Is it this that we so love in a novel?
Is it this that we so love in a novel: the completion of a whole within the mess of life?
We human beings have for so long cherished the circle, which paradoxically embraces infinity and the finite. It both marks a complete whole—places a ring ’round the finite within, whatever we care to fence in: degrees, minutes, seconds, points of space, objects—and remains in an active state of being, circling ’round and ’round again like an eternally restless dog which pursues the ultimate repose, yet for all his efforts cannot. Or, perhaps he does capture the perfect moment, each and every one of them, with perfected wisdom which so utterly evades us humans in our righteous ridicule and judgment. He doesn’t lie in wait for the perfect moment to come or consider that it may have existed in his past as some historical treasure; no, he seizes it now, lives it, and then moves on to seizing the next without undue conceptualization in which we so invest.
We love the circle, more than we love the cross. The former is uncorrupted, unending, the latter stabbing and grotesque; its lines are broken, they must turn back upon themselves with no certainty in their cause. The circle is universal; the cross, judgmental.
Would it do to cast the novel—that enduring literary convention whose end has long been foretold by its critics yet continues, still, to retain its hold—as the circle, the cross as life?
Mathematics, like its cousin, geometry, represents a complete whole which, again, traces the finite and infinite. All sings out in perfect pitch as the harmonies of the heavens do for those sufficiently sensitive to hear, feel or otherwise experience them. A great friend with whom I studied philosophy, theology and literature this past year stopped dead in his tracks as we were making the short walk together one evening between the College library and our seminar classroom and asked, "Did you hear that?" I had heard nothing, but something unmistakable, something whole seemed to enter Dan which would forever alter his course in life. A secret communiqué which was, apparently, for his ears only.
1 + 1 always = 2.
The sum of the internal angles of a triangle always equal 180 degrees.
Never mind that we mortal creatures developed the deductive systems which we call mathematics and geometry and are, now, shot through with amazement that the systems seem to anticipate in some unearthly way our expectations. We programmed the games, forgot that we did so, and now attribute their perfection to an objective universal. Yet, let not my philosophical scepticism detract us from the pure joy of the whole.
Why, if geometry and all its figures exist in a perfected state, can the cross so infect us with disgust and outrage, tension at the least? We seem to unconsciously recognize each of the four tips as thorns amongst skewed bracken. How is it that Descartes’ analytically geometric axes lie within two dimensions and bear the shape of the cross, yet are in their way perfected, too, like a circle? Perhaps it is not that two perpendicular and intersecting lines are inherently incongruent, but that they are only able to maintain their mathematical perfection by way of their removal from life, in a way that the cross, with all the messy connotations of its being in this world, cannot. Cartesian axes bisect one another, perfectly, they exist in symmetry, while the cross’s crosspiece lies like the burdened shoulders upon the vertical it bears, its neck and head foreshortened.
The novel can embrace life in its entirety. There remains room within for interpretation without, for differences of interpretive opinion. But it remains, nevertheless, a complete whole. Life, on the other hand, is untidy and escapes all our attempts to encircle it. Yet there remains something glorious in the whole story which helps us to experience the whole of the universe; like the circle, it both captures the finite within and can, if we are sensitive to its celestial overtones, lead us to the infinite beyond its limited confines.
We human beings have for so long cherished the circle, which paradoxically embraces infinity and the finite. It both marks a complete whole—places a ring ’round the finite within, whatever we care to fence in: degrees, minutes, seconds, points of space, objects—and remains in an active state of being, circling ’round and ’round again like an eternally restless dog which pursues the ultimate repose, yet for all his efforts cannot. Or, perhaps he does capture the perfect moment, each and every one of them, with perfected wisdom which so utterly evades us humans in our righteous ridicule and judgment. He doesn’t lie in wait for the perfect moment to come or consider that it may have existed in his past as some historical treasure; no, he seizes it now, lives it, and then moves on to seizing the next without undue conceptualization in which we so invest.
We love the circle, more than we love the cross. The former is uncorrupted, unending, the latter stabbing and grotesque; its lines are broken, they must turn back upon themselves with no certainty in their cause. The circle is universal; the cross, judgmental.
Would it do to cast the novel—that enduring literary convention whose end has long been foretold by its critics yet continues, still, to retain its hold—as the circle, the cross as life?
Mathematics, like its cousin, geometry, represents a complete whole which, again, traces the finite and infinite. All sings out in perfect pitch as the harmonies of the heavens do for those sufficiently sensitive to hear, feel or otherwise experience them. A great friend with whom I studied philosophy, theology and literature this past year stopped dead in his tracks as we were making the short walk together one evening between the College library and our seminar classroom and asked, "Did you hear that?" I had heard nothing, but something unmistakable, something whole seemed to enter Dan which would forever alter his course in life. A secret communiqué which was, apparently, for his ears only.
1 + 1 always = 2.
The sum of the internal angles of a triangle always equal 180 degrees.
Never mind that we mortal creatures developed the deductive systems which we call mathematics and geometry and are, now, shot through with amazement that the systems seem to anticipate in some unearthly way our expectations. We programmed the games, forgot that we did so, and now attribute their perfection to an objective universal. Yet, let not my philosophical scepticism detract us from the pure joy of the whole.
Why, if geometry and all its figures exist in a perfected state, can the cross so infect us with disgust and outrage, tension at the least? We seem to unconsciously recognize each of the four tips as thorns amongst skewed bracken. How is it that Descartes’ analytically geometric axes lie within two dimensions and bear the shape of the cross, yet are in their way perfected, too, like a circle? Perhaps it is not that two perpendicular and intersecting lines are inherently incongruent, but that they are only able to maintain their mathematical perfection by way of their removal from life, in a way that the cross, with all the messy connotations of its being in this world, cannot. Cartesian axes bisect one another, perfectly, they exist in symmetry, while the cross’s crosspiece lies like the burdened shoulders upon the vertical it bears, its neck and head foreshortened.
The novel can embrace life in its entirety. There remains room within for interpretation without, for differences of interpretive opinion. But it remains, nevertheless, a complete whole. Life, on the other hand, is untidy and escapes all our attempts to encircle it. Yet there remains something glorious in the whole story which helps us to experience the whole of the universe; like the circle, it both captures the finite within and can, if we are sensitive to its celestial overtones, lead us to the infinite beyond its limited confines.
posted by Sean M. Madden at
11:59 AM
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