Book of Mercy #16-19

[Manna]

I know that we need to find meaning (although I can’t relate to Manna’s fear of ‘word salad’) but I am comfortable with it moving, changing and contradicting itself with each new post (she says to prepare for the disagreement that will follow ).

I enjoy and am comfortable having my mind changed; that is one way to define learning (or mood swings ), and if you look closely I display inconsistencies fairly frequently, I hope.

me? mood swings? P'shaw!
But for now I am too pleased seeing you use my little phrase to feel much like arguing, even if it is only in quotes.

Regarding the pronoun thing again - when you watch a flick or read a book, how much do you identify with the characters? Do you get involved emotionally? Do you get turned on during the sex scenes? Do you glare at the bad guy? It's one way to consider Leonard's "I." Do you watch a movie or do you experience it?

((And now for sale we have the Manna home theatre system with tactile interface. You can ruin the day, kill the girl, and go home with the bad guy - right from the comfort of your own couch. Only $40,000 for primary installation in your home today. All restrictions apply, no overseas shipping.))

[blonde madonna]

Still, I do believe that the text should come first, and we must extract whatever we can from it, within reason, before turning our eyes outside. After all, a good poem has so much to tell us in itself, and it is usually the better poems that stand on their own without external crutches.

We are in complete agreement here DBC. I am against using Cohen autobiography as a starting point and for looking at the text as it stands.

Am I being at all clear? I'm trying to talk w/o exposing too too much. It's the best I can do just now.

Manna I was a little confused but I think we should pay more attention to the idea of joy expressed in this verse so keep at it.

[Manna]

keeping at it...

You let me sing,
you lifted me up,
you gave my soul a beam to travel on.
You folded your distance back into my heart.
You drew the tears back to my eyes.
You hid me in the mountain of your word.
You gave the injury a tongue to heal itself.
You covered my head with my teacher’s care,
you bound my arm with my grandfather’s strength.

O beloved speaking,
O comfort whispering in the terror,
unspeakable explanation of the smoke and cruelty,

undo the self-conspiracy,
let me dare the boldness of joy.

I like looking at this the way Greg reformatted it.

What I was talking around is a personal experience I am currently having. Looking at this experience in the context of this passage causes me to question how (or maybe whether) we should put judgments on the validity of our various sources of joy. I called them expected joy and true joy, but I could have done better. I should have called them the expected and the unexpected. They both are true.

In this passage, Leonard seems to me to first acknowledge the joy that comes from his tradition and his G-d. This is the expected joy – expected by the one who experiences it as well as expected by the culture for its persons. It’s a litany of things he likes about God and being Jewish.

In Greg’s second stanza, L addresses his subject, which I take to be God, but could be parental. He calls this One “…beloved…comfort…unspeakable explanation.” And then he asks to have his self-conspiracy undone and to have joy. But he’s already told us that there is joy – in the first part. So what joy is he looking for? A conspiracy is a secret plan to do something harmful, so what is a self-conspiracy? A secret plan to harm yourself? I think he’s addressing pain, but what pain? Smoke & cruelty. Hmmm.

I had been planning to talk about guilt, but I’m not so sure now. My suspicion, for lack of a better word, is that the guilt originates while trying to reconcile sources of joy that seem to be in conflict. For instance, can he allow himself to be a Jew and also accept Jesus as his savior? Can he be so bold?

And I take the message personally and ask, can I be so bold as to have these two sources of joy that I have that seem to be in conflict and that I don’t want to disclose here?

[blonde madonna]

This is not directly related but reading Manna's post brought it to mind. I have just finished reading Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (I thought my daughter might be interested in it because it gives a perspective on the recent Virginia Tech incident) and the father of the school shooter is a university lecturer who is studying happiness and attempting to quantify it with the use of formulas (I think Picoult is having a go at how the quantitative is valued over the qualitative in research – is there such research actually being done?)

