Enigmatic Text Research Articles

A Virgilian Crux: Aeneid 8.342-43

When Evander conducts Aeneas around the future site of Rome, the objects of interest he points out to his guest include the following: "hinc lucum ingentem, quem Romulus acer asylum / rettulit, et gelida monstrat sub rupe Lupercal" (8.342-43). John Conington (1883, 119) complained that rettulit had "not been satisfactorily explained." A century later, Gerhard Binder (1971, 118 with n. 27) repeated the complaint: "Über Vergils rettulit ist viel gerätselt worden." Binder's study was then followed by the unprecedented appearance of three different commentaries on this book of the Aeneid in three successive years. 1 None of them was however able to offer a satisfactory explanation of rettulit: the latest discussion of this passage is obliged to reiterate Conington's original complaint. 2 The purpose of the present article is to suggest a possible solution to this vexatious and long-standing crux. Servius Danielis was himself perplexed by this Virgilian passage, for which he felt the need to offer two alternative explanations: "retulit aut restituit aut nominavit" (Aen. 8.342). The second of these was accepted by Heyne (1833, 221: "retulit est appellavit"); however Conington rightly objected that there is no evidence for such a meaning of referre. The first exegesis proposed by Servius has on the other hand found widespread support. 3 It must however be pointed out that those who accept the equation of referre with restituere appear to have forgotten that the object of rettulit is not asylum, but lucum: while the "re-establishment" of an asylum makes excellent sense, the same can hardly be said of "re-establishing" a grove of trees. Servius himself detected an allusion to the asylum founded at Athens by the Heraclidae: "ideo ergo ait 'quod Romulus acer asylum retulit,' hoc est fecit ad imitationem [End Page 527] Atheniensis asyli" (Aen. 8.342). This interpretation of referre as signifying "to reproduce from a model" has similarly been widely accepted. 4 Such a construe is however open to the same objection that can be raised against restituere: while this rendering would have been admirably suited to asylum as direct object, the notion of "reproducing" a grove "from a model" is likewise far less satisfactory. 5 In support of both these explications it has been customary to adduce Aeneid 5.596-98: "hunc morem cursus atque haec certamina primus / Ascanius, Longam muris cum cingeret Albam, / rettulit." The supposed parallel is however illusory, since here referre simply governs a direct object, whereas in book 8 the same verb is instead employed in conjunction with the predicative apposition asylum. K. W. Gransden's commentary on this latter book (1976, 129) accordingly proposed the novel rendering "instituted as," which was however rejected by P. T. Eden's postscript (1986, 439) to his own commentary as "emphatically not a meaning of refero." Eden's commentary itself had taken rettulit as equivalent to reddidit. 6 This view that referre is here being used in the sense of "to render" had already been tentatively advanced by Conington himself; it too has received a certain measure of support. 7 In his latest contribution to the debate, however, Eden (1986, 440) changes his mind and instead adopts the unsatisfactory notion of Fordyce's commentary that rettulit signifies "reproduced from a model." Eden's reason for this volte-face is the following: "even if . . . the construction here of referre with a double accusative is an analogical imitation of reddere with the same construction, it cannot therefore also be presumed to share its meaning." Perhaps it is nonetheless possible to indicate how this objection of Eden's can be circumvented by a novel hypothesis which would at last appear to provide a key to this troublesomely enigmatic text. [End Page 528] Quintilian (Inst. 8.6.37) illustrates the rhetorical figure of metalempsis or transumptio with a reference to Odyssey 15.299 where thoos ("quick") is employed in the sense of oxus ("sharp"). Heinrich Lausberg (1990, 295) explains the figure as follows: "Die...

