Rousseau's Confessions

As an autobiographer, Rousseau's revolutionary project was to depict a man "dans toute la vérité de la nature" [in all of the truth of his being]. One is unclear as to whether he chooses to focus on himself because he of course knows himself the best and could only complete such a project with regard to himself, or because of his almost palpable immodesty. Even in its choice of title, Rousseau's text presents itself as a response to Augustine's Confessions, though R. claims he has "told of the good and the bad with the same honesty, not adding anything bad or good," perhaps in contradistinction to Augustine whose Confessions serve theological if not also political ends.  Rousseau claims that any existing artifice in his text is due to "deficiencies of memory"[défaut de mémoire] and that he has "revealed his innermost being as if you [the reader] had seen it yourself."

As an assertion of an autobiographical project, Rousseau's rationale is compelling. However can one person ever relate his or her experience to another as if that other had himself seen it? The very paradox of the writing of the self is that one relates experiences that another has presumably not had in order for the other to experience them vicariously, perhaps sympathize, or occasionally even empathize. The practice of autobiography both widens the chasm between self and other as it stretches across that abyss, for in some instances when confronting certain experiences even in the writer's absence the reader can reach out from herself toward the event experienced by the writer, in some sense.

Do you think that Rousseau allows for such a bridging of the space between self and other in his piece, or is his goal more individualistic? He emphasizes his uniqueness as an individual while encouraging us to read his confessions. What is the paradox of such a project? Is there a paradox at all? How (if at all) do you see Rousseau as distancing his text from the work of Augustine with which it is clearly in dialogue?

Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy

Both in form and content, Boethius' classic work De consolatio philosophiae (c. 524) straddles the artificial boundary between the West's "Classical" period and the Middle Ages.  The text is structured as a dialogue between the despondent Boethius, condemned to death for reasons to which he alludes in Book I, and Lady Philosophy--an allegory of wisdom. But the text itself is written as a prosimetrum or a hybrid composition combining prose and poetry. As a translator and student of the works of Plato (as well as other Ancient Greek philosophers), Boethius' thought is steeped in Platonic philosophy. Thus, his very employment of this form has meaning in itself. The prose stands for the measured words and reason of philosophy, while the poetry is a formal place holder for the role of artifice in thought. After all, Plato bars poets from his ideal republic. Considering Plato's ironic critique of poetry and poets, it is curious that Boethius has Lady Philosophy also speak in poetry after her admonition of the Muses (she goes so far as to call them meretricas or "prostitutes"). Perhaps this suggests that reason cannot fully triumph over artifice, or beauty cannot be completely vanquished by truth, its synonym in the Platonic scheme.

Although Boethius was a Christian and this work in particular made an indelible impact on Medieval Christianity, also evident here are strands of thought akin to Pagan, Stoic, and even Buddhist philosophy. It is B.'s desire for a willed reality that differs from Reality that leads to his suffering. This is a philosophical idea akin to the First and Second Noble Truths of the Buddhist tradition, namely that 1) all experience is dukkha ("suffering"or "unsatisfactory") and 2) the cause of that dukkha is desire. B. also brings up important philosophical questions regarding the role of Fortune, and the conflict between free will and determinism. B. has studied philosophy, but when confronted by the vicissitudes of misfortune, it is immensely difficult for him to apply the philosophy that formerly sustained him in happier times. Thus, that philosophy becomes personified as an often strident interlocutor.

What is the medicina that Lady Philosophy offers the speaker in this text? Does he find it without or within? In what ways do you see the role of Lady Philosophy in this text? Is she a projection of B.'s superego? Besides the female gender of the word sophia in Greek (and most other abstract nouns in gendered languages) might there be another reason that philosophy is personified as a woman? Would she have worked as a male interlocutor?  As we will be reading Augustine's Confessions next week, consider the ways in which this "consolation" might also be a "confession." Regarding genre, is this text more of an autobiographical narrative or a philosophical treatise?  

Malcolm X: Man, Figure, Myth, or Fabula

Malcolm Little. Detroit Red. Satan. Minister Malcolm X. El-Hadj Malik El-Shabazz. By the names which the eponymous author assumes—and the personae which those names connote—the reader sees how The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) is illustrative of the many ways in which autobiography might delineate (or fabricate) the vicissitudes of life.

