v is for virgin

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 + on the beautiful beach of amrum i was reading marina warner's "alone of all 
 her sex. the myth and the cult of the virgin mary" [1976: here quoted after the 
 vintage books edition of 1983 which is still available]. it's a clearly 
 structured historical study of 400 pages with special reference to art, 
 literature, and  non-christian mythologies. the five parts (virgin - queen -  
 bride - mother - intercessor) present the goddess in her christian form as she 
 appears in the gospels, the apocrypha, and the history of the churches.  
 (readers of m&d might be especially interested in chapter 13: "the milk of 
 paradise"). very recommendable book from which i learn/ed a lot. henry adam's 
 topic of "the virgin and the dynamo", an american version of catholic 
 anti-modernism (according to my still pretty limited understanding: just  
 ordered not only "education" yet also "mont st. michel and chartres" a couple  
 of minutes ago), seems indeed to be crucial for pynchon's first novel. (in  
 "gravity's rainbow", however, norman o. brown's influence is dominating). could 
 one say that protestant modernity - and this goes for both: its lutheran & its 
 calvinist formatation - has neglected Divinity's female aspect and, thus, got 
 lost in deadly spirals of "shit, money and the word"? we forgot about the great 
 sea ... and without its rose the cross can make no healing honey ... the mystic 
 mechthild von magdeburg says that mary was the magnet who attracted our christ 
 into this world ... the virgin & her cheerful child ... "the 'kisses of his  
 mouth' become, in bernard's sermon, the special symbol of the moment of 
 ecstatic union. but such moments cannot be sustained, and remain mere promises 
 of future bliss in heaven. only one creature ever attained this perfection:  
 the virgin mary. assumed into heaven, seated at christ's right hand, she  
 becomes the example for every christian of his future joy. she was, according 
 to bernard, filled with love because she bore love itself in her womb. in one 
 of his sermons on the assumption he says that, just as john the babtist leaped 
 in elisabeth's womb at the mere sound of her voice, so the hearts of the 
 angelic throng and the company of saints leaped for joy when they say her 
 coming. he quotes from the canticle: 'who is this that cometh up from the 
 wilderness leaning upon her beloved?' (song of solomon 8:5). and if such is the 
 joy of heaven, the rejoicing of christ himself can hardly be described: WITH 
 WHAT A TRANQUIL FACE, WITH WHAT AN UNCLOUDED EXPRESSION, WITH WHAT JOYOUS 
 EMBRACES WAS SHE TAKEN UP BY HER SON! ... HAPPY INDEED WERE THE KISSES HE 
 PRESSED ON HER LIPS WHEN SHE WAS NURSING AND AS A MOTHER DELIGHTED IN THE CHILD 
 IN HER VIRGIN'S LAP. BUT SURELY WILL WE NOT DEEM MUCH HAPPIER THOSE KISSES 
 WHICH IN BLESSED GREETING SHE RECEIVES TODAY FROM THE MOUTH OF HIM WHO SITS ON 
 THE RIGHT HAND OF THE FATHER, WHEN SHE ASCENDS TO THE THRONE OF GLORY, SINGING 
 A NUPTIAL HYMN AND SAYING: 'LET HIM KISS ME WITH THE KISSES OF HIS MOUTH.'/  
 mary is, exulds bernard, 'as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun' 
 (song of solomon 6:10) and she rises into paradise like 'pillars of smoke,  
 perfumed with myrrh and frankincense' (song of solomon 3:6). he is so carried 
 away with his theme that at the end of one of these sermons on the assumption 
 he actually apologizes to his listeners, saying, 'there is nothing that  
 delights me more than to speak on the glory of the virgin mother.' but he adds 
 thoughtfully, everything loses in the telling, for nothing can ever express the 
 full extent of her excellence./this intensely personal love of the virgin that 
 dwelled in st. bernard's heart infused her cult after him with the same highly 
 wrought and intimate sweetness. his eloquence on the canticle, the  
 annunciation, and the assumption mark the fulcrum of devotion to the virgin in 
 the west. till now she had remained a remote majestic figure, used to define 
 the complexities of christological doctrine, or to symbolize the authority of 
 the church. there had been little personal devotion to her in the west at a 
 popular level and her cult - in terms of prayers, processions, and feastdays - 
 only formed a quiet accompaniment to the greater mysteries of the christian 
 year./in the tenth century began the first stirrings of the adoration that 
