Pirates of the Bronx: At Semester's End

Sorry, Mate ... Just couldn't resist So, I'm a little short on sleep right now from a paper. Was going to sleep for longer today but there was the office Christmas thing and lunch with a candidate for a post on faculty (they like to have candidates have lunch with grad students in their specialty while they are here, this guys was in OT) and then I was going to come back and catch up on sleep but then realized it would be probably be a good idea for me to turn up at the talk the guy was giving at for (part of his visiting as a candidate) - was pretty drowsy during the talk but after was more awake, so ... Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End came out on DVD on the 5th and I got a copy but told me-self I could not watch it or the extras till everything was done - but then I was relatively awake, but realizing I would not be so long enough to make it worth getting started, since on this little sleep it is a better idea to catch up some on it so ... you guessed it ... while I did not watch the movie, I did go through the extras Quite simply: this movie rocks more every time I look at stuff from it. I highly recommend watching the extras - the work that went into that final battle in the maelstrom is every bit as over the top as the scene itself is in the finished movie (for which I have made a case, contra those who complain that the movie, and that scene was just too over the top, that that is life, especially on PoMo readings ... "Into the Abyss" is where life takes place and the Spirit is ever brooding over the chaotic face of the deep). And Hans Zimmer ... quite simply rocks - great peace on his work on the score For here, only briefly, I have four findings. I will go through them from the shortest to the longest, since I would not want the reader to get tired out by my longer discussions (and the last point is VERY long because it gave way, contrary to my original intention, before inserting this parenthetical here, to the previously promised discussion on recent statements of "authorial intent" by Rowling), - I would not want the reader to do this if the reader is prone to do so, and miss out on having at least the reward of the shortest one, which is just a really fun factiod, so I put it up first. 1. Gore Verbinski, the director, actually plays guitar in the movie. No, it is not an over-dub of the "Spanish Ladies" piece played by Captain Teague ... that part is actually played by Richards himself onscreen. Verbinski plays the only part in the whole movie score that is rock instrumentation: the haunting distorted electric guitar overlay in the scene where Will, Beckett and Jones meet with Barbosa, Elizabeth and Jack on the sandbar between the two armadas just before the final battle in the maelstrom (the one that sounds a little like some of the "ballad" stuff Metallica has done). Interesting too ... Hans Zimmer used to be in the rock music industry. 2. Hoist the Colors: The song was actually composed from scratch, both melody and lyrics, by not only Hans Zimmer, but Hans Zimmer and Gore Verbinski working together. Also on that song: I had written on here after I watched the movie umpteen times in the theater and then gotten a pirated version on Canal St in lower Manhattan, of my theory of the "meaning" of that song. In the movie Sao Fang's lieutenant sings "never SAY we die," but I was pretty sure that when the pirate chorus sings it at the beginning that it was "SHALL we die." And indeed, in the English subtitles for the extras piece on the song (where at least an original recording was done with Zimmers wife, who just happened to be in the studio that day, singing the song like a young boy), it is indeed, "never SHALL we die." My whole original comment was that the "never" has a secondary undertone of "EVER shall we die." That word in the gallow-pirates chorus is particularly fuzzy, sounding like it could be either. It was this, after looking online and finding a consensus for "never" (probably based in using the version by Sao Feng's lieutenant as a comparison source), that first presented to me the idea to me of two meanings arising from the "fuzziness," one primary and one secondary. The primary meaning is the "never" because this is what the brethren court intended in binding Calypso. The secondary meaning of "ever" is the reality of the thing - the "being towards" death I will take up in observation number 3. 3. Being Towards Death: There is a line I missed in previous viewings because of the chaotic setting and the quickness of it. But it is a central line for the case I have been making (while trying not to tip my hand too much on the contents of an essay I want to write and try to get published), concerning this movie's great manifestation of Heidegger's "being towards death" (which makes it fit well with HP because I have been making a similar case regarding Deathly Hallows). The line is one of two in the pairing off of the two captains, Barbosa and Jones, against each other in the battle in the abyss. I just mentioned, in the parenthetical, Jone's line, "into the abyss" (forget if I mentioned this or not, but the abyss is also a translation for the Hebrew word in that Genesis 1 passage, "the deep," and it is a very key term for Heidegger, the "ab-ground" that is the "nothing" out into which human existence, "dasein," is constantly held, and for Heidegger this is intimately bound up in the "being towards death"). But Barbosa's pairing line, when he takes the helm after Elizabeth and Will tell him they need him, relates directly to the "being towards death": "Dying is a Day worth Living For" (which echoes with Will's central line to his father, when Bootstrap says that 10 years at sea is a heavy price to pay for one day ashore with his wife: "it all depends one day" - and speaking of creation in Genesis 1, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, does not read "the first day," but rather "the one day" - a point out of which the Church Fathers made a great deal in developing Christian eschatology, including in relation to Sunday as the 8th day, the "ogdoad," and the 1 day beyond the created 7 day order of Genesis 1-2). 