final paper

So this is my paper, It too bites off way more than I could chew in the time I allotted myself, Id like to re work it and probably scrap a good amount of it, I think the end needs about 5 pages to focus on itself... Ahh this semester as drained me!!

Jonathan Orsi

            Of the people who’ve had the sorrowful satisfaction of reading Samuel Beckett, there may diverge two roads of response: revulsion, and rapture. The former unfortunately falls into the limiting approach of literalism; the story begins and ends with the word. The literalist will suffer no inquiry about Beckett’s work, no exploration of his characters and their actions. The literalist need only read the title of Waiting for Godot to interpret the play.  There are those of us however, who cannot be so dismissive, who must remain. For those lucky few, those readers of rapture, there is a moment of release. For us, Godot does arrive, we do go on, and the dawn does break. Reading Beckett’s work becomes almost a religious experience. This essay will explore the ideas of how reading, writing, and living become sacred rituals. It will conclude by addressing and answering the question: what’s the point of reading stories that aren’t even real?

            Though this essay will focus on the two plays Endgame, and Waiting for Godot, it cannot entirely avoid the abysm of Beckett’s Three Novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)  in which the subtleties of writing, and authorial voice are explored. The issue that the literalist audience approaches literature with, and the central question running throughout this novel is addressed at the close of Molloy. Beckett writes, “Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining” (Molly 170). Here, Beckett confronts a myriad of problems that will arise throughout this essay. For purposes of structure and balance, we will begin with aesthetics, emotion and the readers response to Beckett’s style of writing.

            Many seem to be to be hung up on the incessant and impenetrable gloom that surrounds Beckett’s writing. His characters, plot, and language drag on in dreary disdain. Reader’s often allow the bleak and pessimistic prose to invade their own view and opinion of the work. What is crucial to recognize on part of the reader, that these stories are just that—stories. It is not midnight it is not raining. Our association with writing and literature can take us through worlds of events, and galaxies of emotions, but we must always be conscious of the “man behind the curtain”. This disillusionment is a broad and very central theme, but it is important to discuss it in specifics.  

            The issue of authorial voice becomes quite focal in Beckett’s work. It is spotlighted in the aforementioned passage from Molloy. Attention is brought to several questions. Who is writing? Why are they writing? And why has Beckett brought in a framed authorial narrative? Beginning with the latter question, we see a direct intention on behalf of Beckett to draw attention to the illusion he has created. As with Prospero in Shakespeare’s the Tempest, the creator (that is Shakespeare) fabricates a creative figure who, in turn effaces that which he (Prospero) has created. These artistic surrogates offer to extrapolate our unveiling of the illusion within the play and extend it to the illusion of the play itself.  Beckett consistently “drowns his books”  throughout his texts.  The exchanges between Clov and Hamm in Endgame routinely allude to their presence within a play,

HAMM: if you must hit me, hit me with the axe.

(pause.)

Or with the gaff, hit me with the gaff. Not with the dog. With the Gaff. Or with the axe.

(Clov picks up the dog and give it to Hamm who takes it in his arms.)

CLOV (imploringly): Let’s stop playing!

HAMM: Never!

            (Endgame. Act 1)

            This disillusionment of the stage gives rise to the humor of the present situation. The panacea statement of, “It was all a joke” is applicable here and throughout Beckett’s work.  Our attention to the situation is restored in these humors moments of parody. Beckett even casts away subtlety and offer up lines like,

CLOV: I’ll leave you.

HAMM: No!

CLOV: What is there to keep me here?

HAMM: The dialogue.

            (Endgame. Act 1)

            Discussing these same nods to the stage presented in Waiting for Godot, Claudia Clausius in her essay Bad Habits While Waiting for Godot states, “ When Didi and Gogo step outside their roles to allude directly to the theater, they admit to themselves and remind us of the drama on stage. The mirror/ window function is inherent in parody; without it parody ceases to exist. For parody to work one must recognize the original and one’s role in it and one must interpret the criticism implied by the distortion” (Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett pg. 132). To accept this concept we must also identify what is being parodied. No doubt the idea of the theater is being scrutinized by Beckett, but on a different level, one that accepts the stage as a representation of life, Beckett also is parodying life itself.

