HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Apr. 27, 2005 The basic archetypes in literature can be attributed to mythologemas, connected with the legends about Zodiacal signs. This cycle of legends gives an idea about that enclosed system of universe, in which a man has to live, and in which, as in any closed system, everything must be subordinated to united ordering accordion and to united laws. Myths represent an attempt at finding of this united accordion, and their inner content (archetypes)(1) later find their reflection in the literary works(2). Zodiac circle is formed by twelve signs, located on it evenly and having as the base four elements (3). Each element, is represented by a triangle.The triangle of the fire is formed by the signs of Aries, Leo, Sagittarius; the triangle of the earth is formed by the signs of Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn; the triangle of the air – by the signs of Gemini, Libra, Aquarius; the triangle of water - by the signs of Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. The triangle of water, with the apex below, presents convergence into the matter, whereas the triangle of fire, with the apex above, presents ascending to the spirit. C D A B The name of this hexagon is Solomon`s star, this geksagramma is the sign of macrocosm. Stauros (T) - (gr.- the cross of Antonius. Its T-shaped form symbolizes wisdom) in the center of the figure indicates the process of fertilization by the vertical line (activity ) of the horizontal line ( passivity ) that is, we may consider the ascending triangle initial, and the descending – as its reflection.There are several interpretations of this sign, since all similar symbols are poly-semantic. For example: 1. The ascending triangle can be named a triangle of Jesus; it symbolizes the evolutive process of our expiation. Whereas the descending triangle is the triagle of Mary, the element which participated in the involutive process of embodiment. Stauros will show, that atonement – is the purpose, and embodiment – is the means. 2.Considering hexagon as the sign of macrocosm, that is as the overall diagram of the motion of phenomena in nature, the ascending triangle is called the triangle of fire, the symbol of evolutive, thinning, reviving, cleaning processes. It presents everything striving upward. The descending triangle is called the triangle of water, symbolizing the totality of involutive, congealing, generating stagnation, complicating processes.It symbolizes all that,condescends from top to bottom. `this is the water of Heaven, metaphysical matter, the substance of the world, originated from the primary spirit - Mother of all things `(4). The motion of these forces is sent downward and hence occurs the individualization of the matter and the formation of all living bodies, giving existence to them. The connection of the two triangles presents the combination of heat and humidity, the Sun and the Moon, the beginning of entire creation, turning LIFE from the Heaven to the Earth and from the Earth to the Heaven. The sign of Solomon depicts the universe with its two oppositions, presenting God and Nature - the image of Macrocosm. Stauros indicates, that the life of thick, inert, complex is only reflection of the life of radiant, thin, simple. The matter is obliged by existence to the Spirit, and not vice versa. In the aspect of manifestations of the archetype, the sign of Solomon is understood as the indication of the great law of analogies ( the lower is analogous with the upper, and the upper is analogous with the lower for the completion of the miracles of the single whole, or for the possibility of penetration into the miracles of the single whole). In the aspect of man`s activity the hexagon symbolizes for us the content of what we name the freedom of human will - Pentagrammatica L ibertas. In the aspect of the life of nature of analogy, the hexagon is associated with the idea of the medium, in which they are manifested, by which they are connected or divided. The meaning of the Methodus Analogiae is arithmetically expressed as identity 6 =3+3; one creation (3) leads to analogous creation ( another 3 ). The second title – Libertas – represents the identity: 6= 4 + 2 or 6 = 2 + 4 that is the result of summing up 2 – the knowledge of the nature of the ways, given to free choice, and 4 - the authority, determining the free choice. As a result, the complete picture of the dilemma of good and evil is obtained, of thin and rough, of the true and false, of temporary and eternal, of active and inert and so on, which are constantly represented in the human life. The choice is free (both triangles are present), but Stauros reminds us, that the push to the choice of evolutive triangle is given by the impulse of the highest activity, fecundating our stagnation. The visible index of systematic correctness in the selection by man of the path of life is named `inner accordion`. It serves as the reward to those, who generally attempt to select the correct road and to achieve this aspiration. The inner accordion is characterized by identity, by pairing, by a strict uniformity and by parallelism in the development of activity and receptivity in a man. Men, well receiving cliche in any region and not gifted with realization authority in the dimensions of their understanding of this region, will be inharmonious, unhappy in this sphere. And vice versa - if