I'm never sure how I feel about this, doing the "last" of something. I keep thinking to myself, what happens after? But of course there really is no "last" or "final", because everything just goes on. As will I, in having epiphanies and being enlarged by them, and trying in vain to comprehend clearly what it all truly meant, and in the trying is where the knowing comes, even though I will not know it at the time. If this sounds nonsensical, probably it is. But that's alright. I have moved beyond praise and blame(at least I'd like to have!).

And so on we all will go to the lighthouse, and the Gates of Dawn, and to the Battlefield and to the river as it runs by swerve of shore to bend of bay.

The rest is silence.*





*which is golden

The day for our en masse recitations of the Four Quartets has been moved to April 30, on which date we must arrive at 8:30. The good news about this is that there will be no final on Finals week. Thank you Mr. Sexson!

I think that this was a thoroughly intimidating batch of final papers; I would say that I was cowed and intimidated by them, and this would be true. But(at the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish or something like that), I wasn't bothered in the least by this or threatened by them. Rather, I basked in the glow of their achievement: Sam's reader's diary, Doug's touching life story interpreted through Tarot, Katie's transforming of her misfortunes into epiphanic experiences, Mick and his passionate poem, Nick and his great concluding treatise on silence and epiphanies. And as Nick said, this has been a great batch of creative intellectual minds at work here. He said it better than I could, and I am happy for this. The rest is silence.

We talked today about the last act of Hamlet being the epicenter of the ontological(having to do with the nature of reality) argument, with Hamlet finally coming into his own, with the understanding of his own part in the play that is life. But this was his dark epiphany, seeing that all of life was a play. So how can his good epiphany be the knowing of his own role in the play? This is where mysticism--seeing the recollection of opposites--comes into play(pun intended).

Abby posted a blog about Horatio, saying that he is Sanjaya: it is the job of both to chronicle the events in their respective dramas, and to be the ones who are detached in the right kind of way. Really, this is probably the first study of Hamlet which I've participated in that gives Horatio his dues--he tends to be devalued as a soundboard/sidekick for Hamlet. But what if, in a way, he ends up being the true hero of the story?

And I now need to read Borges' story The Secret Miracle, where time stops at the moment of annihalation, ala Bhagavad Gita and just as Kevin talks about.

Readiness is all. Always.

I've been somewhat remiss in blogging about our sacred duty( the Gita and Hamlet). But I think I shall now, if only to say that I now have found a way to finally read Hamlet in a truly satisfying context--understand me, I do not (like TS Eliot)deny its aesthetic stature; its just never been my favorite Shakespeare play--. With an eye to epiphanic insight, Hamlet becomes very enlightening, more so than it maybe was already.

Yes, Hamlet in Act 5 is changed. He has had an epiphany, having I would guess to do with the attack on the ship by pirates, but he won't say, and the play doesn't present it to us. And at the moment of his death, Hamlet acknowledges the insight he has gained: "You that look pale and tremble at this chance,/That are but mutes or audiences to this act,/Had I but time(as this fell sargeant Death/Is strict in his arrest)-O, I could tell you-/But let it be. Horatio, I am dead."(5.2-319-322) We the mutes and audiences are left, along with Horatio, to figure out what it was that Hamlet had come to know. What was it? The necessity of right action? The need for time and playing your part within the play that is life? I ask these things because I don't know for certain. But it is so. Quite possibly so.

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.