it would because it just wasn't Sherlock Holmes.
Sometimes all it takes is the magic word. After class, mere minutes ago, I found the magic word to complete my paper thesis. Originally I had the overwhelming gut feeling that what I wanted to say was "The Last Temptation of Christ is an eastern interpretation of the Gospels". However, the word eastern just wasn't right. I felt like I was a shark circling around the idea/concept that I had the feeling for. It was close. Then, when I repeated my thesis to Dr. Sexson, the heavens opened and the magic term came tumbling down. He said something to the effect of 'I don't think you mean eastern but gnostic'. In that moment I knew that was the word I was looking for. Even with only a limited knowledge that gnosticism is concerned with the pursuit of knowledge through intellectual scholarship I could feel my paper begin to take shape.
Apparently Carrie is doing an independant study of gnosticism and I would love to see a blog post from her or talk one on one about some of its tenants that I will need to know before writing a paper on a subject I am mostly blind to.
As far as writing moves go I think I might open with a bit of a confessional statement about how I've been turned off from any religious belief because of the lack of intellectualism that I encountered and that how the Last Temptation of Christ has been surprisingly religious for me due to its focus on asking questions. It would be a personal anectodote that should segway into my more critical understanding of the novel without damning it to the dangerous waters of personal retellings.
The class discussion today also revealed a surprising amount of material that I plan on using in my paper. Katie's paper topic on the dark epiphany being a precursor for the 'light' (I think that was the word she used) epiphany will have a profound impact on some of the ways I pursue my paper. Also, Joan's questions surrounding sacred duty and right action will also be at the center of my exploration of this text.
One thing that I would like to discuss that I haven't heard or seen if anyone is talking about is the theophany. In this novel there are theophanies very frequently and I would love to explore there different natures and make some assertions in connection to sacred duty/right action and such. If anyone is writing on this subject please let me know and I would love to hear where you are going with it!
Anyway I think I'm getting the momentum going forward to composing a wonderful paper that should be something that I will consider a capstone on my career at this university.
Just a couple of days ago I finished The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle. It was a fantastic experience to enjoy about 1800 pgs. of two of literature's most beloved and timeless characters. I never knew that the stories were framed as though actual publications of cases with Watson acting as Holmes biographer and after talking about Sanjaya and "English majors" I think that the role of Watson needs to be exalted. While Holmes' duty is to solve the problems and reveal them in theatrical and dramatic ways it is the duty of Watson to perform the duty of biographer and reveal the wonders to an anticipatory public.
For this class I think that the connection to epiphany comes through the revelations by Holmes to Watson and, in effect, the reader. While Holmes considers most of his amazing deductions to be simplistic and elementary (yes, he does say elementary although it never appears as the famous 'elementary my dear Watson' uttered by his celluloid phonies) the real joy in the cases come from the perspective of the narrator Watson. From this voice, that of a character who relishes a secret knowledge in these revelations, the reader is able to experience the mood of the stories in there truly sensational form. Also, I really enjoy the understanding that all those seemingly insignificant things in our everyday lives, those commonplace items, can pack so much meaning into them as to define a person; just see Holmes' astounding publication on tobacco ash.
On another note this last Christmas I know that they made a new Sherlock Holmes movie but I have yet to see it. Honestly I'm kind of scared to. I'm sure it is a decent production but it is just kind of scary to encounter more "real" interpretations of characters that you have partnered along on 60 adventures. My worry is that my image of Sherlock and Watson will have to grapple with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in an epic battle on the precipice of the Reichenbach Falls. Thank God my dear Holmes and my even more dear Watson will undoubtedly triumph!
