- A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, by Robert M. Grant: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE, written by Robert M. Grant and published in 1963 and later revised with David Tracy is the standard history of the different ways in which the Bible has been interpreted since the days of the early Church to the mid to late twentieth century. Beginning with how Jesus and New Testament authors used the Hebrew Scriptures, the book continues with the different ways patristic authors, medieval and Renaissance authors, and finally modern authors interpret scripture. What we see is that there was never one way to interpret scripture, which shows how scripture is a continuous living and thriving set of writings. I have found the book helpful not only in understanding scripture, but also theology itself. Scripture is the basis of theology, and understanding the differences between Alexandrian interpretations and the interpretation of scriptures of writers associated with Antioch, the differences between Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist interpretations, and how modern scholars see scripture gives insight into theological thought. More often than not, theologians are not biblical scholars, and basing thought in scripture is not their forte. The Grant and Tracy text is a great help with clarification and for me brings together the connection between theology and the Bible.
- Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: A Matthew Arnold quote on the back of my Constance Garnett translation of Anna Karenina reads, “We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art, we are to take it as a piece of life.” Perhaps that explains my sense of helplessness in approaching this review; the novel’s vastness makes any attempt at evaluating it, or even reacting to it, feel impossibly small. In acknowledgement of this defeat, I’ve decided to disregard the novel’s plot, dialogue, sentences, themes, and context, and share just a few meager thoughts on just a few of its characters. These are not necessarily the book’s most essential names—I’m skipping Vronsky, for instance, who bores me, and Kitty, who I find fundamentally unconvincing—but they are some of the most affecting in the book, and, I’d be willing to argue, in all literature.1. Darya (Dolly) Alexandrovna Oblonsky: Stepan (Stiva) Arkadyevitch Oblonsky’s wife, Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky’s sister, and the mother of many children, Dolly is a character of great complexity and depth in spite of her surface conventionality. She does not overlook Stiva’s infidelity, but grieves over it and grapples with it, loving him in spite of himself and aptly describing him as “disgusting, pitiful, and charming.” In her relationship with her husband, Dolly demonstrates an ability to live with contradiction, and to endure suffering but remain good. Meanwhile, she maintains (sporadic) relations with her belle-soeur Anna Arkadyevna Karenina long after the book’s namesake has become “lost.” She feels for the difficulty of Anna’s “position” and is willing to withhold judgment in order to show kindness to a scorned woman.2. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina: Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin’s wife, Count Alexey Kirillitch Vronsky’s lover, Stiva’s sister, and the mother of two children (one by each Alexey), Anna is the epicenter of activity in this novel. After reading this book twice, Anna continues to evoke in me a muddle of confused emotion: awe, indignation, fear, disgust. She is a beautiful, charismatic figure, a woman with more courage than any other character in the novel; I cannot help but admire her elegance and strength as she navigates the stranglehold of elite 19th century Russian society. For although her defining choice—to leave an unfeeling husband she cannot stand for a man with whom she is deeply in love—seems the only sane option to modern readers, she is, infuriatingly, all but excommunicated for it. Still, in spite of her charm and victimization, it is impossible to remain fully on Anna’s side as she descends into the despondent, paranoiac frenzy of self-pity and aimless rage that eventually consumes her.3. Sergey (Seryozha) Alexeyitch Karenin: The Karenins’ only son is part-way between a prop and a minor character, most present in the novel when apart from Anna. I include him in this short list not because he is a well-developed or interesting character (Tolstoy takes his third-person omniscience to Seryozha only once, briefly) but because he is the character who proved to me, incontrovertibly, the author’s unsurpassed genius. About two-thirds through the book, we witness the somewhat well-intentioned, somewhat opportunistic involvement of Countess Lidia Ivanovna in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s life after Anna leaves him. Specifically, we endure her self-importance and infatuation with Alexey, then cringe as she brings her mildly repellent good will into Seryozha’s affairs. We have thus far heard little about Seryozha beyond how much Anna adores him, and peeking into his world is vaguely jarring in her absence. And so I began at this point in the book to wonder, how is Seryozha coping? What does he think of it all? Truly, for the first time in well over 500 pages, I thought I’d love to see things from Seryozha’s perspective for a chapter. I had to close the book and ponder the impossibility of Tolstoy’s brilliance when, as soon as the thought appeared in my mind, the focus shifted to Seryozha and his interpretation of the changes in his household.
5. Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrievitch Levin: Eventually Princess Ekaterina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya’s husband, Levin is far and away my favorite character (in any novel, ever). If Seryozha proves Tolstoy’s genius, Levin proves his heart. From his pinings for Kitty while she swoons over Vronsky to the rustic ecstasy he finds while mowing with peasants, from his inability to emotionally comprehend his sickly brother’s imminent death to his heartbreakingly sweet panic during the birth of his child, Levin confronts nearly every hard and nearly every happy part of life over the course of the book, and always with self-consciousness, stoicism, and honesty. The most absurd situations (a fast-paced series of chalked acronyms that ends in engagement, for example) and the most challenging subjects (like finding God) are moving, sincere, and thoroughly believable when we encounter them through Levin. This may be because Tolstoy—so I’ve read—drew many of his own intellectual struggles and life-changing experiences into Levin’s character, but I have never read an autobiography as true as this. A parting taste:
“All he knew and felt was that what was happening was what had happened nearly a year before … at the deathbed of his brother Nikolay. But that had been grief—this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.” (p. 761)
- Buddha Vol 1 to 8, by Tezuka Osamu: In ancient India the lives of many people are plagued by drought, famine, constant warfare and injustices in the caste system. The intertwining lives of many unhappy souls are drawn together by the birth of the young prince Siddhartha, who embarks on a spiritual journey, becomes Gautama Buddha, “the Enlightened One,” and attempts to bring about a spiritual rebirth of the people in this desperate age.
- Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev:It is easy to see why this novel is considered a masterpiece of Russian literature. Written in the mid-19th century, it deals with intergenerational conflict (i read somewhere that originally, the title was something like “Parents and Children”), with each major character personifying types found in Russian society – the older generation who come from the fading world of the nobility but at the same time attempting to be liberal in their views, and those of the younger generation who advocate nihilism and free thought. The protagonist, an intelligent young doctor, Barazov, represents youth, strength, new ways and ideas, but with very little awareness of his own naïveté and hypocrisy. He is arrogant of any manifestation of “weakness” such as the finer emotions, and when he falls deeply in love with a woman, who was his equal in strength of will and ideas, he goes through an intense struggle with himself. The other characters in the novel provide a brilliant counterpoint to the personality of Barazov, and the exchange between and among them in a subtly woven plot underlies the the slowly changing political and social landscape of the country, signaling a restlessness that characterize periods of transition or upheaval.
