[percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc
Nikkibar at aol.com
Nikkibar at aol.com
Tue Dec 31 16:12:41 EST 2002
Dear Friends,
I have been lurking about with an increasing Holiday headache for the last
couple of weeks over the interesting discussion and have been unwilling to
spoil the fun by getting doctrinaire and behaving like a prissy old fart; but
now that things seem to be slowing up, let me provide a few biographical
observations which I hope will not go so far as to become deconstructionist.
The whole discussion about animals and symbols -- Chomsky, the Chimps in the
household with the letter and icon boards, John Lilly and his dolphin
language, etc. -- was something that Walker followed with eagerness and
interest. We (Walker and I) constantly argued over the matter, Walker
adopting with Aristotle and The Church the position that animals had no souls
(and there was an end on't) and me adopting quite the contrary position which
I had always associated with Theosophical Gnosticism, that the universe (or
all-that-is) is in a state of both physical and spiritual evolution. And
mixing into this lifelong debate was Walker's stout defense of the notion
that animals can't use symbols (despite Chomsky and the household chimps,
etc., and Lilly with his investigation of terciops truncatus' click language
-- possibly indicating to the contrary).
My own argument inevitably ran to the notion that the symbol as we and Peirce
know it, is irrelevant to the debate and that communication and not
symbolization is the more proper touch-stone to get one to the concept of evid
ence of the kind of consciousness that would betoken the existence of
animal-souls. Walker always felt that he prevailed in these contests because
he could fall back on "show me the symbol-making ability) and that for me was
the breakpoint, for while I couldn't show him a symbol emanating from an
animal (although with enough funding and sufficiently sensitive and complex
computers with enough RAM we may in time learn to talk to the dolphin or
translate whale-song) I could always rejoin that he couldn't be certain that
animals couldn't and didn't talk to each other; for our uncertainty is
grounded in the notion that just because they may have little interest in
talking to us, does not logically prove that they cannot talk to one another.
In other words, in good lawyer-like fashion, I could always demonstrate that
an absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. I can assure
you, however that WP was head-over-heels in touch with the problem and took a
long and lively interest in it.
For those bewildered by Gnosticism and what it is, search our archives of
about five years back using not only Gnostic as a word search tool but Elaine
Pagels and to a lesser degree Harold Bloom, whose works we discussed
thoroughly. At the end of that discussion I resolved never to get involved in
that fight again, as it simply produces (on this channel at any rate) a good
deal more heat than light. And the debate seemed fruitless to me for another
reason: which was that the RC proponents of antiGnosticism knew a lot less
about Gnosticism than I did (and do) about the Dogma and History of the
Roman Catholic Church. What was interesting (and horrible to me) in the
discussion was the virulence and mean-tempered attitude emanating at that
time from the antiGnostic position, a latter day resurrection of the very
same mortal combat which the church won with Valentinian and in winning the
victory -- physically obliterated the ancient Gnostics. Pagels reflects with
great eloquence on that fact of this victory and speculates over what the
world might be like today, had the Gnostics prevailed at least to the point
of remaining alive past the sixth century CE. An additional exploration might
be taken up by anyone interested, by reading an enthralling novel on the
subject published the last year entitled The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim
Stanley Robinson (Bantam-Random House). An additional observation: in all my
many discussions with Walker over these matters, he NEVER raised the
slightest banner of mean-tempered virulence but was always the soul of
interested courtesy. For further discussion of Gnosticism and what it is, I
refer you to Bloom's speculatively intriguing American Gnosticism, but it is
not nearly as informative at the basic level of defining terms as the works
of Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels and Gnostic Paul). Google or Amazon
will provide a useful bibliography complete with price lists. For a useful
chapter on Gnosticism, specifically in the work of Percy (which may however
leave you more puzzled after reading it than before) see Eddie DuPuy's book
Autobiography in Walker Percy -- if you can find a copy.
I am amused to the point of gentle mirth at the notion that Walker was a Jew
ab initio through his conversion to Rome. That in my view is stretching the
poetry of language just a little too far. (BTW Poets name things all the
time. Just think of Edward Lear's toeless Pobble QED). What Walker would have
said himself to this interesting error about boxing him in with the Jews, was
that on the contrary he was not a Jew, but a reconstructed bad Presbyterian
made over into a bad Roman Catholic. The wistful reverence for Jewry that he
displays repeatedly in the novels was just that: very wistful and VERY
reverent, which it occurs to me is roughly my own attitude toward Rome but
that is BTW; it equals being an indifferent Episcopalian.
A Parthian shot on the subject of the animals. Anyone watching the last
season of The Sopranos (and who isn't?) may have some very interesting
insights to draw over how Tony's conflicted Catholic attitude to the "Genesis
dominion over the beasts" concept works in that most American of myths in its
current HBO state of becoming. This agon may be the only thing that draws me
back to it in its next season. I am suggesting that for us in the business of
the aesthesis of words, myths and stories in the public mind, it's a pivot
point well worth thinking about. One could assign grad school papers of 20 K
words on it... It could enliven one's grading period to see what results.
And a happy New Year to all.
Nikki Barranger
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