This autobiography is also notable for the hyper-constructivism that defines it, as all indications seem to show it was a joint effort between Malcolm and his ghostwriter, Alex Haley. In the text itself, the reader is made privy to a multiplicity of competing voices that attempt to stake out a cohesive narrative of Malcolm as a political figure. In his 2011 biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (a text that often functions as a response to the famous autobiography), the late Manning Marable suggests that Malcolm may have exaggerated aspects of his criminal record within the chapters entitled “Detroit Red,” "Hustler," “Harlemite,” and “Satan.” There are many reasons that we might offer to explain this. As a minister in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm sought to complete an act of da’wa, proselytizing to convert non-believing blacks. Similarly to the Confessions of St. Augustine, Malcolm might have wanted to cast himself as a more dangerous gangster than he was to lend an air of credibility to his life’s story and convince those struggling with the criminal lifestyle to convert. Malcolm makes himself an exemplum, suggesting that if even he, “Satan,” could find his way to the Truth, so might any other common street hustler. However, he does maintain that even in his worst days, he never robbed or burglarized other blacks. One reason that he must make this disclaimer is that having robbed blacks and whites indiscriminately (as he probably did) might have conflicted with the Black Nationalist ideology which drove Malcolm throughout his life.

Competing with Malcolm’s own ideal narrative is the one suggested by his amanuensis, Alex Haley. Haley was a black conservative and may have diligently sought in his writing to inoculate the radical, threatening figure of Malcolm X in the eyes of the white readers of the text. In Haley’s work, we may very well be witness to the greatest creative act of dictation that we will witness this semester, as the trajectory of the narrative seems to evolve from one of torment by and a consequential hatred for whites and the implied threat of violence, to a near beatific and universal vision which Malcolm experiences after his pilgrimage to Mecca.

The iconography of this journey has made an indelible mark on black culture in America, and this has been only further intensified and complicated by Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X. Here we have a subsequent level of interpretation with Lee’s idealistic projection of Malcolm becoming the predominant narrative in American pop culture. One particular case of historical distortion for the sake of ideological projection (pardon the pun) comes in the iconic scene set in Harlem in which Denzel Washington reenacts Malcolm’s incendiary oratory and famous assertion “we didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on us.” This is a creative rewriting of an offhand comment that Malcolm made in a rather cool and flippant way in a more intimate interview setting. Perhaps this is a mise-en-abyme of the whole narratological and ethical problem of depicting history which concerns us in so far as Malcolm’s (auto)biographer was a mythmaker, exaggerating public perception to create an idea of a person in contrast to attempting to depict a human life as objectively as possible.

In writing a life in hindsight, there is always the desire for cohesion, teleology, and a meta-narrative, aspects usually lacking during the actual living of that life.

In what ways does this narrative seem sincere to you? In what ways is it spiritual? What emotions define Malcolm's narrative of himself and what role does religion play in that narrative? I urge you to consider these questions as we read the second half of the book.

Basho and the Journey to the Interior

Matsuo Basho's most celebrated work, The Narrow Road [sometimes translated as "Narrow Journey" ] to the Interior (Jap. Oku no Hosomichi) is also a prosimetrum of sorts, based on a travelogue. In Japanese poetics, this form of hybrid prose-poetry form is called the haibun and is based on the alternation of prose ruminations and compressed poetic thought. To put it more succinctly, Basho's haiku poetry represents the distillation of insight based on the experiences recounted in the prose that surrounds it. While Boethius uses prose and poetry as a sort of formal dialogic device in the Consolation, and in Vita nuova Dante very subtly and disingenuously plays up his poetic authorship, Basho systematically crafts a poetic in which the subjectivity of both writer and reader seem to fuse with pure objectivity. The images Basho sees do not come from outside himself; rather, based on the Buddhist idea of co-dependent origination (pratityasamutpada) the images he sees are not in any way separate from himself.

The notion of co-dependent origination represented aesthetically is present in Basho's work from its start; though the narrative is based on the experiences of a very personal journey (both literal and allegorical) undertaken during a period of hardship in the poet's life, Basho announces that narrative with a reference to the movements of celestial bodies: "The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home" (Hamill 1). By beginning an ostensibly personal narrative with a reference to celestial bodies, Basho imbues his text with a sense of pantheism that epitomizes the "undoing" characteristic of a haiku's kireji or "cutting words." A reader confronts the poetics of haiku in a similar way as a Zen student confronts a ko'an, a spiritually-productive paradox such as the famous "what was my face before my parents were born?" Basho's personal travelogue is simultaneously an unraveling of the very notion of an independent self.

