AWARD WINNINGthree-footed being. BeforeESSAYS Laius sent him to be de­ stroyed, his ankles were fastened together, an act Alienation,Homecoming,Departure which decreased his limbs by one. The stage of life where three-footedness is the norm, though, is old Told In "Oedipus at Colonus” age. Oedipus, from the time of his birth, is at a distance from understanding the source of his being Editor’s Note: This is a continuing series of award­ equivalent to the temporal distance of an elderly winning essays from the previous school year. man from his birth. Following is the first part of Galen Breningstall’s The most blatant evidence of this alienation from best freshman essay. his source of being is Oedipus’ ignorance of his own “1 YEARS HAD BEEN FROM HOME AND NOW, name. Names are bestowed on one at birth and are BEFORE THE DOOR 1 DARED NOT OPEN, LEST Indicative of the recognition of the creation of a unique A FACE 1 NEVER SAW BEFORE STARE VACANT human being. They symbolize the source of one’s INTO MINE AND ASK MY BUSINESS THERE.” being in both a physical and metaphysical sense. PART I Since he does not know his name, Oedipus does not The riddles supplied by Sophocles in‘‘Oedipus at know his relationship to Laius and Jocasta. Con­ Colonus” are as baffling as the riddle of the Sphinx sequently, his reaction to the message of the oracle itself. Before one even begins to pursue the riddles, is directly opposed to the reaction he would have had though, he must consider the gravity of his actions. had he reacted with knowledge. All the perverse The tragic life of Oedipus has exemplified the risks acts Oedipus perpetrates, he performs under an aegis involved in pursuing the riddles of gods and demi­ of ignorance. He does not realize his actions have gods. Yet, the tragic life of Oedipus has also exem­ this perversity until the old shepherd is forced to tell plified that great risks may lead, however painfully, the painful story of Oedipus’ origins. Even then, to great gains. Sophocles relegated the revelation of Oedipus is victimized by an edict he made while in Oedipus to Theseus as a secret and a source of Ignorance of his name. A name always accompanies power. Perhaps, then, from the benighted point of one and if it remains in darkness may covertly view of one who has not been indoctrinated in the foil the noblest intentions and aspirations. Oedipal mysteries, any attempt at solution would be Oedipus in “Oedipus the King” at first lacks the feeble image-guessing. Finally, one might assume perseverance in investigating his own origins that that Oedipus’ assumption of a mantle of suffering he later shows while indicting himself. When the precipitated a revelation which excuses the rest of elusive oracle prophesies his murdering his father humanity from having to travel the same course for ^and marrying his mother, Oedipus flees in terror. the same result. The alternative possibilities are This is opposed to his resolute refusal to flee as pain, frustration, pleasure, and revelation. Inaction intimations arrive that he has indeed killed his father is manifestly the safest course. It is also contrary and married his mother. Oedipus’ flight results in the to the imperatives of the inquiring spirit. There­ deferring of the irritating question of his origin. The fore, with the regal Oedipus’ preference for truth question may be raised about why Oedipus should and understanding before all consequences, embarks have remained in the proximity and pursued his ori­ this quest for the answer to Sophocles’ riddles. gins in the shadow of such a gruesome prophecy. In response to this query, two replies obtain. Firstly, When the chorus receives the reply of “Oedipus” Oedipus was apparently uncertain enough about his to their insistent inquiry about the name of this genealogy to doubt his foster parents and journey to unfortunate stranger in “Odeipus at Colonus”, they Delphi. How, therefore, could he be certain to whom exclaim, “ Oedipus 1 You I 1” The tale of Oedipus’ this prophecy applied? Also, one wonders if Oedipus woe spread quickly throughout Hellas. On the most could not have continued his investigations into the patent level, it was a delicious tale of horror. rumors which had reached Jiis ear about his origins Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx with his apart from his supposed parents. It is inconsistent insight into human transience, the journeying from with the respect Oedipus has Inspired for his Infancy to age and its effect on the human anatomy. shrewdness and insight to