csuf cplt 324 world literature to 1650 spring 07

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Home Page for Comparative Literature 324

2007-05-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome to CPLT 324, World Literature to 1650

Spring 2007 at California State University, Fullerton

This blog will offer posts on all of the authors on our syllabus. I will post two kinds of notes: general and page-by-page. Both kinds are optional reading, but I encourage you to read the entries as your time permits. While they are not exactly the same as what I may choose to say during class sessions (i.e. these are not usually exact copies of my lecture notes), they should prove helpful in your engagement with the authors and in arriving at paper topics and studying for the exam. Unless otherwise noted, the edition used for our selections is Lawall, Sarah, ed. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd. ed. Vols. ABC: Beginnings to 1650. New York: Norton, 2001. ISBN-10: 0393977641; # ISBN-13: 978-0393977646. A separate text is Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Washington Square Press, 2004. ISBN-10: 074348486X. ISBN-13: 978-0743484862.

A dedicated menu at my wiki site contains the necessary information for students enrolled in this course; when the semester has ended, this blog will remain online, and a copy of the syllabus will remain in the Archive menu.

Week 15, William Shakespeare's As You Like It

2007-04-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Notes on William Shakespeare’s As You Like It

Act 1, Scene 1

The bad characters in comedy tend to be stick figures whose villainous behavior seems rooted in insecurity and selfishness. We aren’t dealing with the ancient problem of evil here, at least not in a serious way. Oliver is jealous of his brother’s virtues, and holds to an “economy of scarcity” model of status and virtue: more love and honor for one person means less for him. On the whole, such men are more like absurd bogeymen than real, complex “evildoers.” Oliver is simply an uncharitable brother. Comedies don’t represent the social order or human nature as intractable—there would be no point in bothering with comedy if that were the cause. We don’t need to worry about providing compensation for insupportable loss, as in King Lear or Oedipus the King. The goal is instead to restore happiness to individuals and smooth functioning to the social order, and to allow people to hope for better things to come. A key concept is balance: how can we bring people together in such a way as to achieve happiness and harmony, even if perfection may be beyond our reach? Coleridge says that literary symbols can “balance or reconcile opposite or discordant qualities.” That’s more or less what comedy does: it reconciles and balances out people who might otherwise stay in conflict, and makes possible a dynamic but sustainable social order. In the first scene, Celia and Rosalind give us a fine example of true friendship that further condemns Oliver’s vicious dislike of his brother. Celia and Rosalind are cousins and not sisters, but their reciprocal generosity is no less complete for it.

Act 1, Scene 2

As for the attraction between Rosalind and Orlando, well, as Marlowe says in “Hero and Leander,” “Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight?” This notion is typical in comedy. The ancient idea is that love strikes people first through the eyes, as if the lovers had been struck with cupid’s arrow. Accordingly, the love between Rosalind and Orlando begins with sudden attraction. Orlando doesn’t yet know himself and can hardly speak to his new admirer, but Rosalind sees his integrity and potential. It is of course improbable for Orlando to win his match against the powerful Charles the Wrestler, but he is an important device in that Orlando’s desperation drives him to go forwards with the match, and thereby he wins Rosalind’s heart. The text doesn’t say exactly how Orlando defeats Charles, though the BBC version starring Helen Mirren as Rosalind makes Orlando’s victory a matter of clever strategy.

Act 1, Scene 3

Duke Frederick is a competitive, ill-spirited ruler. He obviously believes in an economy of scarcity when it comes to virtue: he tells Celia regarding her friend, “she robs thee of thy name, / And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous / When she is gone” (80-82). He is little more than a straw man, and his threat to Rosalind sounds awful, but rings hollow: “if that thou beest found / So near our public court as twenty miles, / Thou diest for it” (42-44).

Act 2, Scene 1

There are different perspectives to be heard about the Forest of Arden, and in this scene we hear the view of the banished Duke Senior, who considers it a place to gain spiritual insight, and seems to like living there for a time. It suits his contemplative nature, and in this he is almost a Renaissance Henry David Thoreau: “Sweet are the uses of adversity, / Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; / And this our life, exempt from public haunt, / Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in every thing” (10-17). But his is not the only perspective, as we will find later in Act 2 and of course throughout the play.

Act 2, Scene 3

In this brief scene, Adam warns Orlando of his brother’s plot against him, and offers his life savings to help the young man escape: “fortune cannot recompense me better / Than to die well, and not my master’s debtor” (75-76).

Act 2, Scene 4

Silvius complains to Corin about his unrequited passion for Phebe, and moves Rosalind, who overhears him. Meeting the shepherds, she offers to buy the sheepfold and cottage, which, as Corin informs her, is for sale. That part of the Forest is for sale reminds us that while the place is a Green World, it isn’t exactly a paradise: there’s “winter and rough weather,” poverty, ignorance, and commerce. On the whole, the Forest of Arden is closer to Virgil’s reality-tinged pastoral locations in the Eclogues than to an earthly paradise. For the shepherd Corin, indeed, Arden is a rather harsh terrain where a man may eke out a living. (Country people often seem to regard the woods this way.) So while Amiens’ songs sometimes promote an idyllic image of Arden and the Duke is pleased with the “lessons” he learns from the woods, that isn’t the way all the characters regard Arden. Incidentally, there is a real Forest of Arden, and Shakespeare must have been familiar with it as a child growing up in Warwickshire.

Act 2, Scene 5

Jaques shows himself a melancholy-making machine, drawing his rather perverse sustenance even from Amiens’ more conventionally comforting songs: “Here shall he see / No enemy / But winter and rough weather” (6-8). Jaques turns this song into something quite different: “If it do come to pass / That any man turn ass, / Leaving his wealth and ease / A stubborn will to please . . .” (50-53).

Act 2, Scene 6

In this brief scene, Adam is on the point of perishing, and Orlando promises to help him. In terms of Christian symbolism, “old Adam” or unregenerate man is aided by his younger counterpart, the one who is poised to enjoy the benefits of regeneration in the Forest. But I wouldn’t lean too heavily on such symbolic interpretations; after all, Adam is a model of uprightness and faithful service, not a fool or sinner.

Act 2, Scene 7

Jaques tells everyone how impressed he is with Touchstone, whose particular brand of foolery he seems to find attractively broad in comparison to his own narrower spectrum of observation. (Touchstone is free to draw out what’s valuable in people, but Jaques’ view is more limited; his insight is drawn through a filter.) Orlando bursts in on the bantering, and tries to commandeer some food for Adam. It soon turns out that there’s more civility in the Forest than he had thought possible, as Duke Senior promises him all he needs: “Your gentleness shall force, / More than your force move us to gentleness” (102-03). As for Jaques, he delivers his excellent variation on an old theme: the Seven Ages of Man: “All the world’s a stage,” he says, and all of us play our parts, which consist in the seven ages: infant, schoolboy, young lover, soldier, mature professional (“justice”), declining pantaloon, and, finally, second child, “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing” (166). This is a hollowed-out conception of humanity, whereby even the most heartfelt passion is entirely scripted by one’s time of life. This kind of insight is, of course, part of the fun in comedy—what is Orlando but a stock lover when he scribbles his bad poems all over Arden’s trees? Still, individuation plays a more important role in comedy than in Jaques’ view, which insistently stresses dis-individuation. Comedy makes fun of us and our pretensions to uniqueness and high-serious significance, but it ultimately accepts us with our follies; Jaques’ melancholic outlook sees life as always being in the shadow of “mere oblivion” (165).

Jaques himself is a stock melancholy traveler. Melancholia was a popular subject in Elizabethan / Jacobean times and attained something like cultic status later in the 1600’s. Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy attests to its significance in Shakespeare’s day. Depression was thought to be cause by an excess of black bile, and indeed the word “melancholy” comes from the Greek words melas (black) and kholē (bile). Jaques, as a melancholy traveler, goes around looking for things that accord with his sadness and isolation from others. So while his “Seven Ages of Man” speech in 2.7 is excellent, it consists of stock ideas and I don’t think we’re meant to agree with it—he reduces life too willingly to its bleakest and most hopeless level, and his simplistic view is promptly undercut by the entrance of the aged servant Adam, who remains cheerful and kindly disposed towards the younger generations. The scene ends with Duke Senior welcoming Orlando for the sake of his father, Sir Rowland de Boyes, and we find that civility, not the savagery Orlando had expected, reigns here in Arden.

Act 3, Scene 1

The usurping grinch Duke Frederick is at it again, booting Oliver out of the realm to search for Orlando, who has earned his ire by defeating Charles the Wrestler.

Act 3, Scene 2

Touchstone, who here engages in an epic battle of wits with Corin the Shepherd, is the play’s “all-licensed fool” who has great scope to offer his perspective. As such, he is a fine foil for Jaques as well as for the lovers. Touchstone employs a kind of schoolboy chop-logic against Corin. The whole argument should probably go to Corin “by a decision,” as they say in boxing. The old shepherd has the innate civility of a country fellow who knows his limitations but also his values, so he doesn’t take Touchstone seriously. Touchstone’s conflation of good manners with theological grace—“thy manners must be wicked, and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation” (42-43), he tells him—seems ridiculous to Corin, who doesn’t share in his courtly understanding of the supposed affinity between moral goodness and fine appearance. (That there’s a close connection between physical beauty and moral goodness is a Neo-Platonist view that we can find in Castiglione’s The Courtier and other key Renaissance texts). Touchstone is also more interested in words than in action, even though he is (unlike Jaques) willing to take part in the play’s marriage festivities. Jaques wants no-one, but Touchstone will soon have Audrey to think of, silly as the match may be.

Also in this scene, Rosalind parries wits with Touchstone, who tries to reduce her love for Orlando to mere physical desire: “He that sweetest rose will find, / Must find love’s prick and Rosalind” (111-12). Meanwhile, Orlando, author of those poems that Touchstone calls “the very false gallop of verses” (113), meets up with an unadmiring Jaques and sends him on his way, dismissing his attempt to typecast the young man as a stock lover. And finally, Rosalind, disguised as Ganymed, meets Orlando and offers to school him in courting his beloved Rosalind—but I will reflect on their conversations in the Forest later.

Act 3, Scene 3

As is evident from his silly courtship of Audrey, Touchstone’s coming marriage to this country lass is more a thing of words, a cover for his lust, than a legitimate institutional act, or at least that’s how the clown at first wanted it—an attitude that shows in his desire to let the incompetent Oliver Martext perform the ceremony. Audrey, as we can see from their conversation in Scene 3, understands very little of what Touchstone says, so there’s no question of their being meet company. On the whole, Touchstone is what his name implies: a sharp stone of a wit who draws sparks and tests the quality of others. He will later join in the marriage rites, but does not much appreciate matrimony’s holier dimension—that key attitude for romantic comedy is left to other characters, most particularly to Rosalind and Orlando, and perhaps to Celia and the transformed Oliver. For Touchstone, marriage isn’t holy and steeped in honor—it is something a person does to keep up appearances and serve his or her own convenience. Shakespeare by no means condemns court life, but here in the attitude of Touchstone, he points out the courtly tendency to slide towards hollowness and ceremonialism. Well, at least Touchstone is honest about his limitations—he doesn’t pretend to be better than he is.

Act 3, Scenes 4-5

Rosalind, invited by Corin, eavesdrops on Phebe as she overplays her hand, while Silvius is loyal to her far beyond her desserts. Rosalind briskly reminds Phebe that she is “not for all markets” and that she ought, therefore, to sell while someone is still willing to buy (60). This match is hardly going to be perfect; Phebe, we may assume, will never love Silvius as much as he loves her, but that’s perhaps rather common: do two people generally love each other to precisely the same extent? I doubt it. Silvius and Phebe it will have to be—they are a match sufficient for civilization’s purposes. Silvius is a good example of the sort of stereotype that Orlando inhabits partly and for a limited time; even so, Silvius is a fine fellow in his way: decent and faithful. Even Phebe’s high ideals, while misplaced, are by no means contemptible. Of course, “Ganymed’s” sage counsel only makes her fall hopelessly in love with him, and we see that firmer guidance will be needed in her case.

Act 4, Scene 1

Rosalind’s deflation of Jaques at the scene’s beginning is decisive even if not devastating. He professes the goodness of his disposition, saying, “Why, ‘tis good to be sad and say nothing” (8), and Rosalind answers him, “Why then ‘tis good to be a post” (9). She ventures that it seems foolish to her to go about seeking experiences that make you sad: “and to travel for it too!” (39) With that remark, Rosalind is on to her pretend/real courtship with Orlando.

As for the value of their dialogue in 4.1, Shakespeare recognizes that for the most part people inhabit types and that a great deal depends on how they inhabit a given type, or how they inflect it. We are not dealing with romantic originality and uniqueness here, and not with the utilitarian-style “bourgeois self” concept of somewhat later times, even if there are perhaps touches of this sensibility in Shakespeare’s plays. There is always some Jaques-like way of describing our present stage of life. The question is, does the type swallow us up, or do we improve upon it or at least inhabit it competently? Orlando (what with pinning bad verses on trees) has played the lover’s type. The present scene, however, shows how the Forest allows both him and Rosalind the time and distance they need to play around with love’s lore and with gender typification. Both will emerge the better for their experimentation. The “masks” they wear for a time allow them to speak and act with frankness and a degree of detachment. Often, Shakespeare treats love as something like a game with its own rules and conventions that must be learned. Those rules turn out to be flexible, but they’re not altogether to be dismissed.

What do men and women say about and to one another? It is difficult for them to be honest in real-life situations, so the disguisings and conversations that occur in the Forest of Arden are valuable to Rosalind and Orlando as they move towards a more complete accommodation of each other’s desires. Rosalind’s characterizations of men and women are appropriately mocking: “men are April when they woo, December when they wed; maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives” (146-48).

“Give a man a mask,” says Oscar Wilde, “and he will tell you the truth.” Rosalind’s mask is “Ganymed,” so we have Rosalind pretending to be Ganymed pretending to be Rosalind: just the right degree of anonymity necessary for her to sort out Orlando’s qualities as a suitor. As for Orlando, those who believe most fully in the ideal vision of love most need distance from such idealism: “idealizing eroticism” is noble, but it has its risks, disillusionment and eventual cynicism being the most severe among them. Orlando needs to be tested: he must show some capacity to moderate and reflect upon his high passions since that is partly what makes a marriage successful. He plays his role as suitor to Ganymed-as-Rosalind with good cheer, putting up with his opposite’s whims and generally saying and doing the right things. As the play in its entirety shows, Orlando’s inner worth is greater than the silly stereotype he has temporarily inhabited: a successful comic hero, he plays a role without being completely reduced to it or permanently trapped by it.

Shakespeare writes perceptively about love as a potentially destructive experience because it threatens to obliterate a person’s boundaries. (“Sonnet 129” and Othello give us the darkest presentations of what love can do, while the comedies deal with the lighter and more uplifting dimension of love, with its civilizing and uniting power.) Distance and reflection seem appropriate as “preventative medicine,” given this tendency of love to strip us of our capacity to define, judge, and maintain our sense of who we are. The playfulness of Rosalind in particular allows her to keep some sense of an independent identity.

Act 4, Scene 3

Rosalind sees her opportunity to transform Phebe’s cruelty towards Silvius into acceptance, and, as Ganymed, orders the intransigent shepherdess to love Silvius instead. Oliver, rescued by his brother just when he is surrounded by two predators—a snake and a lioness—is suddenly transformed. We don’t need to see a painful, penance-driven process of transformation. He doesn’t for a moment believe that Ganymed is male, but goes along with the act nonetheless.

Act 5, Scenes 1-2

In the first scene, Touchstone gets a chance to impress Audrey by chasing away a rustic suitor. In the second scene, Oliver’s recent alteration is supplemented by his equally sudden love-struck decision to marry Celia as “Aliena.” This newest alteration may in part be a perspectival device whereby the brief courtship of one couple appears more credible in comparison to the even briefer one of another—one so brief that it really isn’t a courtship at all. Oliver even tells Orlando that he’s decided to give their father’s estate to him and “here live and die a shepherd” (12).

Act 5, Scenes 3-4

In the third scene, we witness the knotty situation that must shortly be untied: Phebe is in love with Ganymed, Orlando in love with Rosalind whom he sees nowhere around, and Rosalind pines “for no woman” (88). Two young pages crown the third scene with a song about the associations between spring and marriage rites, only to be dismissed by Touchstone’s criticism of their voices.

The fourth scene offers the pleasant interlude of Touchstone’s famous recounting of a courtly quarrel which, he claims, began when he professed to “dislike the cut of a certain courtier’s beard” (69-70). He sets forth a preposterously detailed series of insults and counter-insults between himself and the courtier with the disagreeable beard. But the whole thing begins and ends in words, and they “part company” without exchanging a single blow. The reason? Cowardice—neither of them ever had any intention of getting into an actual fight. So much, then, Touchstone suggests, for a great deal of masculine “honor.” This insight allies him with Sir John Falstaff from I and II Henry 4, and certain other of Shakespeare’s deflators of male puffery. This play is more tolerant of love-driven exaggerations and rituals than it is of honor-based ones.

Finally, Hymen the god of marriage does the honors after Rosalind enters in her own person and clears up the reigning confusion. Hyman is an urban god, so his presence is a reminder that most of the characters will soon return to the court. The right matches have been made, and in any case society demands not perfection but adequacy: it needs “country copulatives” and Touchstones and Audreys as much as it needs the near-perfect Rosalinds and Orlandos. The phrase “as you like it” seems to mean “follow your desire,” so long as your desire doesn’t impede the charitable disposition of things.

Jaques de Boys (the brother of Orlando and Oliver) informs everyone that Duke Frederick has been turned away from his wicked intentions in the Forest by an “old religious man,” and now intends to stay on in the Forest, where he will live retired life of religious devotion. Jaques the Melancholy Traveler will follow this newly retired Duke Frederick; he did not join with the lovers in dancing to Hymen’s tune, and now prefers to remain in the Forest of Arden because he believes there’s more to learn there than at court. Jaques is the odd man out, but he only matters a little in this play. As You Like It doesn’t have the bittersweet quality of the romances, and in general seems satisfied with its sunny comic perspective on life. And comedy is, after all, not only a genre but a perspective on life, just as tragedy and romance are life-perspectives. Shakespeare’s comedies aren’t monolithic in tone or degree of optimism—they range from dark (Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice) to light fare such as the present play, which is perhaps the most perfect of its type in Shakespeare’s canon.

Now that all is done, what exactly might we say is the magic of the Forest of Arden? It’s appropriate to borrow the phrase “freedom and variety of situations” from Wilhelm von Humboldt. Arden has a power to transform people, to alter their perspectives, and set things between them to rights. It’s a liberating place where you can either find out over time who you are (like Rosalind and Orlando do by way of romantic experimentation), as well as a place where you can go and “just change,” as Oliver does. It is markedly different from the Court or cityscape, where competition and greed may hold sway. Of course there’s something of the seasonal cycle’s magic there, too: spring is the time of regeneration and hope. But “nature” is a very complex concept in Shakespeare, and his exploration of it varies from play to play. In King Lear, the King sees Edgar in the guise of Poor Tom the Bedlam Beggar, and declares him “the thing itself: a poor, bare, fork’d animal.” But that play as a whole surely doesn’t tell us we should reduce ourselves to such an extreme; we are not most authentically ourselves when stripped and “unaccommodated” by the arts and considerations of civic and family life. Artifice is part of our nature as human beings, it seems. The Forest of Arden encourages artifice and play, and its magic consists in the freedom to experiment with the styles and types that are undeniably part of life.

Week 14, Lope de Vega, Flor. Codex, Cantares, The Popol Vuh

2007-04-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

Notes on Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna

In the first act, the peasants treat the audience to a “Philosophy 101” roundtable not unlike the discussion between Pietro Bembo and the courtiers in Castiglione concerning the merits of earthly and heavenly love. Mengo “stands up for bastards”—for the selfish and the lustful—while Frondoso and Laurencia are more polite towards the polite discourse of the city.

Still, I think they see through the game-like aspect “respectability,” and they treat love playfully, favoring neither priggishness nor repression, but also not sanctioning complete license. In the second act, we will see the Comendador’s viciously serious attitude towards this game: he sees women as objects, and supposes that “lower-class women have no honor.” For him, that is, honor is purely a matter of rank.

It seems that the bet placed by three characters on whether or not love exists is important. The Comendador and Frondoso display different ways of expressing “love.” The former is selfish and rapacious, while the latter shows much more courtesy even though he is a peasant. The Comendador takes advantage of his martial status—he treats civil life as if it were a war.

The Comendador, having been defeated by the kings of Aragon , turns his tyranny back upon Fuente Ovejuna, spoiling the wedding of Frondoso and Laurencia. The Comendador has lost everyone’s respect because of what he did to Laurencia already; he asserts the ancient chivalric values in a perverted way—rank above everything, with military glory covering for any number of offenses. His values are fundamentally confused—honor has become an empty word for him. The community of Fuente Ovejuna is tightly knit, and everyone asks everyone else’s blessings.

There is a contrast between the two peasants Frondoso and Mengo, but either way the whole community will have to stick together if they are to overcome the Comendador’s violent arrogance. We notice that the kings of Aragon are unifying Spain and asserting central royal authority over ancient feudal prerogative. In the view of Lope de Vega, it is the kings of Aragon who will show respect for Spain’s ordinary people, whereas feudalists like the Comendador obey only their own selfish whims.

The marriage quickly turns into a funeral-like spectacle, with Frondoso and Laurencia carried off to prison. Then there’s a renewal of male honor, spurred on by women’s insults—if the men “act like women,” the women will have to take the place of the men, becoming Amazons or even Bacchantes. That change, says Laurencia, will astound the world—a revolution. The men respond. We then see what Bakhtin might call a “carnivalesque” overturning of the local order, with the Comendador and his henchmen being barbarously, if somewhat comically and suggestively, slain. The women take part in the whole thing—there’s a community barbecue of those who represent unjust feudal authority, and a symbolic emasculation of men like Guzman who use chivalric language and expectations to further their selfish desires. But Lope de Vega isn’t interested in “permanent revolution”—the rioting takes place in the name of adherence to Ferdinand and Isabella, not just local honor (though that’s part of it). It takes place, in other words, in favor of establishing Spain as a centrally controlled, unified kingdom. The law must therefore be invoked to adjudicate the disorder in Fuente Ovejuna. But the community sticks together—the only way they can survive since otherwise there would have to be a sacrificial peasant to offer up to the principle of rank and authority. The peasants respond with humor to the tortures that Ferdinand’s Judge visits on them. Their willingness to suffer actively may remind us of Christ’s active suffering in the Gospel narratives. Ferdinand wisely decides not to destroy the whole town, but rather to pardon them all since they are loyal, and he takes paternal responsibility for them. The townspeople have rejected an oppressive and petty order in favor of a gracious royal couple, Ferdinand and Isabella, who with their marriage united Castile and Aragon and who understand that centralized state power must go hand in hand with acknowledgment of the common people’s dignity.

Notes on The Florentine Codex

The mother is represented in these poems as a kind of warrior and goddess; her pain and self-sacrifice are equated with valor on the battlefield. Even though mothers are given credit for embodying the principle of generation, they are warned by the poet not to take personal pride in their sacrifice or their status. The collectivity is honored, not the individual.

Notes on Cantares Mexicanos

The songs seem to be inspired by earth and by the gods directly. They appear to be composed in an exuberant state, and their effect on the hearer is described in terms of intoxication. The poems are like psychedelic flowers growing from sky, soil, and water; they put the hearers in touch with the divine, with life’s highest purposes. Moreover, the songs should lead naturally to action.

The power of transformation is very direct and strong in them—the hesitant warrior is addressed with transfiguring metaphors; the point of these metaphors is sacred. It isn’t just to explain the unfamiliar by means of the familiar; it is to engraft the hearer into the entire religious system. That’s different from explaining and comforting. It means that the action to take place differs from whatever the hearer may be hesitating to do. And in the fourth song, the power of words is sensuous, physical—identified with the intoxicating scent of flowers. The singer describes nature as a life-world that has the power to take us beyond our ordinary ourselves, and he ascribes the same power to his words. That reminds me a bit of the Symbolists with their incantatory, sacred-word theories about poetry.

Notes on The Popol Vuh

The Mayan Quiché kingdom is post-classical in that the Classical Period runs from 300-900 AD. It seems that the Popol Vuh or Council Book is much older that that, at least in its earliest form. The Norton editors say that the book was said to have been derived from a pilgrimage to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and that it was used as a visionary instrument in governing the kingdom. The current authors are post-1520’s conquest-era, after Pedro de Alvarado’s invasion in 1524. So the Council Book must be brought to light anew. What we have is a hybrid text, therefore: the stories seem to be partly an act of defiance by an author or authors confronted with the claims of Christian Spaniards to superiority. It is partly a protest work, and partly performance art—with the Ancient Word as the thing to be performed. Christian iconography and narrative have entered the picture. There are plenty of echoes of Genesis—the creation story with its emphasis on the ex nihilo aspect of creation, the idea that men were created to praise God, Eve plucking the forbidden fruit, the idea that the creation must be as full as possible etc. But the outcome isn’t the same, and the gods (the Sun God being supreme lord) don’t hold the same attitude towards earth and humanity. Not only that, there is more than one attempt at creation. Yahweh doesn’t “worry” about creating anything, but these gods do; they worry about how the cosmos will be perpetuated, how order may be maintained and light perpetuated.

In the account of the time before humanity, evil anarch-gods or celestial jokers hold sway, but these darkness-loving, deceitful, vain gods are rightly defeated by divine heroes who, with their craftiness and ingenuity, are more than a match for the jokers’ excessive bloodlust and arrogance. The underdogs combat the underworld lords by means of asymmetrical warfare, so that order, light, and respect may emerge. The human order that later comes into being seems to share some of the anarchs’ tendencies.