            Though extremely minimalized and distilled, Beckett’s plays incorporate the essential elements of life within them. Birth and death—the greatest points of polarity orbiting life, are scrutinized and meditated upon throughout all of Beckett’s work. The term, “come and go” found repeatedly peppered among virtually all of Beckett’s texts, holds between its dualism: everything. Suspiciously the response Satan gives to God during their conversation in the Book of Job, the phrase : “I come and go” is perhaps the purest distillation of life into four words.  One can begin by looking at phrase in its passive representation of life on earth, in that we live our lives mundanely and bleak, we wait, we sit, we stand, we come, we go. It can be further applied to a graphic and Beckettesque interpretation that our life is a series of ejaculations and defecations. Beyond these brief explorations there sits yet another metaphor for the phrase. We come and go in life, birth and death. In a burst by the character Pozzo in Waiting for Godot this view is passionately yawped,

POZZO: (Suddenly furious) Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then its night once more.”

            (Waiting for Godot. Act II)

            The reductive view of life presented by Pozzo is perhaps the central philosophy of all Beckett’s works. Beckett continually claws away at the false façade of life and it’s practices. By reducing life to its most base form, we see the unveiled vision of our existence. These plays center around the ideas of decay and decrepitude. After the flesh of body and the flesh of life have withered and rotted away Beckett’s characters still…remain. Now the question arises of how, or why do these characters remain, what’s to keep them there? Hamm’s response of “The dialogue” is perhaps one of the best answers to this question. What Beckett issues here is that our routines, daily habits, our rituals function to keep us in place.

The ritualistic waiting in Waiting for Godot suffers no end. There is no valediction to the actions that these characters undergo; they simply perform them because that is their duty. At this junction, these rituals begin to take on the elemental nature of religious practices. As in any religion faith is often actualized through practice. The practices and methods that surround any religion are away of “living” the faith. This is a topic that needs much attention and has many points of contention, but for purposes of structure and simplicity let us agree most religion requires some level of epistemic faith, actualized through ritual. That is, rituals become an offering or an act of solidarity with a God/Gods in the hope that they (God/Gods) are “watching” and will reward our actions. This is all done however, without any tangible valediction. This is the essence of faith, that in the “end” our actions will be acknowledged. Gogo and Didi perform their own religious practices, so these rituals (theirs being waiting) begin to supplant a God(ot) un-manifested.

For Beckett’s characters who’s extreme pessimism calls into question the credibility of this epistemic faith, ritual carries connotations of humor and parody. Beckett’s character’s, their dialogue and specifically stage directions are so routine they become absurd. At the opening curtain of Endgame before any word has been spoken, Clov’s obsessive ritual literally sets the stage for this plays parody of the routine of life,

“Clov goes and stands under window left. Stiff, staggering walk. He looks up at window left. He turns and looks at window right. He goes and stands under window right. He looks up at window right. He turns and looks at window left…” (Endgame. Act I).

These opening stage directions exemplify the actions that support Beckett’s plays, In the apocalyptic view of the world that is Endgame these routines, and the exchanges between the character are seemingly all that’s left.  Most of the characters proclaim they want to die, or that they want to depart, but out of these habits they remain. At the close of Waiting for Godot this tireless continuation ends without any conclusion,

“ESTRAGON: Didi.

VLADIMIR: Yes.

ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.

VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.

ESTRAGON: If we parted? That might be better for us.

VLADIMIR: We’ll hang ourselves to-morrow. (pause.) Unless Godot comes.

ESTRAGON: And if he comes?

VLADIMIR: We’ll be saved. Vladimir takes off his hat (Lucky’s), peers inside it, feels about inside it, shakes it, knocks on the crown, puts it on again.