Today I had a moment of epiphany. For the first time this semester, or even my 4 year college adventure, I felt like it all made sense. I can't really explain exactly what I felt like but it just seemed that I had a moment where I felt like everything was in sync and I was where I was supposed to be doing what I was supposed to do. It came at the library when I had finished reading a portion of The Last Temptation of Christ. Even though I had a lot more to go before I was finished it felt right to put it down then and there and go home. On the way out of the library everything I saw and everything I considered seemed to make sense like meaning was erupting from a hidden source. It was very cool and kind of scary. Kind of scary because I was at such a calm. It seemed like the eye of a hurricane or something where the calm can only be described as eerie. I don't have any idea where it came from or why it happened then but it was a very cool mental experience.
This weekend I've been reading The Last Temptation of Christ by author Nikos Kazantzakis. At it's most basic description the story is a retelling of the Gospels. However, the maneuvers Kazantzakis performs in the composition of this book makes it's complexity and relevancy excel. Jesus is wonderfully developed as not only a divine character but as a man subject to the passions and temptations of any young male. The poignant questions of the philosophies at the heart of the Gospels sparks the novel to be much more than a novelty. These things not only factor into a great novel but also one that has found much opposition and appears on banned book lists.
For a little background Kazantzakis was born in 1883 in Crete and attended a university in Athens-- he seems to draw on his experiences around the Mediterranean to really paint amazingly sensory settings. Kazantzakis was mostly writing during the mid 20th century with The Last Temptation of Christ published in 1960. He died in 1957 (I'm not sure whether the book was published posthumously or that is the date for the English translation). Another work by Kazantzakis that has permeated the broad cultural awareness is Zorba the Greek; so much so that the character even lends his name to the Greek food place in the SUB and, as we all know, if it's in the SUB it must be important!
Having read about half of the book thus far (~250 pages) I think that this book should be on the radar for the class as almost every page deals with epiphanies and theophanies. Also, the first 180 pages or so would make a great juxtaposition to the Gita. I imagine some readers might find the book too long. It really takes a great deal of focus because Kazantzakis really spends considerable time developing the story. Readers with considerable background dealing with the Gospels and other texts in the Bible will find pleasure in the ways that Kazantzakis draws on those themes and explores the philosophies behind them.
However unfortunate I feel the need to add two disclaimers/ opinions to my reading of the book... not for my own sake but to more accurately guide the reader what to expect. 1. This book would be equally effective to "non-believers" as "believers". Beliefs aren't important to appreciate this story and I wouldn't want the "religious" aspect to push people away. This is just a great story/intellectual treat. 2. Kazantzakis does work with some outdated understandings-- mainly Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. This might turn some readers away for various reasons but it really shouldn't color your decision to pursue this book. 3. Kazantzakis could be read as sexist-- I'm not really sure how to feel about this one. Kazantzakis tends to more fully develop his male characters. Women characters tend to be pigeonholed to various stereotypes and often driven by simplistic motives. However his portrayal of Jesus' mother Mary is a truly masterful depiction of the mater dolorosa. Again, this would be an awful reason to skip over this book.
I think that I'm going to mold my topic for my paper around this book-- perhaps focusing on the themes of sacred duty, distractions, theophanies, etc. I'll need to focus some more before I can really provide a thoughtful thesis but I'm sure that my topic is lurking somewhere in the pages!
This summer I hope to write my own story. Maybe a better word than 'writing' would be 'riding'. After school lets out and I'm a college grad I plan on pursuing a bike tour around the western U.S. I've planned the trip around a concept that I call "the three B's"-- bike, books and brews. Some of you undoubtedly will think that this is a little too "hippie" for your tastes... well, maybe it is. Perhaps it is too cheesy for you. The open road, wind in your face, camping under the stars, all the cliches that Bozemanites claim to love. However, I hope to rediscover the West. Why is it that we only camp in the mountains and cannot feel as if we are in nature unless we are in designated nature areas? I have seen Whitman stopped and waiting for me and I will follow the American piper after graduation as I reclaim my faith/hope/love for the real, forgotten America. Along the way I will become increasingly sensitive to the epiphanies that intimate travel will afford me.
