I don't really have a whole lot to say. I know that sometimes at the end of a class it is appropriate to get all sentimental and such but I don't really feel that way. It's not that this class hasn't inspired strong feelings towards its' content and its' people but sometimes the best end to something good is sweet, short and memorable.
I guess what I really want to say in my last moments of text is that I've enjoyed this class immensely. During the middle of the semester I kind of fell of board for a while. Things were just too much with class, work, "the future" and all of that fun stuff. But I think I came back strong and will have finished off with strong devotion and commitment to the class. My favorite book of this semester in class was The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom. Although I was skeptical of it in the beginning I fell into the boat ride at the end and felt pulled away by the wonderful prose at the novels conclusion. Next time Dr. Sexson teaches this class I would like him to use If On A Winters Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino or at least Invisible Cities or something like that. Calvino is fantastic and I feel robbed that NONE of my college classes taught anything by him. Oh well, you don't have time for everything I guess.
All of the presentations were fantastic. I don't really think I have a typical "favorite" or anything like that. Just being able to see how everybody approached their individual paper topic and paper presentation made the whole experience wonderful. Groups also did a good job. It seems that everyone had a solid presentation put together somehow or another with Rio's help.
Also it was nice to hear what awards/ scholarships people received. Hearing of everyone's achievments really pushes me towards doing all I can in order to better myself. Competitiveness isn't bad if it yields progression. Anyway, knowing that I am in the presence of such a group of people dedicated to intellectualism up here in Montana is great. I couldn't ask for a better group of peers or professors and I will miss all of you even if I never said anything to you. You were a part of the milieu that made the MSU English Dept. a great place to study literature.
How to conclude... well, I guess if we learned anything this year it has been that the myth of the eternal return depicts that in fact we have done this all before-- 15 weeks, reading, presentations, final blogs and everything. If that is the case than I'm looking forward to seeing you all on the next go round.
Yesterday I finished reading Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino. It was a really enjoyable book and did some excellent work exploring various ways of "seeing" the world. For those of you who don't know Italo Calvino borrowed the name from the observatory in Spain. The choice of name was perfect because Mr. Palomar is much like this telescope, or rather, he could be interpreted as the eye and even the "mind's eye" looking through the telescope. This work deals mostly with the ways to view things- in both the simple sense of viewing and the complex, meaning-filled sense of viewing.
The work is set up in three overall sections of setting-- Mr. Palomar on Vacation, Mr. Palomar in the City, and The Silences of Mr. Palomar. Within each of these settings are three more sets of three narratives. In the index Calvino even broke down the work further to explain that the sections of each subset are ordered purposefully to depict progression from strict observance into philosophical narrative. For example sections denoted with 1. are typically written with Mr. Palomar observing the topical sense of what he is observing. Sections marked 2. deal with his observance of something taken in a cultural or anthropological sense. Sections marked 3. take his observations and apply them internally to Mr. Palomar himself.
This was a really nice work to read after Under the Jaguar Sun. While Under the Jaguar Sun dealt with three of the five senses (touch and sight missing) Mr. Palomar focused almost completely on sight filling the gap left in one of the missing senses. It was interesting to consider how Calvino may have completed his novel of the senses had he had the chance to finish it-- I assume that he would have taken many of the themes from Mr. Palomar if not direct lines. Now that I've read a couple of Calvino stories I think I might move on to something else... most likely Fury by Salman Rushdie or Collected Novellas by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm kind of thinking Collected Novellas because I haven't read any Marquez since Christmas and it's kind of nice to read shorter narratives when the end of the semester is here. But If you are really interested in reading some Calvino for yourself here is a link for the full textMr. Palomar online!
I must say that I felt my two most influential bloggers in the class were Rio and Sam. This is pretty simple really. Having two Dr. Sexson classes with two sets of blogs and such has made me really confused at times trying to remember who was talking about what when and why. Sam, acting master blogger in BOTH, kept me straight and focused on what was coming up in each class and what I had to prep for.