deny that he could have All human action occurs between infancy and age. It devised a scheme to accomplish his ends at a dis­ would then appear that an insight into human tran- tance. science would extend to human activity as well. The Finally, Oedipus prior to his tragic fall lacks a perceptive Oedipus, however, is blind to his own feeling of guilt for the horrors he has committed. actions. Oedipus unknowingly flees from his foster It is obviously wrong to wholly censure Oedipus in parents, kills his father, and marries his mother. this respect since he is at this time unaware of the By his presence in Thebes, he unknowingly brings wrongs he has committed with the exception of one. a plague upon the city. The culmination of this un­ When Jocasta tries in vain to allay the fears knowing horror occurs when Oedipus’ perservering Tiresias’ prophecy has incited in Oedipus, she sets Investigation of the death of Lalus reveals hjlmsefi the scene on which occurred Laius’ slaying. Oedipus, as Laius’ son and slayer. A tale of patricide, in­ in the horror of recognition, states, "What have you cestuous love, and the agony of recognition such as said Jocasta? What have you said? The past comes this is grotesquely entrancing. Yet, Oedipus’ tale back to me. How terrlblel 2” At the time of the inci­ has great depth and within this depth are clues to dent, Oedipus felt justified in exacting his ven­ the unraveling of Oedipus’ marvelous and puzzling geance, having been shoved and assaulted over a death. right of way dispute. However, it is difficult with the Oedipus, unlike humanity around him, is at birth a material given by Sophocles to establish exactly Page 3 who was culpable during this incident. Both Laius and The immediately puzzling aspect of Oedipus’ em­ Oedipus evidenced obstinate pride. Laius and his brasure of the Dread Goddesses is that he is to find driver struck first, butt it is doubtful if Oedipus did rest in a forbidden garden under such unlikely not excessively avenge his injuries. This inability auspices. The Eumenides, formerly terrifying de­ of the reader to establish blame reveals something mons of vengeance, have at this time altered their blameworthy in Oedipus himself. There is no hint function sufficiently to be called the Goddesses given in “Oedipus the King” that Oedipus ever pon­ Benignant as well. Now holding sway over the city dered whether he was not partially culpable for the, of Athens and its households, the Eumenides seem to murders. When Oedipus states, “The past comes be strange comforters for the king who brought a back to me, 3” there is an intimation that he had plague upon his city and the son who destroyed his placed the incident beyond his retrospection. household. When the duality of their dread and Tiresias states to an unbelieving Oedipus, benignant nature is considered, however, the Eume­ Therefore, 1 tell you this: you have your eyesight nides are appropriate providers of succor for Oedi­ And cannot see the sin of your existence. pus. Cannot see where you live or whom you live with. Are ignorant of your parents, bring disgrace As was mentioned, the original function of the Upon your kindred in the world below Eumenides was to plague those who had spilt kindred And here on earth. 4 blood. They relentlessly pursued their prey through­ Sightless Tiresias can see origins to which the out the world. There is a close correspondence perceptive Oedipus is blind. By knowledge of this between the function of the Eumenides and that of truth, Tiresias the blind prophet is more powerful guilt. Like the Eumenides, guilt plagues and pursues than Oedipus the king. Oedipus is apart from his those possessed by it. Oedipus, as much as any rnan, source of being and until this point in “Oedipus the has become a victim of this painful sensation. King” has not been persistent in its pursuit. Oedipus Chorus: It is dreadful, sir, to waken long-slumber­ is not troubled by the question of guilt in the recog­ ing sorrow nized actions of his past and has not recognized Yet high are our hopes that the truth will be told much of his guilt. The state in which Oedipus finds at last. himself cannot stand secure against circumstance. Oed.: What now? According to Tiresias; Chorus: Of your anguish beyond all relief, all cure. And other horrors you could never dream of The grief that has held you fast. Will teach you who you are, will drag you down Oed.: As a stranger, a gues% I implore you not to To the level of your children. 