News that a famous American poet, Jack Gilbert, passed away on Nov. 11th. A solitary figure, who avoided the limelight, working away on his spare, very free, very moving poems. He was 87, afflicted with Alzheimer's (as Edwin Honig had been). But his Collected Poems had just come out, from a major publishing house. Poetry is all about time & timing. Now the mourning & celebration sounds are coming from the literary world, & his poems shine brighter than before. (To tell the truth I've never been very aware of him, or familiar with his work; but I picked up this new volume from the library shelf today, and am realizing I missed a lot there.)
A person dies, but leaves a ghostly trace in the work they have done. In the case of art, music, poetry, sometimes it bursts into flame repeatedly long after they are gone.
I'm thinking about Jesus, and recalling a certain idea about the Resurrection that struck me a few months ago. But I'll get to that in a minute. I'm thinking about the impact Jesus had on those around him : this figure of brilliant charismatic gifts - his magnetism & affection, his healing powers, his teachings, his eloquence, his prophetic utterance. The electricity that must have surrounded him like a buzzing power field. And especially his radical, uncompromising claim : to be the expected Messiah : that claim which brought him inexorably into conflict with the established authorities in Jerusalem (and Rome) : which brought him to crucifixion on Golgotha ("the place of a skull").
The Resurrection is a deep-shaded mystery. But I think we can hypothesize that, whatever "really happened", the way of life which Jesus's friends & followers began after his death amounted to the most serious form of commitment to mourn & remember him. It may sound heretical or out-of-bounds to compare their response to other cults of martyrdom and mourning (say, for beloved poets, or the martyr-figures or deceased spiritual leaders of other religions) - but I think it's fair to say there are at least some resemblances. Christianity is in a certain sense the largest, most powerful association of mourning & remembrance the world has ever seen. Christianity is much more than that : but I want to sketch this scene out as a kind of background to keep in mind. This religion still registers the visceral shock & grief which Jesus's followers felt, when this incomparably vital, earth-shaking, life-changing presence in their midst was suddenly, violently thrown down.
The Resurrection is a deep well. I like to think about Mary Magdalen as she is sometimes called, the "first apostle" - since according to the Gospels, she was the first to spread the news that Jesus's tomb was empty - that angels had told her to seek him in Galilee. (The mysterious Gospel of John has a slightly different version : Mary meets the resurrected Jesus in the garden beside the tomb, & at first mistakes him for "the gardener". I can't get away from the notion that this lovely, slightly comic scene - straight out of Shakespeare's late romances - has some kind of underlying symbolic meaning. The gardener - as Adam? Maybe.)
The message of the early Church is that the resurrected Jesus appeared to them several times; ascended to the Father in heaven; and sent the Holy Ghost : to be within & amongst them all, binding them together as the reborn body of Christ on earth, until he comes again. I'm convinced of the essential truth of this message, even though the whole process remains a great & alluring enigma, & even though I believe that as regards the Bible, things "literal" must be taken with a grain of salt. We must "judge for ourselves what is right," as Jesus says to the Pharisees.
But it occurred to me a few months ago that one could think about the meaning of the Resurrection in the following way. I'm not saying this is orthodox, or even acceptable; maybe it's not even true. But it's an imaginative approach. The thought occurred to me that the process of Jesus' death, Resurrection, & sending of the Spirit could be conceptualized as follows : simply, that Jesus died, yes - & is resurrected in us. This is the ultimate, over-arching power of the Holy Ghost working in us : this is the power that God grants - that "glorious freedom of the children of God" to which St. Paul attests. To be the Resurrection in our own place & time on earth : to be Christ, here, now - as manifested in our own distinct personhood, our own fate & vocation.
This, I admit, does not jibe perfectly with the doctrine of the Church : that we are waiting for the 2nd coming of Christ - that nothing is fully accomplished until that "end-time" takes place. But I think, on the other hand, this perspective might possibly give us a glimpse of what it might mean to live in constant gratitude for the simple fact of existence, of being alive. (This "gratitude-for-existence" is something which Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, and the Acmeist poets, expressed as a basic principle.) If, having been "born again", we are the resurrection of Jesus - then suddenly "all things are made new" : we have a task to re-present Christ, here, now. & maybe this would be understood to "fit" the orthodox doctrine after all, in some sense : if we re-examine the pattern of death-resurrection-ascension-glorification, then each of us is at the stage of resurrection - the pre-ascension stage, which still awaits the ultimate "end" of history, the "end of the age".
Somehow I like this notion, anyway, if only perhaps in a poetic sense. The early Church mourned the living Jesus, who had died, who was gone; we were all, as Paul wrote, "baptized into his death". Yet at the same time, in the power of the Holy Ghost, we also live out the resurrection : in the most particular local distinct personal & global & contemporary sense of the word (here & now).
There is an saying of that terse, cryptic Greek philosopher, Heraclitus - something like "living each other's death, dying each other's life" (how does it go?) - which encapsulates the unusual schema for resurrection I am sketching here.
11.13.2012
11.12.2012
Jesus Thoughts (13) : Psychic Sidestep
Being what they call a glutton for books, a non-stop reader, & working in a big library, & always following vague hunches & intuitions in my hunt for material, which is all caught up with what I'm trying to do in poetry, which is an obsessive pursuit in tandem with the reading.... well, it leads me into obscure corners.
"Synchronicity" : the term from Jungian psychology for the uncanny conjunction of seemingly chance events in the outside world, with one's own thoughts, or the inner world of the psyche. I'd been thinking about this lately since I was working on a book review of Christian Wiman's volume of Mandelstam translations (Stolen Air) - why? Because the review work brought back memories of my own first encounters with Mandelstam's poetry, back in the 1970s... which led me to reflect on the psychic crisis I went through in college, & the literary-synchronic strangenesses which happened to me - the happenings - in those days.
& perhaps I also began to triangulate recently on these issues due to some other recent researches, into the cathedral of St. Apollinare in Clase, and its connection with imagery in Dante's Paradiso (see Jeffrey Schnapp's book, Transfiguration of history... on that). A pun is a sort of miniature synchronism (of senses in sound)... & it got me thinking about one of my favorite poets from the old days (my old days, early 70s), Guillaume Apollinaire (though come to think of it that's not really a pun : who knows, Apollinaire may have originally been named after the saint). Soon enough I was immersing myself in a flurry of old French poets, as if part of me was sinking back into a 2nd literary childhood...
What does all this have to do with Jesus, you ask? Well, I was going to say that this general trend of my book-devouring led me to a very interesting & curious little-known (eccentric?) interdisciplinary book by Marie-Louise von Franz, a student & disciple of Carl Jung : Number and Time. This is an extremely erudite & wide-ranging meld of physics, mathematics and Jungian psychology, which examines this phenomenon of synchronicity, and proposes a sort of cosmic order rooted in basic numbers (1, 2, 3, 4...) which embody forces shaping both the mind and the physical universe - Franz's unum mundus (world-unity). It's rooted in Jung's metaphysical psychology, which posits a cosmic Self uniting all opposing forces in nature, mandala-like. An awesome and mysterious (strictly beyond conscious awareness) Mind or conjunction of opposites (subsuming good & evil).
I've always had mixed feelings about Jung. On the one hand, he seems remarkably perceptive about the artistic personality, and many of the things I went through in late adolescence seem amenable to a "Jungian" interpretation (those uncanny experiences in the midst of a crisis). On the other hand, he strikes me perhaps as a kind of Gnostic : as a "scientist" of the mind, he pursues explanations of things down dark corridors of mind & personality - explanations which reach toward the mystical & the cosmic. Yet I wonder if his theory of the cosmic Self might be a sort of spiritual over-reach of some kind. It's so close to the religious vision - the sense of a metaphysical dimension transcending & ordering the physical - a dimension which is also personal in some mysterious fashion; yet in trying to present a theory of Totality rooted in a Self which combines good & evil, it seems like he may also be reaching beyond Christianity.
There is much of warning in the Gospels about the awesome threat of God the Father's eternal judgement. "If your hand causeth offense, it is better to cut it off than to lose your whole soul to hell" (rough paraphrase from memory). Or : "Do not fear those who can destroy the body; fear Him who can destroy the soul in eternal fire!" (another rough paraphrase). A Jungian might see these warnings as evidence of a parallel notion of the frightening aspect of the ultimate Self. But what Jungianism might be missing is the time dimension of salvation history. The work of the Christian Trinity is manifest in time as a procession of saving acts. We have to grasp that this invitation to salvation and renewal is addressed directly to us, now, spoken by God-become-Man : the context of understanding (the insight of the Holy Ghost) is everything in these realms. We have to move beyond theory & intellectual speculation to action, to personal commitment, body & soul.
Jung, it seems, was fascinated by the mathematical structure of the psyche : the basic orientation by four (in the human body, in mandalas, in maps, etc. etc.). Marie-L. von Franz explores these concepts in great depth. Jung saw an oscillation (in the psyche, in reality) - a flickering - between three-four... I find these concepts very fascinating too, esp. in relation to making poetry. If we think of the Trinity - the Son & the Father, leading to the "procession" (the manifestation) of their witness & "advocate", the Holy Spirit (the very spirit of God in the body of the Church) - perhaps the matrix of that body - be it the Virgin Mary, the center of the earth, the center of the church, the center of our own individual soul - could be thought of as the "fourth". I think Jung might assent to this (though I'm by no means an expert, or even very familiar with his complex work). Where I hesitate to "follow" Jung is that sometimes in reading him I sense a curious kind of gnostic pedantry at work : the "explanation" of mysteries takes the place of a more active, direct commitment to the historical, actual embodiment of faith.
I'm probably not being fair to Jung. After all, Jesus himself says "God is Spirit and truth : & those who worship him do so in spirit and truth" - and there's something heroic about his liminal truth-search into the dark underside of the human mind. Often enough he prefaces his writings with a disclaimer : they are psychology, not theology. Maybe it's my own problem : a personal hesitancy to grapple with some of my own "unconsciousness".
I have to say I'm deep into Number and Time, though. Franz's discussion of the numerical dimensions of Chinese thought - the mandalas of number from the I Ching etc. - is very absorbing. Having just finished a very very long poem designed ornately around a symbolic number (the atomic number of Lanthanum, #57) - I feel an affinity here...
p.s. (a few hrs later.) I'd like to summarize with a little more precision what appeals to me in M-L von Franz's Jungian approach, and what gives me pause on the other hand. One of the main themes of Number and Time is the view of number as a mediator or mid-point between the psychic and the physical; Franz examines ancient Chinese modes of divination as representing an approach to reality which is irreducibly personal. The aim of divination is to examine the "field" of phenomena (by numbering) at a certain moment in time, in order to understand its meaning for the person for whom the die are cast. The play of chance allows for the decree of fate. Franz explores how this attitude is not that different from certain streams in 20th-cent. physics; time & space and physical phenomena are inseparable from the position of the observer (I'm drastically simplifying Franz's thesis here). She concludes (in a Jungian mode) that the ultimate meaning of phenomena involves the person, the self - perhaps in a dramatic analogy to the cosmological or collective Self at the creative source of all phenomena. These are "fields" which cannot be objectified or depersonalized. This I can agree with, I think : & it rhymes with my sense of the epistemology of Michael Polanyi (in Personal Knowledge and other writings).
What I am less taken with, in the Jungian approach, is the idea of a collective unconscious, structured by fixed "archetypes" shared by all human beings, and unified by an unknowable Self (in the unconscious) with which the ego seeks to be (re)integrated. There may indeed be certain "constellations" of mythological projections, representing durable aspects of human nature & personality : I'm just not sure I would grant them autonomy within an unconscious "structure". To do so seems to lead in the direction of what I was trying to describe above as Jung's turn to abstraction or gnostic "knowledge" in the description of ultimate Reality. Again, this is probably being unfair to Jung, a many-sided, subtle thinker if there ever was one. Yet for me the ultimate Reality does not "reside" in the unconscious, or in any identifiable metaphysical "place" or intellectual formulation. The ultimate Reality is not an objectively describable "Self" (no matter how awesome or obscure) : it is a relation between persons and Persons, not fixed by anything other than agape, caritas, love.
Again, to repeat : I'm not representing either Franz or Jung very thoroughly or accurately here. I'm just responding to them, informally, provisionally (this is a conversation, not a paper).
"Synchronicity" : the term from Jungian psychology for the uncanny conjunction of seemingly chance events in the outside world, with one's own thoughts, or the inner world of the psyche. I'd been thinking about this lately since I was working on a book review of Christian Wiman's volume of Mandelstam translations (Stolen Air) - why? Because the review work brought back memories of my own first encounters with Mandelstam's poetry, back in the 1970s... which led me to reflect on the psychic crisis I went through in college, & the literary-synchronic strangenesses which happened to me - the happenings - in those days.
& perhaps I also began to triangulate recently on these issues due to some other recent researches, into the cathedral of St. Apollinare in Clase, and its connection with imagery in Dante's Paradiso (see Jeffrey Schnapp's book, Transfiguration of history... on that). A pun is a sort of miniature synchronism (of senses in sound)... & it got me thinking about one of my favorite poets from the old days (my old days, early 70s), Guillaume Apollinaire (though come to think of it that's not really a pun : who knows, Apollinaire may have originally been named after the saint). Soon enough I was immersing myself in a flurry of old French poets, as if part of me was sinking back into a 2nd literary childhood...
What does all this have to do with Jesus, you ask? Well, I was going to say that this general trend of my book-devouring led me to a very interesting & curious little-known (eccentric?) interdisciplinary book by Marie-Louise von Franz, a student & disciple of Carl Jung : Number and Time. This is an extremely erudite & wide-ranging meld of physics, mathematics and Jungian psychology, which examines this phenomenon of synchronicity, and proposes a sort of cosmic order rooted in basic numbers (1, 2, 3, 4...) which embody forces shaping both the mind and the physical universe - Franz's unum mundus (world-unity). It's rooted in Jung's metaphysical psychology, which posits a cosmic Self uniting all opposing forces in nature, mandala-like. An awesome and mysterious (strictly beyond conscious awareness) Mind or conjunction of opposites (subsuming good & evil).
