Repetition: By next week we are advised to have a thesis statement for our papers, up on our blog or elsewhere. And of course, blogging about other people's great blogs(Sam and Nick's probably take the cake but my oh my the competition is stiff), and blogging about the connection between the Bhagavad Gita and Hamlet, in particular Act 5 which is so different from the four previous acts.

Because Hamlet has had a very dark epiphany in the first half of the play: that the world is corrupt and everything artificial, everyone acting a part(note the frequency of the words "play", "put-on", "act" and "perform"). This ties in interestingly with the Sanskrit(I think?) word maya--the world as illusion. But by Act 5 what has Hamlet realized? What epiphany has he had?

It may well have something to do with detachment, which Tayloring Taylor so cogently brought up. We've suggested, via the Gita and the Four Quartets, that this is seeing thing with an equal eye--the learned scholar and the dog and the man that eats the dog being the same thing. And it is also the stage wherein you move beyond praise and blame because praise and blame are the same thing. This is hard to grasp, I know. But then that's the point.

Well, Kari has now officially declared her paper topic: an examination of the anxiety of influence and the the epiphanies of time/history through and in War and Peace. Which the unabridged Mahabarahata is even thicker and heavier than.

I liked the quote from Aldous Huxley that was brought up in class today: "All roads lead to Rome, provided it is Rome you are going to." And what determines where we are going to, Rome or otherwise? Our sacred duty, and bhakti, the way of devotion, be it to Krishna, Jesus, Allah or to some other avatar which our devotion turns to center upon. It was mentioned in class that the Bhagavad Gita, read at a superficial level(which means it will sadly be read that way often)seems to justify or uphold the orthodox Hindu caste system. In reality, this is a narrow limited way of looking at the text, which when read at a deeper level calls you beyond class boundaries; and boundaries of all types.

And we have more conversations about Hamlet, in which the avenging of his father is perhaps a metaphor for sacred duty. And the Ghost intones "Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me." in Act 1, scene five line 91. And this is the still point of the drama, the moment the most vital of commands is given.

Something that Kari has been wondering about is the connections, if that can even be the word we want to use, between Yahweh and Krishna.

I fell to ruminating about the Book of Job in the Hebrew scriptures after reading the Tenth Teaching in the Bhagavad Gita, entitled in this translation "Fragments of Divine Power". Arjuna asks Krishna "Recount in full extent/the discipline and power of your self;/Krishna, I can never hear enough/of your immortal speech." Krishna responds by saying, in effect, that he is absolutely everything: "I am the self abiding/in the heart of all creatures/I am their beginning,/their middle and their end." These descriptions go on for a few pages, and then in the next chapter Arjuna sees the vision for which words were not enough to comprehend. This may be an indicative things about sublime epiphanic experiences, that even "divine speech" cannot make it comprehendible in all its great and terrible beauty.

This made me think of Yahweh(God) in the book of Job, whom it is still very hard not to view as a sadistic prick on a power trip. He when he finally appears to Job out of the whirlwind and says "Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall declare to me." (Chapter 38, verse 3, Revised Standard Version) This is equivalent in many respects to Krishna calling Arjuna a coward at the beginning of the Gita, but still it somehow strikes me as more harsh and severe. But the lists of divine power and sheer capacity are quite similar. One particular similarity which I found striking was the power of the horse.

From the Gita: "Among horses, know me as the immortal stallion/born from the sea of elixir;/among elephants, the divine king's mount;/among men, the king."

From the book of Job: "Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with strength?Do you make him leap like the locust? His majestic snorting is terrible. He paws in the valley, and exults in his strength; he goes out to meet the weapons. He laughs not at fear, and is not dismayed; he does not turn back from the sword. Upon him rattle the quiver, the flashing spear and the javelin. With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground; he cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet. When the trumpet sounds, he says "Aha!" He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. (Chapter 39, verse 19-25)

Perhaps I am stretching in search of a connection between these stories, but I couldn't help but think of it. And, hard though it is for my tiny-little mind to grasp the notion, perhaps they are talking about the same thing on a certain level. Or perhaps not. Kari doesn't know, but Kari will perhaps pursue this consideration further if she can.