ESTRAGON: Well? Shall we go?

VLADIMIR: Pull on your trousers.

ESTRAGON: What?

VLADIMIR: Pull on your trousers.

ESTRAGON: You want me to pull off my trousers?

VLADIMIR: Pull ON your trousers.

ESTRAGON: (realizing his trousers are down). True. He pulls up his trousers.

VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?

ESTRAGON: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move

                                                                                    Curtain.

                                                                                    (Waiting for Godot. Act II).

This incessant waiting becomes more than an act in life, it becomes life itself. Beckett plays issues that these actions go beyond actions, they are dictations. The repetitiveness presents itself as comic relief and it succeeds in doing so, but there is an underlying level of spiritual reflection at play. Clausius writes,  

“In parody, the form and repetition are the content. The Ritual leads nowhere but back to itself, to the need for more ritual; it no longer links man with his origins in the past and his merits in the future…The crisis now is that contact between myth and ritual no longer exists; man is cut off and alone. Ritual now becomes a means unto itself without which life is intolerable” (Burkman 128).

            We then of course, ask ourselves several questions both of the characters and of the author. We question the perseverance of the actors to continue, and we question the authors intent of creating those characters, of creating at all. More significantly we wonder what makes these stories of decay and depravity such pieces of beauty. In her essay Beckett and Religion, Mary Bryden muses on this point, asking, “If, then there is no ‘path,’ no ‘remedy,’ no ‘revelation,’ why does a persistent strain of Beckett commentary assign spiritual values to his work? What turns a groan into a miserere, or a sigh of relief into a deo gratias? (Byrden 154). The answer as Beckett seems to insinuate is that no matter the defining term, or the physical act, all actions of life become ritual. As we await the end, or a God of any kind, we perform. The performance on stage is both farcical play for the actors, and a ritualized action for them as well.

            Beckett’s own position as an author is his actualized ritual. For a man who once stated that every word he wrote was, “a stain on silence” we must question his motives for writing at all. If philosophy of his plays are implemented we see that Beckett writes because he must, it is inescapable it is his own faith actualized.

            Our position as the audience, as the consumers of this literature, begin to manifest into the same form. We read because it is an act of life. We are governed by these actions beyond the point reason and recognition. Reading Beckett’s work, or any literature for that matter hints back on itself as an illusion. In doing so, if (as Nabokov might say) we, “perform that curious mental maneuver” we may in fold this illusion and turn it upon and within ourselves. It is this nearly impossible, yet very simple action of acknowledging the “man behind the curtain”  we can draw upon our own lives as a series of illusions. We ritualize, practice and perform all our lives so as to feed the image of a world we create. Reading may be simply one of these rituals, but through it we might be fortunate enough to catch a faded glimpse, to see through a glass darkly.

Work Cited

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame and Act Without Words. New York: Grove Press, 1970.

Beckett, Samuel. Three Novels. New York: Grove Press, 2009.

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

Burkman, Katherine. Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett. Rutherford N.J.: Fairleigh Dickerson University Press, 1987.

Oppenheim, Lois. Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

furnace skit

Furnace
Scene One opens with Jacob and Job running away from Cossacks they have torn clothes and are dirty
Jacob: “What will I do now we just escaped, from captivity?”
Job: “We are merely runaway slaves, we have lost almost everything”
Jacob: “My wife is dead and my son has been taken away, I have nowhere to go”
Job: “My wife still alive we can try to get to my house for refuge”
Jacob: “God willing we will find salvation there”
Job: “Before I was taken away, we had a prosperous house with many servants we can recover there”
Jacob: “It's good to warm my bones beside the fire”
Job: “Let us make way to the woods, our journey will begin there, come quickly”
Jacob and Job stumble off stage into the forest.

