The Private Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano and The Cabbala 
by 

Perle Besserman

 

Coming to God the Hard Way

That Under the Volcano is permeated by Cabbalistic references - from its overall organisation to its linguistic details - is attested by Lowry in his own comments about the work. The interesting question, for me, is why. And Epstein provides some compelling answers.

Geoffrey Firmin, the protagonist of Under the Volcano, is designated by Lowry as a Cabbalist. Epstein/Besserman, following on from Lowry, sees him as a mystical magician, a god-man who will heroically take on all of human sin and die for it as a scapegoat. He is in effect the Messiah.

Firmin is also a drunk. From the novel’s beginning to its tragic end, Firmin is heavily under the influence. But in good Cabbalistic fashion, Firmin’s drunkenness is not a vice but rather a disguised virtue. It is a quasi-mystical state through which the potential Messiah, much like Jesus, can enter the “Kelipah, the pit of demons, in order to release the power necessary for the redemption of mankind.” As Epstein notes: “[In Kabbalah] Evil is not to be shunned… [it is] actually another aspect of God’s multiple manifestations.”

Redemption from what? Why does Firmin have to pass through his own labyrinthine hell and die with ignominy? Lowry was intrigued by the occult and religion. But he was not an adherent of any sect, practices, or beliefs. He was a writer. So the redemption Lowry has in mind, while ‘spiritual’ in some sense, is literary not Jewish much less Christian. Firmin, or perhaps more accurately the novel, is directed not toward the abstract religious idea of universal salvation but the personal salvation of the reader from the literalness of the text itself.

This reversal is spiritual in a very specific sense and is inspired by the Cabbalah. The effect is to undermine one’s understanding of the story. That is to say, the language of Under the Volcano negates itself. In doing so, the power of language is both exerted and then undermined. Language is shown to have its own agenda. I can think of no better word than ‘revelation’ to describe what the book does. By revealing the existential inadequacy of language, it has the potential to save us from our real original sin: our mindless submission to the power of our most powerful creation.

 

In a Hotel Garden 
by 

Gabriel Josipovici

 

BlackOxford's review 

Jun 28, 2021  ·  edit

it was amazing

bookshelves: british, epistemology-language 

Living In Ambiguity

Deciding about what’s real is a tiring business for the one deciding, and rather more tiresome for any friends or relations within earshot. Not everyone feels the need to pursue this delicate art. But those who do are typically obsessive. They live in a perpetual state of doubt and uncertainty.

The search for reality is a step up from truth-seeking. Truth is subject to logic - state a premise and a qualification and you’re off to the races. It’s a purely linguistic thing. But reality is not about truth. It’s about meaning, which is in a constant battle against the language in which it is expressed. Meaning can be based on entirely false facts (as the world now knows from the antics of America’s ex-president). And the way meaning is arrived at is mysterious. There are no rules for deriving meaning.

More significantly, meaning can never be linguistically fixed. As soon as it is explored or explained, meaning evaporates It often becomes trivial or incomprehensible. But mostly it transforms itself into other meanings. Meaning cannot rest. It can never be authenticated or disproven, although many will attempt to do both according to the rules of truth-seeking.

Nevertheless it is meaning and not truth which drives our lives. It simply doesn’t matter what the facts of the case are. In fact the facts of the case are dependent upon meaning and not vice versa. Those who take meaning seriously know this is the case and consider meaning for what it is - a decision, perhaps the fundamental decision of one’s life.

There are others who take meaning to be obvious. These people are dangerous. Their danger is proportionate to their smugness. Their smugness is apparent in their lack of concern about the nature of meaning and their responsibility toward it. They are easily led and just as easily mis-led. But they really don’t care about that because it means nothing to them.

 

The Book of God: A Response to the Bible 
by 

Gabriel Josipovici

 

BlackOxford's review 

Jun 24, 2021  ·  edit

it was amazing

bookshelves: epistemology-language, philosophy-theology 

The Medium Is Not The Message

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” From its opening sentence in the book editorialised as Genesis, the Bible is flooded with ambiguity, especially in the original Hebrew.* What is it that God has done? Organised a pre-existing chaos or brought into existence the fundamental stuff of the world? And how was it done? Through a divine thought separate from divinity itself? By the utterance of pre-linguistic word? Or perhaps through a command given to nothing to become something?

