I feel I've been a bit of a negative Nellie over the last few days, taking digs at the work of people who at least stopped talking about writing a book and actually did something about their ambitions. At any rate, to prove I'm still capable of smiling with enjoyment at the written word, I'll offer up a quote I found yesterday while doing some research. Behold, in an Observer article dealing with one of the bands from Norway's black metal scene in the 1990s, author Chris Campion describes Mayhem frontman's stylings thusly:
“At
its grotesque best, his singing sounds like vomit.” (1)
Because of this well-written, engaging article (which also includes a description of said vocalist as "com[ing] across as a stoned Bela Lugosi"), I actually found myself interested in this one-time phenomenon about which I had initially started reading only because the particular project I was working on demanded it. Even Campion's employment of a substance more often used as a descriptive reference by fifth-grade boys was, in this instance, perfect.
Here's to you, good journalism. Even--or maybe especially-- when it involves vomit.
(1) Chris Campion, "In the face of death," The Observer, 19 February 2005.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Monday, June 2, 2014
Unexpectedly Marking Time
As I was reminded over the last few days, a good stomach bug will knock your intentions flat. Among other things, that means I'm currently at the same reading point I was when I closed my books early Thursday evening. Hence, the emergence from nausea hasn't involved liberation from José Lezama Lima's florid prose, an end to John Macquarrie's gentle reprovals or confident metaphysical declarations, or greater knowledge about the former Yugoslavia. I do have a couple of thoughts, though, about the first two items on that list.
1) I tend to notice when an author makes frequent use of a particular word-- and in Lezama Lima's case, three are really hogging the floor and overstaying their welcome: "whiplash," "rosette," and "Malpighian." (I'm guessing the latter has to do with Marcello Malpighi, who, according to Dictionary.com, "identified the capillary system" in the 17th century.) The final term, especially, is doing nothing to increase my estimation of the author's style; every time it gets used, it and the sentences around it increasingly take on the aspect of a striving adolescent who thinks insertion of big vocab words makes him sound smart, mature, and intriguing. In particular, it throws me back to teaching days, when there was always That One Guy who'd ask a ridiculously convoluted question two minutes before class let out. When I asked my advisor how he handled such things, I felt like a much less horrible person when he admitted that his first instinct was to think, "Fuck you."
2) Macquarrie continues to make comments that just don't seem to fit into any sort of general social reality occurring past maybe the mid-20th century. In a book published in 2004, we find weird author-dating phrases such as "icons have now become largely aesthetic articles and are collected by the chattering classes, much as postage stamps are collected by schoolboys." (1) Even in my childhood and teens, when I was part of a thriving letter-writing world, I didn't know a single person, boy or girl, who still got giddy over stamps. And although there are plenty of religious people out there who would see nothing wrong with the theologian's assertion that Dionysius "was correct in viewing the universe in a hierarchical way," such presumptions of insight into Realty continue to dissipate the seriousness I'm granting this guy's volume. (2) Macquarrie knows his historical stuff-- but it's often infuriating to have to listen to it.
So yeah: I'm incredibly grateful to be upright, and to be able to look at words without feeling as if said activity will cause me to cough up even the thought of the smallest nutrient. But I'll be even more appreciative when I can move on to different sets of words.
(1) John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 106.
(2) Macquarrie, 94.
1) I tend to notice when an author makes frequent use of a particular word-- and in Lezama Lima's case, three are really hogging the floor and overstaying their welcome: "whiplash," "rosette," and "Malpighian." (I'm guessing the latter has to do with Marcello Malpighi, who, according to Dictionary.com, "identified the capillary system" in the 17th century.) The final term, especially, is doing nothing to increase my estimation of the author's style; every time it gets used, it and the sentences around it increasingly take on the aspect of a striving adolescent who thinks insertion of big vocab words makes him sound smart, mature, and intriguing. In particular, it throws me back to teaching days, when there was always That One Guy who'd ask a ridiculously convoluted question two minutes before class let out. When I asked my advisor how he handled such things, I felt like a much less horrible person when he admitted that his first instinct was to think, "Fuck you."