Scene Two Jacob and Job are wandering in the Garden of Eden they see Eve and Adam under the tree of knowledge
Job: “Hello good people have you any food?”
Jacob: “We have been traveling many miles and are hungry”
Adam: “There is only the tree of knowledge, but its fruit is forbidden”
Job: “Why is it forbidden?”
Eve: “God has demanded so”
Jacob: “Does not want us to prosper? We should eat of it.”
Job: “We should obey God’s word be has provided us with so much to disobedient would be heresy”
Adam: “Job is right to say so”
Eve: “The serpent told me that we would be equal with God if we ate of it”
Jacob: “If that is true eating the fruit would make us stronger and we would no longer suffer.
Job: “Everything God has created so far has been great, is this not one of his creation also”
Adam: “This is right to assume perhaps we should eat of it”
Eve picks up the pomegranate: “Thanks be to the Lord” and takes a bite, passes it to Adam who eats it.
Adam: “I feel different now” looks at Jacob and Job “I know everything from Alpha to Omega”
Eve looks up wide eyed: “Ma ma lou jo”
Jacob turns to Job “These two now seem changed, perhaps we should go by a way in which there is NO ecstasy” they leave

Scene Three:  Jacob and Job are now entering the grounds to the Castle of Nebuchadnezzar.  Nebuchadnezzar is near a desk with several cups of full of seed on it
Job: “Look there is that Queen Nebuchadnezzar”
Jacob: “I believe so should we tell her about our state”
Job: “Yes, she will be shed mercy on us”
Jacob approaching Nebuchadnezzar: “Your Majesty my name is Jacob and this is Job, we come a long way seeking refuge can you help us”
Nebuchadnezzar: “I am Nebuchadnezzar Queen of this Land I have made a decree, that every man that shall hear the sound of all kinds of music, shall fall down and worship the golden image”
Jacob turns to Job: “No matter what one does one stumbles into sin”
Job turns to the Queen: “Your majesty how can we sing a song in a strange land?
Nebuchadnezzar: “If thou does not worship thy God, put in a fiery furnace”
Job: “God will protect us deliver us from you fire”
Jacob: “I do not understand God’s ways any more I do not love him. I can’t. Not in this lifetime”
Job: “Have faith go into the fire with me”
Jacob: “This fire will decide the sacrifice that we denied.”
Jon and Jacob are pushed into the fire and are badly burnt
Job: “Why does got let us suffer so”
Jacob: “ I have not stopped suffering since I was first taken as a slave”
Nebuchadnezzar: “God  is justified and his word will be heard, and you will be cut up and you  will be turned into a dung hill”
Jacob: “We are not to be faeces we are already flesh and fur” swings his arm and knocks over on of the cups of seed
Job: “Nice one Onan”
Nebuchadnezzar: “Blasphemy”
Jacob: “ Let us run and get away now” The two run off stage

Scene Four: (Kaitlin)

Jacob and Job collapse on the side of the road from hunger.
Jacob:  We will starve to death if no one helps us!
Job:  Maybe someone will have mercy.  Hey, here comes someone!  Help!
Priest:  Look at those losers.  I think I’d better take the long way around.
Levite:  Oh they look like they could use some help, but I’m late for a meeting.  Someone else will stop.  
Waclaw the Samaritan:  Look at those poor fellows.  I have to help my brothers who are in need.  Hey good fellows.  Come eat some bread and an apple.  You are not strong enough to continue traveling.  Please sleep in my hut for the night.  
Job:  Why are you being so kind to us, sir?
Waclaw:  I have bread, so I give it to you.  If I didn’t have any, I’d go begging.  God owns everything, but the rich receive it all.
Jacob:  Surely this man follow the law of the Lord which says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.
(Jacob and Job go to sleep)
Waclaw:  Good morning my friends.  Here’s some food for the road.  Safe travels.