- The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr: Niebuhr explores the bend of humanity towards the “will to power” and dominate. He argues that Christians have often ignored this tendency within themselves, and explores the impact that this has played in world economics and politics.
- Past and Present, by Thomas Carlyle:
Chap. I _Midas_
//
The condition of England one of the most ominous ever seen in
this world: Full of wealth in every kind, yet dying of
inanition; Workhouses, in which no work cane be done.
Destitution in Scotland. Stockport Assizes. England’s
unprofitable success: Human faces glooming discordantly on one
another. Midas longed for gold, and the gods gave it him.
Chap. II. _The Sphinx_
The grand unnamable Sphinx-riddle, which each man is called upon
to solve.
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Notions of the foolish concerning justice and
judgment. Courts of Westminster, and the general High Court of
the Universe. The one strong thing, the just thing, the true
thing. A noble Conservatism, as well as an ignoble. In all
battles of men each fighter, in the end, prospers according to
his right: Wallace of Scotland. Fact and Semblance. What is
justice? As many men as there are in a Nation who can _see_
Heaven’s justice, so many are there who stand between it
and perdition.
Chap. III. _Manchester Insurrection_
Peterloo not an unsuccessful Insurrection. Governors who wait
for Insurrection to instruct them, getting into the fatalest
courses. Unspeakable County Yeomanry. Poor Manchester
operatives, and their huge inarticulate question: Unhappy
Workers, unhappier idlers, of this actual England! Fair day’s-
wages for fair day’s-work: Milton’s ‘wages;’ Cromwell’s. Pay
to each man what he has earned and done and deserved; what more
have we to ask? Some not _in_supportable approximation
indispensable and inevitable.
Chap. IV. _Morrison’s Pill_
A state of mind worth reflecting on. No Morrison’s Pill for
curing the maladies of Society: Universal alteration of regimen
and way of life: Vain jargon giving place to some genuine Speech
again. If we walk according to the Law of this Universe, the
Law-Maker will befriend us; if not, not. Quacks, sham heroes,
the one bane of the world. Quack and Dupe, upper side and under
of the selfsame substance.
Chap. V. _Aristocracy of Talent_
// //
All misery the fruit of unwisdom: Neither with individuals nor
with Nations is it fundamentally otherwise. Nature in late
centuries universally supposed to be dead; but now everywhere
asserting herself to be alive and miraculous. That guidance of
this country not sufficiently wise. Aristocracy of talent, or
government by the Wisest, a dreadfully difficult affair to get
started. The true _eye_ for talent; and the flunky eye for
respectabilities, warm garnitures and
larders dropping fatness: Bobus and Bobissimus.
Chap. VI. _Hero-worship_
Enlightened Egoism, never so luminous, not the rule by which
man’s life can be led: A _soul,_ different from a stomach in any
sense of the word. Hero-worship done differently in every
different epoch of the world. Reform, like Charity, must begin
at home. Arrestment of the knaves and dastards, beginning by
arresting our own poor selves out of that fraternity. The
present Editor’s purpose to himself full of hope. A Loadstar
in the eternal sky: glimmering of light, for here and there
a human soul.
Book II–The Ancient Monk
Chap. I. _Jocelin of Brakelond_
How the Centuries stand lineally related to each other. The one
Book not permissible, the kind that has nothing in it. Jocelin’s
‘Chronicle,’ a private Boswellean Note-book, now seven centuries
old. How Jocelin, from under his monk’s cowl, looked out on that
narrow section of the world in a really _human_ manner: A wise
simplicity in him; a _veracity_ that goes deeper than words.
Jocelin’s Monk-Latin; and Mr. Rokewood’s editorial helpfulness
and fidelity. A veritable Monk of old Bury St. Edmunds worth
attending to. This England of ours, of the year 1200: Coeur-de-
Lion: King Lackland, and his thirteenpenny mass. The poorest
historical Fact, and the grandest imaginative Fiction.
Chap. II. _St. Edmundsbury_
St. Edmund’s Bury, a prosperous brisk Town: Extensive ruins of
the Abbey still visible. Assiduous Pedantry, and its rubbish-
heaps called ‘History.’ Another world it was, when those black
ruins first saw the sun as walls. At lowest, O dilettante
friend, let us know always that it _was_ a world. No easy matter
to get across the chasm of Seven Centuries: Of all helps; a
Boswell, even a small Boswell, the welcomest.
Chap. III. _Landlord Edmund_
‘Battle of Fornham,’ a fact, though a forgotten one. Edmund,
Landlord of the Eastern Counties: A very singular kind of
‘landlord.’ How he came to be ‘sainted.’ Seen and felt to have
done verily a man’s part in this life pilgrimage of his. How
they took up the slain body of their Edmund, and reverently
embalmed it. Pious munificence, ever growing by new pious gifts.
Certain Times do crystallise themselves in a magnificent manner;
others in a rather shabby one.
Chap. IV. _Abbot Hugo_
All things have two faces, a light one and dark: The Ideal has
to grow in the Real, and to seek its bed and board there, often
in a very sorry manner. Abbot Hugo, grown old and feeble. Jew
debts and Jew creditors. How approximate justice strives to
accomplish itself. In the old monastic Books almost no Mention
whatever of ‘personal religion.’ A poor Lord Abbot, all stuck-
over with horse-leeches: A ‘royal commission of inquiry,’ to no
purpose. A monk’s first duty, obedience. Magister Samson,
Teacher of the Novices. The Abbot’s providential death.
Chap. V. _Twelfth Century_
Inspectors of Custodiars; the King not in any breathless haste
to appoint a new Abbot. Dim and very strange looks that monk-
life to us. Our venerable ancient spinning grandmothers,
shrieking, and rushing out with their distaffs. Lakenheath eels
too slippery to be caught. How much is alive in England, in that
Twelfth Century; how much, not yet come into life. Feudal
Aristocracy; Willelmus conquaestor: Not a steeple-chimney yet
got on end from sea to sea.
Chap. VI. _Monk Samson_
Monk-Life and Monk-Religion: A great heaven-high
Unquestionability, encompassing, interpenetrating all human
Duties. Our modern Arkwright Joe-Manton ages: All human dues
and reciprocities, changed into one great due of ‘cash-payment’
The old monks but a limited class of creatures, with a somewhat
dull life of it. One Monk of a taciturn nature distinguishes
himself among those babling ones. A Son of poor Norfolk parents.
Little Samson’s awful dream: His poor Mother dedicates him to
St. Edmund. He grows to be a learned man, of devout grave
nature. Sent to Rome on business; and returns _too_ successful:
Method of traveling thither in those days. His tribulations at
home: Strange conditions under which Wisdom has sometimes to
struggle with folly.