you are imperious in anything , in which you do not know how to be oriented, in what you are insufficiently informed, you again are not capable of possessing accordion. The inner harmony, in other words, is the neutralization of the oppositions `Adam – Eve`, `activity - receptivity' inside the astral person. This opposition is neutralized by the element of correspondence, the agreement of extreme terms. In specific aspect of our existence there is a specific portion of slavish dependence on karma ( the laws of nature are the essence of the karma of the universe) plus a specific portion of human freedom of choice between the evolutive and the involutive. The lower part of the involutive triangle corresponds to the body, holding us as in the vises of our instinctive manifestations. The higher are these lower spheres, the more involutive elements we have for selection. Beginning from the level AB, we obtain to the selection evolutive elements. Both enter equally near the middle of hexagon, corresponding to the central ethical regions of the great opposition of Good and Evil. Here the influence of the higher principles is important, which is indicated by Stauros. Then the proportion changes, and beginning from the level CD, already belonging to the mental region, we find ourselves before the dilemma of selection from several evolutive elements. Furthermore, above remain evolutive elements, the freedom of choice is even more and more restricted and finally disappears upon transfer into the highest spheres of spiritual world, where the absolute flow to the origin allows no branchings off. One additional name of Solomon`s sign is `Medium`, that corresponds to the expanding 6 = 5 + 1 and 6 = 1 + 5. The expanding 5 + 1 = life + will (= life, making it possible for a personality to appear, is capable to express its will) gives the diagram of the activity of God in the Nature. The expanding 1 + 5 = will + life (= the will of the United, sufficient for the creation of life in all its phases and aspects)gives the diagram of the emanations of God, generating nature. `Similar to all principles, which were emanated by a single principle by means of its nature, so entire creation was generated from the elements of united medium by means of its adjusting (by thickening and by rarefaction).` The evolutive triangle expresses by itself triune Deity, and involutive - its shadow – the world. The triangle of water is formed by the signs of Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio. Fish live in water, moving easily in it. People also move in the ocean of life.There are sea animals, who lost the ability to come to surface.They are pressed to the bottom and are covered with thick armor.Analogous mutation occurs with the people, who reject `to swim` in the ocean of life. They harden and are covered `with armor `.After growing heavy, they sink very low, in order to hide among the stones, like cancers. The Fishes – the Crab. This is a part of the triangle of water. The Crab is a fish, that became crustacean. A man allowed himself to be immersed into the matter, and became hardened, lost mobility, and is now regressing. If this process continues, the crab will become scorpion - evil, poisonous. Jupiter governs the Fish, the Moon governs the Crab, the Scorpion is governed by Mars. The tendency of jupiterians toward material goods and comfort leads them to be inlaid in their house, their only occupation becomes reaching of vital advantages, and their fear - the risk to lose everything. So they are converted into crabs, and then into scorpions. Thus the body is seized by poisons, by toxins, a man becomes irritable, choleric, vindictive: he is under the influence of Mars, the governor of the Scorpion. This is the story about the process of involution, that is, sinking into the matter. A man, who has lost his ability to float in the ocean of life, falls into the trap of material, where he gradually becomes paralyzed, falls ill and dies. Such consequences are not inevitable. When a man occurs in the triangle of involution, there are three forces, capable of coming to his aid and rescuing: love, hope and faith. Faith is capable of operating with the most difficult conversions, connected with the Fish - the sign of religion and mysticism Supporting people hope is connected with Cancer - the sign of abundance and fertility. Love is connected with the Scorpion - the sign of the conversion of sexual force; by love is meant the instinctive force, which a man can sublimate into the oecumenical love, in the readiness to endow himself for the others.By the might of these three virtues: faith, hope and love it is possible to stop the process of decomposition, stagnation, drop into the material. The house of the Fish brings tests, in order for the melancholy, grief, tension increase our faith. The fourth house - Cancer places before us material problems, in order to force us to be occupied by exercising hope.The eighth house - Scorpio presents death, because death is on the watch for those, who do not know how to love. The triangle of fire contains the signs of Sagittarius,Leo and Aries. Aries governs a head, and represents thought, wisdom; Leo governs a heart, it presents feelings, love; Sagittarius, controlling thighs, represents motion, the realization of thoughts and feelings in the matter. Sagittarius can be interpreted as the symbol of a man, who succeeded in conquering