2) Macquarrie continues to make comments that just don't seem to fit into any sort of general social reality occurring past maybe the mid-20th century. In a book published in 2004, we find weird author-dating phrases such as "icons have now become largely aesthetic articles and are collected by the chattering classes, much as postage stamps are collected by schoolboys." (1) Even in my childhood and teens, when I was part of a thriving letter-writing world, I didn't know a single person, boy or girl, who still got giddy over stamps. And although there are plenty of religious people out there who would see nothing wrong with the theologian's assertion that Dionysius "was correct in viewing the universe in a hierarchical way," such presumptions of insight into Realty continue to dissipate the seriousness I'm granting this guy's volume. (2) Macquarrie knows his historical stuff-- but it's often infuriating to have to listen to it.
So yeah: I'm incredibly grateful to be upright, and to be able to look at words without feeling as if said activity will cause me to cough up even the thought of the smallest nutrient. But I'll be even more appreciative when I can move on to different sets of words.
(1) John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 106.
(2) Macquarrie, 94.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Choose Your Form of Frustration
I reached voting age right in the middle of the former Yugoslavia's self-implosion, so that entire, painful conflict still looms large for me, just as a Cold War atmosphere defined my childhood. And in spite of following the bloody mess in depth at the time, these days, it's hard for me to keep straight who did what to whom when and why. I remember seeing, and loving, Cabaret Balkan-- just as much for the film itself as for the fact that I was watching it in a small theater in Paris-- and having a distinct feeling that I was part of "a time," as in "my time," when X particular historical events occurred, and Y particular qualities were often prevalent in people of a certain age.
Since then, my head's been filled with so many political, historical, personal, etc., etc., situations that I sort of lost the thread of that particular narrative. But then last night, I watched Emir Kusturica's Underground, and got so eager to sort things back out in my head that I reached for two books that've been on my shelf for way too long without being read: Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina and Leslie Benson's Yugoslavia: A Concise History. Admittedly, the former will only give me an historical background, via fiction, to what led up to the Balkan conflicts of the late 20th century; the latter, published as it was in 2001, won't get me anywhere near where we stand today. But patience is not my forte, so of course, I just rushed in with what was at hand, polishing off a chapter of the novel before making a leap to pore over the maps in the history book. And since all of this was taking place way past my bedtime, predictably, I didn't get far-- so judgments about it all will have to be made later.
At any rate, that word debauchery was a welcome change from another volume that's been sitting on my shelf for a while, John Macquarrie's Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism. As part of TA'ing the same class for a couple of years, I was granted a free copy-- but irresponsibly, I never read it, since it was part of the "for further reading" section of the syllabus, and I had my own interests to pursue and a dissertation looming over my head. But after the Buber episode of last week, I decided to check it out. I'll finish it, but I was annoyed from the second I set eyes on the preface-- not for anything the author had done wrong at that point, but because there was one more dude thanking his patient wife for "preparing the material for the publishers." (1) I just didn't want to hear about one more lady apparently waiting around to type up her husband's manuscripts and do all the drudge work so that he could rest his delicate brain for the thinking of further big thoughts. I have never once read any female scholar thanking her husband for the same services, not because she was being miserly with her gratitude, but because that situation never ensued.
But I'll get off my gender-centered soapbox and talk about the aspects of the work itself that are bothering me: a theologian still being worried about so many "dangers" of potential flubs in doctrine, or of dismissing (probably not consciously) others' practices as unworthy means "of escape from the harsh realities of life into new and exhilarating areas of consciousness." (2) And then, there's the maddening refusal to get my man Nietzsche right when he alleges that the Übermensch "seeks and believes he can attain to domination over the world." (3)
Now, from what I hear, Macquarrie was a good egg, and was all in favor of everyone being able to practice his/her own religion without being condemned for it or being seen as a potential target of conversion. I think my grumbling is, more than anything, evidence of the fact that I should just stop reading theology, since I've imbibed enough for at least a few lifetimes, and can pretty much predict by now who'll make which tired argument, and who'll sprint right out into left field to try and save a tradition at all costs. Maybe I'm saying that I should just stick to good literature and complex civil wars and real-life, unimaginably horrible conflicts. At least with the former, the chances that any action that emerges out of personal frustration might actually make a bit of difference.