Although this class is a capstone and representative of the culmination of my college English Lit. major experience I want to end/begin with my own capstone... a heroes journey if you will. I plan on stepping off the porch of my Wyoming home (preferably at daybreak to give it some symbolic significance) onto my bike and riding off towards my own trials and victories as I pedal across the western states on the back-roads and highways.
I'm going to try and work in a lot of reading throughout the whole journey. Although you might think that I should be scouting all the "road-novels" I can I think I'm going to take a special interest in magical realism. To me it seems like magical realism is the perfect literature for the trip. Hopefully I can model my new found perspectives on one of the strongest characterizations of magical realism-- injecting the common existence with a splash of divine magic. Authors I want to read include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges and Juan Rulfo. Reading these magical stories in my tent along side of some road will hopefully allow my perspectives to swing towards the fantastic.
Also, To fit in with my theme of B's, I'd like to try and map out some local microbreweries along the way and stop in and give them a taste. Even now the tastes of Pale Ale's, Wheat Beers, Hefe's, and Belgian White's pique my desire to get out on the road. I can only imagine hundreds of miles of biking will enhance the taste experience. All those flavors prancing on my taste buds will be a taste of divinity revealed.
Some people I tell this to definitely think it sounds silly. I'm sure they puzzle over my objective to "live my life like it's a book" but I think I'll find that it is one of the most satisfying experiences that I will have undertaken. Part of the reason I'm going is to slow down time. I'm so used from going to A-B in such a hurry (can I ever get to Z? even to Q?!) that it's going to be nice to slow the pace down of travel. By going slower I hope to expand my understanding of the vastness of America and in turn expand my knowledge of what inhabits that space. My goal is to never travel through a place and to say there is "nothing there". After a long time of being conditioned to the pathetic "real world" I ant to resaturate my life with divine magic and reclaim my feeling of humanity.
So I haven't composed a blog for a long time. In fact it's been 13 days. On my other blog it's been since Jan. 25th. Even in my classes I've noticed that I just haven't been devoting the same strong effort that I have in the past. Sometimes in the middle of class my mind wanders away. This is pretty embarrassing. In my last semester here at MSU I was hoping to stay motivated and avoid that dreaded senioritis that plagues so many students. It seems that I may be infected...
Wait! Don't give up hope for me yet! There has been a silver lining to the dark cloud of my motivation. I have recently diagnosed the site of my microscopic infection-- and I believe it is stemming from Eliot's Four Quartets. Ever since we began to look at the poems I have felt an overwhelming inspiration take over my mind. I began a poem largely inspired/stolen from Eliot and now it has taken over my life. Whether or not the poem is going to be "good" doesn't matter. It's just important to know that it is a life-drain.
The premises of the poem is rather simple. Two people, you and I, began in a garden hedged by two rivers (I won't tell you which two but leave it to you to figure out) and each walks in an opposite direction around the world. You walk east and I walk west. The length of the trip takes approximately 24 hours-- they leave at noon on one day and arrive back at the same place at noon the next day. However to put the poem in such a simple box would, I think, damn it to a simplicity that it seeks to go beyond. You'll see what I mean when it's done and you have read it.
This blog doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the topics of either class (I'm posting this blog on each class blog). I have mentioned that I'm inspired by Eliot's Four Quartets. Maybe that's where the thoughtfulness is-- tying my experience in writing to Eliot's. However, I don't really want to do that. I want this post to stand on it's own legs whatever they may be, I'm not really sure. I can even know that it won't come to some tidy conclusion after this (it's a little messy). I can look over the whole apology/justification/self-pity/thing because this is the paragraph I'm writing last even though there are two that follow it (have you ever wondered what authors composed first and last and in the middle or have you always thought they were writing the book as you read it?) In fact these are the last words I'm typing; the last period of the author falls in the middle.