5 uncover If the analogy evoked earlier between Oedipus and The shame I have had to endure. the elderly man is recalled, this passage as well as Chorus: Wide spread is the story and grows no less foreshadowing Oedipus’ disgrace foreshadows Oedi­ in the telling pus’ lessening the distance between his understand-^ Let us hear it rightly told; we are eager to learn. ing and his origins. This in time occurs as threads Oed.: Have mercy! 8 of evidence unite to bind Oedipus to a recognition of It is manifest that Oedipus still recoils at the his sinful existence. In this darkest hour, though, thought of his actions. Yet, Oedipus also protests. Oedipus glimpses some of the forthcoming light. But I know this: if I could tell their story. So will I die at last Then you would see that I did not act myself By the decree of those who sought to slay me. So much as I endured the acts of others. And yet I know I will not die from sickness Was I by nature evil? Was I as a sinner, Or anything else. I was preserved from death I who repaid an injury done to me? To meet some awful, some mysterious end. 6 If I acted knowingly, even then Oedipus, with an understanding of his source of You could think me wrong, but I knew nothing. being and a recognition of his acts of horror, All that I did I did in ignorance. 9 prophecies with accuracy. His end in “Oedipus at In “Oedipus at Colonus”, Oedipus’ speeches come Colonus” is described by an awed messenger as in reverse order to that above. Oedipus may attempt most marvelous. Sophocles, though, poses a number to mitigate his deeds with some validity by stating of disturbing questions in his prelude to this end. his actions were done in ignorance. Oedipus may Oedipus embraces the grove of the daughters of dark­ even extend himself to the point where he states ness as his resting place after long wandering. he was simply exacting just deserts from those who Irascibility is still very much a part of the ragged sought to slay him. When he is forced to speak of his blind man. There is no reconciliation between Oedi­ past, however, Oedipus cannot hide the pain his pus and his son of Oedipus and Creon. All these actions have nurtured in him. Despite the protective occurrences are of puzzling significance. Ultimately, veneer of total innocence, it is all too apparent that though, there is the question of the significance of the Oedipus was not simply meting out just deserts when marvelous end of Oedipus. To understand these dis­ he acted in ignorance. It is all too apparent that for quieting enigmas requires an outlook which views himself Oedipus cannot provide an excuse sufficient Oedipus’ final days as the conclusion of a meta­ to nullify a feeling of culpability. As well as citing physical journey. ignorance and justice, Oedipus cites the prophecy of Apollo and his fate. Nonetheless, though each of these O queens, O goddesses, terrible to behold! factors does indeed qualify Oedipus’ actions, to Since my first refuge was this shrine of yours. Oedipus they are inadequate to completely dismiss Close not your hearts to Phoebus and to me. his rei^ponsibility. When by his oracle the god proclaimed Oedipus’ final resting place in the garden of the The many evils that have come upon me. Eunienides, then, is indicative of his acceptance of This too he promised: that after many years the dread specter of guilt to which he had been so I should at length attain my final rest. impervious in his younger years. It is a guilt which Rest from my sorrow and my weariness. Oedipus accrued indirectly, as he did not perform When in some land that made a stranger welcome, the acts of killing his father and marrying his I found the shrine of the Dread Goddesses. 7 mother themselves of his own free will. Although Pag(e 4 Oedipus was inextricably bound to his fate, that is, “SEVEN” bound to kill his father and marry his mother, he can published monthly for be blamed for allowing ignorance to counter his in­ St. John’s College, Santo Fe. N.M. tentions. As Aristotle states, those who act in ig­ norance are blamed because it is assumed to be within Chief Editor...... J. R. Thompson their power to take care, Oedipus, by not pursuing Co-Editors...... Jim Scott the source of his being tirelessly until the past had Della Manning overwhelmed him, did not take care. By ceasing his ...... Bob Hampton journeys in the garden of the Eumenides, the guar­ Contributing writers; C. Bell, G. Breningstall dians of the city and its households, Oedipus ac­ knowledges his culpability for actions within his sphere. This having been done, the Eumenides’ mourning dove - day of cambodia - relationship to Oedipus can alter from dread to beni­ gnant. Always far off, the soft assurance: the first The Eumenides donned their benignant countenance Note tentative, a second rising, in question at the time when their dominion became the city and Of alarm, three then of comfort, breathed, sub­ its households. In the city and household an individual siding. can find a locus of security and satisfaction. There he can enjoy a feeling of quiescence. He is at home. Thunder darkens over the woods of error Oedipus, during his last mortal day, discovers the Where I walk out of touch — ages — listening garden of the Eumenides to be the place where he For the five-fold tones of love’s old covenant. can enjoy that feeling of quiescence. There the —Charles G. Bell Oedipus whose past had constantly contravened his present can at last accept the past and act with a better understanding of himself in the present. Oedipus can reside in that grove of guilt and also Visit fell at rest since he has acknowledged guilt as a force which is fundamental to being at home with himself. Directly and indirectly, the human errs or THE CARD & PARTY falters in the pursuit of his ideals and aspirations. He makes judgements in the present which he regrets in the future. To deny this presence of personal fail­ SHOP ure and regret is to be at odds with oneself. Oedipus affirms the presence of these entities, finds a place CORONADO CENTER where he is at home with himself, and consequently finds a place in the world. for Complete line of Cords, Candles, Stationery, Gifts “Poly-Concerto” By Della Manning for the love of goodness sweet muses strike up the phrygian band today Dressman’s the sullen siren strains of apollo overture the rearrangement of the zodiac; orpheus dreams FLOWER NOOK nightingale lyre slow your melody lalalaelia lalalala PHONE 982-1864 earthly serpent stop listen PLAZA.WEST lalalaelia lalalala o man put down that strad SANTA FE, N.M. 87501 hear lalalaelia lalalala celeste will play for you sweet-sounding mellifluous celeste THE rhapsodies in red minuets in g concert grand sonatas CAMERA etudes OF serenades SHOP SANTA FE lullullullaby lalalaelia 109 East San Francisco / echoes of the world unseen SANTA FE, N. M.

terpsichore sweeps the guileless chords YOUR COMPLETE PHOTOGRAPHIC HEADQUARTERS euterpe dances on the tympanum STEREO HI-FI CENTER thrum titarumtum RECORDERS, TURNTABLES, RADIOS, SPEAKERS thrum titarum polyhyminia comprehends PHONE 983-65^1 the music of the spheres

'{ Page 5 COVER PHOTO was taken SOMETHING IS GONE at Bandolier Nat. Monument by J.R. Thompson on the uneven shore of chunks of rock and slabs of sand 216 W. the water swells and slips away casting up fish and wood it turns over the pebbles SAN that run like crabs after the waves FRANCISCO i gather up its offerings- a few shiney stones, some smooth glass worn 983-9825 by the incessant slap of water on the beach and wonder if i will be rolled over and over CUSTOM SANDALS and smoothed and shined or cast up like a dead fish - —H. Cornelius HANDBAGS • GARMETS NATURAL FOODS STORE Organically Grown Fresh Vegetables Dried Fruit - Nuts - Oils Flour Stone Milled On Order 1203 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe

K^ntufkii fried AiekeN Santa Fe, New Mexico

North America’s 1227 Cerrillos Road Hospitality Dish Phone 983-5489

THIS COUPON On The Purchase GOOD FOR Of One. HOT FUDGE SUNDAE Reg. Price 554... You Pay Only 39

PART FOUR INCARNATE FRUITS — Charles G. Bell Countless are the paradoxes of pagan thought which truly from the point of view of philosophy, it was a Christianity floated — floated or drowned — in the god-send. Here the journey begins which would lead sea of faith. Augustine’s handling of a single problem through the reconciled oppositions of the Scholastic must serve as an example; it is the paradox of God's Summa, the glowingly affirmed paradoxes of Pico’s foreknowledge and man’s free will. In THE CITY OF Platonic Christianity, the even more ecstatically held GOD (V,9) Augustine shows how Cicero labored with antinomies of Bruno and Leibnitz, through the the problem, following the guidance of reason. Hegelian dialectic which systematizes God himself Cicero could not accept both freedom and fore­ as paradox in process, to the modern ambivalence, knowledge; they are rationally contradictory. As Au­ where contraries are accepted as polar limits of gustine says, “like a truly great and wise man,” our intution of reality, of the organic field which we he chose that which was most to the