(1) John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), viii.
(2) 12. In this case, Macquarrie was partially referring to "the taking of the drug psilocin derived from a mushroom and inducing an expanded consciousness" in "some forms of religion" in Mexico, which he seems to see as illegitimate and insincere, and doesn't take the time to differentiate from a bunch of college kids going goofy on 'shrooms. Say what you will about Carlos Castañeda, but his field studies, and the people with whom he interacted, were hardly out to "escape from the harsh realities of life."
(3) 19.
Since then, my head's been filled with so many political, historical, personal, etc., etc., situations that I sort of lost the thread of that particular narrative. But then last night, I watched Emir Kusturica's Underground, and got so eager to sort things back out in my head that I reached for two books that've been on my shelf for way too long without being read: Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina and Leslie Benson's Yugoslavia: A Concise History. Admittedly, the former will only give me an historical background, via fiction, to what led up to the Balkan conflicts of the late 20th century; the latter, published as it was in 2001, won't get me anywhere near where we stand today. But patience is not my forte, so of course, I just rushed in with what was at hand, polishing off a chapter of the novel before making a leap to pore over the maps in the history book. And since all of this was taking place way past my bedtime, predictably, I didn't get far-- so judgments about it all will have to be made later.
At any rate, that word debauchery was a welcome change from another volume that's been sitting on my shelf for a while, John Macquarrie's Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism. As part of TA'ing the same class for a couple of years, I was granted a free copy-- but irresponsibly, I never read it, since it was part of the "for further reading" section of the syllabus, and I had my own interests to pursue and a dissertation looming over my head. But after the Buber episode of last week, I decided to check it out. I'll finish it, but I was annoyed from the second I set eyes on the preface-- not for anything the author had done wrong at that point, but because there was one more dude thanking his patient wife for "preparing the material for the publishers." (1) I just didn't want to hear about one more lady apparently waiting around to type up her husband's manuscripts and do all the drudge work so that he could rest his delicate brain for the thinking of further big thoughts. I have never once read any female scholar thanking her husband for the same services, not because she was being miserly with her gratitude, but because that situation never ensued.
But I'll get off my gender-centered soapbox and talk about the aspects of the work itself that are bothering me: a theologian still being worried about so many "dangers" of potential flubs in doctrine, or of dismissing (probably not consciously) others' practices as unworthy means "of escape from the harsh realities of life into new and exhilarating areas of consciousness." (2) And then, there's the maddening refusal to get my man Nietzsche right when he alleges that the Übermensch "seeks and believes he can attain to domination over the world." (3)
Now, from what I hear, Macquarrie was a good egg, and was all in favor of everyone being able to practice his/her own religion without being condemned for it or being seen as a potential target of conversion. I think my grumbling is, more than anything, evidence of the fact that I should just stop reading theology, since I've imbibed enough for at least a few lifetimes, and can pretty much predict by now who'll make which tired argument, and who'll sprint right out into left field to try and save a tradition at all costs. Maybe I'm saying that I should just stick to good literature and complex civil wars and real-life, unimaginably horrible conflicts. At least with the former, the chances that any action that emerges out of personal frustration might actually make a bit of difference.
(1) John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), viii.
(2) 12. In this case, Macquarrie was partially referring to "the taking of the drug psilocin derived from a mushroom and inducing an expanded consciousness" in "some forms of religion" in Mexico, which he seems to see as illegitimate and insincere, and doesn't take the time to differentiate from a bunch of college kids going goofy on 'shrooms. Say what you will about Carlos Castañeda, but his field studies, and the people with whom he interacted, were hardly out to "escape from the harsh realities of life."