In my past experiences with writing poetry that I really devoted time to it has been a trying process. It isn't even that I want to be writing but that I feel I HAVE to. I don't feel inspired to write all the time but when I do feel inspired, like in class, the poem just takes over. It's like having selective mono towards other literature pursuits. Another way to think of it is like a big sponge-- it just sucks up all the motivation that comes along when it comes along. This poem is no different... perhaps it is even worse.
I hope to finish writing it soon or, at least, get it to a point where the changes are so precise that I'm no longer under the burden of the large construction. Recently I finished one of the poems four sections-- a relatively large achievement considering it totals about 1/3 of the poem. When I get it done I will try to post it on the blog (the structure might be kind of hard to format in the blog... I'll probably have to give it some sort of preface). Odds are some of you won't like it or think it's all that poetic or whatever. Hell, I'm not sure whether or not I will like it. But, when it's done, at least I will be able to move on my life.
For my portion of our group presentation I'm going to go over the background and overall structure of "Burnt Norton".
The title of the poem refers to a manor in Gloucestershire. I was doing some research on the building itself and found some cool info on another blog that states that "the property is essentially divided into four quadrants, like chambers of the heart, and Eliot naturally would have proceeded from an upper chamber toward a lower chamber, then looked down on the dry, concrete pools that he alludes to in the poem. Beyond the pools (which the owner says never held water), he might have turned right into the present-day rose garden." This concept of the four quadrants is kind of cool and seems linked to the notion of four quartets. It's kind of nice to get a bit of an image of how it is set up in order to see the manor for ourselves as we move throughout it in the poem.
The manor still exists and you can visit it and take a tour or even have a wedding reception there.
Unlike the other poems in the "Four Quartets" "Burnt Norton" was actually published in 1936, about five years before the other poems, in a volume of called Collected Poems 1909-1935. At the time Eliot was working on a play called Murder in the Cathedral and many of the fragments that he removed from the composition of the play went into "Burnt Norton".
One of the important concepts to note in "Burnt Norton" and the whole of the Quartets is the emphasis of music on the structure of the poems. In the Western tradition string quartets have played chamber music which was considered by Goethe to be "four rational people conversing". A good way to think of the poems, at least "Burnt Norton", is a highly intelligent religious philosopher making an argument about the nature of time. At the beginning of Burnt Norton Eliot puts forward a sort of hypothesis that he tests throughout the poem.
Going along with the musical-structure theme many critics have found it appropriate to consider the different "sections" within each poem as various musical movements. In this way Eliot can blend the separate movements together to gain an overall statement. It is important to note in the poem how, as it progresses, Eliot provides contrapuntal themes to many of his earlier notions thus providing the different movements.
To sum up I will mention how the poem was received. It seems that "Burnt Norton" was received with mixed reviews. Some people thought that it beautifully captured religious and philosophical themes while other reviewers, such as George Orwell, thought that the use of religious themes harmed the piece.
Since we are not really spending any more time with Joyce's "Araby" in class I will do a little blog on it to discuss it a bit further. In the back of my Viking Critical Edition there was one piece that specifically dealt with "Araby" (and about 5 that deal with "The Dead"). After reading the piece of background/ criticism on "Araby" by Harry Stone I found some really useful concepts that Stone puts forth to illuminate our reading of "Araby" and Joyce in general.
Stone mainly deals with the historical basis for "Araby" and also the job of Joyce inserting various allusions and symbolic meaning. While Stone goes into great detail about each of the historical background, allusions, & symbols' meaning, I will just give a simple rundown to sum up this piece and offer some new insight on the piece. Perhaps the most important statement that Stone makes is that Joyce "was careful to lacquer his images and actions with layer after layer of translucent, incremental meaning." This is one of the best ways to understand the collection of Dubliners.
