One of my favourite pieces. I've yet to get around to Brian Boyd's book but it looks like you agree with his (second) view on the question of 'internal authorship' here - I was wondering if that's changed since or if I've read you wrong? Personally, I think I'll always be much too ignorant to have a decided view on the matter so I like to keep a kind of reverential and apophatic silence before the mystery of the book.
I'm also glad you mentioned Erik Eklund in the last post as I wanted to ask you about him for a while. I started reading his publications a few months ago, which are the first works of Nabokov scholarship I've read, and found them incredibly enriching.
Eklund is wonderful; if you like his style of reading/responding to Nabokov, also check out Christopher Link, Gennady Barabtarlo, and Michael Wood: all fantastic. Boyd, of course, is mostly wonderful until he gets preachy, self-interested.
Y'all are just warming my heart! 😭 It is an honor even to be mentioned in the same sentence as Barabtarlo, Wood, and Link. I should add that Boyd's views on Pale Fire's internal-author problem are always evolving, though I can't say that I've ever found any of them very convincing. A shameless plug (forgive me, David): I've recently published a new theory of Pale Fire's authorship – perhaps iconoclastic, perhaps iconographic, perhaps neither – in Partial Answers.
Lovely writing and story. As a fervent lover of observing nature, these experiences leave an impact.
Unfortunately, my mind seems to be obsessed with the question of why "natural evil", especially predation, is the "modus operandi" of our created order. As I grow older, I recoil more and more at the coldness of animal death and suffering in nature, despite my increasing fascination with all animal life. I'm increasingly skeptical of the eschatological imagery of the carnivores (fitted with specialized digestive systems and teeth specifically for meat) would "lie down" with the benign herbivore. To state it perhaps pejoratively: why would the Judeo-Christian God design the overwhelming amount of the animal kingdom to subsist on cruel violence to then reverse it as though it was something horrid all along?
I tend to hold to the idea of an metahistorical fall myself. This doctrine holds that we fell (whether it was “from the moment of our creation,” as St. Maximus says, or not) in a time beyond time. Thus, the Fall is not an event that occurs within spacetime, but rather the existence of fallen spacetime is predicated on the Fall (and really, from an Einsteinian perspective, where simultaneity down here is at best relative and at worst undefined, this is probably the only sensible view of things). Thus even physics here dictates decay, and no matter how far back you scry, one never sees the remnants of Paradise.
The evolutionary process, then, is a sort of fallen parody of the unfolding of rational form from the Logos predicated on the Fall. It does, of course, generate fantastic diversity, but it is reigned over by natural selection, a cruel mistress whose principal instrument is death. This, of course, is not the intended method—“God did not create death.”
At the restitution of all things, it seems that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom,” as St. Paul says. When all is made well, it seems that we will be resurrected to what we were always meant to be in a happier body not composed of fallen flesh—as St. Paul notes, it is a Resurrection of spirit, away from this fallen medium shaped and conditioned by death and decay.
Well, that there is no restitution; it's just death all the way down. I don't want to believe this, but I have to admit that God, if God exists, sure has made it hard not to.
On strictly logical grounds, I would even dare to say that I know this to be false, but on strictly affective grounds, to make the understatement of the decade, this has been deeply compelling to me in the past. Qohelet remains perspicacious.
Nevertheless, death remains trampled down by death, and that gives me the strength to get up in the morning—and even, miraculously, to rejoice.
I really like this notion but don't fully understand it. Can you please elaborate on what a time before time means? Does this mean we were created in one space time continuum or universe and subsequently fell into a different and fallen space time continuum or universe? I also don't understand fallen the moment you're created. How is that different from being created in a fallen state and thus God being on the hook for making evil?
I feel similarly. I have always been deeply awed by the beauty of animals, and of natural ecosystems. However, at the same time, knowledge of the vast amount of suffering that has occurred in nature over the past several hundred million years makes it hard for me to truly love them. Sometimes I even feel that the origin of life on Earth (or at least animals) was a great tragedy. I wish it were otherwise.
It's not better to not be than to be. We do have to recognize and rave against evil and suffering, but evil and suffering don't go all the way down; God is the Good and the Beautiful, and those animals experienced God as well. He will save these animals just as He saves us.
Why would their suffering make it hard to love them? I find it to be the other way around, myself; our commiseration engenders sympathy and compassion for them in my heart.
I still *want* to believe I'm commenting on the conversation between Mistake Not... and John Dumancic. Even when the door is very narrow, one who has worked through it can enter. But the concern of the door keeper is what would follow, I mean, such as parasitic things, if not predators. It's okay, you both happen to read this and are thinking I didn't get your message. That's just because I can be in a certain mode sometimes.