The gods worry that their creatures will rival them in “distance vision,” so they make humans become narrow, limited, and literally short-sighted. The Quiché account states this anxiety very bluntly, and with no moral justification to back it up. Yahweh’s concern in the Bible is similar, but he makes his case majestically and with reference to the moral transgression of Adam and Eve. As for the creation itself, humanity is close to the earth, close to and even created from the earthly things that sustain it: corn or maize would have been the Quiché people’s staple crop.

Week 13, Michel de Montaigne

2007-04-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

Notes on Michel de Montaigne’s Essais

“To the Reader”

2636. Montaigne is as always slippery—he says he wants to present himself in a natural way without artifice, but a few lines later, he makes a backdoor concession to artifice: “Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature’s first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.” Montaigne’s imaginary reader is his recently departed friend Etienne. Donald Frame makes the point well—even though Rousseau criticized him for not being candid enough, Montaigne is not really writing confessions. The best way to ruin a friendship is constantly to talk about yourself and your own problems. A certain distance from oneself is necessary to the maintenance of friendship, and Montaigne’s reader is best understood as a friend. The other point I would like to make by way of introduction has to do with Kierkegaard’s idea about the incommunicable nature of serious reflection—those who think they are communicating directly about matters of the self or even deep philosophical issues are most deceived. Here is the introduction in French, with Renaissance orthography preserved:

C’est icy un livre de bonne foy, lecteur. Il t’advertit dés l’entree, que je ne m’y suis proposé aucune fin, que domestique et privee: je n’y ay eu nulle consideration de ton service, ny de ma gloire: mes forces ne sont pas capables d’un tel dessein. Je l’ay voüé à la commodité particuliere de mes parens et amis: à ce que m’ayans perdu (ce qu’ils ont à faire bien tost) ils y puissent retrouver aucuns traicts de mes conditions et humeurs, et que par ce moyen ils nourrissent plus entiere et plus vifve, la connoissance qu’ils ont eu de moy. Si c’eust esté pour rechercher la faveur du monde, je me fusse paré de beautez empruntees. Je veux qu’on m’y voye en ma façon simple, naturelle et ordinaire, sans estude et artifice : car c’est moy que je peins. Mes defauts s’y liront au vif, mes imperfections et ma forme naïfve, autant que la reverence publique me l’a permis. Que si j’eusse esté parmy ces nations qu’on dit vivre encore souz la douce liberté des premieres loix de nature, je t’asseure que je m’y fusse tres-volontiers peint tout entier, Et tout nud. Ainsi, Lecteur, je suis moy-mesme la matiere de mon livre: ce n’est pas raison que tu employes ton loisir en un subject si frivole et si vain. A Dieu donq. De Montaigne, ce 12 de juin 1580. Montaigne’s Essays.

“Of the Power of the Imagination”

2636-38. Montaigne begins the essay with the proposition that “A strong imagination creates the event” (2636). The rest of the essay partly confirms this proposition, but not in all cases or completely. He mixes with his own experience the experience of others and the authority of classical examples and folk wisdom, which he sometimes treats almost the same as his own experience. The very first example is illustrative: Montaigne recounts how an excellent doctor, Simon Thomas, told someone suffering from consumption (TB) that gazing upon the healthy Montaigne would make him feel better; but Montaigne suggests that a worsening of his own condition at the same time is entirely possible. Why shouldn’t the consumptive’s good fortune be Montaigne’s bad luck, if imagination is so strong a power in the curing and bringing-on of illness? He mentions also some strange cases: the Roman orator Gallus Vibius, who drove himself mad thinking about madness; the ancient King Cippus, who got so enthusiastic at a bullfight that he grew horns, and the story of “Marie Germain,” who supposedly changed sexes. On the whole, Montaigne gives most of the credit for “miracles, visions, enchantments,” and other such things to the workings of strong imagination. (2638).

2638-41. Montaigne soon steers the subject towards sexual relations—this was not really the initial theme or subject of the essay. So why does he move towards intimacy? He offers a rather comical example in which he colluded with an elderly female relative of some count or other to help the man overcome a bout of impotence. As it turns out, the hocus-pocus routine they develop seems to do the trick. Montaigne draws us towards the idea that we are not fully masters of our will or physiology—many things we think we control happen to us; we don’t make them happen. His main exhibit so happens to be the male sex organ, but he quickly indicts the body in its entirety: “I ask you to think whether there is a single one of the parts of our body that does not often refuse its function to our will and exercise it against our will” (2340).

2641-42. Montaigne also addresses psychosomatic phenomena of the sort we now call “the placebo effect”—tell me you are giving me medicine, and I may be cured even if it is only colored water or a sugar pill. I like the example on 2641 of the woman who thinks she has swallowed a pin—it reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza thinks he has swallowed a fly with his soup, and becomes hysterical, jumping up and asking everyone in the diner “What can happen?”

2643-44. Now that Montaigne is getting around to explaining his methodology as a writer, we find that George Costanza’s question is exactly what he wants to write about—“What can happen?” As he writes, “So in the study that I am making of our behavior and motives, fabulous testimonies, provided they are possible, serve like true ones. Whether they have happened or no, in Paris or Rome, to John or Peter, they exemplify, at all events, some human potentiality, and thus their telling imparts useful information to me” (2643). He exercises the power of reason and reflection on other people’s tall tales and his own experiences alike. The idea isn’t to arrive at historical or scientific truth; it is instead to bring out the difficulty of pinning down human experience to a codified body of knowledge. This is not the same thing as pessimism. Montaigne seems (even in his early phase as a writer) to have combined skepticism with curiosity. On the whole, he is far too curious ever to be a true stoic—no wonder he more or less rejects that philosophy in its purest form. I suppose that he operates rather like a psychologist, except that his aim is philosophical investigation rather than arriving at a cure for “the human condition.”

On these pages, Montaigne also says he writes about the past for a number of reasons, mostly having to do with his own defects—he declares himself “a sworn enemy of obligation, assiduity, perseverance” and will have nothing to do with “extended narration” (2643). But his main idea seems to be that when you write about the present, you encounter all sorts of obligations towards others—what you write or say is immediately consequential: “I consider it less hazardous to write of things past than present,” he says, “inasmuch as the writer has only to give an account of a borrowed truth” (2643). I return to Kierkegaard’s idea about the duplicity involved in treating difficult ideas as if they were capable of being rendered transparent and communicated with others. Montaigne says his old stories are not like medical drugs or present issues—they pose no immediate danger either to the reader or the writer. (2344) This statement may be a way of defending the author’s right to indirection and subtlety—a declaration on Montaigne’s part that he is not communicating anything directly, not teaching anything to anyone. This is a strikingly modern idea worthy of Kierkegaard or Heidegger or Oscar Wilde, the latter of whom said “nothing of the smallest importance ever actually occurs.” And if Oscar didn’t invert Hamlet’s sentence about great enterprises being blasted by “the pale cast of thought,” he should have.

Really what Montaigne has done is discuss a lot of foolish examples and lead us in circles respecting the true subject of his essay; finally, he comes around to making a cogent philosophical point—not a dogmatic statement, but a number of very sharp observations about the complexities involved in human behavior and reflection about human behavior. I suppose Ralph Waldo Emerson might as well have derived his motto—“whim” from Montaigne. ( “I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.” Self-Reliance, 1841.) To be whimsical is not to be worthless—in fact, I suspect that the most serious people sometimes turn out to be the biggest fools and the most dangerous agents in the world. They have too little capacity to reflect upon their thoughts and actions, and insufficient humility to laugh at themselves. As for Montaigne’s role in French politics—in a time of extremism and violence, he promoted tolerance and reason, which probably seemed like pure whimsy to others engaged in their deadly earnest political pursuits and religious campaigns. The fact that reason seldom prevails is no excuse for abandoning it.

“Of Cannibals”

2644-45. Montaigne opens with a good observation about so-called civilized people: “I am afraid we have eyes bigger than our stomachs, and more curiosity than capacity. We embrace everything, but we clasp only wind” (2644). At base, we have learned to covet, which makes us miserable, and instead of living in the here and now, we are always “somewhere else.” All of this comes down to saying that desire and cleverness get the better of us, and that is what we call “civilization.” Montaigne praises simple folk over their sharper fellows: “clever people observe more things and more curiously, but they interpret them” (2645), and interpretation means falsification to some degree.

2646. Montaigne says that we shouldn’t honor artifice over nature, and insists that the opposition between barbarous and civilized is a trick of language perpetrated by biased sensibilities: “each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice.” As for our attempts to transform nature in our horticultural practices, he writes that “it is those [fruits] that we have changed artificially and led astray from the common order, that we should rather call wild.” As with plants, so with manners. We alter what is natural to suit our corrupted tastes, and then declare natural things and manners “savage,” a term connoting extreme disapproval.

Montaigne’s own bemused stance towards the native Brazilians contrasts markedly with this attitude. It seems clear that he privileges nature in the sense of “the natural environment”: “All our efforts cannot even succeed in reproducing the nest of the tiniest little bird,” he says—nature is not simple but wonderfully complex; creatures live in perfect accord with their environments, and show something like collective creativity in doing it, too, as his reference to the bird’s nest and spider’s web suggest. (Why should instinct, as we would call it today, be dispraised by comparison with eccentric individuality?)

2647. With respect to human beings, Montaigne says the term “barbarous” is appropriate if by it we mean only that a given group of people may be “fashioned very little by the human mind, and . . . still very close to their original naturalness.” Such people, he insists, live in a manner that surpasses even the highest ideals of the philosophers; they are better than the inhabitants of Plato’s Republic or “Polity.” Of course, that’s a radical redefinition of the term “barbarous,” which Montaigne is happy to offer. We may well question whether or not human beings were ever in precisely the state of animal-like “naturalness” Montaigne attributes to them, of course.

But perhaps we need not suppose he’s equating human naturalness with animal naturalness: the phrase “fashioned very little by the human mind” might suggest instead that native peoples are highly intelligent but not fiendishly self-conscious, not bent upon constantly transforming and inflecting their already impressive and even sophisticated ways of thinking and acting. It is Europeans and other “civilized” groups, by implication, who are constantly revolutionizing their own humanity and the understanding of that humanity. We might insist that this “permanent revolution” outlook is essential, that man is the self-transforming animal, and so forth—but I think Montaigne would just tell us it’s possible to take such an outlook too far and that matters as they stand in his own sixteenth-century Europe (or our twenty-first century America, for that matter) are a pretty good indication of why that isn’t a good thing to do. But as the rest of the essay indicates, Montaigne really isn’t much interested in making a passionate case for primitivism, either—it just isn’t his way with an argument. He’s writing skeptical, even at times proto-deconstructive, essais, not “position papers.”

2648-49. What exactly do the Brazilians believe? Well, says Montaigne, they praise courage in war and “love for their wives” (2648). They believe in an immortal soul and in the power of prophesy, though they suffer no failures to practice that occupation. (Prophets are sort of like artists as Horace describes them in Ars Poetica: nobody has any patience with a second-rate poet, though a second-rate doctor or lawyer may prove useful enough.) They practice cannibalism after a battle and collect the heads of enemy warriors, which they display right outside their own doors. Why do they roast and eat their enemies’ flesh? Not for the sake of the meal, reports Montaigne. Instead, they do it “to betoken an extreme revenge” (2649). That doesn’t sound so favorable, admits the author, who isn’t set on completely overturning or dismissing the hierarchy between savage and civilized. What he’s doing is exposing the fact that we wield this hierarchical set of terms as a kind of ruse: “I am not sorry that we notice the barbarous horror of such acts, but I am heartily sorry that, judging their faults rightly, we should be so blind to our own. I think there is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead; and in tearing by tortures and the rack a body still full of feeling . . . (and what is worse, on the pretext of piety and religion), than in roasting and eating him after he is dead” (2649). The contrast here is between straightforward, no-apologies-or-excuses-necessary revenge and fiendish torments palmed off as holy acts or “justice.” The uncivilized may do some unpleasant things, but it’s civilized people who make a fine art of barbarity and disregard the arbitrations of reason. On the whole, this business of cannibalism, and Montaigne’s treatment of it, suggests an awareness that it’s more difficult to privilege “the natural man” absolutely than it is to suggest that “Mother Nature” is superior to any of us.

2650-53. With respect to warfare, Montaigne says, the Brazilian natives make it “as excusable and beautiful as this human disease can be; its only basis among them is their rivalry in valor. They are not fighting for the conquest of new lands . . .” (2650). The idea here is that it’s “natural” to want no more land or goods than you can actually use; the desire for more is corrupt, and fighting over other people’s property is vicious. Of course, sometimes it’s said of modern humanity that we fight “even for an eggshell” (a phrase Shakespeare gives Hamlet) rather than for material possessions and power. But most likely Montaigne would say modern humans are just confusing lust for material gain and the pursuit of political power with genuine honor and appreciation of courage. The natives really fight for valor’s sake; we just say that’s what we are doing. Montaigne writes, “The role of true victory is in fighting, not in coming off safely; and the honor of valor consists in combating, not in beating” (2651). It’s the process that matters, not the outcome. As for the courage of prisoners facing sacrifice, says the author, they are reported to spit in the faces of those who mean to kill them. This behavior differs greatly from the European manner of surrender, ransom, and so forth: “Truly here are real savages by our standards; for either they must be thoroughly so, or we must be; there is an amazing distance between their character and ours” (2651).

2652-53. Montaigne notes that the Brazilian natives practice polygamy (allegedly without demur on the women’s part), and that their language rivals Greek for its beauty. He notes that three natives traveled to Rouen, France during Charles IX’s reign (1560-74), and that they thought it strange to see so many grown people obeying such a young child (Charles’ reign began when he was about ten years old). Similarly, they were incredulous that the very poor simply accepted their lot rather than just taking what they needed to survive. Montaigne supposes that those natives will someday pay a heavy price “in loss of repose and happiness” (2652) because of their trip to Europe. He notes with admiration what he heard (through the thick veil of translation, apparently) directly from one of the men about the advantages of rank being simply “to march foremost in war.” But his final remark returns us to the complex stance of the piece as a whole: “All this is not too bad—but what’s the use? They don’t wear breeches” (2652). Perhaps Montaigne implies here that the value of communication between two very different peoples lies in mutual recognition of strangeness, in acknowledging the alien quality of other cultures, not in adopting others’ ways. Montaigne seems to me to be suggesting that civilization is at least partly a cover story for cruelty, lust, and greed. That’s a dreadful realization, but all the same, we are more or less stuck with being “civilized” and can’t return to or fully appropriate the manners of our “savage” fellow humans, uncorrupted of heart and will though they may be. The natives wear no breeches. They won’t conform, so most of us aren’t going to accept their ways or their best insights: everything comes down to taste and fashion with us; essence and truth aren’t worth much to those so taken with the show of things.

“Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions”

2653-56. In this brilliant foray into the vagaries of human conduct, Montaigne begins with the observation that “Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light” (2653). We are creatures of contradiction, and for sheer inscrutability, Montaigne says, we should praise the great Augustus Caesar, victor at Actium over Antony and Cleopatra and subsequent first emperor of Rome. Nobody has ever been able to figure him out—his whole life was a long series of actions that don’t add up to anything like a consistent, much less unified, character. (This inconsistency has made for entertaining variety in the artistic portrayal of the Emperor: Shakespeare casts him as ruthless and businesslike, a true Machiavel, as does the recent British series Rome, though the latter adds a twist of sadism and extreme iciness, while Robert Graves’ novel I, Claudius characterizes Augustus as a good-natured, generous fellow. My guess is that he was probably all of those things, at different times and to different people.) And in truth, writes Montaigne, we are all somewhat like Augustus in our less exalted way: our vices stem from no grand Faustus-compact with the devil but are instead only the unstable product of “unruliness and lack of moderation” (2654). Similarly, our virtues fluctuate with circumstance and desire: yesterday’s virtuous woman is today’s shameless “wench,” and the courageous man of a recent battle or fight is just as likely to turn coward next time around (2655-56). In sum, “We float between different states of mind; we wish nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly” (2654).

2657-58. The inner self is composite, writes Montaigne: “I have nothing to say about myself absolutely, simply, and solidly, without confusion and without mixture, or in one word. Distinguo is the most universal member of my logic” (2656). The self is always shifting, and there seems to be no bedrock or core to it. What methodology does Montaigne offer those who insist upon plumbing the depths of human desire and conduct? Well, certainly no consistent path seems available. What seems like solid advice dissipates soon enough. At first we are told that “to judge a man, we must follow his traces long and carefully” (2657). But this is not a matter of observing external actions over a long period since “No one makes a definite plan of his life; we think about it only piecemeal,” and in any case, as the essay’s own examples suggest, even if we had a plan we couldn’t stick to it for two minutes running. “We are all patchwork,” writes Montaigne, “and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others” (2657), a point he derives from Seneca. All that’s left is to “probe the inside and discover what springs set men in motion” (2658). But that’s obviously a great deal easier said than done, as Montaigne goes on to admit by way of conclusion: “since this is an arduous and hazardous undertaking, I wish fewer people would meddle with it” (2658). True to his own epistemological skepticism, Montaigne hasn’t so much been trying to prove anything positive as to demonstrate the sheer difficulty of knowing human beings, of rendering them intelligible, either with regard to what they do, or what they say, or what they think and desire within themselves.

“Of Coaches”

2658-71. Since this entry is already rather detailed, I will just offer a brief observation about this essay: “Of Coaches” is typical of Montaigne in that the piece isn’t exactly about coaches, except for a few passages. It is about princely pomp and excess, the cruelty of the Spaniards when they conquered parts of the New World, and other things. I’ve read that the increased use of coaches might well serve as a symbol of excessive luxury and corruption, so in that sense the concept “coach” loosely associates the various topics with one another. Montaigne notes near the outset that he can’t bear to travel in coaches and prefers to ride on horseback, while various ancient and modern warriors and rulers have done some really remarkable things with coaches and chariots, some employing them for usefulness, others for ostentation (2660). There is no unitary cultural significance for coaches, or litters, or the various kinds of transport—that’s probably one point Montaigne is making in this whimsical essay. At the end the author returns to coaches, pointing out that the Peruvians’ last king rode in a litter, and the men vied around him for the honor of dying for him as litter-bearers. The implication seems to be that the last Peruvian king and his people showed kind of uncorrupted magnificence that modern Europeans can hardly hope to match.

Week 12, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Castiglione

2007-04-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

Notes on Francis Petrarch’s “Letter to Dionisio de Borgo San Sepolcro” and “Sonnets”

2480-85. Petrarch lived from 1304-1374, during a time when there was a struggle for the seat of the papacy between France and Italy. Petrarch’s father, a lawyer, was exiled from Florence around the same time Dante was exiled, and he settled in Arezzo. Petrarch himself subsequently moved to Avignon. He chose not to practice law and did not go into the church, but devoted his life to literature and humanistic inquiry—he was a Renaissance man just before the Renaissance. Much of his work was done in Latin rather than Italian, so he partially rejected Dante’s bold venture into vernacular literature. The “Letter to Dionisio” chronicles not simply his attempt to scale Mount Ventoux, France in 1336 but instead (at least in its finished, literary form) a turning from material pursuits towards contemplation of heavenly things and the state of his own spiritual health. The letter takes on an Augustinian cast when Petrarch reads in the Confessions the sentence, “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea . . . but themselves they consider not” (2484). As in so many religious narratives (Augustine’s Confessions themselves being perhaps the most illustrious example), this textual moment has a profound influence on the speaker since the words seem to be aimed directly at him, here and now. He has not paid sufficient attention to what is going on in his own soul, and now realizes that the one thing necessary is to “trample beneath us those appetites which spring from earthy impulses” (2485). The thought is conventional, but as any Renaissance intellectual would add, that isn’t necessarily a problem: what makes the letter worthwhile is the fineness of the allegory and the personal application Petrarch makes of the biblical and Augustinian imperative to “look within” rather than seeking answers and comforts from the material realm around us. In sum, Petrarch offers a spiritualized reading of a secular event. His thoughts turn towards a key parallel text, namely Augustine’s Confessions. Our editors say that Petrarch’s path heavenwards is full of introspection, confusion, and self-doubt. Augustine’s self-overcoming is a model Petrarch would like to follow with respect to his own responsiveness to inward events, but he finds it hard going since clarity and self-transcendence are the goal, and the letter ends with a prayer for assistance in his quest.

2485-90. Who was Laura? It is not certain, but most scholars identify Laura as Laurette de Noves, who was already married two years when Petrarch met her on April 6, 1327 (Good Friday), in the church of St. Clare in Avignon. Thomas Bergin says that Petrarch describes four Lauras. The first one stands for Petrarch’s pursuit of the poet’s Laurel crown. The second one is like Dante’s Beatrice, a guide to heaven. The third is beauty itself, a potential distraction from the poet’s Christian hopes for salvation. The fourth Laura is simply the young woman herself, without all the metaphoric and allusive baggage. But most important in Petrarch’s poems is his own attitudes: he is “nostalgic, melancholy, passionate and yet always curiously removed from life, an observer rather than a participant.” Introspection is the hallmark of these poems at their best, and although “Petrarchanism” (I mean the poetry written after the fashion of Petrarch, not so much Petrarch’s own work) may seem ridiculous in its extremes, it captures something true about the experience of love—that is, people tend to stylize their deepest emotions, as if we need a certain distance from them. Similarly, Robert Frost the American poet tends to make his ordinary characters speak in a very conventional, almost stilted way when they are undergoing the strain of difficult experiences or agonizing emotions, and the “burning and freezing” tenor of some Petrarchan sonnets captures the highs and lows of romantic love. Petrarch is a man of extremes, and that is the way he casts Laura: her inapproachability only makes him desire her more intensely. While Beatrice was a remote angel of light for Petrarch’s predecessor Dante and as such too distant for him to entertain hopes of reunion, Laura’s inapproachability endows her with a lasting erotic charge that spurs on Petrarch in his literary and spiritual quest.

Here is one of Francis Petrarch’s more typical sonnets, “Number 134,” as translated by Anthony Mortimer (keep in mind that Petrarch was a sophisticated poet—-not all of his sonnets are so programmatically oxymoronic):

I find no peace, and have no arms for war,
and fear and hope, and burn and yet I freeze,
and fly to heaven, lying on earth’s floor,
and nothing hold, and all the world I seize.

My jailer opens not, nor locks the door,
nor binds me to hear, nor will loose my ties;
Love kills me not, nor breaks the chains I wear,
nor wants me living, nor will grant me ease.

I have no tongue, and shout; eyeless, I see;
I long to perish, and I beg for aid;
I love another, and myself I hate.

Weeping I laugh, I feed on misery,
by death and life so equally dismayed:
for you, my lady, am I in this state.

The sonnet below is a memorial poem to “Laura,” the woman Petrarch (or “Francesco Petrarca”) loved “hopelessly and from afar” (Wilkie 1586) until her death in 1348. Though some of the 366 poems in the Canzoniere are not concerned with Laura, many of them deal with her in life or in memory. Central to Petrarch’s sequence is “the range of moods of the speaker, a range that includes every emotion from spiritual ecstasy to agonized self-laceration and melancholy resignation, every mood associated with love, perhaps, except the joy of physical consummation” (Wilkie 1586). “Laura” means many things in Petrarch’s poetry—she is the “laurel” of the poet’s ambitions, but she is also his spiritual guide, much like Dante’s beloved, Beatrice, and simply a beautiful young female of whom Petrarch was enamored. But most important, Wilkie points out, is the fact that all of Petrarch’s sonnets are concerned not so much with Laura herself as with the poet and his task; they are “metapoetic.” Here is “Sonnet 292” from the Canzoniere, as translated by Anthony Mortimer:

The eyes I spoke of once in words that burn,
the arms and hands and feet and lovely face
that took me from myself for such a space
of time and marked me out from other men;

the waving hair of unmixed gold that shone,
the smile that flashed with the angelic rays
that used to make this earth a paradise,
are now a little dust, all feeling gone;

and yet I live, grief and disdain to me,
left where the light I cherished never shows,
in fragile bark on the tempestuous sea.

Here let my loving song come to a close;
the vein of my accustomed art is dry,
and this, my lyre, turned at last to tears.

Sonnets and background information were taken from Literature of the Western World, Volume One. Eds. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan, 1984. 1586-87, 1593-94.

The Petrarchan sonnet, at least in its Italian-language form, generally follows a set rhyme scheme, which runs as follows: abba abba cdc dcd. The first eight lines, or “octave,” do not often deviate from the “abba abba” pattern, but the last six lines, or “sestet,” frequently follow a different pattern, such as “cde cde,” “cde ced,” or “cdc dee.” See Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, by Paul Fussell. New York: Random, 1979. Chapter 7. In addition, it’s good to know that in 2008, as I write this addition to an old guide, you can easily find information on most rhyme schemes simply by typing them in your Google or other search bar: Google “abba abba cdc dcd” and you’ll be surprised how many good guides to poetic form are available on the net.

Notes on Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince

2521-23. In his chapter “Cesare Borgia,” Machiavelli argues that Cesare or “Duke Valentino” combined the cunning of the fox and the martial audacity of the lion; he played the cards Fortune dealt him, and played them well. He weakened the Orsini and Colonnesi factions in Rome and called on the French to help him put down the rebellions that arose. More broadly, he managed to scatter such factions by appealing to men of rank and rewarding them without reference to which party they served. He took Romagna, shrewdly employing the cruel Remirro de Orco, who, we are told, “in a short time rendered the province peaceful and united, gaining enormous prestige” (1523). He then ordered that henchman to be cut in half and displayed in the public square, lest the people’s hatred flow towards him rather than towards the now-powerful de Orco. He assuaged public feeling against him, that is, not with kindness but rather with a well-directed act of violence—a political “holistic remedy,” with cruelty curing outrage over cruelty. But in the end, illness and bad fortune got the better of Cesare, something that can happen even to the best of Machiavellian princes. Cesare made the most of his opportunities, and that is the best anyone can do.