Reinstating Isaac: The Centrality of Abraham's Son in the “Jacob—Esau” Narrative of Genesis 27

It is frequently noted that, of the triad of Hebrew Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—there appears to be a shortage of biblical material dedicated to Isaac. This article shows that the 27th chapter of Genesis, though often thought to be concerned primarily with Jacob, actually intends to focus on Isaac, thus alleviating this apparent discrepancy. Noting the chiastic structure of the pericope, the narrative is identified as running from 26:34 to 28:9. With the proper narrative boundaries in view, it becomes evident that it is Isaac and his activities (or lack thereof) as acting patriarch, that drive the events described in this enigmatic text.

Beckett's Dying Remains: The Process of Playwriting in the Ohio Impromptu Manuscripts

Samuel Beckett's works originate as highly personal accounts of the author's life and gradually evolve into elusive, enigmatic texts. In Beckett's oeuvre, autobiography provides the foundation for writing that then undergoes a painstaking process that purges the text of the author's identity. It is as though Beckett records aspects of his past with the conscious intent of undoing them, paradoxically developing his texts out of the erasure of autobiography. Far from creating works of "cryptobiography," that is, works in which the author only remotely disguises his identity, Beckett aims "not so much to disguise autobiography as to displace and discount it". The progression of Beckett's manuscripts exposes this refusal to accept the very autobiography that spawns his creative material. In particular, the manuscripts of the late play Ohio Impromptu (1981), including the many unpublished false starts now housed at Reading University's Samuel Beckett Collection, exemplify Beckett's attempt to unwrite himself through what he once called his "literature of the unword". This essay focuses on these recently acquired manuscripts to illustrate how Beckett's unique process of self-erasure informs his final text. In order to elucidate this process before turning to the specific manuscripts, I introduce the concept of "derangement" and its contribution to Beckett's dying presence in his works.

Beckett's Dying Remains: The Process of Playwriting in the Ohio Impromptu Manuscripts

Samuel Beckett 's works originate as highly personal accounts of the author 's life and gradually evolve into elusive, enigmatic texts. In Beckett 's oeuvre, autobiography provides the foundation for writing that then undergoes a painstaking process that purges the text of the author's identity. It is as though Beckett records aspects of his past with the conscious intent of undoing them, paradoxically developing his texts out of the erasure of autobiography (Abbott 1-3; Gontarski). Far from creating works of cryptobiography, that is, works in which the author only remotely disguises his identity, Beckett aims not so much to disguise autobiography as to displace and discount it (Gontarski 4). The progression of Beckett's manuscripts exposes this refusal to accept the very autobiography that spawns his creative material. In particular, the manuscripts of the late play Ohio Impromptu (r981), including the many unpublished false starts now housed at Reading University 's Samuel Beckett Collection, exemplify Beckett's attempt to unwrite himself through what he once called his literature of the unword (German Letter 54). ' This essay focuses on these recently acquired manuscripts to illustrate how Beckett 's unique process of self-erasure infonns his final text. In order to elucidate this process before turning to the specific manuscripts, I intro. duce the concept of derangement and its contribution to Beckett's dying presence in his works.

Theodicy and approximation: Avicenna THÉODICÉE ET APPROXIMATION: AVICENNE

Our aim here is to show that an enigmatic text of Avicenna's Glosses, devoted to the problem of evil, takes on its full meaning in the light of the last chapter of the šifā' on De generatione et corruptione. We will see how Avicenna, deepening and developing a cosmological argument already present in the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on the De generatione, ends up building most of his theodicy on the relative incommensurability of the different celestial periods. All the problem of divine Justice is thus reinterpreted in terms of opposition between discrete and continuous. Finally we will show the importance that this development of Avicenna had in Western Christendom in the 14th century, and the complex relationship which Leibniz has with it in his recently edited reflections on the Great Year.