good of humanity, perceive and are. The container is no longer faith, freedom. This drove him, however, to deny fore­ but the existential. Yet the continued affirmation of the knowledge to God or man. Thus to make men free he existence which contains, is our heritage not from made them sacreligious, a worse result than if he had the Classical world, but from the faith which spear­ surrendered to the superstition of soothsayers and headed the breakthrough — the Incarnate Word. the influecne of the stars. “But the religious mind,” If one wishes, in the most immediate way, to see says Augustine, “chooses both, confesses both and how the first container shades over into the last, maintains both by the faith of piety.” The paradox imperceptibly yielding place to it, one has only to is not solved (how could it be?), it is ambivalently consider Leibnitz’ MONADOLOGIE, where faith and suspended in a faith which flaunts reason. Augustine the modern ambivalence are indistingulshably blend­ concludes: “Against the sacreligious and impious ed. When Leibnitz writes: darings of reason, we assert both that God knows According to this system bodies act as if (to all things before they come to pass and that we doi^ suppose the Impossible) there were no souls by our free will whatsoever we will to do.” ^ at all, and souls act as if there were no bodies, If the reason here is made a burnt offering to faith, and yet both body and soul act as if the one it is precisley in the Phoenix-flame of that burning-' were Influencing the other. that the germ of renewal lies, that is, in the cele-f — this rational triumph of the transratlonal is both bration of the ambivalence of life and of the divine. Theistlc and existential. And if the first form of this celebration is, in the This is true not only of Leibnitz. One cannot study late-classical world, reason’s abandonment, the the growth of Western science and mathematics in distinctive sign of the Western awakening lies in those luminous texts of the Renaissance and 17th those pre-scholastic attempts, from Fredugis (c. century without noticing that the Insights are not 800) to Anselm (c. 1100) to use reason again — the born of reason alone. Thereisahalf-mystlcalflre, a new-born reason — to justify a now instinctive and kind of Cult of the Infinite which drives (as in paradoxical faith. Five centuries of acceptance of Galileo’s New Sciences) toward the study of series the transratlonal have so re-oriented the mind that and limits. And what is most exciting in all this Anselm can support in the mode of reason — can speculation is the almost drunken flaunting of the prove — the necessity of that very Incarnation which paradox. It is of primary importance to remember to Tertullian was divine impossibility. that at the kernel of Newton’s calculus lies the as­ sumption and solution of the appalling contradiction This means that the reason, which in Greek specula­ which Greek mathematics had as it were raised up tion had undermined and surrendered itself, has and let fall — balking as the young Socrates did been transplanted, and is growing up again, but at endowing hair, mud, etc. with Forms (PAR­ cloistered in the wall and holy ground of the Chris­ MENIDES: ‘^And I am afraid I may fall into a bottom­ tian system. Automatically it begins and ends in less pit of nonsense and perish.”); thus Euclid III, dogma; it is a reason born in servility to its con­ 10 on the size of the “horned angle” — that in its trary, transratlonal faith. Yet from that very ser­ manlpulable limit a curve is a straight line and a vility it derives strength; it is unable to undermine straight line curved; that a tangent is a secant and itself. As a cathedral which rises through its an area is sum of lines — that a dimensionless skeleton of buttresses and bridge-vaults to its point carries all the properties of its geometrical height, so that one hardly grasps in the light-filled and physical context: slope, curvature, Maxwellian choir what mysteries of structure hold it there (how divergence and curl — a host of bewildering ad­ different from the rational and self-declaring post- missions which would seem to sabotage the whole and-lintel harmony of the temple) thus Western effort of rational mathematics, but are exactly the philosophy enjoys a dialectic buttressing of which the alienation by which it arrives at higher birth. Greek mind was unaware. Pure speculation, like the This is the paradox of the Infinite in the finite, of digestive tract, can dissolve its own tissue. It is the the