The Poetry of the Dancing Bee

Andre: ... You see, I keep thinking that we need a new language, a language of the heart ... some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry, that is the poetry of the dancing bee, that tells us where the honey is. And I think that in order to create that language we're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking-glass into another kind of perception, in which you have that sense of being united to all things, and suddenly you understand everything.

Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory's 1981 film (My Dinner With Andre) is, in my view, one of the finest products of American cinema in the late 20th century. The script reads wonderfully as a play--indeed, as American literature.

Since first seeing the film around the time of its release, I have periodically screened it for myself, my friends and family and loved ones. I never tire of it. Nor have I ever stopped learning from it. Anyone who sees the film and says, "Boring," or "I don't get it" is a true Philistine.

Andre's musings on the need for "a new language" send one back to Tolstoy's Olenin in the stag's lair, to Thoreau's "ecstatic witness" at Walden Pond, and farther back in time to the adepts of Muslim pietism and, indeed, to many of the world's mystical or religious traditions.

What Mr. Gregory sensed about American life in the late 1970's-early 1980's--the emptiness of our consumer-driven culture and of lives lived without a sense of connection to the broader human community and, just as importantly, lives lived without any genuine focus upon the "small things" made available to experience when one finally learns to tune out the noise of government and media-driven fear and greed and to live deliberately and in touch with one's deepest intentions--is as true today as it was when the film was made.

As Thoreau understood, the "new language" we need will not be fashioned out of whole cloth; it is in fact resident in our very old languages: the "classical" languages in which visionaries composed what Thoreau called "the heroic books"--books that, "even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times." He therefore admonished us that "it is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations" [Thoreau, Walden, Everyman's Library edition, 89].

The "heroic books" present us with heroic figures, individuals Wallace Stevens named "figures of capable imagination." They are visionary poets capable of seeing beyond the status quo and dream a different world.

Once again, we seem to have traveled full circle: to Peter L. Berger's "ecstatics"; to William Blake's "apocalyptic humanism."

Interstitial Literature

Bruce Wilshire may be the most under-rated American philosopher of the 20th century. I have long treasured his "Epilogue: Self-Limitation as the Ground of Hope," a contribution to his edited volume Romanticism and Evolution, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons (1968), 314-317. In this epilogue, Wilshire articulates the sober Romanticism one finds in Thoreau, Wordsworth, Tolstoy, and Wallace Stevens--though he credits William James' "philosophy of radical finitude" (316). Wilshire writes:

The universe is open not only on its periphery, but there are open spots within it as well. There is room for the individual to rattle around; room to change the world a little if one wants to and has the courage to; or room to draw a few breaths in peace and just to dream. Hence along with irreducible individuality and freedom there comes irreducible limitation (ibid).

And this is not a bad thing. As with Peter L. Berger's notion of "ecstasy," Wilshire finds freedom, true freedom, in the interstices of life; for it is "only when we forget that most mysteries are hidden in the tissues of everyday life, and are not grand and portentous, do we swing wildly from one extreme of mania to the other extreme of despair" (ibid).

What appeared to the romantics to be high sentiment for action, all too frequently degenerated into sentimentality--a substitute for action. Could it be that too much emphasis was placed on the single moment and the single leap and that no faith was left over for the many little moments and many little leaps (ibid)?

We find our joy "in limiting ourselves to what is really possible to live with over many ordinary days in contact with many ordinary people ... The romantics pictured the infinite as their outermost environing context; for us the infinite is embedded in the grit of an inescapably daily and inescapably contingent human existence. If we are to step beyond the romantics, it is possible only because of them; but to step beyond is to step into the finite (317)."

Thoreau, Tolstoy, Wordsworth, and Stevens all understood this humble truth and, in pursuit of it, pioneered a genre of interstitial literature: one in which the grandest possibilities presented themselves with the quiet persistence of a walk in the woods.

"If your trade is with the Celestial Empire," Thoreau wrote in Walden (Everyman's Library, 18), "then some small counting-house on the coast, in some Salem harbour, will be fixture enough."

This is the sober Romanticism that speaks reverently "of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them" (Stevens, "Large Red Man Reading" from The Auroras of Autumn).

It is the god Elijah encountered at the mouth of the cave on Mount Horeb:

11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah? 1 Kings 19: 11-13 (KJV)

The god of the dihliz: of the spaces in-between.

The Thoreauvian Complementary Difference

Tolstoy was an admirer of Thoreau but, as Clarence Manning pointed out in his essay on the two figures in the early 1940's, Tolstoy was primarily interested in humankind and only secondarily interested in nature; with Thoreau, opposite emphases obtained. [Manning, "Thoreau and Tolstoy," The New England Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 2 (1943), 235].

There are other interesting differences to be noted as well. Tolstoy immersed himself in the sacred literatures of religious traditions; with Thoreau, "we never fail to notice" his "secular education. When he was a student at Harvard College, he loved Greek poetry, and the classics of the world, including the Oriental philosophical writers that he had read" [ibid., 239]. In the pages of Walden, Thoreau offers the following advice:

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; ... It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations [Manning 239/Walden, Everyman's Library edition, 89].

Manning's preference for the Thoreauvian difference manifests itself throughout his fine essay, though probably no more so than in this comparison: Tolstoy, as Manning read him, organized his life around a principle of abdication. He wished to find a way through this world (and, ultimately, out of it) with what he perceived to be his essential integrity intact. Thoreau, on the other hand, "was endeavoring to progress" as a human being despite the low level to which civilization continually threatened to drag him. "Tolstoy's last years and the tracts produced in them are very different from those stories in which he grasped the nature of simple man--what Merezhkovsky called the Aryan man--who was freed from the tyranny of laws and customs and Semitic asceticism, and sought to merge with Nature" [Manning, 242].