dark instinctive forces by reason.This idea is expressed in the mythological figure of Centaur, in which the body of a horse is crowned by the head of a man.There are two nature in the man: the lowest and the highest; a man cannot be freed from his lowest nature, but he must learn to manage himself, in order to place the lowest nature on the service to himself. This is expressed in the very figure of Centaur, or Sagittarius. The body of the horse is in motion: the horse runs, but this run makes sense – everything is on the service of that comprehended, reasonable action, expressed by the bow in the hands of the rider on the Centaur, who is ready to let out the arrow. Thus, Sagittarius represents a man, setting to the motion his lowest nature – throwing the horse into a gallop- to the service of the ideal: the arrow is ready to reach the target. Leo presents force, might. Aries in this case is identical to a lamb, being the eternal symbol of the spirit of sacrifice and love. This is Christ.(5). The archetype of evolution and involution is central in literature, since it reflects not only that choice, before which a man finds himself at each stage of his life, but also because of the choice of the basic orientation in the life of a man. This is not only the selection between the good and the evil, between the material and the spirit, between dull existence and tendency toward knowledge and self-perfection and finding the true destiny in the life of an individual person. It is also connected with one of the basic philosophical problems - the freedom of will and morals. The entire course of human life depends on the solution of these problems, therefore this archetype occupies the central place in the literature of different epochs and peoples. For the analysis of works, reflecting the archetypes of the two triangles (involution, or of convergence of spirit into the material; and evolution, ascendings to spiritual origin) we have selected work, relating to the genres of the tale and short novel (6), which enable an authour to give a comparatively full interpretation of his vision of the subject. The archetype, standing behind the involutive triangle, can be most vividly traced based on the example of a myth about Narcissus (7). Narcissus – is an image of a spirit, charmed by the matter, in which it was personified, and destroying itself, by following only the laws of material, which captivated it, and forgetting about its upper, ultimate source. If we consider the surrounding us world as consisting of the reign of minerals, the reign of plants, animal reign and the reign of people in this order, which corresponds to the development of life on the Earth, then the transformation of a man into a representative of the reign of plants,means convergence to two levels lower than the one, which a man is to occupy in his development. In psychology the propagation of the term `Narcissizm` is contributed to Z.Freud. The essence of Narcissizm, according to Freud, is in the accomodation in the self of the entire external world, or incapacity of the distinction between the self and the world, which defines the inner world, as well as behavior: Narcisstic personality is absorbed by himself, is cut off from the others, is badly socially adapted, he is vain and affected. According to Freud ,Narcissizm is a personal property, manifested in the absence of the need to love others and to be loved. Further development of Narcissizm occurs in the parental love for the children (which many consider to be the highest manifestation of altruism). A child is percived as something, on the one hand, as being a part of parental self, and on the other – represents what that self would like to be. Therefore the parental exaggeration of merits and ignoring the ` commonness ` and deficiencies in the child, the tendency to remove from his pass all obstacles (so that he could personify all unexecuted desires of parents) are estimate by Freud as revival of Narcissizm in parents (8). The archetype of the convergence of spirit into the matter is most vividly reflected in the novel by Oscar Wild ` The Picture of Dorian Gray`, which according to its structure is a short novel. Besides the main narrative line, telling about the basic events of the life of the main hero, it includes two short stories: the story of the love of Dorian Gray and Sybil Vane, which is the beginning for the entire work, and a story about the attempt of Sybil`s brother to take vengeance for the death of his sister,which is the turning point for the denouement of the novel. The novel has annular structure, reflecting the basic supposition about the result of a man`s actions that affect the man, performing them, in the form of consequences of those actions, like Echo. Three main heroes of the novel - Lord Henry, the artist Basil Hallward and Dorian Gray by themselves represent a triangle, in the range of which the action of the novel is developed. Painted by Basil Hallward the portrait of a handsome youth is without a doubt a masterpiece of the artist, who found in the image of Dorian Gray inspiration for his work He counted, that the external beauty is the reflection of the internal, spiritual beauty. Oscar Wilde has an interesting interpretation of the myth about Narcissus: When Narcissus was dead, the nymphs of forest - dryads - noted, that fresh water in the stream became salty from his tears. - Why are you