That opening sentence and its successors all demand interpretation. And according to Josipovici, not to mention history, the Bible is likely unique in the plethora of interpretations that are possible - many highly interesting, provocative and instructive, but none definitive. 

The Bible’s ambiguity is not incidental. Uncertainty and fecundity of meaning are its central characteristics. The Bible itself in both its Jewish and Christian versions is the product of numerous re-interpretations of itself by story-tellers, writers, editors, and redactors. It is in effect a reflection of religious thinking about itself, a self-referential and therefore self-contained entity whose unity can only be discerned within itself.

As Josipovici shows, the fragmentary additions, emendations, and substantial alterations to the sacred texts over time have resulted in a rather unexpected unified whole whose parts cannot be understood without an appreciation of this whole. Certainly the narrative subject of this whole is a story of Creation, the Fall into sin, and Redemption. But there is also an abiding meta-narrative of the unintelligibility of divine intention at any moment. The God of the Bible is nothing if not surprising in the apparent range and intensity of his emotions, his frequent contradictory actions, and his essential inscrutability.

This is the point, something the characters of the Bible couldn’t know about, neither the narrators, nor the prophets, perhaps not even Jesus. But the reader cannot but be aware that the God of the Bible is inherently unknowable. This is the message of the whole not its parts, although its parts contribute to the overall meaning. When asked his name by Moses, God answers with a non-answer: Being. Nowhere in the Bible is God described or reasons given for his attitudes which are often vengeful, erratic, and simply cruel. Such descriptive presumptions as are made are recorded as blasphemy. God is hidden, mysterious, beyond any rationale of existence or action. In short God is entirely outside of any language used to recount God, divine actions, or human imperatives implied by these actions. God’s word may be the cause of everything but no one except God is privy to the divine vocabulary or grammar.

In a sense, as most religious authorities are keen to insist upon, revelation of divinity stopped at some point in history - for Jews after the completion of the Writings, for Christians after the death of the Apostles. Revelation perhaps did end when the Bible itself could no longer be pinned down to a specific meaning. What follows then is a virtual infinity of interpretations reflecting the depth and scope of Biblical concerns. God and his revelations, unlike most ancient myth and the conceits of modern science, explain nothing. They prove all explanations inadequate and presumptuous.

In other words, the Bible provides a spiritual and cultural agenda. It is not a “how to” for a life of good but a challenge to identify the good and act accordingly. It is also a warning that the most important aspect of this challenge is the self-serving rationalisations which blind us to the good. We are trapped in our own self-interests and in the very language that we use to determine the good. The Bible’s enduring brilliance is its repetitive insistence that it should not be used for precisely these justifications. As the great 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, noted: God’s word is not Man’s word. And ultimately that is what the Bible is: Man’s word trying to reach beyond itself. When it is taken as more, it fails entirely.

* One of the many facts ignored by biblical literalists (as well as the casual reader) is the relative grammatical paucity of Hebrew. Tense for example is suggested by context, and often even then only incompletely. In addition, the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament contains only word roots - consonants without their accompanying vowels - which may have vastly disparate meanings depending on the vowels attached. Add to that the inherent difficulties (sometimes impossibilities) involved in any translation from one language to another and the silliness of literalists becomes obvious. Paradoxically, the Septuagint translation of the original Masoretic text is in Greek, arguably the most precise and grammatically nuanced language ever developed - perhaps making the translation appear far more definitive than it actually is.

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A Vegan Meal

I like Korelitz. She’s got style and skill and imagination. All of those are here. But I don’t like the meal. There’s no meat. It’s cleverly put together but ultimately unsatisfying. I think it’s what they call a beach read. Perhaps, since I didn’t read it on the beach, that’s why I’m disappointed. Context matters after all.

View all my reviews