SLSL "TSR" Love and Sleep

[David Morris]

--- Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:
> From Harold Bloom. "Genius, A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary 
> Creative Minds," Warner Books, Inc., New York, N.Y. 2002.
> 
> Gnosticism: The Religion of Literature: (quote from the "Poimandres"
> Hermetist first tract)
> 
>     When the man saw in the water the form like himself as
>     it was in nature, he loved it and wished to inhabit it; wish
>     and action came in the same moment... Even though he is
>     immortal... mankind is affected by mortality... although...
>     above the cosmic framework, he became a slave within it.
>     He is androgyne because he comes from an androgyne
>     father, and he never sleeps because he comes from one
>     who is sleepless. Yet love and sleep are his masters.[his
>     snips]
> 
> 
> "This is a Narcissistic rather than an Oedipal Creation-Fall,
> Platonic rather Judeo-Christian, and is akin to Emerson's
> 'Self-Reliance,' where the oldest and best aspects of the self
> are seen as not being part of nature. Ancient Gnosticism
> named these elements in the self as the 'pneuma,' authentic
> spirit or breath, the true person." (xvii-xviii)

I've never heard the term "Oedipal Creation-Fall" before, but I like it. 
"Oedipal" would of course refer to that difference between the Father-Creator
and his "creation," who starts out smaller-than the Father and becomes even
more so after the fall.  Intrestingly, though, the mythic parallel of
knowledge/conciousness leading to a "fall" creates something like an inverse to
the "Narcissistic" structure in the quoted passage:  Loss of innocence
(receiving "knowledge" (the fruit)) leads to a "fall" (from the favor and
paradise of the Father), but it also leads to freedom, independence and growth
away from a dependant undeveloped state.  The "Narcissistic" structure has man
becoming enslaved to his passion, his love of "himself" mirrored in "nature"
(read "innocence, carnality, lack of knowledge"), and thus loosing his
independence.

Thanks for the quote.  What is the rest of Bloom's book like?

David Morris

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