Scene five: Jacob accompanies Job home and then the shit hits the fan for Job. (Jon)

God on stage left stands. He is approached by a sulking Samuel Beckett
GOD: Ah Samuel, whence comest thou?
Samuel (gloomily): Oh I come and go along this putrid earth.
GOD: Putrid? Why have a look around, there is nothing but beauty here. Take Job here- what a fine specimen. Blessed since the day he was born.
SAMUEL:  Birth was the death of him.
GOD: But see how he looks upon the earth, he has the eyes of Mitus, everything he sees turns to gold.
SAMUEL:  Everything he sees turns to gold? That’s because he has gold as far as he can see.  I bet you if you took away his house, his children, his cattle, goats and camels he’d have nothing left to be happy about. He’d curse you and this bitch of an earth.
GOD: well…perhaps your right, I mean if you had all your money, possessions,  and your home taken from you and then had your entire family murdered that might…no you know what? I’m feeling pretty lucky- your on.
Jacob and Job make it to the clearing where his home once stood- everything is decimated.
JACOB: :Yeah…you got a real nice place here Job.
JOB: no, no you don’t understand. My mansion, my live stock, my my children….my wife?
JACOB: ( pointing )No she’s still here.
JOB: Oh curse the day on which I was born!
JACOB:  Now see here, don’t be too rash. let’s just wait..I’m sure things will get better.
JOB: Oh perhaps your right. Let’s just wait for God’s direction.  The lord giveth and the lord taketh away.  I’m sure he’ll be here to guide us.
Seeing this GOD and SAMUEL exchange a quick glace.
SAMUEL: Double or nothing?
GOD: Game on.
Enter Samuel from stage left.
SAMUEL:  what are you two sorry pieces of shite doing?
JACOB AND JOB (TOGETHER): Where waiting for God-
SAMUEL(interrupting) : OH?
JACOB AND JOB (TOGETHER): No, where waiting for God-
SAMEUL (interrupts) OH?
JOB:  where waiting for direction from God.
SAMUEL (DISAPOINTED): Oh.. I see.
JACOB: Can you help us?
SAMUEL: well first let me help you two up.
JACOB: oh thank you for your hand sir.
JOB: Strong grip there, my hands sort of burning.
JACOB: mine too… more tingly than hot.
JOB (holding his hand in pain) Don’t you have any piece of advice, some words of wisdom?
SAMUEL: Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
JACOB:  whoa, I’m really boiling here.
JOB: Please just tell us what we can do. How can I retrieve all my possessions? How can I get my family back?  How can I stop these burning boils? How do I fix this miserable world?
SAMUEL: I’m sorry. You’re on earth, I’m afraid there’s no cure for that.


Scene six: (Guys) advise Job. (Emily)
Job: (Crying out) God has delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, but he has broken me: He has taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark!
Nietzsche: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
Job: Oh that I knew where I might find him! Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him.
Nietzsche: Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"
Job: No, I haven’t.
Vladimir(from Waiting for Godot): He should be here. We’ve been waiting all day.
Wife: Curse God and die!
Nietzsche: God is a thought that makes crooked all things that are straight.
Job: I have heard such things: miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words have an end? Where shall wisdom be found?
Vladimir: Shhhhh!!! Listen! (everybody freezes: In walks T.S. Eliot)
Wife: Is that him?
Eliot: Hi, I’m T.S. Eliot.
(Everyone groans in disappointment)
Eliot: (by way of apology) A play should give you something to think about! When I see a play and I understand it the first time, then I know it can’t be much good.
Nietzsche: Shut it, poet.
Eliot: Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present, then all time is un-redeemable.
All: Huh?!
Nietzsche: Job, you are going the way to yourself. And your way leads past yourself and your seven devils. You will be a heretic to yourself and a witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and a villain. You must wish to consume yourself in your own flame: how could you wish to become new unless you had first become ashes!
Job: Now my soul is poured out upon me: the days of affliction have taken hold. He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes.
Vladimir: But where IS He? (Enter boy/messenger) Speak!
Boy: God told me to tell you he won’t come this evening, but surely tomorrow.
VLADIMIR: You work for Him?
BOY: Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR: What do you do?
BOY: I mind the goats, Sir.
VLADIMIR: Is he good to you?
BOY: Yes Sir.
VLADIMIR: He doesn't beat you?
BOY: No Sir, not me.
VLADIMIR: Whom does he beat?
BOY: He beats my brother, Sir.
VLADIMIR: And why doesn't he beat you?
BOY: I don't know, Sir.
Job: I have to get out of here. I can’t take this anymore. (Jacob and Job depart)