The historical background in "Araby" is fairly present. Like the boy, Joyce himself grew up on North Richmond Street. Joyce and his character attended the same school and both "found it dull and stultifying". Also, it appears that characteristics of the boy's surrogate parents were inspired by Joyce's own parents. Not only do the boy and Joyce share many similarities but the bazaar itself had actually happened in 1894. In one of Stone's claims he says that it seems that "Araby" "is the identical struggle {to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man} at an earlier stage; "Araby" is a portrait of the artist as a young boy."
Stone also wants to assure us that beyond the historical foundations for the story lie the important lacquering of images mentioned earlier. Here is a list with a quick breakdown of important "meanings" to be grasped.
The Priest & house-- The death of the priest and the withering of a "central appletree" suggest a decay in the Catholic religion. Also the books the boy sees in the priest's death-room are full of meaning (too much to go in to here).
The girl (Mangan's sister)-- Stone says "all women, for Joyce, are Eves: they tempt and they betray". Stone suggests that Mangan's sister is a sort of false Madonna that is actually leading the betrayal and decay of Catholic religion (furthering the last theme).
Silver Bracelet-- Mangan's sister twirls a silver bracelet around her wrist suggesting an idolatry of mammon. The silver bracelet will come back about in the florin the boy carries to Araby. Araby-- The uncle says how the word "araby" reminds him of a poem that he is going to recite. It turns out that the poem is about betrayal. The Arab's Farewell to His Steed begins with "My beautiful, my beautiful! that standeth meekly by,/ With thy proudly-arched and glossy neck, and dark fiery eye!/ Fret not to roam the desert now with all thy winged speed;/ I may not mount on thee again!-- thou'rt sold, my Arab steed!"
Florin-- The florin coin, or "flower" named because of the presence of the flower represented by the Virgin Mary, the boy clutches is actually the English production which became known as the "Godless and Graceless Florin". The coin itself recalls the silver bracelet the girl wears and also suggests betrayal of the Virgin Mary and Ireland itself.
I have left out mention the last epiphany on purpose. This blog was meant to show the "ooh's" that fill the story and not the "ah!". It is simply astounding to see how Joyce sets up the story with these layers of images (which I barely scratched). It is extremely evident how he could have progressed from these stories to Finnegan's Wake. Getting a further working knowledge of how Joyce structures his stories will reveal the epiphanies to us in more force.
While finishing up Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth I realized just how saturated the book was with discussion on the importance of epiphany. Once I broadened my understanding of epiphany to mean "experiences of the divine" I was illuminated with an interesting perspective on our contemporary placement on the historical scale of experiencing the divine. I will briefly outline the history of man and experiences of the divine. (extremely brief considering it is the history of mankind :) Perhaps Blake would call it an idiotic pursuit! But I think it is useful to know our general place in history in such matters.
In the Paleolithic Period, spanning from c. 20000-8000 BCE, and the Neolithic Period, from c. 8000- c. 4000 BCE, people experienced the divine in everyday life through animals, the earth, and other naturalistic places. Perhaps the time when the divine and the 'commonplace' life of people were mostly intertwined, at least in the sense that people felt their lives depended on the course of the divine.
In the early civilizations, from c. 4000- c. 800 BCE, the divine shifted from the naturalistic places to the structures of cities. "These early city-dwellers saw their cultural attainments as essentially divine" (Armstrong 61). With greater reliance now on human ingenuity "people began to see themselves as independent agents" (Armstrong 72). The gods still existed in the myths of the people but were beginning to become more distanced and ineffective on everyday life.
The Axial Age, from c. 800- c. 200 BCE, was coined because "it proved to be pivotal in the spiritual development of humanity; the insights gained during this time have continued to nourish men and women to the present day" (Armstrong 79). People began to rely on themselves even more thus increasing the distance between mankind and divinity. People "yearned for transcendence, but the sacred now seemed remote, and even alien" (Armstrong 82). One of the major developments during this time was the Greek logos-- a development that definitely impacts our notions of divinity today. Another main tenant of this age was a rise in the importance of rejecting violence and the belief in the Golden Rule.