Chap. VII. _The Canvassing_
A new Abbot to be elected. Even gossip, seven centuries off, has
significance. The Prior with Twelve Monks, to wait on his
Majesty at Waltham. An ‘election’ the on important social act:
Given the Man a People choose, the worth and worthlessness of the
People itself is given.
Chap. VIII. _The Election_
Electoral methods and manipulations. Brother Samson ready
oftenest with some question, some suggestion that his wisdom in
it. The Thirteen off to Waltham, to choose their Abott: In the
solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and in her birthtime,
what gossiping, babbling, dreaming of dreams! King Henry II in
his high Presence-chamber. Samson chosen Abbot: the King’s
royal acceptation. St. Edmundsbury Monks, without express ballot
box or other winnowing machine. In every nation and Community
there is at all times _a fittest,_ wisest, bravest, best. Human
Worth and human Worthlessness.
Chap. IX. _Abbot Samson_
The Lord Abbot’s arrival at St. Edmundsbury: The self-same
Samson yesterday a poor mendicant, this day, finds himself a
_Dominus Abbas_ and mitred Peer of Parliament. Depth and
opulence of true social vitality in those old barbarous ages.
True Governors go about under all manner of disguises now as
then. Genius, Poet; what these words mean. George the Third,
head charioteer of England; and Robert Burns, gauger of ale in
Dumfries. How Abbot Samson found a Convert all in dilapidation.
His life-long harsh apprenticeship to governing, namely obeying.
First get your Man; all is got. Danger of blockheads.
Chap. X. _Government_
Beautiful, how the chrysalis governing-soul, shaking off its
dusty slough and prison, starts forth winged, a true royal soul!
One first labour, to institute a strenuous review and radical
reform of his economics. Wheresoever Disorder may stand or lie,
let it have a care; here is a man that has declared war with it.
In less than four years the Convent debts are all liquidated, and
the harpy Jews banished from St. Edmundsbury. New life springs
beneficent everywhere: Spiritual rubbish as little tolerated
as material.
Chap. XI. _The Abbot’s Ways_
Reproaches, open and secret, of ingratitude, unsociability;
Except for ‘fit men’ in all kinds, hard to say for whom Abbot
Samson had much favour. Remembrance of benefits. An eloquent
man, but intent more on substance than on ornament. A just clear
heart the basis of all true talent. One of the justest of
judges; His invaluable ‘talent of silence.’ Kind of people he
liked worst. Hospitality and stocism. The country in those days
still dark with noble wood and umbrage; How the old trees
gradually died out, no man heeding it. Monachism itself, so rich
and fruitful once, now all rotted into _peat._ Devastations of
four-footed cattle and Henry-the-Eighths.
Chap. XII. _The Abbot’s Troubles_
The troubles of Abbot Samson more than tongue can tell. Not the
spoil of victory, only the glorious toil of battle, can be theirs
who really govern. An insurrection of the Monks: Behave better,
ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an Abbot. Worn down
with incessant toil and tribulation: Gleams of hilarity too;
little snatches of encouragement granted even to a Governor. How
my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his _un_due ‘debt,’ gets a
Roland for his Oliver. A Life of Literature, noble and ignoble.
Chap. XIII. _In Parliament_
Confused days of Lackland’s usurpation, while Coeur-de-Lion was
away: Our brave Abbot took helmet himself, excommunicating all
who should favour Lackland. Kind Richard a captive in Germany.
St. Edmund’s Shrine not meddled with: A heavenly Awe
overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought and must, all
earthly Business whatsoever.
Chap. XIV. _Henry of Essex_
How St. Edmund punished terribly, yet with mercy; A Naratice
significant of the time. Henry Earl of Essex, standard-bearer of
England: No right reverence for the Heavenly in Man. A traitor
or coward. Solemn Duel, by the King’s appointment. An evil
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
Chap. XV. _Practical-Devotional_
A Tournament proclaimed and held in the Abbot’s domain, in spite
of him. Roystering young dogs brought to reason. The Abbot a
man that generally remains master at last: The importunate
Bishop of Ely outwitted. A man that dare abide King Richard’s
anger, with justice on his side. Thou brave Richard, thou brave
Samson! The basis of Abbot Samson’s life truly religion. His
zealous interest in the Crusades. The great antique heart, like
a child’s in its simplicity, like a man’s in its earnest
solemnity and depth. His comparative silence as to his religion
precisely the healthiest sign of him and it. Methodism,
dilettantism, Puseyism.
Chap. XVI. _St. Edmund_
Abbot Samson built many useful, many pious edifices: All
ruinous, incomplete things an eye-sorrow to him. Rebuilding the
great Altar: A glimpse of the glorious Martyr’s very Body. What
a scene; how far vanished from us, in these unworshipping ages
of ours! The manner of men’s Hero-worship, verily the innermost
fact of their existence, determining all the rest. On the whole,
who knows how to reverence the Body of man? Abbot Samson, at the
culminating point of his existence: Our real-phantasmagory of
St. Edmundsbury plunges into the bosom of the Twelfth Century
again, and all is over.
Chap. XVII. _The Beginnings_
Formulas the very skin and muscular tissue of a Man’s Life:
Living Formulas and dead. Habit the deepest law of human nature.
A pathway through the pathless. Nationalities. Pulpy infancy,
kneaded, baked into any form you choose: The Man of business;
the hard-handed Labourer; the genus Dandy. No Mortal out of the
depths of Bedlam but lives by Formulas. The hosts and
generations of brave men Oblivion has swallowed: Their crumbled
dust, the soil our life-fruit grows on. Invention of Speech;
Forms of Worship; Methods of Justice. This English Land, here
and now, the summary of what was wise and noble, and accordant
with God’s Truth, in all the generations of English Men. The
thing called ‘Fame.’
Book III.–The Modern Worker
Chap. I. _Phenomena_
How men have ‘forgotten God;’ taken the Fact of this Universe as
it is _not;_ God’s Laws become a Greatest-happiness Principle, a
Parliamentary Expediency. Man has lost the _soul_ out of him,
and begins to find the want of it. The old Pope of Rome, with
his stuffed dummy to do the kneeling for him. Few men that
worship by the rotatory Calabash, do it in half so great, frank
or effectual a way. Our Aristocracy no longer able to _do_ its
work, and not in the least conscious that it has any work to do.
The Champion of England ‘lifted into his saddle.’ The hatter in
the Strand, mounting a huge lath-and-plaster Hat. Our noble
ancestors have fashioned for us, in how many thousand sense, a
‘life-road;’ and we their sons are madly, literally enough,
‘consuming the way.’