(3) 19.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Buber Is Better
Well, it's always good to have a solid reminder not to be such a tool. This little book is not only jam-packed with arguments against such easy spirituality (1); it's also written with a dense sort of poeticism that refuses to let laziness or possible intimidation off the hook, respecting the reader enough to hold him/her to high standards by unapologetically laying down weighty ideas while also refraining from making those ideas purposefully inaccessible via labyrinthine language or big vocab words. I can't think of any other scholar or academic theologian who employs such a style-- and am additionally convinced that Anne Michaels must have read and absorbed the man's writing at some point in her life-- and if not, that she's benefited from otherworldly input from the dude when crafting her prose.
I loved what could only badly be described as Buber's non-fluffy, not-easy mysticism; his anti-dogmatism and assertion that encapsulating the Thou or telling anyone how to respond to it is impossible and misguided; and his valuation of real dialogue and relationship. But the book spoke to me most sympathetically via what felt like anachronistic support for what troubles me about the constantly networked nature of these here times. The philosopher might as well have been addressing the topic of grown adults obsessively checking in on Foursquare, and trying desperately to find some meaning and companionship in inarticulate texts while being too lazy or scared to actually talk to each other, when he wrote,
The self-willed man does not believe and does not meet. He does not know
solidarity of connexion, but only the feverish world outside and his feverish
desire to use it... When this man says Thou, he means 'O my ability to use,'
and what he terms his destiny is only the equipping and sanctioning of his
ability to use. He has in truth no destiny, but only a being that is defined by
things and instincts... He intervenes continually, and that for the purpose of
'letting things happen.' Why should destiny, he says to you, not be given a
helping hand? Why should the attainable means required by such a purpose
not be utilised?... Without sacrifice and without grace, without meeting and
without presentness, he has as his world a mediated world cluttered with
purposes... Thus with all his sovereignty he is wholly and inextricably
entangled in the unreal... he directs the best part of his spirituality to averting
or at least to veiling his thoughts. (2)
The book was written in 1923, and Buber was talking about much more than human interaction with any technology-- and so it would be dishonest of me to seize upon passages such as the lengthy one just cited and say, "See? See?! Take that, technophiles!" But methinks one of the hallmarks of any enduring examination of the human condition (whether that involves something transcendent or not) is its ability to relate, from beyond its author's grave, to changing times. And so, like Greek drama speaking to veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, or the story of Macbeth still offering frighteningly relevant insights into the desire for power and what it entails, "the feverish world outside and [one's] feverish desire to use it" to which Buber pointed almost a century ago continues to be able to take on new faces and characteristics while the way these things are described stay put in print.
(I would also be disingenuous in condemning tout court contemporary information technology; this is a blog, after all, and I'm giddily thankful for the interaction that ensues here, even if I'd rather be talking live, in the same geographical location, with the people who pop in. But I so often get the sense that all this information hoarding has spun wildly out of control, and you end up having to get out of the way of Borg-like people wearing Google Glass because reality as-is just doesn't offer up enough thrills.[3])
Anyway, to summarize, Buber: better than imagined. Making judgments about something before checking it out yourself: folly. Finding disembodied support, when one often seems to be existing in a world unintentionally apart: priceless.
(1) For example, there's the person, Buber says, whose "spiritual" leanings are essentially another form of self-involvement that engages in what Kant would call using things and people as means-- whose approach to being in the world "lays bare the shame of the world-spirit which has degraded to spirituality." Martin Buber, I and Thou, 2nd ed., transl. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons), 66.
(2) 60-1.
(3) If you've never come across someone wearing a pair of these things, it might be difficult to a) erase from your memory his/her undead stare that never seems to meet your eyes; b) wonder if you were being recorded, and for what purpose; and c) get Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" out of your head.
Monday, May 26, 2014
A Filmic Semi-Diversion
Child of the '80s though I am, I somehow managed to get through that decade and the two-plus succeeding ones without having seen Purple Rain, in spite of loving Prince and having thoroughly enjoyed one of his performances right after college (in which his numerous costume changes enhanced even further some already amazing dancing). I remedied that gap this weekend, and wow: it was bad. Incredibly bad; shittily so, in fact. Not that I was expecting a life-altering experience, but-- well, I'll just lay my general dumbfoundedness out on the table, and will be glad to engage in exchanges of disbelief and wry laughter, should anyone care to take part.
