Know Thyself 6 comments

2 Oct 2005 @ 08:02, by Uncle Remus Know thyself, these two words were inscribed on the oracle-shrine of Apollo at Delphi, Greece (6th century B.C.). In Grendel, by John Gardner (1971), the same phrase, however, appears with this somewhat unexpected twist in one of the Dragon's dialogues with Grendel: "Find a pile of gold and sit on it." Grendel is a reworking of the classic epic, Beowulf. Focusing on the monster from the original poem, John Gardner retells the traditional legend from the viewpoint of Grendel, "a well of contradictions," which one review describes as a monster that is "wrecked and oedipal, an 'I' seeing only 'Its'." Interestingly, each of the twelve chapters borrows ideas from different school of philosophy, showing how each is applied and used in the character of Grendel. There's also some good wicked humor and intesting reflections on the nature of reality and mythmaking. The dialogue that takes place between Grendel and the dragon is one of the most entertaining of any book I remember. The Dragon gives Grendel what seem to be three distinct bits of advice: "Know thyself, that's my dictum. Know how much you've got, and beware of strangers!" More about this in Julio Machado's excellent summary, here: "The dragon launches into a sprawling philosophical discussion...[in which he]...explains that humans have a tendency to extrapolate theories and grossly generalize from the limited evidence they have, hampered as they are by their restricted vision of the world (...) Finally, the dragon reveals that the world Grendel knows is no more than a small ripple in the stream of Time, a gathering of dust that will fade away completely when enough years pass. All of man's monuments, systems, and inventions will eventually fade from the world entirely. Even the dragon himself will be killed someday. In light of this vision, the dragon scoffs at Grendel...[and presents that]...whether Grendel sticks with man, helps the poor, or feeds the hungry is irrelevant in the long run. The dragon, for his part, plans only to count all his money and perhaps sort it out into piles. After ridiculing humankind's theories...the dragon gives Grendel a final piece of advice: "seek out gold and sit on it." (...) Though the dragon is a fully realized character---indeed, the only character beside Beowulf's with whom Grendel has any significant dialogue---many critics have proposed that the dragon is not a real being, but comes instead from within Grendel's own psyche. The dragon seems to live in another dimension, one reached not by a physical journey but a mental one, as Grendel has to "make his mind a blank" in order to approach the dragon. Moreover, several characteristics of the dragon are echoes of things Grendel has previously witnessed: the dragon's "nyeh heh heh" laugh, for example, recalls the laugh of the goldworker Grendel once watched at Hart. The dragon is a curious amalgam of dragon imagery from widely varying sources, including Asiatic mythology, Christian texts, and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, which were enjoying a surge in popularity at the time of Grendel's publication. (...) Despite the dragon's claims of complete, unlimited knowledge, we should follow Grendel's lead and regard the dragon and his teachings with some amount of skepticism. The dragon hardly bears any of the characteristics one would expect in a sage old teacher. Wheezing, greedy, and slightly effete, he spouts a torrent of philosophical chatter that seems to parody man's own convoluted attempts at making meaning." Machado, Julio. SparkNote on Grendel The problem with individualism---as a philosophy---is that it can easily tip over into egotism, or elitism, and poorly digested spiritual ideas where concepts such as "know thyself," "awaken to thy true potential," "rise above thy limitations" are twisted into "there is no point in thy trying to change our civilization from the outside... thou create thy own reality... change comes from the inside... blah blah blah...". Self-knowledge and self-improvement are good and worthy goals, but that doesn't make them a spiritual justification - or a political argument - to condemn civic activism, or just simply forget compassion and ignore inequities in the world, based on some premise that "people create their own realities," or even, as I have sometimes heard, that "individuals alone are responsible for their problems" - a "blame the victim" attitude that one has come to expect from certain political circles, but which takes on an especially obnoxious quality when it is cloaked in pseudo-spiritual pronouncements buttressed by smug New Age platitudes. A rift appears when the difference between "ego-centered" spirituality versus "self-transcending" spirituality is blurred. Clearly everyone has his or her own talents, stories, history - and this makes things interesting. But no man -no woman- is an island I sometimes look for quotes, randomly, on the greater NCN - i.e. the WWW. This one is from Dissensus: "Individuality is something that lives on its own, but if I put one crystal next to another, the crystal presents itself as singular only insofar as it reflects its neighbor, and on and on, all the way back to infinity. When I talk about a multitude I'm talking about a group of singularities. These singularities don't exist in the way that individuals are classically thought to exist, as something with a substance all its own. Here it's a question of singularities that only exist as parts of relationships, or only insofar as they reflect one another, or place themselves in a mutual relationship. That's what's absolutely fundamental, the fact that a crystal is also a crystal with an ability to exist in relationships, and not simply to exist for itself alone." The binary concept of "inside" and "outside" is mostly illusory. Or as the poet Jelaluddin Rumi would put it: When matter dissolves in the Ocean the particles glow. As who I am now melts in a candle flame, identity becomes one vast motion. Civilizations are based on how we come together with our different perspectives and contradictions and find out how much we have in common and what that can mean for doing things together.... Art© by David Mattingly

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