We are to blog, from now until the end(if indeed there is such a thing) on The Bhagavad Gita and Hamlet, because it is from these texts that the rest of what we are to know will emanate. Because Hamlet and Arjuna have the same problem: they cannot act, and do what they must do. Arjuna has Krishna, and Hamlet has another avatar: the Ghost, who is essentially a secular version of Krishna.

Both avatars are here for the sake of reminding their respective pupils of their sacred duty, which we have suggested is thus: the the thing that you would do even if you weren't required to do it.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." This is a great example of a synechoche(a part which represents the whole), so "Denmark" really means "the whole world and the whole of life".
Similarly, the battlefield in the Gita is a metaphor for all of human life, and so the call to violence isn't a literal call to killing, but a call to do what you must do. This is why Gandhi, a great practioner of nonviolence, was so influenced by the text.

I look forward to seeing the portion from Peter Brooks' film version of the Mahabarata(sp?), the long Hindu epic of which the Bhagavad Gita is one portion of. The voice of the Mahabarata, as a whole, including the Gita is Sanjaya, and Sanjaya is the poet.

And by this time next week, we are to tentatively have a thesis for our papers up and viewable. Kari thinks that she shall do something with War and Peace but she is so intensely percieving the anxiety of influence that she may end up wondering "To be or not to be." We shall see.

Back from break and onto the Gita and Hamlet. By way of duty(as opposed to sacred duty, though indeed perhaps there is only a hairsbreadth, nose-tipped distinction), our individual presentations begin on April 9, in our group order reversed. These will be turned in to Mr. Sexson, who will be serving the function, here and now, of an avatar(a divine being coming down to the mortal world and assuming mortal form for the sake for the instruction of mortal beings). Because really we all need some kind of avatar, do instruct us in the comprehension of sacrifice. Sacrifice literally means "to make sacred" and it is our dharma( sanscrit for "duty", though often translated as "truth" or "responsibility" which may seem less stringent than duty) which can lead us to sacrifice in the correct way.

But it had to be pointed out, that the Bhagavad Gita and To the Lighthouse intersect, on page 63, where Mrs. Ramsey and the Lighthouse are one. This is the notion from the Vedic scriptures, whereby atman and brahman are one and the same. There is no distinction between the divine being and the Self. Leave it to Virgina to understand this and apply it to the dishwater dull common life.

Our assignment over spring break is to read Hamlet and The Bhagavad Gita.These will be the two texts which will be most central to the latter half of the class, and especially to the development of our term papers, which we are advised to postpone thinking about until after we have read these two works(holy mouthful sentence!).

We discussed To the Lighthouse and its connections with another poem by Wallace Stevens, To an Old Philosopher in Rome, itself an elegy, and also a consideration on the space where we have epiphanies: the threshold of heaven, on the street.

And we also talked about Kevin's blog, in which he went off on a magnificent defense of To the Lighthouse on the grounds of its practicality. I also loved his observation, closely aligned with that of practicality, that the book presents Inscape as a way, not only of looking at the world, though it is that too, but as a way of looking at ourselves. When we are able to perceive other things in the way in which they truly are themselves(a table, a chair, a boat) than we can perhaps be able to perceive ourselves for what they truly are. This ties back so very interestingly with Vladimir Nabokov's Transparent Things. Is this what N. was on about in that book, which also has the typical response from readers of "I don't like it", and "I don't understand it." Just goes to show that the anagogic level requires a mysterious mental maneuver to gain entrance to.

It appears that I am something of an anomaly(this seems to happen with disturbing regularity, but never mind), in that I am one of the few members of class who actually likes To the Lighthouse. But as Mr. Sexson said yesterday, it perfectly fits into the two categories for qualifying as Highbrow Literature: the responses are 1. I don't like it and 2. I don't understand it.