But as I find happens frequently when I'm involved in reading/viewing/discussing multiple cultural products at the same time, a weird thread or connection between them peeps out every now and then. In this case, Prince's mode of dress during his Purple Rain phase-- and the periodic plot and/or motivational gaps in the film that threw me into brief bouts of confusion-- seemed a perfect match for the baroque style of the book I'm currently reading, José Lezama Lima's Paradiso.
Given, the latter work is in no way crappy, campy, or even potentially culty. But I could picture The Purple One reading some of these flowery passages in his frilly poet's blouse, and being entirely unconcerned about the fact that, say, a conversation between our young hero and his classmate, whose favorite pastime is poking his fellow students in the butt with his pen, involves dialogue more appropriate to foppish university philosophes who use approximately 75% more words to express their confused thoughts than are necessary. It's true; youths often don't have a very good sense of what they're saying, or even trying to say, and might comically puff up their language to try and make themselves sound more sophisticated-- and so, although Lezama's probably making a point with all of these words, so far, I'm unconvinced by his characters' ownership of their own verbiage.
To link back to another film, my experience with this novel up to this point is similar to the emperor's reaction, in Amadeus, to a performance of one of Mozart's pieces: "There are simply too many notes." I'm having some nebulous thoughts about why this is so for Paradiso and not for David Foster Wallace, whose style is sometimes jam-packed, but without using one word too many. I'll have to get to the end of Lezama's text, though, before I'm willing to take that thought any further.
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| Source: Nicolas Genin |
Given, the latter work is in no way crappy, campy, or even potentially culty. But I could picture The Purple One reading some of these flowery passages in his frilly poet's blouse, and being entirely unconcerned about the fact that, say, a conversation between our young hero and his classmate, whose favorite pastime is poking his fellow students in the butt with his pen, involves dialogue more appropriate to foppish university philosophes who use approximately 75% more words to express their confused thoughts than are necessary. It's true; youths often don't have a very good sense of what they're saying, or even trying to say, and might comically puff up their language to try and make themselves sound more sophisticated-- and so, although Lezama's probably making a point with all of these words, so far, I'm unconvinced by his characters' ownership of their own verbiage.
To link back to another film, my experience with this novel up to this point is similar to the emperor's reaction, in Amadeus, to a performance of one of Mozart's pieces: "There are simply too many notes." I'm having some nebulous thoughts about why this is so for Paradiso and not for David Foster Wallace, whose style is sometimes jam-packed, but without using one word too many. I'll have to get to the end of Lezama's text, though, before I'm willing to take that thought any further.
Friday, May 23, 2014
A Story that Might Be on the Move
Ho hum. Spring pollen has me committing so many of my energy-bearing resources to the struggle simply to stay awake that my ability to put two coherent thoughts together, much less post them, has been significantly impaired. But I did manage to finish the little two-novella collection I was reading by Gottfried Keller, The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula.
What a great read-- maybe because the initial feeling that you're entering into a world of old-school starched collars and self-conscious diction soon gives way to the sense that something transitional is going on here, and that Keller, trained as a painter and for a time, at least, into radical politics, probably wouldn't have enjoyed sitting around in stiff salons and drinking very proper tea. The author is considered a literary realist, but something about the first story, at least-- that vaguely transitional "something" I mentioned and that almost seems to catch a glimpse of modernism on the horizon-- keeps it from exemplifying that school.