crying? – asked the dryads. - I am mourning Narcissus, - answered the stream. - It is not amazing, - said the dryads. – Indeed, we always ran after him, when he passed in the forest, and only you could see his beauty closely. - But was he beautiful? - asked the stream - Who can judge better than you about this? – asked the astonished forest nymphs. - Was it not on your bank, bending over your waters, that he passed his days from dawn to night? The stream kept silent for a long time and finally it answered: - I am weeping on Narcissus, although I have never noticed that he was beautiful. I am weeping because, every time, when he came to my bank and was bending over my waters, in the depth of his eyes I could see my beauty . Basil Hallward speaks about the same: `Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.`However, he prepers to see the accordion of spirit and body in Dorian Gray. Lord Henry is also struck by the beauty of the young man, but behind his good looks he sees an entirely different soul, than that, which is seen by the artist. He sees in the portrait only excellent appearance and no similarity to the artist himself, who was asserting that he had put in the portrait too much his own soul. `Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you - well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.`And he succeeds in finding the words, which most of all will affect the young person, revealing to him his own self, although he is capable thus far to understand only the superficial sense of his reasonings. `The aim of life is self-development. ....Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. ....Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.` And Dorian Gray understands literally Lord Henry's words. Possessing only physical, external beauty Grey's Dorian values it above all, since he himself so far, has no deeper merits. Therefore for him the loss of external beauty is equivalent to the loss of himself. And in the external world he also searches for only surface luster and entertainments. Having erroneously understood the council to treat soul by sensations, and from the sensations to be cured by means of the soul, he begins to search for only the visible beauty in the life. Similar was his affair with Sybil Vane, who attracted him by her external prettiness and by her actor's talent. In the actress, acting each evening different roles, he sees the connection of beauty and skill without being interested by that real person, who stands behind it. She was also `like a white narcissus` for him. Therefore after the unsuccessful performance by her of the part of Juliet, she ceases to exist for him, (since real Sybil Vane had never existed for him) and even the news about her suicide does not prevent him from going to the opera in the evening. After turning away from his own soul, he ceases to note it in others and only after having noted the changes in the portrait he is terrified by the fact, that the connection of a soul and extrinsic ethos of a man is real and the appearance is capable of reflecting behavior and thoughts of a man. However, this leads him to the realization of the fact, what from now on he ceases to bear responsibility for his behavior. Now his portrait will bear the entire burden of his sins and passions, and he will only observe how the life of a man creates his soul. At this time Lord Henry with the interest of an experimenter observes the development of Dorian Gray`s life. Soul and body present a riddle for him. Animal instincts are concealed in the soul, and the body can experience spiritualizing minutes. Sensual impulses are capable of becoming refined, and intellect - to become dull. It is difficult to say, when flesh falls silent and soul begins to speak. Is the soul of man – only a shadow, imprisoned into the sinful shell? Or, as Giordano Bruno assumed, is body concluded in the spirit? The parting of the soul with the body was the same incomprehensible riddle, as their confluence. Meanwhile Dorian Gray hides his portrait in the room upstairs, away from the strangers` eyes. Looking in the solitude at the portrait and comparing it with his own image in the mirror, he becomes more and more enamoured of his own beauty, and more and more interested in the corruption of his own sole. He attempted to justify for himself the advantage of his deal with the devil and wanted to understand which were the most horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He dreamed to create a new philosophy of life and the highest sense of life saw in the spiritualization of feelings and sensations.It seemed to him, that the true nature of feelings has not been revealed until now, and they remain animal and not bridled only because people always tried to pacify them, without giving them food, or tried to kill them by sufferings, instead of seeing in them elements of new spiritual life, in which predominating feature must be the highly developed tendency toward the beauty. Senseless renunciation and self-restriction, based on the fear, brought, in his opinion, to the degeneration immeasurably more terrible, than the so-called `drop`, from which the people, in their ignorance, attempted to rescue themselves.He wanted to create the new theory of hedonism, which will teach people to experience fully each instant of life. Since life itself is only a transient instant. He searched for new sensations, which would