I've always had mixed feelings about Jung. On the one hand, he seems remarkably perceptive about the artistic personality, and many of the things I went through in late adolescence seem amenable to a "Jungian" interpretation (those uncanny experiences in the midst of a crisis). On the other hand, he strikes me perhaps as a kind of Gnostic : as a "scientist" of the mind, he pursues explanations of things down dark corridors of mind & personality - explanations which reach toward the mystical & the cosmic. Yet I wonder if his theory of the cosmic Self might be a sort of spiritual over-reach of some kind. It's so close to the religious vision - the sense of a metaphysical dimension transcending & ordering the physical - a dimension which is also personal in some mysterious fashion; yet in trying to present a theory of Totality rooted in a Self which combines good & evil, it seems like he may also be reaching beyond Christianity.
There is much of warning in the Gospels about the awesome threat of God the Father's eternal judgement. "If your hand causeth offense, it is better to cut it off than to lose your whole soul to hell" (rough paraphrase from memory). Or : "Do not fear those who can destroy the body; fear Him who can destroy the soul in eternal fire!" (another rough paraphrase). A Jungian might see these warnings as evidence of a parallel notion of the frightening aspect of the ultimate Self. But what Jungianism might be missing is the time dimension of salvation history. The work of the Christian Trinity is manifest in time as a procession of saving acts. We have to grasp that this invitation to salvation and renewal is addressed directly to us, now, spoken by God-become-Man : the context of understanding (the insight of the Holy Ghost) is everything in these realms. We have to move beyond theory & intellectual speculation to action, to personal commitment, body & soul.
Jung, it seems, was fascinated by the mathematical structure of the psyche : the basic orientation by four (in the human body, in mandalas, in maps, etc. etc.). Marie-L. von Franz explores these concepts in great depth. Jung saw an oscillation (in the psyche, in reality) - a flickering - between three-four... I find these concepts very fascinating too, esp. in relation to making poetry. If we think of the Trinity - the Son & the Father, leading to the "procession" (the manifestation) of their witness & "advocate", the Holy Spirit (the very spirit of God in the body of the Church) - perhaps the matrix of that body - be it the Virgin Mary, the center of the earth, the center of the church, the center of our own individual soul - could be thought of as the "fourth". I think Jung might assent to this (though I'm by no means an expert, or even very familiar with his complex work). Where I hesitate to "follow" Jung is that sometimes in reading him I sense a curious kind of gnostic pedantry at work : the "explanation" of mysteries takes the place of a more active, direct commitment to the historical, actual embodiment of faith.
I'm probably not being fair to Jung. After all, Jesus himself says "God is Spirit and truth : & those who worship him do so in spirit and truth" - and there's something heroic about his liminal truth-search into the dark underside of the human mind. Often enough he prefaces his writings with a disclaimer : they are psychology, not theology. Maybe it's my own problem : a personal hesitancy to grapple with some of my own "unconsciousness".
I have to say I'm deep into Number and Time, though. Franz's discussion of the numerical dimensions of Chinese thought - the mandalas of number from the I Ching etc. - is very absorbing. Having just finished a very very long poem designed ornately around a symbolic number (the atomic number of Lanthanum, #57) - I feel an affinity here...
p.s. (a few hrs later.) I'd like to summarize with a little more precision what appeals to me in M-L von Franz's Jungian approach, and what gives me pause on the other hand. One of the main themes of Number and Time is the view of number as a mediator or mid-point between the psychic and the physical; Franz examines ancient Chinese modes of divination as representing an approach to reality which is irreducibly personal. The aim of divination is to examine the "field" of phenomena (by numbering) at a certain moment in time, in order to understand its meaning for the person for whom the die are cast. The play of chance allows for the decree of fate. Franz explores how this attitude is not that different from certain streams in 20th-cent. physics; time & space and physical phenomena are inseparable from the position of the observer (I'm drastically simplifying Franz's thesis here). She concludes (in a Jungian mode) that the ultimate meaning of phenomena involves the person, the self - perhaps in a dramatic analogy to the cosmological or collective Self at the creative source of all phenomena. These are "fields" which cannot be objectified or depersonalized. This I can agree with, I think : & it rhymes with my sense of the epistemology of Michael Polanyi (in Personal Knowledge and other writings).
What I am less taken with, in the Jungian approach, is the idea of a collective unconscious, structured by fixed "archetypes" shared by all human beings, and unified by an unknowable Self (in the unconscious) with which the ego seeks to be (re)integrated. There may indeed be certain "constellations" of mythological projections, representing durable aspects of human nature & personality : I'm just not sure I would grant them autonomy within an unconscious "structure". To do so seems to lead in the direction of what I was trying to describe above as Jung's turn to abstraction or gnostic "knowledge" in the description of ultimate Reality. Again, this is probably being unfair to Jung, a many-sided, subtle thinker if there ever was one. Yet for me the ultimate Reality does not "reside" in the unconscious, or in any identifiable metaphysical "place" or intellectual formulation. The ultimate Reality is not an objectively describable "Self" (no matter how awesome or obscure) : it is a relation between persons and Persons, not fixed by anything other than agape, caritas, love.
Again, to repeat : I'm not representing either Franz or Jung very thoroughly or accurately here. I'm just responding to them, informally, provisionally (this is a conversation, not a paper).
11.09.2012
Jesus Thoughts (12) : & Jimi Hendrix, too
Well I stand up next to a mountain
Chop it down with the edge of my hand
- Jimi Hendrix, "Voodoo Child"
“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.
- Gospel of Matthew
I don't think I can stand up next to a mountain and tell it to jump into the sea (though I'm sure Jimi Hendrix could). This is because I don't believe I myself am capable of doing that. If I did, I certainly would tell a mountain to jump into the sea - especially if it happened on a Friday afternoon after working all day in a library. Tossing a mountain into Narragansett Bay would be a nice change of routine.
& yet I do have faith in God (for which I'm grateful). It's grown more firm over time - maybe I've ripened somehow. Perhaps I'm fooling myself, but I feel less enmeshed in my own web of mistakes, troubles & distractions than I did when I was young (now I've jinxed myself! Watch that mountain fall on my head).
My faith is like a GPS system, or a lighthouse projecting beams into the imponderable fog around me. My imagination projects my conjectures about things... I model my hunches based on what I believe to be the case.
What do I see through these faith-goggles? I see a kaleidoscope of millions of people like me, billions of individual faces of persons; & I see how much I don't see : that is to say, what I (with my partially-blind vision) comprehend about people and persons is extremely limited, distorted, vague & fuzzy. What I comprehend about persons is really only a surface sketch, or a mental analogy, of that mysterious substantial something, the "I am" of each individual. & I believe the person per se is more profound & substantial than I can project or imagine.
So I believe in this world of a cloud of leaves of persons, flowing & standing together in a mystery of planetary time & space, heading through suffering experience on paths toward deeper encounters, clearer understanding, more light, more light. I see an almost Dantesque image of swirling circles of affectionate persons, joined together by a natural & supernatural agape - Dante's Man, the animale compagnevole (the friendly animal) : in a communion beyond time & space, transcending timespace - what Walt Whitman humorously celebrated as "adhesiveness".
I sense these lifting circles of spiritual joy - something seraphic, angelic - rising through time, as each one of those persons lifts up their own cross of spirit & truth - that is, the cross of showing forth love for God, neighbor, enemy - offering service to others, denying oneself... I see the outcome of those hidden good deeds ("as ye sow, so shall ye reap;" & "to those who give, shall more be given : good measure, overflowing, shall be poured into their lap"). I see the invisible, unacknowledged, humble works of service & charity carried out now and at each moment everywhere by millions upon millions of such persons on earth, of whatever tribe or faith, human beings...
I see humanity being transfigured in toto by the Word of God as a shared bread & wine of joy & a "peace which passeth understanding" - a transfiguration which is the purpose and telos of the earth itself, its "birth-pangs" in time & history : this is God building the human house on earth, through the Word become Person & arriving amongst us....
... & Jimi Hendrix too. Toot-toot! Tout suite. Laissez les bons temps roulez.
Chop it down with the edge of my hand
- Jimi Hendrix, "Voodoo Child"
“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.
- Gospel of Matthew
I don't think I can stand up next to a mountain and tell it to jump into the sea (though I'm sure Jimi Hendrix could). This is because I don't believe I myself am capable of doing that. If I did, I certainly would tell a mountain to jump into the sea - especially if it happened on a Friday afternoon after working all day in a library. Tossing a mountain into Narragansett Bay would be a nice change of routine.
& yet I do have faith in God (for which I'm grateful). It's grown more firm over time - maybe I've ripened somehow. Perhaps I'm fooling myself, but I feel less enmeshed in my own web of mistakes, troubles & distractions than I did when I was young (now I've jinxed myself! Watch that mountain fall on my head).
My faith is like a GPS system, or a lighthouse projecting beams into the imponderable fog around me. My imagination projects my conjectures about things... I model my hunches based on what I believe to be the case.
What do I see through these faith-goggles? I see a kaleidoscope of millions of people like me, billions of individual faces of persons; & I see how much I don't see : that is to say, what I (with my partially-blind vision) comprehend about people and persons is extremely limited, distorted, vague & fuzzy. What I comprehend about persons is really only a surface sketch, or a mental analogy, of that mysterious substantial something, the "I am" of each individual. & I believe the person per se is more profound & substantial than I can project or imagine.
So I believe in this world of a cloud of leaves of persons, flowing & standing together in a mystery of planetary time & space, heading through suffering experience on paths toward deeper encounters, clearer understanding, more light, more light. I see an almost Dantesque image of swirling circles of affectionate persons, joined together by a natural & supernatural agape - Dante's Man, the animale compagnevole (the friendly animal) : in a communion beyond time & space, transcending timespace - what Walt Whitman humorously celebrated as "adhesiveness".
I sense these lifting circles of spiritual joy - something seraphic, angelic - rising through time, as each one of those persons lifts up their own cross of spirit & truth - that is, the cross of showing forth love for God, neighbor, enemy - offering service to others, denying oneself... I see the outcome of those hidden good deeds ("as ye sow, so shall ye reap;" & "to those who give, shall more be given : good measure, overflowing, shall be poured into their lap"). I see the invisible, unacknowledged, humble works of service & charity carried out now and at each moment everywhere by millions upon millions of such persons on earth, of whatever tribe or faith, human beings...
I see humanity being transfigured in toto by the Word of God as a shared bread & wine of joy & a "peace which passeth understanding" - a transfiguration which is the purpose and telos of the earth itself, its "birth-pangs" in time & history : this is God building the human house on earth, through the Word become Person & arriving amongst us....
... & Jimi Hendrix too. Toot-toot! Tout suite. Laissez les bons temps roulez.
Reply to Brandon Brown & the Harriet blog
Harriet, the popular poetry website managed by the mighty Poetry Foundation, recently featured a "Craft Work" posting by Brandon Brown. Brandon fashions his essay in reply to some comments I had posted to a previous Harriet feature, way back in February, 2010 (which was a dialogue on the art of translation between Brown and David Larsen). So I'd like to respond briefly to this recent article.
(As an aside, it seems slightly ironic to me that the editors of Harriet, after closing down their "comments" function and no longer allowing online discussion, would feature an article whose entire argument is a response to some comments posted there over two years ago.)
First, I apologize to Brandon Brown for giving him the impression that I was tarring him personally as "effete, decadent." For despite his claims to the contrary, his essay is in fact a light-hearted parody of his own "decadent" lifestyle. He seems to have taken my comments to heart indeed. My criticisms of Brown & Larsen's positions were most definitely not meant to be "about" Brown & Larsen : they reflect differing views on the craft of translation, & nothing more. Again, I'm sorry if my oftimes grouchy-old-guy manner hurt anyone's feelings.
As for the substance of these debates, though, my own view remains the same. Brown & Larsen's take on translation seems to participate in trendy recent currents in the American poetry scene. They involve different kinds of procedural interventions, meant to detach art from perceived outdated modes of originality, uniqueness, personality, and willed craft. "Conceptual poetry", "uncreative writing", chance operations based on appropriation of prior texts, parodies and pop-cult travesties of "traditional" works - this is the mode in which Brown & Larsen participate. They represent a generation following in the footsteps of Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein & the "Language" school, who sought to replace the conventional "creative writing" styles of the 1970s with methods modeled on postmodern theory (abstraction, displacement, non-referentiality, simulacra, etc. etc.).
Both generations piggyback on the 20th-century zeitgeist of Western science, in which "objective" technical knowledge is rooted in abstraction, de-personalization, and a detachment of language from direct representation of things. Western science deals in aggregates, probabilities and statistics, rather than distinct entities or individualities. (This reigning zeitgeist, however, is not actually congruent with the most advanced thinking in 20th century physics and mathematics. See a little-known work by Marie von Franz, Number and Time, for a terrific comparative exploration of Western & Chinese science/philosophy.)
Works of poetry and art, like ancient China's oracles and modes of divination, are rooted in distinction : an irreducible uniqueness and singularity. Art is an expression of wholeness, or a vision of the whole, by way of the particular : the unique moment : the incomparable person, place or thing. Art is a conjunction of opposites : the one with the many, the specific with the general. These may sound like commonplaces, conventional cliches : but the attitude one takes toward the unique and incomparable has implications for the art of translation.
There is no doubt that chance and creative spontaneity play a huge role in both art and science. But translation and the making of original poetry are two different activities. Original poetry subsists in a particular milieu : a distinct language, culture, landscape and historical time. Poetry emerges and speaks from that distinct milieu. It is from that irreducible field that poetry addresses our own particular place and time.
The only real conversation involves a recognition of the other : an acknowledgement of a personhood distinct and different from our own. The only real learning that takes place involves an encounter with something different, something unknown.
The principles I'm trying to sketch out here seem to be rejected by the trends in poetry and translation represented by Brown & Larsen. When Brown (half in jest, I suppose) proclaims an art of translation based in a "revolt" against the quasi-political or ideological "sovereignty" of the original work, I read this as an admission of cultural solipsism. We are not going to encounter the original, by way of an effort to understand a foreign language or a different culture. We are going to forgo any attempt (however limited & imperfect) to transmit the values of a foreign literary text into our own language. Instead we are simply going to appropriate chunks of already pre-translated versions, or untranslated originals, and absorb them into our own creative projects - leaving the original and its distinct milieu lying in the dust. We are not really interested in the other writing, the other culture, or interested in trying to share it by way of an equivalence : we don't actually believe in the substance of translation, which is that literary values can be shared (in a limited, imperfect way) across different languages.