Chap. II. _Gospel of Mammonism_
Heaven and Hell, often as the words are on our tongue, got to be
fabulous or semi-fabulous for most of us. The real ‘Hell’ of the
English. Cash-payment, _not_ the sole or even chief relation of
human beings. Practical Atheism, and its despicable fruits. One
of Dr. Alison’s melancholy facts: A poor Irish widow, in the
Lanes of Endinburgh, _proving_ her sisterhood. Until we get a
human _soul_ within us, all things are _im_possible: Infatuated
geese, with feathers and without.
Chap. III. _Gospel of Dilettantism_
Mammonism at least works; but ‘Go gracefully idle in Mayfair,’
what does or can that mean?–Impotent, insolent Donothingism in
Practice and Saynothingism in Speech. No man now speaks a plain
word: Insincere Speech the prime material of insincere Action.
Moslem parable of Moses and the Dwellers by the Dead sea: The
Universe _become_ a Humbug to the Apes that thought it one.
Chap. IV. _Happy_
All work noble; and every noble crown a crown of thorns. Man’s
pitiful pretension to be what he calls “happy;” His Greatest-
Happiness Principle fast becoming a rather unhappy one. Byron’s
large audience. A philosophical Doctor: A disconsolate Meat-
jack, gnarring and creaking with rust and work. The only
‘happiness’ a brave man ever troubled himself much about, the
happiness to get his work done.
Chap. V. _The English_
With all thy theoretic platitudes, what a depth of practical
sense in thee, great England! A dumb people, who can do great
acts, but not describe them. The noble Warhorse, and the Dog of
Knowledge: The freest utterances not by any means the best. The
done Work, much more than the spoken Word, an epitome of the man.
The Man of Practice, and the Man of Theory: Ineloquent Brindley.
The English, of all Nations the stupidest in speech, the wisest
in action: Sadness and seriousness: Unconsciously this great
Universe is great to them. The silent Romans. John Bull’s
admirable insensibility to Logic. All great Peoples
conservative. Kind of Ready-Reckoner a Solecism in East-cheap.
Berserkir rage. Truth and Justice alone _capable_ of being
‘conserved.’ Bitter indignation engendered by the Corn-Laws in
every just English heart.
Chap. VI. _Two Centuries_
The ‘Settlement’ of the year 1660 one of the mournfulest that
ever took place in this land of ours. The true end of Government
to guide men in the way they should go: The true good of this
life, the portal of infinite good in the life to come. Oliver
Cromwell’s body hung on the Tyburn gallows, the type of
Puritanism found futil, inexecutable, execrable. The
Spiritualism of England, for two godless centuries, utterly
forgettable: Her practical material Work alone memorable.
Bewildering obscurations and impediments: Valiant Sons of Toil
enchanted, by the million, in their Poor-Law Bastille. Giant
Labour yet to be King of this Earth.
Chap. VII. _Over-Production_
An idle Governing Class addressing its Workers with an indictment
of ‘Over-production.’ Duty of justly apportioning the Wages
of Work done. A game-preserving Aristocracy, guiltless of
producing or apportioning anything. Owning the soil of England.
The Working Aristocracy steeped in ignoble Mammonism: The Idle
Aristocracy, with its yellow parchments and pretentious futilities.
Chap. VIII. _Unworking Aristocracy_
Our Land the _Mother_ of us all: No true Aristocracy but must
possess the Land. Men talk of ‘selling’ Land: Whom it belongs
to. Our much-consuming Aristocracy: By the law of their
position bound to furnish guidance and governance. Man and
miserable Corn-Laws. The Working Aristocracy, and its terrible
New-Work: The Idle Aristocracy, and its horoscope of despair. A
High Class without duties to do, like a tree planted on
precipices. In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful
making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie. The pagan
Hercules; the Czar of Russia. Parchments, venerable and not
venerable. Benedict the Jew, and his usuries. No Chapter on the
Corn-Laws: The Corn-Laws too mad to have a Chapter.
Chap. IX. _Working Aristocracy_
Many things for the Working Aristocracy, in their exteme need, to
consider. A national Existence supposed to depend on ‘selling
cheaper’ than any other People. Let inventive men try to invent
a little how cotton at its present cheapness could be somewhat
justlier divided. Many ‘imposibilities’ will have to become
possible. Supply-and-demand: For what noble work was there ever
yet any audible ‘demand’ in that poor sense?
Chap. X. _Plugson of Undershot_
Man’s Philosophies usually the ‘supplement of his practice:’
Symptoms of social death. Cash-Payment: The Plugson Ledger, and
the Tablets of heaven’s Chancery, discrepant exceedingly. All
human things do require to have an Ideal in them. How murderous
fighting became a ‘glorious Chivalry.’ Noble devout-hearted
Chevaliers. Ignoble Bucaniers and Chactaw Indians: Howel
Davies, Napoleon flung out, at last, to St. Helena; the latter
end of him sternly compensating for the beginning. The
indomitable Plugson, as yet a Bacanier and Chactaw. William
Conqueror and his Norman followers. Organisation of Labour:
Courage, there are yet many brave men in England!
Chap. XI. _Labour_
A perennial nobleness and even sacredness in Work. Significance
of the Potter’s Wheel. Blessed is he who has found his Work;
let him ask no other blessedness. A brave Sir Christopher, and
his Paul’s Cathedral: Every noble work at first ‘impossible.’
Columbus royalest Sea-king of all: a depth of Silence, deeper
than the Sea; a silence unsoundable; known to God only.
Chap. XII. _Reward_
Work is worship: Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in
Heaven. One monster there is in the world, the idle man. ‘Fair
day’s-wages for a fair day’s-work,’ the most unrefusable demand.
The ‘wages’ of every noble Work in Heaven, or else Nowhere: The
brave man has to _give_ his Life away. He that works bodies
forth the form of Things Unseen. Strange mystic affinity of
Wisdom and Insanity: All Work, in its degree, a making of
Madness sane. Labour not a devil, even when encased in
Mammonism: The unredeemed ugliness, a slothful People. The
vulgarist Plugson of a Master-Worker, not a man to strangle by
Corn-Laws and Shotbelts.
Chap. XIII. _Democracy_
Man must actually have his debts and earnings a little better
paid by man. At no time was the lot of the dumb millions of
toilers so entirely unbearable as now. Sisterhood, brotherhood
often forgotten, but never before so expressly denied. Mungo
Park and his poor Black Benefactress. Gurth, born thrall of
Cedric the Saxon: Liberty a divine thing; but ‘liberty to die
by starvation’ not so divine. Nature’s Aristocracies. William
Conqueror, a resident House-Surgeon provided by nature for her
beloved English People. Democracy, the despair of finding Heroes
to govern us, and contented putting-up with the want of them.
The very Tailor unconsciously symbolising the reign of Equality.
Wherever ranks do actually exist, strict division of costumes
will also be enforced. Freedom from oppression, an indispensable
yet most insignificant portion of Human Liberty. A _best path_
does exist for every man; a thing which, here and now, it
were of all things _wisest_ for him to do. Mock Superiors and
Real Superiors.