The formula is H = R/E, or happiness equals reality divided by expectation.
It all sounds simplistic and vaguely silly but, assuming reality is constant, an optimist has expectations greater than reality, a pessimist has expectation lower than reality. The character muses that if you invert the equation – expectation divided by reality – you don’t get the opposite of happiness, you get hope.

As I said it is not directly related but it has me thinking about the very idea that attaining joy might be simple, that you could follow a set path and lo, there it is. Joy, the different types (physical, spiritual etc), all the different aspects and elements of reaching for joy and the possibility of attaining joy at all, let alone for an extended period.

In this passage, Leonard seems to me to first acknowledge the joy that comes from his tradition and his G-d. This is the expected joy – expected by the one who experiences it as well as expected by the culture for its persons. It’s a litany of things he likes about God and being Jewish.

This is an interesting way of looking at this verse.

And then he asks to have his self-conspiracy undone and to have joy. But he’s already told us that there is joy – in the first part. So what joy is he looking for?

I think Mat’s apostate thoughts earlier might connect to spiritual aspects of what that joy might be.

I am afraid you lost me with the conspiracy part, which might be because you are approaching it from a personal experience that I don’t share.
Anyway, this verse looks different in each different light.

[Manna]

I was just trying to figure out what the conspiracy was, so here we are both confused, unless you have unshared thoughts about it.

I paraphrased the definition I put up after reading what my little desktop (problem-filled) dictionary said, and I left out the part that conspiracy is something done by a group. (I know you already know this.) I left it out because I didn't understand how it could fit, but I have an idea now that lets it play against the culture-driven expected joy vs. the personal unexpected joy.

I also think that the parent-or-God thing may be reconciled if he's talking about living as a One in a culture - the apostate, or becoming the apostate, or considering becoming the apostate.

It's making more sense to me now, so if I'm repeating what's already been said, well, sorry. I'm still finding joy in the discussion.

[mat james]

Manna wrote/asks,

What is the object of your desire to understand? Is it the Leonard who wrote these works?

That is a funny question for a thread set up to analyse Leonard Cohen’s work!
But it is also valid, I suppose, to find out what motivates one to understand.

My answer is pretty simple really, Manna.
As soon as I heard his songs, I thought, “This guy thinks like me.”
Listening to him was a kind of affirmation that I was on the right track.

Interestingly enough I attended the blessing of a Tibetan Buddhist “Stupa” in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, on the Thursday 7th June, and I heard another guy (The Dalai Lama) talk beautifully about attitudes of religious tolerance and eclecticism. After listening to him for an hour or so, I again felt that “affirmation” that I was on the right track, and that he was also!
I looked around the gathering and saw many people in tears and I suppose that was their expression of affirmation. I didn’t feel like crying, I felt like shaking his hand, one man to another,and, in my own quiet way, that is what I did, (in my mind at least).

“What is the object of your desire to understand?

Manna”

As Popeye would say:
“I yam what I yam and I is what I is!
Those guys above “are who they are and do what they do”.
The same goes for me, I suppose.
Chasing the common thread of mysticism is what I do. I look for people who think like me. (It is easy to find many who don’t think like me!!!)
And when people like Leonard or Solomon or Juan de la Cruz and the Dalai Lama express their journey beautifully, then I stop and listen and contemplate and occasionally applaud and laugh and sigh. In these lucky moments, rare as they are, I am both happy and fortunate.

Matj

[Manna]

That is a funny question for a thread set up to analyse Leonard Cohen’s work!

I suppose I have to say that is a good point, and I appreciate that you've given me a way to understand you, if only a little starting point. I'd gotten the impression that you were into mysticism, but I didn't know how much a mucho part of your life it was.

Hi, Mat, nice to meet you.

I don't know much about mysticism, Judaism, or any other religion/practice/way really, so I'm just kind of trying things and going along like a shivering cat in a row boat. Sometimes she gets somewhere, but she doesn't know how to use the tools. I've fallen in love with a few things Leonard has written, and of the poets out there that I have read, I have probably read him the most. But still, many times when I think I have a hold on one of these (unshod, hee hee hee, Tchoc, you crack me up) fishies, they go flipping and squirting right out of my grasp again, and turn into a different kind of fish. Maybe that means they're alive (eyes roll). (Ooh, and that kitty goes paw-paw-pawing...)