Scene Seven:
Job and Jacob are wondering through a meadow
Job: Jacob we have had a long journey and experienced much but I feel our trial is coming to an end
Jacob: I too have that sense, who is this that now approaches?
Blake: Hello, good sirs, I am William Blake
Job: I am Job and this is Jacob Why have you come here?
Blake: I came because I sensed you men have anxiety about your struggles it this true?
Jacob: Yes but what advise can you offer?
Blake: As I have written; without contraries is no progression
Job: You see our recent trials as contraries?
Blake: Yes, you see without your struggles and pains there is no progression
Jacob: Why must we struggle at all?
Blake: It is like a sword being crafted in a furnace, it must be burned and melted for it to take shape.
Job: We must suffer so that we can live
Blake: Yes it is much like a Sexson class
Jacob: Yes I have heard of that man, it was prophesied that him and his iPad will take over the world.
Blake: I must leave you now, for it is time that the two of you must  have an epiphany
Job: How? One cannot be told to have an epiphany it is impossible.
Blake: Just another contrary, good day sirs. (leaves)
Jacob: What is to happen now?
Job pointing to the ceiling : Look a whirlwind of fire.
God enters: I am the all powerful Lord Almighty and it was your destinies that brought you here
Jacob: But what of our free will Lord, do we not have that?
God: That you do, but you missed the meaning, your suffering was not it vain
Job: What was it then, we have lost it all, in a fiery downfall.
God: Fire not only destroys, it has a creative power as well, for now that your suffering has ended, your peacefulness is more profound.
Jacob: Now all we can do it gain it back, Job.
Job: I see what you mean, we are not unlike the swords Blake spoke of in the furnace.
God: Blake is a wise man, and he speaks the truth do you both understand why all this has happened?
Jacob: Yes I do
Job: I as well, I will blog about it later
God: The only hope or else despair, Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- to be redeemed from fire by fire

Jon Orsi- On Books

Too little thought went into my last blog on Epiphanies. Specifically concerning the venue of Books- I really didn't have a whole lot to say.
There is no easy way to describe the phenomena and I suppose that's what particularly drew me to The Aleph because its subject is epiphanic. I felt and still feel today that this short story is the magnum opus of my literary vocabulary thus far.
Instead of breaking some sort of copyright by posting the story on here, I'll just give you the option to check it out yourself here (though I have sense that this translation is lacking somehow)

But what came to me was the acceptance that though this story  "IT" for me there are many other "it's" I have come across and each has it's place. Some are very small, the "light-bulb" that clicked over my head with these may have only been one of those eco-illegal 70W incandescent bulbs.

I will share these in the hopes that further meditation on them will help me reseed the fields of my mind.
I often have held the view that literature is sort of womb, fruitful and ceaseless in it's births yet each one can yield a new (both fresh and varied) life.
(Dr. Luebner had a great discussion skirting this idea that, he described the importance of where one reads a book and the idea that one copy of a book can be very different depending on where, when, how and by whom it is read.)
Where was I?
Ah yes, So these following bits and pieces of epiphanic literature influenced me in former life-as each passing day creates another life lived formerly- and revisiting them now may have a different effect. Or perhaps they may spark interest in whoever may be reading.

Ezra Pound-

IN THE STATION OF THE METRO
These appartions of faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.

-the simple radiance of beauty, the simple radiance of simplicity. This made me love poetry.

From The Tempest-

The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again. (III.ii.130–138)

Though I truly love this play because its role in the disillusionment of the theater, of literature, of all things really, Calliban's soliloquy expresses the power of the illusion. Both sides to this coin comprise the coin itself. The yin and the yang. This symbol is not just something cool to draw on your grade school notebook, it is representative of the balance of life and in this case epiphanic literature. Wikipedia actually puts it quite well, "describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn."