The Post-Axial Age, from c. 200 BCE- c. 1500 CE, is marked by the flourishing of the three major Western monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These religions all began searching for their place in history, thus relying on logos to explain their history. People of the day were at odds with trying to explain the mythic stories with logos and thus began the shift towards logical reasoning rather than mythic explanation.; the Post-Axial Age marks the beginning of the decline in the cultural prevalence of myth and the end of 'advancement' of our spirituality.
The Great Western Transformation, from c. 1500 CE- c. 2000 CE (present?), marks the rise of the "new hero of Western society", the "scientist or the inventor, who was venturing into uncharted realms for the sake of his society" (Armstrong 121). "The heroes of Western modernity would be technological or scientific geniuses of logos, not the spiritual geniuses inspired by mythos" (Armstrong 121). This became the time when myth, and the divine, became purged from society unless it was scientifically 'provable' to exist. This is the age in which the divine has the smallest place allotted in society... although it does still exist.
Essentially, Armstrong's whole argument is, in regards to experiencing the divine, as we moved forward through history the 'distance' between humans and the divine increases making it increasingly more difficult and rare for us to have divine experiences-- even to the point where Armstrong says "because of out suppression of mythos we may even have regressed" (Armstrong 135). (Consider this in the same context as what Dr. Kollin often refers to as the "Progressive Myth of History") This seems like a pretty bad thing for us-- the people most current in the linear scope of history. However, she seems to support that we are actually not in the 'most distanced' time which, according to her, occurred approximately between 1900-1950 with the First and Second World Wars, attempted genocides, flourish of alienation and nihilism, etc. Humanity's relationship with the divine appears to be on the rise, however slightly. Interestingly, she makes the point that we are experiencing the divine not through religious means but rather through art forms such as visual art and literature (I don't think she mentioned music but you could probably throw that in there too). She mentions some specific authors including Joyce and literary movements such as Magical Realism (I hope to write a blog in the future about the movement of Magical Realism and it's assimilation of the epiphany into everyday life). Whether or not our current age will be a turning point back to frequent manifestations of the divine or just a small spike in the history of humanity is yet to be seen. The future of this relationship is undetermined and up to us to see how far along it comes.
*Hopefully their will be more beer in The Golden Age.
It seems to me that the project of our class, to experience divine manifestations through epiphanies, is the new heroic quest. Perhaps it is the wrong pursuit to actively search for the divine (does it go against the unexpected revelatory nature of epiphany?) but I think that experiencing the divine, so essential to epiphanies, is an important concept to embolden. Coming off the heels of an age determined to exterminate all that wasn't supported by logos, including much of myth, spirituality, and a greater sense of the divine in everyday life, it is the contemporary challenge to once again see the importance of the divine in our lives. In a historical sense, according to the basic 'progression' outlined above, even the epiphanies we have had and have yet to experience are a 'return' to an age where man and gods lived in closer proximity to one another. This return should not be considered a descent or return to barbarism, but as a return to an age with certain qualities superior to our own. As the band TV on the Radio puts it we must look forward to "The age of miracles, The age of sound, Well there's a Golden Age, Comin' round, comin' round, comin' round". This "Golden Age", a mythic time that often occurred in the distant past, can give modernity, with it's tendency to look to the future, a positive spin. As T.S. Eliot opens up the "Four Quartets" in Burnt Norton "Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future,/ And time future contained in time past." Eliot seems to have founded the same theme that TV On the Radio sings; despite the current negativism toward the divine, as captured in "The Waste Land", we will undergo a great return to "The Golden Age, comin' round, comin' round, comin' round..."
*Apparently this is a CD cover for some psychedelic band. Looking at the track list it is evident that this band supports the Mayan "end of the world" in 2012 concept. However, they obviously think that instead of this being a plunge into darkness it will be a return to more simplistic times based on agriculture (note the forefront image of the tree and the divine colors, psychedelic images, that are sprouting upwards from it).*
