“The Dilettantes Abundance of Good”
or “Some such Foolish Journey”
By
James Kushman
I’m
going to take for granted that you have discovered by now that Romance is
living abundantly and that the common popular assumed definition of Romance is
only in reference to its novelty: similar to referring to the clothes of a
human as its exterior. But how to live abundantly? It’s a rather wanting
question is it not? I’m so very bored with the beginning middle and end of the
usual essay-those stifling reads where it shouts like a child—”THIS IS WHAT I LEARNED!”
No, it seems to me that if I’m going to write about what it means to live
abundantly I’m going to have to make sure my writing is abundant as well.
It is with no delight that I point out to the skimmer and
the skeptic that I am in fact a leach of Heinrich Zimmer. But what I believe we
shall all find (and in no way am I going to help you with this) is that Zimmer
himself is leaching as well. And what do I mean by a leach? Well Zimmer is
stealing stories of course! This German professor is no other than a
reincarnation of Scheherazade and whether or not you would like to admit it,
whether you are a man, woman, middlesex, or a poltergeist, you have been
reigning as a king, taking a new woman every night; wedding, bedding, and
beheading her too.
Now shame on all you hypocritical feminists pointing out
all the misogynistic qualities of the king: you missed the point. And you
missed the point because you wanted to miss the point. Creativity takes a fair
bit of destruction to come about and the intellect-bogged theories of modern
man see no reason in humbling themselves to things that have no reason. And
that sentence will either make all the sense in the world to you or its vortex of
dissolution will stop you dead in your raggedy slippers.
. . .
By the end of Zimmer’s King and the Corpse it will be readily apparent to you that
destruction was somewhat of a focal point throughout all of the stories. The
subtitle “ Tales of The Soul’s Conquest
of Evil” (If you had even noticed) might even have provided you with some
sort of extended peripheral vision in which you sensed some blind intimation of
a clandestine ending. If you are like me, which through all your
dissimilarities you are, upon finishing the book you swore loudly several times
and realized that this book had far more to do with the times then you thought.
For once you actually need to reread the book. You hadn’t paid attention. You’d
not read close enough. And while these are all true of all of us, the ending of
the book will not provide that clandestine feeling in its end. That subtle
intimation you have will continue to grow, and you will quite possibly and
probably begin noticing its flicker in other texts, other events, but your
clever self will have tricked you into longing and wanting of an end that does
not exist. That intimation is a perpetual place of beginning. This book is an initiation—a going in—in which “even the advanced
reader must inevitably discover, time and again, that he is still but a
beginner, the following essays are intended for him” (Zimmer, 6). And so is
mine it seems.
You
can put your philosophy books down. You can season your reason in the recycling,
and if you are still one of the humans capable of reading fairytales then it
would seem you already have a grasp of some of the non-rational qualities swirling
around in you. If I have insulted the few of you who have become so identified
with your intellect (and believe you me, there is still times when I eat the
cake) I would ask that you humble yourselves. Yet, sadly, modern man’s
intellects plays the trick of ambiqueuating
[yes I made it up] humility to such a point that it’s prideful nature
projects like a shadow its own humility onto the other. The Who? The sniveling
voice in your head—which we will get to later.
Zimmer (or perhaps it’s the man behind the curtain—Joseph
Campbell) starts his story within a story with “Abu Kasem’s Slippers”; a story
set apart from all the other stories in that it, in and of itself, has no
upliftment. A greedy Abu, we find that the old miser, never, ever, ever gives
anything back. Zimmer’s psychological induction begins with this tall tale of
avarice and greed. If anyone has seen the pop culture blockbuster, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, they
will remember Michael Douglas saying how Greed is good. And certainly that is the depiction we gain of what we, as
college students, have begun to be programmed to call the “real world.”