2524-26. In his chapter, “On the Things for Which Men, and Especially Princes, Are Praised Or Censured,” Machiavelli says pointedly that “if a prince wishes to maintain himself, he must learn how to be not good, and to use that ability or not as is required” (2524). A vital question is, how can the prince use both his virtues and his vices to get and retain power? There are virtues that weaken a prince’s grasp, and vices that strengthen it. To be overly generous is a mistake, says Machiavelli in his chapter “On Liberality and Parsimony,” because generosity commits the prince to a ruinous economic policy based on unfair taxation. Liberality is not a renewable resource. It makes people like you at first, but then they keep asking for more until you have nothing left to give, and then they will begin to despise you.

2526-28. In his chapter “On Cruelty and Pity,” Machiavelli says that cruelty is sometimes necessary on the principle of sacrificing one person for the greater good of the many. He argues further that men are generally “ungrateful, mutable, pretenders and dissemblers, prone to avoid danger, thirsty for gain” (2527). In a word, people are selfish. Love establishes obligations that are easily abandoned, but fear induces the dread of punishment—a far more consistent motivator. Still, the prince must not become the object of hatred, which means that he must respect the property rights of his subjects and take care not to provoke the nobles or the populace beyond necessity. In military matters, cruelty may be excused on the grounds of immediate necessity. It is in the prince’s power to make people afraid, but love is something they have in their own power—the prince cannot control it. And control is the name of the game in politics: you don’t want to be defined by others, and you don’t want to be forced to act in ways that harm your interests or those of your subjects. Aristotle said that politics was the art of helping others achieve the good life and that as such it was among the most honorable of pursuits. Machiavelli’s view is not without idealism, but his understanding is that humans are flawed and selfish by nature and that this badness in us will come out under the pressure of circumstances. It takes craft and “art” to harness the subjects’ desires and make them useful. What’s needed as well is an honest assessment of one’s own powers, virtues, and limitations: if a ruler is of a generous and forgiving nature, he or she had better know how those qualities can affect the ability to govern. How are others likely to respond and in what circumstances?

2528-29. Should the prince keep his promises? In his chapter on that subject, “In What Way Faith Should be Kept by Princes,” Machiavelli says that promises are contingent upon circumstances. Others will break their promises whenever it suits them, so the prince has the right to do the same. It is his prerogative to behave like an animal—specifically, now like the audacious lion and now like the cunning fox. This is an amoral, bold application of the Renaissance idea that man is a microcosm containing within himself all elements of God’s creation. On 2529, Machiavelli says people often act like simpletons thanks to their selfishness and shortsightedness, so it will always be easy to find some way of deceiving them. Pope Alexander VI, Machiavelli points out, always deceived people, and never seemed to run out of eager dupes. It is only necessary to seem virtuous, to keep up an appearance of virtuousness, since doing so establishes cover for the times when it is, unfortunately, necessary not to be good. It’s interesting to speculate on what Machiavelli would say to President Lincoln’s democratic-spirited dictum, “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” He might sympathize with this notion to some extent: after all, Machiavelli favored republican rule in Florence, so he believed the people should govern themselves without the aid of princes. And a prince who behaves with notorious wickedness and faithlessness might eventually make himself hated and so lose his grip on power.

Still, while Machiavelli is at his core idealistic as our editors say, there’s no denying the realist edge in his political theory—he says in this chapter that “the crowd is always caught by appearance and by the outcome of events, and the crowd is all there is in the world. . .” (2529). There’s little hope in such a sentence that “the crowd” is ever going to break out of its cage of illusion and see people and events for what they really are, so how much danger is the artfully deceptive prince really in here? The suggestion is that people want to be deceived, especially when the deception is pleasant and seems to offer them advantages and all the good things in life. The world turns on appearances, not truth. And as for those few who are able to see the deceitful, sometimes immoral or amoral prince for what he really is, “there is no place for the few when the many have room enough.” That idea is as old at least as Herodotus—I recall the example of the King who explains to his subordinate his principle of ruling. He points to a field of waving grass or flowers and suggests that the tallest ones must be cut down because they stand out too much. The intellectuals, the prideful and self-sufficient, the ones who see the truth too clearly, are dangerous. The notion that people judge only by success or failure gives us a whole theory of history—if you start a war, for example, you will be judged on the basis of success on the battlefield. If you lose, almost everyone will say that your cause was unjust and you should be punished; if you win, those who think such things will mostly keep quiet, and will be little heeded if they choose to speak out against you. In sum and in keeping with the “situational morality” Machiavelli has been positing, then, we are led back to the insistence the prince need only seem “compassionate, trustworthy, humane, honest, and religious” (1529). Above all, religious because when people believe you’re pious, they will credit you with all the other good qualities Machiavelli names.

2530-32. In his chapter, “Fortune Is a Woman,” Machiavelli’s remark, “la Fortuna ed una donna” implies aggression, true enough, but it also alludes to the capacities of a canny suitor. Boldness may imply humility, it may that one subject oneself to the storms of Lady Fortune. Stand up, keep up your half of the bargain by exercising free will, the field for which is open and subject to negotiation. The bold, even violent, prince gets the reward, while the passive are sheep to be directed and mobilized. Machiavelli insists that the prince must attend to circumstances, and not be a creature of habit. As Pater says, “failure is to form habits.” Flexibility is needed, and so is aggression when warranted. Fortune favors energy and youth, and sometimes smiles upon those who know better than to expect consistency from her, those who are willing to stand up, assert themselves, and fight, taking charge of circumstances to the extent possible. Life is full of uncertainties, and passion must go forth to meet them. But this audacity must be backed up with intelligence and talent: I suppose the assertively superior “blond boy” in Golding’s Lord of the Flies would not overly impress Machiavelli because he lacks the cunning of, say, a true Machiavellian like Cesare Borgia. (That doesn’t keep me from thinking of the kid when I see certain prominent politicians from time to time—after all, it takes a lot of arrogance to suppose you have the talent and the right to “rule the earth,” and then expect others just to fall in line behind you.)

2532-34. In his chapter, “The Roman Dream,” Machiavelli answers the question, “is there an ethics in this text?” in the affirmative. The ethical dimension has to do with the liberation of Italy from Spanish (and French) influence and its unification. Viva Italia! This goal, we are to understand, justifies the sometimes unpleasant means Machiavelli advocates, and the realization of the dream will require both looking back to the ancient Roman virtues and a strong man to gather and deploy great power in the present. At heart, Machiavelli is an admirer of republican virtues and of pan-Italian sovereignty, and it seems unfair to use his name as a byword for the cynical, selfish pursuit of “power for power’s sake” we sometimes ascribe to him.

Finally, there is probably no way out of the dilemma that The Prince as a whole raises: amoral or even immoral means can sometimes achieve worthy goals, but aren’t they a shaky foundation for perpetuating such goals? And if we try to lie and kill our way to the good society, aren’t we likely to lose sight of the end-point, instead getting lost in the wicked pursuit and worship of power itself? That said, Machiavellian analysis is still useful because politics is played as a game and staged as a spectacle. You and I wouldn’t want our friends applying Machiavelli to their own conduct and deceiving us because we had granted them our trust, and we wouldn’t care to be always acting in a purely Machiavellian “princely” fashion, doing good or ill to suit the circumstances and make gains in reputation and wealth. But it makes sense to bear in mind that not everyone is so idealistic—many are perfectly willing to behave that way. Unfortunately, in grand matters of state, entities usually behave that way, pursuing their own advantage at the expense of others and by means of duplicity. There’s much to be said in favor of Machiavelli’s attempt to balance genuine regard for political and moral ideals with a hard-edged capacity to see things as they are and to acknowledge the consequences of that disposition. Machiavelli’s analysis of princely authority, whatever its actual aims, should teach us to bear in mind that what politicians (even ones in democratic countries) give out as the “reasons” for their actions may not be—and often aren’t—the ones that actually motivate them. Machiavelli, in offering his vision of how the mind of a capable ruler works, is useful to anyone who doesn’t want to be treated like a simpleton or a child in matters of politics. It’s true that unbounded cynicism is shallow and self-defeating—it’s one of the easiest attitudes to adopt and it makes us seem “hip,” perhaps; but automatic acceptance of everything the government says at face value is stupid and ultimately disastrous to a people’s liberty. A government that repeatedly lies to and otherwise abuses its citizens without fear of being stripped of power will eventually lose all respect for them and stop maintaining even the sham appearance of “self-government.” Machiavelli sought to hold on to at least some degree of idealism while not giving in to naïve passiveness in the face of power. At least, that’s one positive way to read The Prince, for our own benefit.

Notes on Baldesar Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier

2552-53. Duke Federico of Urbino is praised as an example of the perfect Renaissance prince: courageous, generous, and prudent. He is also said to have been the possessor of a fine palace and a collector of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew manuscripts. His son Guidobaldo (or Guido for short) succeeded him, but has been kept from living an active life due to his frail health. His excellence consists in not being “overcome by Fortune.” That is, he bears up under the strain of many difficulties. He also values the excellence of his courtiers, which speaks well of him.

2554. The Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga is the center of the courtly circle, serving more or less in the place of the ailing Duke. Everyone looks to her as the model of perfect conduct and aristocratic excellence. This is not to say that she is intimidating or rigid; quite the contrary. The narrator says that there was no one “who did not esteem it the greatest pleasure in the world to please her and the greatest grief to displease her. For which reason most decorous customs were there joined with the greatest liberty, and games and laughter in her presence were seasoned not only with witty jests but with a gracious and sober dignity….” she combines a free spirit with an intuitive understanding of propriety, and the result is a graceful social circle in which everyone is encouraged to be honest and to strive towards perfection. Those around her take part in pleasurable conversations that don’t sacrifice the Renaissance goal of constantly improving on one’s capacities and cultivating one’s faculties.

2555-57. Count Ludovico argues in favor of nobility as the first requirement for a proper courtier. His reasoning is that “noble birth is like a bright lamp that makes manifest and visible deeds both good and bad, kindling and spurring on to virtue as much for fear of dishonor as for hope of praise.” People of ordinary birth, he believes, do not have this incentive but will be satisfied to live in the manner of their parents and grandparents. He argues explicitly that nobility is innate: “nature has implanted in everything that hidden seed which gives a certain force and quality of its own essence to all that springs from it, making it like itself…” (2555).

Nonetheless, he advises, effort can largely make up in a nobleman for the lack of certain qualities he really ought to have: “those who are not so perfectly endowed by nature can, with care and effort, polish and in great part fix their natural defects.” What is needed, he says, is “that certain grace which we call an ‘air’” (2555). It is perhaps worth quoting the Italian here: the courtier should have “una certa grazia e, come si dice, un sangue, che lo faccia al primo aspetto a chiunque lo vede grato ed amabile.” (See the Biblioteca Italiana online edition of Il Libro del cortegiano, Book 1.) If he has this sangue or air, everyone will find him likable and pleasant to be around. And to his friendly opponent’s argument that noble birth is really not so important after all, Ludovico replies without hesitation, “I deem it necessary to have him be of noble birth… because of that public opinion which immediately sides with nobility” (2556). It is a matter of popular bias, we might say—the nobleman or noblewoman makes the best “first impression” (2557).

2557-58. Ludovico continues his list of requirements with the thought that “true profession of the Courtier must be that of arms,” and he must be loyal “to whomever he serves” (2557). But this military capability must not be taken too far—it is appropriate only on the field of battle, and not in polite social situations, as the anecdote told about the soldier Berto who prided himself on his fierceness suggests.

2558-59. Should a courtier praise himself? Well, he should have qualities worth praising, but he must not trumpet his own virtues directly. There is an art to speaking well of oneself without sounding conceited. As Dante had long ago pointed out, when you praise yourself, no one wants to believe you, but when you speak ill of yourself, almost everyone wants to believe you. The key thing is to do more than you claim you can do, and moderate your speech.

2559-61. A courtier’s physical appearance is also very important, and Ludovico insists that he must avoid appearing overly feminine in bearing or speech, as was sometimes fashionable at court. We may recall that Shakespeare’s plays often make fun of such courtly effeminacy—Osric in Hamlet is a good example, as is Oswald in King Lear. And the French come in for a good deal of mockery on that account, as in Henry V. The courtier must also be well versed in the handling of dueling weapons and an excellent horseman as well as a hunter, among other exercises. In sum, he should be expert in everything he does without being ostentatious.

2562-64. The Count is asked how exactly a person might come by this “grace” he talks about, but he professes not to be interested in that question. He will offer illustrations of “what a perfect Courtier ought to be” (2562), and that is all. The only hint he will offer is that one who seeks “to acquire grace in bodily exercises” should “begin early and learn the principles from the best of teachers” (2563). Above all, staying clear of pomposity or affectation is necessary. Coining a term, the Count says we must “practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it” (2563). Again, the Italian may be worth quoting: “usar in ogni cosa una certa sprezzatura, che nasconda l’arte e dimostri ciò che si fa e dice venir fatto senza fatica e quasi senza pensarvi.” If we can do this, considerable “grace” will attend our person and actions: “Da questo credo io che derivi assai la grazia.” The only genuine art, apparently, is “art which does not seem to be art” (2564): “arte che non pare esser arte.” We can readily appreciate this notion in our modern consumer culture since so much involving fashion, after all, is about seeming artless while actually taking care to get just the right look and make just the right “statement” in public. (How many person-hours have been spent trying to achieve that “disheveled” look with regard to hairstyle?) Ludovico’s promotion of sprezzatura, like most of the other things he says, amounts to an admission that courtly life revolves around spectacle.

And it would not be advantageous if the spectacle began to seem unnatural, forced, or “practiced.” Who is the “audience” here? The Duke’s subjects in general, other rulers’ subjects when they have dealings with the Duke, and, of course, the courtiers and courtly ladies themselves. A courtier’s role is to embody, and to body forth, the goodness and grace of the sovereign. Outward appearances, as any good Neo-Platonist would say, mirror the inward goodness of a person’s soul, and the courtier is the ruler’s outward appearance, somewhat as Christ is God’s “Word made flesh.” This frame seems appropriate since Castiglione is writing in a materialistic, competitive age that still convincingly speaks the language of a profoundly Christian ethical and symbolic universe. In the end, I’m not sure we can separate the courtly spectacle from the “reality” of political power at court: courtiers are essential mediators between the ideal aims of power and its actual deployment in a complicated, compromised world.

Week 11, Sei Shonagon, Yoshida Kenko, Zeami Motokiyo

2007-04-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

Page-by-Page Notes on Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book.

2273. Shonagon notices not only activity in nature but also stillness; mixed in with this appreciation are the author’s impressions of various human activities. She can appreciate ordinary things, but seems most taken with people when they go beyond the ordinary, when they are wearing their best clothing and so forth. But again, it is not only finery that catches her eye—she is interested in those moments when circumstances expose the reality underneath the fine appearance. She likes ceremony and formality in general, but also searches out authenticity—it seems that both are necessary, and one must try to achieve a balance.

2275. I like the tableau Shonagon sets up on this page—the scene suggests a kind of eternity for the Japanese monarchy. It is an ideal moment, and she wishes it could extend for a thousand years. She describes the scene as if it were a painting, with everyone and everything appropriately placed.

2278. Shonagon brings up a number of stories of excellence—in this case, the story or model concerns a young woman during the time of Emperor Murakami. She knew her classical poetry faultlessly, and it would be difficult to surpass her graceful performance under pressure. There’s a sense of unreality about the palace, or rather the palace seems to be its own reality—Emperor Murakami does something purely for fun, and everyone takes it seriously. The current Emperor looks back upon this story with wonder. He considers it evidence of a golden age.

2279. Shonagon has little respect for women who do not come to know the world as she does—they do not take advantage of their high birth. Serving in the palace has its advantages, and she is quick to point them out. The palace provides respect ever after, and makes one well-versed in life’s necessary formalities, adding a touch of elegance.

2280-82. Shonagon identifies as depressing a collection of events involving frustrated expectation, failure to communicate with others, disappointed ambitions, and a sense of mediocrity. Moreover, there must be transitional phases in life, but there is sadness when they occur as well as when they go on too long.

2282-86. As we would expect, Shonagon finds hateful anyone who goes beyond his or her station in life. Above all, inconsiderate and pushy behavior earns her anger. As for conversation, I imagine the so-called “California like” would give her conniption fits. It’s like, too casual, dude. She has no regard whatsoever for people who want to be considered elegant and civil when in fact they are not. Decorum is not just finery and fluff—clearly, good manners in speech and action embody the rightness of the imperial order. Shonagon has a strong sense of privacy, but also a strong sense that sometimes it is obligatory to share one’s impressions. This is why she dislikes the gentleman who will not share his impressions with younger men. People who overstay their welcome are hateful to her. Whatever the time and occasion, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. For example, she says that a woman loves a man partly for the way he takes his leave of her.

2286-87. Shonagon likes things that produce a striking, memorable impression. A lot of her life revolves around registering her own impressions and perhaps comparing them to other people’s impressions. As Oscar Wilde says, “nothing that actually happens is of the smallest importance.”

2286-88. In the part about Buddhist priests in the temple, Shonagon begins with her own observation but then quickly moves on to other people’s observations and behavior. In particular, the behavior of retired officials and fashionable young gentlemen. People seem to have all sorts of motives for attending the temple—most of them having nothing to do with religion. They go there to pass the time, to see and to be seen. Shonagon makes a show of moral indignation, but really she admits she is fascinated with the goings-on. She is only indirectly a moralist, but much more directly a close observer of her own time who seems to have a lot of knowledge about people’s behavior in former times. It is always an interesting question as to what people do when they have nothing to do—in a Western context, education takes as one important purpose inculcating the ability to enjoy leisure time wisely. Sometimes Shonagon reminds me of Charles Lamb in the essay where he writes about getting early retirement and wondering what he will do with himself, even though he is delighted at having so much free time.

2288. How does Shonagon conceptualize nature, how does she relate to it and describe it? I think she describes nature as if it were a work of art; we only have selections, but I find that she concentrates mostly on still-life tableaux, and not so much on natural process or activity, though of course that is always implied in any sensitive description of nature. Nature is presented to her as a series of distinct but related objects, aesthetic objects. She seldom speaks harshly about nature, but instead finds something good to say about most natural objects. She is not always so generous about human beings within the court system or outside of it. But that doesn’t bother me—people can take care of themselves; we should be indulgent with nature. Shonagon is very conscious of nature’s presence in literary tradition, both Japanese and Chinese, and she mixes in this awareness with her naturalistic descriptions. In the example of the pear blossom, it is Chinese literature that leads her to make a close examination of the blossom itself. She does not hesitate, either, to mingle observation of nature with comments about human affairs like coming home from a festival. She is not, in other words, a purist who must block out all things human to talk about nature—that is probably more a product of modern necessity. In Japan , as I’ve read, people once lived very close to nature, and then when the island became crowded, they had to work hard to recreate a sense of the natural, by means of artifice. Zen gardens epitomize this kind of artifice—they are at once natural and artificial, we might say.

2290-91. Unsuitable things—this part the editors find unflattering. Shonagon says snow on common houses is unsuitable, perhaps because the beauty is wasted on people who don’t appreciate it. The idea is that beauty is only for the select, only for her and those who can appreciate her fine observational powers. She sounds a bit stingy with the pleasures of aesthetic appreciation, at least to our democratic sensibilities. We usually insist that art should be held in common, as something that unites people, that appeals to universal faculties or sensibilities (as in Kant it lets him demonstrate the universality of the faculty psychology he advocates as the basis for his epistemology). That’s hardly the case with Sei Shonagon, whose sensibilities are aristocratic. People from different ranks, though they may share many traits, are in the last analysis fundamentally different—at least the best amongst them are. Sometimes her observations seem singular, as when she says the old man with a black beard who’s playing with children is unsuitable. So how many times does one see such a sight? Just once? Her observation about how the person you stop loving seems like someone else is brilliant—here she is at her most honest and best. The point is that how we define others has a lot to do with our own needs and frame of mind. This is important because it coincides in a sophisticated way with Shonagon’s insistence on close observation of nature and human conduct.

2292-93. Here there’s a combination of sentiments: Shonagon appreciates perfection in various things, but perfection in the sense of artificial design isn’t always appropriate—ponds are best left wild.

2294-95. Shonagon is critical of men’s behavior towards women—too often, she says, they dissemble their feelings and leave women in the dark. Or they refuse to accept the consequences of their actions. There are also some excellent “imagist” observations here, like the one about “the play of the light on water” being poured from a vessel. And she mentions again how social situations can go wrong—expecting someone and then having to entertain another person. Deception is sometimes necessary in these circumstances, but it’s distasteful.

2296-97. Shonagon betrays an aristocratic sense for beauty—I don’t think she simply identifies physical attractiveness with morality, but in any event an ugly person is unacceptable to her. Attractive people should consort with attractive people. That’s similar to the Greek attitude about “the beautiful people.”

2298-99. It’s worth considering the difference between how Shonagon treats human beauty and natural beauty or the beauty of an art object—her comment about a beautiful face is valuable in this regard. Human beauty is endlessly interesting, she says, while a painting soon loses its capacity to hold our attention. She also enjoys being singled out by those who are themselves distinctive and important.

2299-2300. Why did Shonagon write The Pillow Book? I don’t know if her regrets over publication are conventional, like Chaucer’s retraction of The Canterbury Tales. Most likely her comments in this regard are partly sincere, partly image-management. She’s an aristocrat, not a tradeswoman or hack writer, if indeed there were “hack writers” in her milieu. It would be pushy to promote one’s own talents as a writer. I find an interesting mix of wanting to guard her privacy and claiming that she has “set everything down,” both feelings and observations. Kierkegaard makes a relevant point when he says that good philosophical writing always involves indirection—writing of Shonagon’s sort is at base philosophical; it can’t succeed it she assumes that we really understand her directly and simply. The point isn’t transparent communication. The effect is instead that of overhearing somebody’s private reflections—some of the meaning is available to us, but not all of it, and that’s probably just the way Shonagon wants things to be.

Notes on Yoshida Kenko’s Essays in Idleness.

Kenko is concerned to reflect on strategies for surviving with one’s spirit more or less intact in difficult times—the world is full of lies, so what’s the best way to act, given such an unfortunate fact? By no means to fight against the lies brazenly, but rather to let the world go on thinking as it does, and keep your reflections to yourself, for private occasions. Simply maintaining the ability to reflect on things is worth something when so few people are given to reflection about anything at all. Kenko’s way of dealing with profound subjects is to set forth a principle such as “all things must pass,” but then not to take it too seriously, lest it become in itself an attachment, an obsession. I think this is typical of Buddhism—we shouldn’t become too attached even to our own wisdom. Themes to be found in Kenko: the value of uncertainty, the meaning of death, the problem of desire, the virtues of imperfection, the need to concentrate one’s energies to achieve something worthwhile, and to eliminate whatever is unnecessary; the relative potential and dangers of youth and age.

2328. Kenko accords a certain significance and elegance to the higher nobility, but those below that exalted rank come in for some criticism: people who have achieved some distinction within their middling rank, he says, “are apt to wear looks of self-satisfaction,” but in truth they don’t matter as much as they think they do. And as for priests who try to throw their weight around, their inappropriate attitude makes them appear ridiculous. Kenko writes also, “It is desirable that a man’s face and figure be of excelling beauty. I could sit forever with a man, provided that what he said did not grate on my ears, that he had charm, and that he did not talk very much. What an unpleasant experience it is when someone you have supposed to be quite distinguished reveals his true, inferior nature.” Appearances are of some importance to him, and it is jarring when an elegant person’s character doesn’t match his or her fine looks: people really ought to be what they seem to be. Kenko’s description of excellence is delightfully whimsical: “he writes easily in an acceptable hand, sings agreeable and in tune, and . . . is not a teetotaler.” I’m reminded of Oscar Wilde’s quip, “In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.” Of course, that might be going a bit too far to suit Yoshida Kenko.

2329-31. Kenko favors uncertainty: “If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty” (1229). Uncertainty, he explains, leaves room for worthy aspiration and for concentration on what really matters. Kenko points out that if we live too long, our “preoccupation with worldly things grows ever deeper, and gradually . . . [we lose] all sensitivity to the beauty of things” (2329). I think he is implying that as we age, we begin to attach our hopes for permanence to seemingly solid and finished things, rather than accepting that all things are transient and appreciating them all the more for that very reason. Buddhism emphasizes self-discipline, concentration, and clarity of perception. So the suggestive, bare thing is better than the gilded one. Kenko writes, “People seem to agree that autumn is the best season to appreciate the beauty of things. That may well be true, but the sights of spring are even more exhilarating” (1231).

2332-33. “In all things I yearn for the past. Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased.” Included in this observation is the customs surrounding death. Kenko misses “The custom of paying homage to the dead, in the belief that they return that night.” We go to great lengths to ceremonialize the passing of the dead, but then we forget them ruthlessly. Life seems to depend heavily on forgetting of this sort: “During the forty-nine days of mourning the family, having moved to a temple in the mountains or some such place, forgathers in large numbers in inconvenient, cramped quarters, and frantically occupies itself with the motions of mourning for the dead. The days pass unbelievably fast. On the final day, all civility gone, no one has a word for anybody else . . .” (2333). With the end of the ceremony, the living are impatient to get back to their own concerns, and the dead become ever more distant in memory, until at last “the old grave is plowed up and turned into rice land.” I’m reminded of Tolstoy’s painful exploration of our intolerance for the dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in which a dying man increasingly notices the hurry those around him seem to be in to abandon him—they wish he would just get on with the business of dying, and leave them to enjoy their own vitality.