Rio, with his attention to media, cannot be forgotten in this discussion of memorable blogs. Although much of my appreciation of his talents comes through the class it has been largely influential to watch him work thus making his service to the class indispensable. It think that most of us would agree that every class needs a Rio running the magic Apple displaying fantastic images and relevant information within seconds of hearing about it; Visual learners rejoice! His smartpen is also incredible. To be able to record all of the lectures and post them just shows how cool school is becoming!
He heard the cackling of the partridge, the tickling and creaking inside the bolted chamber, heard the old woman at the door load her grate with live crabs, which then hopped onto the coals. This is Paradise, he meditated… ‘Prince of India, what does your God have to say about all this?’ ‘That everything is a dream’… The son of Mary looked around him, terrified. Could the Indian nobleman really be right? Could all this—yard, pomegranate, grate, partridge, men—be a dream? Perhaps he was still under the cedar, dreaming”— The Last Temptation of Christ
Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel The Last Temptation of Christ was first translated into English in 1960 and from that time on the book was surrounded with controversy and would be banned from many reading lists for Kazantzakis’ portrayal of the life of Jesus. Those who challenged the book cited various moments in the work where Jesus questions his role of being the savior of mankind, the seeming defense of Judas’ betrayal, and the sexual attraction that Jesus has for Mary Magdalene. Unfortunately, those who criticize the work on those grounds missed the point that Kazantzakis made in his prologue that, after closer examination, seems to anticipate these claims and offers a defense of his work. Kazantzakis begs the reader to remember “in order to mount to the Cross, the summit of sacrifice, and to God, the summit of immateriality, Christ passed through all the stages which the man who struggles passes through” (Kazantzakis 2). Kazantzakis furthers his argument to include the necessity of his embrace of that which accompanies humanity by saying that “if he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives” (Kazantzakis 3). Thus, part of the essence of being ‘Christ-like’ is to experience the pushes and pulls of being human.
The road for Jesus is not easy— in neither the Gospels or in The Last Temptation of Christ— but the difficulty of the road is different in each. In the Gospels the difficulty of Christ’s path is typically considered in the Passion where Jesus experienced his most physical suffering whereas in The Last Temptation the difficulty of being the Messiah lies in Jesus’ discovery of his role as Messiah and in his ability to remain firmly on that road; in comparison, the passion of The Last Temptation tends to focus on the most spiritual suffering. Jesus in the Gospels his role as Messiah, although cryptic at times, never seems to be in doubt. The Last Temptation however offers a complex portrayal of Jesus’ realization of his role and his understanding of how to follow the road correctly. In the book, dreams assume the role of being the language of the divine and are the catalyst to both lead Jesus toward his place on the cross and also into the depths of temptation.
The novel opens with a dream. Jesus dreams of the Readbeard coming down into to Nazareth with a mob to capture him. He blockades his door with everything he has—saws, hammers, nails, a huge cross—tools of the carpenter who makes crosses for the crucifixions. He wakes with a start and asks, “was this sleep? Or death, immortality, God?” (Kazantzakis 11). While the meaning of this dream is fairly transparent to the modern reader who knows the end of Jesus’ story it is important to consider the dream from the perspective of Kazantzakis’ character—a man who does not know the end to his story and has only glimpses of the future revealed to him. In this vision Jesus’ end is revealed to him at the beginning of his journey echoing those lines opening T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets “East Coker”, “In my beginning is my end” (Eliot 23). During this first revelation, this pivotal moment, Jesus begins to move on the path that will undoubtedly lead towards his eventual end.
It should be understood that dreams are more to Jesus than a passive revealing of his eventual fate. When talking to his Uncle Jesus asks “’do you believe in dreams, Uncle Simeon? I do; I believe in nothing else” (Kazantzakis 147). We see that his belief runs so far beyond the simple understanding of dreams as knowledge to actually prompt Jesus to act. Asked why he came to the monastery in the desert Jesus replies “I’ve come because of the dream” (Kazantzakis 136). We see that the dream actually serves as the reason for Jesus to act and further himself along his road. Jesus understands dreams as more than what will happen—he understands them as what should happen and thus he will make efforts to realize the images of those dreams, set like landmarks, along his path.
