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.

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.