2334. Kenko’s mention of how the living forget the dead is not exactly nostalgic or outraged, however: he says here that “It does no good whatsoever to have one’s name survive.” To seek fame in this life or long remembrance after death, he suggests, is foolish. That attitude differs remarkably from the ancient western notion that a person ought to live in such a way as to be remembered long afterwards by his or her descendants. Kenko sees all desire to rise above one’s station, all desire for notoriety or fame, as the mark of an empty and vain person. On this page, he writes in accord with Chuang Chou that “True knowledge is not what one hears from others or acquires through study,” and even quotes Chou directly: “The truly enlightened man has no learning, no virtue, no accomplishments, no fame.” We might think that’s so because enlightened people don’t draw attention to themselves: the mark of vanity, crass commercialism, or some other equally unattractive tendency. But as Kenko explains, “It is not that he conceals his virtue or pretends to be stupid; it is because from the outset he is above distinctions between wise and foolish, between profit and loss.” Anything to do with the world is void: “All is unreality. Nothing is worth discussing, worth desiring.”

2335-36. Kenko says that we should neither “accept popular superstitions uncritically” (2335) nor dismiss them because of their improbability. We should instead remain even-minded about such things, and not take up the habit of scoffing at the beliefs of the ignorant. Kenko also says that he has no problem believing in “the miracles of the gods and buddhas, or in the lives of the incarnations.” I am moved by this to note with some disdain the current fashion for atheist scoffing. Not that I’m religious in the traditional sense (going to church, accepting a set of metaphysical doctrines or a creed, etc.). But all the same, I find the today’s bustling advocates of Reason misguided: they seem to have little appreciation for the sustaining power of eloquence, or the need for anything beyond some set of facts by which to live. To assume that Reason is all-sufficient seems to me as preposterous a gesture today as August Comte’s (1798-1857) attempt to found a “religion of humanity” a century-and-a-half ago. Furthermore, the French Revolution’s exaltation of Reason ought to be warning enough about the dangers of setting up our own qualities as self-sustaining replacements for “a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused / whose dwelling is the light of setting suns” (Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”). Failing to project something beyond ourselves (whatever one may construe it as being) to which we can at least then try to connect may well strip us of our potential for transcending our limitations and lead us to withdraw into our stagnating selves. That isn’t Kenko’s point exactly, but I think it’s worth making. On 2335 bottom, bottom Kenko writes that “A man should avoid displaying deep familiarity with any subject.” It’s a good thing this gloomy monk didn’t have to attend academic conferences: erudition on display for the purpose of impressing others is something he just can’t stand. In fact, Kenko disdains ostentation of any kind: “Possessions should look old, not overly elaborate; they need not cost much, but their quality should be good” (2336).

2337. “Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless?” asks Kenko. The cherry tree before or after it is in full bloom, or the moon when partially clouded over, he suggests, is best because we appreciate most what is transitory; we give it our respectful attention. Things we consider permanent are apt to be taken for granted and reduced to what today we might call “post-card status.” Kenko writes, “In all things, it is the beginnings and ends that are interesting,” and he said on 2336 that “uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting.” Perfection isn’t the goal when it comes to choosing the objects of our perception. Beauty, yes, but the kind of beauty we must really look for; it shouldn’t just be given to us. On the whole, Kenko shows a refined sense of how a person ought to enjoy life: “The man of breeding never appears to abandon himself completely to his pleasures; even his manner of enjoyment is detached.” In an almost Kantian passage, Kenko writes of the unrefined that, “No matter what the sight, they are never content merely with looking at it.” Kant would perhaps nod in agreement, based on what he writes in his Critique of Judgment about the necessity of “disinterestedness” in making properly aesthetic judgments about beautiful things: if we desire the object’s existence or expect to get some use from it, we can’t sustain the kind of “dry liking” Kant thinks appropriate to aesthetic experience.

2338-39. One of Kenko’s most haunting descriptions of the emptiness of life is his passage about going to a festival, and getting caught up with all the sights on the crowded street. Then the festival ends, the props and so forth are hauled away, and the entire scene is empty, as if nothing had happened and no one had ever been there: “Before you know it, hardly a soul is left . . . . Then they start removing the blinds and matting from the stands, and the place, even as you watch, begins to look desolate. You realize with a pang of grief that life is like this. If you have seen the avenues of the city, you have seen the festival” (2338). The sense of meaningfulness we lend life is transitory, and soon gives way to utter desolation, a deep feeling of absence and emptiness. One doesn’t usually realize this except upon reflection, standing in the empty street, but perhaps some understand it even while the festival is under way. The street pageant is the main event; there is nothing at the core of events, and in fact, suggests Kenko, there is no core. Denying this fact leads to self-delusion, and Kenko’s meditations most likely allow him to register personally the “nothingness” to which his writing attests. Kenko then discusses that frequent theme of his, the inevitability of death: he points out that at such festivals, he often recognizes many of the people—his is a small world, so to speak, and he is led to reflect that soon the lot of his friends and acquaintances will be gone, as will he: “the hour of death comes sooner than you expect,” and there’s no way to avoid it. As he writes on 2339, “When you confront death, no matter where it may be, it is the same as charging into battle.”

2339-41. Kenko discusses the relative merits of youth and age: “Youth is the time when a man ruins himself. // An old man’s spirit grows feeble; he is indifferent and slow to respond, unmoved by everything” (2339). But all the same, “The old are as superior to the young in wisdom as the young are superior to the old in looks” (2440). Meditation is like “a little death,” lending us a perspective that lets us register the nothingness of ourselves and of life. On the whole, Kenko’s comments on age and wisdom are somewhat paradoxical: he asserts something like the idea that the preacher of Ecclesiastes keeps coming back to: “all is vanity.” Add to this his point that aging tends to muddy our understanding; we are beset by a materialism that is founded on the fear of death. To cling to the things of this world is to cling to life. But at the same time, he puts some stock in the attainment of “wisdom” and even says that “we should be impatient to discover the sources of enlightenment” (2341). With respect to learning, Kenko has a keen sense of what economists would call the “opportunity cost” of any such endeavor: those who mean to learn something allow themselves to be distracted, and end up dispersing valuable energy. “In the end,” we says, “they neither become proficient in their profession, nor do they gain the eminence they anticipated” (2340). What is the solution to this problem? The following: “we must carefully compare in our minds all the different things in life we might hope to make our principal work, and decide which is of the greatest value; this decided, we should renounce our other interests and devote ourselves to that one thing only” (2340). Sound advice, of course—but then there’s always Shelley’s equally true observation: “We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon,” and often not capable of the sort of intense, perpetual concentration Kenko is suggesting we must maintain to accomplish some great feat of learning.

A personal reflection: I take Kenko’s ideas about learning to heart since I’ve always considered myself rather more like Shelley’s drifting cloud-consciousness or the wind lyre “To whose frail frame no second motion brings / One mood or modulation like the last” than like the model scholar. But as I’ve grown older, I have learned how to turn this inconstancy into more of a strength than a weakness, or at least to bring out the reserve of strength in the weakness: I’ve read very broadly and reflected a great deal, if not always in a sustained way; so I am able to make many connections that may not be available to those whose path of study has been more single-minded, more persistent, more constant. I am not so much trying to “amass information” in one or two fields as I am trying to achieve some degree of wisdom, and perhaps even to arrive at that elusive state Milton calls “calm of mind, all passion spent.” For me, that’s the value of literature, criticism, and literary theory. Younger scholars who want to make progress would do well to reflect on why they want to learn (insofar as that understanding is accessible to them), how they proceed, the limits of their attention and desire, and so forth.

While Kenko says, “A great enterprise is unlikely to be achieved except at the expense of everything else” (2341), it’s fair to suggest that very young people might find it best not to focus too narrowly on any one subject: the time of life to do that is somewhat later, as one approaches middle age, and time becomes more obviously a factor: there are some things I’d like to learn thoroughly, but I know that there just isn’t enough sand left in my hourglass, so I might as well concentrate my activities somewhat and accomplish something in what I’ve already found worthwhile.

2342. The concluding paragraph of our selection shows genuine humility: at eight years old, says Kenko, he asked his father about Buddha, and his father gave one of those answers parents give when they don’t know quite what to say. You become a Buddha by following the teachings of Buddha, says father. So who, asked little Yoshida, taught him to teach? And all the father can say is, “I suppose he fell from the sky or else he sprang up out of the earth.” Ultimately, Kenko’s whole approach as a mature thinker suggests, there aren’t any answers to the profound questions that people begin asking even in childhood—or at least there aren’t any final answers or answers that will please everyone.

Finally, to compare Kenko with Sei Shonagon, I’d say that while the latter is mostly serene and upbeat (except when she is criticizing those who fail to come up to the mark in some capacity or other), Kenko is rather “Eeyorish” in his outlook. While Shonagon writes in a quirky first-person mode dedicated to excellent impressionistic descriptions, Kenko’s style tends to lean on philosophical abstractions and a rather impersonal “we.” But both are for the most part admirably non-systemic in their way of perceiving and judging things, and they show some affinity in the loose, almost episodic quality of their writings.

General Notes on Zeami Motokiyo’s Atsumori.

Atsumori, the slain warrior who now wanders as a ghost, must let go of his murderous obsession, and it seems that his old foe Kamagai (a member of the Genji or Minamoto clan), disguised as the priest Rensei, must do the same with regard to the remorse he feels over having killed this virtuous member of the Heike in 1185. Behind the play is the earth-shaking history of the fall of a powerful clan that had once controlled half of Japan. The play’s action seems to consist in the “letting-go” on Atsumori’s part of his desire for vengeance. But Kamagai’s Buddha-like gentleness and prayer surely helps set Atsumori free. Motokiyo’s drama relies upon economy of expression and restraint in all things; it’s highly symbolic and not at all mimetic in the sense that many western plays are. A good website for further study: Traditional Theater in Japan.

Week 09, Faridoddin Attar, Jalaloddin Rumi, Sa'di

2007-03-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

Notes on Faridoddin Attar’s The Conference of the Birds

1528. “Forget what is and is not Islam,” says the narrator; that’s a confrontational statement given that the five pillars seem so set: believe in Allah and the Prophet’s revelation as the final one; pray five times daily; give alms; purify yourself by fasting; make the pilgrimage to Mecca if possible. So the author redefines Islam (the process and state of submission to Allah’s will) in a manner that de-emphasizes following the rules and instead posits that mystic experience is central.

1528-31. The learned Sheikh Sama’n is someone others look to as a symbol of righteousness in Islam, but he is shaken by a dream in which he has given over Muslim faith only to throw himself into the Christian way of belief. This dream horrifies him, but he must confront his worst fear. This man of books has not struggled, perhaps, has not really lived, so his “submission” will not be complete until he undergoes such a journey as the dream now requires him to begin. Islam, after all, emphasizes the individual’s spiritual struggle to submit.

The Sheikh isn’t overcome by the Christian girl’s beauty alone; on 1529, we are told that this girl “knew / The secrets of her faith’s theology.” Sam’an doesn’t so much embrace wordly desire for her as renounce the world for her sake. He is a spiritual seeker, not a libertine. Still, when the girl unveils, he falls before her as an “idol,” and we’re told that “A fire flashed through the old man’s joints” (1529), and from this point his passion seems to take on an erotic cast. On 1530, he has “put aside the Self and selfish lust,” but his forgetfulness leads him to worship not Allah but a fleshly Christian idol.

1532-36. Allah is known as “the merciful,” but the Sheikh’s Christian idol hardly merits that title—she induces him to “Burn the Koran, drink wine, seel up Faith’s eye, / Bow down to images” (253-55). He declares that he will actually burn his Koran (though the text decorously avoids describing this depraved act), and do whatever he’s told. On 1534, what medieval Christians would call a sententia gets the message across: “After so many years of true belief, / A young girl brought this learnèd sheikh to grief.” Fifty years of study and devotion are swept away by a beautiful young infidel, and this good man is entirely at the mercy of his passions and those who would lead him even farther astray by means of them. On 1535, the Christian girl demands gold and silver, and insists that her worshiper become a swineherd for a year. The sheikh has reached a point beyond description, a place of absolute transgression: “I’ve passed beyond loss, profit, Islam, crime, / For how much longer must I bide my time?” (1535) He is so far beyond the pale of Islam that his friends desert him, and he becomes isolated.

1537-41. The sheikh’s old friend arrives on the scene, and can’t believe the others have left the man to his own devices. So he prays in Rome for forty days and nights until he sees “the Prophet, lovely as the moon” (496), who rewards the friend by liberating the sheikh from the “chain” (505) that had bound him. The sheikh’s repentance and reformation sends him back to his proper dervish cloak and faith, and a dream commands the Christian girl to follow him to the true faith and “emerge from superstition’s night” (569). When her transformation is complete, she feels the familiar pain of absence from Allah, and accepts death to be nearer to Him. The final lines of our selection contrast the uncertainty of “the muddied Self” with the “Assurance” that “whispers in the heart’s dark core” (645-46). This seems like a Sufi point in that the sheikh’s way forward has come by a painful demonstration of how incomplete and wandering a thing is selfhood, which we may gloss here as something like “the ego, or that part of us which is beholden to selfish desires and the pursuit thereof.” It’s true that the sheikh’s passion wasn’t about self-aggrandizement, but his desire must have been selfish because it flowed towards the wrong object too easily. Still, we come back to that initial warning not to be priggish about “what is and is not Islam”: if I understand the lesson rightly, the sheikh’s journey through idol-worshiping and abasement was necessary, so there’s no point in wishing it undone. He has found insight at last by means of this journey, by the aid of his friend and the Prophet. He has confronted his worst fear, lived through it, and now is good as new. At the “heart’s core,” there is something beyond ordinary notions of self, something that connects the believer directly with Allah. It is to that place that the sheikh’s dream and journey have led him.

Notes on the Poetry of Jalâloddin Rumi

“Listen, if you can stand to” and “What I most want”

The robai is a rhymed Persian quatrain, and the content of these two poems speak of the need to get beyond the constrictions of personality, of the ego. In this, Sufism is a lot like, say, Buddhism or Hinduism, both of which counsel forms of constructive self-annihilation. The second poem is noteworthy in its hope that the person who has escaped personality may be able to “sit apart” a while and not just leap right into some other trap that only leads back to the body and desire. The first robai mentions the possibility of a language that will subsist “inside seeing” rather than taking up an oppositional or distorting relationship to insight.

“Don’t come to us without bringing music” and “Sometimes visible, sometimes not, sometimes”

Spiritual insight is described in the first poem as a kind of intoxication (wine is forbidden to Muslims), while the second poem probably alludes to some of those passages in The Koran in which it’s said that Allah will eventually reconcile all people of good will; for now, the “different shapes” or religious faiths prevail.

Robais 25, 82, 158

In Robai 25, the Friend is of course Allah, and the poem simply asks why God is not visible as well as nature. Robai 82 suggests that the essence of ritual is intention; it’s devotion that sanctifies the physical act. 158 mentions a place literally “beyond good and evil,” beyond the rigid conceptions people adhere to about ethical categories and sanctions. Sufism seems to delight in positing this sort of realm, which is also beyond language and self-identity. This strategy seems designed to open up the believer’s mind rather than focus it on some petty set of “rules and regulations.” In other words, the enemy of any religion is the tendency of believers to settle into comfortable, empty ritual practices and to adhere childishly to some code of do’s and don’ts. But that’s not spirituality, it’s herd-think that demands authoritarianism.

Ghazals

“An Empty Garlic” and “Dissolver of Sugar”

The first poem deals with shortsightedness in matters of spirit: “You miss the garden, / because you want a small fig from a random tree.” Introspection and silence are the counsel: “Let yourself be silently drawn / by the stronger pull of what you really love.” The speaker suggests, if I understand him rightly, that spiritual understanding is like a beautiful woman we can’t see because we allow our attention to be taken up with the material world as “an old crone” that flatters us with her attentions and her talk. Spiritual enthusiasm is its own kind of understanding. In the second poem, what is the “dissolver of sugar”? Well, the main thing that dissolves sugar is water. It seems to me that God is figured as being like a lover whose touch melts the beloved. The speaker says he wants to be ready for death, and he welcomes the presence of God as something that can “dissolve” his ordinary self into a greater reality. The very distance between lover and beloved only compels the speaker towards unification.

From Spiritual Couplets

“A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot”

As an admirer of Indian cooking, I like this poem and would advise any wayward chickpea just the same. The chickpea gets a lesson, that is, in its value as a natural thing to the human beings who are about to consume it: “Remember when you drank rain in the garden. / That was for this. . . . / Grace first. Sexual pleasure, / then a boiling new life begins.”

“Why Wine is Forbidden”

Well, as the Romans say, in vino veritas. The speaker suggests that most people are more likely to become belligerent than mellow when drunk. His view of human nature is somewhat distrustful, and he’s probably right: most people do become jerks when they drink too much. The Prophet understood this, and therefore prohibited the consumption of alcohol. At best, alcohol only helps people cheat their way to ecstasy, and apparently our Sufi mystic thinks it’s necessary to put some real effort into the attempt.

“The Question”

The speaker presents us with a choice: God’s presence will appear to us as a fire on our left, and water on our right. Which will we choose? If we choose the soft-seeming, flowing water, we choose wrongly. Sometimes—and almost always in matters of spirit—the easy choice, the “rational thing to do”—isn’t the right choice. Water partly represents the material world, which can be soft, pleasant, seductive. Fire is the element of purification and transformation: that is what we should choose. As it turns out, “If you are a friend of god, fire is your water.” The poet isn’t condemning water; he is suggesting only that “Fire is what of God is world-consuming. / Water, world-protecting.” As spiritual beings, I think he is saying, we should not fall in love with the things of this world. Our proper home is fire, spirit, not earthly comforts. We find the same choice put more starkly in the Gospels: Jesus says, “whosoever will save his life shall lose it” (Matthew 16:25). Former student Kathleen Olem describes the assumptions underlying this poem very well. She writes, “ Rumi suggests that what we believe to be true when we rely on reason, and our senses, is nothing more than an illusion he likens to magician’s tricks. In the realm of spirit, reason can be misleading; what appears to be death by fire is really spiritual transformation, what mystics refer to as "piercing the veil of illusion" revealing an eternal reality that will sustain us. Water, on the other hand, represents the physical world, and all its pleasures, which we mistakenly believe will sustain us, but, by its very nature, cannot. Rumi is pointing out that, on the mystical path to spiritual enlightenment, the truth may, in fact, contradict what we have always held to be true.”

From Birdsong: “Lovers in their brief delight”

The speaker emphasizes the cost of both erotic and spiritual passion, describing it in terms of sacrifice: “A thousand half-loves / must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.”

From The Glance: “Silkworms”

This poem quietly revels in paradox: embrace hurt and it will “change” into joy. It figures the life-process as the spinning of a cocoon whose purpose is transformation from the material to spiritual, from earth to flight. Particularly fine is the conclusion: “When I stop / speaking, this poem will close, / and open its silent wings . . . .” The poet’s words have as their purpose something beyond his intention or interpretation; the poem is to take flight and go where it will.

Notes on Sa’di’s Golestan

The dervishes who advise shahs deal with what the everyday processes of life cause people to forget, and they keep trying to bring whoever questions them back to fundamental insights about the primacy of spirit. The dervishes are centered in their “spinning” way; they are consistent sources of inspiration and wisdom for others and at the same time constantly traveling on an introspective journey. They are rooted in wisdom, while the shahs often seem to feel too strongly the pull of worldliness and material responsibility. Some shahs judge by appearances, wield their power arbitrarily, and so forth. The better ones, however, are compassionate and willing to listen to wise counsel. When they do, good things happen. The same goes when they manage to discern the essence of a person. Consider the Fourth Anecdote, in which the counselor saves a child who belonged to a defeated band of thieves, and the child grows up to kill him and his two sons. The shah gets things right in this instance, even if his thinking doesn’t seem very generous: “A wolf is what a wolf cub grows to finally / Although it might grow up in human company” (1555). Be careful, he suggests, to whom you show mercy and generosity, lest you loose evil and destruction into the world. The shah knows this because he’s in a position of power, and must consider such things. So perhaps there’s a dialectic here: we should listen to both perspectives, that of the dervishes, and that of the shahs. The dervishes are privileged, but the shahs have their virtues as well; they have their sphere of authority and understanding.

Week 08, The Koran, Ibn Ishaq's Biography of the Prophet

2007-03-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

Notes on The Koran

1433. “Believers, when you rise to pray wash your faces and your hands . . . . But if you are sick or travelling . . . take some clean sand and rub your hands and faces with it. God does not wish to burden you . . . .” Forms are important, but the faith that animates them is much more so. If you can’t find some sand in Arabia when water isn’t available, you’re not looking very hard.

1433. The Koran says to “deal justly” and “bear with” Israelites and Christians, those other “People of the Book.” For the most part—at least arguably—harsh treatment of non-Muslims is put off to the Day of Resurrection. It’s said of the Israelites that “You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them. But pardon them and bear with them.” Similar words are spoken of Christians, who are charged with forgetting the covenant God made with them. And on 1434, the text calls those who insist that “God is the Messiah, the son of Mary” unbelievers.

1435. As with the Hebrew Scriptures, there is undeniably some strict legal sanctioning in The Koran: “As for the man or woman who is guilty of theft, cut off their hands.”

1436. Here the text says that “People of the Book” should “vie with each other in good works” and in the end differences will be resolved.

1436-37. Jesus is described as a prophet, but not as an equal of God. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the sticking point. See 1437: how can one be a Christian without believing that Jesus is God’s “only begotten Son”? If a Christian gives up this belief, he or she is not Christian, right? So a key source of tension between these two religions is apparent from such passages. The text sometimes counsels patience and offers hope, but it is also often blunt: “do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those who were given the Book before you, who have made of your religion a jest and a pastime” (1436).

1440. Jesus is here made to disavow any claim to divinity. God gave him miracles, and he is a genuine apostle of God, but not, according to the Koran, more than that: “Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to mankind: ‘Worship me and my mother as gods beside God?’ // ‘Glory to You,’ he will answer, ‘how could I ever say that to which I have no right?’” The apostles warn us and undergo testing, whereby they set an example of steadfastness. God favors them with his messages, and every nation gets its apostle (1443).

1442. It seems that one cannot have a “pick-and-choose” Koran, to adapt a phrase from Pope John Paul II. The Koran’s status is claimed to be even more infallible than that of the Bible, but I’m no expert in such matters. The Christian tradition has included intense and prolonged argument over the precise textual contours of the Bible; the Church Fathers had to act as literary critics to establish which books were to be considered canonical, and which should be described as apocryphal. But I think that Islam has also built up a vast body of extra-Koranic literature in the area of social conduct and law—the Imams are supposed to be experts in all aspects of the written tradition.

1443. The Idols here are eerily personified and made to attest to their own falsity: “It was not us that you worshipped, God is our all-sufficient witness. Nor were we aware of your worship.”

1446-52. Joseph is treated as a prophet and is “universalized”; he isn’t so much a national leader as an example of patience and wise use of power. In other respects, the story seems similar to the one in the Bible.

1452. Allah speaks directly to Muhammad, distancing the Messenger from the message. There is plenty of room for drama in that kind of relationship between God and the Messenger. But the relationship in the Gospels between Jesus and God seems to me more intimate and more enigmatic.

1453. Here the text makes the father of Jesus “a special messenger”—not “god himself.” Jesus’ blessedness and purity are conveyed, but not any equation of status to God.

Notes on Ibn Ishaq

“How Salman Became a Muslim”

1463-67. Salman is an earnest fellow who seeks the truth. He starts out as a Zoroastrian, and then becomes attracted to the doctrines of Christianity and wants to find an honest embodiment of those doctrines. His father fears this change and actually puts him in fetters, which Salman manages to cast off, whereupon he’s off to Syria and thence to what would now be Mosul, Iraq, whose Bishop he reveres, and afterwards to Nasibin, Turkey, and on to Ammuriya, Turkey. In Ammuriya Salman is told about a prophet who will bring a new dispensation of the Religion of Abraham, and is given a few signs by which he may be known. On 1466, the apostle devises a way for Salman to free himself from his current master, and even helps him carry out the plan: he assists Salman in planting the palm trees promised to the master. Then comes the oddest part of the story. Salman has been told by his master to “go to a certain place in Syria where there was a man who lived between two thickets” (1466). There he meets none other (according to the apostle’s belief) than Jesus, who, when Salman comes upon him, points him towards the apostle. Jesus keeps turning up in the Koran as a wondrous, misunderstood figure.

“The Beginning of the Sending Down of the Quran”

467. The text says that “Prophecy is a troublesome burden—only strong, resolute messengers can bear it by God’s help and grace, because of the opposition which they meet from men . . . .” Muhammad’s message was uncongenial to the people amongst whom he was born (the Quraysh); they were polytheistic animists, and his new dispensation is monotheistic. It isn’t that monotheism was inconceivable to them (Hebrews and Christians were hardly unknown to the Arabian peninsula), but they remained unwilling to change their older religion.

“Khadija, Daughter of Khuwaylid, Accepts Islam”

1467-68. Khadija seems to have been a practical woman of the merchant class, and she became Muhammad’s first convert. The text says that she was of great assistance to him, providing material and moral support as his revelations flowed and ceased.

