Rougemont finis

 M. de Rougemont intends with his analysis of the literature surrounding the Tristan and Isolde myth, its development through the centuries, to diagnose the breakdown of western civilisation, especially marriage. While he believes he succeeds he stops short of prescribing a solution thinking instead it would likely do more harm than good. He adopts the attitude that its best to just let it play out hoping along the way we don't destroy ourselves in the process. For, indeed, the morphology of the myth in its final stages invests our predatory nature with fantastic war making abilities augmented, it seems, with ever increasing machine, and now computerized, and it would seem biological, methods of killing vast numbers of people, whole populations, or segments thereof.

Though he makes no prescription for the culture as a whole he does embrace Soren Kierkegaard's views on coping with the madness.

Cite SK. Pg 315: Adopts Kierkegaard's view as his own that human life tends to proceed in stages from the aesthetic through the ethical, ending in faith. Passion, he thinks, is "the highest value in the aesthetic stage" while extolling marriage as the highest in the ethical. But marriage is claimed to be the highest obstruction in the religious stage for it fetters one to time whereas faith requires eternity.

In this writer's view the image of the sword placed between Tristan and Iseult as they sleep signifies what is said about renouncing marriage as an obstruction when entering life's final stage of faith. "Goal was no longer redemption through love but redemption through renunciation." One gives up passion, love, in favor of dissolving the little self with the eternal. This is why Tristan can say I am the whole world as Wagner has him do.

Doesn't this correspond nicely with Kierkegaard's attitude? Rougemont writes: "When the lover in the Manichaean legend has undergone the great ordeals of initiation he is met ... by a dazzling maiden who welcomes him with the words: 'I am thyself!' So with fidelity in the myth, and Tristan's. Fidelity is then a mystic narcissism ... imagining itself to be true love for the other. In analysing the courtly legends, however, we saw that Tristan is not in love with Iseult, but with love itself, and beyond love he is really in love with death - that is, with the only possible release there can be for a self guilty and enslaved. Tristan is true neither to a pledge nor to a symbolical being named Iseult. She is but a lovely pretext, and all the time he is being true to his most profound and secret passion. The myth seizes on 'the death instinct' inseparable from any form of created life, and transfigures it by bestowing upon it an essentially spiritual goal. To destroy oneself, to despise happiness is thereupon a way of salvation and of acceding to a higher life, to 'the highest bliss of being' sung of by the expiring Isolde (in Wagner's opera)." Life for the sake of death was Tristan's passion and "The love of Tristan and Iseult was the anguish of being two; and its culmination was a headlong fall into the limitless bosom of Night....Iseult is no more, Tristan no more, and no name can any longer part us!"

Kierkegaard's existential anguish, his fear and trembling (Frygt og Baevan) resulting from the lost love of his Regine brought him low and he ended as a "fatally unhappy" man which he equates with man's relation with an eternal and holy God from the standpoint of the finite and sinful human. He said "God creates everything ex nihilo." Whomsoever God elects by his love, "He begins by reducing to nothing." This, he said, makes God "my mortal enemy." M. de Rougement writes: "Here we are being brought up against the extreme limit, the pure springs of passion; and in the same moment we are thrust into the heart of the Christian faith! For, behold! the man now dead to the world, killed by infinite love, has to go forward and to live in the world....(such a man) has renounced all things with an infinite resignation, and .... is constantly leaping into the infinite, but faultlessly and with complete confidence, so that he drops back into the finite, and nothing is noticeable about him but the finite."

Finally, Rougemont continues: "Thus the extremity of passion - death in love -introduces a new life, where passion never ceases to be present, but is under the most jealous incognito; for it is now far more than regal, it is divine." (This is in contradiction to his former exegesis of the myth, in this writer's opinion, but is in reality much nearer the actual Truth. While all that goes before goads the reader into plumbing the myth's and western civilization's morbidity his final summation and recap is rather uplifting, offers some hope.)