Paradoxically, the capacity to transmit and exchange poetry and literature depends on an a recognition of the irreducible singularity and otherness of the works we are trying to share. It seems ironic to me that American poets would, even in jest, dispute the ideological "sovereignty" of a work in another language, from another land. Here we are, in the great & powerful United States, pathetically unwilling and unable to master diverse foreign languages, incurious about history, geography, and just about anything outside our own sophomoric pop-cult narcissism. How sad.
(As an aside, it seems slightly ironic to me that the editors of Harriet, after closing down their "comments" function and no longer allowing online discussion, would feature an article whose entire argument is a response to some comments posted there over two years ago.)
First, I apologize to Brandon Brown for giving him the impression that I was tarring him personally as "effete, decadent." For despite his claims to the contrary, his essay is in fact a light-hearted parody of his own "decadent" lifestyle. He seems to have taken my comments to heart indeed. My criticisms of Brown & Larsen's positions were most definitely not meant to be "about" Brown & Larsen : they reflect differing views on the craft of translation, & nothing more. Again, I'm sorry if my oftimes grouchy-old-guy manner hurt anyone's feelings.
As for the substance of these debates, though, my own view remains the same. Brown & Larsen's take on translation seems to participate in trendy recent currents in the American poetry scene. They involve different kinds of procedural interventions, meant to detach art from perceived outdated modes of originality, uniqueness, personality, and willed craft. "Conceptual poetry", "uncreative writing", chance operations based on appropriation of prior texts, parodies and pop-cult travesties of "traditional" works - this is the mode in which Brown & Larsen participate. They represent a generation following in the footsteps of Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein & the "Language" school, who sought to replace the conventional "creative writing" styles of the 1970s with methods modeled on postmodern theory (abstraction, displacement, non-referentiality, simulacra, etc. etc.).
Both generations piggyback on the 20th-century zeitgeist of Western science, in which "objective" technical knowledge is rooted in abstraction, de-personalization, and a detachment of language from direct representation of things. Western science deals in aggregates, probabilities and statistics, rather than distinct entities or individualities. (This reigning zeitgeist, however, is not actually congruent with the most advanced thinking in 20th century physics and mathematics. See a little-known work by Marie von Franz, Number and Time, for a terrific comparative exploration of Western & Chinese science/philosophy.)
Works of poetry and art, like ancient China's oracles and modes of divination, are rooted in distinction : an irreducible uniqueness and singularity. Art is an expression of wholeness, or a vision of the whole, by way of the particular : the unique moment : the incomparable person, place or thing. Art is a conjunction of opposites : the one with the many, the specific with the general. These may sound like commonplaces, conventional cliches : but the attitude one takes toward the unique and incomparable has implications for the art of translation.
There is no doubt that chance and creative spontaneity play a huge role in both art and science. But translation and the making of original poetry are two different activities. Original poetry subsists in a particular milieu : a distinct language, culture, landscape and historical time. Poetry emerges and speaks from that distinct milieu. It is from that irreducible field that poetry addresses our own particular place and time.
The only real conversation involves a recognition of the other : an acknowledgement of a personhood distinct and different from our own. The only real learning that takes place involves an encounter with something different, something unknown.
The principles I'm trying to sketch out here seem to be rejected by the trends in poetry and translation represented by Brown & Larsen. When Brown (half in jest, I suppose) proclaims an art of translation based in a "revolt" against the quasi-political or ideological "sovereignty" of the original work, I read this as an admission of cultural solipsism. We are not going to encounter the original, by way of an effort to understand a foreign language or a different culture. We are going to forgo any attempt (however limited & imperfect) to transmit the values of a foreign literary text into our own language. Instead we are simply going to appropriate chunks of already pre-translated versions, or untranslated originals, and absorb them into our own creative projects - leaving the original and its distinct milieu lying in the dust. We are not really interested in the other writing, the other culture, or interested in trying to share it by way of an equivalence : we don't actually believe in the substance of translation, which is that literary values can be shared (in a limited, imperfect way) across different languages.
Paradoxically, the capacity to transmit and exchange poetry and literature depends on an a recognition of the irreducible singularity and otherness of the works we are trying to share. It seems ironic to me that American poets would, even in jest, dispute the ideological "sovereignty" of a work in another language, from another land. Here we are, in the great & powerful United States, pathetically unwilling and unable to master diverse foreign languages, incurious about history, geography, and just about anything outside our own sophomoric pop-cult narcissism. How sad.
11.08.2012
Jesus Thoughts (11) : on a Bruegel day
Fleeting short thoughts this morning, at work. Glancing out the library window, at a Bruegelish autumn scene : snow on the rooftops, the Unitarian steeple. Low clouds roving up from the south (Narragansett Bay); a few flickers of gold leaf flaking off the maple trees; huddled shrouded monkish people walking by, leaning into the wind.
The recurrent, obscure & pleasant fantasy-sensation of drifting into the seamless continuum of a Bruegel landscape. Or is it a sense of heavy stones dusted with snow in the Middle Ages. Or is it a sense of a time-warp, an anachronism, a synchronicity. Or is it just an imaginary (willfully imagined) feeling of stillness : of Time slowing down, the wheel coming to a halt.
Forgive me for my self-indulgence here; maybe I'm just an old monkish librarian. Thinking this morning of one of Jesus' parables of the kingdom of heaven (& I've probably got it slightly wrong, you'd better look it up). Here's my rough paraphrase :
The Kingdom of God is as when a rich householder throws a wedding feast. He invites all his friends, all the rich & powerful & intelligent, the priests, the scribes, the lords; but nobody shows up. So angrily he throw open the doors and invites everybody in : sinners, criminals, the sick, the homeless, the poor. & they flock inside, happily celebrate with their host. But one young man shows up without a wedding outfit : the servants of the householder confront him : "What? No wedding suit?" & toss him out. & so it will be for each & all, when the Eternal comes upon you.
"When the Eternal comes." What does this mean?
To repeat : I think Jesus believed he was the Messiah, the Son of the Most High - & understood what it meant, its implications. One of those consequences was that "in his name" - in his name - salvation, healing & blessings were coming into the world. What was "his name"? Among other things, it was the sign of his individual personhood. Through the action of God coming into the world as an actual person, the form of the individual human life, the life of the person, is blessed, is made holy. As it's been put in another way : Man as the original Adamic "image of God" is cleaned, polished and restored through the "name" (the personhood) of Jesus.
Once he began his "public" career, Jesus lived his life as a sacrificial priest, making a sacrifice of his life : & in doing so, every such public act became symbolic, a dramatic sign. The life he lived became framed within the aegis of its end : he was moving toward his own death, he was moving into the dimension of eternity.
And there must be an "eternal" dimension to every person's life. The Bible, the "Word", sets up a kind of light-reflective mirror. On the one hand, we see the outward, "objective" traces of the historical record, the chronicle of the radiating vibrations from Jesus' actual life on earth. On the other hand, in the mirror of the word, we sense the inward meaning of the Gospel message as it impinges on own personal consciousness (within our "subjectivity"). A curious doubleness, a complementarity of inner & outer weaves itself together in this "mirror" Logos.
I'm looking out the window, at the wintry Bruegel-world. Sensing strange oneness, underlying time & distance : like these dark red-gold leaves, flying, floating & clustering everywhere, pervasive, omnipresent - under a worn old lamb-statue, leaning out from a cathedral door. "When the Eternal comes..." (will I have my wedding coat?).
The recurrent, obscure & pleasant fantasy-sensation of drifting into the seamless continuum of a Bruegel landscape. Or is it a sense of heavy stones dusted with snow in the Middle Ages. Or is it a sense of a time-warp, an anachronism, a synchronicity. Or is it just an imaginary (willfully imagined) feeling of stillness : of Time slowing down, the wheel coming to a halt.
Forgive me for my self-indulgence here; maybe I'm just an old monkish librarian. Thinking this morning of one of Jesus' parables of the kingdom of heaven (& I've probably got it slightly wrong, you'd better look it up). Here's my rough paraphrase :
The Kingdom of God is as when a rich householder throws a wedding feast. He invites all his friends, all the rich & powerful & intelligent, the priests, the scribes, the lords; but nobody shows up. So angrily he throw open the doors and invites everybody in : sinners, criminals, the sick, the homeless, the poor. & they flock inside, happily celebrate with their host. But one young man shows up without a wedding outfit : the servants of the householder confront him : "What? No wedding suit?" & toss him out. & so it will be for each & all, when the Eternal comes upon you.
"When the Eternal comes." What does this mean?
To repeat : I think Jesus believed he was the Messiah, the Son of the Most High - & understood what it meant, its implications. One of those consequences was that "in his name" - in his name - salvation, healing & blessings were coming into the world. What was "his name"? Among other things, it was the sign of his individual personhood. Through the action of God coming into the world as an actual person, the form of the individual human life, the life of the person, is blessed, is made holy. As it's been put in another way : Man as the original Adamic "image of God" is cleaned, polished and restored through the "name" (the personhood) of Jesus.
Once he began his "public" career, Jesus lived his life as a sacrificial priest, making a sacrifice of his life : & in doing so, every such public act became symbolic, a dramatic sign. The life he lived became framed within the aegis of its end : he was moving toward his own death, he was moving into the dimension of eternity.
And there must be an "eternal" dimension to every person's life. The Bible, the "Word", sets up a kind of light-reflective mirror. On the one hand, we see the outward, "objective" traces of the historical record, the chronicle of the radiating vibrations from Jesus' actual life on earth. On the other hand, in the mirror of the word, we sense the inward meaning of the Gospel message as it impinges on own personal consciousness (within our "subjectivity"). A curious doubleness, a complementarity of inner & outer weaves itself together in this "mirror" Logos.
I'm looking out the window, at the wintry Bruegel-world. Sensing strange oneness, underlying time & distance : like these dark red-gold leaves, flying, floating & clustering everywhere, pervasive, omnipresent - under a worn old lamb-statue, leaning out from a cathedral door. "When the Eternal comes..." (will I have my wedding coat?).
11.07.2012
After Apollinaire (long after)
As part of my current 2nd childhood project, I've been wrapped up in Guillaume Apollinaire. Much absorbed in his Villonesque, Verlaineish life & verses. Goes back to an early attraction, affection. Here's the first poem of mine published in RI, written as a freshman at Brown U., outside sitting on the sidewalk around the corner from the library where I work today...
FOR MARCH 28 NINETEEN 71
(after reading Apollinaire)
I made this notebook thoughtlessly
out of marks that separate me
from what my feet touch
though it bakes my eyes
each morning leaving a room
I find a lot of people without shoes
are whistling down the street
without caring about stars or dark bowls
a girl's hair beckons the evening on
in the warm air the first fly of spring
drones about my face looking for summer
short-legged people with winter hats
glance at the sun and bounce off the sidewalk
my back to a warm wall
I know how silence defeats love
leaning like an old man
against a warm day like this
*
Now that I AM (just about) an old man, around the corner from this poem (40 yrs ago)...
FOR MARCH 28 NINETEEN 71
(after reading Apollinaire)
I made this notebook thoughtlessly
out of marks that separate me
from what my feet touch
though it bakes my eyes
each morning leaving a room
I find a lot of people without shoes
are whistling down the street
without caring about stars or dark bowls
a girl's hair beckons the evening on
in the warm air the first fly of spring
drones about my face looking for summer
short-legged people with winter hats
glance at the sun and bounce off the sidewalk
my back to a warm wall
I know how silence defeats love
leaning like an old man
against a warm day like this
*
Now that I AM (just about) an old man, around the corner from this poem (40 yrs ago)...
Jesus Thoughts (10) : the Son of Man goes...
Only stray thoughts here today : I don't have much time or energy.
This line from the Gospel of Luke crossed my mind this morning (King James Version) : "And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!" Actually in my mind I had mixed up two different passages from Luke. Here's the other one : "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"
So similar in tone and meaning; maybe they hearken back to a single teaching. The first one is applied to Judas (who betrays Christ to the authorities); the second to people in general. It's been (traditionally) interpreted that Jesus is saying, though everything that happens is ultimately determined by God's providence, this does not excuse those who do wrong : they can expect to face "woe" for their actions.
This morning, when I thought about this phrase ("the Son of Man goes as it has been determined"), once again I was struck by the double meaning Jesus is playing with here : the "Son of Man" conflates Jesus himself, the Messiah, with another, generic sense - the "Son of Man" is Everyman. What happens to Jesus in person is unique and personal; yet it is also representative of human fate at large.
I hear someone uttering this sentence : "the Son of Man goes..." with their eyes open, directly facing their own ineluctable mortality. It is like the voice of someone already speaking from beyond the grave. "The Son of Man goes as it has been determined..." It is a haunting phrase. It is also simply a warning, a word to the wise. What we do on earth has its term, its end : yet, if we indeed have a soul, we will carry the trace of all our actions into the "next world" : what we do impinges on our soul : how we stand toward others will be represented & reflected in how we stand with others for eternity. So it's an admonition : think about how you live with others, while you have time : your love & your hate, your kindness & your cruelty, your affections & your enmities, your generosity & selfishness, are carried over into that realm of invisible quantum-timespace-"spooky action at a distance" fellowship to come.
This line from the Gospel of Luke crossed my mind this morning (King James Version) : "And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!" Actually in my mind I had mixed up two different passages from Luke. Here's the other one : "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"
So similar in tone and meaning; maybe they hearken back to a single teaching. The first one is applied to Judas (who betrays Christ to the authorities); the second to people in general. It's been (traditionally) interpreted that Jesus is saying, though everything that happens is ultimately determined by God's providence, this does not excuse those who do wrong : they can expect to face "woe" for their actions.
This morning, when I thought about this phrase ("the Son of Man goes as it has been determined"), once again I was struck by the double meaning Jesus is playing with here : the "Son of Man" conflates Jesus himself, the Messiah, with another, generic sense - the "Son of Man" is Everyman. What happens to Jesus in person is unique and personal; yet it is also representative of human fate at large.