Meaning is also coupled with the directions sent through the dreams. After saying that he had come to the monastery because of the dream he mentions “God sent it in order to show me my road, and the Abbot is going to untangle it for me’” (Kazantzakis 136). Not only is the direction he must take communicated there is also something to untangle, some deeper meaning, adding to the richness and wonder. Key to understanding this concept is another line in the book where Jesus thinks, “everything is of God… everything has two meanings, one manifest, one hidden. The common people comprehend only what is manifest. They say, ‘This is a snake,’ and their minds go no further; but the mind which dwells in God sees what lies beyond the visible, sees the hidden meaning” (Kazantzakis 150). This statement is rooted in the understanding that everything has or is an aspect of the divine. For the thing itself to be fully known the one considering it must be able to find this hidden meaning. When that thing is fully known the way in which the essence of the thing was understood could be considered language, and, in the case of dreams, the language of the divine.
While dreams appear as the language of the divine, with immense complexities and troubles to make meaning for the unpracticed, it must be considered that the divine encompasses both godlike figures— omnipotent God and the tempter Satan. After a dream that he experienced Jesus says “’someone came last night in my sleep… someone came. Surely it was God, God… or was it the devil? Who can tell them apart? They exchange faces; God sometimes becomes all darkness, the devil all light, and the mind of man is left in a muddle’” (Kazantzakis 15).To the dreamer, the dream is a mixed muddle of images and meaning and, adding the most basic yet important complexity, whose voice, God or Satan, is speaking the divine language? While this creates a complex problem for the dreamer it establishes dreams as a form of communication that is used by both powers and in much of the same way as evident by the dreamers inability to distinguish between the two. Because of the reliance of each to use this form of revelation the power of the dream as a method of persuasion towards action does not go unnoticed. Used effectively this dream-language should be understood as one of the most potent and most convincing methods of revelation. It is fitting then that God used a dream as a catalyst to prompt Jesus to begin his journey and also that Satan used a dream to try and tempt Jesus from his journey.
Finally, as Jesus faints upon the cross, we are transported to the last temptation of Jesus for which the novel is named. After he faints Jesus’ “eyelids fluttered with joy and surprise. This was not a cross; it was a huge tree reaching from earth to heaven” (Kazantzakis 444). Jesus is bewildered and asks his supposed guardian angel “’wasn’t I crucified… was the cross, then, a dream—and the nails, the pain, he sun which became dark’” to which the angel replies “’yes, a dream. You lived your entire Passion in a dream. You mounted the cross and were nailed to it in a dream. The five wounds in your hands, feet and heart were inflicted in a dream, but with such force that, look!, the blood is still flowing’” (Kazantzakis 446). As we later find out the garden Jesus has been transported to is actually the dream. But, as followers of the story, we too suppose that Jesus has lived his Passion in a dream and that the life lying before him, the life he utters about earlier when he says, “I don’t care about the kingdom of heaven. I like the earth. I want to marry”, is the life he will finally be able to live (Kazantzakis 28). Little do we suspect when Kazantzakis claims that “every moment of Christ’s life is a conflict” that he has filled one of the last moments in Christ’s life with the most tortuous test of all—the man’s desired lifestyle, dripping with possibility before him, appearing in it’s whole in a flash quick as lightning. The clue should remind us of Eliot’s Four Quartets in which he claims “the time of death is every moment” and that there is “a lifetime burning in every moment” (Eliot 42, 31). Satan himself even relates this concept when, in the form of Jesus’ guardian angel, he preaches “Here is eternity: each moment, Jesus of Nazareth, each moment that passes” (Kazantzakis 466). For Satan to uncover Jesus’ deepest desires and place him in the center of the illusion is the most potent application, and most potent temptation, of the dream that Jesus has felt.