include the basic element of romantics - singularity. Trying to uncover the secrets of sensual life of a man, he studied the action on the man of different smells, sounds of exotic musical instruments, properties of precious stones, attempted to guess from which ancestors he inherited his defects. He disappeared for days on end in sorded opium dens, there is much scandal surrounding his life, and people who befriend him are disgraced, or die in mysterious circumstances. Dorian Gray feared now only to be parted with his portrait for a long time, so that no one would see in his absence the tracks of all those defects and passions, which it now bore on itself. After refusing to balance his life and tendency toward the external beauty and sensual enjoyment by the basic component of soul - the conscience, he, nevertheless, could not completely exclude its existence, therefore, when the artist Basil Hallward, before his departure to Paris, arrived to have a talk with him about what opinion was formed about him in the society, Dorian Gray decided to show him the portrait. It now seems to him, that Basil Hallward, who had painted the portrait, was guilty of what had occurred with him. Indeed it was him, who painted the portrait, that revealed to him the great force of beauty, and it was Basil,who introduced him to Lord Henry, who explained to him, what wonderful gift the youth was. To the proposal of Basil Hallward to repent and pray together, he answers only by spite. After showing the artist the face of his soul, Dorian kills him. Blackmailing another friend, he destroys all evidences of his crime. Fear before the inevitable payment after death causes in him a thirst for life.And the deformity of life, once hateful to him, because it returned him to the reality, now for the same reason became dear to him. He sees only chaos in reality, and counts, that only imagination of man forces repentance to follow the crime. As reminding about the inevitability of reckoning there was his encounter with Sybil Vane`s brother, and as the postponement of this reckoning - the tragic death of the latter, which caused in Dorian Gray only the sensation of happiness from the fact, that he himself was thus far rescued. However, the phantoms of crimes begin to torture Dorian Gray day and night. His attempt to behave ` nobly ` with a country girl occurs only the index of his bigotry. And a quotation from the Scripture, given by Lord Henry ` what benefit is to a man to acquire the whole world, if he does lose his own soul?` leads him to the realization of the erroneousness of his choice. He says that the soul of a man is real, it is possible to purchase it, to sell, to exchange, to poison or to save and recalls how Lord Henry once poisoned his soul by the book. However, in front of the portrait happens the overestimation of values in Dorian Gray, since regardless of the fact whether you have sold your soul or not, it bears in itself the concept about the Good and the Evil. He begins to hate his own beauty.His beauty has ruined him, beauty and eternal youth, which he had implored for himself. If it were not for them, he thinks now, that his life would be pure. Beauty proved to be only a mask, youth – a mockery. Indeed youth, at best, is the time of immaturity, naivete, the time of surface impressions and unhealthy thoughts. Why was he to bear it? The death of his own soul torments him, the dead soul in the living body. He blames the portrait for everything that happened. He doesn`t blame himself even for the murder of the artist and the suicide of his friend. Against himself he sees only one evidence - the portrait. This portrait - is conscience, and it must be destroyed. He took the knife, by which he had earlier killed the artist, and stabbed the portrait with it. However, the soul - is immortal. And on entering the room people saw `hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they examined the rings that they recognized who it was `. The same archetype - sinkin of spirit into the matter, that is, the descending triangle, is developed in the novel by Honore de Balzac ` La Peau De Chargrin `(10). At the beginning of the novel a young Marquess de Valentin decides to commit suicide because of extreme poverty and an old man in the antiquarian store proposes to his selection a piece of shagreen skin, on which the inscription in the form of a descending triangle promises the performance of all his desires to its owner. The second, alternative way, depicted as the ascending triangle, and corresponding to the way of wise men, the old man himself describes to the young man. On the other side of shagreen skin the image of Solomon's star is depicted in complete. The position between two triangles, that is between the lines AB and CD corresponds to the state on the crossroads, when a man enchanted by the attractiveness of spiritual world, as well as by material world, frequently enticing a person by its visible beauty; is not capable to complete correct ( from the point of view of morals ) behavior, forseeing the attractive results of temptation. Thomas Mann's tale ` Exchange Heads ` (11) is based on the Indian legend. This is the tale about the complexity for the soul of a man to make a choice between the beauty of material world and the beauty of spiritual world, between the attractiveness of the matter and the attractiveness of the spirit. Two friends, grown in one village `being differed little from each other in terms of age and merit of castes, but very different in the extrinsic ethos together leave on a journey. ` The friendship of both youths was founded on a difference in that, which is called the essence of man, and on the tendency of each of them to complete his essence by the essence of the other `. Young Shridaman, a merchant the son of a merchant, descended from brakhmans, the interpreters of the sacred Veds. Nanda was a blacksmith and a herdsman. ` His karma was different, and he was never occupied with theorizing, since he was not encouraged to it either by family legends, or by the blood, flowing in his veins, and he was such as he was borne - the son of people, merry and open- hearted, like the embodiment of the god Krishna (12), like Krishna he was dark-skinned and black- haired and even had the lock on the breast -` the lock of a happy calf `. The body of Shridaman was only the appendage of the main thing - his noble, wise head, whereas in Nanda, on the contrary, the body was the main thing, and the head served it only as a dear appendage. Quietly amusing themselves above the deficiencies in each other, they compared themselves, realizing their own essence, which conducts to the desire to reunite with the dissimilar. These two young persons appear before us as two different beginnings in the man: physical and spiritual. They arrived at the place of ablution, and when they were resting in the shadow and enjoying conversation, a girl appeared before them, excellent in her nudity as sinless anima. The charm of her body was dazzling. It all seemed to consist of attraction of Maya and it was of fascinating color. Her charming head only asserted in the rights the beauty of her body. Nanda recognized Sita, the daughter of Sumantra from the settlement nearby.He was swinging her on the swings last spring at the holiday of the Sun. Some time passed, and Shridaman understood, that he had hopelessly fallen in love with Sita,and asked his friend to make a stake, which he would ascend, to be released from his ailment. Nanda undertakes to arrange match-making and his friend`s wedding, in spite of the fact, that he also loved Sita, understanding that only enthusiasm reunites sensual beauty with the greatness of soul. But after some time Shridaman reveals, that Sita, who was expecting a child from him, secretly longs for Nanda.Valuing her husband for his mind and education, the soul, living in the material world, is subjected to its laws and inclinations. And when Nanda was driving the newly married couple to Sita`s parents, they came to the sanctuary of Davy, carved in the cliff, unapproachable Durgi, Dark mother Kali (13), and here Shridaman, obeying to internal call, expressed the desire to stop and to render honor to the Goddess. After entering the sanctuary, he cut off his head with a sword on the spot for offerings, thus giving to physical world ability to live according to its laws and in accordance with itself. On entering the sanctuary after his friend, detained there, and seeing what he had done, Nanda also beheaded himself, recognizing thus the supremacy of the spirit above the matter and the impossibility for the latter of isolated existence. Later on Sita, after finding in the sanctuary two corpses of a husband and a friend, decides to commit suicide, fearing to be accused of their deaths and fearing for the lot of her unborn child. And here Durga- Davy appeared, Untouchable, dark Kali, the mother of the world, and instructed her. She explained to Sita, that Shridaman and Nanda in their piety, one following another, sacrificed themselves to Her. And she decided to abolish this dual sacrifice and ordered Sita to put heads correctly to the bodies, to bless cuts by sacrificial sword, to pronounce Her name twice and the youths would come back to life again. However, Sita in the haste (or wishing to achieve the desirable for her accordion), put the head of Shridaman to the body of Nanda, and the body of Shridaman to the head of Nanda. Only the council of the hermit Kamadaman helped to solve the dispute about who was the true husband of Sita.He decided, that although the unborn child was the creation of the body, however, a head is the main thing in the man. Consequently Sita is the wife of the one, to whom the head of its husband belongs - Shridaman. Thus was again confirmed unquestionable superiority of the spirit over the matter. Not only the head of Shridaman was contented by such solution, but also Sita, who counted that now she obtained an ideal husband, possessing an ideal head and excellent body. However, everything in Nature is subordinated to its laws and the complete happiness of Sita didn`t last long, as in the course of time the body of Nanda began to weaken under the effect of the head, and the head began to lose its dignity under the effect of the body of Nanda. Sita began to suspect , that the transformation unavoidably occurs also with the one, with whom remained the head of Nanda and it can be in the more successful form, than in that, who bore the head of Shridaman. And having taken Samadkhi (concentration), her son borne from the body of Shridaman, she went to search for his bodily father,who now led the life of recluse. She found him and actually found out, that the change that occurred with him proved to be more favorable, because under the effect of the head of Nanda, strengthened the body of Shridaman, and his head became ennobled under the influence of the body. However, their happiness didn`t last too long. Soon Shridaman found them, as he immediately understood that Sita (soul) again went in search of perfection - the unity of spirit and beauty, which in life are split in two. They all agreed that Sita`s searches will continue eternally, and that she will always search for perfection in the friend, which she will not be able to find in the husband.