Grace?

[Laura Kelber]

Must grace be theological? Maybe it's more a frame of reference. There are
moments we all have where we see things freshly. Lying on the grass, when
the trees rustle, just as a cloud partially obscures the sun. Focussing on
the dust motes illuminated by a ray of light in a musty room. Pausing,
almost without realizing it, over the odd curvature of the pepper one's
about to slice into. Responding to the moments, the thing-ness, unmediated
by any thoughts or knowledge of theology or philosophy or any lore at all.
To commune with the trees or the dust motes or the pepper on that elemental
level is to (momentarily) become a child of nature. No knowledge, no
morality, no mediating thoughts at all. As soon as you name it, it's gone.

To view the world from that frame of reference for an extended period might
put one at peace. But it would be terrifyingly lonely. More than Lew can
bear. For Gottfried, that point at the top of the parabola -- where the
knife cutting the apple is just a knife cutting an apple, where there's a
complete absence of knowledge or morality -- is a comfort. For the Chums,
it's a safe haven from the impending horrors. Don't we all attempt to
retreat to that frame of reference - the cold, amoral universe, where
things just are what they are - when confronted with the insanities of the
day? I know I do.


On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 7:54 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thomas,
>
> Theological concepts indeed. As far as I can tell, the key figure here
> is Descartes, who studied with Jesuits, thus  Aristotle/Thomas and
> then applied his Subjective *I*  to Thomas's defense of God's
> existence, not to deny it, but, as his Meditations  argue, to shift
> the proof of existence from God's Nature/Action to Man's thinking.
>
> As far as I can tell, P does not use Grace or any other concept  to
> make of Man a thinker who in the act of thought has an equivalency of
> knowledge of the essences, that is to say, humans are not, even with
> the shift to Descartes, privy to the knowledge of Thomas's God.
>
> As far as what we or the Chums fly toward? Well, Grace, of course.
> Something we move toward by God and God alone, something we may want
> to know by can not. And since we can not know it, how can we know we
> want it? Because it is God's will. or will be when He elects us. Of
> course, this is why Pynchon finds the Preterit so compelling.
>
> >
> > In theological/philosophical terms, seeing things as they are means
> > understanding things in their quiddity or "whatness", perceiving their
> > essence and not their outward appearance. We know, from his essay on
> Sloth,
> > that Pynchon is familiar with Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (and
> Aquinas
> > turns up in his writings as early as "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna").
> >
> > Cf.:
> >
> > "But the angelic and the Divine intellect, like all incorruptible things,
> > have their perfection at once from the beginning. Hence the angelic and
> the
> > Divine intellect have the entire knowledge of a thing at once and
> perfectly;
> > and hence also in knowing the quiddity of a thing they know at once
> whatever
> > we can know by composition, division, and reasoning. Therefore the human
> > intellect knows by composition, division and reasoning. But the Divine
> > intellect and the angelic intellect know, indeed, composition, division,
> and
> > reasoning, not by the process itself, but by understanding the simple
> > essence."
> >
> > Summa Theologica, I, Question 85, Article 5
> >
> > Against this background, seeing things in their quiddity would mean to
> see
> > things like God or angels do, having "the entire knowledge of a thing at
> > once and perfectly". Is this not the state of mind (or grace) that
> befalls
> > Lew and that Gottfried aspires to?
> >
> > We don't know what "flying toward grace" means for the Chums, but we know
> > that they have to shield their eyes against the revelation (against the
> > day/light?) that is to come:
> >
> > "They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part
> the
> > sky. They fly toward grace." (1085)
> >
> > As usual, exactly what kind of revelation is to be expected remains
> unsaid
> > -- the blinding Glory of God, Rilke's terrifying angels, "the light
> beyond
> > metaphor" (Derek Walcott)...
> >
> > I also hear echoes of Fausto Majistral's confessions, in particular
> "life's
> > single lesson:  that there is more accident to it than a man
> > can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane" and the task of the poet
> to
> > invent "pious metaphor" to cloak the isolated and accidental nature of
> > things.
> >
> > I suspect that Aquinas may also be helpful in understanding the "unsought
> > good" becoming "more accessible" to us at the end of AtD. There seem to
> be
> > some important theological concepts at play here.
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170811/1ac842ec/attachment.html>