I’m an unabashed maximalist universalist, I’m afraid. The whole cosmos, and not a jot or tittle less, is being dragged to God through the Cross—God would accept nothing less!
No engagement is expected. But, I conducted a quick study selectively on your ideas through your past comments. So far, in my sense, your supportive cross points seem to be "equilibrium states of energy", discussed with DBH between 3/8 - 9 on the threads attached to "Leonergan, The Philosophy of Mind, and The Theology of Grace".
Consider me, please, as an atheistic Christian. I don't believe, forgive me, maximalist universalism by the term as connotated, if I don't misunderstand it tragically. Or, simply regard me as if junk DNA.
Oh, I mostly had in mind animals that harm other animals, predators and parasites and such. Though I would like to think that I also have sympathy for them. They are just trying to survive, after all. And they often have very hard lives.
Anyway, don't mind me! I am by disposition rather melancholic.
Ah, I apologize—my tone there, on a re-read, was much harsher than intended.
A little melancholy is good, I reckon, but too much can paralyze. I would think that we have to strive to not close our eyes to either the suffering that’s before us or the light of the Good that shines through everything—we’ll get off-track otherwise!
It's a bit uneasy for me to follow the exact thread line, but I believe I'm replying to Mistake Not... and John Dumancic altogether at the same time. From bacteria to organic intelligence able to create Suer AI, the process cannot be reciprocal to Divinity, because the evolutional matters are impenetrable into the Divine. I was drawn to the last two paragraphs of DBH's piece. When even an existence of a very small beauty containing, expressing, and mirroring the mystery of God is harmed, we feel our whole world losing its exquisite balance. It can be described as a fall as well. Such was my response. Please don't ask me the referential material, for this is coming from my mind.
A dreadful crime against the beauty of nature and its mystery, having been committed by a child who had just learned to stand by herself and began to walk, was the firm promise for falling far down into the unknown eternity forever. In a garden, she separated the beautiful wings from a butterfly. At that moment, a whole mechanical world fell apart. Seeing *it* walk on the ground, she was frightened by her act and cried, cried, cried. The manual teaching can tell her as grown, as old, as near-death, or as in any state, contrition, love, and being forgiven. Neither natural selection nor intelligent design provide a consolation. But, being and beautiful, enigmatically and mystically, beyond all and within all at the same time, that is only, because that would be.
Speaking of serendipity, how nice to see a reference to Poems and Problems on the very day that we have a new chess world champion, or at least a new “FIDE champion .” As I recall, I have not previously seen any passing allusions suggesting that you are a wood pusher. Are you, and does your admiration of VN extend to his non-lexical compositions?
Thank you for this post! I thoroughly enjoyed it! I recently read a book, Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa, by Natalie Carnes. She mentions the significance of your work, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. She uses the themes of fittingness and gratuity to show Gregory's Trinitarian vision of beauty. Your reference in this post to, "the sheer surfeit of the beautiful over the needful," reminded me of the theme of 'gratuity' in her work. I'm curious to know if you have read her work, and if so, your thoughts on her interpretation of Gregory's view of beauty.
One of my favourite pieces. I've yet to get around to Brian Boyd's book but it looks like you agree with his (second) view on the question of 'internal authorship' here - I was wondering if that's changed since or if I've read you wrong? Personally, I think I'll always be much too ignorant to have a decided view on the matter so I like to keep a kind of reverential and apophatic silence before the mystery of the book.
I'm also glad you mentioned Erik Eklund in the last post as I wanted to ask you about him for a while. I started reading his publications a few months ago, which are the first works of Nabokov scholarship I've read, and found them incredibly enriching.
I don’t really favor Boyd’s view. This is of course a piece from 14 years sgo.
Eklund is wonderful; if you like his style of reading/responding to Nabokov, also check out Christopher Link, Gennady Barabtarlo, and Michael Wood: all fantastic. Boyd, of course, is mostly wonderful until he gets preachy, self-interested.
Y'all are just warming my heart! 😭 It is an honor even to be mentioned in the same sentence as Barabtarlo, Wood, and Link. I should add that Boyd's views on Pale Fire's internal-author problem are always evolving, though I can't say that I've ever found any of them very convincing. A shameless plug (forgive me, David): I've recently published a new theory of Pale Fire's authorship – perhaps iconoclastic, perhaps iconographic, perhaps neither – in Partial Answers.