` Since the lot of a mortal - is in vanity and bifurcation of this life – to shield light to each other, and the best of us dream in vain about the existence, in which laughter of one would not indicate the tear of another `. As the only way out, Shridaman proposed to Nanda to suspend their burdensome bodies and to again dissolve their essences in the Universal Essence. ` Since if a separate essence was so tangled, as it takes place in our case, the better, if it would melt in the flame of life, as oil in the sacrificial fire `. By agreement between Shridaman and Nanda, they killed each other in the duel, and Sita ascended together with them to the funeral stake, as the soul, that got entangled in its searches - the act by which she deserved honor of all countrymen. Their son Samadkhi enjoyed universal benevolence, because of the holiday of burning. He was beautiful and charming, a little blind, which retained him from the excessive devotion to carnal life and directed to the spiritual. A brakhman, connoisseur of the Veds (14) taught him educated, correct speech, grammar, astronomy and the skill of thinking, and by the age of twenty he was already the elocutionist of rajah. The treatment of a legend can never be single-valued, since in their essence legends are polysemantic. The searching of man is not reduced to the searching between the spirit and the beauty, it is desirable to find them both together , as it happened with Sita. The main selection of a man in the life consists of the selection of the superiority of spirit or material, as the basic orientator in this life, and the complexity of finding the equilibrium between them.This often leads a man to the conclusion into the square of material elements, where he remains, subjected to the laws of material world and its sufferings till his end. How destructive can be for the man the presence between two triangles and the incapacity to make a correct selection between nature and its attractiveness, and moral laws of society, in which the man lives, that is, on the destructive nature of the disturbance of the internal accordion of a man, is the tale by T.Mann ` The Deceived ` (15). The incapacity to make correct, free choice in life can be connected with the suppression of the free will of a man from outside and with the actions, contradicting the laws of life from the side of the persons, suppressing this freedom. Then the law of the natural motion of life gains the top, destroying those, who hinder it. (See the tale by T.Mann ` Mario and Magician ` (16) and the novel by S. Maugham ` Magician ` (17). The triangle of fire, or the triangle of ascending to the spiritual beginning, is most vividly illustrated in the tale by T.Mann ` Law ` (18). Most vividly since it shows the experience of one person, who undertook to convert his people from a shapeless mass into the people of God. The tale is based on the second Book of the Old Testament ` Exodus ` and tells about one of the greatest people of humanity: the greatest by that high mission - to take his people away from the servitude and to bring them to the light and God,which no one besides him has achieved during the entire history of humanity. T.Mann wrote this tale in 1944, on the eve of the crash of the 3rd Reich. It is undoubtedly, a tale about the role of a personality in the history of his people, a personality, which can degrade people and direct them along the false way, or raise them morally and draw them closer to God, depending on that purpose and ideas, by which this personality is guided. The tale was written following the publication in 1937 of Z.Frud`s last work, ` This Man Moses` (19), in which are considered the assumptions about the Egyptian origin of Moses (in the Old Testament he is the son of levits (20), as well as the specific character of the Judaic religion and Jewish national nature. The personality of Moses repeatedly interested the researchers of folklore and religion and inspite of different treatments of his origin ( finding of a baby in a basket is quite a widespread motive in the folkloristics of the whole world (21), Moses unconditionally is acknowledged by all researchers to be a real person, possessing unique role in the history of humanity. As it was said above, the tale represents an artistic account of the content of the Second Book of the Old Testament ` Exodus `. In this tale T.Mann makes an accent on the role of Moses, as a sculptor of his own people, who set before himself as a goal to affirm in the hearts of helpless, biased crowd, the Holy Image of Invisible God, clean and spiritual, after making for them God a uniting, essential focus, and by His Image to create his people, outstanding from all others, the people of God, noted by true holiness and spirituality and exceeding all other tribes and languages by awe, abstinence, and by fear of God, that is by fear of the very concept of cleanliness, before the precept, which in the