 transformed the virgin from a distant queen into a gentle, merciful mother, 
 'our lady', the inspirer of love and joy, the private sweetheart of monks and 
 sinners, and the most prominent figure in the christian hierachy. st. ulrich 
 of augsburg (d. 973) recited daily the little office of the blessed virgin 
 mary, a sequence of meditations, psalms, and prayers. this reveals a 
 fundamental change --- from organized communal chanting of the congregation to 
 private prayers made in the spirit of interior contemplation ..." (warner: 
 alone of all her sex, pp. 129ff). myself i grew up in northern germany's 
 lutheran tradition which means i never heard much about the virgin in my  
 childhood; me was adopted by HER later ... recently i saw a tv-docu on haiti: 
 there's a virgin-cult place by a waterfall where voodoo-practioners and 
 christians (some of the people are, interestingly enough, both) pray, 
 sacrifice (°zoom on a basket full of blue flowers whereinto a bull's fresh  
 blood is pul-sa-ting°) and chant together in the name of mary ... even over the 
 screen the enormous psycho-spiritual intensity was highly perceptible: the 
 people sending their energy - through giving, song & prayer - up to the virgin 
 whose healing grace is floating down on them with the water ... some of the  
 worshippers fall in trance, 'intoxicated' by the bliss, and others care for 
 their brothers and sisters in spirit ... there was an interview with one of the 
 participants who turned out to be a political intellectual who had once been   
 the haitian ambassador in germany [this is all true!]. asked if the political 
 developments in haiti and elsewhere in the world do not undermine his trust 
 into the virgin's grace, the guy - honestly astonished - said: "can you imagine 
 how it would look here without HER?!" ... these hybrid zones between christian 
 and 'pagan' religions (of native american or afro-carribean origin) do emerge 
 especially in south- and middle-america yet can be found also in new orleans  
 ... the virgin is recognized as the cosmic goddess, and this matriarchaic 
 merger enables the 'pagans' to practice christianity as their new religion. the 
 rest will follow - or not (which can, in terms of consistency, be problematic 
 for the catholic church: in the posthumously published "die religion der 
 gesellschaft", ffm 2000: suhrkamp, p. 351, luhmann quotes a church-man from  
 andacollo in chile with the following words: "if they [the native  
 virgin-worshippers] believe in god, and if they are catholic, i don't know; 
 that they believe in mary, that's for sure.") i'm not catholic yet 
 post-protestant, but i believe in mary, too ... of course that whole 
 catholic obsession with sexual purity is hard to follow for a learned lutheran 
 from northern germany, but in my understanding the status of virginity means 
 essentially the never changing freshness of her ever streaming grace ...  "a 
 sealed fountain", yes, but not necessarily in a sexual sense ... while pynchon, 
 and here his (partly) catholic background was certainly helpful, is pretty good 
 in addressing the spiritual malaise of protestant modernity, there's not much 
 virgin-worshipping in his novels, is it? where the catholic church - think 
 especially of the jesuits in m&d - appears it is, most of all, pictured as a  
 powerful organization taking part in (more or less) sinister politics. and the 
 actually female spirituality we do find in characters like geli (gravity's  
 rainbow) or dl (vineland) seems to flow in non-christian contexts ... perhaps  
 dl's feminist deconstruction of the old garden & apple story could be connected 
 to the theological discourse about the virgin as the "second eve"... anyway,  
 let me finish this posting with some rilke in own translation. this is from the 
 poem-cycle "das marien-leben", written on schloss duino in 1912: "STILLING OF 
 MARY WITH THE RESURRECTED ONE// what they did feel back then: is it not/ sweet 
 before all secrets/ and still of this earth:/ when he, a little pale still from 
 the grave,/stepped on her side relieved/ arosen on all places./ o to her first. 
 how were they then/unoutspeakable in healing./ yeah, they healed, that was it. 
 they weren't in need/ to touch each other strongly./ he put her for a second/ 
 hardly his nightishly/ eternal hand at the womanly shoulder./ and they started/ 
 quiet like the trees in spring,/ infinite together,/ this season of their/   
 most ultimate interaction." kai: scattering flowers ***