For the next two weeks we will be reading personal narratives whose ideology challenges the very notion of the integrated, diachronic self. Through the practice of zazen and ruminating on ko'ans which push logic to its very limits, Zen forces a practitioner to question his or her identity before ultimately concluding that such an identity, in fact, does not exist. Ontologically, this stance poses a clear threat to the practice of autobiography. How do you think Buddhist ideology and the genre of autobiography can be reconciled, if at all?

Dante: Poeta Combinator

As we saw with Augustine and his numerous references to the biblical and classical traditions, intertextuality is a staple of both medieval texts and those of Late Antiquity. Medieval authors largely saw their own writing as palimpsestic, using the works of prior canonical authors to substantiate and validate their own authorial ventures while simultaneously rewriting those earlier works.

Dante takes this process a step further, referencing and rewriting not only those works which had inspired him to compose the Divine Comedy, but also undertaking the same process with his own purported autobiographical work, the Vita Nuova. An example of a prosimetron (a work containing both poetry and prose), Vita nuova is not easily categorized. The book combines many genres—from journal entries to spiritual autobiography; from Bildungsroman to a poetry collection of Dante’s earliest canzoni--complete with exegesis of both the poems, and the events which inspired them.  

One of several consistent threads within the text is an idea of "memory." In the prologue, the narrator refers to another “libro de la mia memoria” [lit. 'book of my memory,' perhaps a journal outside of this one] (Vita nuova I) from which the current work is a transcription. The scribe claims that he will transcribe all that appears under the Latin heading "Incipit vita nova" ['here begins the new life.'] Yet, as we read throughout the text, this definition of “memory”  seems to be informed by his own fragmented role as both the redactor and key personage within the text being redacted. Dante's intention is only “to copy into this little book the words [he] finds written under that heading.”[1] We learn that we will not to be given a full account of the author’s memory but an amended one, customized to fit his intention as to how the past should look. He modifies his original intention by saying “if not all of them [the words], at least the essence of their meaning [sentenzia].” This sentenzia is a telling word. The reader begins to inquire just whose meaning will be revealed, the meaning intended by the author of old, the meaning given by the current redactor, or rather a veridical synthesis of the two?  

Do you find this work more autobiographical in premise, or rather the more rigidly structured Divina Commedia for which the poet would rightfully receive more acclaim? It should be noted that the latter work is also a part of his personal narrative, a response to the various poetry of Dante’s youth, collected in the Vita Nuova, themselves given "new lives" by the commentary of the Commedia.  

---

[1] Longer passages which I cite in English come from Mark Musa’s translation,  Dante’s Vita Nuova : Translation and an Essay (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973). Shorter translations are my own. Italian citations are culled from the Paternostro’s text La Vita nuova tra gesto e memoria (Roma: Lithos editrice, 2008).

   

Augustine of Hippo

Just how does one situate a "confession" as a literary genre, and how does it relate more generally to autobiography? Nearly one thousand years before the Church instituted the Sacrament of Penance, Augustine of Hippo rather disingenuously related the sins that he had committed in his pre-baptismal life within a greater biographical narrative. I say "disingenuous" because Augustine is incredibly selective about the details that he chooses to note. For example, he consciously omits any details about the woman with whom he had conceived his son, Aldeodatus, but speaking at great lengths about being stealing pears, being a disciple of the Manichees, and other carefully selected indiscretions. What is it that he confesses in this text and why does he do so? His motivation seems to morph dramatically throughout the text, a problem that makes any concise definition of a "confession" grow more and more elusive.

Like many of the texts that we will read this semester, the Confessions seems to be an attempt to follow the trajectory of psychological transformation, above and beyond a recitation of deeds. At the beginning of Book II, Augustine prefaces the narrative by writing, "I must now carry my thoughts back to the abominable things I did in those days, the sins of the flesh which defiled my soul[;]" yet, he explains that he does this for his God, "not because I love those sins, but so that I may love you. For love of your love I shall retrace my wicked ways" (II. 1). Does this suggest that the mental retracing of his steps is a prerequisite for solidifying his relationship with his God, or is it purely a therapeutic practice which he seeks to undertake in order to achieve at some sense of closure? If it is the former, why not as that famous confessional poet, Anne Sexton, once wrote in quoting Schopenhauer, "make a clean breast of it?" Augustine's selectivity implies that he really has another reason in mind for accounting his sins.