I hear someone uttering this sentence : "the Son of Man goes..." with their eyes open, directly facing their own ineluctable mortality. It is like the voice of someone already speaking from beyond the grave. "The Son of Man goes as it has been determined..." It is a haunting phrase. It is also simply a warning, a word to the wise. What we do on earth has its term, its end : yet, if we indeed have a soul, we will carry the trace of all our actions into the "next world" : what we do impinges on our soul : how we stand toward others will be represented & reflected in how we stand with others for eternity. So it's an admonition : think about how you live with others, while you have time : your love & your hate, your kindness & your cruelty, your affections & your enmities, your generosity & selfishness, are carried over into that realm of invisible quantum-timespace-"spooky action at a distance" fellowship to come.
11.06.2012
Jesus Thoughts (9) : Election affinities
As it's Election Day here in the U.S., I will endeavor to steer this imaginary conversation toward the galaxy of spiritual election.
Cosmic oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of monotheism, its historical/cultural development, & (recently) on the shifting, tricksterish, unaccountable personality of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible. I'm just going to try to articulate what strike me as the most basic & important features of this portrait.
Three features stand out :
1) this God is a Creator. As I tried to describe early on in this thread, the Genesis story of "creation in 7 days" sets the cosmos within a solar/planetary framework of day, week and year - a way of "domesticating" the universe for Man. The seasonal rituals of Judaism are in part, then, a kind of annual dance of celebration within this scheme. And this feature lays the groundwork for :
2) this God is a Savior. This may be the most distinctive aspect of Yahweh : he enters History as an agent on behalf of the lowly & the oppressed (saving the Hebrews from exile and oppression in Egypt : leading them to their Promised Land). The Bible is in this sense an epic, quasi-historical chronicle - a "transgressive" mix-up of genres (theology, history, poetry). Which leads to the third, fateful characteristic :
3) this God is Universal. The texts of the prophets make two great claims in the latter portions of the Bible : first, that Yahweh is the God of all things and all people, who has called the Jews to be a "priestly nation", offering worship and sacrifice for all nations; and second, that the Messiah promised through Moses is coming, at some future time, to complete the salvation of Israel and the whole world.
When, firstly, the Bible portrays a personal (though at the same time invisible, ineffable) God, who intervenes in history in order to establish his elect - his chosen people - for the purposes of world salvation - and then, secondly, declares through his prophets that he will send his Messiah - the combination of these two elements lays the ineluctable groundwork for the appearance of one who will claim that mantle, bring it to fruition (the Messiah). The Messiah, as the personal "representative" of a personal God, is what you might call "the elect of the elect" : one can imagine the wonder, unease and tumult that such a claim would unleash at any time or place.
I want to go back to the 2nd of the three original characteristics of Yahweh for a moment, since the Messiah is, again, presenting an enactment of salvation. The Hebrew "God as Savior" is distinct from other gods and religions in that, rather than being welded into a hierarchical, authoritarian structure of cultural power (say the Egyptian or Assyrian sacred kings), Yahweh is the God of the lowly, the poor & the oppressed : he challenges, undermines, and overthrows kings and empires on behalf of a universal spiritual relation between every person and his or her Creator. We need to underline this distinctive quality of the Bible (pointed out memorably by Eric Auerbach in his masterwork, Mimesis) : here even the great kings and priests of Israel (Moses, David, Solomon...) are delineated in all their comical human weakness and imperfection - as wholly dependent on the grace of their saving God.
One of the implications of this egalitarian emphasis is that it short-circuits, again, the official mediation of "sacred rulers" (priests or kings), who would "authorize" the relation between human persons and God. The barrier is beginning to be broken down. But the radical claim of Jesus : to be the Messiah himself, to be, in fact, "one with the Father" - coexistent with the eternal Spirit of God - completely dissolves that barrier of mediating authority. The personal God has manifested in person : the circle has come round. Man and woman - persons - made "in the image of God" have been set in a contextual frame of earthly time and space (of history) which incarnates, embodies, this abstract ratio (Logos). The spiritual relation between God and Man has been simultaneously universalized and personalized. The "God of slaves and servants" has appeared fully embodied, as Isaiah predicted, "in the form of a servant" : but in this lowly approach (through suffering), Jesus serves by opening the cosmic door : the "Way" which unites the cosmic Source with the "children of God", and the children with each other.
Many of the early Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom as they traveled through the Roman Empire proclaiming this new "kingdom" of God. But a pivotal change took place when, in a.d. 313, Emperor Constantine ended the suppression of Christian worship. The Church, especially in the East, gradually became aligned with the authority of the State; while in the West, the decline of the Empire and the social disorder caused by the barbarian invasions forced the Church to take on many of the former responsibilities of government; bishops oversaw the safety and welfare of local communities. The development of the Byzantine theocracy and medieval feudalism not only re-established archaic forms of mediating authority between the person and God; they also set in motion fateful changes in the relationship between Christians and Jews. What had formerly been a matter of polemic and religious debate, became a rule of enforcement and discrimination (once Christianity became aligned with the power of the State). The destiny of this fateful divide unfolded catastrophically in the 20th century, when malevolent Nazism exploited ancient religious divides and social enmities, the deep & poisoned well of anti-semitism.
The original message to Man is direct, without mediation of any earthbound authority. It is a personal spiritual invitation to believe and understand. Roger Williams (of Rhode Island) - who called himself a "seeker" - is the great saint of this principle, which he termed "soul liberty." Williams' Rhode Island colony is considered the first government in history founded on an explicit separation of church and state.
I feel a curious personal connection with this particular story, since I was born on May 29, 1952, & thus celebrated my first birthday exactly 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (the conquest of Constantinople, 5.29.1453).
Cosmic oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of monotheism, its historical/cultural development, & (recently) on the shifting, tricksterish, unaccountable personality of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible. I'm just going to try to articulate what strike me as the most basic & important features of this portrait.
Three features stand out :
1) this God is a Creator. As I tried to describe early on in this thread, the Genesis story of "creation in 7 days" sets the cosmos within a solar/planetary framework of day, week and year - a way of "domesticating" the universe for Man. The seasonal rituals of Judaism are in part, then, a kind of annual dance of celebration within this scheme. And this feature lays the groundwork for :
2) this God is a Savior. This may be the most distinctive aspect of Yahweh : he enters History as an agent on behalf of the lowly & the oppressed (saving the Hebrews from exile and oppression in Egypt : leading them to their Promised Land). The Bible is in this sense an epic, quasi-historical chronicle - a "transgressive" mix-up of genres (theology, history, poetry). Which leads to the third, fateful characteristic :
3) this God is Universal. The texts of the prophets make two great claims in the latter portions of the Bible : first, that Yahweh is the God of all things and all people, who has called the Jews to be a "priestly nation", offering worship and sacrifice for all nations; and second, that the Messiah promised through Moses is coming, at some future time, to complete the salvation of Israel and the whole world.
When, firstly, the Bible portrays a personal (though at the same time invisible, ineffable) God, who intervenes in history in order to establish his elect - his chosen people - for the purposes of world salvation - and then, secondly, declares through his prophets that he will send his Messiah - the combination of these two elements lays the ineluctable groundwork for the appearance of one who will claim that mantle, bring it to fruition (the Messiah). The Messiah, as the personal "representative" of a personal God, is what you might call "the elect of the elect" : one can imagine the wonder, unease and tumult that such a claim would unleash at any time or place.
I want to go back to the 2nd of the three original characteristics of Yahweh for a moment, since the Messiah is, again, presenting an enactment of salvation. The Hebrew "God as Savior" is distinct from other gods and religions in that, rather than being welded into a hierarchical, authoritarian structure of cultural power (say the Egyptian or Assyrian sacred kings), Yahweh is the God of the lowly, the poor & the oppressed : he challenges, undermines, and overthrows kings and empires on behalf of a universal spiritual relation between every person and his or her Creator. We need to underline this distinctive quality of the Bible (pointed out memorably by Eric Auerbach in his masterwork, Mimesis) : here even the great kings and priests of Israel (Moses, David, Solomon...) are delineated in all their comical human weakness and imperfection - as wholly dependent on the grace of their saving God.
One of the implications of this egalitarian emphasis is that it short-circuits, again, the official mediation of "sacred rulers" (priests or kings), who would "authorize" the relation between human persons and God. The barrier is beginning to be broken down. But the radical claim of Jesus : to be the Messiah himself, to be, in fact, "one with the Father" - coexistent with the eternal Spirit of God - completely dissolves that barrier of mediating authority. The personal God has manifested in person : the circle has come round. Man and woman - persons - made "in the image of God" have been set in a contextual frame of earthly time and space (of history) which incarnates, embodies, this abstract ratio (Logos). The spiritual relation between God and Man has been simultaneously universalized and personalized. The "God of slaves and servants" has appeared fully embodied, as Isaiah predicted, "in the form of a servant" : but in this lowly approach (through suffering), Jesus serves by opening the cosmic door : the "Way" which unites the cosmic Source with the "children of God", and the children with each other.
Many of the early Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom as they traveled through the Roman Empire proclaiming this new "kingdom" of God. But a pivotal change took place when, in a.d. 313, Emperor Constantine ended the suppression of Christian worship. The Church, especially in the East, gradually became aligned with the authority of the State; while in the West, the decline of the Empire and the social disorder caused by the barbarian invasions forced the Church to take on many of the former responsibilities of government; bishops oversaw the safety and welfare of local communities. The development of the Byzantine theocracy and medieval feudalism not only re-established archaic forms of mediating authority between the person and God; they also set in motion fateful changes in the relationship between Christians and Jews. What had formerly been a matter of polemic and religious debate, became a rule of enforcement and discrimination (once Christianity became aligned with the power of the State). The destiny of this fateful divide unfolded catastrophically in the 20th century, when malevolent Nazism exploited ancient religious divides and social enmities, the deep & poisoned well of anti-semitism.
The original message to Man is direct, without mediation of any earthbound authority. It is a personal spiritual invitation to believe and understand. Roger Williams (of Rhode Island) - who called himself a "seeker" - is the great saint of this principle, which he termed "soul liberty." Williams' Rhode Island colony is considered the first government in history founded on an explicit separation of church and state.
I feel a curious personal connection with this particular story, since I was born on May 29, 1952, & thus celebrated my first birthday exactly 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (the conquest of Constantinople, 5.29.1453).
11.05.2012
Jesus Thoughts (8) : repentance & belief
Will continue as I can with this line of conjectures, come confusion, rain or shine. Gentle blog readers might want to start with #1 of these Thoughts - otherwise the drifts might be too high, the cloud banks too dark. They will be dark enough anyway...
Have been thinking out loud here about the spiritual claims Jesus makes : that he is the Messiah, that with him the gate and the way to God's presence, the kingdom of God, is opened : which is a personal presence. Which means that the ultimate ground of the cosmos is in some way, somehow, personal - beyond our sharpest consciousness & comprehension of what that might mean (in the abstract, anyway : we might experience it, however, in some kind of unknown spiritual trance or rapture). In the depths.
But Jesus does more than simply make a claim for his status, for who he is. His message, his mission, is to invite people to join him there. The NT repeatedly summarizes the announcement he made as he wandered around Galilee and Judea : "Repent and believe in the Gospel (the good news)."
These two go together : repent and believe. Why? Well, for one thing, the spiritual pigeon-code, the message, he is delivering, is so earth-shaking, so transformative - such a shock to our ordinary earthbound perceptions and way of thinking, that we have to repent - to turn, to make an inward moral change - in order to receive it. it's simultaneously a moral and intellectual change which is demanded here.
If we accept the message, we are no longer grounded in common sense or material calculations : we are suddenly participating in some kind of previously-unknown spiritual community. We are grounded in a relationship with the creator of the universe : as the NT puts it (I paraphrase from memory), "he gave men the power to become children of God." Children of God. It's an assertion which requires an almost incomprehensible revolution of consciousness.
And it has a moral component. If God is the pure power of infinite Love and Wisdom - the "whole Good" in a Platonic sense, or the goodness of the whole - then we are called upon to refashion our lives in response to this invitation to infinite love & joy. We're asked to re-evaluate the partial goods we pursue on earth, in the context of an acknowledgement of a new spiritual dimension : the life of our eternal soul. Inner and outer correspond to and influence each other, as in the saying "Give, and you shall receive." What we acknowledge and do with respect to loving our neighbors as ourselves, will have repercussions on our inward state of mind and soul - every day, in every situation. It really is an invitation to be "born again" into a new way of life, rooted in a spiritual dimension which we have until now shunted to the sidelines (a low priority).
It's an invitation, not a command. I hold firmly with the notion that Jesus's message was never intended to condemn the world, but to liberate our minds - from an enslavement to anything less than eternal life. God the father in Jesus's words, is a God of infinite love, mercy and forgiveness. The renewal of repentance and belief which Jesus outlines is a challenge for every person - not an easy path. We all have our burdens of inward & outward trouble, suffering and shame - our selfishness, our complacency, our moral obtuseness, our unkindness, our stupidity & rage, our fears, our despair. "For unless you turn and become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God." - this is a saying both easy and hard. But listen to this : "Come unto me, you who are burdened and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.' My burden is.... light.
Have been thinking out loud here about the spiritual claims Jesus makes : that he is the Messiah, that with him the gate and the way to God's presence, the kingdom of God, is opened : which is a personal presence. Which means that the ultimate ground of the cosmos is in some way, somehow, personal - beyond our sharpest consciousness & comprehension of what that might mean (in the abstract, anyway : we might experience it, however, in some kind of unknown spiritual trance or rapture). In the depths.
But Jesus does more than simply make a claim for his status, for who he is. His message, his mission, is to invite people to join him there. The NT repeatedly summarizes the announcement he made as he wandered around Galilee and Judea : "Repent and believe in the Gospel (the good news)."
These two go together : repent and believe. Why? Well, for one thing, the spiritual pigeon-code, the message, he is delivering, is so earth-shaking, so transformative - such a shock to our ordinary earthbound perceptions and way of thinking, that we have to repent - to turn, to make an inward moral change - in order to receive it. it's simultaneously a moral and intellectual change which is demanded here.
If we accept the message, we are no longer grounded in common sense or material calculations : we are suddenly participating in some kind of previously-unknown spiritual community. We are grounded in a relationship with the creator of the universe : as the NT puts it (I paraphrase from memory), "he gave men the power to become children of God." Children of God. It's an assertion which requires an almost incomprehensible revolution of consciousness.