From Finnegans Wake-

"in the silence, of the sycomores, all listening, the kindling curves you simply can't stop feeling, he plunged both of his newly anointed hands, the core of his cushlas, in her singimari saffron strummans of hair, parting them and soothing her and mingling it, that was deep-dark and ample like this red bog at sundown" 

 -There really isn't a "word" in this book that with enough investment wouldn't yield and epiphany but, this passage in particular struck me quite well. Very beautiful, very sensual.


Wallace Stevens-
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.


-This distills beauty, simplicity and notion of epiphany reappearing  in different form.
If pound was my first poetic love. This was my re-bound. upgrade.


I was wrong to attempt to classify or issue quality to any epiphanic moment. They occur at every moment, in every moment.
as Eliot puts it
"Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before or after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment."

But, these instances, I find, are worth mentioning.

Jon Orsi- Things I think about

As I recall, we were assigned to have an epiphany. Now I can’t remember if the assignment was for this class (Bible) or the other (Mythologies) or perhaps one of the others (…) but I feel that that bit of information is trivial.

The notion that this could be an assignment is also quite flawed. These are happenings that cannot be conjured, and the implication of ownership seems to diminish the instance.

I can never presume to have and epiphany. I can only be fortunate enough for one to have me.




At some point or another I concluded that there are only two instances or scenarios that have provided an appropriate venue for these visits of a divine visage.

One being dreams.

The other: Books.




To begin with I’d really like to talk about a dream I just had—this statement I realize, usually prefaces a long winded story that has seemingly blown the mind of the emphatic narrator, while the poor listener feigns interest and secretly awaits this awkward retelling to end. I’m sorry. But flatter me—It wasn’t necessarily an extraordinary dream by any means, but something about it still claws at me. It involved a gunfight which is strangely common in my dreams. I was positioned in a bell tower of my own construction and I was fending off some adversary, but the situation quickly soured and I sense my impeding doom. This may sound bland to the reader, but imagine if you will the undoubted sense you are about to die. I realized that this was it. Uncreative people on a first date often ask the question: If you had five minutes to live what would you do? And the answers are usually as uninteresting as the people discussing the question. But now this question was upon me and there was no possibility of sex if I answered right, there was only death. I wasn't in a state of panic. I did not feel defeated. I knew that this was the end but, I did not feel as though things were over  I took what little time I had to simply be.
You could ask me today or any day in the future and I could recall every finite detail of those final moments down to the smell and feel of my oilskin shroud, the sound of cracking pinewood panels, or the pressure of the book I clasped to my breast.
There was recess in the wooden floor that led to a steep stairwell. A fitted door was in place and though it could have been easily opened, I knew that there was nothing for me beyond it. I lay myself in this shallow grave and draped myself in heavy canvas. Bullets tore through the pine box tower yet their impending closeness did little to stop my ceremony. In my right hand I held a Bible but felt no urge to read it. Instead I placed it under my head as I lay prostrate. In my left hand, pressed against my chest with an unmovable weight was the novel Form Whom the Bell Tolls. And even though this was a good book, it was by no means one I would have ever called sacred, or one I would ask for on my death bed, but something at that particular moment, something very really, wanted this novel with me. I kept repeating the last paragraph to myself without having to open the book. I felt something beyond solace in the novel's closing words, I felt a sense of immortality.

What is beyond explanation is when I awoke I stumbled to my bookshelf and deposited a cache of books on the floor, eventually finding For Whom the Bell Tolls I flipped to the last page and I saw the words exactly as I had repeated them in my dream. Verbatim.
I can truthfully say however, that prior to this dream. If I was called upon to recite those lines I would undoubtedly fail. I knew something about pine needles on a forest floor but that's about as far as I could go.
Even now the words are fleeting, but in that dream they were clear to me as any. In fact these words were all I wanted. My answer to that abominable question--in that moment at least-- would have been: I want to hear these words:

Lieutenant Berrendo, watching the trail, came riding up, his thin face serious and grave. His sub machine gun lay across his saddle in the crook of his left arm. Robert Jordan lay behind the tree, holding onto himself very carefully and delicately to keep his hands steady. He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.