4. The Long Awaited DVD Answer On Will's Destiny: In regards to this "being towards death" the one thing I was looking forward to in the DVD release was a rumored 23 extra minutes of deleted footage, which contained, among other things, material pertaining to the exact nature of Will's contract with the Dutchman as her captain. Well, that 23 minutes was only a rumor. The deleted scenes include only 2 brief scenes. BUT, I was rewarded on the matter of Will and the 10 years aboard the Dutchman. Rumor had had it that what was to be revealed was that Will had only one 10 year stint to do to fulfill the terms of service, and then he could stay on land with Elizabeth for the rest of his life all the time. This is not the case, and I am very glad. Rather than extra scenes, the DVD included in the insert a list of "top questions movie goers had about POTC: AWE" ... and the second question is that of one 10 year stint or a continuing system ... and the definitive answer in the insert is the latter. The reason I was so glad about this is actually very pertinent for recent events of public statements in Potter-land. In the "text" of the movie as it stands the best case that could be made for the shorter terms is that the text is ambiguous and leaves that question unanswered. But I do not think that position (of the text as completely ambiguous on the matter) stands up very well because it does not adequately describe the text. If one asks the question of the text, one must follow the logic in the text: Will replaced Jones, whose original accord was the longer, repeating, schema., and thus these are the terms of Will being captain. There is no going back to "normal" life. To quote Val Kilmer's Doc Holladay in the movie Tombstone: "there's no such thing as normal life, Wyatt, there's just life" ... and death (this line is spoken on Holladay's death bed). (I am also apposed to readings of this text that view the 10 years at sea as the man "going out every day to return at night, bringing home the bacon" concept of "normal life." That leaving and returning is a part of human existence, but this thing of "being towards death" - Will's specific task of ferrying the dead is central, as are his death and resurrection - the latter term used specifically in the DVD insert. It is the same with Harry: even though he goes on with life and marries Ginny and has a family with her, it can no longer be "normal life." Those events changed him radically and definitively. The scar has not even prickled in 19 years ... but he still remembers it and his hand still goes there by instinct.) Don't Mess With the Text: From Pirates to Potter The logic of the recurring 10 years stands as it is in the logic of the movie's text and I am glad they did not muck things up with some statement of authorial intent outside the text that muddied the waters of the text itself. The way that the reason I was so happy connects with recent Potter statements is that the logic of the text stands as it is, on its own. If that logic is flawed or not well written then that is just the way it is ... adding "extra" material does not fix the problem with the text as it stands unless you write a new text. And even on that issue, I see no reason to say that the text as it stands has lacunae that require explanation. And I don't think the proposed answer to a supposed lacuna is anywhere near as present, if at all, in the DH text as the author sees it. I don't doubt she had that reading of the character long before, maybe from the start, but I think she let the story tell itself by its own logic and that that logic does not contain that element for that character (neither that specific form, nor the question in general, either "same" or "opposite"). "Authorial intent" versus "author providing information on details." When sounding the war-cry of the "new criticism" (as I am apt to do) - "don't commit the fallacy of authorial intent!" - I would distinguish between authorial intent and information on details provided by the author. Under the latter I would place such material as giving the sources of images used (e.g. noting that the source directly and concretely impacting the nature of the four houses is the classical four elements cosmogony - but even in that case I would differentiate between what can be said about - such as, for example, that the four elements comprise the nature of the physical cosmos, just as the four houses comprise the English wizarding world's concept of the composition of the defining trait of their "world" as distinct from other worlds, such as the muggle world, with special emphasis on the fact that the author concretely uses the "world" terminology, which generally translates the Greek "cosmos" - from my own theories and comments, as an interpreter, of how the interaction between the individual four elements works out in the text). As an example from the wider world of literature (and I only know this one from doing a paper on it in undergrad) I would offer the example of informing the un-informed that the dates given as the headings of the four sections of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury are the dates of the Tuesday and Thursday-Saturday of Holy Week (in the year 1938 and, for the Tuesday, the Quentin Compton section, for 1928, I believe, but I would have to look it up, the years are given in the date headings), and thus one is justified in using Holy Week as an interpretive matrix for the novel. I do not believe that the statement in question falls under the heading of such information, but properly under the improper understanding, and really inflation, of the natural role of "authorial intent." As an example of such considerations of what is "in the text" take my comments on a possible Harry-Hermione thing, in remarks exchanged with Jo from Australia just after the release of DH. In those comments, if I remember them correctly (and if not, take this as an opportunity to edit that text of mine by here making a new text with