And it has a moral component. If God is the pure power of infinite Love and Wisdom - the "whole Good" in a Platonic sense, or the goodness of the whole - then we are called upon to refashion our lives in response to this invitation to infinite love & joy. We're asked to re-evaluate the partial goods we pursue on earth, in the context of an acknowledgement of a new spiritual dimension : the life of our eternal soul. Inner and outer correspond to and influence each other, as in the saying "Give, and you shall receive." What we acknowledge and do with respect to loving our neighbors as ourselves, will have repercussions on our inward state of mind and soul - every day, in every situation. It really is an invitation to be "born again" into a new way of life, rooted in a spiritual dimension which we have until now shunted to the sidelines (a low priority).
It's an invitation, not a command. I hold firmly with the notion that Jesus's message was never intended to condemn the world, but to liberate our minds - from an enslavement to anything less than eternal life. God the father in Jesus's words, is a God of infinite love, mercy and forgiveness. The renewal of repentance and belief which Jesus outlines is a challenge for every person - not an easy path. We all have our burdens of inward & outward trouble, suffering and shame - our selfishness, our complacency, our moral obtuseness, our unkindness, our stupidity & rage, our fears, our despair. "For unless you turn and become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God." - this is a saying both easy and hard. But listen to this : "Come unto me, you who are burdened and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.' My burden is.... light.
11.04.2012
A letter from World War I
Grandpa Edward Gould was an artillery captain in WW I. He was around 20 yrs old at the time. My brother Jim recently emailed this transcription of the 1st letter he wrote after the Armistice :
Envelope: (this was probably not original envelope – has a 5 cent Lincoln head stamp that is part of the envelope)
Writing on outside of envelope:
“Letter –
Edward S. Gould
To
His Dad Nov. 24th 1918”
Contents:
“Nov. 24, 1918, Ville France –
Dear Pa: -
This is Fathers Xmas letter with a few events and dates to show how fast we went in this last drive.
After the Battle of Argonne we were sent back to Brocourt for a little rest and to get enough horses to haul our carriages.
We left there Oct. 26 and marched 30 kilometers thru the blackest nights without even a star out. On Oct. 27 we came to our first position for the drive. Romagne. This was a veritable hellhole – The German planes had us spotted and for three days we we[re] subjected to enfilading fire – The last day when the order for the advance came I had just completed a rolling barrage and the horses caissons and limbers having just pulled in to the side waiting for the fire to cease so they could limber up and make a quick getaway - Four German 150mm high explosive bursts right square amongst them. Two of my caissons were blown so far in shell holes we just left them. But it would have done your heart good to see how those drivers of mine cut loose those horses hit and down and there was about 15 horses killed and many of the others had slugs in them and it wasn’t long before we were on the road. I had my hand roll in an ammunition shed and that was blown up and my hand roll looks like the pup played with it but luckily nothing inside was damaged. During all this heavy shelling though when we were getting direct hits on the battery position those gun crews did not miss a shot in the barrage.
We pulled out and up the road. This was Nov 1 and went in a position south of Remonville. This was a regular mudhole and the next day Nov. 2 we pulled up again – Our horses had been in the harness 60 hours without a rest and the mud was so heavy it took 5 pair to pull a gun carriage out to the road.
We advanced to a position in an aviation field near Barricourt. All along the road effect of American artillery on German retreat could be seen. German dead horses were everywhere along the road side.
Nov. 3 we advanced again. You can see by our advances how they were being pushed back, but they put up a heavy resistance all thru the drive. This time our position was just north of Beauclair. My reconnaissance officer was up selecting a position before the first wave had gone over and when we went into position we were only a kilometer behind the advancing infantry. On the night of Nov. 5 we were advancing again and going into position in woods thru a mudhole road when orders are changed and we are given orders to follow close on the infantry and protect the crossing of the Meuse. We came up on a dark night thru Laneuville and about 4 kilometers up the road toward Beaumont. It was lucky for us that it was misty and dark for the road was in direct view of the German hills for quite a distance and subject to constant shelling.
We came up between the 89th and 90thdivision [s]. We could see the first wave and the reserves back of us in the woods. Machine gunners on our right flank burning flares to protect bridges. I never will forget that march. Suppose you have read in the Newspapers of the crossing. I went over to the other side the next day to look around and a long hedge ran on the other side of the river. Behind this hedge machine gun pits were placed one right next to another.
We are back now at Ville France 7 kilometer from DunSu [not sure spelling] Meuse.
Hoping everyone will have a merry Xmas and a Happy New Year –
Yours Very Truly
Edward
Envelope: (this was probably not original envelope – has a 5 cent Lincoln head stamp that is part of the envelope)
Writing on outside of envelope:
“Letter –
Edward S. Gould
To
His Dad Nov. 24th 1918”
Contents:
“Nov. 24, 1918, Ville France –
Dear Pa: -
This is Fathers Xmas letter with a few events and dates to show how fast we went in this last drive.
After the Battle of Argonne we were sent back to Brocourt for a little rest and to get enough horses to haul our carriages.
We left there Oct. 26 and marched 30 kilometers thru the blackest nights without even a star out. On Oct. 27 we came to our first position for the drive. Romagne. This was a veritable hellhole – The German planes had us spotted and for three days we we[re] subjected to enfilading fire – The last day when the order for the advance came I had just completed a rolling barrage and the horses caissons and limbers having just pulled in to the side waiting for the fire to cease so they could limber up and make a quick getaway - Four German 150mm high explosive bursts right square amongst them. Two of my caissons were blown so far in shell holes we just left them. But it would have done your heart good to see how those drivers of mine cut loose those horses hit and down and there was about 15 horses killed and many of the others had slugs in them and it wasn’t long before we were on the road. I had my hand roll in an ammunition shed and that was blown up and my hand roll looks like the pup played with it but luckily nothing inside was damaged. During all this heavy shelling though when we were getting direct hits on the battery position those gun crews did not miss a shot in the barrage.
We pulled out and up the road. This was Nov 1 and went in a position south of Remonville. This was a regular mudhole and the next day Nov. 2 we pulled up again – Our horses had been in the harness 60 hours without a rest and the mud was so heavy it took 5 pair to pull a gun carriage out to the road.
We advanced to a position in an aviation field near Barricourt. All along the road effect of American artillery on German retreat could be seen. German dead horses were everywhere along the road side.
Nov. 3 we advanced again. You can see by our advances how they were being pushed back, but they put up a heavy resistance all thru the drive. This time our position was just north of Beauclair. My reconnaissance officer was up selecting a position before the first wave had gone over and when we went into position we were only a kilometer behind the advancing infantry. On the night of Nov. 5 we were advancing again and going into position in woods thru a mudhole road when orders are changed and we are given orders to follow close on the infantry and protect the crossing of the Meuse. We came up on a dark night thru Laneuville and about 4 kilometers up the road toward Beaumont. It was lucky for us that it was misty and dark for the road was in direct view of the German hills for quite a distance and subject to constant shelling.
We came up between the 89th and 90thdivision [s]. We could see the first wave and the reserves back of us in the woods. Machine gunners on our right flank burning flares to protect bridges. I never will forget that march. Suppose you have read in the Newspapers of the crossing. I went over to the other side the next day to look around and a long hedge ran on the other side of the river. Behind this hedge machine gun pits were placed one right next to another.
We are back now at Ville France 7 kilometer from DunSu [not sure spelling] Meuse.
Hoping everyone will have a merry Xmas and a Happy New Year –
Yours Very Truly
Edward
11.03.2012
Jesus Thoughts (7) : in the beginning....
Improvisation is part of this thread; I'm not always completely sure of what I'm going to say. This is just a journal, Henry's Logos-log : I have to seize the day, free time is scarce... so when the moment is opportune, then here I am. Maybe this diary will accumulate gradually into something of value.
Someday I'll try to write in more detail about the crisis, back in 1972-3, which entirely reshaped, re-oriented me. I've posted scattered things here & elsewhere about it (including an essay in the 1994 anthology for Edwin Honig, A Glass of Green Tea), but much more could be written. Someday. For now, let's just say that - to paraphrase Simone Weil - when I was about 19 years old, I had come to the end of my "natural" self - I reached an inner limit, my merely personal spiritual resources were exhausted, burnt out. I was sinking under the weight of my own natural gravity - I was in need of supernatural grace. & grace arrived, in the nick of time.
Faith itself is a spiritual gift. Without it, the mystery of truth is too deep for any one person. I know exactly how meaningless these phrases sound to someone who doesn't think they believe in God. I've been there. I'm still there. But my convictions are firmer now than they were three, five, ten, fifteen years ago. When convictions and principles are weak, then the short day's distractions, mistakes, temptations are strong. Yet, as Roger Williams well knew, and proclaimed from his rustic rooftop - you can't force belief or conviction of any kind, on anyone. An imposed conviction is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms - a mode of intellectual tyranny.
No doubt I could be dwelling in utter delusion; yet I feel confident instead. I feel my vision of things as they are is growing more clear. Not wise myself (& never have been) - still, I sense my perception becoming aligned with a truth that is inherent in reality.
I say these things because, to repeat, I understand how extremely difficult it can be to attain a rational basis for a spiritual truth. I spent many years in the mid-1970s as a kind of wandering seeker, a dreamer - mostly in a kind of meditative trance (while hitchhiking around out West, or doing odd jobs in New York City or Minneapolis, or traveling to London with musical ambitions) : reading, reading, thinking, pondering... trying to grasp 1) what had happened to me, and 2) how to imagine - realistically - a "personal" divine Being.
Many writers & thinkers fall back on mystical paradoxes when confronted with these issues. I can't disagree with them : I agree (reservedly) with Nicolas Cusanus, that there is a fundamental distinction between the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine - a logical distinction, in other words - which is, nevertheless somehow bridged and transcended in the Incarnation (the union of finite and infinite, of divine and human). But mystical paradox can result in a sort of explanatory cul-de-sac. It's poetry, not prose.
So today, here, I am going to sidestep in my discourse, make a flanking maneuver. I'm simply going to assent to the irrational bridging of that distinction (as the diagonal bridges a square with an irrational number). I'm going to take it, for the moment, on faith. And I'm going to turn (return) to a schematic mapping of what seem to be some implications of such a (cosmological, ontological) logos-design.
To do that, let's go back and reiterate, in a new figuration, the main plot of the Bible. We recall the "hexaemeral" cosmology of the opening chapters of Genesis. The story is metaphorical, analogical - we were never meant to take it literally. When Genesis states that God created the universe in 7 days, what the author is doing is aligning the cosmic, seasonal order of solar time with a theological explanation of that order. It's convenient : it's "fitting" - it fits, since the 365 days of the solar year and the 12 months of the lunar cycle divide into 52 weeks of 7 days. The story that the world was made in 7 days is a kind of hymn of praise disguised as a prose narration : it allows a people, a tribe, a community, to align itself with the cosmic order on a human level - on an ordinary, daily (weekly) basis.
All the seasonal festivals of ancient peoples are simply elaborations of this fundamental cultural orientation. This is what is called piety : the structuring of human works and days on an attitude of trust and supplication offered toward the logos, the divine order, of the universe. The dome, the house, the temple - fundamental, global phenomena representing what Osip Mandelstam (in a literary analogy) termed an attitude of "domestic hellenism" - a radiant push-back against harsh existence with "teleological warmth" : confidence in humanity's ultimate place, a being-at-home on earth, a dwelling.
Of course, we are no longer ancients : we are modern. In the context of 19th-21st century history & science, the voices conceptualizing a remote, impersonal cosmos, subject to randomness, chance, violence, and the finality of death, have grown strong. For many, the notion of a cosmic Spirit, a somehow "personal" God, simply outrages our own rationality. It's a shock to the mind.
Yet the mind itself is the key. One meaning of Logos is "ratio". The poet, the seer, deals not so much in analysis, but with analogy (leading to synthesis). An analogy is a kind of ratio. The fundamental ratio that structures belief in God was narrated at the climax of the creation story at the opening of Genesis : when "God made man, in his own image and likeness". This too is a literary fiction : it was never meant to be taken literally. But it symbolizes a ratio inherent in nature, in the entire cosmos. Here is the analogy : just as the mind of Man (male & female) senses, interprets, & orders life on this planet, so the ineffable mind of God orders the cosmos which emerged from nothing. Body is to mind as Man is to God : and the "Son of Man" is the verbal sign given to the summary, the totality, of that physical manifestation, that embodiment of the logos, the ratio. "God is Spirit," declares Jesus, "and those who worship him do so in spirit and truth." In this spirit, then - in this light - it's possible to recognize the signs of the "Son of Man" as omnipresent and pervasive throughout the natural world.
Suddenly we understand we are participating, mostly without being aware of it, in a planetary and cosmic mystery play : as St. Paul wrote, we are all dying to this "body of death", all at once - & all rising too : into that "third heaven" (the intellectual heaven, above the 1st heaven of the sky and the 2nd heaven of the stars). Into the dimension of the eternal, "uncreated" Logos. There the spirit of God is the living "person of persons" - that is, a personal being more personal than our own deepest experience and consciousness of personhood (as we have known it, imperfectly, in our own lives).
These are the strange metaphysical mysteries I've come to accept, after much hard experience, seeking & searching. I know exactly how drastically they overturn the modern "rational" worldview. But this is the way home; this is the fireplace in the kitchen of "domestic hellenism."
Someday I'll try to write in more detail about the crisis, back in 1972-3, which entirely reshaped, re-oriented me. I've posted scattered things here & elsewhere about it (including an essay in the 1994 anthology for Edwin Honig, A Glass of Green Tea), but much more could be written. Someday. For now, let's just say that - to paraphrase Simone Weil - when I was about 19 years old, I had come to the end of my "natural" self - I reached an inner limit, my merely personal spiritual resources were exhausted, burnt out. I was sinking under the weight of my own natural gravity - I was in need of supernatural grace. & grace arrived, in the nick of time.
Faith itself is a spiritual gift. Without it, the mystery of truth is too deep for any one person. I know exactly how meaningless these phrases sound to someone who doesn't think they believe in God. I've been there. I'm still there. But my convictions are firmer now than they were three, five, ten, fifteen years ago. When convictions and principles are weak, then the short day's distractions, mistakes, temptations are strong. Yet, as Roger Williams well knew, and proclaimed from his rustic rooftop - you can't force belief or conviction of any kind, on anyone. An imposed conviction is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms - a mode of intellectual tyranny.