This whole ordeal for me was pretty mind blowing and I've tried to share this with others but, and I am guilty of this myself, I know that everyone who is being told a "dream story" Is really just thinking: "Man I can't wait 'til this person stops talking so I can tell an even better story that really centers more around the idea of me."

But--And this is what makes the story so interesting for anyone who can conceive of it-- When I remembered that passage- it did not have anything to do with me.

What I mean by this is pretty tough to explain but, I will try.

I did not know those words. So when I was recounting them, I was tapping into this unconscious aquifer that sits beneath the bedrock of all our minds.

Dreams seem very "me" oriented, but they are about as personal as breath and air and we can only claim as much ownership. For we share this ether of life and dreams. And in our sharing we snip fences and topple walls, we dissolve borders and emancipate our minds.

This shared consciousness is explored by Jung with his Archetypal roles. In the final chapter of Words With Power by Northrop Frye, Frye discusses Goethe's evocation of this world. Frye states, " In the second part of Faust we are told that Faust himself, without the help of Mephistopheles, must descend into the realm of the "mothers' to bring up the deeper mythical archetypes such as Helen of Troy".
Joseph Cambell discusses it at length as the shared mythic realm of our minds. A realm that is "controlled" by the entire sea of stories, A sea that is comprised by mythos both learned and un-learned.

There are fascinating studies that attempt to define this phenomena, (again I am reminded of Dustin's paper discussing the "gaze" and the very confined and constricting nature of definition and designation) but alas, some of these studies are very interesting.
For example, a study that has been conducted a great number of times with the same result revolves around Crossword puzzles.
A large group is given a crossword puzzle and their success and completion rate is documented, these puzzles are broad casted and published in various newspapers thus making them and their answers well known among the broad community. All the while a separate group, isolated during this time, is then administered the puzzle and their success and completion rates are consistently and stunningly much higher and faster.
More can be read on this subject here

But I digress,
Whether or not I can really understand what particularly drew me to that novel other than it too describes the moment in detail before death, It is a perfect thread in the tapestry of collectivity
Those clever enough or deeply in tune will have already pointed this out to themselves, but the Tittle of this Novel is taken from A John Donne Poem:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The significance of this is pretty self evident, "No man is an island" concisely summarizes my entire point (though there is nothing concise about it).

This comes into my next, and orignal point:

There are only two instances where I feel as though I have experienced an epiphany.

Dreams

and Literature.

I've tried to express how this is true in dreams but its a very abstract concept and the less that's said about it- I fell the better.

Literature, books and poems are a little more tangible.

The Donne poem above provided me with the slight onset of such an experience, yet I liken it's strength to the moon's pale fire*

(*aside: I truly loved Nabokov's Pale Fire, but  its radiance I still find has been eclipsed by Lolita's might)

these experiences run on the same frequency, but Epiphany is reserved for those whose power is deafening.

 It is almost orgasmic but in a tantric sense, there is no release so to speak, but something has undoubtedly  changed. One can describe this moment as apocalyptic as we have discussed in the sense you find your self unveiled. with unshaded eyes the light simultaneously blinds and illuminates all.
In my attempt to describe or define this moment I am diminishing it. So I will leave it as it is.

But this moment came to me not in a fire of a burning bush, nor did it come to me atop any mountain. Instead it happened on night, In the s.u.b. of all places. I cracked a new book I had picked up on a whim (I really did "crack" it--the spine is ruined) The book was a collection of the works of Jorge Louis Borges, and the story I came upon was The Aleph. And it changed my world.
I realize I talk about this instance a lot and I hope its not sounding tired by now, but this particular moment was for me very sacred and I will never let that go.