‘Finding the Way’: James Legge and the Victorian Invention of Taoism

James Legge (1815–97) is primarily known as the great missionary translator of the Confucian Classics (1861–72, 1893–95). However, after his installation as the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford University in 1876, Legge was a close associate of Max Müller and participated in the production of the Sacred Books of the East (1879–1910), the foundational documents for the new discipline known as the comparative science of religions. By virtue of his translations for Müller’s Sacred Books (1891), Legge was the most important figure contributing to the late Victorian invention of ‘Taoism’ as a ‘world religion’ located ‘classically’, ‘essentially’, and ‘purely’ within certain ancient texts or ‘sacred books’, especially a single enigmatic text or Taoist ‘bible’ known as the Tao Te Ching , attributed to the sage Lao Tzu. It was Legge’s Protestant (and resolutely anti-Catholic) paradigm of an early philosophically and morally pure Taoism (identified with the Tao Te Ching), as distinguished from a later ritualistic and magical Taoism (associated with the machinations of the Taoist ‘popes’) that set the context for the Western understanding of the Taoist tradition for much of the twentieth century. Recent revisionary developments in Taoist scholarship reflect some of the important methodological issues of interpreting the ‘special nature’ of Chinese religious tradition first debated by Legge and others such as Herbert Giles during the Victorian period.

Defining The Genre Of Bonaventura’s Nachtwachen

The enigmatic text of the anonymous Nachtwachen. Von Bonaventura has consistently baffled critics. Its meaning has largely remained elusive and its structure has resisted logical decoding. Yet most interpretative difficulties disappear when the text is considered as a menippean satire, the genre dealing with questions of life and death, and with the tragicomic reaction of mankind to the challenge they represent.The Nachtwachen fit easily into this tradition originating from Greek philosophy. This view is supported by the literary criticism of Northrop Frye, and particularly by that of the Russian Mikhail Bakhtin, who tabulated a number of generic characteristics and intellectual menippean conventions, all of which relate to Bonaventura’s text and reveal a veritable compendium of eighteenth‐century concerns. Though the identity of the author may remain in doubt, we have, therefore, to focus on a personality of quite unusual erudition and intelligence.

As siglas em cores no Trabalho das passagens, de W. Benjamin

Do que era para ser seu opus magnum, o Trabalho das passagens, concebido como uma história social da cidade de Paris no século XIX, W. Benjamin elaborou em 1938 um modelo, que ficou inacabado, mas do qual existe um plano de construção integral, reencontrado em 1981 na Bibliothèque Nationale da França. Com base no deciframento desses manuscritos, 80% inéditos, é apresentada aqui uma síntese do Modelo das passagens, em forma de uma constelação das 30 siglas em cores que simbolizam as 30 categorias construtivas. O trabalho se baseia na hipótese de que se trata de uma escrita esotérica com valores estéticos, semânticos e estruturadores próprios: recurso mimético destinado a ler o texto difícil da metrópole moderna. As siglas são analisadas sob sete aspectos: oficina de historiografia, escrita fisiognômica, visualização do tempo, história como cartografia, quadros de mentalidade, alegorização e radiografia de época. Atuando na intersecção entre tradições conceituais e pictográficas, as siglas constituem na historiografia um gênero de fronteira.

The Narrative Secret of Flannery O'Connor: The Trickster as Interpreter

The Narrative Secret of Flannery O'Connor provides new insights into the full corpus of O'Connors fiction by exploring the intersection of O'Connor's artistic intentions and her religions preoccupations. Johansen looks first at how the stories create meaning in order to explain what they mean. Drawing on a variety of critical methods from narratology, anthropology, mythology, and reader response criticism, this study invites us to reconsider O'Connor's complex and enigmatic texts through their structures and actions. By focusing on the interplay of O'Connor's narrative structures, the human psyche, and the institutions and traditions of our collective history - particularly ancient myths and legends - Johansen illuminates the relation between narration, the self, and spiritual transformation. O'Connor's narratives employ figures, gestures, and actions that work to deceive or disorient the reader. These havoc-wreaking forces in and among the stories most resemble the archetypal trickster. Johansen demonstrates that, through such tricksteresque activity, O'Connor's narratives push the reader to acknowledge the perverse, violent, and often disorderly aspects of human and divine behavior. The religious secret of O'Connor narratives - revealed in shimmering environments where narration and incarnation meet - is that both evil and good, the grotesque and the ideal, violence and peace, Satan and God, the human and the divine exist together in sacred unity. O'Connor's literary secret, through which she discloses the religious one, is to tell stories that return human beings to original mythic events. By recasting these events in contemporary fiction, with the assistance of the trickster, sheperforms a ritual function that is as necessary in an individualistic, technological age as it is in a communitarian, primitive one. With its emphasis on narrative structures, this investigation of O'Connor's writing holds significance for other literature studies because it enable