But at the same time, we find that it is truly replete with epiphanic revelation, particularly if one sees it as a displacement of myth; Mrs. Ramsey as Penelope in the opening chapters, weaving and weaving but destined not to finish. Or the great moment Taylor mentioned of Nancy at the tide pool, on page 75, which suggests a finer line between mortality and immortality, Gods and mortals than we are generally lead to believe exists. It illustrates that ultimately all we can do is strive to become Gods.

I also found this passage intriguing, in the first chapter of The Lighthouse section.

"And he shook his head at her and strode on("Alone", she heard him say, "Perished" she heard him say)and like everything else this strange morning the words became symbols, wrote themselves all over the grey-green walls. If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things. " (pg 147)

This brings to my mind associations with Kabbala, which is centered upon word magic and the divine, creative properties inherent in words(fitting, as this is Lily Briscoe the artist here, listening to Mr. Ramsey), and how the act of applying words,even bleak frightening words like "alone" and "perished" grants reality where there previously was none(the house was abandoned, after all, and left open to Time and Mrs. McNab). And in the fact of there being something as opposed to nothing, there is the reality and the impetus to live and to work--Lily decides to finish the abandoned painting.

I can't say that Virgina had intensive knowledge of Kabbala, but there is another place, sadly forgotten by me at this present time and moment(one of her letters or her diary maybe) where she says "Nothing has happened until it has been described." Which applies to this fittingly.

I read To the Lighthouse about three years ago. Perhaps it goes without saying, but there have been things that have popped out to me this time around, re-reading it, that I didn't catch the first time. One of these is the connection(if any) between the fairy tale and the rest of the Vision of Virginia(couldn't resist, sorry).

Mrs. Ramsey is reading The Fisherman's Wife to her little son James in chapter X of The Window section.

" ' And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark grey, and the water heaved up from below, and smelt putrid. Then he went and stood by it and said,

Flounder, flounder, in the sea,
Come I pray thee here to me;
For my wife, good Isabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will.

Well, what does she want then," said the Flounder.' And where were they now? Mrs. Ramsey wondered, reading and thinking, quite easily, both at the same time; for the story of the Fisherman and his wife was like the bass gently accompanying a tune, which now and then ran up unexpectedly into the melody. And when would she be told?" (pg. 56)

I wonder if this can be construed as a reflection on the relation that story has for Real Life(whatever that is anyway), the bass gently accompanying the tune, and hence a part of the overall music of our existence. It isn't so much that the fairy tale relates in some sort of perfect microcosmic way into the rest of the story; though in a sense it does: the fisherman's wife wants everything that can possibly be had, and ends up ultimately with nothing. Mrs. Ramsey's epiphany on page 65 where she becomes one and the same with the lighthouse beam and "She felt, It is enough! It is enough!" Which is to say that, paradoxically, nothing is perhaps Everything after all, and vice-versa. That at any given moment you are in contact with everything you'd ever need or want to be. You just don't know it. And it is through the sharing of stories, from one age to another(ie. Mrs. Ramsey and James) that we can come a little bit closer to understanding this.

Or Kari could be off-base, which is also a possibility.

Our assignment for this week is to find five epiphanic moments in To the Lighthouse. I'll admit I've been excited to come to this, being that I am something of a Woolf-ophile. Not that I intend to raise expectations with this statement.

There is a point, talked about by Aldous Huxley in his 1945 book Perennial Philosophy, where all religons meet(perhaps despite themselves)and that is the mystical(this is also something that Huston Smith, a teacher of Mr. Sexson's, talked about to in his book Religions of the World). The mystical is the level at which To the Lighthouse, and indeed pretty much all Woolf, demands to be read. The mystical and the mythological(which are tied so very close together) are woven throughout the entire novel, which on the low-rung Literal level is so, dare we say, boring and mundane. For example, part 4 of the Time Passes section features time being interpreted in its eternal process by Mrs. McNabb, the ancient cleaning lady. It could almost be said that Mrs. McNabb is like Sibyll, from Greek Mythology. I was also interested to see the corallation with a Theodore Roethke poem about three cleaning ladies named Frau Baughman, Frau Schmidtz and Frau Schwartz, whom he metamorphosizes into the Three Fates. And also the personification of the night on page 142, and the idea of Mr. Ramsey as Cronos(devourer of his children).

