From a New York Times obituary online today —
“He was an absolutely brilliant reader
at taking what seemed to be the knots,
or the impenetrability, or the downright
insanity of a piece of writing, and just
saying, ‘Hey, guys, that’s the point.’”
See as well Humpty Dumpty and unit e .
Impenetrability vs. Interpenetration
The previous post discussed impenetrability .
To give the opposing concept of interpenetration
a fair hearing, see . . .
More generally, see a search for interpenetration in this journal.
(And for Mustang Sally)
|
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.' Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!' 'Would you tell me please,' said Alice, 'what that means?' 'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.' 'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone. 'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.' |
"We are not isolated free chosers,
monarchs of all we survey, but
benighted creatures sunk in a reality
whose nature we are constantly and
overwhelmingly tempted to deform
by fantasy."
—Iris Murdoch, "Against Dryness"
in Encounter , p. 20 of issue 88
(vol. 16 no. 1, January 1961, pp. 16-20)
"We need to turn our attention away from the consoling
dream necessity of Romanticism, away from the dry
symbol, the bogus individual, the false whole, towards
the real impenetrable human person."
— Iris Murdoch, 1961
"Impenetrability! That's what I say!"
"It's still the same old story…"
See Glory in this journal.
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master— that's all.'
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they're the proudest— adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs— however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
'Would you tell me please,' said Alice, 'what that means?'
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'
See also Interpenetration in this journal… and in Northrop Frye.
“This passage… equates the big Other
with the impenetrability of another subject
beyond the ‘wall of language’….”
Geometry and Theology
See
the science fiction writer mentioned in a Friday entry.
Mark Olson’s article is at the website of the New England Science Fiction Association, publisher of Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson. This book, by one of my favorite science-fiction authors, was apparently edited by the same Mark Olson.
The following remarks seem relevant to the recurring telepathy theme in Henderson:
From the first article cited above,
David L. Neuhouser,
Higher Dimensions in the Writings of C. S. Lewis (pdf):
“If we are three-dimensional cross-sections of four-dimensional reality, perhaps we are parts of the same body. In fact, we know we are parts of the same body in some way, this four-dimensional idea just may help us to see it more clearly. Remember the preceding comments are mine, not Lewis’s. He puts it this way, ‘That we can die “in” Adam and live “in” Christ seems to me to imply that man as he really is differs a good deal from man as our categories of thought and our three-dimensional imaginations represent him; that the separateness… which we discern between individuals, is balanced, in absolute reality, by some kind of inter-inanimation of which we have no conception at all. It may be that the acts and sufferings of great archetypal individuals such as Adam and Christ are ours, not by legal fiction, metaphor, or causality, but in some much deeper fashion. There is no question, of course, of individuals melting down into a kind of spiritual continuum such as Pantheistic systems believe in; that is excluded by the whole tenor of our faith.'”
From Webster’s Unabridged, 1913 edition:
inanimate,
[Pref. in- in (or intensively) + animate.]
inanimation, n.
animation; inspiration.
The inanimation of Christ
living and breathing within us.
— Bp. Hall.
Related words…
Also from the 1913 Webster’s:
circumincession, n.
of the three persons of the Trinity.
From an online essay:
perichoresis, n.
“The term means mutual indwelling or, better, mutual interpenetration and refers to the understanding of both the Trinity and Christology. In the divine perichoresis, each person has ‘being in each other without coalescence’ (John of Damascus ca. 650). The roots of this doctrine are long and deep.”
— Bert Waggoner
coinherence, n.
“In our human experience of personhood, at any rate in a fallen world, there is in each person an inevitable element of exclusiveness, of opaqueness and impenetrability. But with the three divine persons it is not so. Each is entirely ‘open’ to the others, totally transparent and receptive. This transparency and receptivity is summed up in the Greek notion of perichoresis, which Gibbon once called ‘the deepest and darkest corner of the whole theological abyss.’ Rendered in Latin as circumincessio and in English usually as ‘coinherence,’ the Greek term means literally, cyclical movement, and so reciprocity, interchange, mutual indwelling. The prefix peri bears the sense ‘around,’ while choresis is linked with chora, ‘room,’ space,’ ‘place’ or ‘container,’ and with chorein, to ‘go,’ ‘advance,’ ‘make room for’ or ‘contain.’ Some also see a connection with choros, ‘dance,’ and so they take perichoresis to mean ’round dance.’ Applied to Christ, the term signifies that his two natures, the divine and the human, interpenetrate one another without separation and without confusion. Applied to the Trinity, it signifies that each person ‘contains’ the other two and ‘moves’ within them. In the words of St Gregory of Nyssa, ‘All that is the Father’s is seen in the Son, and all that is the Son’s belongs also the Father. For the whole Son abides in the Father, and he has in his turn the whole Father abiding in himself.’
— Timothy Ware, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia,
The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity
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