From a post of April 15, 2006 —
From elsewhere —
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Notes for the Harrowing of Hell
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Saturday, April 4, 2015
Harrowing of Hell (continued)
Holy Saturday is, according to tradition, the day of
the harrowing of Hell.
Notes:
The above passage on "Die Figuren der vier Modi
im Magischen Quadrat " should be read in the context of
a Log24 post from last year's Devil's Night (the night of
October 30-31). The post, "Structure," indicates that, using
the transformations of the diamond theorem, the notorious
"magic" square of Albrecht Dürer may be transformed
into normal reading order. That order is only one of
322,560 natural reading orders for any 4×4 array of
symbols. The above four "modi" describe another.
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Saturday, April 19, 2014
Harrowing Pater
For the first word of the title, see The Harrowing of Hell.
For the second, see Pater and Hopkins.
This post was suggested by yesterday’s Symmetry and by…
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Saturday, March 30, 2013
Blackboard Jungle
Harrowing of Hell (Catholic Encyclopedia )
"This is the Old English and Middle English term
for the triumphant descent of Christ into hell (or Hades)
between the time of His Crucifixion and His Resurrection,
when, according to Christian belief, He brought salvation
to the souls held captive there since the beginning of the world."
Through the Blackboard (Feb. 25, 2010)—
See also The Dreaming Jewels and Colorful Tale.
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Saturday, April 7, 2012
Background
From Joyce's 1912 Trieste lecture on Blake:
"Michelangelo's influence is felt in all of Blake's work, and especially in some passages of prose collected in the fragments, in which he always insists on the importance of the pure, clean line that evokes and creates the figure on the background of the uncreated void."
For a related thought from Michelangelo, see Marmo Solo .
For pure, clean lines, see Galois Geometry.
As for "the uncreated void," see the Ernst Gombrich link in Marmo Solo for "an almost medieval allegory of how man confronts the void."
For some related religious remarks suited to the Harrowing of Hell on this Holy Saturday, see August 16, 2003.
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Monday, August 2, 2010
Specific and Robust
The New York Times version of the philosophers' stone:
In the Times 's latest sermon from THE STONE, Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, discusses
"…the specific and robust claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam about how God is concretely and continually involved in our existence."
A search shows that Gutting's phrase "specific and robust" has many echoes in biotechnology, and a few in software development. The latter is of more interest to me than the former. (The poetically inclined might say that Professor Gutting's line of work is a sort of software development.)
"As a developer, you need a specific and robust set of development tools in the smallest and simplest package possible."
— EasyEclipse web page
Here are two notes on related material:
Specific— The Pit:
See a search for "harrowing of Hell" in this journal.
("…right through hell there is a path…." –Malcolm Lowry)
Robust— The Pendulum:
See a search for "Foucault's Pendulum" in this journal.
(“Others say it is a stone that posseses mysterious powers…. often depicted as a dazzling light. It’s a symbol representing power, a source of immense energy. It nourishes, heals, wounds, blinds, strikes down…. Some have thought of it as the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists….”
Those puzzled by why the NY Times would seek the opinions of a professor at a Catholic university may consult Gutting's home page.
He is an expert on the gay Communist Michel Foucault, a student of Althusser.
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010
07 Book
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
A Talent for Writing, and Falling Into Things
(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/books/07book.html)
The above headline from this morning's New York Times is a rather strong reminder of a post linked to here last night— a post from April 10, 2004 (Holy Saturday), titled "Harrowing."
The book under review is a biography of William Golding, also quoted here in "Harrowing."
From that post—
“There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ. The Consul is hurled into this abyss at the end of the novel.”
– Stephen Spender, introduction to Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano
Related material:
|
Theater of Truth rift-design— Definition by Deborah Levitt— "Rift. The stroke or rending by which a world worlds, opening both the 'old' world and the self-concealing earth to the possibility of a new world. As well as being this stroke, the rift is the site— the furrow or crack— created by the stroke. As the 'rift design' it is the particular characteristics or traits of this furrow." – "Heidegger and the Theater of Truth," in Tympanum: A Journal of Comparative Literary Studies, Vol. 1, 1998 See also "harrow up" + Hamlet in this journal. |
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Sunday, April 4, 2010
Virgil Vigil
Two definitions–
"In Dante's Inferno the Harrowing of Hell is mentioned in Canto IV by the pilgrim's guide Virgil." —Wikipedia
"The Easter Vigil…. is held in the hours of darkness between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day." —Wikipedia
Two more, of acronyms coined by Philip Rieff—
"Rieff is critical of the present 'pop' culture that glories in the 'primacies of possibility' and prefers 'both/and' to 'either/or.' … the 'via'— the 'vertical in authority'—… teaches us our place as we assent to and ascend on via’s ladder." —Philip Manning
Related material:
The infinity symbol, as sketched in a touching
attempt at scholarship by the late
"both/and" novelist David Foster Wallace—
Lemniscate with Cartesian cross—
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Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Wednesday July 9, 2008
God, Time, Epiphany
8:28:32 AM
Anthony Hopkins, from
All Hallows' Eve
last year:
"For me time is God,
God is time. It's an equation,
like an Einstein equation."