A pique of interest for the mythologically inclined
intuitive would be the symbolism of the painting of Cronus—the titan god of
time—greedily devouring his children so that he may not be usurped. A picture
that meets its tragic end to the hands of its usurped owner-a parallel
depiction of Abu Kasem’s karma building up in time and unleashing upon him. But
to read into the symbolism of a Hollywood movie—is this acceptable? Can you do
this? I do so delightfully. Hollywood films are the fairy tales of our day. The
independent films are to the present day what Latin literature was to the
medieval world.
USELESS
SCHOLARLY FACT #1: In medieval times serious literature was written in Latin,
while the popular tales were written in the common language, Roman. The focus
of love often being the center of these tales, and also the tales being written
in Roman, Romance (“to speak in Roman”) became down the synthetic pole the
language of love. No longer was it to speak in Roman, but to speak in love.
As for a straggling Arabic tale about Greed, what does it
have to do with Romance? Abu lives a disharmonious life. “[H]e endures the
blind fury of the powers of life in their unpacified, sheerly destructive
aspect” because unlike anyone else who would have held a celebration in his
honor, Abu decides to treat himself for
his own luck (Zimmer, 35). Abu’s complete self-absorption in treating himself
leads him to the unhealthy belief that the whole world beckons to him. The self-congratulations
has convinced Abu that all his things “inseparable from his public character”
are in fact because of his path in life (Zimmer, 9). This vanity, this inward
narcissism encapsulates him in a nutshell, and he is forced to follow the path
he has chosen to manifest. Abu may not get rid of his shoes; the material
public reflection of who he is to everyone else,” has also become his inner
manifestation. He has come to believe his shoes are his path—the outer image is
him. And all his attempts to get rid of the shoes are null since he cannot drop
the ideal he has consummated.
“Abu Kasem’s Slippers” is perhaps the most important tale
to be told in America if onlybecause it speaks to the own inner blindness we
have crafted. And while a disharmony runs havoc in our lives we are to blind to
see that our lack of response, our inability to humble our pride will keep
walking us down a path toward complete self-destruction. And this is the
narcissists path, a complete lethargy and destruction of every distraction,
every echo, until your kneeling on your legs staring at an emptied image you
never wanted to face. A Romance gone wrong, not a love of oneself, but a
hatred. The soul’s conquest of evil can be nothing but a disharmonious venture
in the lives of those who believe (and not necessarily think) who they are is
the persona they project.
So what is the Great Shaharazade Zimmer trying to tell us
with his next double feature: “The Pagan Hero and The Christian Saint”? The
double picture provides a mirror of its thematic in which we find that the
Hero’s Adventure and the Christian Sinner’s rise to Sainthood by absolution of
sin (and therein guilt) are one in the same—and both are the Soul’s conquest of
evil.
Depictions of consciousness provide seemingly
dissimilarities between the two stories, but there is also the dissimilarities
of the approach of the path, which is
of course shaped by the level of consciousness given to the protagonist. About both tales is the integration of
experience, but the level of innocence is stressed much higher for the Pagan Hero
then it is for the Christian Saint.
Often called Christ consciousness or Krishna
consciousness, both protagonists are in search of this, though Conn-eda is
unaware and thus unconsciously seeking it, while the Christian Saint is
controlled from the very beginning by his conscious, though his conscious
unawares to him is being led by the pope, who in turn is attempting to obtain
the absolution of a poltergeist. The “geist” or ghost has an oddly creepy
similarity to the “geis” or conditions that Conn-eda must achieve in his
adventure. Conscious choice only arises
for Conn-eda when he must follow against his own principles and slay his horse.
But even then any guilt on Conn-eda ‘s part is taken away as a force beyond him plunges the knife.
This action is the effacement of morals, the humility to
let go of the conscious principles that govern your life so as to listen
to your own intuition—and thus find what
true morality is. Had he not made the choice he would have suffered the same
fact as Abu Kasem, cut off from the intuitive powers that could free him from
the destructive manifesting cycles of a delusionary ideal of how things are.