From “The Prescription of Prayer”

1468-69. Muslims are supposed to pray five times daily if at all possible. This part of the text explains the significance of prayer: at first it was Allah’s commandment to Muhammad that he should pray, and the number of prostrations during prayer gradually increased. The angel Gabriel then visited with the prophet and prayed at the five prescribed times with him, and made apparent the importance of ritual ablution before prayer. But the statement “prayer is in what is between your prayer today and your prayer yesterday” gets to the heart of the matter. Islam itself signifies “submission to God’s will,” and apparently, life itself is to be lived as a perpetual prayer. Therefore, Muslim prayer isn’t something a believer does at the proper times as a formal requirement and then sets aside; it is a constant attitude of devotion. The traditional call to prayer sung at mosques, by the way, is:

God is most great. God is most great.
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.
God is most great. God is most great.
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.
I testify that there is no God except God.
Ash-hadu an la ilaha ill-Allah.
I testify that there is no God except God.
Ash-hadu an la ilaha ill-Allah.
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Ash-hadu anna Muhammad-ar-Rasoolullah.
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Ash-hadu anna Muhammad-ar-Rasoolullah.
Come to prayer! Come to prayer!
Hayya 'alas-Salah. Hayya 'alas-Salah.
Come to success! Come to success!
Hayya 'alal-falah. Hayya 'alal-falah.
God is most great. God is most great.
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.
There is none worthy of worship except God.
La ilaha ill-Allah.

Belief.net Call to Prayer.

Another illustrative site is Muslim Canada.org, which contains (as do many other sites) some audio files of the Call to Prayer. The following version in Quicktime format is beautifully done and you can follow the Arabic lines easily: Audio File of Call to Prayer.

From “Ali ibn Abu Talib, the First Male to Accept Islam”

Ali is Muhammad’s first male convert, and when Abu Talib discovers them praying together, he won’t convert but promises his support. The prophet begins to pick up more converts, including Abu Bakhr, who later became the first caliph.

From “The Apostle’s Public Preaching and the Response”

1470-73. Muhammad was getting along with the tribe of the Quraysh, it seems, until he began to speak less than positively about their gods, after which time his faithful uncle Abu Talib did his best to protect him from the machinations and warlike attacks of the Quraysh. But he is beginning to make converts, too, and gathers those loyal to him to his side.

From “Al-Walid ibn Al-Mughira” and “How the Apostle Was Treated by His Own People”

1473-75. Muhammad continues to speak forthrightly, and is accused of being a sorcerer, and so forth. Others defend him fervently, and at one point his own behavior is striking: walking three times around the ancient Qa’aba stone and hearing harsh words spoken against him, he says, “Will you listen to me O Quraysh? By him who holds my life in His hand I bring you slaughter” (1474). This statement makes quite an impression, and his accusers back down for a time.

“Hamza Accepts Islam”

1474. “Islam” means “submission,” and different people achieve it differently. It so happens that Hamza’s way is to beat a man named Abu Jahl for insulting the prophet. This act has a good effect on Hamza and even, to some extent, on Abu Jahl, who regrets his bad behavior.

“The Burial Preparations”

Muhammad passes away, supposedly with the last injunction “Let not two religions be left in the Arabian peninsula” (1475). See Wikipedia on Muslim History for an overview of the historical events that follow the death of the prophet in June 632. Albert Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples is excellent, as is Karen Armstrong’s Muhammad: a Biography of the Prophet.

Week 07, Buddha, The Jataka, The Bhagavad-Gita

2007-03-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

Notes on Buddha’s Three Cardinal Discourses and the Buddhist Jataka.

The Three Cardinal Discourses are entitled “Setting Rolling the Wheel of Truth,” “The Not-Self Characteristic,” and “The Fire Sermon.” One thing is obvious about Gautama Buddha, as accounts of his personality have come down to us: he is unencumbered by desire or ambition, and has disinvested himself of all stock in the body. Unlike George Costanza’s nutty father on Seinfeld, he doesn’t have to shout “serenity now!” out of desperation, but is truly free. Why, then, does he bother talking to others about spiritual matters? His reason for taking up the role of teacher and prophet is compassion for those who (to varying degrees) don't yet know what they need to know, and therefore do not live as they should. The ignorance and suffering of others, it seems, calls for a response on the part of those who have become enlightened, so liberation isn’t the same thing as irresponsibility.

How easy or how difficult does he make attainment of serenity sound for others, and what style does he adopt to convey his message? Much in Buddhism comes down to promoting acts of constructive self-annihilation and renunciation of materialism. The Four Noble Truths are that life is suffering, that suffering is a product of attachment or desire, that it’s possible to let go of such attachments, and finally, that there’s a specifiable path to follow towards liberation. That is a very simple, straightforward message: misdirected desire makes us unhappy, but right conduct and attitude can bring us peace. On the whole, Buddha counsels reorientation of one’s sensibilities and attentions away from the self and towards the community, though not in an ostentatious way. Buddhism is often called “the middle way” because it doesn’t preach extreme asceticism, but at the same time the concept of self-sacrifice for others’ welfare seems to be very important to this philosophy, which differs markedly from western outlooks that emphasize the primacy of the individual and the satisfactions of material accumulation. I will leave the specifics to the notes available online along with the sermons themselves, but basically, the Eightfold Path, as the first sermon sets them forth, consists in right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. (The BigView.com offers lucid explications of these categories, but you can find them all over the Internet. See, for example, The Buddhist Reading Room, which provides a wealth of materials and links).

What is especially noteworthy about Buddha’s views on attachment is that he applies them to everything: attachment to anything whatsoever—our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and so forth—and consequent appropriation of them as mine, belonging to me, leads to delusion and misery. Fundamentally, it seems, the self is a delusion. That is a point we can also find in the Baghavad-Gita, beautifully enunciated by the god Krishna. Buddhism differs in a number of significant ways from Hinduism (see Brian's Syllabus), but in some respects it is consonant with it, and the point I just made is a key area of agreement: the small-s “self” or autonomous ego is a function of our greedy and anxious desire for security and gain. To put the case lightly, Buddhism and Hinduism both seem to be on to our “control freak” tendencies and possessiveness.

As for stylistics, Buddha surely doesn’t construe knowledge in an Aristotelian or Baconian fashion: patient inductive research and the gradual building up of knowledge into theories are not his method or goal. He has already achieved serenity, and that isn’t something we can capture in fourfold or eightfold divisions, or classify in the usual western way. Nonetheless, even though we are talking about something language can't really express—absolute peace and an intuitive sense of truth, Buddha characterizes enlightenment's stages as attainable in degrees, with each degree of attainment giving us a kind of satisfaction, though not of the sort that comes from object-relations. The sermons’ divisions are heuristic (teaching) devices: they help Buddha convey his main point that suffering is a product of desire—we covet objects, we covet security, we turn people into objects, and so forth—and that it is eminently possible to overcome such tendencies. He conveys in a constructively paradoxical style a message about acts of letting-go and letting-happen, not making-happen. This distinction seems to be common to several eastern philosophies and religions: while the west is often about spiritual struggle, or “making-happen,” eastern wisdom has to do with the letting-go of delusions and the letting-happen of intuition and wisdom. That’s an overstatement, of course, but I think it’s worthwhile as an initial distinction.

With regard to The Jataka, its stories are about Buddha’s incarnations, so they teach us about Buddhist ethics. Purification is important, and so is a strong sense of community. Buddhism preaches respect for all creatures and rejects emphasis on human rank or caste (important considerations in Hinduism) and instead promotes egalitarianism and community. Buddhism privileges the spirit of self-sacrifice. The hare, for example, sacrifices its life in the flames, giving its body as alms, and this is described as a constructive, purifying act of self-annihilation, one that forces others to confront their own selfishness. In another of the tales, a selfish king sees the error of his ways when he is confronted with the courage of a monkey who gives his life to save his comrades; the monkey’s broken body becomes a bridge whereby they pass to safety and escape the king. Of course, there are always those who take kindness for weakness, but Buddha is offering an uplifting code of conduct that will inspire as many as possible: devotion to the welfare of others is the way. Buddhism is “worldly” in the best sense: it makes us think through how we treat others and consider the consequences of our behavior in that respect. The stories in The Jataka sometimes entail punishment, but that really isn’t what they are about. Punishing those who do wrong is undeniably satisfying for a while, but it’s almost certain to make them withdraw into their own ego-shell and “forget” or deny that they have done wrong—not exactly a recipe for spiritual enlightenment. The punishments suffered by the selfish characters in The Jataka (like the greedy merchant in the first tale) seem designed to enlighten, not simply to cause pain and distress.

Finally, a good question would be, “to what extent can we take Buddhist ethics seriously in a western market society, one based on the desires of consumers for many more “things” than they need?” Capitalism thrives not on the buying and selling of basic foodstuffs and other necessities but rather on the producing, selling, and buying of all that which goes beyond need. Capitalism thrives on the production not only of goods but, more importantly, of people’s desire for an endless series of goods above and beyond what they need. The market sells us buying and selling, consumption, as a lifestyle, a world view: it takes advantage of the fact that we are creatures of excess and extravagance. (No wonder King Lear gets so upset when his daughters take away his hundred knights: “O, reason not the need!” he exclaims, “Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous.”) So how can we accept Buddha’s antimaterialism and “not-self-ism”? Can we at least use those ideas as a hedge against confusing our love for commodified objects with an appreciation of genuine value? Buddha offers a perspective outside the system. (Differences aside, the same is true of Jesus, who rejected materialism and said, “Take no care for the morrow” and “My kingdom is not of this world.”) A modern, semi-Buddhist ethos might say something like, “well, if you’re going to be consumers, at least live lightly in the presence of the object-system; don’t get attached to the objects you buy and consume or take buying and consuming as the purpose of your lives.” To the contrary, the capitalist order’s proponents would surely prefer that we be chained to a process of serial obsession and consumption, and unable to think outside the commercial box in any way that threatens to restrict the flow of our desire for objects and the satisfactions they bring. Buddha himself was high-born and could have taken full advantage of wealth and position, but he rejected those things, and chose to help others. It is possible, after all, so perhaps enlightenment is to some degree attainable by anyone who understands that it is a worthy goal and who wants to achieve it. Of course, wisdom itself is commodifiable—we can turn anything into a “product,” and thereby neutralize the transformative potential it may otherwise have had. But why not end on a positive note? This will do:

The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the world’s ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Atisha, an 11 th-century Tibetan Buddhist master.
(http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/)

General Notes on The Bhagavad-Gita.

The Individual or “Self”: We tend to think of the individual person as a fully self-contained, autonomous agent. “I” am not “you,” and you and I are not “them.” Everybody, we like to say in our post-romantic fashion, is in at least some sense unique, and by this we seem to mean that something in us precedes any possible determination or shaping influence by outside forces like the society into which we have been born, the political order that subjects us to its imperatives, the expectations of our parents, the linguistic order, and so forth. We sometimes acknowledge that forces beyond ourselves are partly responsible for what we become, but that sort of acknowledgement usually makes us uncomfortable. Freud, Marx, Foucault and others have in their various ways insisted to our discomfiture that the forces that produce “us” as individuals are powerful and relatively autonomous—how does one combat the Unconscious, international capital, Ideological State Apparatuses, or Power? But how does The Bhagavad-Gita deal with the concept of the self? What constitutes it? It seems that the Gita author or authors would accept neither the idea of the self as an autonomous, unique agent nor the idea that forces such as “society” straightforwardly determine who we are as individuals. The Gita insistently claims that the self is a delusion stemming from ignorance and entirely dependent upon a strong desire to find security and permanence in our relationships with objects and with other people in their narrow selfhood. Ultimately, this desire boils down to fear of death. The only security an individual can truly hope to attain, counsels the Gita, is to be found in the knowledge that the small-s self has its source in the ultimate Self, Krishna. When a person realizes this truth, the fear of death recedes and a whole new world opens up. This is a key point in the Gita—when we no longer see the world “through selfish eyes,” so to speak, we see it in an entirely different, liberated manner. As William Blake says in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “a fool sees not the same tree as a wise man sees.”

Why is the self a delusion? Well, it’s just another concept that doesn’t explain anything. Nietzsche makes a fine point when he says that the expression “lightning flashes” may be useful, but it’s also a lie. We perceive a “flashing” in the sky, and then we invent a noun (lightning) to account for the instrumental cause of that flashing. But “lightning” is just a word, an empty concept, an abstraction. To say “lightning flashes” is at best shorthand for “go see what I’m talking about: flashing,” but it doesn’t explain the flashing activity that we see. No, it makes us think we do, which in turn makes us arrogant because (supposedly) now we know so much. As country folk say, “it’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, it’s what you think you know.” Try substituting for “lightning flashes” the phrase “I do” or “self performs action,” and you can easily understand the Hindu and Buddhist notion of why the individual ego is a delusion: the noun “self” is an ex post facto construction we use to explain things and relationships that we really don’t understand. Arjuna says to Krishna something like, “I am the doer of my deeds, and am deeply attached to and responsible for their results,” and the latter entirely disagrees with that assessment. You only covet the fruit of your actions if you cling to the notion of self as an entity that covets, that tries to extend itself by means of things and deeds that in fact limit and attenuate, that hinder the path to enlightenment.

Consequentiality of Actions: Based on our delusory notion of the autonomous self, w e generally make a close connection between what we are and what we do. We like to say that as individuals with free will, we are responsible for what we have done and are doing. Deeds entail consequences and (supposedly) reveal the essence of a person. Existentialism, one of the most popular western philosophies, encourages such notions by means of its Sartrean dictum, “essence follows existence.” We might even say that we treat the deed like a thing, a commodity, with which our identity gets caught up to the point of identification: you are your car, you are your deed! This is a powerful tendency in modern western societies, with their strong emphasis on competition for the right to accumulate material goods, the achievement of carefully specified goals often tied to or allied with economic production and consumption, and the eventual accountability of all “evildoers” at the bar of justice. What does this book say about such a viewpoint? It counsels action, to be sure, but action in a peculiarly detached manner: action in what the text calls “the spirit of worship.” Can you act in such a way that you don’t expect to own or control the results of your actions? If so, you’re acting in the way the Gita suggests you should. If you act on the basis of some kind of “reward/punishment” or “success/failure” scheme, if you expect recognition and admiration for what you do, then the Gita would suggest that you’re not acting in the right spirit. This sort of selfish action is somewhat like that of a mediocre actor who “plays to the crowd” rather than just trying to be true to the part.

The Path to Enlightenment: On the surface, this seems simple— Krishna says all you really need to do is appreciate him, listen to his wisdom, and concentrate on him. If you do that, you’ll escape the seemingly endless cycle of death and rebirth. Too much spiritual storm and stress may turn a person into a fanatic who can’t act in the detached manner that Krishna advocates. I don’t think the Gita’s idea of “devotion” (which is the best path, in the text’s view) amounts to anything like zealotry—if salvation is pursued anxiously and obsessively, the seeker will move farther and farther away from enlightenment and liberation. Perhaps that is where some westerners go astray when they make contact with eastern philosophy: they become fanatics determined to cast off immediately everything they ever knew or did. Inevitably, I suspect, this fanaticism leads to disillusionment. Hindu religion involves devotion, but wisdom seems to be more a matter of “letting things happen” than of anxiously trying to make them happen. Of course, it makes paradoxical sense to point out that it takes a lot of work before a person can just “let truth happen.”

Structure: the book is dialogic, a conversation between the charioteer-god Krishna and Arjuna the warrior. As Krishna unfolds his truths, Arjuna plays the practical man and asks, “yes, but we are restless, how can we live up to all this advice?” Which question elicits variations and alternatives from Krishna . We move towards a penultimate vision of Krishna as both Destroyer and Preserver. He is life and death, beautiful and mild, terrible as the lion killing its prey. This vision is too much for Arjuna—be careful what you wish for! So Krishna becomes mild again, and conversational. The text returns to the theme of wisdom and the right path, and before it ends we are given something of a jeremiad against the losers who don’t get the idea. But the book doesn’t end on such a sour note, returning instead to the necessity of renunciation and the achievement of right attitude and understanding.

Text’s Status: How does this book compare to The Bible with regard to the status posited for the text? Well, the latter work makes more claims for itself as necessary for salvation. But the Gita sets itself forth as a husk you can work through to get at the kernel of truth, so that you won’t need the printed words anymore. The Four Gospels deal heavily in winnowing the wheat from the chaff; they are consequential, linear, black and white in their morality. Forgiveness is possible and there’s much magnificence of gesture, but individual sinners are closely bound to their actions. One might see Jesus as a transgressive figure, a revolutionary who breaks the law to fulfill it—but the strict law of observance reigns and is turned inward, as when Jesus says that even to think of adultery is already to have committed it.

Chapter-by- Chapter Notes on The Bhagavad-Gita.

Edition: The Bhagavad-Gita. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York : Three Rivers Press, 2000. ISBN 0—609-81034-0. Page numbers do not apply to the Norton Anthology of World Literature selections, but the commentary is compatible.

Chapter 1. Arjuna’s Despair.

41-45. Dhritarashtra, father of the Kaurava warriors, sits beyond the story’s frame, requesting from the poet Sanjaya that he relate what happened in the fateful days of the Battle of Kurukshetra. He, too, will have a chance to derive enlightenment from the story. As Sanjaya recounts things, Arjuna asks Krishna to drive his chariot to a commanding place where he may view the entire field of battle. Time seems to stand still, opening a space for sustained reflection. Arjuna is not yet enlightened, and needs to know the precise relationship between himself and the actions he is about to perform. At this point, he is overwhelmed, and grieves over the imminent loss of his kindred in the battle, and the confusion and disorder he believes will necessarily result.

Chapter 2. The Practice of Yoga.

46-53. To clear away the thicket of Arjuna’s illusions, Krishna must first help him redefine what is meant by the term “self” and what is meant by “action.” He tells him to let go of his grief, which stems from attachment to his kindred in their perishable, mortal form. The truth is that such a connection is selfish—Arjuna is thinking more of himself than of the others whose loss he fears. Krishna seems to counsel that while family and caste are important, they are not to be fetishized for their own sake, or for the comfort and advantage they bring to oneself. The general comments I made above about “the self” apply well to this chapter. The Self transcends ego or personhood and cannot die; it is as imperishable as modern physics says matter is indestructible. Some of the language in this chapter may remind us of Jesus in The Gospels. For example, Mark 3.31-35: 3:31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. 3:32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. 3:33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? 3:34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 3:35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

Saint Augustine follows this lead in The Confessions, too, in the way he deals with the passing of his mother Monica—he treats her with great regard, but at the same time he does not cling to the mortal element in her, saying that it would be selfish and an insult to God to behave that way. Krishna doesn’t preach stoicism; what he suggests is that Arjuna should act with detachment and that he should treat whatever feelings or sensations that come to him with indifference. He should do his duty as a Kshatriya warrior, and not worry about the so-called death of his relatives. At 52, Krishna speaks to Arjuna in terms he can understand: not to do your caste-based duty is shameful, it constitutes failure and disgrace.

53-60. What is the wisdom of yoga? All of the yoga types— of action, wisdom, devotion, and meditation, as they’re usually described—counsel that whatever a person does or thinks, it should be done or thought in “the spirit of worship,” and not for the sake of the results. Taking unwise account of the results to be attained from actions leads only to enslavement to desire and ambition, whether one’s own desires and ambitions or those of others. Reading the Hindu scriptures with some ulterior motive in mind, it seems, would be just as misguided as acting for personal gain. Regarding religion in this way only leads to empty ritualism and, in the end, disillusionment. The text is very clear on these points at page 54: “Act for action’s sake,” it says, and “unnecessary are all scriptures to someone who has seen the truth.” From 56-60, Krishna explains that the essence of yoga is rest, meditation, detachment. He calls for a reorientation of purpose when a person acts: the one who acts should be centered not in him- or herself, but rather in Krishna , the all-encompassing Self.

Chapter 3. The Yoga of Action (Karma Yoga).

61-63. Arjuna does not yet understand Krishna’s message, it seems, since he sees only paradox in the command to act: action is necessary, but action, he thinks, must be bad because it enslaves the doer. So on 62-63, Krishna varies the message, saying that action is necessary, but that so long as a person acts in the spirit of worship, it will not have the results Arjuna fears.

65-66. Krishna suggests that those who know about yoga do not try to impose enlightenment, but inspire by example.

66-70. Krishna himself keeps the cosmos going by means of action, as he says at 66, so inaction is not the aim. Human beings must act, but they must not covet the results or outcomes; they must not attach their desires to their deeds, and try to control what happens after they have acted. Krishna posits a reciprocal relationship between gods and human beings: “by worship you will nourish the gods / and the gods will nourish you in return” (63). What is the cause of “action”? The three gunas or qualities that arise from nature: sattva (spiritual, having to do with purity and spirituality), rajas (worldly, having to do with action and process) and tamas (unholy, having to do with inertia). It is not the ego that we should consider the performer of actions, but the gunas, which, if I understand correctly, exist in all things and bind the body to the spirit; as Krishna says on pg. 158, they “bind to the mortal body / the deathless embodied Self.” (This is an important consideration in Indian dietary practice, by the way—a healthy diet reinforces the balance between mind and body, while an unhealthy one destroys that balance. See, for example, the clear explication about yoga, the gunas and cooking at Sivananda.org.

Towards the end of the chapter, Krishna explains why a certain withdrawal from the senses is advisable—he says that desire strikes us first through our senses, so people must learn to control their reactions to sensory experience. Again, stoicism or simply “not feeling anything” doesn’t seem to be what is counseled here. Rather, the key thing is how a person responds to sensory experience, feelings and desires. Embedded in this text is a hierarchical notion of the mind being more valuable than the body.

Chapter 4. The Yoga of Wisdom (Jñana Yoga).

73. Krishna’s method entails variation and elaboration, the partial unfolding of truths to which the text returns repeatedly. Here he explains that all honest action leads to him. Indeed, a person rooted in wisdom is already “there,” so the book’s employment of location-words is more a device than an actuality; the “path” described is circular, not linear.

75. Here Krishna thoroughly redefines the concept “action.” Action isn’t simply “doing things”; this kind of busy-action may amount to doing nothing at all. In fact, says Krishna , in this sense the wise do nothing at all since wisdom consumes the content of their actions. As an American Secretary of State once said, “don’t just do something—stand there!”

76-77. The various “offerings”—sacrifice, the objects of the senses, action, etc.—almost don’t matter; what matters is how you do what you do. Right-spirited action is worship. What Krishna advises here resembles the preaching of Buddhists: a constructive, gentle form of self-annihilation. Experience itself can be considered an offering to Krishna if it’s approached rightly. Those who act honestly are, he says, “freed of themselves” (77).

78-79. Krishna says that the seeker should find a teacher. How to learn? Well, first the person who wants to learn must know that learning consists not in the accumulation of facts and so forth, but rather in the clearing away of deeply rooted illusions that stem from self and society. A person teaches not so much by imparting truth but rather by modeling how to learn. Oscar Wilde’s quip is relevant: “Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” (“A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated.” The Writings of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Isobel Murray. Oxford : Oxford UP, 1989. 570. ISBN-10: 019281978-X.)

Chapter 5. The Yoga of Renunciation.

81-87. This chapter furthers the transition away from what we would call narrowly construed Cartesian dualism (cogito, ergo sum or “I think; therefore, I am” being the key precept). It seems that the errors of connecting doers with actions, being attached to one’s desires, and being attached to the results of actions, are symptoms of this primal intellectual mistake. In my view, the text values the things of the mind and spirit over the body, but I also think it warns us against deriving from this hierarchy a narrow, ego-centered conception of the self as something purely intrapersonal. The point isn’t to dismiss one’s embodied existence altogether so as to exalt Reason or anything of that sort; it’s to understand how the mind and body work together and how the individual is related to constructions that go well beyond the narrow confines of the “little-s” self. The chapter’s central statement occurs on page 83: when a person offers his actions to Krishna , the text says, “sin / rolls off him, as drops of water / roll off a lotus leaf.” Such a person has shed the illusion of self and thereby connected to the cosmic Self that is Krishna , and purification is a natural result of the transformation. I suppose someone determined to deconstruct the text’s metaphysics would suggest that this Self is the ultimate “center that is not the center,” i.e. that it’s the metaphysical concept set beyond investigation so as to ground everything else Krishna says. That would be a fair point, but I find it more interesting to attend to the manner in which the text’s representational and dialogic strategies try to slip away from this difficulty and to produce genuine enlightenment. The representation of infinity and absolutes in religious texts may be mostly intended to instill a certain perspective on things, a way of living in the world without losing hope, not to deliver something that really cannot be conveyed in language or by means of images. The point is to keep the mind and spirit open, not to shut it down. The vastness of the Gita’s time frames swamps teleological thinking—its cycles seem run in billions of years, a frame too great for the mind to comprehend. In Job, the protagonist is instilled with such a perspective after God recounts his sublimities: Job says simply that God has spoken “things too wonderful” for a mortal to understand, and that silence is the only appropriate response.

Chapter 6. The Yoga of Meditation (Dhyana Yoga).