I can't remember if it was here or another forum I frequent or maybe something I was reading, but a similar discussion was taking place there about how to go about understanding a literary work, and specifically how much importance to place upon your knowledge of the author. Someone had a "kill the author" thing, another was sticking up for the poem-in-the-context-of-its-author idea. Well, the only opinion I have is that I can't fabricate an opinion for something like that. I'm not up for killing anyone, but I do like to ignore the guy sometimes.

[Manna]

I came upon an intersting sentence I thought I'd share. But allow me to make it clear that I'm not out to send some secret message to anyone. Just hoping to spark some debate on how to read, assuming that's not inappropriate here.

Instead of asking how things are in fact, and how one can find out, one wonders mostly whether one has got the author's point; and if one has, one may even feel superior to those who have not.

This is from the prologue of the Walter Kaufmann translation of Buber's I and Thou.

Here are some other things he says a bit later.

Modern man is a voracious reader who has never learned to read well. Part of the trouble is that he is taught to read drivel that is hardly worth reading at all. (There was a time when Jewish children learned to read by reading the Bible.)
One ends up by reading mainly newspapers and magazines-ephemeral, anonymous trash that one scans on its way to the garbage can. ... There is no person behind what one reads; not even a committee. ... It cries out to be forgotten soon, like the books on which one learned to read, in school. They were usually anonymous, too; or they should have been.
...
We must learn to feel addressed by a book, by the human being behind it, as if a person spoke directly to us. A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response.

Kaufmann's use of punctuation seems foreign to me, though the ellipses are my own omissions for the sake of brevity.

I've been approaching the idea that everything I do should be prayer. The "good" kind of reading that I think he's talking about fits nicely. And I like it because it's an idea, an ideal, I aspire to. To apply this ideal to my human encounters may be useful, which is another reason for me to read this book. Though I don't yet know if that is the author's point. ha ha.

Shall I tell you what this means to me? It means that all the ones who come here and say this or that about a reference or how an image is related to a religious Text, you are treasures. All those who come here and say things about Leonard's life, you are Angels. And the ones who come and say, here's what it means to me, and I disagree, well, that's what I think I am, so I don't feel comfortable naming it. But because many of us are doing this in different ways, I'll say that words like human and contact did come to mind. Oh love, I think BoM merits reading well, and I think we're doing OK.

[blonde madonna]

one wonders mostly whether one has got the author's point; and if one has, one may even feel superior to those who have not.

A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response.

I am sorry Manna, I cannot agree with what this person says, he sounds so 'frightfully old hat'. I don't think being a translator makes you an expert on reading and I am uncomfortable with his generalizations.

Please don't think you should be doing only the "good" kind of reading, it is really too limiting!

Although the western culture is at constant risk of being completely dumbed down by the endless rubbish about Paris Hilton, we need to read widely to remain engaged with that culture. I read as much as I can of practically everything (as I am sure you do for we can't avoid it) but I do have to make time to read the 'nourishing stuff' like BoM, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and Independance Day by Richard Ford (to name a couple of American authors I love).

Let me add that I do find your opinions on things engaging and interesting even if I don't always agree.

[mat james]

B.M. says,

I am sorry Manna, I cannot agree with what this person says, he sounds so 'frightfully old hat'. I don't think being a translator makes you an expert on reading and I am uncomfortable with his generalizations.

I'll go along with Kaufmann and Manna on this one.

Part of the trouble is that he is taught to read drivel that is hardly worth reading at all Kaufmann

To discriminate or not to discriminate, that is the question!
There is so much to read, and I read slowly!

We select the food we eat
the music we listen to
the friends we spend time with
the holiday destinations we take
the toothpaste we use
perhaps the job we do
maybe the person we live with too?