This makes sense, I think, of Tristan's "I am the world" attitude. Whereas mystic union, the explanation thereof, fails completely one can nevertheless circumscribe it, though perhaps only in increasingly vague terms. While it admittedly is a slippery matter perhaps one learns that though it evades our attempts to grasp or hold it we can gain somewhat by just accepting it (with cupped hands, so to speak). Receive instead of take, in other words. Denis de Rougemont is a master of all this, as was Soren Kierkegaard, and for that matter Socrates, Jesus, the Buddha - its a long list. Suffice to say, Rougemont continues: "We are unendingly and incessantly in the thick of the struggle between nature and grace; unendingly and incessantly unhappy and then happy. But the horizon has not remained the same. A fidelity maintained in the name of what does not change as we change will gradually disclose some of its mystery: beyond tragedy another happiness waits. A happiness resembling the old, but no longer belonging to the form of the world, for this new happiness transforms the world.

As said elsewhere Beauty is infinite, eternal, ever increasing, ever glorifying the divine. To get a little taste of this is man's lot gained by living in the finite, as intended, but from an eternal perspective. And, quoting Mr. T.S. Eliot, "when arriving at our destination we see it as our beginning but know it for the first time."

Infinite resignation is like total surrender to God......only then can we live perfectly in imperfection. Also said elsewhere in this blog, though its in error to ascribe to G_d anything at all, not even being itself (after all, Soren Kierkegaard himself, and he was and is known as a Christian philosopher, actually stood in the pulpit and expounding on faith, said that God does not exist. Why? Simplicity itself - "He is eternal" - that's why. That should need no explanation. And yet, in Exodus, appearing in a burning bush before Moses, asked "who shall I say sent me?", he replies, " Say that 'I am' sends you.")  it nevertheless dips into the limitless vastness of Beauty and Love and Truth to say that we sentient life forms, human beings on planet Earth, are the eyes and ears of the Cosmos, that simple device whereby G_d, if you like, has, or gains self realization, self understanding. The horizon of discovery is thus ever and anon pushed into infinity with we humans in endless renewal making pursuit. At the very least, I think, we are of the same stuff as the Sun, so our perception is no doubt the Sun's way of knowing itself. As stated this can not be explained for it is a matter of direct knowledge, Noesis, from which derives the noosphere wherein we find the concomitants of consciousness.

more thoughts

 self manifesting first principle

fundamental idea with the power to self manifest

potentiality with the power to actualize

The present is a realization or actualization of the past and future which are potentialities.

 

Music lives in the moment but its yearning is for the next moment. It is the essence of restlessness, of finding completion in the infinite regress of the horizon beyond the now.

 

If knowledge is always knowledge of something, then only reason leads to knowledge. All knowledge is through sense perception and memory. Direct knowledge, intuition, noesis, is not based on experience.

 

The oak dreams of the acorn. The acorn dreams of the oak. The stump lives in them both.

 

There is nothing that can be said that can do more for understanding the full meaning and purpose of life (enlightenment) than what a finger pointing at the moon can do for 'seeing' the moon.

 

Matter conveys individuality, form universality.

 

Guilt is the father of anger, hatred, self loathing. Salvation is the undoing of guilt through forgiveness, redemption. Guilt is self loathing. Achieve blamelessness through self sacrifice...accept the self as sacred.

More on Rougemont

 I'm on page 269. I wish I could recall which university course this book goes with. Of course it was philosophy, but don't recall which one. Perhaps William Poteat's course on "Eroticism, Music, and Madness". Seems fitting.

Details on the book: A Fawcett Premier Book copyright 1940, Harcourt, Brace and Company. This augmented edition copyrighted 1956, Pantheon Books, Inc., published by Fawcett World Library. Translated by Montgomery Belgion.

M. Rougemont was born in 1906 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. I once knew people there, interestingly, had a girl friend. Francoise Tschudin. They lived on the lake in Hauterive, Neuchatel. Beside the point, I know.

Rougemont views human relations through the lens of the Tristan and Isolde myth which dates from about the twelfth century. He cites multiple versions, multiple authors, with the troubadours playing the major part, at least in the beginning. He writes that the underlying theme of the myth is that Passion is Love perverted, is narcissistic. Literature of that time, and he cites many following works, is an expression of this perversion. The myth coincides with the beginning of civilization's departure into this gross error. His thesis, in part, is that this myth promotes common or acceptable behavior in the culture. Rougemont really gets down in the weeds. His genius, pg. 275: "...passion of love is at bottom narcissism, the lover's self-magnification, far more than it is a relation with the beloved. Tristan wanted the branding of love more than he wanted the possession of Iseult (Isolde). For he believed that the intense and devouring flame of passion would make him divine; and, as Wagner grasped, the equal of the world. See here.