(What follows are purely personal interpretations, which I know would be slammed by any literature scholar worth the name, but here goes.) Young Karl in "Upright Seven," for example, seems too tickledly detached from everything except Hermine, and the couple somehow too good-naturedly airy, or aware of the slight goofiness of their infatuation and situation, to fall in with the creations dreamed up by the Big Russians (except, maybe, for Chekhov). What really fascinates me about this story, though, is its ending. (Insert obligatory spoiler alert here.) Our young couple has finally overcome the objections of their fathers, and is sharing a happy post-proposal moment, when a former military colleague of Karl's shouts out to them in recognition. And then, "[t]he betrothed sat down on the steps at his feet and chatted with him for a full half hour, before they returned to the company."(1) End of story. This pair, who's been sneaking around and scheming ever since the tale began, and who's cocooned into a little universe all its own, suddenly pops out of it and goes to hang out with a guy Karl doesn't know all that well anymore. There's something-- I don't know what-- about the fact that it was a "full half hour," and not just a half hour, that's also contributing to my reaction of "Huh? Interesting." Sure, it would've been rude not to have acknowledged the sentry's presence, and the couple was probably bursting with eagerness to broadcast the engagement all over the place. But that apparent ability to snap out of one engrossing emotional situation, right into another, and thereafter to head back to the oldheads, is curious, even if young adults were probably just as flighty in their own way then as they are today.
Maybe I've undermined my own initial assertions about the tale's impatience with its assigned genre. Oh well. The only other observation I have is that with "Ursula," Keller managed to make a fictional account of mass Reformation nuttiness interesting-- maybe because he let the implications of religious upheaval play themselves out without really overtly discussing religion in general.
So: a short-ish review of a short-ish book. That seems appropriate for a Friday, especially one on which the ol' nasal passages are suffering fits of ticklishness. In that spirit, I'm setting down the metaphorical pen and going in search of some Kleenex.
(1) Gottfried Keller, "The Banner of the Upright Seven," in The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula, transl. Bayard Quincy Morgan (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1974), 67.
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| Zentralbibliotek Zürich |
What a great read-- maybe because the initial feeling that you're entering into a world of old-school starched collars and self-conscious diction soon gives way to the sense that something transitional is going on here, and that Keller, trained as a painter and for a time, at least, into radical politics, probably wouldn't have enjoyed sitting around in stiff salons and drinking very proper tea. The author is considered a literary realist, but something about the first story, at least-- that vaguely transitional "something" I mentioned and that almost seems to catch a glimpse of modernism on the horizon-- keeps it from exemplifying that school.
(What follows are purely personal interpretations, which I know would be slammed by any literature scholar worth the name, but here goes.) Young Karl in "Upright Seven," for example, seems too tickledly detached from everything except Hermine, and the couple somehow too good-naturedly airy, or aware of the slight goofiness of their infatuation and situation, to fall in with the creations dreamed up by the Big Russians (except, maybe, for Chekhov). What really fascinates me about this story, though, is its ending. (Insert obligatory spoiler alert here.) Our young couple has finally overcome the objections of their fathers, and is sharing a happy post-proposal moment, when a former military colleague of Karl's shouts out to them in recognition. And then, "[t]he betrothed sat down on the steps at his feet and chatted with him for a full half hour, before they returned to the company."(1) End of story. This pair, who's been sneaking around and scheming ever since the tale began, and who's cocooned into a little universe all its own, suddenly pops out of it and goes to hang out with a guy Karl doesn't know all that well anymore. There's something-- I don't know what-- about the fact that it was a "full half hour," and not just a half hour, that's also contributing to my reaction of "Huh? Interesting." Sure, it would've been rude not to have acknowledged the sentry's presence, and the couple was probably bursting with eagerness to broadcast the engagement all over the place. But that apparent ability to snap out of one engrossing emotional situation, right into another, and thereafter to head back to the oldheads, is curious, even if young adults were probably just as flighty in their own way then as they are today.
Maybe I've undermined my own initial assertions about the tale's impatience with its assigned genre. Oh well. The only other observation I have is that with "Ursula," Keller managed to make a fictional account of mass Reformation nuttiness interesting-- maybe because he let the implications of religious upheaval play themselves out without really overtly discussing religion in general.
So: a short-ish review of a short-ish book. That seems appropriate for a Friday, especially one on which the ol' nasal passages are suffering fits of ticklishness. In that spirit, I'm setting down the metaphorical pen and going in search of some Kleenex.