Chap. XIV. _Sir Jabesh Windbag_
Oliver Cromwell, the remarkablest Governor we have had for the
last five centuries or so: No vulunteer in Public Life, but
plainly a balloted soldier: The Government of England put into
his hands. Windbag, weak in the faith of a God; strong only in
the faith that Paragraphs and Plausibilities bring votes. Five
years of popularity or unpopularity; and _after_ those five
years, an Eternity. Oliver has to appear before the Most High
Judge: Windbag, appealing to ‘Posterity.’
Chap. XV. _Morison Again_
New Religions: This new stage of progress, proceeding ‘to invent
God,’ a very strange one indeed. Religion, the Inner Light or
Moral Conscience of a man’s soul. Infinite difference between a
Good man and a Bad. The Great soul of the World, just and not
unjust: Faithful, unspoken, but not ineffectual ‘prayer.’
Penalities: The French Revolution; cruelest Portent that has
risen into created Space these ten centuries. Man needs no “New
Religion;” nor is like to get it: spiritual Dastardism, and
sick folly. One Liturgy which does remain forever
unexceptionable, that of _Praying by Working._ Sauerteig on the
symbolic influences of Washing. Chinese Pontiff-Emperor and his
significant ‘punctualities.’ Goethe and German Literature. The
great event for the world, now as always, the arrival in it of a
new Wise Man. Goethe’s _Mason-Lodge._
Book IV.–Horoscope
Chap. I. _Aristocracies_
To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so
impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled:
a godless century, looking back to centuries that were godly. A
new real Aristocracy and Priesthood. The noble Priest always a
noble _Aristos_ to begin with, and something more to end with.
Modern Preachers, and the _real_ Satanas that now is. Abbot-
Samson and William-Conqueror times. The mission of a Land
Aristocracy a _sacred_ one, in both senses of that old word.
Truly a ‘Splendor of God’ did dwell in those old rude veracious
ages. Old Anselm traveling to Rome, to appeal against King
Rufus. Their quarrel at bottom a great quarrel. The boundless
future, predestined, nay already extant though unseen. Our
Epic, not _Arms and the Man,_ but _Tools and the Man;_ an
infinitely wider kind of Epic. Important that our grand
Reformation were begun.
Chap. II. _Bribery Committee_
Our theory, perfect purity of Tenpound Franchise; our practice,
irremediable bribery. Bribery, indicative not only of length of
purse, but of brazen dishonesty: Proposed improvements. A
parliament, starting with a lie in its mouth, promulgates strage
horoscopes of itself. Respect paid to those worthy of no
respect: Pandarus Dogdraught. The indigent discerning Freeman;
and the kind of men he is called upon to vote for.
Chap. III. _The One Institution_
The ‘Organisation of Labour,’ if well understood, the Problem of
the whole Future. Governments of various degrees of utility.
Kilkenny Cats; spinning-Dervishes; Parliamentary eloquence. A
prime-Minister who would dare believe the heavenly omens. Who
can despair of Governments, that passes a Soldier’s Guardhouse?–
Incalculable what, by arranging, commanding and regimenting, can
be made of men. Organisms enough in the dim huge Future; and
‘United Services’ quite other than the red-coat one. Legislative
interference between Workers and master-Workers increasingly
indispensable. Sanitary Reform: People’s Parks: A right
Education Bill, and effective Teaching Service. Free bridge for
emigrants: England’s sure markets among her colonies. London
the _All-Saxon-Home,_ rendezvous of all the ‘Children of the
Harz-Rock.’ The English essentially conservative: Always the
invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old, to admit the
_minimum_ of New. Yet new epochs do actually come; and
with them new peremptory necessities. A certain Editor’s
stipulated work.
Chap. IV. _Captains of Industry_
Government can do much, but it can in nowise do all. Fall of
Mammon: to be a noble Master among noble Workers, will again be
the first ambition with some few. The Leaders of Industry,
virtually the Captains of the world: doggeries and Chivalries.
Isolation, the sum-total of wretchedness to man. All social
growths in the world have required organising; and work, the
grandest of human interests, does now require it.
Chap. V. _Permanence_
The ‘tendency to persevere,’ to persist in spite of hindrances,
discouragements and ‘impossibilities,’ that which distinguishes
the Species Man from the Genus Ape. Month-long contracts, and
Exeter-Hall purblindness. A practical manufacturing Quaker’s care
for his workmen. Blessing of permanent Contract: Permanence in
all things, at the earliest possible moment, and to the latest
possible. Vagrant Sam-Slicks. The wealth of a man the number of
things he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.
The Worker’s _interest_ in the enterprise with which he is
connected. How to reconcile Despotism with Freedom.
Chap. VI. _The Landed_
A man with fifty, with five hundred, with a thousand pounds a
day, given him freely, without condition at all, might be a
rather strong Worker: The sad reality, very ominous to look at.
Will he awaken, be alive again; or is this death-fit very
death?–Goeth’s Duke of Weimar. Doom of Idleness. To sit idle
aloft, like absurd Epicurus’-gods, a poor life for a man.
Independence ‘lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye:’ Rejection
of sham Superiors, the needful preparation for obedience to
_real_ Superiors.
Chap. VII _The gifted_
Tumultuous anarchy calmed by noble effort into fruitful
sovereignty. Mammon, like Fire, the usefulest of servants, if
the frightfulest of masters. Souls to whom the omnipotent guinea
is, on the whole, an impotent guinea: Not a May-game is this
man’s life; but a battle and stern pilgrimage: God’s justice,
human Nobleness, Veracity and Mercy, the essence of his very
being. What a man of Genius is. The Highest ‘Man of Genius.’
Genius, the clearer presence of God Most High in a man. Of
intrinsic Valetism you cannot, with whole Parliaments to help
you, make a heroism.
Chap. VIII. _The Didactic_
One preacher who does preach with effect, and gradually persuade
all persons. Repentant Captains of Industry: A Chactaw Fighter
becomes a Christian Fighter. Doomsday in the afternoon. The
‘Christianity’ that cannot get on without a minimum of Four-
thousand-five-hundred, will give place to something better that
can. Beautiful to see the brutish empire of Mammon cracking
everywhere: A strange, chill, almost ghastly dayspring in
Yankeeland itself. Here as there, Light is coming into the
world. Whoso believes, let him begin to fulfil: ‘Impossible,’
where Truth and Mercy and the everlasting Voice of Nature order,
can have no place in the brave man’s dictionary. Not on Ilion’s
or Latium’s plains; on far other plains and places henceforth
can noble deeds be done. The last Partridge of England shot and
ended: Aristocracies with beards on their chins. O, it is
great, and there is no other greatness: To make some nook of
god’s Creation a little fruitfuler; to make some human hearts a
little wiser, manfuler, happier: It is work for a God!