No doubt I could be dwelling in utter delusion; yet I feel confident instead. I feel my vision of things as they are is growing more clear. Not wise myself (& never have been) - still, I sense my perception becoming aligned with a truth that is inherent in reality.
I say these things because, to repeat, I understand how extremely difficult it can be to attain a rational basis for a spiritual truth. I spent many years in the mid-1970s as a kind of wandering seeker, a dreamer - mostly in a kind of meditative trance (while hitchhiking around out West, or doing odd jobs in New York City or Minneapolis, or traveling to London with musical ambitions) : reading, reading, thinking, pondering... trying to grasp 1) what had happened to me, and 2) how to imagine - realistically - a "personal" divine Being.
Many writers & thinkers fall back on mystical paradoxes when confronted with these issues. I can't disagree with them : I agree (reservedly) with Nicolas Cusanus, that there is a fundamental distinction between the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine - a logical distinction, in other words - which is, nevertheless somehow bridged and transcended in the Incarnation (the union of finite and infinite, of divine and human). But mystical paradox can result in a sort of explanatory cul-de-sac. It's poetry, not prose.
So today, here, I am going to sidestep in my discourse, make a flanking maneuver. I'm simply going to assent to the irrational bridging of that distinction (as the diagonal bridges a square with an irrational number). I'm going to take it, for the moment, on faith. And I'm going to turn (return) to a schematic mapping of what seem to be some implications of such a (cosmological, ontological) logos-design.
To do that, let's go back and reiterate, in a new figuration, the main plot of the Bible. We recall the "hexaemeral" cosmology of the opening chapters of Genesis. The story is metaphorical, analogical - we were never meant to take it literally. When Genesis states that God created the universe in 7 days, what the author is doing is aligning the cosmic, seasonal order of solar time with a theological explanation of that order. It's convenient : it's "fitting" - it fits, since the 365 days of the solar year and the 12 months of the lunar cycle divide into 52 weeks of 7 days. The story that the world was made in 7 days is a kind of hymn of praise disguised as a prose narration : it allows a people, a tribe, a community, to align itself with the cosmic order on a human level - on an ordinary, daily (weekly) basis.
All the seasonal festivals of ancient peoples are simply elaborations of this fundamental cultural orientation. This is what is called piety : the structuring of human works and days on an attitude of trust and supplication offered toward the logos, the divine order, of the universe. The dome, the house, the temple - fundamental, global phenomena representing what Osip Mandelstam (in a literary analogy) termed an attitude of "domestic hellenism" - a radiant push-back against harsh existence with "teleological warmth" : confidence in humanity's ultimate place, a being-at-home on earth, a dwelling.
Of course, we are no longer ancients : we are modern. In the context of 19th-21st century history & science, the voices conceptualizing a remote, impersonal cosmos, subject to randomness, chance, violence, and the finality of death, have grown strong. For many, the notion of a cosmic Spirit, a somehow "personal" God, simply outrages our own rationality. It's a shock to the mind.
Yet the mind itself is the key. One meaning of Logos is "ratio". The poet, the seer, deals not so much in analysis, but with analogy (leading to synthesis). An analogy is a kind of ratio. The fundamental ratio that structures belief in God was narrated at the climax of the creation story at the opening of Genesis : when "God made man, in his own image and likeness". This too is a literary fiction : it was never meant to be taken literally. But it symbolizes a ratio inherent in nature, in the entire cosmos. Here is the analogy : just as the mind of Man (male & female) senses, interprets, & orders life on this planet, so the ineffable mind of God orders the cosmos which emerged from nothing. Body is to mind as Man is to God : and the "Son of Man" is the verbal sign given to the summary, the totality, of that physical manifestation, that embodiment of the logos, the ratio. "God is Spirit," declares Jesus, "and those who worship him do so in spirit and truth." In this spirit, then - in this light - it's possible to recognize the signs of the "Son of Man" as omnipresent and pervasive throughout the natural world.
Suddenly we understand we are participating, mostly without being aware of it, in a planetary and cosmic mystery play : as St. Paul wrote, we are all dying to this "body of death", all at once - & all rising too : into that "third heaven" (the intellectual heaven, above the 1st heaven of the sky and the 2nd heaven of the stars). Into the dimension of the eternal, "uncreated" Logos. There the spirit of God is the living "person of persons" - that is, a personal being more personal than our own deepest experience and consciousness of personhood (as we have known it, imperfectly, in our own lives).
These are the strange metaphysical mysteries I've come to accept, after much hard experience, seeking & searching. I know exactly how drastically they overturn the modern "rational" worldview. But this is the way home; this is the fireplace in the kitchen of "domestic hellenism."
11.02.2012
Jesus Thoughts (6) : a Fri. afternoon blast from past
5.7.2004
My God, my God, my whole weird life has pivoted on this hair's-breadth. I am not kidding, nay, not one bit.
The poetry of Shakespeare & the Bible drove me out of college into the wilderness. The poetry of the NY School got me into college (Ted Berrigan imitations : he grew up a couple miles from my alma mater).
Zen & the Art of Information Maintenance.
voice/text
art/knowledge
Gospel: Jesus (the Nazir - not the "Nazarene", but the Nazir, the ecstatic singer-prophet) - speaking of the future, says, offhandedly: "Knowledge shall increase." Oh, heart/mind. Logos/pathos/ethos. Mimesis vs. analysis.
One of the best books I've ever received was a gift from a carpenter-photographer high school friend, who dropped out of college in the early 70s & came to NY to get into the art scene: The Nazarene : Studies in New Testament Exegesis, by Eugenio Zolli, Univ. of Rome (publ. Herder, 1950). On the Hebrew/Aramaic context of the poetics of the parables.
http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/2004/05/my-god-my-god-my-whole-weird-life-has.html
My God, my God, my whole weird life has pivoted on this hair's-breadth. I am not kidding, nay, not one bit.
The poetry of Shakespeare & the Bible drove me out of college into the wilderness. The poetry of the NY School got me into college (Ted Berrigan imitations : he grew up a couple miles from my alma mater).
Zen & the Art of Information Maintenance.
voice/text
art/knowledge
Gospel: Jesus (the Nazir - not the "Nazarene", but the Nazir, the ecstatic singer-prophet) - speaking of the future, says, offhandedly: "Knowledge shall increase." Oh, heart/mind. Logos/pathos/ethos. Mimesis vs. analysis.
One of the best books I've ever received was a gift from a carpenter-photographer high school friend, who dropped out of college in the early 70s & came to NY to get into the art scene: The Nazarene : Studies in New Testament Exegesis, by Eugenio Zolli, Univ. of Rome (publ. Herder, 1950). On the Hebrew/Aramaic context of the poetics of the parables.
http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/2004/05/my-god-my-god-my-whole-weird-life-has.html
Jesus Thoughts (5) : fields of Messiah
Context is everything. The framework, the field of the message-in-embryo nurtures its meaning, forms the protective husk of the traveling pigeon-signal. Thus when we think & talk about Jesus we have to envision the wider field, the landscape, the ground upon which the Messiah-figure stands.
We could start with the meaning of "Messiah" itself. The root of the messianic phenomenon lies in the character & nature of Yahweh, the High God, the only God, as presented in Hebrew monotheism, the beliefs and practices of Judaism. Two characteristics, it seems to me, distinguish Yahweh from other ancient mythologies of the divine. First, is the monotheistic concentration of all power and benevolence in the one God, a creator-God, apart from whom nothing exists at all. Second, is the active, personal character of Yahweh : as narrated in the Bible, God intervenes in history in a way that can be chronicled. Yahweh is a saving God, coming to rescue the poor and oppressed, raining down judgement on the wicked - in this life, in this world.
This narrative depiction of Yahweh, as an actor in history as well as all-powerful Creator, lays the foundation for the prophetic expectation and reception of a Messiah : one who comes to fulfill all the promises of justice and salvation made by God to Israel (and through Israel, to the world).
And this is the context, I believe, in which we have to build a mental sketch (merely a conjectural hypothesis!) of Jesus's self-understanding : how he himself comprehended his vocation, his mission in life. He believed himself to be the Messiah : the one called upon to fulfill the messianic expectations of the people of Israel. From this original position flows the application of all of his spiritual, intellectual, charismatic and rhetorical gifts, and the expression of decisive moral choices, as he faced up to the consequences of his vocation.
Let's think about this for a moment in a yet wider context. The Jewish "fulfillment of Scripture" in the embodiment - the personhood - of a Messiah shows imperfect parallels with the rhetorical denouements found in other philosophical & religious cultures. Buddhism was embodied by the Buddha. Platonic philosophy culminated (theoretically, as befits Plato) in a "philosopher king" who would implement, in the real world of history, the ethical paradigms of Platonism. Aristotle, Plato's pupil, inculcated a living ruler - Alexander the Great, no less - with the precepts of his own philosophy. What I'm looking at here is what might be (in my admittedly very sketchy and unsystematic review) a general tendency : the expressions of religious world order tend to become personified, embodied, expressed in action by representative figures (ie. the prophet Daniel's messianic "Son of Man").
With this in mind - this sense of Jesus shaping his mission as a messianic fulfillment - perhaps we can appreciate his message itself in greater depth. His message, to put it simply, is that he is opening the door to God. God as the universal, ever-living fulness of an overwhelming love, wisdom & mercy : as the eternal cosmic Mind of creative lovingkindness, out of which all creatures have emerged. Thus, in this vision, we are re-shaped, "reborn", as "children" of this God - children, with Jesus, of his divine "Father". & so we begin to share a new life in this new, divine-human nature. Moreover, Jesus aims to create a community in which "we shall all be one." Through the recognition of our common "creaturehood" - offspring of a divine Mind - we begin to live together according to the precepts of such an understanding - the original Logos, what "was from the beginning."
The message is challenging, radical & strange. It is also rooted in ancient worldviews & conceptions which we sometimes fail to grasp today. But it is "possible, possible"... when we go back to the original comprehension or insight : that is, when we ask ourselves, "why is there something at all, rather than nothing?" When we consider : "What if human consciousness and action, as we know it on this planet, represent a ratio, an analogy, a proportion - ie., a Logos - with a universal Consciousness from which reality proceeds (is given)?"
We could start with the meaning of "Messiah" itself. The root of the messianic phenomenon lies in the character & nature of Yahweh, the High God, the only God, as presented in Hebrew monotheism, the beliefs and practices of Judaism. Two characteristics, it seems to me, distinguish Yahweh from other ancient mythologies of the divine. First, is the monotheistic concentration of all power and benevolence in the one God, a creator-God, apart from whom nothing exists at all. Second, is the active, personal character of Yahweh : as narrated in the Bible, God intervenes in history in a way that can be chronicled. Yahweh is a saving God, coming to rescue the poor and oppressed, raining down judgement on the wicked - in this life, in this world.
This narrative depiction of Yahweh, as an actor in history as well as all-powerful Creator, lays the foundation for the prophetic expectation and reception of a Messiah : one who comes to fulfill all the promises of justice and salvation made by God to Israel (and through Israel, to the world).
And this is the context, I believe, in which we have to build a mental sketch (merely a conjectural hypothesis!) of Jesus's self-understanding : how he himself comprehended his vocation, his mission in life. He believed himself to be the Messiah : the one called upon to fulfill the messianic expectations of the people of Israel. From this original position flows the application of all of his spiritual, intellectual, charismatic and rhetorical gifts, and the expression of decisive moral choices, as he faced up to the consequences of his vocation.
Let's think about this for a moment in a yet wider context. The Jewish "fulfillment of Scripture" in the embodiment - the personhood - of a Messiah shows imperfect parallels with the rhetorical denouements found in other philosophical & religious cultures. Buddhism was embodied by the Buddha. Platonic philosophy culminated (theoretically, as befits Plato) in a "philosopher king" who would implement, in the real world of history, the ethical paradigms of Platonism. Aristotle, Plato's pupil, inculcated a living ruler - Alexander the Great, no less - with the precepts of his own philosophy. What I'm looking at here is what might be (in my admittedly very sketchy and unsystematic review) a general tendency : the expressions of religious world order tend to become personified, embodied, expressed in action by representative figures (ie. the prophet Daniel's messianic "Son of Man").
With this in mind - this sense of Jesus shaping his mission as a messianic fulfillment - perhaps we can appreciate his message itself in greater depth. His message, to put it simply, is that he is opening the door to God. God as the universal, ever-living fulness of an overwhelming love, wisdom & mercy : as the eternal cosmic Mind of creative lovingkindness, out of which all creatures have emerged. Thus, in this vision, we are re-shaped, "reborn", as "children" of this God - children, with Jesus, of his divine "Father". & so we begin to share a new life in this new, divine-human nature. Moreover, Jesus aims to create a community in which "we shall all be one." Through the recognition of our common "creaturehood" - offspring of a divine Mind - we begin to live together according to the precepts of such an understanding - the original Logos, what "was from the beginning."
The message is challenging, radical & strange. It is also rooted in ancient worldviews & conceptions which we sometimes fail to grasp today. But it is "possible, possible"... when we go back to the original comprehension or insight : that is, when we ask ourselves, "why is there something at all, rather than nothing?" When we consider : "What if human consciousness and action, as we know it on this planet, represent a ratio, an analogy, a proportion - ie., a Logos - with a universal Consciousness from which reality proceeds (is given)?"
Jesus Thoughts (4) : Pigeon 40TW194
A blog is an imaginary conversation, & for this reclusive librarian such conversations are important. I like to imagine a bunch of Russians with nothing much to do sitting around a cramped apartment building, doing what they do best, talking. This is not that. My "Jesus thoughts", in comparison to more formal kinds of rhetoric (speeches, articles, academic papers), may be just a jumble of meandering undigested opinion-babble... but it's not formal in those professional ways, and isn't meant to be : it's just me talking, relating what's crossed my mind as I walked in to work this morning. Just keep visualizing that kitchen table, all right?
The brilliant pre-Renaissance thinker Nicolas Cusanus outlined how we inhabit a "conjectural world" - a human world constructed out of our conjectures about the truth. So I'm just sharing my own conjectures. I'd like to emulate that street vendor, the "carver of spoons", in one of Cusanus's dialogues, who reveals more wisdom than do his interlocutors, trained academicians.