For the reader, who experiences time most likely in its “normal” flow the concept of the momentary lifetime may be misunderstood. This life that Jesus lives is practically complete spanning from his early 30’s to old age. We learn that Jesus weds both sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Although not Jesus’ ideal woman Mary Magdalene Satan gives Jesus solace by saying “only one woman exists in the world, one woman with countless faces. This one falls; the next rises. Mary Magdalene died, Mary sister of Lazarus lives… she is Magdalene herself, but with another face” (Kazantzakis 457). Ironically, this statement evokes a passage from Cees Nooteboom’s work The Following Story (another momentary lifetime story in which the characters’ story takes place in the two seconds of his death much like Jesus in The Last Temptation) where the main character, Herman Mussert, says, “the world is a never ending cross-reference” (Nooteboom 98). It is as if Jesus has seen these women in another woman at another time… or maybe in another lifetime. What is so confounding to the subject of this experience is the duration of time that passes. Jesus has children and eventually becomes a grandfather. The experience is not the usual experience of a moment— it is experienced over days, months and years creating the most real illusion possible by adhering to the supposed constant, time, that governs our lives.
However, for as realistic as the craft has been, it is not without it’s cracks. Like the moment of déjà vu in the film The Matrix Jesus’ unreality has been infiltrated by truth like light through the chinks. One night a nervous Mary wakes Jesus and tells him of a dream she had where “you {Jesus}, me, Martha, our embraces at night, the children… All, all—all lies! Lies created by the tempter to deceive us! He took sleep, death and air and fashioned them…” (Kazantzakis 468). Jesus is confronted with the knowledge that the life he is living, what seems to be his reality, is actually something otherworldly. However, the most rupturing of this illusion occurs when she refers to his “other” life and says to Jesus “that you, Rabbi… were crucified” (Kazantzakis 469). By alluding to Jesus’ supposed “dream” of long ago, something that we can assume he has not told to Mary, the truthfulness of this statement is overwhelming and brings the tension to a high. Even Satan, weaver of this alternate reality, feels panic and tells Jesus “this is a difficult moment. Your mind might waver” (Kazantzakis 469). Interestingly, this dream of Mary’s occurs within the larger dream created by Satan. With no small stretch of the mind we can assume that the dream of Mary was instigated by God in order to guide Jesus as God has done throughout the novel. So, in this moment of conflict, we can see the two opposing forces using the same language almost identically to communicate each wish Jesus creating a cacophony of truth and lies. By using the dream as a revelation of truth God is attempting to undermine the appearance of Satan. However, Satan ironically appeals to Jesus’ logical understanding of the world and challenges the vision of Mary saying to Jesus “are you a woman? Do you believe in dreams?” (Kazantzakis 469). As we learned earlier Jesus does in fact believe in dreams and sees the power they hold. Jesus belief has become so powerful in fact that there is a switch between the meaning of dream and reality with dream now appearing as actual reality and actual reality appearing as dream. The mind is left to reel.
Eventually Jesus pushes aside the dream of Mary and further assimilates into the dream world. This is not a world of Satan with fire and brimstone. This world appears as sweet as honey—the ideal existence for a man who wants to fully be a man. He exalts much of the same joys that we experience in our lives. At one point he says “to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of Paradise?” (Kazantzakis 458). Perhaps this momentary lifetime is so attractive to Jesus (and to us) because, as we’ve demonstrated earlier, the dream is a language spoken by both God and Satan where the dialects of Satan almost pass imperceptibly as the utterance of God. Satan’s craft takes the appearance of light and goodness especially juxtaposed against God’s reality of the crucifixion; we only wish the best for this man who has suffered so much. Our feelings towards echo in the speech of Caliban from Shakespeare’s’ The Tempest:
“Be not afeard. 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 137-145).
However, despite his and our temptation to remain the dream world, Jesus eventually awakes from this allusion to a reality of hanging on the cross. It is in this moment of waking that he realizes his feat and gloriously exclaims, “it is accomplished!” before giving up his spirit (Kazantzakis 496). The temptation of the momentary lifetime was necessary for Jesus to conquer to rise to the highest heavens; as the epigraph states in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets “the way up is the way down” (Eliot 10). The glory of Jesus accomplishment thus lies in his ability to go down to experience the most powerful sorcery of Satan— a luscious momentary lifetime— and to reject the temptation and instead provide his followers with the ultimate example of attaining the divine through sacrifice.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt Inc., 1943. Print.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. The Last Temptation of Christ. Trans. P.A. Bien. New York:
Scribner, 1960. Print.