88-98. It seems as if the yoga of action is to be pursued only so that one can reach a level of maturity sufficient to practice the yoga of meditation, which yields serenity. Reigning in the mind is necessary since it’s natural for it to wander during meditation. If possible, one is supposed to reach a temporary state of silence wherein the flow of language and emotion stops. A person who has ever attended to this incessant internal chatter for long will know how difficult it is to make it stop or even to slow it down, even for a moment. As the Shakers say, “‘tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free.” Western people seem addicted to self-consciousness. The romantic poets analyze and sing well regarding the potentially infinite and maddening regression of acts of self-consciousness: “I am thinking about myself thinking about myself thinking about myself . . . .” Where does that attempt to gain complete mastery over the psyche lead but to despair? How is it supposed to engraft a person into a state of wisdom, or rather (to be more accurate) into a process of thinking that yields wisdom? No wonder poets like Shelley pine because they can’t become like a skylark or a nightingale, even for an instant—see his excellent poem “To a Sky-lark.” It isn’t too difficult to think of analogies for the meditative transformation Krishna describes: Heidegger’s wonderful line about that need to refine one’s thinking to the point where one can perceive “a single star shining in the sky” (like Krishna’s “single object” on page 90) bracketing out all else, captures something of the transformation. More generally, how many people have ever really seen the night sky, free of interference and diminution by city lights, human language, and anything else that might get in the way? To do so is to be liberated from oneself, at least for a time; the stars have power to draw us beyond the confines of ourselves: self-annihilation, so to speak. A need for serenity and silence need not be construed as a flight into mysticism and irrationalism: instead, opening up a space for contemplation involves the bracketing-out of quotidian things like language, ordinary eventuality, and polluted sensory perception; where this cannot be accomplished, it involves knowing how to deal with what cannot be avoided so as not to be bound to it and determined by it. Finally, the chapter makes a broad offer of what in western terms might be called salvation: Krishna says that nobody is ever utterly lost; even the one who wanders may “cleanse himself” of sin “through many lifetimes” (97), and thereby reach the goal of liberation.

Chapter 7. Wisdom and Realization.

99-101. This chapter begins with mention of the rarity of seeking, and the even greater rarity of attaining, a true understanding of Krishna . At 101, the god explains that he is the excellence in all things, though he is not himself bounded by such excellence: “I am the taste in water,” he says. Desire is sanctioned so long as it is in accordance with duty. Apparently, one can find Krishna in anything excellent—”I am the arc of the ball as it flies through the air; I am the sound of the ball as it drops through the hoop / without touching the rim.” How’s that for a basketball analogy? Or perhaps Krishna is the best thought one has while reading a text, the one that comes and goes as quick as lightning—illustrating Moses Maimonides’ conception of learning as taking place through a series of illuminations, of “flashings” that come and then leave one in the dark again.

102-05. Krishna describes the sage as one who has sought the truth and who is now at rest. Page 104 is central to this chapter since Krishna declares himself “beyond all knowing”—a fact obscured to “fools” who, tied to the cycles of their own desire and aversion, believe he can be reduced or reified to a limited form: something, that is, that they can wrap their narrow minds around.

Chapter 8. Absolute Freedom.

106-112. Freedom is described on 107 at “union with the deathless” Self of Krishna, which can be realized only by a kind of devotion not reducible to mere ritual. At 110, we again see the vastness of the text’s time frames and the shifting or ever-expanding quality of its conceptual frameworks: Krishna says that “one single night of Brahma / lasts more than four billion years” and that “beyond this unmanifest nature / is another unmanifest state, / a primal existence that is not / destroyed when all things dissolve.” This kind of successive revelation of Krishna’s dimensionality I sometimes try to represent by drawing a series of concentric circles—every time the last dimension of reality seems to have been revealed, you have to draw another circle. Or picture yourself sitting somewhere, and then “situate” that scene in a much larger one encompassing your surroundings, and then the still larger one that would encompass that, and so forth, ad infinitum. The chapter ends with the thought that a wise person, dying, “reaches / the supreme, primordial place” (112). I suppose that the Gita author would agree with William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that birth is a kind of “fall” into the realm of materiality, and that “if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

Chapter 9. The Secret of Life.

113-20. This chapter prepares the way for Krishna’s subsequent self-descriptions and manifestations. The “secret” that Krishna promises to unveil is that he pervades all things, is the source of all things. On 118-19, he makes the startlingly broad claim that “all those who worship / other gods, with deep faith, / are really worshiping me, / even if they don’t know it,” and concludes by saying that “no one who truly / loves me will ever be lost.”

Chapter 10. Divine Manifestations.

121-30. This chapter is partly about how Arjuna may visualize Krishna , and again, it prepares us for the “cosmic vision” of the eleventh chapter. Krishna offers many beautiful and exalting images—the lion, the flower, the wind, the river Ganges ; he also employs more ineffable language such as “time” (127), “death that devours all things” (128), and “the wisdom of the wise” (129). He ends the chapter with the words, “I support the whole universe / with a single fragment of myself” (130). On the whole, the chapter offers a series of intuitions, not one coherent image or description of Krishna , because the point we are to understand is that he is ultimately not representable in any finite shape, either in images or in language. Krishna also explains that he is both Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, the two gods Shelley invokes in his “Ode to the West Wind”: “ Wild Spirit, which art moving every where; / Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, hear!”

Chapter 11. The Cosmic Vision.

When Arjuna asks to see Krishna as he really is, the latter endows him with special eyes with which to view this celestial wonder. Arjuna gets infinitely more than he bargained for since Krishna shows his divine aspects as the embodiment of the Hindu Trinity of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. We are told that Arjuna “saw the whole universe enfolded” (134). This sight is properly infinite, so the text’s descriptive language seems designed more to instill wonder at the sublimity of Krishna’s true nature than actually to body it forth. Only Arjuna, with his temporarily adequate eyes, can see what is described to us. The sight does not bring comfort to Arjuna; it brings terror at Krishna’s “billion-fanged mouths” that “blaze like the fires of doomsday” (136). When Arjuna asks for a spoken description, Krishna declares, “I am death, shatterer of worlds, / annihilating all things” (138) and drives home to Arjuna the imperative to act, to do his duty as a member of the Kshatriya caste, a warrior: indeed, explains Krishna, he himself has already acted, and the battle has already taken place: all the warriors will die, and Arjuna the limited being is not truly the doer of the deeds that “will occur.” This “dazzling, infinite, primal” (141) form of Krishna cannot be endured long, so at Arjuna’s request he returns to his milder dimensions, and explains that only through devotion—not by “study or rites / or alms or ascetic practice” (143)—can he be known as he is.

Chapter 12. The Yoga of Devotion (Bhakti Yoga).

Krishna privileges devotion—centeredness on him, offering up one’s actions to him—as the best way to achieve mokhsha or liberation and escape the cycle of death and rebirth. Mystical worship of “the unmanifest” is more arduous for embodied beings like humans; the devotion to which Krishna refers seems to consist in devotion to him “as if” he were himself an embodied being, the way one human being might be devoted to another to the point of never allowing other imperatives to get in the way. The spirit of “surrender” is greater, Krishna explains, than practice, meditation, or knowledge (146)—such spiritual efforts are worthwhile techniques, not the thing itself. But ultimately, Krishna says with great generosity, all spiritual roads lead to him, though some may require longer and more difficult journeys than others. The supreme contentment he describes is, he says, beyond any human feeling—beyond even what we call “joy.”

Chapter 13. The Field and Its Knower.

The field is the body, with its ten senses. This is the main idea of the chapter—knowledge and its object are interrelated, it seems. Desire and aversion are included in the field; they are the two main things to watch out for because they have harmful effects on a person’s capacity for devotion to Krishna .

The ten senses or indriyas: Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati says that a human being is “like a building with ten doors”: the five exit doors or karmendriyas are eliminating, reproducing, moving, grasping, and speaking. The five entrance doors or jnanendriyas are the cognitive senses of smelling, tasting, touching, seeing, and hearing. The point is that one has to become aware of all these in order to become detached from them, to turn inward (pratyahara) by means of meditation. Simple denial of sensory experience isn’t good—rather, one gradually understands that the senses, though necessary, are ultimately unreliable and don’t give the only kind of knowledge. We are more than the body.

This chapter again says that the self is not the cause of actions; actions arise from Nature. Here is how the text explains this point: “Nature gives rise / to changes in the field and to gunas. // Nature is the cause of any / activity in the body; / the Self is the cause of any / feelings of pleasure or pain” (153). A bit later, the Gita says that it is Nature, and not the self, that causes actions (155). Again, unitary notions about the ego, some abstract self that makes things happen, are delusory; an act is the coming together and parting of many forces in motion. The terms “Self” and “self” are important to distinguish in this book: the capital-letter Self is a cosmic entity and is not to be reduced to Nature or the gunas (which are best explained in the next book); it is that eternal part of us that transcends ego and personhood and temporality, the part that is pervaded by Krishna . It is not the limited, bounded ego.

Chapter 14. The Three Gunas.

The three gunas are the three prime qualities of nature—sattva (spiritual), rajas (worldly) and tamas (unholy), which constitute all life (158). They “bind” the body to the deathless Self. The point is that the little-s self is too narrow a conception—the capital-s Self is a trans-subjective reality; we are all part of a vast cosmic Self. I think the idea is that the gunas, the prime qualities of nature, are the “doers” of actions. This is not the same thing as fatalism or determinism—there has to be something that is aware of itself to make such a determination as “I am not the doer of the deed.” It is sometimes said that karma is all about action. That’s what the word means, but I believe we are not to take it as a western-style cause/effect or “sin” model of transgression and punishment. The yoga of devotion can take us beyond concern with action. Pure devotion leads us to become unattached to action, realizing that your “little-s self” is not the center of the universe. We come to look upon the realm of action in a serene, detached manner. So Arjuna the warrior should participate in war, and yet, in the highest possible sense, not be “doing” anything at all. This is to redefine the concept of action in a profound way.

Chapter 15. The Ultimate Person.

Visualization technique becomes important again here: the Gita pictures the upside-down world tree, “this world of sorrow.” Krishna is said to be the supreme Person, beyond eternity. The author isn’t satisfied with even the grandest, most capacious concept because concepts, by their very nature and function, must contain, limit, and narrow things down to a level of specificity and simplicity at which we think we understand them. This is a useful function—we tame and comprehend the world by abstraction, but it is not an end in itself. Krishna says he is beyond beyond. “How utterly utter,” as the C19 aesthete would say, making fun of superlative language. Whoever understands this philosophical maneuver and representational strategy, it seems, knows Krishna and is devoted to him.

Chapter 16. Divine Traits and Demonic Traits.

This chapter seems almost condemnatory, though that’s understandable: desire, anger, and greed are the three main gates to hell. They all result, I presume, in attachment to the material realm in a narrow and selfish way. The demonic are people who do attach themselves to their desires and their aversions, seeing themselves as the doers and the center of all things. If they understood, I think, they would not behave the way they do: the fundamental problem is one of misunderstanding, not knowing the true nature and cause of action.

Chapter 17. Three Kinds of Faith.

Everything in the realm of Nature can be divided into sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic: food, worship, etc.

Chapter 18. Freedom Through Renunciation.

Relinquishing is a more important distinction than renunciation because beyond the issue of renouncing desire, one is still confronted with orienting oneself with any action whatsoever—even, for example, worship. An embodied being can’t give up action altogether; such a being can only relinquish the results of the action. You worship for worship’s sake, not because you hope to get something from it or want to feel upright, etc.

A final thought: it’s tempting, with our western vocabulary, to say that this Hindu text advocates self-overcoming. That’s one way of looking at it, but it doesn’t quite capture what I think Krishna is saying. Self-overcoming sounds like struggle—the Germanic idea that life is always striving to be other (Leben ist andersstreben.) But isn’t that to say that desire is the essence of life?—that we are never satisfied with who we are, always want something more, and so forth? It makes us sound like country folk who yearn to visit the big city, like those characters in the musical Oklahoma . That doesn’t sound Krishna-like to me. I think he’s saying the necessary adjustment isn’t so much to struggle as to let go and become free. Think of the common Buddhist example of how understanding happens: you concentrate and concentrate on one of those funny-looking dual-images, and all of a sudden, you just see it properly; you understand or become unconfused. Your delusions have slipped away and have been forgotten, and understanding comes peacefully. It isn’t a matter of arduous “getting of knowledge,” as when we stock our minds with facts; it is a matter of letting understanding happen. Eastern philosophy and religion sometimes call for intense self-discipline in meditation, yoga, etc., but the emphasis is on the fact that these practices allow immediate and intuitive understanding. Not building, but clearing away and opening up, is the aim.

211-21. Mohandas Gandhi’s essay “The Message of the Gita” interprets the Gita as non-violent. I believe this approach stems from Gandhi’s decision to read the text in light of present-day needs, in a time when consciousness has moved beyond the conservative, caste-based system within which the Gita was created. It’s obvious that Krishna counsels Arjuna to do his duty as a member of the warrior caste, but Gandhi’s point is that on the whole the text teaches us about “perfection” (212) and “self-realization” (213). At 218, Gandhi further says that acting without desire to control the outcome of one’s actions, as the Gita surely does, leads a person to reject violence and untruth as principles of action. Both involve an attempt to force or deceive others into getting them to do what you want them to do. He concludes with the thought that “Like man, the meaning of great writings undergoes evolution.”

Week 06, Classic, Confucius, Chuang Chou

2007-02-26T11:04:00.000-08:00

Notes on The Classic of Poetry, Confucius, Chuang Chou.

Poem-by-Poem Notes on The Classic of Poetry.

“Fishhawk.” Who is the speaker? It seems that the speaker is collective, not individual. This poem isn’t a direct love lyric, but rather a communal lyric that asserts a harmony between the processes of nature and human emotions. The girl the speakers sing about is no doubt a maiden favored by the prince.

“Plums are Falling.” This is similar to the combined action/thought pattern in “he loves me, he loves me not” while plucking a flower. I find that it conveys a sense of how the mind turns even sharp observation of material acts and things to its own account. The woman in this poem is just picking fruit, but she’s thinking of something else. Marriages at this time would surely have been arranged, as they were in most ancient cultures, but the woman here suggests that she can assert at least an opinion, a kind of general desire for happiness and a “fine” husband. I’ve read that plum blossoms are symbols of courage and hope, heralds of the new year.

“Dead Roe Deer.” The situation here is in one way obvious, in another enigmatic. The maiden has been “led astray,” but how should we interpret her response to the situation? The dead deer perhaps symbolizes the girl’s loss of innocence. I’ve read that if one came across a dead deer, it was considered auspicious and proper to cover it as described in this poem, i.e. by wrapping it in white rushes.

“Boat of Cypress.” The poem is probably best understood as being about the speaker’s sense of betrayal at the hands of a lover. So how does the poem show the speaker dealing with her discontent? How is the leading image, the boat of cypress, related to the theme? Well, this image often (according to Arthur Waley) symbolizes the back-and-forth motion of a person’s intentions. The Odes, as Confucius will later say, help one compose oneself in such situations.

“Gentle Girl.” The poem is interesting in the sense that the girl is placed beyond all objects of the senses; she’s the very source of beauty. But at the same time the speaker, in the girl’s momentary (?) absence, concentrates on the material objects with which she is associated.

“Quince.” The exchanges aren’t equal materially—only the color of the gifts seems to make a rough match. But the love match is what matters. The man redefines objects for their symbolic value, and so a precious object can serve as proper “return” for an ordinary one, and vice versa. The Norton editors mention this poem to highlight the sense of egalitarianism that runs through these poems; as they put it, the gods don’t “play favorites,” and the Chou dynasty rulers seem to have respected the common people they ruled.

“Chung-Tzu, Please.” As the editors say, the poem is an offering of sorts to an overly excited lover. His behavior is a bit wild, and it’s a violation of decorum—the girl is becoming embarrassed about what her family and people in general might say about this manner of courtship. Reticence reigns even in revelation—the girl is enamored of Chung-Tzu, and the poem admits as much. She’s redefining his role as a lover, telling him how he must behave if he is to keep her affection and prosper in his suit. The material boundaries he crosses, the damage he does to the garden, violates her sense of belonging, her security. In ancient cultures generally, the individual’s sense of self is defined largely in relation to a communal order; a person’s “sense of self,” as we would say, is from the outset informed by the voices and opinions of respected others in the community. This way of understanding “personality” differs markedly from modern, post-romantic Western insistence on the uniqueness and radical autonomy of the individual. I would not care to overstate this argument since it’s foolish to suppose “people didn’t use to have a self way back when” (there’s truly “nothing new under the sun,” and the ancients could no doubt teach us a thing or two), but there’s a difference in emphasis to be reckoned on between ancient Chou culture and our own.

“I Went Along the Broad Road.” This short poem is apparently about a momentary meeting in the road between (in the first stanza) two old friends, and in the second, two former lovers. The speaker is concerned that no friendship or affair should ever be completely forgotten.

“Rooster Crows.” This poem is related to the traditional “dawn song,” as we would call it in western literature. Here, though, the point isn’t to curse the dawn for breaking the lovers’ idyllic time together; instead, the female speaker spurs the man on to go and do some work before he returns. I get the sense that these are courtly lovers, not peasants—the speaker has jewels to give, and they both will live the good life, replete with attendant harpers, fine wine and excellent food.

“Willows by the Eastern Gate.” Seems like an assignation had been set, but one partner didn’t keep it. The other’s mind remains fixed upon the place, wistfully or obsessively. The place knows nothing of the proposed meeting, but it is associated with the meeting in the speaker’s mind.

“She Bore the Folk.” Chiang or Jiang seems to have been one of those mortals who bears divine children to a god, in this case to the Jade Emperor, co-ruler of Heaven along with Jade Pure or Yuan-Shi-Tian-Zong. (See http://www.godchecker.com/ on Chinese Gods.) Lord Millet is her first-born of this god, and the boy grows up in a natural realm that both nourishes and abandons him. In turn, he establishes a close, productive relationship between ordinary mortals and the land that sustains them; Chou culture is agrarian, and this poem seems to be about the foundations of their society and political system. Lord Millet established the rites that the people still carry on with in the present time of the poem; their agricultural labor itself seems to be part of what is meant by “the rites.”

General Notes on the Analects of Confucius.

The complexity of the moral system in this text may stem from political necessity. As Lau says in his introduction to the complete translation, even before Confucius’ time, observing human behavior was considered an important way to gain some control over current and future events. People are unpredictable, and if you want to derive some sense of regularity from them, you have to study carefully how they behave. Confucius held some political offices connected to the Chou dynasty court, and he is concerned about this matter, too—he treats his disciples in accordance with their respective understandings.

Benevolence. The main quality of a gentleman is benevolence. It seems that in keeping with his flexible way of defining things, Confucius doesn’t offer any single statement, but makes us work at piecing together a sense of what the gentleman is, and how he must behave. First of all, the term seems partly connected with social class, as it sometimes is even today—i.e. to be a gentleman is to be well born, of a certain social standing and not exactly a member of the seething masses. Ancient societies had no problem maintaining strong distinctions between the lower orders and the higher-ups. But it also isn’t only a class-based term; the gentleman may be judged in terms of his character and his conduct, too. Lau explains clearly what “benevolence” entails:

1) Don’t make others do things you wouldn’t want to do yourself. This sounds a lot like the golden rule.

2) Love your fellow men. The family comes first here, but the affection extends in ever-lessening degrees to much more distant groupings. Confucius writes in support of a dynasty based on the clan-inheritance system, but we can see an impulse towards universalism here; he is capable of saying “love your fellow men,” even if he may not mean precisely the same thing as we might mean.

3) Do your best, do your duty—for the sake of doing so since Confucian ethics doesn’t really depend on concern over punishment in the afterlife. This seems similar to the idea set forth in the Gita: act in the spirit of worship, not self-aggrandizement.

4) Benevolence entails self-overcoming and observance of the rites, or, more broadly, religious and social custom. These are received wisdom, and, along with music and philosophy, they help to bring a sense of order to life, especially given the generally unpredictable and unruly character of people. Lau reminds us that self-interest is something Confucius understood to be a powerful chaos-maker in society and politics. Maybe this constant interest in “the rites” is annoying to modern westerners—American culture values rebelliousness (think “Boston Tea Party”) and individualism in that modern, post-romantic way. But many ancient cultures think of the self as more of a public construct. Confucius isn’t a Spartan advocating the life of the mess hall and the military camp, but the point is that a gentleman grows up respecting the rites, developing and learning in accordance with them. There is room for a notion of individualism, of personal integrity and reflectiveness—but the self is given a priori the pattern of the customs and traditions, and learns the value of moving along such a path towards wisdom and maturity. It would be arrogant, I think, to put this down as “conformism,” even if Confucianism is often used by Westerners like Ezra Pound to mean something like “strict order, respect for rank,” and so forth.

Other related virtues—they complement one another—are courage and reliability or living up to one’s word so long as that doesn’t mean being stupidly rigid. Then there are reverence in religious matters, and respectfulness in outward manner and in accordance with the station of the people around you.

Education. I think it’s true that the courtly notion of education was strict and labyrinthine—we’ve all heard the term “Mandarin” applied to mean something like “an erudite person who is remote from ordinary people.” But it’s silly to generalize like that—Confucius evidently doesn’t see education as merely the passing on of facts; it is lifelong and process, part of a perpetual formation of character. Notice that he doesn’t call himself a sage, and insists that he’s never even met one. The sage is an ideal, not a reality easily achieved. Maybe even that is going too far, since as we said, the point of Confucian morality isn’t to strive for recognition—it is to do one’s duty and treat others generously but according to their status and merit.

General View of Social Order. It’s not so difficult to see that Confucius’ society emphasizes order and harmony. Most likely, such an emphasis counteracts powerful real-life tendencies. There was plenty of political violence and probably a good deal of social unrest at times. Plato’s Republic was written in the aftermath of Athenian democracy’s self-inflicted implosion and defeat at the hands of Sparta—it is something of a wish-fulfillment. I don’t know that Confucius is in quite that position, but evidently, he had no illusions about his ideas being broadly applied as principles of government and social harmony. He has to settle for influencing his disciples, who will try to broaden the influence of his example to as many people as possible. This is a philosophy about how to develop sound individual character.

Another thing to consider with regard to Confucius’ vision of social order is his insistence on the way the common people—for whose good the whole political order is ultimately arranged, we are told—are influenced by the good (or bad) example of the nobility and ruling elite. Confucius claims that the common folk are like grass, and the nobility’s actions and words are like the wind that blows over the grass, bending it. The people take their “set,” so to speak, from their betters. What is American government founded on but a healthy distrust of government, coupled with an insistence that those whom we elect not tell us what to do in any area of life where it isn’t absolutely necessary? I’ve noticed that a certain slice of the electorate conflates leadership with moral example—there’s no harm in rulers behaving themselves (it’s embarrassing when they don’t, and can be dangerous if it touches upon matters of state), but a lot of us have trouble with the idea that we’re paying elected officials to set a moral example for us because such notions tend towards authoritarianism. In a sense, I’m paying the pols to carry out the public’s business, not to tell me how I should behave in my private affairs. Some of our presidents would probably never have been elected had we scrutinized their moral fabric or even their mental stability the way we do today—Jefferson was a complex and moody man to say the least, and Lincoln was subject to profound depressions.

Confucius’ sayings are at times rather cryptic and paradoxical, but they sound like the authoritative words of a master. They have come down to us at second-hand, as things said in response to questions asked by disciples of varying degrees of wisdom. I think this fits Confucius’ outlook well—he responds in particular ways to particular people at particular times. He isn’t preaching from the mountaintop; he’s talking about practical things in the here and now, and trying to explain to others why they ought to respect themselves and the relative dignity of other people, whatever their rank.

Page-by-Page Notes on the Analects of Confucius.

823. Confucius says that at seventy years old, a person’s understanding frees up development in accordance with the Way. The ruler is urged to teach by concrete example. What to do? Raise the virtuous, promote meritocracy.

824-25. Benevolence: respect for all, reverence for some. Benevolence is perhaps wisdom long continued, and involves overcoming internal and external barriers. A gentleman should maintain appropriate bearing and speech, consider the context and circumstances of words and actions. Tact is essential.

825-26. Music, religious rites, received customs—not chaos-inducing self-assertion—should be our pattern for development. Statecraft plays a major role in promoting this path. A gentleman should have a certain temperament: one that makes him generally capable rather than merely proficient in a few areas. Confucius and John Henry Newman the Victorian author would agree in that regard: Newman promoted a truly liberal education that would form a person’s character and temperament; above all, liberal education makes a person capable of continuing to learn, and learn quickly. Above all, a gentleman sets a good example for the commonfolk.

826. The young, says Confucius, deserve awe. Those fifty and under should have the potential to develop themselves authentically, at least if they live in a state that follows the Way. So in a sense, Confucius is promoting a “youth culture,” in spite of all the reverence for the old we associate with traditional Confucianism. I doubt, however, that he would agree with Oscar Wilde’s quip, “the young know everything.”

827. Undue sorrow is appropriate, Confucius suggests, if the person you grieve for has earned it. As the Bible says, “there is a time for every purpose and for every work.” It is somewhat less than human, perhaps, to measure out one’s sorrow, confining it neatly by means of the old rituals. Is it not in the very nature of sorrow to have something excessive about it? The deepest sorrows are in response, after all, to events that rake us to the very core of our being. Passage 26 is particularly fine: Confucius is tolerant of the others’ busybody counsels of perfection, but when Tien says he simply wants to “go bathing in the River Yi and enjoy the breeze on the Rain Altar, and then to go home chanting poetry,” Confucius is impressed. Tien’s wish is best because it flows from a sure knowledge of the wellspring of joy: to follow one’s heart in the proximity of the rites, concretely and simply.

828. Benevolence is discussed again. The golden rule is to treat all with respect and with due regard for their station in life. Government by good example is best. Encourage everyone to respect themselves by respecting their duty. It isn’t simply “rank” that matters. One must occupy well a certain station and fulfill one’s responsibilities. People are bound, bonded together, by a strong sense of reciprocal obligation. Even so, Confucius knows that it may take generations to achieve order, based on the multiplication of personal example. Is this because he believes self-assertion will keep cropping up? Sure. Also that the unwise can “teach by example,” creating thereby a prevailing climate of stupidity and greed. To what extent is Confucianism applicable today, we might ask? We live in an age of manufactured consensus, simulacra, global villagism, and so forth. Can cultural learning happen by means of concrete example? What is the root of us?