James Joyce, from
June 26 (the day after
AntiChristmas) this year:
"… he glanced up at the clock
of the Ballast Office and smiled:
— It has not epiphanised yet,
he said."
Ezra Pound (from a page
linked to yesterday morning):
"It seems quite natural to me
that an artist should have
just as much pleasure in an
arrangement of planes
or in a pattern of figures,
as in painting portraits…."
From Epiphany 2008:
An arrangement of planes:
From May 10, 2008:
A pattern of figures:
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See also Richard Wilhelm on
Hexagram 32 of the I Ching:
"Duration is a state whose movement is not worn down by hindrances. It is not a state of rest, for mere standstill is regression. Duration is rather the self-contained and therefore self-renewing movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole, taking place in accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending. The end is reached by an inward movement, by inhalation, systole, contraction, and this movement turns into a new beginning, in which the movement is directed outward, in exhalation, diastole, expansion."
— The Middle-English
Harrowing of Hell…
by Hulme, 1907, page 64
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Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Tuesday July 8, 2008
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
Thursday October 11, 2007
The Nobel Prize
in Literature
Background from 1947:
in Literature
this year goes to the author
of The Golden Notebook
and The Cleft.
Related material:
The Golden Obituary
and Cleavage —
Log24, Oct. 9, 2007 —
Background from 1947:
Further details:
Wheel
Quoted by physics writer
Heinz Pagels at the end of
The Cosmic Code:
“For the essence and the end
Of his labor is beauty… one beauty,
the rhythm of that Wheel….”
— Robinson Jeffers
|
“The Ferris wheel came into view again, just the top, silently burning high on the hill, almost directly in front of him, then the trees rose up over it. The road, which was terrible and full of potholes, went steeply downhill here; he was approaching the little bridge over the barranca, the deep ravine. Halfway across the bridge he stopped; he lit a new cigarette from the one he’d been smoking, and leaned over the parapet, looking down. It was too dark to see the bottom, but: here was finality indeed, and cleavage! Quauhnahuac was like the times in this respect, wherever you turned the abyss was waiting for you round the corner. Dormitory for vultures and city of Moloch! When Christ was being crucified, so ran the sea-borne, hieratic legend, the earth had opened all through this country…” — Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, 1947. (Harper & Row reissue, 1984, p. 15) Comment by Stephen Spender: “There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ. The Consul is hurled into this abyss at the end of the novel.” — Introduction to Under the Volcano Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXI — Gibbon, discussing the theology of the Trinity, defines perichoresis as “… the internal connection and spiritual penetration which indissolubly unites the divine persons59 ….
William Golding: “Simon’s head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him. ‘What are you doing out here all alone? Aren’t you afraid of me?’ Simon shook. ‘There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast.’ Simon’s mouth labored, brought forth audible words. ‘Pig’s head on a stick.’ ‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close!’ “ “Thought of the day: — Alice Woodrome, Good Friday, 2004 Anne Francis,
“Here was finality indeed, — Under the Volcano |
For further details of
the wheel metaphor, see
Rock of Ages
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Tuesday June 22, 2004
Dirty Trick
Some quotations in memory of philosopher Stuart Hampshire, who died on June 13, 2004.