Nooteboom, Cees. The Following Story. Trans. Ina Rilke. New York: Harvest, 1991.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Eds. David Bevington & Scott Kastan. New York:
Well, it looks like it's going to be another glorious day outside and I have the feeling that I'm going to be inside writing my papers/ preparing for group projects! Ugh. I'm excited to get my paper done so I can move on to other papers/projects and get back to some of the personal reading that I'm doing and, eventually, get out to ride my bike before the weather takes another turn for the worse. By the way, this brings up two good questions I have-- Do we have a final in this class? and What is the schedule for presenting papers? I'm not going to be able to go on Friday of this week because I'm going to be out of town visiting my girlfriend's parents.
On another note I'm extremely excited for the English Dept. reception in the Habit restaurant this Thursday! After 4 long years of taking classes from the English Dept. and having had classes from so many of the professors it will be great to have some sort of appropriate send-off. I know that Justin will be there as he said on his blog but I hope to see many more of you there also. I'm not sure about the dress... Formal? Casual? Togas?
I guess this blog basically comes to this point-- while I am extremely excited to be finishing up school soon I know that in the fall I will really miss coming back and seeing many of you in classes. I've had a great run of things at MSU and the English Dept. has treated me wonderfully (except all the problems with the writing minor. Get that fixed English Dept.) and I don't believe that I would have enjoyed my time more anywhere else. Of course I have regrets about things done and things left undone-- going to NCUR this year for example. I wish I had put a paper together to present but, alas, time was just terrible in the fall and I wasted some of the time I had this last summer.
So, with two weeks left before finals week, or, for an English major, the "real" dead-week, let's all remember that college is a great place where things are pretty enjoyable. Even though at times being busy with papers and projects seems like a hell of a lot for us to be paying for we should appreciate the opportunity to be involved in an academic community of our peers, the likes of which many others around the world would love to have.
The other day I watched the children's animation film "Fantastic Mr. Fox" directed by Wes Anderson. Before I begin let me say that I love "The Royal Tennenbaums" and really enjoyed "The Darjelling Limited", "Bottle Rocket", and "The Life Aquatic" although I do have an interesting paper topic in mind about how Anderson's scripts portray minorities (God I'm a nerd). Anyway, to the movie "Fantastic Mr. Fox". I felt that Anderson's style of film making really made an interesting movie. Also, the voices used for the characters was fantastic. George Clooney as Mr. Fox was perfect as well as the rest of the cast. Also, the music was great.
I don't know if you would call "Fantastic Mr. Fox" a highbrow film or not. I guess that calls into question whether the rest of Anderson's films are highbrow. The film was definitely quirky and witty which gives it some points towards being highbrow. I guess I would settle on the film being middle-brow or even highish-brow... especially by today's standards. For any of the rest of you who have seen the film I would be curious to hear what your opinion on the matter is.
On a final note Wes Anderson appears on the list of "Stuff that White People Like". For those of you who are white and aren't particularly offended by race humor (although white people like being offended) check out the list and see how many of the things that you like. If you're not white check out the list to find out how to impress your white friends and potentially get help when moving!
Do I need to offer a defense of our project? Should I offer apologies? Man, you guys were a tough crowd. It was kind of brutal standing up after the presentation was over. Perhaps our focus was too much on the lowbrow? Too demotic? The connection to the highbrow not obvious enough as a character from Samuel Beckett (who most everyone seems to admire & "get") walking across the stage counting his farts? Maybe everyone was too embarrassed to laugh while at the university where we feel the need to act like rigid intellectuals? I don't know.
Typically people don't like to admit it when things don't go the way they thought it would. When we were practicing this skit I was thinking "we're probably going to have to pause here for laughs to die down". Nope. Didn't have to pause ever. Maybe we took to lowbrow, the "lowest of the lowbrow", and portrayed it as highbrow making some scoff with distaste. Not obviously "artsy" enough? Did you think that this humor was too sophomoric? Too pre-teen? Well, if some of you have "grown up" to much to laugh at a good fart but outside of class find Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow scripts consistently humorous then sucks to be you.