I think I'm going to enjoy this.

Blast from the literary criticism past this morning. We trace how Northrup Frye's scale of reading levels ties in with Dante's(who Frye of course stole from). For Frye, the go in order from the highest to lowest thus:
1.Anagogic - monad
2.Mythical - archetypal
3. Moral -image
4. Literal - sign

This also ties in with Giambatisto Vico's Ages as well:
1. Gods
2. Heroes
3. Men
4.Chaos

Frye also lays out, in his dense and dry but perversely palatable The Anatomy of Criticism, literary symbols of the epiphany. They are the mountaintop, the tower, the lighthouse, and the ladder. All of which we can find in expected or unexpected places. All of this is important information because we are officially about to begin (re)reading To the Lighthouse , and we are required to read it on the level of anagogy and Gods, not of the literal. Because we have to have the experience and the meaning, not just the one.

It was apparently Jorge Luis Borges who said that there only two stories really, the crucifixion on Golgotha and the search for an island in the Mediterranean where magical things exist.

You can tell that Annie Dillard is a good writer because it doesn't seem like she is trying. Her style is so smooth, seemingly casual and unadorned that it seems as though no effort went into it at all. But of course this really means that a great deal of effort went into it; in the case of the essay on the total eclipse, it took her two years to sort through everything she went through, to recollect it, and to write it out. Because as she makes no small point about, it was an experience that might be classified as holy terror: "You can feel the deadness race up your arm; you can feel the appalling, inhuman speed of your own blood. We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit. This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying speeds. "(pg. 100-101)

This could be the essence of the dark epiphany; the comprehension of the enormity and darkness of the universe, or God or the gods or whatever we choose to call it--that it what the universe perhaps is, and why it is so shattering to actually percieve, because to see it is to see our own essential selves, which are finite.

Dillard also hits on the way that life goes on. "The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, all eternity, and God. The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious, clamoring mind will hush if you give it an egg."(pg. 99)

We perhaps have to "forget" things, or to let them go, especially experiences that lead you to the edge of the abyss, that are terrifying and awesome and, yes, sublime. Because if you didn't let go and move on to things like fried eggs, you wouldn't be able to function. Maybe the capacity for the mind to "forget" is in some respects a cosmic gift, which we frequently let down by, but which is necessary if we are to function and not struck eternally dumb and into stone.

We have all been given a very extra-curricular assingment: to be in Caspar Wyoming on August 21 2017 to witness the total solar eclipse of the sun, and see how are experience goes along with Annie Dillard's. I we haven't read her essay on the eclipse(which I shamefully have not yet), then we are to, and blog about it for Friday. We are also to read Helena of the Ten Thousand Lakes' blog and do her better one. I somehow doubt that this can be accomplished by me, but we shall see.

We also discussed the notion of recollection(ie. memory)and its importance. In Tintern Abbey for instance, shows that it isn't experiance but re-visiting experience that ultimately matters. This is something that Proust also conveys(although not with the comparative brevity of Wordsworth, himself fond of words), in a kind of secular mysticism. And both In Search of Lost Time and Tintern Abbey suggest that the Aesthetic Hero must be an awakener of recollection, in others as well as in himself/herself. This not an easy feat, but then this is why there are lamentably few Aesthetic Heroes.

Great many things covered today, as usual taken from the impressive array of blogs that have been done. Sam made an interesting link with Tintern Abbey and the Upanishads and the notions of atman(the self, in Hindu religous philosophy) and the brahman(God, which is really everything) and the idea that in fact the atman and brahman are one. We just don't realize it in this world. And this tied in with the discussion of Plato and how when we are born we are in fact fallen infinitely wise winged beings who simply have to remember all that we knew before(links with Gnosticism). And all of this is to be found in Wordsworth.

I also liked the discussion of the implications of the word "buckle"; simulatanously being able to come apart and come together and how it further illuminates The Windhover.

And we are to read about the Fisher King, and see how it ties in with The Kingfisher.