Pynchon's RC Sources

[Paul Mackin]

Nicely composed post, T. Points up the important demarcation in mankind's
consciousness--prehistory vs history. Ahead even of modern vs postmodern I'd
bet you would agree. :-)
            P.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Terri" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 6:32 AM
Subject: Re: Pynchon's RC Sources


> Elaide, as several critics have demonstrated, is one of P's
> most important sources for religious material.
>
>
> In the Jews, Eliade argues, we  encounter a people with a
> personal God of history. This is something quite new. This
> is evidenced in the famous biblical story of the patriarch
> Abraham, who prepares to kill his son as an offering to
> God.  If Judaism were an archaic religion, says Eliade, this
> fearsome act would be an instance of human sacrifice.
> Killing of the firstborn to renew the sacred power of life
> in the gods.
>
> However, within the New Judaism, the Event has  quite a
> different character. Abraham's encounter is a very personal
> transaction in history with a God who asks him for his son
> simply as a sign of his faith. This God, not an Earth God,
> but a sky God,  does not need sacrifices to renew his divine
> powers. In fact, he does spare Isaac, the son. This Father
> God requires from his people is a heart loyal enough to make
> that ultimate  sacrifice if asked. Christianity inherits
> this same
> perspective. The sequence of events that make up the life
> and death of Jesus forms a singular and historic instance, a
> decisive moment which, occurring ONCE ONLY, serves as the
> basis for a personal relationship of forgiveness and trust
> between Christian believers and their God. In celebrating
> the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ, the
> Christian faithful do not engage in a ritual of seasonal
> rebirth; they do not act out an eternal return to
> beginnings.
>
>
> Of course, this new historical religion did not win an
> instant victory over the older, archaic attitudes, which are
> deeply rooted in human psychology. The tremendous attraction
> of the  fertility religions did not simply go away.
>
>
>
>
> In Western civilization, especially modern Europe and
> America, in the last few centuries, Eliade explains, we have
> once again seen something quite new in human history: the
> wide acceptance of philosophies that deny the existence and
> value of the sacred altogether. Advocates of these views
> claim that it makes no difference where one wants to find
> the sacred, whether in history or beyond it, for the simple
> reason that human beings do not need it. The truth, they
> say, is that
> there are no gods, there are no "sacred archetypes" which
> can show us how to live or what ultimate purpose to live
> for.  We must now live as Profane, without the sacred
> altogether. We can put aside for a moment the question of
> whether this modern, totally unsacred view of the world is
> good or bad or what the applied author or what TRP thinks
> about all this. Where did this thinking come from? WHo let
> the dogs in? Eliade argues that the door to this second
> revolution was in fact opened by the very same shift of
> ideas that created the first: the coming of Judeo-Christian
> historical religion. This seems puzzling at first sight, but
> for Eliade the sequence is clear. It comes into focus the
> moment we place everything within the original context of
> archaic religion and the myth of eternal return. We must
> remember, he says, that to the first archaic peoples, the
> world of nature was of pivotal importance. It was able at
> any instant to come alive with the sacred. Symbolism clothed
> it in the supernatural; legend and myth sang of the gods
> behind the storm and rain. Clues and hints of the sacred
> could be found
> in a tree, a stone, or the path of a bird in flight. When I
> argued that Pynchon's sympathies for some early Puritans is
> evidenced in Slothrop's passion for trees, directly
> attributed to his Puritan heritage (see also Milton's Sonnet
> on Piedmont, How Milton Works?) some objected to this. Even
> here in V., Pynchon's critique of Puritanism is obvious, but
> a claim that in P one finds a condemnation, is not
> warranted.  Nature was the garment of the divine. This was
> not to be the case, however, in Judaism and Christianity.
> The prophets of Israel and writers of the New Testament
> pushed nature into the background and brought history up to
> the front of the stage. The seasons, storms, and trees were
> "desacralized," for the God of Israel and of Christian faith
> chose to show himself chiefly in the twists and turns of
> dramatic human events-in the Hebrews' escape from Pharaoh,
> in the battle of
> Jericho, or in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus
> Christ. In this new perspective nature still had a part to
> play, but only in a supporting role. Israel's prophets still
> saw the great wind that parted the Red Sea as a sign of the
> sacred, but in the light of their historical perspective,
> they read it quite differently. For them it disclosed the
> divine not because it was a wondrous natural event as
> archaic peoples would have said, but because it contributed
> to God's  purposes. It delivered his people from the hands
> of their enemies. As Eliade sees it, this change of
> religious sensibility is a significant one, not only on its
> own terms, but because of the momentous consequences that
> follow from it. For gradually, and almost imperceptibly,
> this original move from religions of nature to religions of
> history laid the groundwork, in the present era, for a
> further shift from the newer religions of history to
> philosophies of history and society that discard religion
> altogether. Through the long passage of centuries, and
> especially in Western civilization, the removal of the
> divine from nature has slowly opened the way for entire
> societies to adopt a style of thought that only a few
> isolated individuals ever seriously considered until the
> coming of the modern era. That style is secularity--the
> removal of all reference to the sacred from human thought
> and action.  Eliade explains that the logic behind this move
> away from religion is simple enough. Secular thinkers argue
> as follows, if
> religions like Judaism and Christianity made one great
> change in the world's religious consciousness, does that not
> license us to make another if we should so wish? If the
> prophets felt they had a right to take the sacred out of
> nature and find it  only in history, why can we not follow
> their own example and dismiss it from nature and history
> alike? In short, why can we not remove it from human affairs
> completely?  Eliade describes these secular creeds as forms
> of "historicism," a type of thought that recognizes only
> things ordinary and profane while denying any reference at
> all to things supernatural and sacred. "Historicists" hold
> that if we want significance, if we want some sense of a
> larger purpose in life, we obviously cannot find it
> in the archaic way, by escaping history through
> some eternal return.  But neither can we
> find it in the Judeo-Christian way, by claiming that there
> is in history some great plan or purpose of God. We can find
> it only in ourselves. Examples of this historicist thinking
> can be found in any number of modern systems and thinkers.
> Eliade notes the developmentalism of the German philosopher
> Hegel, the communism of Karl Marx, and the perspectives of
> twentieth century fascism and existentialism. Modern
> capitalism might be included as well.