the inaccurate material struck from the old text and this material inserted), that the presence of a real thing was ever even actually present. I think that the case is that the logic of character types and of experience lends itself to the possibility of something, but that is not the same as the thing itself actually existing between the two. I think a key element is the absence of Ron as a result of his actively leaving. I believe that it is only in this absence that logic of the character types and that of the emotionally intense common experience, without Ron there, ever even even have arisen at all, in any way shape or form, on Hermione's radar, even subconsciously (which is why I think Hermione was so upset with Ron for leaving - but on my reading it is also entirely possible that the blip on the radar is only subconscious and that Hermione could not consciously tie out this element as a contributing factor for her anger - but, as I said then, I do think that things such as the posing as a middle-aged muggle married couple so support the element as a factor in the text, at the very least in the use of the images, even if not at all on the level of the Hermione character, although I do think the latter at least possible, and my gut feeling sides with even at least probability, but how much I can "prove" is of course another matter - and here I am arguing in a different fashion from the "fun logic of images" I speak of sometimes, when I say I am not trying to proof-text or provide "evidence" for certain things, - here I am trying to provide evidence to support a certain reading of a certain possible element in the text). I do not think that the thing itself ever actually occurred in the text, only the latent possibility according to only the logic of character types and of the common experiences in that context. And I do not think Hermione ever chose (consciously or subconsciously) to follow those logics, but simply that they did put a real strain on her emotionally in Ron's absence (a tenet I would list on the "latent" level, but still concretely in the text on that level) ... a strain to which Harry was totally oblivious (the reason you go with someone is because you actually are drawn to them not because they are "your type" or simply because there is a certain logic in sharing certain general experiences together, even if those things contribute secondarily - and obviously in the final moment it is a matter of a choice, an act of the will). I think that is the state of the text as it stands in this case(on Harry, Hermione and Ron - the last especially evident in what Ron sees in the locket ... if it is in Ron's mind and read by the Voldy-Crux, Hermione can probably guess that it is in Ron's mind) and no statements of authorial intent would change that (the author might be able to change my opinion by their own arguments as an interpreter of the text, the same as any other interpreter might be able to by presenting arguments), just as statements that seem to me to fall distinctly under the class of "authorial intent," such as those actually made, will not change my read on that issue. On a further matter concerning that public statement, the matter of the public reception, I do not necessarily fault the author, but I do think that giving statements of interpretation, given the fact that in this case the interpreter in question is also the author, has seriously muddied the waters on the issue. John Granger has suggested in a post on the matter that one should heavily qualify the nature of that statement by observing the context. I don't disagree (at least not necessarily, not being in a privileged position to discern such things) with his assessment of the statement as heartfelt and honest and directed primarily to the questioner. What I disagree with in Granger's assessment is the contention that those parameters definitively define the context of the statement. This was not simply a private conversation, or even a Q&A session of a talk given in an auditorium filled with persons with a specialized interest in an academic matter, where the only audience outside the physical walls that will probably ever hear the answer are the academic readers of a peer-reviewed academic journal. The real context of the statement involves a very pervasive world wide-wide media in which often occur very heated and polemical ad-hominem campaigns (and even the original question evidences the differences: an audience interested in such academic textual matters would not generally ask a question of that nature - I do not mean to infer any ill mark on the questioner whatsoever, but such a question arises, I think, from conflating what the experience of the text means for a person, in their particular life-situation, with the text itself). (Wow, the end of that last paragraph, before the parenthetical, sounds so much like my roommates recent paper on Augustine on "gapped" texts, that the understanding of context and its role in genre-type plays a central role in the "meaning" of texts.) In other words, I think Granger (and probably the author, but I cannot say for sure), while calling attention to the context, have quite misunderstood the true scope of that context. I also think that Granger does not give proper consideration and weight to that matter of heated ad-hominem arguments in the public arena. One might take a view "against" but see a need to nuance it greatly in order to convey what they believe (such as not being mistaken as implying that certain people will necessarily go to hell if they do not leave a certain lifestyle ... although here it would be a matter of further debate whether, or to what extent, the categories of "insurmountable ignorance" apply or to what extent the psychological conditioning of certain experiences can impact a person in certain areas - and those experiences can drastically effect the psychological: just two days ago I was talking to the professor I spoke of who teaches the class on Corinthians, and he told me the story related to him by a man of how the man's son wound up in a holding cell