Thank you! I should just take a month out and read nothing but Nabokov scholarship, it all just seems so fun
My offering of agreement:
Surrender
Beauty surrounds me like a benevolent posse,
tracking me to this canyon hideout,
determined to take me
here and now,
smoke me out with a mountain honeysuckle breeze,
lure me with a square-dance of dust devils,
or wait until dark to distract me with an ivory forest fire on the canyon's rim,
glowing brighter, brighter 'til it gives way to the moon's sharp edge,
silently entering the night sky, unaware of its own grandeur
or how it is warping spacetime or that even the
great oceans are moved by its majesty,
and, as if I could hold out against this barrage,
the conspirators have backup plans to insure my capture:
the brook has added my name to its unending, ever-changing song,
and snowmelt is encouraging the waterfall's ovation,
so now it ricochets 'round the giant canyon walls,
as the water sprites fill the whole place
to the brim;
a pair of eagles circle, calling, as if to say, "It's over, kid.
Give it up, this life on the run. You know you want to be caught!"
At first light, I come out with my hands up.
"No more," I yell.
"You win."
David Newton Baker
4/3/18
Lovely writing and story. As a fervent lover of observing nature, these experiences leave an impact.
Unfortunately, my mind seems to be obsessed with the question of why "natural evil", especially predation, is the "modus operandi" of our created order. As I grow older, I recoil more and more at the coldness of animal death and suffering in nature, despite my increasing fascination with all animal life. I'm increasingly skeptical of the eschatological imagery of the carnivores (fitted with specialized digestive systems and teeth specifically for meat) would "lie down" with the benign herbivore. To state it perhaps pejoratively: why would the Judeo-Christian God design the overwhelming amount of the animal kingdom to subsist on cruel violence to then reverse it as though it was something horrid all along?
I tend to hold to the idea of an metahistorical fall myself. This doctrine holds that we fell (whether it was “from the moment of our creation,” as St. Maximus says, or not) in a time beyond time. Thus, the Fall is not an event that occurs within spacetime, but rather the existence of fallen spacetime is predicated on the Fall (and really, from an Einsteinian perspective, where simultaneity down here is at best relative and at worst undefined, this is probably the only sensible view of things). Thus even physics here dictates decay, and no matter how far back you scry, one never sees the remnants of Paradise.
The evolutionary process, then, is a sort of fallen parody of the unfolding of rational form from the Logos predicated on the Fall. It does, of course, generate fantastic diversity, but it is reigned over by natural selection, a cruel mistress whose principal instrument is death. This, of course, is not the intended method—“God did not create death.”
At the restitution of all things, it seems that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom,” as St. Paul says. When all is made well, it seems that we will be resurrected to what we were always meant to be in a happier body not composed of fallen flesh—as St. Paul notes, it is a Resurrection of spirit, away from this fallen medium shaped and conditioned by death and decay.
What other view is possible?
Well, that there is no restitution; it's just death all the way down. I don't want to believe this, but I have to admit that God, if God exists, sure has made it hard not to.
On strictly logical grounds, I would even dare to say that I know this to be false, but on strictly affective grounds, to make the understatement of the decade, this has been deeply compelling to me in the past. Qohelet remains perspicacious.
Nevertheless, death remains trampled down by death, and that gives me the strength to get up in the morning—and even, miraculously, to rejoice.
We must be using different forms of logic.
Maybe so. Still, for both of our sakes, I hope I’m right.
I really like this notion but don't fully understand it. Can you please elaborate on what a time before time means? Does this mean we were created in one space time continuum or universe and subsequently fell into a different and fallen space time continuum or universe? I also don't understand fallen the moment you're created. How is that different from being created in a fallen state and thus God being on the hook for making evil?
Along with the material from Dr. Robbins, see here and Robert Fortuin's comments. I don't have a specific model to peddle, as I'm still working through all this business myself! https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/11/14/st-maximus-the-confessor-on-the-cosmic-fall/
This is in Origen, Maximus, & other patristic writings. It's developed by Balthasar & Bulgakov. Wood has some good pages on this:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Whole_Mystery_of_Christ/MZpdEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22the+fall+at+the+moment+of+becoming%22&pg=PT234&printsec=frontcover
I feel similarly. I have always been deeply awed by the beauty of animals, and of natural ecosystems. However, at the same time, knowledge of the vast amount of suffering that has occurred in nature over the past several hundred million years makes it hard for me to truly love them. Sometimes I even feel that the origin of life on Earth (or at least animals) was a great tragedy. I wish it were otherwise.