Why not the books/authors we read??????

"Life is folly.
The wise man chooses his folly." Carlos Casteneda's, don Juan.(A separate reality)

Matj.

[Manna]

one wonders mostly whether one has got the author's point; and if one has, one may even feel superior to those who have not.

A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response.

I am sorry Manna, I cannot agree with what this person says, he sounds so 'frightfully old hat'. I don't think being a translator makes you an expert on reading and I am uncomfortable with his generalizations.

Please don't think you should be doing only the "good" kind of reading, it is really too limiting!

I think it’s funny that it looks to me like you did what you’re arguing against.
Limiting? I'll have to think about that.
I don't only read this "good" way. For me, it is the work itself and what I aim to get out of it that determines how much I will invest in these two, possibly opposing, tasks – understanding the author as a person speaking these words, and formulating a response. Sometimes the author’s intent is to not be considered as a person at all, for instance in most scientific articles, and possibly in newspapers & mags, though even in these cases one can get familiar enough with any author to recognize a person there. I don't think Kaufmann says we should be reading this stuff in any other way, though he does use a tone that suggests we shouldn't be reading it all. His problem is that people may be reading books, poems and essays in a certain cursory or superficial way, and that is shameful when an author has put his personal humanity into the work. And don't forget that this was from the prologue to a book that is about relations, where such generalizations are more appropriate than if they stood on their own.

I too have read the fiction of Marilynn Robinson. According to one of Steven King’s essays, the publisher did a crappy job of selling Gilead, this beautifully written, too-good-for-its-own-good book, so not many people have read it. (But I did.) That you've claimed reading good fiction as a way to be engaged with a culture that largely has not feels strange to me. Please help. (Did you read Housekeeping too? Could you tell that it was from a younger version of Marilynn?)

I hope I don't get accused of hijacking the thread. I'm not out to change anyone. Thanks, though.

We could have a whole other discussion about the value of being engaged in a culture.

[blonde madonna]

Maybe, Manna, I have misunderstood Kaufmann's words by taking them out of context. I reacted to a perceived snobbery about 'classic' literature, ie that usually written by dead white males. I suppose now that I have left school I prefer to read what I want to read rather than what I am told I should read.

That you've claimed reading good fiction as a way to be engaged with a culture that largely has not feels strange to me.

No, I said the opposite. I read books like '19 Minutes' and the 'Da Vinci Code' because my daughter, my sister, my mother and my friends will also read them and we share our thoughts on them. With the 'Da Vinci Code' it is also mentioned in the media and other books and essays.

Reading 'Gilead' is a precious but fairly solitary pursuit. Yes I have also read 'Housekeeping', many years ago and again more recently. That was why I was keen to read 'Gilead'. In many ways they are completely different books. 'Gilead' is a far more accomplished novel. It is not as easy as she makes it look to sustain the voice of her male character and yet there is not a note wrong. Both books share a mood I think, a sensitivity to the sadness of not quite fitting in the world. John Ames is more mature than Ruth and deals with his tragedy differently. I could say more but we have got off topic haven't we? Maybe DBCohen should arrive with the next BoM verse.

"I'll pray, and then I'll sleep."

[Manna]

No, I said the opposite.

Yes, of course you are right. That phrase about making time for nurturing reading fell into some bottomless brain crevace as I was formulating my response, and I didn't notice, and I didn't reread. So sorry. No wonder it seemed strange.

You can't claim all of the blame, if there is any to be claimed, for misunderstanding Kaufmann, which I don't think you did. I think I allowed myself to buy into it because I don't do much reading of newspapers and magazines and junk books. I have NPR and movies.

Oh, and I'm so so so glad I'm getting to know you.

[lazariuk]

undo the self-conspiracy,
let me dare the boldness of joy.

seems to me that he has the joy already and that with it comes a boldness to do something that those without joy would not dare to do.

I am getting very curious as to what will come next. When I feel joy I start looking for mistakes that can be corrected.