Back to AtD...p960

[Ian Livingston]

A Benedictine monk once loaned me his copy of The Cloud of Unknowing. I
didn't make the explicit connection until reading your insights here, Mark,
but I think this little summary from wikipedia is an adequate teaser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing Wasn't Cyprian a
Cambridge lad?

I'm not so sure about P's singling out for dissing the contemplatives,
though. It seems to me he is equally ready to dis those too eager to act
without considering the repercussions of their actions. Benny and the Crew,
Slothrop, Lake, maybe even Zoyd and Mucho might be examples of characters
inclined to action and reaction as opposed to the over-contemplative
(Mason? Roger M?), though, in the end, I am inclined to see all as aspects
of the human psyche. You got your poles and then there's all that's in
between.

On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  If Cyprian and his decision(s) are some kind of upbeat authorial value
> embodiment in
> AtD, "the Heyschasts, who might as well have been Japanese
> Buddhists---they sat in their cells,
> gazing at their navels, waiting to be enfolded in a glorious light they
> believed was the same light
> Peter, James, and John had witnessed at theTransfiguration of Christ on
> Mount Tabor.......
> are not.
>
> the place where human nature met God---wikipedia describing the
> theological import of
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfiguration_of_Jesus"
>
> "perhaps they asked themselves forms of your question as well, as a sort
> of koan. What is it that
> is born of *that *light? Oddly, if one reads the Gospel accounts, the
> emphasis in all three is not on
> an excess of light but a deficiency---the Transfiguration occurred at best
> under a peculiar sort of half-light.
> 'There came a cloud and overshadowed them", as Luke puts it. Those *omphalopsychoi
> *might have
> seen a holy light, but its link with the Transfiguration is doubtful.
>
> A little hermenuetical theology from our God-obsessed writer? Knows the
> Gospel accounts yet,
> gives us another metaphor for agnosticism? Clouds. Or another dissing of
> religious belief altogether
> even if Buddhist. As above, so below?
>
> Certainly a dissing of navel-gazing whether Western or Eastern? Action
> matters, even if it is Cyprian's
> self-reclusive action? Is Cyprian and his monastery decision a metaphor
> for the reclusive dedication of
> our writer?
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20121225/22c6dbb0/attachment.html>