From the Hampshire obituary in The Guardian:
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I He frequently told the story of how, towards the end of the war, he had to interrogate a French traitor (imprisoned by the Free French), who refused to cooperate unless he was allowed to live. Should Hampshire, knowing the man was condemned to die, promise him a reprieve, which he was in no position to give, or truthfully refuse it, thereby jeopardising the lives of Resistance fighters? “If you’re in a war,” said Hampshire, “you can’t start thinking, ‘Well I can’t lie to a man who’s going to be shot tomorrow and tell him that he isn’t.’ ” But what the whole anecdote, and its incessant retelling, revealed was that Hampshire had, in fact, thought precisely what he said was unthinkable, and that whichever of the two decisions he finally took lay heavy on his conscience ever afterwards. Indicatively, too, it was especially loathsome to him because, although he did not say this in so many words, the traitor was almost a mirror image of himself – a cultivated young intellectual, looking like a film star, much influenced by elegant literary stylists – except that, in the traitor’s case, his literary mentors were fascist. II It is hard to know how Hampshire’s academic career was vitiated by the scandal over his affair with Ayer’s wife Renee, whom he married in 1961 after a divorce in which he was named as co-respondent. Even if less a matter of the dons’ moral conviction than their concern over how All Souls would appear, the affair caused a massive furore…. |
From a log24 entry on the day before Hampshire’s death:
|
I “Hemingway called it a dirty trick. It might even be an ancient Ordeal laid down on us by an evil Inquisitor in Space…. the dirty Ordeal by — Jack Kerouac in Desolation Angels II The New Yorker of June 14 & 21, 2004: …in ‘The Devil’s Eye,’ Bergman’s little-known comedy of 1960. Pablo seduces the wife of a minister, and then, sorrowful and sated, falling to his knees, he addresses her thus: ‘First, I’ll finish off that half-dug vegetable patch I saw. Then I’ll sit and let the rain fall on me. I shall feel wonderfully cool. And I’ll breakfast on one of those sour apples down by the gate. After that, I shall go back to |
Whether Hampshire is now in Hell, the reader may surmise. Some evidence in Hampshire’s favor:
His review of On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry, in The New York Review of Books of November 18, 1999. Note particularly his remarks on Fred Astaire, and the links to Astaire and the Four Last Things in an earlier entry of June 12, which was, as noted above, the day before Hampshire’s death.
As for the day of death itself, consider the following remark with which Hampshire concludes his review of Scarry’s book:
“But one must occasionally fly the flag, and the flag, incorrigibly, is beauty.”
In this connection, see the entry of the Sunday Hampshire died, Spider Web, as well as entries on the harrowing of hell — Holy Saturday,
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Thursday April 29, 2004
X
Tonight on PBS:
The Jesus Factor
|
3 PM
For an explanation |
|
“There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ. The Consul is hurled into this abyss at the end of the novel.” — Introduction to Couleurs
In memory of On the former: “The predominant use On the latter: |
“…a ‘dead shepherd who brought
tremendous chords from hell
And bade the sheep carouse’ “
(p. 227, The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Vintage Books, 1990)
— Wallace Stevens
as quoted by Michael Bryson
See also the entries of 5/12.
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Saturday, April 10, 2004
Saturday April 10, 2004
Harrowing
"The Ferris wheel came into view again, just the top, silently burning high on the hill, almost directly in front of him, then the trees rose up over it. The road, which was terrible and full of potholes, went steeply downhill here; he was approaching the little bridge over the barranca, the deep ravine. Halfway across the bridge he stopped; he lit a new cigarette from the one he'd been smoking, and leaned over the parapet, looking down. It was too dark to see the bottom, but: here was finality indeed, and cleavage! Quauhnahuac was like the times in this respect, wherever you turned the abyss was waiting for you round the corner. Dormitory for vultures and city of Moloch! When Christ was being crucified, so ran the sea-borne, hieratic legend, the earth had opened all through this country …"
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, 1947. (Harper & Row reissue, 1984, p. 15)
Comment by Stephen Spender:
"There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ. The Consul is hurled into this abyss at the end of the novel."
— Introduction to Under the Volcano
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXI —
Gibbon, discussing the theology of the Trinity, defines perichoresis as
"… the internal connection and spiritual penetration which indissolubly unites the divine persons59 ….
59 … The
or 'circumincessio,' is perhaps the deepest and darkest corner of the whole theological abyss."
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
William Golding:
"Simon's head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.
'What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?'
Simon shook.
'There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast.'
Simon's mouth labored, brought forth audible words.
'Pig's head on a stick.'
'Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!' said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. 'You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close!' "
"Thought of the day:
You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar… if you're into catchin' flies."
— Alice Woodrome, Good Friday, 2004
Anne Francis,
also known as
Honey West:
"Here was finality indeed,
and cleavage!"
— Under the Volcano
From the official
Anne Francis Web Site:
Come into my parlor….
For some background,
see the use of the word
"spider" in Under the Volcano:
WRIDER/ESPIDER:
THE CONSUL AS ARTIST IN
UNDER THE VOLCANO,
by Patrick A. McCarthy.
See, too, Why Me?
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Saturday April 19, 2003
Harrowing
In memory of the many who have died on April 19, most notably Octavio Paz.
"There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ."
— Introduction to Malcolm Lowry's classic novel Under the Volcano, by Stephen Spender
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|
|
"Hey, big Spender, spend a little time
with me." — Song lyric
For a somewhat deeper meditation on time, see Architecture of Eternity.
See also Literature of the Descent into Hell.
"Mexico is a solar country — but it is also a black country, a dark country. This duality of Mexico has preoccupied me since I was a child."
— Octavio Paz, quoted by Homero Aridjis
Amen.
Concluding Unscientific Postscripts:
"Once upon a time…" — Anonymous
"It's quarter to three…" — Sinatra
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