and was subjected by other inmates to certain things, in other words forced and by no means of his own free will; after six months of not telling anyone the son took his own life). But if one takes such a stance and holds such a view, as I do (and as the Church of John's active creedal affiliation does), such a statement as this by the author potentially gives rise to certain problems. Holding such a nuanced position, one might wish to exercise discretion by "choosing ones battles," and such an authorial statement might seriously limit one's ability to exercise such discretion (I personally try to exercise discretion, not simply for the matter of considering when and where a statement might or might not be effective, or to what degree, but because when making a statement I wish not to be misunderstood, for instance, on the distinction between the simple having of certain inclinations, and the acting upon those inclinations, especially if the misunderstanding meant being construed as saying "you are abhorrent and going to hell simply for having the inclinations" and I tend to gravitate towards situations in which I have more chance of being able to make such distinctions and nuances. For instance, while my roommates might not agree with me, they do know my beliefs and we are able to get along, but many others do not have that privilege of being able to say they concretely know where I stand ... unless they happen to be reading this blog post I guess). If one is of such a mind, and is a PhD student at a large university, and is known to be a practicing Catholic, and is also known to be a huge Harry Potter fan, as I am ... situations which one might otherwise avoid might become unavoidable from causes not within one's control, including, as the first such factor, the author's public statement. In such a case one will likely be written off as "phobic," without the chance to explain one's position adequately (fortunately this has not yet happened to me personally ... but given things as they are, it is not necessarily unlikely ... and the further consideration that should be added in my situation is that, if asked on the matter, I do not wish to betray my faith, I prefer to be honest). Granger gives an example of, when he worked for Whole-Foods, a certain label being applied to himself owing to his marriage and large family (the term rhymes with "feeder"). Being so labeled does not seem to have affected him greatly, but his charitable disposition (and I mean that description of him in all seriousness of respect) does not changed the bigoted nature of someone labeling somebody else that way. Granger makes the statement that such polemicists from the "against" side (as I mention below parenthetically) wrongly take the matter to the level of "election year politics"; but I would argue that the true state of affairs in our cultural context, especially give the aforementioned pervasive world-wide mentioned above is that ... it's always an election year. In short, I think that in trying (and I freely admit that I think he does so with the best intentions) to "pour oil on the water," Granger really just adds fuel to the fire. Better simply to say something nebulous like "well, its a thing people are naturally going to disagree on" and leave it at that (which, in and of itself would be enough to send those who are unfortunately given to agitated polemics "against" and lack of discretion in how they handle such a situation - if looking to distinguish oneself from such polemicists is the desired goal of such as statement ... such polemicists tend to settle for nothing less than very animatedly hopping on their side in no uncertain terms - but I would differentiate between such polemics and generaly being a bit perturbed by the statement, and I don't think Granger addresses this distinction sufficiently enough to justify the statements he himself make ... just my take on it). Better to make such brief and nebulous statements than to go to the lengths he has chastising those who were upset for being so vocally so (or at least that is how I read his statements, but that may just be me for the reasons I stated just now). For this reason, while I disagree with the polemicists (on both sides of the fence), I do not find the same fault as Granger seems to (at least in that one piece as I understood it) with some being agitated by the statement. On the score of the question of whether or not the statement of "authorial intent" impacts the meaning of the text, even some decidedly, publicly, and even polemically, on the one side (the "pro" and activist side) have argued that it does not, such as John Cloud in Time, who basically said (in a piece in time days after the author's statement) "you're not doing any good for my side ... put the character back where the character was before your statement -in the ...." All that having been said, I do think that it is a legit question to ask whether this particular author, in her particular time and life situation, would have written such a character (who we all have found genuinely VERY endearing) without such a concept (not "could this character be written without this concept" in general, but in the very particular case of this author) ... and the attendant question of whether or not any body else, period, could have given us this particular character. I do not know the answer to that question, but I do think it is a valid question to ask. It is a question that applies to the way in which the text arises, as distinct from the text itself, but I do think it a legitimate question to ask. so, there you have it for what it is worth: Merlin's literary theory (101) and read of recent major HP events and the responses to them ... I wouldn't necessarily advise quoting it in any significant debates if I were you (not for my own sake ... for yours lol). I was not planning on making the big long statement on the recent HP developments and Granger's commentary on them. I was planning just to make a short post on Pirates the Caribbean and then put me to bed, but oh well. Now I really am going to bed.