Eyes with joy are blinded ...I myself am the world.

Whatever obstructs love actually consolidates, intensifies it, he writes. (Pg 43) The ultimate obstruction of love is the aim of the romantic who seeks the ultimate intensity, passion, consolidation. The romantic seeks unity. What expresses this better than  "I myself am the world?" The ultimate obstruction of love is death. The romantic seeks death but calls it passion. So, if obstruction is the true object of passion, the beloved is a mere substitute. And if peril brings obstruction the affinity for the thrilling arises. M. Rougemount describes enlightenment and redemption as "passing from existence into being." The desire to exceed our limits is "fatal but divinizing."

As mentioned earlier he works Mozart's Don Giovanni into his thesis but doesn't mention Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Kierkegaard thought of passion as a force of nature calling it the Daemonic in Nature, a sensuous-erotic principle. M. Rougemont agrees but doesn't acknowledge this profound idea - at least not directly. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (Edit: at end of book he brings SK in.)

As an aside gravity is a force of nature, too, and spin, without which there is no vector, direction, or for that matter, congruence. Life too is a force of nature.

Rougemont strives mightily to quantify literature so that it confirms this thinking. There is some obfuscation there but his genius prevails though it is a bit messy at times. As I say, he really gets down in the weeds. There is a confirmation bias with him and, I'd note that the more we cling to our pet ideas the more we exclude the real truth. [And, what is true locally may be false universally.] Kierkegaard quickly elevates perverted Christian love to the universal daemonic in nature. So does M. Rougemont. Pg. 275: "Passion requires that the self shall become greater than all things, as solitary and powerful as God. Without knowing it, passion also requires that beyond its apotheosis death shall indeed be the end of all things."

Death is made an enervating force, finally making of war the inevitable outcome of passion's grip on humanity. William Poteat, and G.V. Desani also spoke of this. Desani said that the end of the development of war making machines, devices, ended necessarily in man's annihilation. Kierkegaard also thought annihilation was the natural end of the development of the "sensuous-erotic" principle.

We do hug and kiss our self destruction, the spokes of the wheel whose turning returns us again and again to our beloved suffering because of which we feel alive. The more we suffer passion's pains the more intense our lives. Passionate love is for the sake of pain. And the more we pursue our passions the faster their fulfillment recedes on an ever disappearing horizon.

There's no escape. Eastern religion and philosophy address these root causes and while Rougemont brings them into his subject he fails to address the reality of their suggested remedies. Neither does he acknowledge the esoteric teachings of the ancient rabbinic Jews. While he and Kierkegaard advance the notion that Christianity is not what we are led to believe it is, that it is in reality a destructive force, as it is popularized, they provide no insights as to the path one must take to escape the enumerated conundrums. (Editor: see next post)

On the Daemonic in nature. Love is in the noosphere so passion is too but not naturally in that created man puts it there. True love enhances life. Passion destroys. True love is selfless.

Denis de Rougemont "Love in the Western World"

 Emotional in the sense an agenda is in control. I don't know at this time whether he is promoting any particular point of view; whether it be Christian, which I suspect, or paganism. He alludes to but I don't think he embraces Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoga, the issues of the Mahabharata, or for that matter Manicheanism, Gnosticism, Platonism and several others. He does seem anxious to resolve the "stresses" into a "grand unified theory" subsuming all opposing spirits. He seems to write knowing the conclusion is foreordained, thus making his purpose suspect.

We argue the known outcome in order to have something to say! Noise! "Sound and fury signifying nothing." Which is not to say his scholarship is not of the highest order of professionalism.

But anyhow, its hard to ignore the comparison of this work to Kierkegaard's. An audacious question: Is Tristan and Iseult (the opera) to Rougemont as Don Giovanni was to Soren Kierkegaard?