It's not better to not be than to be. We do have to recognize and rave against evil and suffering, but evil and suffering don't go all the way down; God is the Good and the Beautiful, and those animals experienced God as well. He will save these animals just as He saves us.
Why would their suffering make it hard to love them? I find it to be the other way around, myself; our commiseration engenders sympathy and compassion for them in my heart.
I still *want* to believe I'm commenting on the conversation between Mistake Not... and John Dumancic. Even when the door is very narrow, one who has worked through it can enter. But the concern of the door keeper is what would follow, I mean, such as parasitic things, if not predators. It's okay, you both happen to read this and are thinking I didn't get your message. That's just because I can be in a certain mode sometimes.
I’m an unabashed maximalist universalist, I’m afraid. The whole cosmos, and not a jot or tittle less, is being dragged to God through the Cross—God would accept nothing less!
No engagement is expected. But, I conducted a quick study selectively on your ideas through your past comments. So far, in my sense, your supportive cross points seem to be "equilibrium states of energy", discussed with DBH between 3/8 - 9 on the threads attached to "Leonergan, The Philosophy of Mind, and The Theology of Grace".
A bientôt !
Consider me, please, as an atheistic Christian. I don't believe, forgive me, maximalist universalism by the term as connotated, if I don't misunderstand it tragically. Or, simply regard me as if junk DNA.
God bless!
Oh, I mostly had in mind animals that harm other animals, predators and parasites and such. Though I would like to think that I also have sympathy for them. They are just trying to survive, after all. And they often have very hard lives.
Anyway, don't mind me! I am by disposition rather melancholic.
Ah, I apologize—my tone there, on a re-read, was much harsher than intended.
A little melancholy is good, I reckon, but too much can paralyze. I would think that we have to strive to not close our eyes to either the suffering that’s before us or the light of the Good that shines through everything—we’ll get off-track otherwise!
It's a bit uneasy for me to follow the exact thread line, but I believe I'm replying to Mistake Not... and John Dumancic altogether at the same time. From bacteria to organic intelligence able to create Suer AI, the process cannot be reciprocal to Divinity, because the evolutional matters are impenetrable into the Divine. I was drawn to the last two paragraphs of DBH's piece. When even an existence of a very small beauty containing, expressing, and mirroring the mystery of God is harmed, we feel our whole world losing its exquisite balance. It can be described as a fall as well. Such was my response. Please don't ask me the referential material, for this is coming from my mind.
A dreadful crime against the beauty of nature and its mystery, having been committed by a child who had just learned to stand by herself and began to walk, was the firm promise for falling far down into the unknown eternity forever. In a garden, she separated the beautiful wings from a butterfly. At that moment, a whole mechanical world fell apart. Seeing *it* walk on the ground, she was frightened by her act and cried, cried, cried. The manual teaching can tell her as grown, as old, as near-death, or as in any state, contrition, love, and being forgiven. Neither natural selection nor intelligent design provide a consolation. But, being and beautiful, enigmatically and mystically, beyond all and within all at the same time, that is only, because that would be.
I liked your post.
Speaking of serendipity, how nice to see a reference to Poems and Problems on the very day that we have a new chess world champion, or at least a new “FIDE champion .” As I recall, I have not previously seen any passing allusions suggesting that you are a wood pusher. Are you, and does your admiration of VN extend to his non-lexical compositions?
On a lighter note, Dr. Hart, have you heard the Netherlands Bach Society’s recently released interpretation of BWV 1052R? It’s fantastic.
I know the one from 2019. Is that the recording you mean?
They released a second performance around two weeks ago, which I like slightly more (though both are fantastic!).
I shall seek it out instanter.
Where can one find this?
They upload all their recordings for free on the platform YouTube. https://youtu.be/XqO4au4Ai-Y
I know you despise Carl Jung, but your encounter is a good example of his concept of synchronicity. He had a similar experience with a beetle.
I don’t despise Jung. I vacillate on him.
Perhaps he would ascribe to Vivian Bloodmark’s idea of “cosmic synchronization” with less vacillation?
Thank you for this post! I thoroughly enjoyed it! I recently read a book, Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa, by Natalie Carnes. She mentions the significance of your work, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. She uses the themes of fittingness and gratuity to show Gregory's Trinitarian vision of beauty. Your reference in this post to, "the sheer surfeit of the beautiful over the needful," reminded me of the theme of 'gratuity' in her work. I'm curious to know if you have read her work, and if so, your thoughts on her interpretation of Gregory's view of beauty.