Where did Schaeffer find the clay tablets of the Ugaritic Baal‐cycle?

Abstract A great variety of cuneiform texts have been found within the precincts of the high priest's building complex in ancient Ugarit. Some of the texts are letters, others are lexical texts and others again are ritual texts. The great epics of aqht and krt are best described as literary texts. Some of the texts, however, do not unambiguously belong to one group only: Some scholars would construe the Baal‐cycle as a ritual text or at least a text somehow connected with the cult performed in the temples; others would describe the Baal‐cycle as pure literature. Similarly the enigmatic text about Shachar and Shalim (abbreviated SS) apparently contains cultic and literary elements. Is this text then a cult‐text or a piece of literature? The aim of the article is to investigate if from the archaeological evidence we can add an argument to the on‐going debate about the Sitz im Leben of the Ugaritic Baal‐cycle: Were the clay tablets in the high priest's building distributed according to their content? The ans...

The Writer's Identity as Self-Dismantling Text in Julien Green's Si j'étais vous. . .

Written between 1944 and 1946, Julien Green's novel Si j'étais vous . . . is one of the author's most fantastic and enigmatic texts, having generated interpretations ranging from the Freudian to the theological. Yet certain central features of the text have not yet been addressed and may lead to a different approach, one focusing on the problem of the writer's identity in his works. Despite the fact that his literary efforts are unsuccessful, Fabien is shown as being a writer like Green himself, but more importantly, he is a character in another writer's fiction. As metatext, Green's novel describes the conversion of an author into a succession of language objects which are similar and alien to him. In each of his different incarnations, Fabien transposes himself as text, marrying a residual consciousness of self to the desired attributes of his "host." Fabien's round-trip journey may, therefore, represent the process of turning the writer's reality into language, and the subsequent endeavor to resituate what that language had displaced.

“They Saw What They Said They Saw”: Sense Knowledge in Early Christian Polemic

A curious parallel exists between two early Christian discussions of prophetic or divine knowledge. Both deal with the Christian problem of sense knowledge about the divine in a thought world dominated by Platonic thinking: how can Christians base their knowledge of the divine upon the reports of the apostles who claim to have seen God in a human shape? The first of these discussions arises from criticisms from outside; Celsus, the second-century Platonist critic of Christianity, calls the Christians a carnal race who say that God is corporeal and has a human form, and complains, “How are they to know God unless they lay hold of him by sense-perception?” (C. Cel.7.27, 37). The second comes from within the Christian camp, and is to be found in theClementine Homilies. In this rather enigmatic text Simon Magus, the arch-heretic, accuses Peter in his reliance upon his apostolic experience of “introducing God in a shape,” and opposes to apostolic sense knowledge his own visionary experiences (Hom.17.3). The examination of these two texts demonstrates that in their common terms and the common shape of their arguments the issue of the knowledge of the apostles was common in Christian polemics. It was also a problem for philosophically minded Christians who would prefer to place the knowledge of God, even if historically mediated by Jesus, in the intelligible knowledge of the soul, rather than in the senses.