830. Education is not the same thing as extreme erudition. I agree—it seems best to “think along with” a text rather than simply to regard it as information to be received as fact and memorized.

831. The Odes are a channel for legitimate expression, and they help induce harmony. Society works like music; we must play in tune together, or there will be not euphony but dysphony, chaos, ugliness. We can’t escape our humanity, says Confucius. He is no primitivist. The state should guard the rites and customs. People live within the state, which is not, therefore, to be understood as a mere set of arrangements whereby some people will superimpose order on the lives of other people. Confucius and the nineteenth-century German philosopher Georg Hegel might agree on at least one thing: the state is the nursery and guarantor of true individuality. We become who we are under the auspices of the governmental and social order.

Page-by-Page Notes on Chuang Chou’s Chuang Tzu.

835. Chuang counsels self-sufficiency, but not pride in accomplishment. It’s implied that since the Way can’t be known in its entirety, we shouldn’t presume to have met all its demands or to have followed it since we can’t verify our claims. Chuang’s basic approach is perspectivalist, but even that term seems inadequate since it invokes the “here/there” distinction that Chuang finds troubling. In his paradoxicality, he resembles the pre-Socratics, and his approach towards the misleading aspects of language and concepts seems quite similar to Nietzsche’s proto-deconstructive analyses many centuries later.

836. Lien Shu hears from Chien Wu about a “Holy Man living on faraway Ku-she Mountain.” He chides Chien Wu for not crediting the man’s perfection and wisdom. Such a man resists definition, he explains: in his perfections, such a sage remains aloof and refuses to be defined by things, events, or desire: “Though the age calls for reform, why should he wear himself out over the affairs of the world? There is nothing that can harm this man.”

837. Chuang Tzu tells a story about a traveler who made good money and achieved social advancement by buying the rights to a salve for chapped hands that the inventor had failed to capitalize on. The lesson here is that ingenuity pays. Chuang Tzu next explains that Hui Tzu’s shu tree is actually quite valuable in its uselessness, and has something to teach him: “If there’s no use for it, how can it come to grief or pain?” Chuang here seems to be setting forth an anti-utility, anti-purpose ethos. Hui Tzu should adapt himself to the tree’s being, not the other way around.

838-39. Tzu-ch’i’s views on desire are excellent. He suggests, I think, that openness to desire is fine, but we mustn’t try to ground our lives on attaining the object of our desires. We won’t find any false carpe diem claims in Chuang. He also says that “Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy,” and that those of little understanding “drown in what they do.” Is the body the key to understanding? Well, it doesn’t seem to be the case, based on what is said here: “Once a man receives this fixed bodily form he holds on to it, waiting for the end. Sometimes clashing with things, sometimes bending before them, he runs his course like a galloping steed, and nothing can stop him. Is he not pathetic?” (839) Are words vital? It’s not certain: “Words have something to say. But if what they say is not fixed, then do they really say something?” Or does the Way rest upon something other than these things? Tzu-ch’i says that the mind teaches itself: “If a man follows the mind given him and makes it his teacher, then who can be without a teacher?” (839) Evidently, Chuang’s is not Confucius’ “little accomplishments” philosophy: we find in Chuang a different definition of “the Way,” one suggesting it is not realizable in custom or society.

840-41. The paired categories “this” and “that,” says Tzu-ch’i, amount to conceptual slicing and dicing. The distinction-making into right and wrong (moral categories) stems from desire. But desire for what? For certainty and stability, comfort for mind and body. We humanize, anthropomorphize everything around us. Consider Nietzsche’s Apollo/Dionysus argument, in which both are of twin birth, like obverse/reverse. The similar point is that the sage embraces everything, and rejects only rejections implied by the distinction-makers and anthropomorphizers. So understanding should rest in what it doesn’t understand, and go by “the torch of chaos and doubt” (841 middle). All firm definitions of the Way are false. Heaven is the equalizer, and one should relegate all to “the constant” (840). Tzu-ch’i says, “A state in which ‘this’ and ‘that’ no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So, I say, the best thing to use is clarity.” Difficult language, to be sure, but at times Chuang’s simplicity is remarkable: says Tzu-ch’i, “A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so.” When people stop walking on a road, they stop calling it a road, and it isn’t a road anymore. There’s no need, therefore, to get fooled by abstract concepts into confusing words with the world itself. Not all philosophers would agree (if indeed I understand Chuang’s point correctly) that we can keep the two distinct, but the clarity of his remarks is excellent: he understands that “concepts” are impositions on things, not sufficient explanations for them.

842-43. Tzu-ch’i suggests that understanding should “rest in what it does not understand” (842) since “If the way is made clear, it is not the Way.” The sage embraces things, leaves things as they are: this simultaneous embracing and letting-be constitutes success. See 842 1/3, 843 near bottom. We should consider what this philosophy offers by rejecting rejections and the lure of facile concepts and oppositions. See 840 mid: making into one equals allowing, letting be. Tzu-ch’i says that “Ordinary men strain and struggle; the sage is stupid and blockish. He takes part in ten thousand ages and achieves simplicity in oneness. For him, all the ten thousand things are what they are, and thus they enfold each other.”

844-45. I believe that here Chuang is allowing his characters gently make fun of Confucius’ upbeat, social understanding of the Way, of its respect for rank. Chuang recognizes that you can’t look to society’s workings for the “natural order of things.” Why not? Because we humans are inveterate self-promoters, substituting our perspectives and desires for the world, swallowing up or vacuuming all else into our acts of definition and understanding. So who is the man: Chuang Chou or the dream butterfly? See 845 top.

845. The cook Ting teaches Lord Wen-hui something important. He follows the Way, he suggests, by simply doing what he does. His wondrously deft carving of an ox isn’t simply a matter of conscious technique: “After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now—now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants.”

846-47. The old tree’s uselessness—its resistance to men’s needs and desires—protects it. Carpenter Shih has learned to respect the forest, its way of remaining beyond our limitedness. The tree speaks to him in a dream and disinvites comparison, asking, “If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large? Moreover you and I are both of us things. What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You, a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?” Crippled Shu, too, remains outside the pale of usefulness, content to be unworthy of notice, though the philosopher notices him.

848-50. Master Sang-hu dies, and Confucius, in Chuang’s telling, sends condolences by Tzu-Kung. Confucius realizes that the man’s friends did not really need condolences. They sing and weave silkworm frames, and don’t lament. Confucius praises them for it, says that he, by contrast, stays in the realm, and thrives in the Way as fish in water: “Fish thrive in water, man thrives in the Way” (850). The emphasis on annulment of change sounds Confucian, but the kind of uncertainty Chuang embraces sounds very different. And singular Meng-sun? Well, he makes no distinctions but wails because others do. Confucius suggests that one may do well to “go along and forget about change” (850 bottom). I think he’s reasserting his perspective: go with, not against, the rites and customs. As for the Masters who didn’t need Confucius’ Hallmark-Card, is there a mild criticism here? Does their joy come from protest against death rather than calm acceptance? (Whitman’s “sane and sacred death.”) We recall Confucius’ willingness to indulge himself in “undue sorrow.”

852-53. Duke Huan learns a lesson about book-learning from the wheelwright P’ien: “When the men of old died, they took with them the things that couldn’t be handed down. So what you are reading there must be nothing but the chaff and dregs of the men of old.” So much for the Miltonic idea that “a book is a living thing,” I suppose. P’ien’s example of his “knack” for working with a chisel and mallet suggests that just as you can’t really teach people manual skills—they must learn for themselves, for the most part—there’s a great deal that can’t be captured in language.

854. Chuang Tzu is lectured in a dream by a skull on the rhythms of the living and the peacefulness of the dead. He had previously presumed to question this very skull, and had been using it as a pillow. But it’s clear that the skull thinks it has the best of the situation, and points out that life is full of troubles and tasks. It’s hard to see how the living could embrace this philosophy of nothingness and tranquility, but the passage seems to privilege the skull’s viewpoint.

858. The Yellow Emperor learns something about the nature of kingship from a boy tending to some horses: “Governing the empire I suppose is not much different from herding horses. Get rid of whatever is harmful to the horses—that’s all.” Stripping away the ceremony and flattery, the boy is suggesting, leaves the Emperor with this simple imperative as his guide.

Week 04, Sophocles' Oedipus the King

2007-02-12T22:02:00.000-08:00

Introduction to Ancient Greek Theater

Good Books I’ve Come Across:

Easterling, P.E. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy.

Ley, Graham. A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1991.

McLeish, Kenneth. A Guide to Greek Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen, 2003.
Pomeroy, Sarah. Et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Religious Roots of Tragedy: The Festivals of Dionysus at Athens were called the City Dionysia, which was held in March or April, and the Lenaea, which was held in January. Though classical theater flourished mainly from 475-400 BCE, it developed earlier from choral religious ceremonies dedicated to Dionysus.

The God of Honor: Dionysus was an Olympian god, and the Greeks celebrated his rites in the dithyramb. In mythology, his followers were satyrs and mainades, or ecstatic females. We sometimes call him the god of ecstasy, and as Kenneth McLeish says, he “supervis[ed] the moment when human beings surrender to unstoppable, irrational feeling or impulse” (1-2). His agents are wine, song, and dance. Song and dance were important to Dionysian rites, and the participants apparently wore masks.

At the festivals, three tragic writers would compete and so would three or five comedic playwrights. The idea was that each tragedian would present three plays and a satyr play; sometimes the three plays were linked in a trilogy, like The Oresteia. So the audience had a great deal of play going to do during the festival seasons; the activities may have gone on for three or four days, with perhaps four or five plays per day. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival provides something like this pace.

Organization: How were the festivals organized? Well, the magistrate was chosen every year by lot – the archon. Then, dramatists would apply to the magistrate for a chorus, and if they obtained a chorus, that meant that they had been chosen as one of the three tragic playwrights. After that affair was settled, wealthy private citizens known as choregoi served as producers for each playwright. The state paid for the actors, and the choregos paid chorus’ training and costumes. So there was both state and private involvement in the production of a tragedy or comedy.

The Playwrights: Aeschylus 525-456 B.C. / Sophocles 496-406 B.C. / Euripides 485-406 B.C.
Aeschylus composed about 80 dramas, Sophocles about 120, Euripides perhaps about 90. Aristophanes probably wrote about 40 comedies. Dramatists who wrote tragedies did not compose comedies, and vice versa.

The playwright was called a didaskalos, a teacher or trainer because he trained the chorus who were to sing and dance. As drama developed, the playwright also took care of the scripts and the music. He was something like a modern director, and may at times have acted in his own plays, especially in the early stages of his career. A successful dramatist could win prizes, but generally, playwrights were able to support themselves independently by land-holdings. Sophocles, for example, was a prominent citizen – he served as a general and treasurer. Aeschylus was an esteemed soldier against the Persian Empire, and his tombstone is said to have recorded his military service, not his prowess as a playwright.

The Theater: The theater for the City Dionysia was located on the south slope of the citadel of Athens, the Acropolis. The Didaskalia Classics site offers 3-D images of a later reconstruction: http://didaskalia.open.ac.uk/StudyArea/visual_resources/dionysus3d.html.

The theater had three parts:

Theatron: this was for seating around 14,000 spectators; it was probably at first of wood, but later it was of stone.

Orchestra: this was for the chorus to sing and dance in and for the actors, when their function was developed.

Skene: this was at first a tent-like structure that served as a scene-building, and it had a door for entrances and exits. The Oresteia requires one, though perhaps the earliest plays didn’t.
Costume was important, too, because it could be used to determine factors like status, gender, and age.

The chorus remained important in drama, especially in Aeschylus. At some point, a choregos (legend says it was “Thespis,” hence actors are “thespians”) stepped forth and became the first actor, or answerer (hypocrites). So the composer was the first participant to turn choral celebration into what we call drama, with a plot and interaction between characters. Apparently Aeschylus or Sophocles added a third actor. The former’s early plays required only two actors, but even that was enough to make for interesting exchanges between the chorus and the actors and, to some extent, between the actors and each other. With three actors, of course, the possibilities for true dramatic dialogue and action are impressive.

Audience: Would have consisted mostly of male citizens -- the ones who ran Athenian democracy by participating in the Assembly. There would probably have been very few, if any, slaves or women present, and perhaps some resident aliens or “metics” and visiting dignitaries. Drama was surely a male-centered affair, as was the political life of Athens. Public speaking was vital in democratic Athens -- anyone who was someone in the legal/political system needed to know how to move and convince fairly large numbers of men. Theater and political life, as we shall see from Aeschylus, were in fact closely connected: the same skills were required, and the same class of people participated (male kyrioi, or heads of households who also performed military service). So while the stuff of tragedy seems almost always to have been the ancient myth cycles, the audience watching the plays would have felt themselves drawn in by the dramatists’ updating of their significance for the major concerns of the 5th-century B.C. present. And that present was, of course, the age of the great statesman Pericles (495-429 B.C.), who drove home the movement towards full Athenian democracy from 461 B.C. onwards and who at the same time furthered a disastrous course of imperial protection and aggression that had ensued from victory in the Persian Wars around 500 B.C. Greek tragedy grew to maturity in the period extending from the battles of Marathon on land in 490 B.C. and the naval engagement at Salamis in 480 B.C., on through the Second Peloponnesian War from 431-404 B.C., in which the Athenians lost to Sparta the empire they had gained during half a century of glory following the victories over Persia. Athens’ supremacy didn’t last long as such things go, but it burned brightly while it lasted, and festival drama, along with architecture, sculpture, and philosophy, was among its greatest accomplishments. So the dramas took place in one of the most exciting times in Western history – both heady and unsettling at the same time, shot through with violence, democratic and artistic flowering, victory, and great loss.

Tragic Masks: The masks tell us something about tragedy: with linen or clay masks, a single actor might play several roles, or wear several faces of the same character. Wilde said, “give a man a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth.” His quip should remind us that masks don’t discourage expression -- as Kenneth McLeish says, they had religious significance in the theater: participants in Dionysian rites offered up their personal identity to the god, and further, he continues:

“Wearing a mask does not inhibit or restrict the portrayal of character but enhances it, allowing more, not less, fluidity and suppleness of movement; and the character created by or embodied in the mask and the actor who wears it can feel as if it has an independent identity which is liberated at the moment of performance – an unsettlingly Dionysian experience” (9).
That emphasis on what we might call expression is important especially because – Aristotle’s claims about plot being the soul of tragedy notwithstanding – not much happens in many Greek tragedies. Instead, chorus members and characters “take up an attitude” towards the few well-packaged, exciting events that take place on or off the stage. The action is important, but the characters’ words and attitudes help us, in turn, gain perspective on the action. Perhaps when Aristotle emphasizes plot so much, he’s taking for granted the great power of the Dionysian mask to support the plot in driving the audience towards catharsis. Character, he says, will reveal itself in relation to the play’s action.

Aristotle’s theory of drama – we didn’t cover this much in our class, but if you would like to read something about it, please see my Fall 2005 E491 Literary Theory blog (http://www.ajdrake.com/blogs/491_fall_05/), where (in the entry for Week 3) I cover The Poetics in some detail. In Aristotle’s view, a well constructed plot that follows probability and necessity will induce the proper tragic emotions (pity and fear or terror), with the result being “catharsis,” a medical term that may be interpreted as “purgation” (of emotion) and/or as “intellectual clarification.” I should think that the tragic emotions, once aroused, become the object of introspection; thereafter, the audience attains clarification about an issue of great importance – for instance, our relation to the gods, the nature of divine justice, etc.

Oedipus the King

The play is successful because it is perfectly constructed along the lines of probability and necessity -- everything happens like clockwork. Also there’s a kind of tunnel-vision; we know the story and so aren’t in full suspense, but the characters are limited in knowledge -- I mean that at the beginning, Oedipus is handed a very narrow mandate to find out why the city is suffering from a plague. That’s all he knows. Then he learns that it’s because of Laius’ murder. Only later does he find out that he is the cause of it all. Well, that’s the human condition -- we tend to learn things either on the “just in time” system or the “too damned late” system. Here Oedipus’ greatest gift from the gods is the very thing that gets him in trouble with the gods and his people. Connect the issue of intelligence as a human virtue with Prometheus Bound--Prometheus gave humans all the arts they practice, and he stands for the principle of forethought, the ability to take care for one’s course of action and its consequences. But it’s ironic that he can’t help himself, and that even excellent people like Oedipus are so blinkered when it comes to “getting the big picture” and knowing the consequences of their actions. We have intelligence, but it doesn’t go very far and certainly doesn’t embrace the totality of factors we would need to stay out of trouble.

Reputation is everything. Oedipus is called upon to defend his own status as “first of men.” He must match his initial glory in dealing with the Sphinx. It was his quick intelligence and fearlessness that got him through that trial and saved the whole city then; now he must repeat the feat and show the same combination of qualities.

65ff. The Chorus (i.e. “The People”) ask the usual question – “what have you done for us lately?” They demand most of all that Oedipus “be the same” man they’ve always known. What taller order could they lay upon Oedipus? The Chorus apparently believe we can be free of the Sphinx and her question – “what goes on four legs, then on two legs, and finally on three?” Well, that’s a good reason why Oedipus shouldn’t pay attention to the polls, so to speak: I doubt that we can ever really be free of the Sphinx, her question, or the answer. I mean that this monster who propounds the “riddle of man” would have to be invented if she didn’t exist: perhaps her function is to put this riddle before us in the most compelling of circumstances (occupy yourself with the simple answer or die) to keep us from taking ourselves as a deeper object of contemplation. Sophocles’ play – by means of Oedipus’ drive to solve the mystery of Laius’ murder -- poses that we contemplate the question at greater length, to our cost as well as to the cost of the tragic hero. As Wilde would suggest, it’s dangerous to remain at the surface, and just as dangerous to delve beneath it.

245ff. Oedipus promises to fulfill the prayers his citizens have addressed to the gods. He considers that learning the truth and taking right action will set matters right. In a sense, they will.

340-526. As for the Oedipus/Tiresias exchange -- the king interprets what he hears as a political conspiracy. He thinks in political terms, and mocks prophecy, saying that reason alone overcame the Sphinx. In essence, Oedipus considers the prophetic function of religion as “politics continued by other means.” The two men argue over the value of prophecy versus intellectual effort -- fundamentally, Tiresias says our knowledge comes from the gods; they tell us what they want us to know, and that ought to be good enough for us. Tiresias won’t adopt Oedipus’ model of inquiry – the prophet sees with Apollo’s eyes, but for that very reason he would prefer to withhold much of what he knows (388).

573-750. Creon and Oedipus square off – Creon sees little value in wielding direct political power. He would just as well enjoy his power as member of the royal family, without taking on the burdens that go with the ceremony and pomp of actual kingship. On the whole, Creon finds Oedipus an outrageous man – rash, importunate, intolerant and stubborn, even to the point of brutality.

751-953. Oedipus admits that he has been running from the fate Apollo predicted for him, only to arrive at the three-forked road where he killed a man. Oedipus now knows (or rather strongly suspects, since the old witness has said thieves were responsible, not just one man) he is the man who has killed Laius, so he must be exiled -- but he does not yet know that his is Laius’ son and that Jocasta is his mother; he thinks that fulfillment of the prophecy still lies in the future.

954-97. The Chorus begin to think that the oracle may have been worthless, and one need have no reverence for the gods. They seem inconsistent, buffeted by events. Their world view begins to crumble when the supremacy and consistency of the gods is called into question.

998-1182. The irony here is that while the Messenger reveals that Polybus is dead (and so Oedipus now thinks he can’t have killed his father, so his faith in the power of intellect is as yet intact), he also reveals that Oedipus’ father is not Polybus, and explains the details of Oedipus’ discovery in the hills. Now the old Herdsman tasked with doing away with the infant Oedipus is called to court. The royal couple had hoped that chance ruled the universe, but the Corinthian Messenger will be the final blow to Jocasta’s “randomness” theory. Oedipus wrongly thinks Jocasta is simply upset about having married a man of base origins, but now she, at least, knows the awful truth.

Sophocles is very economical in his plot constructions – it turns out that the Corinthian Messenger who brings such terrible news to Oedipus is the same man who received the infant Oedipus from the Shepherd who ends up acquainting the hero with the final truth about his origins and subsequent taboo-shattering career. Incidentally, it’s worth remarking that the Theban Shepherd’s finest quality – his compassion for a poor outcast infant – is turned into a vehicle of tragedy.

The end of the play: self-blinding and exile. Oedipus blinds himself – I have never heard of an actual case of this sort. Many people have killed themselves, but has anyone ever blinded him or herself? Oedipus has apparently committed yet a third crime against nature. How he does this is revealing – he blinds himself with the pins that had kept Jocasta elegantly clothed. This act rejects the “cover story” of civilization (as symbolized by dress), and confronts squarely the naked truth. Oedipus rejects the world and all its sights because seeing can give him no further joy. We, too – because we hear and do not see the terrible event – are blinded for a time, and are made to imagine and interpret Oedipus’ primal and unnatural violence from a certain aesthetic distance. What has been gained? Oedipus becomes an object of contemplation for himself and for us. Now that he can look nowhere but inward, he will be able to bring home to us not joy or comfort, but ultimate knowledge about the relationship between the human and the divine. What the Greeks seem to value most is strength and clarity, not pleasure. If the gods bless the uncanny and the irrational – if they play dice with the universe –this fact must become an object of contemplation for the human intellect. This compulsion is one of the things that Nietzsche analyzes so well in Greek thought and culture: there isn’t a sustainable opposition between reason and unreason, the Apollinian and the Dionysian. Even Oedipus, the Man of Reason, must face the fact.

Oedipus at Colonus.

A comparison to Shakespeare’s King Lear is instructive. If you have read that play, you will remember that in order to go off and practice the art of dying, King Lear foolishly decides to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. That was not so much his mistake – rather, the mistake is that he wants to keep the name of authority while giving away the responsibility of exercising it. You cannot separate symbol and ceremony from the actual exercise of power; these things must work together, however difficult that achievement may be. In any case, Lear loses his kingdom and is driven out into the storm to rage in his reduced circumstances, and Cordelia’s husband the king of France invades England to rescue Lear, but it is too late to save the King and Cordelia herself ends up dead. The play charts two developments: Lear’s loss of power and his gaining of insight; the problem is that the two processes operate inversely – you can either have power or insight. By the time you gain insight, you cannot do anything in the real world. Lear claims that he and Cordelia will become god’s spies, and speaks eloquently to that effect, but this prophetic rhetoric may be only his own internal reckoning; it is not certain precisely what compensation this amounts to. And by the end of the play, no one really wants the kingdom, so it isn’t certain that the social order has been upheld by King Lear’s personal tragedy.

Oedipus gains insight into his relationship to the gods, but the process of gaining insight is accompanied by, in fact preceded by, a loss of ability to do anything in the political and social world. There is some difference, perhaps, since we have more certainty about the nature of the insight he has gained, and Oedipus remains important to his native Thebes. Moreover, Duke Theseus learns what he needs to know for the welfare and continuity of Athens: Oedipus’ grave will be the site at which the Athenians will defeat an invading Theban army.

What Oedipus learns, however, is not exactly the stuff of Machiavellian political science; the knowledge or insight passed along to him is mysterious, a matter of communion with the gods. Neither is it a matter of “redemption” in the Christian sense -- we are dealing, as Rene Girard would say, with the logic of sacrifice in which individual or dynastic cyclical violence is transformed into unified violence directed at one object.

Oedipus gets some comfort from the gods, though it’s hardly of a sort to puff up humanity about its place in the cosmos. Usually, the gods are nowhere to be found in Sophocles -- he and Bergman would agree in that sense: “God’s silence” is a recurring theme. That is why people sometimes say Sophocles is a true exponent of the Greek enlightenment – whereas Aeschylus seems largely to have accepted Greek mythology as a framework for understanding life, and Euripides is usually described as rather skeptical about the whole scheme, Sophocles is in between. He does not dismiss the old ideas, but does not deal with them naïvely either. As with Ingmar Bergman (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light), the relationship between humanity and the gods is still an important consideration, but not necessarily a matter for simple reaffirmation or outright denial. In Nietzsche’s interpretation in Birth of Tragedy, this play realizes the perfection of passive suffering, while the Greeks usually place a premium on action.

Week 03, Genesis and Job from the Hebrew Scriptures

2007-02-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

Notes on Genesis.

Genesis 1-3: The Beginning, the Fall

How powerful the spoken word is in the scriptures! God “speaks” the world into existence, and apparently without any need for raw materials with which to create. His words are acts—no separation between the two, as there is for us. God is somewhat anthropomorphized in Genesis—at times, he sounds like a powerful patriarch who takes issue with the beings he has created. He does not like it when his creatures try to rival him—eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil can only lead to eating from the tree of life, and then Adam and Eve might “be as we are.” God begins to regret that he has made the world at all, so sinful are the human beings he made in his image—this is odd in light of later Christian doctrine that God is omniscient and omnipotent; how could such a perfect and transcendent deity “regret” anything? But the Hebrew Bible writers are dealing with God in a dramatic fashion—they have Milton’s task of making pure transcendence and inscrutability talk to us in ways that we can appreciate. What kind of answers or explanations does Genesis give to the huge questions it raises? Well, they are sometimes provocative, and always majestic. Adam and Eve are told to “be fruitful and multiply” (57), and the creation should contain all that it can—”plenitude” and diversity are two great laws of the universe. But why should that be the case? Why should there be something rather than nothing, light instead of darkness, sound and not silence? There really are no answers to such questions—God has simply bid that it should be so, according to Genesis.