In a NY Times article today (11.2.12), Alan Cowell reports the discovery of the bones of an heroic WW 2 "special agent" carrier pigeon, found in a chimney near Bletchley Park (site of British secret code-breaking during the war). The coded message, folded into a tiny red capsule attached to the pigeon's leg, has been sent to Britain's top-secret GCHQ intelligence office, for de-coding.
Thinking about this on the way to work, I received a slightly different signal from Pigeon 40TW194. The pigeon with the coded message, lost during the war after dying in a chimney, reminded me of the Logos (the word, the meaning, the order, the code) descending from heaven "in the form of a dove", and resting on the Messiah, the "Anointed", as he was baptized by John in the river Jordan. Consider a structuring code, a pre-existing Logos, framing the cosmos, delivered to Jesus, and through Jesus, absorbed into the Pentecostal "body of Christ" - the church : represented in the NT as the day of Pentecost, when the disciples, gathered in a "high room" in Antioch after Jesus's ascension, are suddenly filled with the fire of the Holy Ghost, and begin speaking and understanding each other multi-lingually, in a host of different languages. Here is the narrative representation of a prime moment - the global "decoding" of the signal.
I'm well aware that the message I'm delivering is just a far-fetched metaphor (Pigeon 40TW194 to Holy Ghost) - a symbol, a conjecture. But I like it.
p.s. In truth, my own poetry is heavily filtered through bird-signals. The entire plot of the massive long poem Forth of July is triggered by a mysterious Bluejay, yodeling in a backyard dogwood tree.
The brilliant pre-Renaissance thinker Nicolas Cusanus outlined how we inhabit a "conjectural world" - a human world constructed out of our conjectures about the truth. So I'm just sharing my own conjectures. I'd like to emulate that street vendor, the "carver of spoons", in one of Cusanus's dialogues, who reveals more wisdom than do his interlocutors, trained academicians.
In a NY Times article today (11.2.12), Alan Cowell reports the discovery of the bones of an heroic WW 2 "special agent" carrier pigeon, found in a chimney near Bletchley Park (site of British secret code-breaking during the war). The coded message, folded into a tiny red capsule attached to the pigeon's leg, has been sent to Britain's top-secret GCHQ intelligence office, for de-coding.
Thinking about this on the way to work, I received a slightly different signal from Pigeon 40TW194. The pigeon with the coded message, lost during the war after dying in a chimney, reminded me of the Logos (the word, the meaning, the order, the code) descending from heaven "in the form of a dove", and resting on the Messiah, the "Anointed", as he was baptized by John in the river Jordan. Consider a structuring code, a pre-existing Logos, framing the cosmos, delivered to Jesus, and through Jesus, absorbed into the Pentecostal "body of Christ" - the church : represented in the NT as the day of Pentecost, when the disciples, gathered in a "high room" in Antioch after Jesus's ascension, are suddenly filled with the fire of the Holy Ghost, and begin speaking and understanding each other multi-lingually, in a host of different languages. Here is the narrative representation of a prime moment - the global "decoding" of the signal.
I'm well aware that the message I'm delivering is just a far-fetched metaphor (Pigeon 40TW194 to Holy Ghost) - a symbol, a conjecture. But I like it.
p.s. In truth, my own poetry is heavily filtered through bird-signals. The entire plot of the massive long poem Forth of July is triggered by a mysterious Bluejay, yodeling in a backyard dogwood tree.
11.01.2012
Jesus Thoughts (3) : Day of the Dead
Halloween. Day of the Dead. Strange carnival abolishing time & space, life & death, the living, the undead - by way of twilight parades of kids en masque, costumes from other times, other planets. Thinking as I walked home from work today of T.S. Eliot's line from Four Quartets : "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." & of the famous phrase of Pascal : "Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis m'affraie." (The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.)
These came to mind today as I had been pondering (& bloggifying) the riddle of resurrection. If there are countless earth-like planets out there, circuiting a zillion stars - and even if, as Giordano Bruno speculated, God has sent his cosmic "Son" in some fashion to redeem those myriad worlds - still, on the Day of the Dead, that infinity, that vastness, can project a melancholy image : chill the bones a little, when we think of all that space as a theater of final separation from everyone we love & keep near.
Yet there is something bracing in the effort to imagine that daunting "very much reality". Jeffrey Schnapp, in his book on Dante (The transfiguration of history at the center of Dante's Paradise), describes how Justinian's architects laid out the mosaics in the Ravenna church at St. Apollinare in Classe - & how Dante figured their design in his Paradiso. Over the image of the martyr-saint (Apollinare) hovers a tremendous cross-in-circle, composed of 99 stars, with a small face of Christ at its center : representing both the resurrection-body of Christ - prefigured in the Gospel narrative of the Transfiguration - and the eschatological "sign of the Son of Man" which was to appear in the heavens at the Day of Judgement. In the church, the sacrament of the Eucharist, performed at the altar over the fragmentary relics of the saint, enacts a communion of transfigurement : the body of Christ becomes bread and wine, becomes the collective Body of Christ (the Church itself, the "communion of saints"), and finally becomes the unimaginable "resurrection-body", when "in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed" (St. Paul).
& when we circle back to the logical foundation-stones of this "Way", which I sketched very casually in the first section of this thread - that is, when we keep in mind the concept of God's creative Mind & Being as the origin of the universe which we inhabit (as in a dream) - then suddenly the idea of death's finality, the threat of remote separation from those we love - is modified. We recognize the limitations of our human vision : we acknowledge the brevity & fragility of our lives within the framework of eternity & infinite space : in an almost Buddhist or Hindu or Zen state of mind, we behold the road of infinite experience stretching out before the soul. But most of all, we sense, in the love-beauty-joy that we have actually experienced in this world (somehow manifested out of nothing at all) - we sense a promise of future happiness, we feel the warmth, the smile of a cosmic victory hidden within the suffering at hand. (Relativity & quantum physics have begun to alter our sense of mystery in this regard : things are seldom what they seem. What seems infinitely remote may actually be too close to perceive; what we thought was matter might actually be mind; life might indeed be more like Poe's "dream within a dream" - to quote a well-known Halloween author).
It's intriguing to remember that behind the stodgy old stone walls of ancient churches, people are gathering for a rite of communion which is indeed a kind of pantomime, a mystery play, representing the transfiguration of the "body of death" (the body we know so well) into the body of Christ - the holy fellowship of spiritual glee : that is, the grace of an intellectual perception of shared life beyond death, when "Death itself shall die" : and then "Death, where is thy sting?" And "Death is swallowed up in victory."
Here's a Halloween poem I wrote years ago, which glances at some of these things :
These came to mind today as I had been pondering (& bloggifying) the riddle of resurrection. If there are countless earth-like planets out there, circuiting a zillion stars - and even if, as Giordano Bruno speculated, God has sent his cosmic "Son" in some fashion to redeem those myriad worlds - still, on the Day of the Dead, that infinity, that vastness, can project a melancholy image : chill the bones a little, when we think of all that space as a theater of final separation from everyone we love & keep near.
Yet there is something bracing in the effort to imagine that daunting "very much reality". Jeffrey Schnapp, in his book on Dante (The transfiguration of history at the center of Dante's Paradise), describes how Justinian's architects laid out the mosaics in the Ravenna church at St. Apollinare in Classe - & how Dante figured their design in his Paradiso. Over the image of the martyr-saint (Apollinare) hovers a tremendous cross-in-circle, composed of 99 stars, with a small face of Christ at its center : representing both the resurrection-body of Christ - prefigured in the Gospel narrative of the Transfiguration - and the eschatological "sign of the Son of Man" which was to appear in the heavens at the Day of Judgement. In the church, the sacrament of the Eucharist, performed at the altar over the fragmentary relics of the saint, enacts a communion of transfigurement : the body of Christ becomes bread and wine, becomes the collective Body of Christ (the Church itself, the "communion of saints"), and finally becomes the unimaginable "resurrection-body", when "in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed" (St. Paul).
& when we circle back to the logical foundation-stones of this "Way", which I sketched very casually in the first section of this thread - that is, when we keep in mind the concept of God's creative Mind & Being as the origin of the universe which we inhabit (as in a dream) - then suddenly the idea of death's finality, the threat of remote separation from those we love - is modified. We recognize the limitations of our human vision : we acknowledge the brevity & fragility of our lives within the framework of eternity & infinite space : in an almost Buddhist or Hindu or Zen state of mind, we behold the road of infinite experience stretching out before the soul. But most of all, we sense, in the love-beauty-joy that we have actually experienced in this world (somehow manifested out of nothing at all) - we sense a promise of future happiness, we feel the warmth, the smile of a cosmic victory hidden within the suffering at hand. (Relativity & quantum physics have begun to alter our sense of mystery in this regard : things are seldom what they seem. What seems infinitely remote may actually be too close to perceive; what we thought was matter might actually be mind; life might indeed be more like Poe's "dream within a dream" - to quote a well-known Halloween author).
It's intriguing to remember that behind the stodgy old stone walls of ancient churches, people are gathering for a rite of communion which is indeed a kind of pantomime, a mystery play, representing the transfiguration of the "body of death" (the body we know so well) into the body of Christ - the holy fellowship of spiritual glee : that is, the grace of an intellectual perception of shared life beyond death, when "Death itself shall die" : and then "Death, where is thy sting?" And "Death is swallowed up in victory."
Here's a Halloween poem I wrote years ago, which glances at some of these things :
Halloween. The sun’s already down. Everywhere leaves are gathering, lightly rustling and shivering, their ruddy bloom already fading, the sun’s dry wine drunk to the dregs. The neighborhood grows anonymous. Soon the small ghosts will appear, flickering and half–transparent under the streetlights, costumed for space travel, or the Middle Ages. This is that ancient harvest night. Harvest of time, harvest of souls. Tonight the years are buried quietly under a shroud of old leaves, and I am a child too, standing at the door.
Jesus Thoughts (2) : footnotes & leaves
John Meier (in The Marginal Jew) makes a convincing case that the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels really were his siblings (or half-siblings), rather than his "cousins", as has sometimes been claimed.
In which case, I suppose it's quite possible (likely?) that descendants of these siblings are alive & with us on earth today.
*
Jesus appears to have at times referred to himself as "the Son of Man". This is a phrase from the OT Book of Daniel, for the apocalyptic Messiah-figure Daniel sees in a vision. But to my ears it also has connotations of "Everyman". Thus Jesus is presenting himself and his fate as representative of the fate of each man and woman. This chimes with the later theological notion that God has imprinted his signs, his signature, all across nature. & it reminds me of Joyce's idiosyncratic, anti-clerical fashioning of reality in Ulysses : of the layers of symbolic echoes joining every element in linked scales of meaning; of Stephen Dedalus, reading the "signatures" in things; of the pivotal encounter in the late-night bus station between the two male protagonists, Bloom & Stephen, with its Biblical echoes of grieving father & prodigal son.
If the natural and human worlds radiate these parabolic signatures of the Son of Man, then we are all caught up in a sort of cosmic mystery play of life, death, eternity. Jesus, the "woodworker", starts out life in Nazareth as the "son of the woodworker", fashioning wood : he ends life fastened to the cosmic Tree at the matrix of all things.
The other day I was sitting on a bench at Prospect Park, on my lunch break. Beside me I found a little curled maple leaf, its reds and yellows fading into brown; it reminded me of an old piece of parchment. The red-brown veins branching through the leaf spread like a microcosm of the tree the leaf had fallen from, or like a dark brown microcosmic river. I thought about autumn, and Halloween, and the mortality of all physical things... I thought about the mystery play of Resurrection, & the role of the hero Jesus plays there.
These are not original ideas, obviously. But I find them curiously generative... might lead to something more distinctive here someday.
In which case, I suppose it's quite possible (likely?) that descendants of these siblings are alive & with us on earth today.
*
Jesus appears to have at times referred to himself as "the Son of Man". This is a phrase from the OT Book of Daniel, for the apocalyptic Messiah-figure Daniel sees in a vision. But to my ears it also has connotations of "Everyman". Thus Jesus is presenting himself and his fate as representative of the fate of each man and woman. This chimes with the later theological notion that God has imprinted his signs, his signature, all across nature. & it reminds me of Joyce's idiosyncratic, anti-clerical fashioning of reality in Ulysses : of the layers of symbolic echoes joining every element in linked scales of meaning; of Stephen Dedalus, reading the "signatures" in things; of the pivotal encounter in the late-night bus station between the two male protagonists, Bloom & Stephen, with its Biblical echoes of grieving father & prodigal son.
If the natural and human worlds radiate these parabolic signatures of the Son of Man, then we are all caught up in a sort of cosmic mystery play of life, death, eternity. Jesus, the "woodworker", starts out life in Nazareth as the "son of the woodworker", fashioning wood : he ends life fastened to the cosmic Tree at the matrix of all things.
The other day I was sitting on a bench at Prospect Park, on my lunch break. Beside me I found a little curled maple leaf, its reds and yellows fading into brown; it reminded me of an old piece of parchment. The red-brown veins branching through the leaf spread like a microcosm of the tree the leaf had fallen from, or like a dark brown microcosmic river. I thought about autumn, and Halloween, and the mortality of all physical things... I thought about the mystery play of Resurrection, & the role of the hero Jesus plays there.
These are not original ideas, obviously. But I find them curiously generative... might lead to something more distinctive here someday.
Jesus Thoughts (1) : 1st things
First things first. First of all, dear reader, please keep in mind : this is a blog. An informal space for notations. Scribbled on the fly, extemporaneous, incomplete - in the narrow spaces between work assignments, or in the late hours, after work & everything else. It's not going to be elegant or highly organized, I promise.
First things first. Religion, needless to say, sustains a moral dimension - a demand for personal commitment, self-sacrifice, existential change. If it were only a matter of words, of comfortable speculations, it would obviously not carry much weight. I'm a sub-librarian, in an academic library: the dangers of tweedy detachment and abstraction are real. Possibly I've already dropped irrevocably into the pit of effeteness, complacency. You, the reader, will have to be the judge in that regard. Beware.
First things first. In my own experience, to think about Jesus, God, & Christianity, is to gaze into a deep - maybe infinite - well of mystery. "Food for thought", yes... an endless supply. I walk to work in the morning, thinking perhaps Vermont has thrown itself together (to paraphrase Stevens) - that I've seen the truth, that I have a foothold, a slight grasp : only to be pulled up short again by an equally-strong sense of uncertainty - of hiddenness (especially re: the resurrection).