Hell's Angels: A Reading of Alberti's "Sobre los angeles"

?O~~ ? OBRE los dngeles is one of the richest and most enigmatic texts to appear in Spain in a century remarkable for its poetic production. It occupies a central position in Alberti's poetics and in the history of modern Spanish poetry. Yet despite its recognized importance, this book has received considerably less critical attention than the work of many of Alberti's contemporaries. Sobre los cngeles lies midway between Marinero en tierra (for which Alberti received the Premio Nacional de Poesia in 1925) and Consignas, the publication of which in 1933 confirmed him as Spain's foremost political poet. Alberti's dizzying career from dehumanization to political commitment in less than a decade is paradigmatic of his entire generation. Sobre los dngeles and surrealism in general play a fundamental role in that transition. The most cursory reading makes it apparent that Sobre los dngeles gives expression to some sort of crisis. Its violent imagery and at times tortuous syntax point to disruption and upheaval. Most critics who deal with Sobre los ingeles take Alberti's stunning gallery of angels as a spiritual autobiography,' viewing it variously as the poetic reflection of an existential, religious, or amorous crisis. These studies often rely heavily on the poet's lyrical autobiography, La arboleda perdida, to explain difficulties in the text

Coloring <i>Gravity's Rainbow</i>

More than a decade after Gravity's Rainbow first appeared, the central question about this enigmatic text remains unanswered. How can we impute coherence to the text without falling into--or creating--the totalizing structures that the text warns us against? As the "Rainbow" of Pynchon's title suggests, color is an important way in which this question is brought into focus. Most readers are aware that certain colors and color combinations occur repeatedly through the text; but so far no one has connected them either with Pynchon's recurrent themes, or with the more general question of how to reconcile the obviously elaborate patterning of Gravity's Rainbow with its paranoid intuition that all patterns originate in death-obsessed consciousness. Encoded into the color transformations of Gravity's Rainbow are complex responses toward the psychopathologies to which fragmented Western thought gives rise, and the ways in which we as writers and readers get co-opted into participating in and reinforcing this fragmentation.

A Postscript to the “Letter of Gilgamesh”

The celebrated “Letter of Gilgamesh,” treated by Gurney, AnSt VII (1957), 127 ff. and by Kraus, AnSt XXX (1980), 109 ff., has so far remained without parallel in Akkadian literature. Kraus pondered the significance and interpretation of this enigmatic text, and found it an “Erstling” (p. 120). He looked ahead to Ovid for a parallel. With diffidence one may also look backward to some obscure school-boy efforts from Sargonic Girsu. In the archives of the ensi of Girsu appeared various learner's texts which I have suggested elsewhere were the efforts of bureaucrats learning their profession “on the job.” Among these are two fanciful products that raise some of the same problems that the Gilgamesh letter does.The first is a “letter” (L. 1073), that, daydream though it be, offers a tantalizing glimpse of another scholar apparently thinking along the same lines as the amanuensis of Gilgamesh.

The Celestial River: A Reconstruction

Those of us who wish to acquire an understanding of the history of science and technology in China are fortunate. Joseph Needham's work on the subject, which started to appear in 1954, is now near completion.1 It not only provides new insights and knowledge, but helps us to understand the tantalizing descriptions of old apparatus which have no surviving artifacts or illustrative diagrams. These descriptions present problems of reconstruction not yet decisively solved. No doubt this is partly due to the extraordinary economy of expression employed in these texts: At first sight they often appear quite unintelligible. One wonders if it is at all possible to reconstitute the ancient apparatus on the basis of apparently enigmatic texts which may well contain errors of transcription. This suspicion is counterbalanced by the equally obvious idea that our lack of ready understanding may be due to the large cultural difference, manifest also in its technological aspects, between the China of many centuries ago and the world we are living in now. We cannot dismiss these descriptions as corrupt before we have explored all avenues of interpretation; we have to guard ourselves against the temptation to emend these texts until a reconstruction emerges which may be readily understood in terms of present-day technology, even though its historical value remains questionable. In the text analyzed below the one emendation found necessary concerns a common scribal error.