Harry Potter and the Gift of Death

So, I just ordered a book online: The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida. Now, being as Derrida just died in 2004, there stands a pretty good chance that he knew of Tolkien's use of that title/phrase in the Silmarillion. But my own path to the JD book was through my professor in the class I am taking on St Paul's Corinthian correspondence in the New Testament. When talking to him earlier in the day I happened to mention the direction I am taking with my paper in my other class on the History of Biblical Interpretation, in which we have been taking the history of interpretation of Genesis 22 (also known as the "Akedah" or "binding" of Isaac) as a paradigm - covering everything from second temple Judaism to, last week, Soren Kierkegaard (in Fear and Trembling). Upon hearing the direction that I was going with that other paper, Dr Welborn (the NT professor) said, "you know who has an interesting book on the Akedah is Jacques Derrida." So, there is Derrida, as in the French father of post-modern deconstructionist theory, as in Rowling was a French major. As in Rowling was a classicist. As in just in tonight's class we were talking about how Foucault (also French PoMo, of whom I will have to read a fair bit next semester in a class on "the postmodern subject" ... meaning subjective, as in the role/place of the acting subject, not as in "I am studying the subject of theology" or "what subjects are you taking next term?" ) spawned a whole corpus of secondary literature concentrated on ancient Greco-Roman thought on the emotions. So, what, you might ask, were we doing talking about ancient Greco-Roman understandings of the emotions? Well, I'm glad you asked. Paul devotes quite a bit of ink in parts of 2nd Corinthians to the concept of the "pain" or "anguish" he has suffered. The Greek word used here is "lupei" and generally means psychic/psychological suffering or pain. Now, cut back to just after the Lumos conference in August of 2006. I had listened to one of the CDs from the conference, a talk I had not been able to go to while there, by Kim Decina and Josella Vanderhooft, on standard disorder types from clinical psychology as present in the HP series. I think even more now than back then that their paper topic was uniquely insightful into a key element in understanding the books. Of course, coming up to book 7 release I did a long post on what I called the "insanity chiasm," focusing heavily on therapeutic imagery (particularly "being sick") in connection with key moments such as visions (revelatory in nature, as therapy is meant to be, working out "what ails you" by first getting it out in the open) and retellings of dark deeds (such retellings done under influence of substances the sort of force the revelation, like veritaserum ... as in when Barty Crouch Jr recounts his tale under the truth serum and Harry notices that McGonnegal looks a bit disgusted, as if she had just watched somebody being sick). Now, all that is not to say that Decina and Vanderhooft saw exactly the same on all things. We didn't necessarily disagree, but they were hesitant to cast Lupin under the umbrella of psychological malady because they could not put him into a standard modern psychology category. But with this new info on his name (IE the Greek lupei as psychological pain), I feel even more confident about my reading of Lupin as, not a particular objective, classifiable disorder, but as the experience of psychological malady for the person who undergoes it. Here's an interesting fact we went through in class tonight. The Stoic system that was the most common "popular" philosophy in the Greco Roman world at the time of Paul (sometimes sort of mixed with some Platonism) had two sets of emotions they talked about, the 4 bad ones and the 3 good ones. So, why the difference in number? Well, the 3 good ones all corresponded to one each of the bads ones (so the sage is the one who has trained themself rightly and passed from the stage of being dominated by the bad ones to living only in the good ones) ... and that leaves one bad emotion without a corresponding good emotion to be turned to after becoming sagely. The reader gets 3 guesses what the name of that "bad" emotion is that is so bad it cannot be transformed into anything positive when one advances to sagehood (under the system of stoic thought, which Paul is actually arguing contrary to) ... and the first two guesses don't count. Lupei is as excluded from the life of the sage as Lupin is from the society of wizards. This is the experience of the one who is weighed down by the conception of their own illness - "My kind don't usually breed!" (DH 213 - "It will be like me, I am convinced of it - how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my condition to an innocent child? And, if by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!") Now, back to that mention of being sick in connection with visions ("your young men will dream dreams" - guess what one of the standard ancient texts that is connected withe the healing cult of the Greek god of healing, Asklepios, who just happened to have a VERY big branch office in Corinth, was - Artemidorus' work on the interpretation of dreams - apparently the dreams were supposed to provide clues to healing - and the symbol of Asklepios? a snake and a staff crossed or the snake wound around the staff - sound a little like the symbol for any institutions in HP - like the wand a bone of St Mungos?). In particular I am thinking of the vision from inside the snake in Order of the Phoenix. The almost single-minded goal of stoicism was to become impervious (sound like any HP charms discussed before, especially during brutal Quidditch matches, like one against a character who will later die at the dead center of the series, Cedric Diggory?) to lupei. Paul's rebuttal is a journey to redemption that he actually describes very heavily in terms of anguish (7 specific terms in Greco-Roman world for types of it) - that the path to salvation goes by way of being led through the suffering, not becoming impervious. But my point is: where do we see in DH the image of a misguided attempt to become impervious from invasion (which is, more than anything, suicide ... the level to which one must cut oneself off from others)" ... "Dumbledore wanted you to close that connection! Dumbledore wanted you to practice Occlumency!" (and by book 6, of course, Dumbledore fully realizes that Harry can no more do occlumency properly than he can make his hair behave, but the headmaster does not seem to be at all that concerned the deficiency in Harry's , not after the pain Voldemort experienced when trying to possess Harry in the end of book 5 ... Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, who is in such a psychologically distraught state from oppression by Voldy that he can muster the loathing to use the cruciatus curse effectively on Olivander, using it on the wandmaker without even the natural righteous anger driving it that Harry has in using it on Amycus Carrow - Draco can practice occlumency quite well, well enough to stop even so skilled a legilimens as Snape) (oh, and for the thing above on the "impervious" charm .. I am not trying to tie out a nice neat system in which the impervious charm was actually a bad thing because it is like trying to close the Voldy connection and in book 7 that is not the deal [in book 5 before the end occlumency is a good idea ... it might have saved Sirius' life if done rightly] ... I look at things more as the way certain images attune the reader to certain questions - so the impervious charm is neither good nor bad [if anything it is good as a way of keeping the rain out of your face in gale force winds during a Quidditch match], but simply meant to sort of "stick" in the reader's ear as something that is somehow meaningful in the books, meaning the issue of imperviousness, protection from invasion, psychic or otherwise etc etc) Anyway, one last thing on Lupin and lupei. There is a classicist named William Harris who is presently at Columbia U on the upper west side in Manhattan, whom my professor, Dr Welborn, was mentioning tonight, who has done a bit of work on this subject. Harris says that in the ancient world lupei was thought of as pretty much the flipside of the same coin as "orgei." So what is orgei? Well, we get certain words in English from it, used in a, to be discrete, coital context (or being as we deal so heavily with language here, maybe "conjugational" would be a fitting pun). But this usage largely comes from the cultic fertility activities surrounding the cult of the Greek god Dionysius. On the other hand orgei can be translated "anger." The connection between the dionysian sense and the "angry" sense, can best be seen in the word "madness." We can use that word of being angry or we can use it of being deranged ... or being so angry that we "lose it" ... much as, for the stoics, to be subject to lupei was to be not in control of oneself. The dionysian sense mentioned just above derives the connection from the sort of "ecstatic" state, out of control etc, often occurring in such cultic settings of this particular nature. But, aside from that specific dionysian setting, in the more general sense of being "mad" as being "out of one's mind," in the HP series, who "loses it" once a month? Who is "stark raving mad" at the full moon? Interestingly, the closest Greco-Roman literary form of that time for the section/s of 2nd Corinthians where Paul addresses the "anguish" is known as the "therapeutic letter" - which generally addresses both aspects of lupei, "anger" and "anguish." ... I always come out of the class on Corinthians with at least one or two good ideas or observations on Harry Potter ... which makes it make even more sense to me that Rowling used the St Paul quote for the headstone in Deathly Hallows (and there again is Derrida writing a book on "the last enemy to be overcome"). PS ... there again, maybe death conquered by being transformed into gift (although this is a very deep concept, and utmost caution must be observed in speaking of it, especially with one who has lost a loved one in death - some gifts are so sublime that they are agony) ... transformed, did you say? interesting, in 2 Corinthians 5:18 and 19 there is a verb that standardly gets translated in English "reconcile" (katalussoe) - God was "reconciling the world to himself" etc, but the sense of the Greek world itself is actually, "make other" - as in transformation, as in transfiguration - like I said, always a few good thought on HP from that class.

Death Within and Without: Being Towards Death

I was taking a break from research and reading for papers and since I had recently, on the drive from the Bronx to PA and OH and back again, listened a good deal of the way through Deathly Hallows (Scholastic Version with Jim Dale), I decided to pick up DH and read the King's Cross chapter again (a few nights ago I did the same, reading the escape on the dragon, which was where I had been in the CD set when I hit the George Washington bridge on my way back into town, and selections up through the story told by the ghost of Ravenclaw's tale). As I was reading I was thinking about the specifics of the way the cloaked scene works as Harry walks down with his parents and Lupin and Sirius to face death by Voldemort's hand. Harry walks down protected from death by the cloak, as the cloak is specifically known to do. This is the part where, in DD's words, the legend breaks down and facts become a little more relevant. The cloak may make the wearer truly invisible to the 'death' character in the tale, but, as Harry notes, it is not a protection from curses, and thus not a fail-safe protection from death (and interestingly - and I am not sure if this is a glitch/mistake or not - the cloak does not make Harry invisible to magical eyes like Moody's, which I think is somewhere in GOF, sometime when they are in the 3 broomsticks, Harry under the cloak). BUT, the thing is that while Harry is invisible in the cloak he still has the opportunity to evade death at Voldy's hand. It is his choice that