But instead of fleeing from his intuition like Abu Kasem and suffering the
unimaginable effrontery of a mind disconnected from being, Conn-eda assimilates
the destructive qualities that exist in his horse just the same as the
all-healing abilities. Absorbing himself in the grief instead of suffering
through the denial as Abu does with his missing slippers; instead of getting
angry as Abu does countless times with his slippers; instead of bargaining for
responsibility as Abu does with the judge; instead of falling through the
depressing cycle of losing everything that holds with his principles—instead
Conn’edda, accepting his grief, passes through the flaming towers to where the
tree of life stands. He finds the fruit of Abundance and also the rejuvenation
of part of his soul (and rightfully, from its unmasking).
Destruction is itself a part of the harmony and it must
be assimilated so that the disharmony does not begin. Harmony is always a
constant beginning, or re-beginning. Disharmony is always an end in itself as
we can see in the evil stepmother throwing herself to her death, or even, as I
found out, in the absolution of the hell tortured poltergeist.
The minute conscientious choice of the pagan tale (the
stabbing of the horse) makes up the near entirety of the Christian story. Like
a lousy philosopher writing an essay with the assumption you are aware of
Badiou’s conception of the event, or the phenomenological implications of
Husserl, the Christian narrative promotes the assumption that all the
unconscious, all the separate modes of consciousness in the pagan tale can be
fully realized without being mentioned (or so it would seem).
“Whereas the pagan hero was sent on the path of adventure
accidentally, in ignorance and by inadvertence, John has been moved by his own
conscious sense of a personal insufficiency.”
Which translates basely as the Christian
Saint falls conscientiously. Hermit’s (as this is the self-forced trail of John’s)
are a strange species of Psyche. They literally wear chains of their own
psychological crafting about themselves. Something in their education has them
at a loss for the ability to exist amongst their society. And so like a fast,
they banish themselves to the dessert, or to the woods, so that they may seek
out their answers. Think of John as an Abu Kasem with the awareness of all his
responsibilities, yet still stuck in the ideal which makes his view of the world timeless—and his banishment thus forever.
Temptation is brought and made manifest to him in the
form of a woman. And like an egotistical man thinking only of his image and how
his principles apply to his thoughts, he attempts the out of sight out of mind
trick by pushing the woman into his unconscious abyss. Yet this repression only
feeds the temptation until his very thoughts and stature as a human are
bypassed and he becomes as Conn-edda’s horse, an animal.
[H]e discovers the
ultimate depths of the devilishness within him, and dons the mask of the
loathsome beast that he has found himself to be. The priestly habit rots, the
saintly hermitage becomes a weird monster’s den. John keeps to the filthy,
brute existence until the higher forces speak to him once more with a
convincingness equal to that of the revelation at the time of his first mass”
(Zimmer, 65).
The revelation of the
poison of temporal possessions to the soul was equaled with the revelation of
mental idolatry, or idealatry. Thought is consciousness, but it is only a
form. So compelled by his own thought John is always reacting compulsively and
then resolving to such realizations as “God certainly will avenge this terrible
sin on me forever!” Thus John is the most fun type of narcissist (to me); one
not obsessed with his good looks, or his things, but his thoughts. Polter, from poltergeist, stands for an
auditory hallucination. And it certainly took John going through these
conditions, or geists, before he
could overcome his own reflective thoughts in the pool and glisten to the soft Echoes
of his own un-absolved soul.
And I will just end it here, without a reason or a good ending. I don’t mind. Find your own
way. If Zimmer can introduce Morte D’Arthur for his own fulfillment it
seems I too can foolishly and delightfully cut from the traditional essaic fulfillment
of a conclusion, an end, an analyst’s reductive closure of his final
Citations
Zimmer, Heinrich. The
King And The Corpse: "Tales of The Soul's Conquest of Evil". 2nd
ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948. Print.