A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett, who wrote everything in both French and English, specialised in short enigmatic texts, implying vast visionary works of which the stories are broken pieces. Kenner's guide is designed to help readers see beyond the story in Beckett to the text as a whole and to appreciate the uniqueness of each of his works. Hugh Kenner's books include The Poetry of Ezra Pound, Dublin's Joyce, and Joyce's Voices.

Ursprung und Anfänge der Kabbala (review)

170 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY time we eagerly look forward to the appearance of Volume II (Metaphysics of S[*fism) and Volume III (Safavid Renaissance and subsequent developments) of the Histoire de la Philosophie Islamique, which presents such an original vision of Islamic thought in history. JACQUES WAARDENBURG University of California, Los Angeles Ursprung und An]iinge der Kabbala. By G. Scholem. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1962. Pp. viii [if + 434. = Stadia Judaica, III. DM 48.--) Ursprung und An]iinge der Kabbala is a reworking of Professor Scholem's Hebrew study, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, which appeared in 1948. An English translation is also planned (cf. Scholem's On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, p. 97). To assess the book properly, one should control all of Jewish mystical literature, Jewish aggadic literature, Jewish philosophic literature, gnosticism, and the history of Neo-Platonism. Few readers or reviewers will be able to match the author in the breadth of his knowledge, and the present reviewer does not claim to. Therefore I shall not enter on a detailed analysis of the book, but restrict myself to outlining Scholem's general thesis and then--perhaps at the risk of impertinence--to raising a few questions. Scholem's thesis may be placed in better perspective by the addition of a few words concerning his views on a prior stage of Jewish mystical speculation. Some sort of mystical doctrine is known to have been current among the Jews in Mishnaic times, but all that the Mishnah (second and third centuries) is willing to say about the doctrine is that it should not be taught publicly. In fact, if the key text (Hagigah, II:l) is taken literally, the more secret part of that doctrine should not be taught at all, and may only be studied by a single individual when alone. Other talmudic sources, somewhat later than the Mishnah, give nothing more than a few vague hints concerning this ultra-secret doctrine. However, there are also extant a number of texts which, in contrast to the Talmudic sources just mentioned, are extremely explicit. These texts, generally thought by scholars to be centuries later than the Talmud, deal with the celestial realms and the adventures of certain select souls as they passed through those realms on their way to an anthropomorphic vision of God. The divine "palaces" are one of the central themes in the texts, and most of them have the term "palace" in their titles, so that we may call this type of speculation "palace" mysticism. Quite a different type of doctrine is covered by the term "cabala" in the strict sense. The cabala, which appeared in Southern France and in Spain from the twelfth century onward, is not particularly concerned with the celestial regions below God, but rather analyzes the hypostases or aspects (or attributes or powers) of the deity Himself, and describes how they have emanated from, and are related to one another (cf. Ursprung,p. 33). Scholem has attempted to run a thread through the unknown early rabbinic doctrine, the "palace" texts, and the cabala. In a brief, but extremely important study (Jewish Gnosticism , Mer~abah Mysticism, and the Tatmudic Tradition [New York: 1960]), he argued that the "palace" mysticism is essentially identical with mystical doctrines taught by the rabbis as early as the third century, his argument being based on a very delicate and perspicacious analysis of the few hints that have been preserved in the rabbinic sources. Scholem also unearthed and analyzed certain passages in the early rabbinic and "palace" texts, to buttress the position--not new--that gnostic elements are to be found in the rabbinic writings; in Scholem's view these elements reflect "fundamental" gnostic teachings (cf. Ursprung, pp. 18-19). In Ursprung und Anfiinge der Kabbala, Scholem traces the thread a step further. Here he discusses four types of early cabala (in the strict sense): an enigmatic text, entitled Bahir, which appeared in Europe before 1200 and which ostensibly cites its material in the names of various rabbis of the talmudic period; a circle of cabalists centering around one Isaac the Blind, the scion of an eminent rabbinic family in Southern France for whom Scholem infers the dates 1165...