decides. What stood out to me in this reading is the image of the loved ones "inside" the cloak with Harry. They disappear when he takes the cloak off and reveals himself in the moment of choice. And they are visible to none but him. Somehow, it is accepting the company of the dead, of the dearly departed - not as ghosts or in the way of the stone and trying to "fetch them back", but specifically AS dead, as having passed through the veil ("He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.") - is what is necessary for facing death well - and for the possibility of resurrection, and for the possibility of living well even on earth (for Harry to live on and have a family with Ginny etc). While carrying the dead with him while in the cloak, he is protected from death by invisibility if he chooses so to continue. But to make that choice would go against the whole reason for calling them with the stone in the first place, and then it would become what it was for the Peverell brother who made the stone - bringing the dead back into a wretched half-life. Two points from past posts are relevant here. One is the "technical detail" of the missing 14 feet in the graveyard scene in GOF (Harry is six feet from the tombstone when Cedric dies, then Wormtail has to walk "some twenty feet" to retrieve Harry's wand laying by the body), on which I noted that I think it results partially from the text detail of the wand dropping near Cedric's body and then the need for the death eater symbolism that the body be outside their circle (the discrepancy comes from the conflicting material requirements of 2 "meaning" right in a row ... Voldy is cold and heartless and the "killing of the spare" could hardly warrant from him more than a passing whisper, so Harry and Ced must be no more than about 6 feet to hear it, but a circle of close to 30 death eaters is going to be more than that in diameter, and if you are going to get that body outside that circle for symbolic effect, right after the whisper scene, you're going to have to move it without explanation in the text), the departed excluded from the death eaters' considerations. The second point is related in that in the cage of phoenix song just after this, it is the death eaters who are outside while the shades of the martyrs are inside the central arena of action. Whether by conscious choice or subconsciously, Rowling's brain really goes for the "inside-outside" pairings, oppositions and reversals, especially in regards to the issues of death and the departed. PS That thing just now of meeting death "by Voldemort's hand" ... Really interesting phrase. Actually I have used it in Hebrew but was not aware of its existence in the Hebrew Scriptures and thus had to sort of guess at the morphology on my own (in Hebrew "by his hand" is one word: the preposition "in/with/by" is a single letter, "b", which can attach itself to the beginning of a word [a prefix] and Hebrew has a system of what are called "pronomial suffixes" - endings that can attach to nouns to show possession according to number and gender, so you attach the suffix for masculine singular ["his"] for a singular noun [there are different suffixes for singular and plural nouns, such that "his horse" and "his horses" would be different not only in the original noun, but in the suffix used - and their is yet another for "their horses" when you are speaking of masculine plural owners and another for when you are speaking of feminine plural owners, and different endings and rules for if you are dealing with a masculine or feminine possessed noun - since, as in German, French, Greek and Latin, nouns have gender - for masculine plural possessed noun, feminine plural possessed noun, basically every variation, you get the picture ... takes a while to learn ... but you get the picture: attach the prefix for "in/with/by" to the front of the word for hand, and the suffix for "his" on the end). Anyway, I had done this for a series of handmade wedding gifts with the "Poetic Benediction" from Numbers ("The Lord Bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace") in Hebrew (Masoretic Text), Greek (Septuagint), Latin (Vulgate) and English (Revised Standard Version). The inscription below had the dedication to the couple and then the Hebrew of Genesis 12:3b ("In you shall all the families of the earth bless themselves"), and then my signature, and below it that Hebrew word for "by his hand" - meaning that it was handmade (at least hand-inked, not my actual full caligraphy because I made a guide to use on a lightbox because my penmanship is even worse in Hebrew and Greek alphabet than it is with English alphabet). But the further meaning of the word was that of an oath, to put one's hand to something like putting your hand on the Bible to take an oath in court ... to pledge yourself, your very being, to good will for true well being ( I also had them blessed by a priest when I was done with them). Well, recently in a class I am taking on the history of the interpretation of the "Akedah," the "binding" of Isaac in Genesis 22, I discovered an actual use of that Hebrew word: "in/by his hand." When they reach the mountain after a 3 day journey, In Genesis 22:6, Abraham places the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac's back and takes the fire and knife "in his hand" (meaning his own) - and "so the two of them walked on together." I am making no claims that I think Rowling had this passage in mind when she wrote "The Forest Again" chapter - I think these things travel in our collective subconscious (more commonly referred to as "tradition") and just sort of bubble out. But take a look at the groups of images used. Harry walks to his death ("and the two of them walked on together") with his "beloved" ones ("take now your son, your only son, whom you love ..."). We have had much research and many authorial statements about the role of different types of wood ("And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son") in wands ... and in this book especially the wand made of elder. Now, as with all analogies, the analogy