Goal for meeting next Friday: present Mr. Sexson with a three page "plan of attack". Essentially, a rough-draft for the beginning of the paper, in which I am to focus most acutely upon Gnosis and Imagination "understood as". Because for my studying purposes, narrowing the focus is vital, especially in as broad-reaching a topic as Gnosticism. This also seems to be were I am having the most difficulty with; I seem to have the urge to read everything that can be read by the Romantics and about Gnosticism, which of course is impossible in the span of time available to us for this purpose.

So, my three-page plan of attack is likely to focus upon the chosen understanding of Gnosis and Imagination to be employed, which it is looking like will be about like this:

1. Self-knowledge as knowledge of God
2.Hence, one in possesion of gnosis becomes a kind of creator or artist; "divine in the world" as it were. The notion of apotheosis becomes central here.
It would probably be a good idea to discuss the idea of the Aesthetic Hero, as it relates to gnosis and the Romantic imagination as well.
4. The diminished trope of illumination to be found in Modernism: "matches struck in the dark" in To the Lighthouse, linked with Shelley's celestial fire, and with the Gnostic idea of the "spark" or "flame" to be found inside.

See, all of this is complex enough without Kari trying to make it even more so. We shall see how it ends up developing.

Blog Resurrected for LIT 470

From here on the entries in the blog will be for the independent study on Gnosticism and the British Romantics. I am a little remiss in beginning, but it is happening now.

It has been decided, for the sake of ease and(hopefully)resultant expertise, to try and narrow the scope of inquiry to the relation between Gnosis and Imagination. How does the Gnostic view of gnosis(knowledge) relate or intersect with the Romantic poets' view of the imagination?

I may take a starting cue from Coleridge, from chapter 13 of his Biographia Literaria.

"The IMAGINATION then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation with the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify."

If this sounds rather like Stevens' Idea of Order at Key West it probably isn't just me that would detect the similarity. If the Primary Imagination is where all the source of creativity lies, is the utmost expression of it, then the Secondary Imagination is the watered down, more commonly operating immination of the Primary Imagination, which I suspect is the level at which anagogy operates(and that at which truly sublime art is made). And if the power to create is what designates one as a Creator(or a Demiurge) then the Artist is akin to God, or perhaps in touch with God that is inside.

I think I have stumbled into something, and intend to expound upon it in further entries.