Plate 'o Triangles

Still slogging through Stephenson's tome. Some times I feel as if I have been sentenced like Erasmus to copy the book, and eventually I will go mad, or perhaps gather wisdom like Jad. I am 400 pages into Anathem. The story proper began around page 200. Lots of set up, I hope it pays off. There is a lot of Plato, specifically the Timaeus, at least what I can remember from my Philosophy of the Middle Ages class I took as an undergrad. the Ideal world, the world we sense, the world contained by God. I remember drawing diagrams of triangles within triangles for the mid-term in that class. I suppose I could go look it up, but I know I'm not going to do that, instead I'll just rely on my  idea of the ideal of the book (Timaeus) that I can glean from the "speculative" fiction of Anathem. But as the characters in Anathem have said, there are no new ideas. But then there wouldn't be in an infinite number of universes; all ideas would exist if all possible permutations of "worlds" existed. I think the Amber Chronicles played with this idea in a more succinct manner.  I guess I aut to be going now.

Angels and Annihilation

. . . for I was old enough to know that a man. . . can find comfort in words coming out of his own mouth. ( Till We Have Faces, p.86)

Several times as I read “Till We Have Faces,” the beginning of Rilke’s Duino Elegies came to mind. Here is the beginning of the poem:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from the first “Duino Elegies”

Looking back at my markings in “Till We Have Faces,” I could only quickly find two times specifically when I thought of this poem. Here they are:


Till We Have Faces

(p.112):

Sister, do you think young gods have to be taught to handle us? A hasty touch from hands like theirs and we’d fall to pieces.


(p. 307):
The God comes to Judge Orual.

If Psyche had not held me by the hand I should have sunk down. She had brought me now to the very edge of the pool. The air was growing brighter and brighter about us; as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with arrows of it. I was being unmade.


Not that I think Lewis was quoting from Rilke, I just found the parallels interesting. The destruction of the self when in contact with god/beauty/angels. And it is terrifying to stand on the abyss and realize that we are a rather insignificant moment in time.

Anosognosia

I finished "Till We Have Faces" a few days ago.

First Reaction


“the primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to what his psychiatric colleagues call a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in line with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. In Henry’s view such reasoning belongs on a spectrum at whose far end, rearing like an abandoned temple, lies psychosis.” (Ian McEwan, Saturday, p.17).

A fairly straightforward mechanical reflection on the binary nature of faith/belief/god and rationality/reality/”greek thinking.” It ends, rather predictably from the start with the solution to the binary being “god is the answer,” which I feel is kind of a cop out: “I can’t figure it out so there must be something greater than what can be thought out there who can figure it out.” The assumption being is that there is an answer, and that the search for an answer isn’t enough. There must be some end point, in time (end of the world/our selves), but without the ability to accept that end point without some way to get out of it (all united in the godhead after death which is life everlasting).

Other aspects of interest:

* Storytelling, and who gets to tell the story. Psyche’s story told by the priest in contrast to Oural’s version in the book. Additionally her view of her relationship with Bardia and Bardia’s wife’s version. “I must try at any cost to write what is wholly true. Yet it is hard to know perfectly what I was thinking while those huge, silent moments went pst. Byu remembering it too often I have blurred the memorey itself.” (C.S. Lewis, p.117).

An unreflective self caught up in what is true, without questioning the ground on which you stand.

“How restful it must have once been, in another age, to be prosperous and believe that an all knowing supernatural force had allotted people to their stations in life. And not see how the belief served your own prosperity - - a form of anosognosia, a useful psychiatric term for a lack of awareness of one’s own condition.” (Ian Mcwan, Saturday, p.74).

* Eros telling Orual that she is Psyche as a punishment. Then the consequent unfolding of Orual not being aware (blinded, not able to see) of the love of Bardia, the Fox, Redival, and how their love for her crushed out aspects of them. Orual became the devourer. “Some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing.” (C.S. Lewis, p.49).

Appetizers

Here are some links I found the other night concerning "Till We Have Faces:"

http://www.spectrummagazine.org/reviews/book_reviews/2009/02/17/lewiss_favorite_till_we_have_faces

This one is a review of C.S. Lewis "Till We Have Faces."

It comes from an interesting site if you back up to spectrummagazine.org

Additionally here are two more sites that were interesting enough to pass along. Just something to keep you engaged while you wait for the book to arrive.

http://www.montreat.edu/dking/lewis/TILWEHAV.htm

http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12321