breaks down (I would say it has to break down, by definition, otherwise it would be an identity and not an analogy) - so it is best not to look to tie things out so nice and neat; real literature, like real life, is a little bit messier ... and richer. And that is not really my methodology anyway - I look for clusters of images traveling together, resonating organically off of each other, and resonating also with traditions. But, if one does want to look for tighter connections (and if one has thrown up one's hands at the whole thing of the wood on Isaac and the wand in Voldy's hand and asked "so Voldy is Harry's father like Abe is Isaac's? What are you smoking?"). Dumbledore knew a lot of things, he probably knew Voldy would wind up seeking and finding that wand of elder wood, and from his own hands, even if they were dead when he took it, and we know from Snape's memory that DD sent Harry to receive Voldy's AK from that wand, to have that wood of his own death "laid across his back" as it were (meaning there also the image of a whip on the back, a scourging). Dumbledore has been very much a father figure to Harry, and in effect laid that wood on his back. Of course it was Voldy who applied it ... but look at Dumbledore's comments in "King's Cross" - his grief and heaviness when asking the question of the similarities in his own mission for the hallows and Voldy's mission. Other things that are added in the history of interpreting the Akedah/Genesis 22 also ring in Rowling's tale here. In some later sources the element of a stone of sacrifice is added - like Harry walking with the resurrection stone. This seems to me a particularly strong resonance, especially in the context of this present post, since it is the resurrection stone that creates the situation of which I spoke in this post, of the communion of saints within the cloak ... want another nice little connection? In the Targums [Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Scriptures], the connection of the mountain of "Moriah" with the mount of the Jerusalem Temple is drawn out more, including the cloud and fire of the Shekinah of the later Temple AND Abraham is looking into Isaac's eyes and does not see what Isaac sees looking up - angels, connected with the angels believed to guard the Temple sanctuary ... just as only Harry can see his parents and Lupin and Sirius, the protectors. Now, lest I seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill - This passage, the Akedah/Genesis 22 is a very important passage for the three largest religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is especially relevant in the issue of religious identity. Muslims believe it was Ishmael who ascended the mount with Abraham. Jews believe the merits won in the Akedah obedience provided a guarantee of mercy for all of Isaac's descendants (this is worked in in the Targums in a prayer on the part of Abraham). The author of 2nd Maccabees saw in the story of Isaac a model with which to connect the martyrdom of those who would not defile the name of the Holy One, Blessed be He, under pressure from Antiochus Epiphanes (pressure to eat pork, defiling the dietary laws etc). Christian Patristic writers and others emphasized that Abraham's obedience lay in the fact that it was identity itself that he was willing to sacrifice (the continuance of his name in legitimate descendants through Isaac ... and for an echo of the role of names and descendants, male and female, in identity cf the comments of Ron/Hermione on certain wizarding lines being "extinct in the male line" ... this is standard "boiler-plate" language of geneological identity matters and it feeds directly into the mystery of Riddle as a descendant of Slytherin through the Gaunt line). Even down to modernity ... the book I was taking a break from reading was Soren Kierkegaard's (19th century) Fear and Trembling, a classic of contemporary existentialist philosophy - all about Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac. And as for the present day, I'll just close with the lines from Bob Dylan (my old fall-back) with which the translator of Kierkegaard's FnT opened his forward to the work (from "Highway 61 Revisited" - and also current, the movie "The Hunted" with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro featured a page torn from a Bible with Genesis 22 on it and a Johnny Cash cover of the Dylan song): "God said to Abraham, 'kill me a son,' Abe said, 'Man, you must be puttin me on' God said, 'you can do what you want , Abe, but next time you see me comin' you better run' Abe said, 'Where you want this killin' done?' God said, 'Do it out on Highway 61'" (I was walking through the reference section of the library with an armful of several volumes of Kittel's Dictionary of the New Testament, on my way to the copy room, and out of the corner of my eye, on a shelf I see "the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia" - so I look up Highway 61 because I had just learned from a girl in our program who is from Minnesota, that Highway 61 in MN runs right past Duluth, Dylan's [or I should say Zimmerman's] home town - but this guy also noted the symbolic nature of Highway 61 - It runs north-south from Canadian Border to Mississippi River Delta by way of Memphis and is standardly seen as symbolic of African American musical/cultural migration, as opposed to Route 66, which is standardly viewed as the east-west symbol of white migration in different periods of US history) Wood, Knives, Stones, Angels seen and unseen, Fathers and Sons, Death "in/by his hand," Promises of Identity, a Via Dolorosa ("way of the rose" = "way/walk of sorrow/to death"), A Son willingly dying (in the Targums Isaac asks Abraham to bind him tightly and well, lest in a moment of panic he kick out and make Abraham's sacrifice profane and he himself be sent down into the pit of destruction ... the pleasant feeling and how everything automatically appears to meet Harry's needs in the King's Cross chapter suggests he has definitely not "gone down into Sheol" as it were) ... All just some food for thought.