- The Story of the Amulet, by E. Nesbit:
At the beginning of this book the children’s father, a journalist, has gone overseas to cover the war in Manchuria. Their mother has gone to Madeira to recuperate from an illness, taking with her their younger brother, the Lamb. The children are living with an old Nurse who has set up a boardinghouse in central London. Her only remaining boarder is a scholarly Egyptologist who has filled his bedsit with ancient artifacts. During the course of the book, the children get to know the “poor learned gentleman” and befriend him and call him Jimmy.
Cook’s house is in Fitzrovia, the district of London near the British Museum, which Nesbit accurately conveys as having bookstalls and shops filled with unusual merchandise. In one of these shops the children find the Psammead. It had been captured by a trapper, who failed to recognise it as a magical being. The terrified creature cannot escape, for it can only grant wishes to others, not to itself. Using a ruse, the children persuade the shopkeeper to sell them the “mangy old monkey,” and they free their old friend.
Guided by the Psammead the children purchase an ancient Amulet in the shape of an Egyptian Tyet (a small amulet of very similar shape to the picture can be seen in the British Museum today [1]), which should be able to grant them their hearts’ desire: the safe return of their parents and baby brother. But this Amulet is only the surviving half of an original whole. By itself, it cannot grant their hearts’ desire. Yet it can serve as a portal, enabling time travel to find the other half.
In the course of the novel the Amulet transports the children and the Psammead to times and places where the Amulet has previously existed, in the hope that — somewhen in time — the children can find the Amulet’s missing half. Among the ancient realms they visit are Babylon, Egypt, the Phoenician city of Tyre, a ship to “the [[Tin Islands]” (ancient Cornwall), and Atlantis just before the flood. In one chapter, they meet Julius Caesar on the shores of Gaul, just as he has decided that Britain is not worth invading. Jane’s childish prattling about the glories of England persuades Caesar to invade after all.
In each of their time-jaunts, the children are magically able to speak and comprehend the contemporary language. Nesbit acknowledges this in her narration, without offering any explanation. The children eventually bring “Jimmy” along with them on some of their time trips. For some reason, Jimmy does not share the children’s magical gift of fluency in the local language: he can only understand (for example) Latin based on his own studies.
In one chapter the children also come to the future, visiting a British utopia in which H.G. Wells is venerated as a prophet. Wells and E. Nesbit were both members of the Fabian political movement, as was George Bernard Shaw, and this chapter in The Story of the Amulet is essentially different from all the other trips in the narrative: whereas all the other adventures in this novel contain scrupulously detailed accounts of past civilisations, the children’s trip into the future represents Nesbit’s vision of utopia. This episode can be compared to many other visions of utopian socialist futures published in that era; Nesbit’s is notable in that it concentrates on how the life of children at school would be radically different, with economic changes only appearing briefly in the background. (It seems somewhat akin to William Morris’s News from Nowhere.) It also mentions a pressing danger of Edwardian England: the number of children wounded, burned, and killed each year. (This concern was addressed in the Children Act 1908, and later in the Children’s Charter.)
- The Great Code:Bible and Literature, by Northrup Frye:
In 1982 Frye published The Great Code, which has since been translated into 22 languages. In it, he treats the Bible as a totally unified book, disregarding the scholarly agreement that it actually was written by dozens of writers in three different languages over a period of a thousand years. Frye declares that the coherence of the Bible’s narrative as a whole is created by a “U-Shaped plot” typical of comedy. That plot begins with the Genesis creation of a harmonious family and garden state, is followed by a fall into a long alternation of historical disasters and triumphs, and concludes with a final ascent back to harmony in the eternal city of Jerusalem at the end of the book of Revelation. This U-shaped pattern also governs dozens of minor plots of fall and rise subsumed in the major one–for example the stories of Joseph, of Moses, of Ruth, of David, of Job, of Peter and of Paul–each of which functions as a “type” or prefiguration of what follows and of the encompassing whole. Frye discovers the same kind of unifying repetition or typology in the recurrence of specific images throughout the Old and New Testatments–e.g. the image of the tree, the ocean, the tower, the garden, the sheep and shepherd. Such repetitions of plot and image tie the many books of the Bible together, and also create a sense of deja vu and premonition, hinting that discreet events have some greater symbolic significance, that they are both themselves and not themselves, that time may be an illusion.
Words with Power expands its subject from the internal structure of the Bible to the relationships between Biblical language and thought and the language and thought of mythology, literature, and everyday life. Part I is titled with a phrase taken from a poem by Wallace Stevens, “Gibberish of the Vulgate.” This cryptic phrase suggests that the everyday language of common sense is itself a kind of obscure jargon. That is the implication of all four chapters of Part I, which explain how the specialized languages of literature and the Bible convey truths of experience that are inaccessible to normal speech.
Chapter 1, “Sequence and Mode,” develops this claim by categorizing four kinds of language. The first is factual or descriptive, the kind that’s intended simply to record or reflect external reality, such as newspaper reporting or a dictionary. The second is conceptual or dialectic, the kind of language in which the connections between elements–logic, causality, and arrangement –are more prominent than the data themselves. This encompasses speculative and theoretical writing, for example mathematics, political science, or philosophy. The third kind of language is persuasive; it emphasizes the emotions of both writer and audience, which it attempts to move toward action. Frye calls this rhetorical or ideological language. The fourth use of language is mythic or literary. In mythology and literature there is no dividing line between emotion and intellect, between the subjective reality of the mind and the objective world of facts.
Chapter 2, “Concern and Myth,” explains the social function of this mythic and literary language. In stories of gods and a society’s history and social structure, myth creates “a sacred ground”(31) in words–a center of communal meaning and identification. Mythology and literature ultimately deal with what Frye calls primary concerns; universal, natural concerns that we share with animals and perhaps plants; these he lists as food and drink, sex, property, and liberty of movement. He distinguishes these primary concerns of myth and literature from what he calls secondary concerns that are created by culture–ideological concerns of religion, class, nation or tribe such as piety, virtue or patriotism. Hence, mythology and literature are affiliated with both primitive and prophetic rather than social experiences.
In chapter 3, “Identity and Metaphor,” Frye moves from the social to the psychological function of mythical and literary language. It conveys patterns of meaning and aesthetic values distinct from what the words describe or assert. These are achieved through sound, symmetry and various devices of intensification. Metaphor, the illogical assertion that unlike things are the same–for instance, that life is a dream or that the world is my ashtry–is a function of literary language that generates individual words, like bookworm or wallflower, as well as lyric poems and grand epics. Gods are metaphors of personification that join subjective personalities to objective things. Zeus is lightning; Mars is war.