On Good/Evil he assigns human agency, the Christian view. This is common practice and, in my opinion, a fallacy. Personhood does not necessarily pertain to the divine or the profane but is a reflection that man only understands, or rather, has knowledge of himself so God and Satan must be measured in terms thereof. Its simpler to accept Reality evolved to the world we see, are embedded in and will ever remain a mystery that, also ever, engenders discovery. Why must there be agency at all? Sure Good and Evil are real even without the "myths" adopted in order that we can easily grasp them on familiar terms. It is not necessary that understanding follows always from measurement in terms of human metrics. To do so merely reinforces the fact that man is self absorbed, self centered and not interested in Truth in and of itself. Divinity is not "personal" [to a God Head]. Divinity is universal, not finite but infinite. A Lord, The Lord, taking on the cloak of divinity is leaving the "person" aside and assuming the infinite quality of the divine in the same way a rose assumes the infinite quality of beauty. It is full self-realization.

Again, the rose is not itself beauty but beautiful. Rather it participates in, is a manifestation of beauty. Likewise things manifest are not the universe itself, but the universe, the Real - G_d, if you like - is made manifest in them. Divinity is thus made manifest in [all] man, sentient life forms especially. The Word is made flesh and Life is a tool in his box.

How long must we mistake measurement for understanding?

Personal Observations on Desani's Piece "A MARGINAL COMMENT ON THE PROBLEM OF MEDIUM IN BICULTURES"

 "Oh, how sweet to be alive! How good to be alive and to love life! Oh the ever-present longing to thank life, thank existence itself, to thank them as one being to another being.

"This was exactly what Lara was. You could not communicate with life and existence, but she was their representative, their expression, in her the inarticulate principle of existence became sensitive and capable of speech."

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Copyright 1958, Pantheon Books, Inc., New York, page 325

"....reality takes shape in memory alone...."

"...it yet belonged to an order of supernatural beings whom we have never seen, but whom, in spite of that, we recognize and acclaim with rapture when some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax one forth, to bring it down, from that divine world to which he has access, to shine for a brief moment in the firmament of ours."

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves...[The lives you admire] ...having been influenced by everything evil or common-place that prevailed round about them...represent a struggle and a victory."

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of things Past, Vol. I, Vintage Books, September, 1982 pps 201, 381, 923-924

This piece by Desani describes his personal struggle reflected in the creation of his literary works Hatterr and Hali. He uses himself as an example to elucidate all literary creation and its combination into human cultural traditions and propagation across varying, disparate, societies. The opening quotes are different ways of stating points he raises in his essay by literary geniuses who, I think, draw from the same reservoir.

He writes that "Literature is life-histories, a response by individuals to life, to love and hate, and both the makers and the readers need to have, from individual experience and formed habits (cultural involvement), the capacity to move and be moved." Quoting William Butler Yeats he says " ...I think profound philosophy comes from terror. An abyss opens under our feet... whether we will or not, we must ask the ancient questions: Is there a Reality anywhere? Is there...God? Is there a Soul?

Proust writes "...reality takes shape in memory alone..." Desani says this another way: "Inspiration arises from consciousness...as a reservoir of memories." He goes on to say "Art, for all the explaining, is a mystery: and original imageries, for all the exploring, the greater mystery." So, we do not receive high Art but discover it for ourselves in a continuous struggle that becomes a victory.

His Hali, he says, rejects "...an impersonal, amoral, indescribable, unknowable, all and nothing, a loveless, godless abstraction [called the atma]." Hali's was a "...God of of Love and Beauty, and it was from fulfillment, not defeat, that he willingly surrendered his life."

Pasternak wants to, and succeeds, in communicating with Being itself, when he realizes that his Lara is The Real made flesh. Desani has Hali write that he would "...seek still, seek a thing of glory...and see what no mortal ever saw before, a vision of such enchanting awful beauty, that a mortal would die! [To behold which as a mortal would mean death.] "He found his vision in a human, his Rooh, of whom he said '...the God I prayed to was not holier than thou, none holier, none! ...Garland wert thou, the garland of God, to seek which I sought a temple, and thee I found!'

This writer believes "there is an order of supernatural beings whom we have never seen, but whom, in spite of that, we recognize and acclaim with rapture when some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax one forth, to bring it down, from that divine world to which he has access, to shine for a brief moment in the firmament of ours." Professor Desani does that in this little essay, and indeed, in all his writings, in his life, in our memory of him.

Todd Katz hosts this essay at this link. I've also linked to it here at Desni.net