Perhaps his confessions seek to undermine the erroneous philosophical ideas that he had formerly held but has subsequently rejected. This would make his long discussions of the Manichees more pertinent (along with Theodosius' suppression of that group happening near contemporaneously with Augustine's composition of the Confessions). My proposition may be epitomized in the incessant theological questioning that accompanies Augustine's self-interrogation and revelation. He questions just why the Bible--if it is indeed the absolute truth, which for him it became--was not compelling for him in his youth, citing his love of rhetoric and the written word that could not be satisfied with the crude Latin of the Bible that he had read in translation. And from the very outset of his text, Augustine inquires about how pantheism truly functions, "You fill all things, but do you fill them with your whole self? Or is it that the whole of creation is too small to hold you and therefore only holds a part of you?" (I. 3), while simultaneously praising the God whose forgiveness he ostensibly seeks.

If this text is a confession, it is more of a confession of erroneous beliefs than of evil deeds. This assertion is substantiated by the famous Augustinian explanation of theodicy as prviatio boni, that is, that "bad" is but the privation or absence of good and doesn't really exist in and of itself. Perhaps Augustine mitigates his "sinful" action by simply asserting that they were committed from a misguided mind and are therefore not venial, i.e. not damning. If so, he had never been truly malicious, but rather unaware that only Good exists. This might help us to better explain his selectivity in discussing sins, for his carnal sins had nothing to do with thought, rather the absence of will and knowledge.

On the last, less philosophical note, in the autobiographical genre we are constantly confronted with the question of authority. We must ask what alternate perspectives the author of autobiography is allowed to relate in his or her text, and which aspects of the self are equally off limits. Augustine pushes these boundaries by writing about his infancy (I. 7), and claiming the authority to relate and interpret his mother's dreams. How do these readings of others and projections of their motives affect your reading of the text? Does the author of autobiography have free license to speak about the motives and experiences of others? Does this affect the veracity of an already dubiously "true" genre? How is it even more problematic in a text which is dubbed to be a confession? How do Augustine's Confessions compare to Boethius' Consolatio, either as a literary genre or a philosophical approach to understanding the self?

What Did Ezekiel See?: Intertextuality and the Merkabah Tradition

What did Ezekiel see? As we begin our short but chronological examination of the genre of spiritual autobiographies, I think it is important to acknowledge the great role that both intertextuality and prophetic texts play in the Western branch of spiritual autobiography. Loosely defined, intertextuality is a term used to define the relationship between texts to one another. Intertextuality has a particularly complex relationship with spirituality. Although scholars of comparative religion such as Steven Katz or Evelyn Underhill argue about whether mystics who speak of satori, moksha, or d'vekut, are truly speaking about the same phenomenon when they write about no-self, liberation, or cleaving, respectively, in many Western mystical texts, even the very language used to convey these experiences is a palimpsest of stories and images.

The Book of Ezekiel and the vision of the Merkabah in the first chapter of his prophetic narrative has been the model for later expressions of Jewish mysticism as well as John of Patmos' Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible. In the essay, "The Problem of Pure Consciousness," Katz has famously argued that "there are no unmediated religious experiences." Though Katz' argument pertains more directly to the phenomenology of religious experience, we might apply it to the material culture and literary depiction of mysticism as well. Hence John of Patmos' written testament of  visionary experience echoes Ezekiel's because he has inherited the archetypal images from a cultural tradition, namely that of the Jews. It should of course be conceded that John's vision differs slightly from Ezekiel's, but they notably  share much of the same language.

The religious language of the West--mystical or not--is largely intertextual. Indeed, even Ezekiel's Hebrew mirrors that of Jacob's vision of the ladder from Genesis 28:10-22. One could claim that these writer's are speaking about the same experiences and as such, their language mirrors each other. On the other hand, one could also make the counterclaim that an ineffable experience requires the language of a culturally authenticated other experience for validation.

What do you think about the role of literary models in spiritual texts? Do these models and the appropriation of their imagery make novel depictions of spiritual experience seem any less or more convincing?