eternal Word among beasts in a stall. Like so protection of reason’s structure against its proper much that is essential to the West it was hinted at acid which makes possible the daring towers of by Plato, but only in an image, a metaphor. It is Western thought. the pot-bellied bust of Silenus (Socrates, that out­ The surrender to faith, then, allowed reason to ward clown) which opens to great riches. As if Plato “have its cake and eat it too;” faith sanctioned the the myth-maker had taken the road of regenerative mystical marriage of antitheses: Plato’s immortal­ paradox and been called back by the rational voice. ity at the cost of negating body, with Aristotle’s As if he was not yet ready to be one of those Wise mortal union of body and soul; Plato’s God of Men. And Indeed, there is something absurd about changelessness alien to matter, with Aristotle’s' this mystery, where the alienation becomes a point God inseparable from the world-body. The power to of transcendence. It makes everything loose its assert both simultaneously was the gift of faith; and dignity: God ridiculed, tragedy turns to tragi-comedy; Page 7 Lear goes hand In hand wltn a Clown and makes a trial of joint stools for daughters; mind bows to un­ tas,” reason; everything Is mocked and made foolish, but In You have great power, O love; you alone could a mode where folly Is transfigured, where It testifies draw God down from heaven to earth. How to the mysterious and divine. One should not forget strong Is your bond with which even God could the charcoal scratch from the walls of the page­ be bound...You brought him bound with your boys’ school on the Palastlne (Museo Nazlonale bonds, you brought him wounded with your Graffiti) with the boy doing reverence to a crucified arrows...you wounded him who was Invulnerable, ass and the Inscription: ‘^Alexemenes worships his you bound him who was Invincible, you drew God.” Surely the rumour which made the Christians him down who was Immovable; the Eternal you worship an ass-delty had Its core of truth which has made mortal...O love, how great Is your victory. propagated Itself through the ages, transforming all So the Impossibility of pagan reason becomes the notions of the comic and sacred. Thus In Western preoccupation of deepest thinkers. What had been culture, the comic has become the centrally expres­ bruited about by the fable-mongerlng masses but sive form. Did not the lustiest of Western painters, rejected by mind, wells up now from the subliminal Rubens, crown his career with the grotesque exuber­ and possesses the enlightened. It Is again the llfe- ance of the great-bellied Magi and comical beasts glvlng reversion. Only from the organic matrix of folk wondering at the rollicking (almost farting) child? Intuition can a total regeneration of thought and life From AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE and THE arise. It Is as If mind Itself, In those Intuitive SECOND SHEPHERD’S PLAY to Shaw and Chaplin, depths of spirit, unknown to merely conscious comedy has become PAR EXCELLENCE the form of philosophy, had felt Its way along the banks of the the paradox, of the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” gorge which reason could not cross, had perceived which Is at the core of THE ALCHEMIST, DON the point at which a span could be made. No philoso­ QUIXOTE, DON GIOVANNI, HUCK FINN. And Its pher would have said that was the point, or that the Quixotic heights of reversal are preluded by span of an Incarnate God was anything but a super­ Erasmus’ PRAISE OF FOLLY, In which the relevance stitious absurdity, but spirit addressed Itself to that to Christ Is made clear. This amazing pamphlet critical narrowing, the separation of body and soul, heralds a comedy of total ambivalence: beginning flux and Idea, God and man, and Christ took flesh In with the jesting praise of petty vanities, “old women the stable of Imperial Rome. In heat” who paint and pluck out hairs. It moves This presented Western Civilization from the first through a vitriolic satire on “holy war” and the ruling with a strange contradiction. What Is human had fools of viciousness, to an Inversion of values where never before been so denied or so affirmed — It the final follies become the Inspirations of spirit, Is a paradox which burns through Western writing: Platonic madness, the divine absurdity of Christ and __ Hamlet’s “how like a god” and “Quintessence of the silly (SELIG, SELAH) children of God: “Except^ dust,” Pascal’s “What a chimera Is man...the pride as you become like