The text says that God has made Adam in his image, and there are two overlapping stories of humanity’s creation, it seems: the fuller one in Genesis 2 (pp. 57-58) explains that God first makes Adam from the dust (the name Adam is derived from the Hebrew word for “red clay,” as scholars point out) by breathing life into him. Then God puts Adam to sleep and creates Eve from one of his ribs, to serve (along with the rest of the creation) as a fitting companion for him. A law of hierarchy, as yet gentle enough, binds all creatures from the beginning. God has made mankind in his image, but since he is perfection itself, anything he creates must be less perfect than he is. Apparently to reinforce this principle for Adam and Eve, God plants the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and next to this tree he plants the Tree of Life. The first couple have dominion over everything around them, but not over these two trees. This is simply an interdiction—God does not explain to Adam and Eve why he has made such an interdiction, except to tell them that they will “die” if they disobey. How are we to gloss this act on God’s part? Perhaps we may extrapolate by supposing that God is something like the greatest of romantic poets: the creation is his perpetual poem, and natural process is his “expression.” He has generously given Adam and Eve a chance to help advance the beauty and dignity of his work—they are to tend his garden and take pleasure in the work they do as a way of worshiping him. If, as seems reasonable, they are to draw nearer to the perfect being who has made them in his image, their ascent must be gradual, not sudden. They must not try to usurp God’s place in the hierarchy of the universe by seeking to attain forbidden knowledge. (Incidentally, the text doesn’t say that God has interdicted them from eating of the Tree of Life, though I think it must be implied based on what he says on page 59.) But the serpent, that slippery character “more subtil than any beast of the field” (58), tempts Eve, convincing her that God’s motive is jealousy and stinginess: eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, he says, and “your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods.” This imputation that God is withholding something good from her simply to preserve his own prerogatives, to maintain a distinction between himself and his creation, is very powerful. The text explains that Eve succumbs to the fruit’s apparent deliciousness and its supposed wisdom-giving properties, and completes the Fall by giving Adam some as well. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with innocent curiosity, but that isn’t what Eve shows at the moment of choice: her desire to learn is obviously not accompanied by respect and wonder—it is fundamentally selfish and envious, and flows from what one of my former professors in Renaissance literature calls (in reference to Milton’s retelling of Genesis) a “sense of injured merit” not unlike that of Milton’s Satan himself.

The immediate effect of the fall is described somewhat enigmatically: “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (58). As I understand this passage, what was previously the innocent principle of generation—the means whereby all creatures would “be fruitful and multiply,” has become for Adam and Eve something shameful, something to be covered up. Their pride has caused them, in effect, to take God’s generosity for selfishness, and now they construe sexuality the same way, since their understanding has become deranged and darkened. Their being seems shamefully “carnal” to them now, and spirit is no longer at peace with matter and its principle of physical generation. From this point forwards, as God’s stern pronouncements in Genesis 3 make clear, Adam and Eve’s relationship to each other, to their fellow creatures, to the earth itself, and to God will involve difficulty and sorrow: Adam will labor to bring forth his sustenance from an alien, harsh land, and he will “rule over” Eve, who will give birth in pain. And of course, to borrow a line from Milton, they have brought “death into the world.” No longer will they converse pleasantly with God or labor joyfully in his garden amongst their fellow creatures. The laws of life now (as subsequent books in the Bible show) are fearful obedience, painful effort in the face of necessity, cruelty, dishonesty, envy, and misunderstanding with regard to one’s fellows, and dispersion over the earth’s surface: alienation, distortion, derangement.

Genesis 4: The First Murder.

Adam and Eve are the first sinners, but the pattern of sin, which follows an arc of pride, envy, and selfishness, begins with Cain and Abel, their offspring. God doesn’t accept Cain’s offering, presumably because Cain didn’t make it in the right spirit—it makes sense to suppose he offered his gift to God only because he had to, not because he wanted to. As the Bhagavad-Gita later says, one must “act in the spirit of worship” and not be obsessed with getting something from one’s action. Cain hasn’t acted in this selfless or charitable spirit. Then, envious of his brother’s favor with God, Cain kills him without warning and impudently responds to God’s outraged questioning, “am I my brother’s keeper?” As a consequence of his deed, Cain will feel still more deeply than Adam and Eve a sense of alienation from his fellow beings and from the land: “a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth” (60). But as a consolation to Cain, who fears that now he will be marked for death as an outlaw, God preserves his life by declaring that “whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” Apparently, then, one human being may not use the wrongs done by another to justify further wrongdoing. As God’s phrase from Deuteronomy goes, “ To me belongeth vengeance and recompence” (32:35).

Genesis 6-9: The Flood.

Noah earns God’s remembrance because of his goodness, and is spared from general destruction in the Flood. In Genesis 9, God sets his “bow in the cloud,” he says, as a “token of a covenant between me and the earth” (63). The covenant amounts to a promise that God will never again destroy the earth by flood. Why does he make this concession? Well, in Genesis 8 God had accepted Noah’s burnt offerings and decided that since “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (pg. 62), there is no point in destroying such wayward children altogether. To me, it seems as if we are to understand from this declaration that God finds it appropriate to be merciful with human weakness, and to show pity for the world that weakness has deranged—the covenant, after all, is not only for human beings; it is for “every living creature of all flesh” (63). But there is genuine sternness in these chapters of Genesis, too: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man” (62). Then, too, God’s description in Genesis 9 of what “dominion” over the animals means is revealing: “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth.” Evidently, within the limits prescribed by God, there is to be much harshness, much strict justice between man and man, and men will rule the animal kingdom by fear and brute force.

Genesis 11: The Origin of Languages.

In this chapter, human beings again try to rival God; they obey their own desires and set themselves up as proprietors of a divided or rival empire, as evidenced by the building of the Tower of Babel. Here, God discerns that the best way to punish such impiousness is to “confound” the builders’ speech, making it impossible for them to join easily in such nefarious enterprises as raising a building almost to the heavens. The Tower is the first skyscraper. An already self-limited human capacity for learning and understanding will be further limited by the diversification of signifying systems and by physical dispersal across the earth. As the Bible stresses again and again, human language is a fallen instrument, and, in the language of King James I’s day, human combination is apt to be taken as “murmuring against the king”: society breeds an arrogant presumption of self-sufficiency and autonomy far beyond what simple exercise of free will dictates.

Genesis 22: Abraham and Isaac.

God puts Abraham’s faith to the test in this chapter, requiring him to offering his beloved son Isaac as a sacrifice. On the one hand, Genesis 22 reinforces the painful lesson that after the fall, everything is forfeit to God and man can find security in little or nothing: Abraham must be willing to sacrifice even his own son to prove his faith in the Lord. But again, because Abraham is willing to act—because he acts in the right spirit, however troubling the command is to him—he finds mercy in God’s sight. What has not been withheld will be returned manyfold: God promises Abraham, “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed…” (64). It’s easy to see why Christian tradition has read this chapter typologically, with Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, his “lamb,” serving as a prefiguration of God’s willingness to send “his only begotten son” to atone for mankind’s sins.

Genesis 25, 27: Jacob and Esau.

It seems that God’s providential design justifies considerable “trickery,” as we might call it, amongst the descendants of Adam and Eve: the human order of things must be rearranged sometimes to suit God’s plan. If God requires it, the youngest son must use deceit to take on the powers of the eldest son. Jacob (his mother Rebekah’s favorite) tricks his elder brother Esau into giving up his birthright for some “red pottage” (65). And what Esau has, as the text puts the case, “despised,” Jacob will now secure by tricking old father Isaac (son of Abraham) into bestowing the blessing of the first-born upon him. The plan comes off well, and the blessing, which involves exercising dominion over brethren and even nations, is duly given. This blessing, once given, cannot be retracted, so we can understand Isaac’s feelings about what has happened. But to Esau, too, Isaac offers comfort: he will serve his younger brother, but the servitude will not last forever. In Genesis, Jacob and Esau are reconciled. Jacob’s twelve sons (Asher, Benjamin, Dan, Gad, Issachar, Joseph, Judah, Levi, Naphtali, Reuben, Simeon, Zebulun) will become the twelve tribes of Israel, while Esau’s descendants are said to be the founders of the Kingdom of Edom, a kingdom with which, later on, Kings Saul and then David will clash. See Wikipedia’s entry on the Twelve Tribes and the Edomites. Jacob himself has much service to do—he ends up serving Laban for fourteen years to gain the hand of Rachel, and six years for his stock of cattle. He is renamed “ Israel” after wrestling with an angel in Genesis 32, and is of course the father of Joseph, hero of our next selection.

Genesis 37, 39-46: The Story of Joseph.

Joseph is Jacob/Israel’s son by Rachel, and is possessed not only of a “coat of many colors” given to him by his now elderly father but also the gift of prophetic dreams and the interpretation thereof. One of those dreams gets him in dire trouble with his brothers, since in it, Joseph says, “the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me” (pg. 67, Genesis 37). Only Reuben’s fearful counsel keeps them from killing him outright, and they sell him to the Ishmaelites, who in turn bring him to Egypt , where Pharaoh’s servant Potiphar buys him. Joseph’s powers of interpretation result in his being rescued from the prison where he was sent thanks to the scheming of Potiphar’s wife (whose sexual advances he refused), and Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that he makes him all but a co-ruler. As almost always seems to be the case, a gift that places someone in close contact with the divine comes at great risk and cost: insight must be “paid for,” so to speak. When Joseph’s brethren are sent by their father to seek out some wheat (“corn”) during years of famine, the now powerful dweller in Egypt first pays them back for their cruel treatment of him, but then reconciles with them, showing remarkable generosity and inviting them all, along with the youngest son Benjamin and old Israel (Jacob) to come to Egypt and live there. Israel has been promised by God that his children will constitute “a great nation,” and with this faith he enters Egypt. He will live and die there, and so will Joseph. The departure from Egypt and from the clutches of Pharaoh, of course, will only occur when Moses comes to maturity; the story of Moses is told in Exodus.

Notes on Job.

77-78. From the outset, we are told that Job is a “perfect and upright” man, yet God will use this good man to demonstrate to a scoffing Satan the perfection of his order and the loving obedience of his servants. (Satan is not the devil of the New Testament; rather, he is an accusing or adversarial angel amongst God’s council; see the Wikipedia entry on Satan.) Satan sees a fine chance to show that God is mistaken: “Doth Job fear God for nought?” he asks, meaning evidently that Job only obeys and loves God because as yet he has no reason to do otherwise. He has a good, rich life—what is there to be afraid of? Satan’s claim is that once Job suffers a genuine setback in his fortunes, he will hold God in contempt and curse him to his face. But Job responds eloquently to both the first phase (loss of kindred and goods) and the second phase (loss of bodily soundness) of his trial. Satan has lost his wager, but the text has much more to do than prove Satan’s incorrectness.

79. Job’s wife tempts him to “curse God and die,” and his friends, after keeping a seven-day vigil with him, beset him with additional foolish advice. In essence, their counsel follows from the notion that one’s earthly fortunes can be linked directly to the morality or immorality of one’s conduct. In other words, life is a matter of reward and punishment, and nothing else. How does Job process what has happened to him? He prays for death, the great leveler of men and silencer of troubles. This “death” doesn’t seem to entail an afterlife; Job simply wishes to cease existing altogether, and thereby to find peace. He knows in his heart that he is not guilty of what his accusers say he is: “I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.” He never took his good fortune for granted or puffed himself up with pride on account of it. He is not a self-aggrandizer, a miser, or anything of the sort. So far as he is able to discern, he has been genuinely righteous and has never ceased to praise God for his blessings, and he won’t be so hypocritical as to pretend that he understands why he is suffering now. (The knowledge of God’s wager is denied to him—it is known only to us, the readers. But of course, the notion of a wager that causes such suffering is hardly a sufficient justification by any reasonable human standards. We would not easily pardon another human being if he or she did to us what God has allowed Satan to do to Job.)

80-81. Eliphaz picks up on Job’s refusal to accept the charge of iniquity, and urges him to embrace his troubles as the “correction” necessary to purify him. But Job again prays for death instead, pointing out that Eliphaz’s logic is a “pit” into which he will not fall. There is no correspondence between earthly prosperity and moral rectitude, and his own anguished soul tells him that such explanations are brutally insufficient and cruel.

82-83. Because Job’s “days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope” (82 top), he will not keep silent. He will take this one brief chance to voice his anguish and uncertainty. His complaint is not petty: Job demands to know why an infinitely magnificent and powerful God would bother raining trouble and confusion down on a poor servant like Job. What is the point of such contention between God and man? Contention implies the acknowledgment of a relationship, however unequal. We notice, too, that on these pages Job pleads neither perfection nor the virtue of patience: “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse…. If I say, I will forget my complaint … I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent” (83). His one need is that God should enter into a conversation with him, should declare himself and explain why he has done such things to a mere mortal: “I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me” (83.10).

84-87. Job insists on attending to the problem of his relationship with a divinity with whom he can find no commensurateness, no manner of accommodation or understanding. This “desire to reason with God” (85.13) does not stem from stupidity or arrogance. To his friends he says, “I have understanding as well as you” (85.12). He understands the basis of their explanation, and he knows that God will do as God wills. But by this point in the text, Job’s conversation is turned away from his friends and towards God, to whom again he addresses questions such as “why do you insist on troubling me? what have I done?” His desire is that God should declare himself and enter into dialog with him. Job’s spiritual turmoil (caused by suffering and by uncertainty about the great question, “Why?”) is intolerable, so the dialog for which he asks is a necessity for him.

88-91. Job searches his heart—has he in fact done something wrong, or even something right in the wrong spirit? No, he is unable to accuse himself honestly. With one further plea that God will “remember” him and speak with him, “The words of Job are ended” (89). He will not accuse God of unrighteousness or curse him, but neither will he condemn himself. At last, God declares himself from what me may presume is the perfect calm within the chaos of a deafening whirlwind, telling Job, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me” (89.38). What follows is more a series of clarifying questions than a full conversation. All of the questions God poses declare and demonstrate his own sublimity. It is from such language that William Blake probably borrowed when he wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head!” Like Krishna in The Bhagavad-Gita, the God of the Hebrews deigns to “put on his terrors” for a time. He made Leviathan (on whose subsequent career see Revelations) and Behemoth, and he is behind the tremendous power of all natural processes on earth and all celestial forces in heaven. This “Unmoved Mover,” as Christian theologians (following Aristotle’s older terminology) will call him, seems annoyed with Job, who “darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge” (89.38).

92-93. Job’s best response is to say, “Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.” He has seen God, at least to some penultimate degree, and the vision leads him to declare, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (92.42). Divine and human understanding are not commensurate: apparently, that is what dialog with God teaches us. But “that” turns out to be enough: Job prays for his misguided friends, and God decides to reward him and restore him to great wealth and status. Job’s soul-searching and then his conversation with God have demonstrated a necessary spiritual process: the man may not have been able to understand God fully, but nobody can do that anyhow. He has at least refrained from presuming or cursing, and his questions are not hypocritical or timid, but honest. It seems that God appreciates Job’s honest questioning. Ultimately, the text seems to identify a need for mystery and wonder, and for prayer, as the essence of religiosity. The system of reward and punishment one can find elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy, for example) seems less important than these things. On the whole, Job promotes the principle of a divine order than transcends anything possible to conceive in human terms, not the principle of a divine order that somehow corresponds with human ways of understanding order. The great value of the first-mentioned principle, of course, is that it draws humanity out of itself, and sets it on a course towards greater spiritual effort and understanding; it preaches self-transcendence, and perhaps even something like what in Eastern philosophy (Hinduism and Buddhism in particular) we might call “creative self-annihilation.” There is some difference to be noted, in that Job’s offering up of his old self restores him to an even more rooted sense of personhood, so to speak. With regard to the Eastern texts it might be more correct to suppose that the annihilation of self is meant to rid us permanently of such notions as “personhood” altogether.

Week 02, Gilgamesh, Egyptian

2007-01-29T22:00:00.000-08:00

Gilgamesh Notes

Prologue and Part 1

As with the Greeks, a certain kind of wildness or violence is proper to men. Early on, Gilgamesh is unrestrained in his violence and does not show proper respect to his people. He doesn’t understand that he is supposed to be a shepherd, not a wolf. Enkidu is “wild” and strong, but I don’t get the sense that he was violent before he became “a man” after sleeping with the temple prostitute -- a violation of the separation between human and animal. He ran and ate grass with the herd animals, the gazelles, and foiled human attempts to kill these peaceful animals. He is also given womanly attributes -- the metaphor of a marriage bond between him and Gilgamesh should come into play. When Enkidu sleeps with the temple prostitute, he becomes like Gilgamesh, a challenger to the state’s orderliness. He becomes estranged from the animals, who reject him. This rejection stems from the animals’ perception of his interest in humans, and from the fact that he now knows “the woman’s art.” As for Gilgamesh’s bond with Enkidu, it’s a case of like taming like. The strong must consort with the strong, or else they will turn on the weak. To become a man is to become violent, and violence must be both recognized and restrained, limited to proper boundaries. The story demands that human and animal be kept at enmity – Gilgamesh’s pity for the “snared bird” can’t be encouraged – but this may betray equally strong anxiety about the boundaries; they are maintained at great cost. Being human is an exhausting task.

Part 2. The Journey of the Forest.

Gilgamesh says on 17 that destiny leads him to stamp his name on bricks; he will raise a monument to the gods after cutting down the evil in the land, Humbaba, who is identified with the wild mountain and woods that Gilgamesh and Enkidu must enter.

Enkidu at times counsels turning back, and at a critical point Gilgamesh weakens. Is he confronting the threat of meaninglessness, something like an ancient sense of nihilism? That would contrast with what one author has called the “ego” as a material force that must be connected with others beyond the individual. He counters Asian philosophy’s tendency to focus on “self-annihilation” with African rootedness in the material (but not mere materialism).

What is the reward for killing Humbaba? Is this a primal struggle with nature, in which humanity must assert its powers? Is it a confrontation with death? Or with some of the gods – Enlil in particular? We might relate the reward to the fate Enlil has decreed – Gilgamesh is of the dying generations of men, but he has the power of darkness and light. So perhaps going to the forest is confronting the dark side of the gods and of human destiny. Gilgamesh fells the seven sacred cedars and will build with them a temple in Uruk. We might suppose that this journey, aside from asserting the power of human effort, is about reestablishing divine order in the face of a menace – but of course the gods themselves aren’t exactly in agreement. Shamash helps the heroes, but Enlil becomes enraged, even though it seems he’s the one who told them to kill Humbaba.

Part 3. Ishtar and Gilgamesh, and the Death of Enkidu (24-30).

Ishtar becomes enamored of Gilgamesh, but he scorns her and announces his distrust – she’s had a succession of unfortunate lovers, so why should he be added to the list? She unleashes the Bull of Heaven, which Enkidu promptly kills. She then vents her outrage to the other gods, and, in spite of Shamash’s objections, Anu declares that one of the two heroes must die. When Enkidu is stricken with a wasting illness, he reveals to Gilgamesh his dream about the Underworld, presided over by Queen Ereshkigal. The earth’s great kings are mere servants here; even the greatest of human beings mean little to the gods, it would seem. Ancient literature seems full of such implications – as when, in Indian lore, a self-important Indra is humbled by a vision of infinitely many Indras marching as a long file of insects. The metaphysical layers of the cosmos – its infinity and transcendence of ordinary time – annihilate all human pretensions. Sometimes even the gods are dwarfed by infinity and cosmic cycles. Well, Enkidu’s vision is a sad one – perhaps the best humans can hope for is this kind of melancholy insight. Is it better to know, or not to know? It’s better to know, if only because failing to take the insight that is given amounts to cowardice. “We must treasure the dream whatever the terror.” Gilgamesh still needs to learn how to take the ultimate knowledge afforded by Enkidu’s dream of the Underworld; he mourns for a space, and then goes searching for life everlasting: he fears death, and will confront his fear.

Part 4. The Search for Everlasting Life (30-35).

Gilgamesh goes to the Scorpion-guardian of the Mashu Mountains, who opens the mountain gate for him. In the Garden of the Gods, Shamash and then Siduri the winemaking goddess, with her golden bowl, tell Gilgamesh he’s on a fool’s errand, but the hero declares he will look straight at the sun, and confront death itself. On 32-33, Siduri’s advice is simply to enjoy the “good things that lie at hand” (to borrow a stock phrase from Homer’s Odyssey); to revel in his physical being and in whatever transient pleasures mortal life offers.

Still, Siduri directs Gilgamesh to Utnapishtim’s ferryman Urshanabi, who will convey him across “the waters of death.” Gilgamesh damages the boat’s tackle and destroys the sacred stones, thus sacrificing his own and Urshanabi’s safety. But the journey will be made, and apparently by Urshanabi’s “pole-vaulting” stratagem, Gilgamesh (now alone) reaches Utnapishtim “in Dilmun at the place of the sun’s transit.” He is the only man the gods have made immortal. And what does he say? Well, for the moment, only that “there is no permanence.” All human distinctions come to nothing when, at last and never quite certain what is going to happen, we arrive at our end.

Part 5. The Story of the Flood (35-38).

Utnapishtim agrees to tell Gilgamesh how his immortality came to be granted. It seems that the gods, spurred on by Enlil, decreed the extermination of the teeming, noisy human race. These gods hardly found it acceptable that humanity’s din and activity should set up against them a rival order. Ea saves Utnapishtim of Surrupak because of an oath he must keep, and so Utnapishtim rides out the flood on the boat he has built for himself and his fellow citizens, along with many wild and tame animals. The story strongly resembles the one in the Bible about Noah and his Ark. Ishtar the Queen of Heaven relents, and the flood recedes at last. Ishtar gives Utnapishtim a gift of jewels, and Ea rebukes the raging Enlil, who promptly bestows upon Utnapishtim (and his wife?) immortality; they will dwell “at the mouth of the rivers.”

Parts 6-7. The Return, The Death of Gilgamesh (38-41).

The thing I find most interesting about the Epic of Gilgamesh is its unrelenting rejection of the “happiness principle,” as we post-Utilitarians would call it. Utnapishtim gets the last word – there is nothing permanent for human beings, and that seems to be the wisdom he imparts to Gilgamesh, who has sought him out to learn about death, his greatest fear after the passing of Enkidu. The idea that Gilgamesh actually grasped in his hand not immortality but at least youth, and then lost it, is almost a cruel joke on the part of the narrator’s gods – even this hero (himself partly divine) gets no more than a tantalizing touch of what lies beyond humanity. At least, that’s the way it is in our version of the story. The destiny decreed by Enlil is cited at the end of the epic: it emphasizes the need to be fair to one’s subjects. Gilgamesh has no cause for despair – he has been given “power to bind and to loose, to be the darkness and the light of mankind.” That is, the partly divine, partly mortal hero has been given a chance to participate in wielding the gods’ ultimate power. His fame will be carved in stone. Perhaps that hardly amounts to what today we might demand – personal immortality, or at least a measure of satisfaction. In a sense, the power granted by the gods is the power to participate against oneself, against one’s own species – after all, the gods may swear that earthly kings should be fair with their inferiors, but they themselves deal as they wish with human beings.

Notes on Egyptian Poetry

In Akhenaton’s “Hymn to the Sun,” everything is attuned to sun, given sparkle (eye-light), purpose. The King wants to be like a concentrated beam, to epitomize purposiveness. He is the reflective consciousness of his people, embracing all things of the eye and mind. Throughout there are metaphors of reflection and light, mirroring, etc. -- such metaphors both capture the creation’s diversity and speak to the Pharaoh’s role as describe above. Order in the cosmos coincides with its great diversity, and there is no contradiction.

The Leiden Hymns are also striking – Horus the Sun-God isn’t the only god, but he’s the source of the other gods. Interesting here, as the editors suggest, is the way the speakers try to “express the inexpressible” (with respect to time, space, and spirit). The Sun is like an unblinking pair of eyes (moon and sun – a beautiful image!) that always keeps all things in view, though mortals sleep. That seems to be important to the speaker – humans live and die, fade in and out of consciousness, but the great God never sleeps. The poet employs the strategy of incarnation and anthropomorphization without confining himself or the Sun-God to the bodily contours thereby delimited. At some point -- and here I would suggest that point is set forth quickly and frankly -- religious language must bear witness to its own inadequacy or, perhaps a better phrase, its ultimate incommensurateness with what it tries to express. There’s no discomfort on this score, so far as I can see, in these Egyptian hymns. I think the way the Hebrew scriptures portray Yahweh is more circumspect -- burning bushes, and so forth. It isn’t as if in the Bible you’re going to get an image of a huge man with one eye as the moon and the other as the sun. The Hebrew God is inscrutable both in shape and, for the most part, in thought.

I find the love poems full of appropriate reserve -- not about sex or expression of sexual feelings. This is not a shame culture like Christianity. Rather, the reserve comes from the sense that one might not be accepted or that the lover might not be able to convey his or her passion in the right way. Good lyric poetry never comes across as smug regarding the inherent power of expression; it is never really sure that “conveying emotion” is a simple task or that language is up to it. Even so, the possibility that words may or must fail us at some point doesn’t necessarily enjoin despair – that’s an issue Wordsworth addresses straightforwardly in his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” when he points out that even if the romantic poet were to be thought a translator of his or her own feelings and thoughts, the task of poetry is to reawaken the kind of immediate pleasure in us that in turn reminds us of our common humanity. If a “translation” can do that, so be it. The Egyptian poems we are reading, of course, make no such theoretical statements – they simply adopt a frank and sometimes sunny attitude towards the relationship between language and love.

Week 01, Introduction to Comparative Literature 324

2007-01-22T21:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to CPLT 324, World Literature to 1650

Spring 2007 at California State University, Fullerton