(1) Gottfried Keller, "The Banner of the Upright Seven," in The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula, transl. Bayard Quincy Morgan (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1974), 67.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Father of Analytical Psychology: What a Guy
How to sum up a really fantastic collection of C.G. Jung's writings? Overall, this volume, edited by Anthony Storr, gives the impression of a guy completely devoted to others' mental health, and to figuring out how best to achieve it, even if that meant risking the ridicule of scientism, via open-minded explorations of mythology and the psychological aspects of alchemy. I get a sense of a much more compassionate, curious, and humble individual than, say, Freud, and of a foundational figure who would probably bemoan the stats-laden and -dependent "behavioral sciences" we get to deal with today.
(Exemplary aside, re: an obsession with statistics: A few years ago, I got assigned to a miserable "research committee" headed by a statistics-worshipping chair. I told the woman she'd probably have to school me in some of her terminology, as well as explain to me why she was using only stats to address particular issues, since my philosophy-ethics-religion-literature background often approached the human condition in entirely different ways. She cheerfully said even I could make great use of statistics in pondering the state of the soul: "You can ask someone, for example, how many times he's read Dante's Inferno." Probably rudely, I replied, "Which would tell me nothing." Not that long before, a business prof had made a similar pitch to me, re: statistics' ability to be of use in existential investigation: "You can use them to keep track of church membership.")
Anyway, my only true beef with the guy's thought is centered around his assumptions regarding gender and its easy division into two clearly differentiated types. Given, from what I understand, what Jung defines as the anima/animus isn't prescriptively advocating for a particular idea of what a woman or man is, but instead, is a sort of historical "spiritual" conglomeration of assumptions about what constitutes "feminine" and "masculine"-- and so of course, each of these figures would largely be made up of baggage (whether well- or ill-founded) that's been carried through the collective unconscious since, essentially, the beginning of time. What I'm wondering is whether, according to Jung, as collective beliefs about the characteristics of biologically male, female, or other (a category not really extant at the time of his writings) are transformed, images and characteristics of the anima/animus are thought to change as well-- and whether, in the light of such changed beliefs, our psyches will continue to operate according to gender-based polarities, when such things grow ever less relevant or acceptable in the public sphere.
There's really too much in this book to explore in one post, and so I'll probably be coming back to it in the next few days and/or weeks. (I did go out and buy Answer to Job, and I'm particularly excited about it.) But far from being a lamentable state of affairs, the abundance, and potential overload, of so much rich material, is a real joy; I wish I came across such things much more often.
(Exemplary aside, re: an obsession with statistics: A few years ago, I got assigned to a miserable "research committee" headed by a statistics-worshipping chair. I told the woman she'd probably have to school me in some of her terminology, as well as explain to me why she was using only stats to address particular issues, since my philosophy-ethics-religion-literature background often approached the human condition in entirely different ways. She cheerfully said even I could make great use of statistics in pondering the state of the soul: "You can ask someone, for example, how many times he's read Dante's Inferno." Probably rudely, I replied, "Which would tell me nothing." Not that long before, a business prof had made a similar pitch to me, re: statistics' ability to be of use in existential investigation: "You can use them to keep track of church membership.")
Anyway, my only true beef with the guy's thought is centered around his assumptions regarding gender and its easy division into two clearly differentiated types. Given, from what I understand, what Jung defines as the anima/animus isn't prescriptively advocating for a particular idea of what a woman or man is, but instead, is a sort of historical "spiritual" conglomeration of assumptions about what constitutes "feminine" and "masculine"-- and so of course, each of these figures would largely be made up of baggage (whether well- or ill-founded) that's been carried through the collective unconscious since, essentially, the beginning of time. What I'm wondering is whether, according to Jung, as collective beliefs about the characteristics of biologically male, female, or other (a category not really extant at the time of his writings) are transformed, images and characteristics of the anima/animus are thought to change as well-- and whether, in the light of such changed beliefs, our psyches will continue to operate according to gender-based polarities, when such things grow ever less relevant or acceptable in the public sphere.
There's really too much in this book to explore in one post, and so I'll probably be coming back to it in the next few days and/or weeks. (I did go out and buy Answer to Job, and I'm particularly excited about it.) But far from being a lamentable state of affairs, the abundance, and potential overload, of so much rich material, is a real joy; I wish I came across such things much more often.
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