But then, on the other hand, I do admit to having felt something like Poe's Eureka-thrill... Eureka! I have found it! If I hadn't, I wouldn't be bothering with even this rough draft of preliminaries.
First things first. We map reality - a synthesis of imagination and experience. And then we interpret and refine our maps. The map of ancient religion, the worldview of ancient humanity, begins with God. The existence of God, on this particular map, means that reality in toto is rooted in a creative, ordering consciousness. Let's call it (rough sketch) "God the Father, the Mother, the Origin, the Source". We can't understand Jesus without first recognizing this founding "principle". Nor can we begin to comprehend Jesus without knowing something about the matrix of Judaism in which he lived : a culture and faith which was, and is, motivated and devoted to this universal God.
Jesus' mission - to put it in the most reductive nutshell possible - was to proclaim and celebrate the personal, mysterious, loving presence of this God - the Father, the Parent, of whom he was (& is) the Child, the human Son, the Image. Jesus was an ecstatic, dynamic, eloquent and charismatic teacher, healer and leader, all in one (think Martin Luther King and his impact for a partial contemporary analogy). And what was the core of his message? That through himself - Jesus - this God was revealing himself and entering the space of human history, in order to bring all of humanity into the Family whose original is metaphysical, cosmic, and paradisal.
Thus Jesus calls himself the Way, the Door, the Gate. As the looked-for prophetic Messiah, he represented God's "seal" upon human history. As the Messiah, he played the hero, and walked through Death : in the process leading the rest of us into the presence/comprehension/awareness of life and consciousness beyond time & death. The recognition of this metaphysical dimension of "eternal life" was not offered as a means to a detachment from mortal, ordinary, earthly life (as the Gnostics and Stoics proposed) : but to reconcile and balance the material and spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical, time and eternity, soul and body. In such a balance, rooted in vision, each person, and humanity as a whole, can be redirected toward rightness (justice), joy, hope, and peace.
First things first. I'm laying out some basic elements, foundations. No doubt you've heard them before. But to start with the basics might lead further....
First things first. Religion, needless to say, sustains a moral dimension - a demand for personal commitment, self-sacrifice, existential change. If it were only a matter of words, of comfortable speculations, it would obviously not carry much weight. I'm a sub-librarian, in an academic library: the dangers of tweedy detachment and abstraction are real. Possibly I've already dropped irrevocably into the pit of effeteness, complacency. You, the reader, will have to be the judge in that regard. Beware.
First things first. In my own experience, to think about Jesus, God, & Christianity, is to gaze into a deep - maybe infinite - well of mystery. "Food for thought", yes... an endless supply. I walk to work in the morning, thinking perhaps Vermont has thrown itself together (to paraphrase Stevens) - that I've seen the truth, that I have a foothold, a slight grasp : only to be pulled up short again by an equally-strong sense of uncertainty - of hiddenness (especially re: the resurrection).
But then, on the other hand, I do admit to having felt something like Poe's Eureka-thrill... Eureka! I have found it! If I hadn't, I wouldn't be bothering with even this rough draft of preliminaries.
First things first. We map reality - a synthesis of imagination and experience. And then we interpret and refine our maps. The map of ancient religion, the worldview of ancient humanity, begins with God. The existence of God, on this particular map, means that reality in toto is rooted in a creative, ordering consciousness. Let's call it (rough sketch) "God the Father, the Mother, the Origin, the Source". We can't understand Jesus without first recognizing this founding "principle". Nor can we begin to comprehend Jesus without knowing something about the matrix of Judaism in which he lived : a culture and faith which was, and is, motivated and devoted to this universal God.
Jesus' mission - to put it in the most reductive nutshell possible - was to proclaim and celebrate the personal, mysterious, loving presence of this God - the Father, the Parent, of whom he was (& is) the Child, the human Son, the Image. Jesus was an ecstatic, dynamic, eloquent and charismatic teacher, healer and leader, all in one (think Martin Luther King and his impact for a partial contemporary analogy). And what was the core of his message? That through himself - Jesus - this God was revealing himself and entering the space of human history, in order to bring all of humanity into the Family whose original is metaphysical, cosmic, and paradisal.
Thus Jesus calls himself the Way, the Door, the Gate. As the looked-for prophetic Messiah, he represented God's "seal" upon human history. As the Messiah, he played the hero, and walked through Death : in the process leading the rest of us into the presence/comprehension/awareness of life and consciousness beyond time & death. The recognition of this metaphysical dimension of "eternal life" was not offered as a means to a detachment from mortal, ordinary, earthly life (as the Gnostics and Stoics proposed) : but to reconcile and balance the material and spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical, time and eternity, soul and body. In such a balance, rooted in vision, each person, and humanity as a whole, can be redirected toward rightness (justice), joy, hope, and peace.
First things first. I'm laying out some basic elements, foundations. No doubt you've heard them before. But to start with the basics might lead further....
Jesus Thoughts (prologue)
Today is All Souls' Day (with emphasis on ALL Souls) - old Christian holiday, & perhaps a seasonal festival too, back in prehistory. So maybe it's a good day for this particular wayward soul to start a new thread on HG Poetics. Can't promise it will continue, but I hope so.
Am reading 1st volume of John Meier's 4-vol magnum opus, A Marginal Jew - in this layperson's opinion, the place to start for anyone interested in learning more about that Jesus fellow who intervened in something so serious and ponderous as Human History.
I can identify with the title somewhat, when I mope about my status as a marginalized American poète maudit. But let's not mope. When I look back on my life, I see several often snarled patterns : 1) an artistic bent; 2) a boy's fascination with heroism, glory, history; 3) a tendency to ponder philosophical/existential/metaphysical conundrums; 4) an upbringing shaped by parents and grandparents who participated in American "mainstream" Christianity (in my case, Episcopalian).
The combination of these four tendencies - and added to them, 1) a turn to poetry, and 2) an adolescent psychological crisis, a near-breakdown, an "extreme" response to BOTH Shakespeare and the Bible simultaneously - offers background for a longtime focus on the nexus of poetry, religion, history. For example, in the last 20 years I've written several long poems with an historical, "epic" dimension. Part of my motive there involves a resistance to other long poems, a desire to revise or rewrite them. And what is the source of this resistance? My own worldview, my own "inspiration", calls for a different world-picture. Meier's work helps me right now in this respect.
What I'd like to do, and hope to accomplish, in this thread , is to reflect further on that historical-theological (and poetic) sense of things. So we'll see if I can manage to do that.
Am reading 1st volume of John Meier's 4-vol magnum opus, A Marginal Jew - in this layperson's opinion, the place to start for anyone interested in learning more about that Jesus fellow who intervened in something so serious and ponderous as Human History.
I can identify with the title somewhat, when I mope about my status as a marginalized American poète maudit. But let's not mope. When I look back on my life, I see several often snarled patterns : 1) an artistic bent; 2) a boy's fascination with heroism, glory, history; 3) a tendency to ponder philosophical/existential/metaphysical conundrums; 4) an upbringing shaped by parents and grandparents who participated in American "mainstream" Christianity (in my case, Episcopalian).
The combination of these four tendencies - and added to them, 1) a turn to poetry, and 2) an adolescent psychological crisis, a near-breakdown, an "extreme" response to BOTH Shakespeare and the Bible simultaneously - offers background for a longtime focus on the nexus of poetry, religion, history. For example, in the last 20 years I've written several long poems with an historical, "epic" dimension. Part of my motive there involves a resistance to other long poems, a desire to revise or rewrite them. And what is the source of this resistance? My own worldview, my own "inspiration", calls for a different world-picture. Meier's work helps me right now in this respect.
What I'd like to do, and hope to accomplish, in this thread , is to reflect further on that historical-theological (and poetic) sense of things. So we'll see if I can manage to do that.
10.29.2012
10.17.2012
after reading Apollinaire
This was the first poem in a chapbook published in 1972 by the Brown Univ. Literary Board, featuring the winners in fiction & poetry of the 1st annual Charles Philbrick Award (Henry Gould & James Morgan).
*
FOR MARCH 28 NINETEEN 71
(after reading Apollinaire)
I made this notebook thoughtlessly
out of marks that separate me
from what my feet touch
though it bakes my eyes
each morning leaving a room
I find a lot of people without shoes
are whistling down the street
without caring about stars or dark bowls
a girl's hair beckons the evening on
in the warm air the first fly of spring
drones about my face looking for summer
short-legged people with winter hats
glance at the sun and bounce off the sidewalk
my back to a warm wall
I know how silence defeats love
leaning like an old man
against a warm day like this
*
FOR MARCH 28 NINETEEN 71
(after reading Apollinaire)
I made this notebook thoughtlessly
out of marks that separate me
from what my feet touch
though it bakes my eyes
each morning leaving a room
I find a lot of people without shoes
are whistling down the street
without caring about stars or dark bowls
a girl's hair beckons the evening on
in the warm air the first fly of spring
drones about my face looking for summer
short-legged people with winter hats
glance at the sun and bounce off the sidewalk
my back to a warm wall
I know how silence defeats love
leaning like an old man
against a warm day like this
9.03.2012
remembering Edwin Honig
Edwin Honig was born Sept. 3 (Labor Day) in 1919. He'd be 93 today. I remember being at a wine & cheese thing after a poetry reading, sometime in the early 70s, when I was a freshman or sophomore at Brown. I had just read Edwin's long poem "Four Springs", and I said to him that this closing passage reminded me of John Donne's poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" ("O more than moon, draw not up tears,
to drown me in thy sphere...")
Edwin looked at me, & smiled, & said "You're making my hair stand on end."
13.
My heart is a love that I like and dislike a bit more,
a bit less, than a friend.
It turns like a world half-known that is huge and cold
as the moon still-a-moon,
And you don't remember me, it says, because
I've always been there.
You bear with me as you would with a parent you care for
more the less that you see,
the longer you live to remember as younger
than you are now.
Oh world, my heart, as you live and sleep, remember me
less and less,
but bear with me to wake to the stars and the moons
always there to land on
in dreams when the earth, grand mother-father of life,
is no longer there.
8.31.2012
8.27.2012
8.26.2012
8.24.2012
Talkin' Henry Blues #1
One of the big watersheds in American poetry of the last 100 years : the shift in the late 50s, by several major poets, from traditional high style, to free verse and a more informal diction. Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, James Wright come to mind. Maybe this was a second wave, since in the early decades of that century there had been a kind of double movement - first, the rise of vers libre and imagism (spearheaded by Harriet Monroe and her Poetry magazine), and second, Eliot's and Pound's complicated and influential reaction (both with & against) that trend. In the 20th century several contradictory crosscurrents of style were set in motion, causing trouble for partisan critics of one stream or another, since the poets' models and aims were so various and distinct.
The liberation of poetry from traditional prosody allowed for a great influx of new subject-matter, expanded ranges of diction and vocabulary; it brought to the fore all kinds of "prose virtues" (directness, simplicity, precision, clarity, etc.). What it also did was give an advantage to poets whose strength lay in invention : I mean the ability to invent new and fantastic scenarios, plots, and impressions with wit, satire, humor, journalistic immediacy, or fanciful inversions of ordinary experience. This capability - to evoke clever imaginary scenes - went a long way to make up for a thinning-out of the more traditional music of poetry (sonority, resonance, rhythm, rhetorical ebb & flow).
When I look back at my own stylistic models, choices & directions taken over the last half-century or so, it strikes me that one common thread joining my early love for the NY School and Ashbery, with my later fascination with Mandelstam and the Acmeist poets - and tied in as well with my affection for some aspects of Hart Crane, Berryman, Pound - is a distaste for prosaic direct statements, testimonies and observations. Not so much in themselves - I'm in favor of directness and simplicity in prose and ordinary conversation! - but in poetry. There is something one-dimensional about talky, flat, prosaic poems, which almost always puts me off. Does this make me an elitist, an aesthete, a reactionary, a traditionalist? I don't think so (just read my poems). The prosy poets make a claim for commonality, for egalitarian engagement : but I find the stance proves in the end to be mostly parochial and narcissistic.
There's a strong current in American poetry which resists the prosaic by an ascetic paring-down, a further simplification, in the interest of sharp observation, pithy statement. I admire these poets. I think I do retain a streak of midwestern reserve and understatement, which comes out in at least some of my writing. I like much in this vein, but I think it's not for me. I'm too interested in the resonance which comes from multiple layers of meaning, allegory, allusion; I'm too taken with the musicality of obscure images, their emotional freight.
The liberation of poetry from traditional prosody allowed for a great influx of new subject-matter, expanded ranges of diction and vocabulary; it brought to the fore all kinds of "prose virtues" (directness, simplicity, precision, clarity, etc.). What it also did was give an advantage to poets whose strength lay in invention : I mean the ability to invent new and fantastic scenarios, plots, and impressions with wit, satire, humor, journalistic immediacy, or fanciful inversions of ordinary experience. This capability - to evoke clever imaginary scenes - went a long way to make up for a thinning-out of the more traditional music of poetry (sonority, resonance, rhythm, rhetorical ebb & flow).
When I look back at my own stylistic models, choices & directions taken over the last half-century or so, it strikes me that one common thread joining my early love for the NY School and Ashbery, with my later fascination with Mandelstam and the Acmeist poets - and tied in as well with my affection for some aspects of Hart Crane, Berryman, Pound - is a distaste for prosaic direct statements, testimonies and observations. Not so much in themselves - I'm in favor of directness and simplicity in prose and ordinary conversation! - but in poetry. There is something one-dimensional about talky, flat, prosaic poems, which almost always puts me off. Does this make me an elitist, an aesthete, a reactionary, a traditionalist? I don't think so (just read my poems). The prosy poets make a claim for commonality, for egalitarian engagement : but I find the stance proves in the end to be mostly parochial and narcissistic.
There's a strong current in American poetry which resists the prosaic by an ascetic paring-down, a further simplification, in the interest of sharp observation, pithy statement. I admire these poets. I think I do retain a streak of midwestern reserve and understatement, which comes out in at least some of my writing. I like much in this vein, but I think it's not for me. I'm too interested in the resonance which comes from multiple layers of meaning, allegory, allusion; I'm too taken with the musicality of obscure images, their emotional freight.
8.03.2012
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