future will tame the willfullness of all tribes, since the Invisible, in the essence, is the oecumenical God. This enormous labor, undertaken by one person, on the transformation of a shapeless mass into the people God, included subordination to the law of justice, morals, observance of cleanliness in all spheres of life, and the adoption of the Commandments of God with the oath to fulfill them. And the letters on the Tablets of Precept, carved by Moses on two polished by him rock plates and written in the alphabet, devised by himself ( so that on it it would be possible to write the words of all languages) and painted with his own blood, were that moral law, upon which the people, changed by him, agreed to live and which, as the Scriptures, subsequently accepted other peoples. The tale by Richard Bach ` Jonathan Livingston Seagull `(22) tells not only about the aspiration of one person for knowledge and self- perfection, but also about the fact, that knowledge, gathered by one for oneself, is gathered in vain.As one of the sages said: ` If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, then what am I worth? And if not ( look for the answers ) now, then – when?`(23) The image of the seagull Jonathan is close to the image of Moses from the Old Testament; they represent the same archetype – the aspiration for self-development, selfless love for the neighbours, and the wish to help them to achieve a better lot. It is the tale about the seagull, who understood that the purpose of life is not food, but flying, striving for knowledge, love for the other living beeings and the desire to help them. The way, indicated by the evolutive triangle, may be passed by one person alone, though even this is quite a rare fact, as not everybody dares to look for their own way of life and their true destiny, even if once, in their youths, they realised them. This is the topic of the tale by Paolo Coelo ` The Alchemist `(24) and the short novel by Herman Hesse `Sidhartha ` (25). The problem of freedom of choice is one of the most fundamental problems for the man. It is connected with the fact, that the man is simultaneously material and spiritual essence. It is not possible to live only by spiritual problems and, at the same time, to continue to live in the human society as its full member. This is the way of a very few chosen, not carrying material responsibility for themselves and the others. At the same time, life by only the problems of material world emasculates the very existence of a man and makes it hollow and senseless. The skill to find equilibrium is one of the signs of wisdom(26). (Apparently, therefore the sign of the Scales, the only sign not depicting animal or mythical essences, enters into the number of constellations of Zodiac).This is the reason, on which each stage of human life, its sense and the skill to make one choice or another, are the eternal and inexhaustible questions for the reflection of all people. They are the eternal subjects of literary works, reflecting the view of the author on the eternal, but nevertheless, unresolved problems, as the freedom of will is given to all people, and each significant stage of life places before one the choice ( the choice between the good and the evil), for which, one feels, that one bears responsibility before the Universe. B I B L I O G R A P H Y: 1. K.G.Jung, The Man and His Symbols, St.Petersburg,1996 p.361 2. T.Mebuke, The Signs of Zodiac and the System of Universal Archetypes.Tbilisi,2005 3. O.M.Ayvankhov, Zodiac, Key to Understanding of the Man and Universe. Moscow,1997 4. The Sacred Book of Tot. vol. 1. Moscow, 1994 pp.110-111 Encyclopedia of Occultism. vol. 1. Moscow, 1992. pp. 89-97 Papyus, Initial Information on the Occultism . Moscow, 1993 pp.119-120 O.M. Ayvankhov, Op.cit. 5. O.M.Ayvankhov, ibid. 6.T.Mebuke, The Structure of Paragraphs in the Genres of Epic Prose. Tbilisi,1986 7. N.A.Kuhn, Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece.Moscow, 1957. pp. 54-56 8. Narcissizm 9. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. vol.1. pp.77-347. Moscow, 1979 10. O.Balzac, La Peau De Chargrin. Ufa, 1956. 11. T.Mann, in 10 volumes. Vol. 8 pp.223-313 12. In the ancient Indian mythology Krishna is a terrestrial embodiment of the God Vishnu, who accepted a human appearance, in order to save people from the evil demons, Asurs. 13. Kali (Black) - the wife of Shiva, the goddess of death and destruction, to whom in the antiquity were brought human sacrifices. She is also known by the name Parvati (Proud), Bkhayravi (Terrible), etc. 14.Veds (knowledge) - the ancient Indian sacred books. 15. T.Mann, Op.cit. pp.383-456 16. T.Mann. Ibid, pp.168-222 17. Somerset Maugham, The Mahician.A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication., 1908 18. T.Mann. Op.cit. pp. 314-382 19. Z.Freud, This Man Moses. 20. The Old Testament. Ezodus. Ch.2 21. James George Frazer, Folk-lore in the Old Testament. Moscow, 2003. pp. 371-378 22. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Moscow,2003 23. Perkey Avot. Ch.1(14) 24.Paolo Coelo, The Alchemist. Moscow, 2003 25. H.Hesse, Sidhardha. St.Petersburg,2000 26. Encyclopedia of Occultism. vol. 1. Moscow,1992. pp.18-19 ------------ About the author: Tamar Mebuke is Assistant Professor at the Department of the English Language at Tbilisi State Technical University of Georgia. Email: mebuket@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