Frye refers to the coupling of two disparate entities in metaphor as “identification with”; Apollo is identified with the sun; God is identified with Love. “Identification with” is a fundamental creative operation of the mind that creates unity in diversity. Through a crucial and perhaps questionable maneuver, Frye links the identifications of such linguistic metaphors with a whole range of real-life couplings that he refers to as “existential metaphors.” “Identification with” is how my present “I” is attached to my past and future selves and how in perception the different parts of my body are attached to me. “Identification with” thus becomes the source of identity. Frye finds additional examples of “indentification with” in shamanistic trance, in erotic ecstasy and in creative inspiration, when the borders of the ego are dissolved in a coupling with something outside it, an “oscillation between a feeling that [the individual] is part of a larger design and the larger design is part of him”; in moments when “one becomes what one beholds.” (85-6)
Another form of identifying with or existential metaphor occurs during the activity of reading, when what we take in from the outside becomes part of our inner world of consciousness. But when we read, there’s an important difference between experiencing a story and knowing it; between following along as it unfolds and arriving at the end, where we stand “outside the narrative” and regard it as complete. “Coming to the end,” Frye says, “and trying to understand what we have read, introduces a vertical metaphor of looking up and down.”(95) Reaching the conclusion of what we read moves us out of space and time. “There is one consciousness that subjects itself to the text and understands, and another that, so to speak, overstands.” (83)
In Chapter 4, “Spirit and Symbol,” Frye introduces yet another kind of language, one unique to the Bible. Labelled as kerygmatic, prophetic or proclamatory, this is language spoken by God directly or through the inspired mouthpiece of a prophet. The words of this language represent nothing in the material world, but function as pointers to “a universe next door”(112) What God proclaims from the whirlwind at the end of the book of Job is reiterated in God’s speech throughout the Bible: people must abandon descriptive or logical concepts of the deity in the face of the ineffable experience of God’s presence.
The Bible also uses kerygmatic language in specialized vocabulary, like “Word” (with a capital W), “Spirit,” and “Faith.” The word “Word,” translating the original Greek’s logos, signifies that which is uttered by the creator-creation to bring itself into existence; the order or principle of intelligibility by which our minds are able to make sense of the world. It also signifies the Bible itself as well as the person of Jesus. “Spirit” is what receives and what is absorbed in the Word; it is “the human response to the revealing of intelligibility in the natural and social orders” (166) and also “the reality of what is created in the production and response to literature.”(128 )
Eventually Frye comes to the word “God.” What does it signify? Does God create humanity or does humanity create God? His answer is “Yes”: rather than one or the other, both of these assertions are true. The existence of God is not a proposition to be proven or believed but a reality manifested in creative human action. Frye concludes Part I with his own prophetic reading of what the Bible reveals about God: “The Bible begins by showing on its first page that the reality of God manifests itself in creation, and on its last page that the same reality is manifested in a new creation in which man is participant. He becomes a participant by being redeemed, or separated from the predatory and destructive elements acquired from his origin in nature. In between these visions of creation comes the Incarnation, which presents God and man as indissolubly locked together in a common enterprise.” (135) Such an interpretation, Frye proclaims, could serve as the basis of a religion of the future.
The structure of each chapter and the sequence of chapters in Part I follow parallel ascending curves from the mundane to the transcendant. Part II, “Variations on a Theme,” has a corresponding pattern of four parallel chapters, as its musical title makes explicit. But here the subject is presented more as poetic than conceptual. Rather than the abstractions in Part I, the Chapter titles in Part II are visual images: “The Mountain,” “The Garden,” “The Cave,” and “The Furnace.” Here, as these titles suggest, the sequence between chapters is one of descent, reversing the movement upward of Part I. Each chapter in Part II is a meditation on one aspect of a global symbol that Frye calls the axis mundi: “a vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the cosmos.” (151) The picture of a layered universe, in which earth is sandwiched between higher and lower worlds is shared by mythology, literature and the Bible. We may no longer believe literally in heaven or hell, but we still find meaning in the notion of an upper world of “higher consciousness,” a middle world of normal consciousness, and a lower world of the “subconscious.” The axis mundi is the way up and down through these layers.
Mythology, literature and the Bible are full of images of mountains, ladders and towers that communicate between the world above and earth down here. In Chapter 5, “The Mountain,” Frye categorizes this recurrent image-idea as the myth of Wisdom and the Word, presided over by Hermes, the messenger God. One elaboration of this myth is found in the first chapter of Genesis, the story of the creation in six days. Here God makes the world not by molding or giving birth to it, but by uttering words and thereby creating the intelligible order of nature. God’s utterance remains fixed as a ladder-like Great Chain of Being extending from mineral matter at its base up to the human being communicating and co-creating with God at its apex. Frye finds another elaboration of the myth of the mountain as Wisdom and Word in the multileveled psychology of time and space shared by mythology, literature and the Bible. At the top of this scale is the mystical sensation of Eternity, where all time and space is experienced as here and now. One rung down is the upper world of the arts like music and dance where time and space exist as a medium of aesthetic creation and enjoyment; lower still is our everyday world, where time and space tend to be constraints of movement and freedom; at the bottom rung, in the state of depression or damnation, time is experienced as a continual destroyer and space as a sense of alienated presence. Each of the four variations of the axis mundi expresses one of the “primary human concerns” mentioned earlier. The mountain’s is freedom of movement. In climbing, we move away from gravity and constraint and what we achieve through effort is a sense of freedom and control over space.
The next chapter is entitled, “Second Variation: the Garden.” Around the image of the Garden, Frye clusters all mythological, literary and Biblical themes of love, presided over by the god Eros. The primary human concern of this myth is sex. Sex is enjoyment and creation through union; union is the special capacity of the Spirit, the aspect of intelligence that perceives beauty, as distinguished from the Word, which produces order. The second creation story in Genesis takes place in the Garden of Eden and centers on sex. It tells the story of the human being growing up by leaving its parents–that is Father God and Mother earth–and finding a spouse, having sex, and planting the seed of future community. This story is recapitulated frequently in the tales of adolescent development in Genesis. As in the pastoral landscapes of the Song of Solomon, the psalms, and the book of Ruth, the image of Eden’s beautiful and fruitful garden associates sexual emotion with a vision of renewed nature, and sacred marriage, like Christ’s with the bride Jerusalem in Revelations. Sacred marriages, like Plato’s ladder of Love, suggest an ascent of love akin to the mountain’s ascent of wisdom. The sexual union of male and female is an analogy for the human union with God.