a little child.” and refuse of the universe.” (“Quelle chlmere est- For why should not madmen and fools be saints and^' ce done que Thome...glolre et rebut de Tunlvers.”) heroes of a god so foolish and mad as to assume fallen ' Under this tension how tempting It must have been flesh, with Its death and pain? That Is the central to take the easy Platonic relief and split the enigma paradox. In talking of the other Classical antinomies Into the components of body and soul, rationalizing which were creatively fused In Christianity, we have It by the age-old prescription of “divide and con­ more or less reserved this, the final one, as If for quer” — like that man Socrates tells of In the final handling. And the greatest Western work which REPUBLIC, who was seized by a horrible desire to bears the title of a Comedy, DIVINA COMMEDIA, look on mutilated corpses by the city wall, and so reminds us what paradox It Is, when at the close of approached, head averted and eyes closed, until he Paradise, the challenge posed for Dante by his cul­ was just above them, and then turning his head and minant vision Is just the problem of seeing “how the thrusting the eyelids up with his fingers, cried out: man’s Image blends with the divine circle and abides “There, feast your fill, you beastly organs.” As If In It” (Come si convenne/L’ Imago al cerchio, e soul could so easily be exonerated of criminal In­ come vl s’lndova”), how the human and divine are volvement, or body so easily made a scapegoat for compatible. This every pagan thinker would have all that reason might not wish to claim as soul’s. hurled as the unanswerable question not only at But Christianity was clear from the first on both Christianity, but at all the primitive religions and counts; that was Its Hebrew heritage. Evil was neces­ salvation-cults among which Christianity arose. sarily an action of the soul, otherwise sin had no When Plutarch In his life of Romulus sceptically meaning. If the “paragon of animals” was subject repeats fables of bodily ascents to heaven, he gives to these perverse longings. It was not the weakness the usual answer of Greek reason: “To mix heaven with earth Is ridiculous.” He does not have to quote Plato; this separation of body and spirit Plato shares with most classical minds. Plutarch quotes Pindar: THE CANDYMAN All human bodies yield to Death’s decree. The soul survives to all eternity; Strings and Things and he concludes: “We must not,therefore,contrary to nature, send the bodies, too, of good men to The Folk Music Center of New Mexico heaven.” One might equally say (and Epicureans, Stoics and Platonlsts would all have to agree) we 127 E. Water St., 983-9309 must not bring God, a spiritual being, bcSily Into the world. It Is just this rational Impossibility that Christian Records • Tapes writers solemnize. Thus Hugh of St. Victor (DE LAUDE CARITAS): “Magnam ergo vim habes, carl- Guild - Martin - Gibson Page 8 of the beastly organs, eyes, or of the fingers that shade, volume, all are caught up in the celebration opened the eyes, but of the will that connived at the of a universal mystery, both tragic and transcending, rape. As for body, the wish to make it a scapegoat a Passion and apotheosis of a new kind. (though that fought its way through the whole Western history) was doomed from the first by the fact that What is happening here can no longer be put in class­ God took a body, and even when crucified, dead and ical art-terms of imitation, pleasing forms, etc., burled, refused to part with it and go back to pure any more than KING LEAR can be dealt with as an spirit, but raised it up and gave it a glory in the Aristotelian imitation producing psychological measure of its dark. And this pattern imposed itself catharsis. No doubt it does produce catharsis; on everyChristian, as certain Old Testament verses whatever that may be; but when Bradley set out to de­ had curiously foreshadowed, as Job: “And though fine Shakespearean Tragedy, it was not just his after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my reading of Hegel that led him to see it as “the typical flesh shall 1 see God;’’ so that all souls at the sound­ form of a universal mystery’’: “We remain con­ ing of the trumpet must return for the fulfillment of fronted with the inexplicable fact, or the no less their carrion; and however one tried to hold the inexplicable appearance, of a world travailing for Neoplatonic line, the separation could not be main­ perfection, but bringing to birth, together with tained. It was body-soul, the entire human person glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome that had been paradoxically humiliated and crowned, only by self-torture and self-waste. And this fact or raised to unparalleled heights by the example of the appearance is tragedy.’’ This is exactly the paradox incarnate God, and simultaneously broken on the of God in the Gospels, in the New Testament of his wheel of his total sacrifice. The antinomy which had born pagan reason apart was subsumed in the Christ, Incarnation, Death and Resurrection. whose divinity and humanity were unquestionable Clearly, the artist shaping such a drama as this, pronouncements of creed. or painting the “View of Toledo’’ or “Lacoon” is no longer to be conceived as standing outside the Even Thomas Aquinas, in the very passage (Q. 106, tumult, contriving to stamp the foreseen form or Art. 4) where he counters Joachim de Fiore’s heresy inert material. This is an evolution in which he of the realization of God in time (“The third state, has become part of the agony. He has assumed wherein man is to possess the grace of the Holy in art the position which the heretical Medieval Ghost more perfectly than he has possessed ii mystic had already assumed in religion. The im­ hitherto, will take place not in this life but in manent and personal incarnation through which Eck- Heaven.’’), even Thomas, led balking down the Hege­ hard felt in his own soul the birth of God, is being lian road, has made the crucial admission of the re-enacted on the theater of creative form. And the fruitings of God, his Church and the New Law: “A re-enactment continues, moving outward and onward, thing is not brought to perfection at once from the with increasingly revolutionary Implications, through outset, but through an orderly succession of time.’’ science, politics, philosophy, all life. The road of So in Western Culture there is an orderly unfold­ the union of body and soul, self and God, was open; ing as the germ of the embodied divine elaborates it was the Western road, and it was inevitably aimed its temporal incarnations in the material of civiliza­ at Goethe, Hegel, Blake, Whitman, Nietzsche and tion and the arts. But here the writer of an article Jung. ^must call a halt. For that unfolding is simply the history of Western Culture, which is scarely the sub­ The history of Christian civilization was to be a ject for a closing page. Yet something must be said. history of successive and regenerative heresies, slowly tending from the Neoplatonic repudiation of the The early Middle Ages continues the late classical embodied to its romantic glorification. The heresies search for Gnosis, as if Christ by his sacrifice had were unavoidable; they had their seed in Christ him­ given the nod to Plotinus, abetting the denial of self; they were his life and the life of the culture that world, flesh and time. It is the Dark Age burden: would take his name — fruits of his symbolic In­ “nos miseri, cur te fugivum, mundus, amamus,’’ carnation. “O flying world, that we sick-hearted love thee.’’ It was as if the Biblical angels had opened their The illuminations and carvings of before 1000 live mouths and voiced the cry of Blake: in the bodiless and spaceless. But as we enter the “And suddenly there was with the angels a multi­ 11th century, we have passed one of those mysterious tude of the heavenly host, praising God and say­ nodes the poet Yeats liked to symbolize by his con­ ing:’’ struction of a cone within a cone; and all things, to “Arise and drink your bliss, for everything use his words: that lives is holy.’’ Are changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born. The arts, from year to year, record the Increasing ANCIENT CITY BOOK SHOP vortex of Incarnation. Eyes and face are drawn first into the nexus, as being nearer spirit. Body remains IN SENA PIAZA as in Chartres, symbolic, a columnar support of Announcing a new line of paperback books heavenly architecture. By the Renaissance, body itself has been taken into the spiritual storm. The on Chicano studies, the American Indian, Word has been made flesh in the most dynamic way. Archeology and Anthropology, Psychology Michelangelo’s Creating God separates light and and the Occult. darkness with the tortion of physical involvement. Nor is the transformation in man alone. It gathers If we haven't got it, we'll get it up nature also, the world-energy, which is entrained like body in the sacred passion. With El Greco this Phone 982- 8855 has reached a certain culmination^ Man, earth, light.