The third variation of the axis mundi, Chapter 7, centers on the image of the Cave. The cave signifies movements of descent to a lower world, and Frye situates it in relation to the Garden of sexuality as a lower form of love directed towards fertility. The Cave is presided over by Adonis, the dying god of winter who eventually is reborn with the crops of spring. Cave myths take us below the earth to the underground kingdom where the dead survive. This place is referred to as Sheol in various places in the Old Testament; from here the spirit of Samuel is conjured by the Witch of Endor; the Cave is the belly of Jonah’s whale and the pit into which the speaker of the penitential psalms has been cast. The underworld is generally dark and its inhabitants stripped of all clothing by death the leveller. But it is also a place where lost treasure is found, threatening monsters are confronted, and help is enlisted for the accomplishment of a goal. Psychologically, the underworld of the cave is synonymous with the subconscious, from which we wake “up” every morning. It is the home of dreams, intuitions, hidden desires, and suppressed energies.
Frye links the descent to the cave with the primary concern of eating and drinking because of its involvement with cycles of life and death. The agricultural cycle of food production includes the decline of plants into the earth and the regeneration of seeds underground. This is figured in the myth of Proserpine and Ceres or the dying and reborn Adonis as well as in Christ’s burial and resurrection. Some organisms die so that others may ingest them and live; this is linked to the sacrificial ritual when the corn king is killed and eaten by members of the community to assure the return of the crops, as in the communion, when Christ’s body and blood are shared by his flock as bread and wine.
At this point, Frye points out a crucial change in the conception of the axis mundi that took place toward the end of the 18th century. The metaphor of a sky god residing in the heavens above and approached by an ascent from nature lost its attractiveness; the stars became symbols of dead mechanical laws, and reason was toppled from its position as the most valued of human faculties. Instead, the lower world of suppressed energies and irrational power gained priority. Blake preferred the imagination to reason, Rousseau preferred nature to civilization, Marx preferred the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, Freud preferred the id to the superego. All of these writers embarked on mythic descents to the lower depths and celebrated resurrection as the release of natural forces that were unjustly repressed.
This historical shift of emphasis from upper to lower levels on the axis mundi is reflected in the descending movement of chapters. Frye’s fourth variation and last chapter is called the Furnace. Its theme is “lower wisdom,” relating it to the lower love of the previous chapter and to the higher wisdom of the mountain in chapter 5. The wisdom and power of the Furnace is not communicated from on high by God, but is forged within by His rivals. Frye calls that self-made wisdom titanic creative energy. Its primary concern is making or work or possession or property. What these apparently unrelated terms have in common is the self-driven extension of the self–that which one produces and thereby owns.
The presiding figure of this variation is Prometheus, who, in the Greek myth, defied Zeus by creating humanity and then conferring on it the gifts of fire and the arts of civilization. For this rebellion he was cast down to earth, where he was bound to a rock and tortured and turned into a tragic hero. The Bible contains several stories analogous to the Prometheus myth, but since it is averse to tragedy, they take the form of what Frye calls demonic parody, a negative, destructive inversion of the original story. We are told of rebels who are thrown out of heaven, such as the mysterious “Sons of God” in Genesis and in the Book of Enoch who are attracted to the daughters of men and beget a demonic race of giants. The Book of Revelation relates the story of the angel Lucifer’s rebellion, his descent into the pit below the earth and his transformation into Satan or Antichrist, the demonic antagonist of God.
The descent to the bottom of the cosmos, Frye states, is to the sources of genuine human power. That descent is often shown in tragedy to be self destructive or anti-social. It involves a final confrontation with Nothingness such as Macbeth’s realization that life is a tale told by an idiot or Ahab’s encounter with the whiteness of the whale or Mr. Kurtz’ discovery of “the horror.” But in a titanic descent, such an experience of absolute negation ultimately negates itself and leads to an affirmative ascent. This is achieved by the counter-gravitational energy of the creative imagination. Frye delineates four aspects of the creative furnace work of the imagination: the technological, the purgatorial, the educational and the Utopian. These correspond to four ways Prometheus is characterized: the fire-bringer, the tormented champion, the god of forethought, and the founder of culture.
In the Bible, the descendants of Cain, the first criminal, developed metallurgy, giving technology a demonic association. The smith “has a sinister reputation” as a maker of swords and shields, and devils are traditionally the inventors of gunpowder and cannons. But valuable innovations can proceed from military devices. The smith is also the forger of the New Jerusalem in Isaiah 54:16 and like Blake’s figure of the imagination, Los, works in his furnaces to improve human life. Yeats’ Byzantine artisans work in “God’s holy fire.” The furnace is therefore a crucible, a refiner’s flame as well as the container of hell-fire. The refining process of the furnace portrays the purgatorial pain of constructive effort that is part of the creative process. The ordeal is suggested by a difficult journey, like the Israelite’s travel through the furnace of Egypt and the waste of Sinai before reaching the promised land or like the climb of penitents through flaming barrier on the way to salvation.
By introducing the arts and sciences to people, Prometheus provided the basis of community that distinguishes humans from animals and the natural world. The final element of the titanic ascent with which Frye concludes this book is the power conferred on people by their participation in the social order. This order creates the secondary concerns of politics, law, economics, religion and art. When they participate in this communal endeavor, says Frye, humans can experience eternity through their own efforts. They can build the earthly paradise in society if they abide by the natural norms of happiness and fulfillment provided by their primary concerns, and they can attain the vision of what is past, passing and to come by discovering the patterns of coherence that unite and identify their imaginations with those who came before and go after.
This Promethean vision of human civilization reaching for the heavens discloses an overall circular structure of Part II in which lower wisdom created by humans converges with higher wisdom uttered by God. Such convergence presents an ambiguity whose difficulty is heightened by the Bible’s repeated portrayal of titanic self-creation as demonic threat, as in the story of the Tower of Babel. That ambiguity returns us to the question Frye treated at the end of Part I: does God create humans or do humans create God? Frye doesn’t confront it explicitly here, but instead concludes his Words with Power by exploring the meaning of God’s words from the whirlwind at the end of the Book of Job: “When the infinitely remote creation is re-presented to [Job], he becomes a participant in it: that is, he becomes creative himself, as heaven and earth are made new for him…The Biblical perspective of divine initiative and human reponse passes into its opposite, where the intiative is human and where a divine response…is guaranteed. The union of these perspectives would be the next step, except that where it takes place there are no next steps.” (312-13)
In the introduction to Words With Power, Frye confides that “at the age of seventy five,discovery can only come from reversing one’s direction, going upstream to one’s source.” (xxiv) In the course of this book, as he reverses direction from secularizing sacred scriptures to spiritualizing secular ones, his own language moves from the descriptive, the conceptual and the rhetorical to the language of proclamation and prophecy. This confirms a sense that he is returning to his early vocation as a preacher and also suggests that like the authors he prefers, in interpreting the Bible, Northrop Frye is remaking it as his own.