It is interesting to note how the "Semitic" Tolstoy and the "Aryan" Thoreau reproduced, between them, the "Semitic" (Arab) and the "Aryan" (Persian and Greek) sensibilities of classical Islamic tradition.

The balancing of (or tension between) these competing sensibilities is what Paul Tillich called "biblical religion and the search for ultimate reality."

Tolstoy's Restless Religiosity

Luigi Stendardo's superb study Leo Tolstoy and the Baha'i Faith (translated from the French by Jeremy Fox and published in 1985 by George Ronald) is important not only for the light it sheds on Tolstoy's late-life relationship to Iranian Babism and its successor movement Baha'ism but also for the considerable information that it makes available regarding the evolution of Tolstoy's religious thinking.

As Stendardo makes quite clear, based upon a careful study of Tolstoy's correspondence, by 1909 "one can no longer assert, without risk of contradicting oneself, that Tolstoy remained a Christian to the end of his life" (Stendardo, 42). Indeed, "according to Makovitsky" (Tolstoy's physician and secretary), Lev Nikolayevitch declared in his presence that "Just as I passionately loved the Gospels, now decidedly, I do not like them anymore, because they are full of contradictions" (ibid).

Stendardo's conclusions are measured and amply supported by his evidence: "... the religious question became over the years Tolstoy's main preoccupation. His determination not to conform to established rules was immediately striking, as was his determination to remain open, without prejudice, to everything which could stir his imagination and curiosity. His spiritual development seemed to be that of a restless person, always in search of absolute truth" (ibid., 57).

Tolstoy did not, in the end, embrace Baha'ism; nor did he embrace Islam or Buddhism. He remained among the restless Majnuniyya: rational beyond reason--an "ecstatic witness."

No Alibi For Being

"For both Tolstoy and Bakhtin, novels, the most prosaic of prosaic forms, occupy a special place in ethical education. For good or ill, they are powerful tools for enriching our moral sense of particular situations" Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford U. Press: 1990), 27.

"Bakhtin inherited the moral urgency of Russian literature and turned it into a theory" Gary Saul Morson, "At Last: Bakhtin and the Teaching of Literature," Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 41, no. 3 (Feb. 2007), 350.

As I noted in a previous post (May 15, 2012, below), my Tolstoyanism is a morally enabling tradition. It enables me to "imaginatively project myself into the shoes of another" and, in so doing, to acquire the kind of insight that makes for genuine ethical engagement.

But what is that?

It is, as Mikhail Bakhtin argued, an approach to life that offers no "alibi for being." Morson summarizes the Russian thinker's notion thus:

In his writings on ethics, Bakhtin outlined numerous ways in which thinkers can avoid engaging with the world. They can live "representatively" by allowing the ideology or religion to which they subscribe make their moral decisions for them. Intellectual systems thus provide an "alibi for being," to use Bakhtin's term. But to be truly alive and truly ethical is to recognize that "there is no alibi." Without any guarantees, one must directly engage with others and expose oneself to perspectives and feelings different from one's own. One must risk one's sense of self and most cherished values. Morson, "At Last," 351.

The manner in which one engages "directly" with others is, in a word, "novelistic," i.e., it replicates the kind of dialogic engagement to which great fiction invites us. Again, Morson interprets Bakhtin: "Great works invite us to do two things: first, 'live into' them and understand them from within; then, enter into dialogue with their perspective from one's own" ("At Last," 355).

For Bakhtin, fictions are, in a real sense, persons--for they are the products or "offspring" of persons (authors). By the same token, persons are, in a real sense, fictions--for, just like fictions, they resist "finalization," i.e., they or their stories (what we can actually know about them) are always undergoing interpretation (both elaborative and revisionary). See Morson, "At Last," 353-354.

Learning to negotiate novelistic meaning in dialogical fashion is, therefore, ethical training. It is what allows one to come to terms with, say, the complexities of the Iranian government's relationship with the Baha'is--not in order to condone the nature of that relationship but, rather, to be able to parse its peculiar logic and, potentially, to be able to answer it.

Without, in any case, offering an alibi.

Pitiful Are Those Who Do Not Seek...

As Tolstoy said to Bulgakov: "Pitiful are those who do not seek, or who think that they have found."

This is the 'aqida of the Majnuniyya and of Ibn Al-Dihliz--the "foundling," the liminal denizen of the interstices, of the cracks in the edifice, of the unmitigated in-between. This life is all about the yearning; it is a pilgrimage that pauses at certain shrines, but only ends with death.

Tolstoy and the Baha'is

Reading Tolstoy as an autodidact scholar of world religions, one inevitably confronts his ambivalent attitude towards the Baha'is. As was his wont, Tolstoy was both appreciative of the Baha'i movement and critical of it. Inspired by Tolstoy's example, I once investigated Baha'ism (and its precursor Babism) and came away with an impression similar to Tolstoy's: there is much to laud in the movement, and some things to be cautious about. But the overwhelming impression that I had then (almost 20 years ago) was reinforced when I recently dipped into Baha'i studies in an effort to refresh my recollection: in order to understand Baha'ism as an historical phenomenon, one must first investigate the modern history of Iran (in general) and the modern history of Iranian Shi'ism (in particular). In other words, one must undertake serious Islamic Studies.

I doubt that this is something that most self-identifying Baha'is ever bother to do--and it is a shame. Because the teachings of the Bab and his subsequent Baha'i interpreters is steeped in Islamic intellectual traditions and pietism. A knowledge of these facets of Islam would only enrich Baha'i self-understanding, in my view; indeed, it would make it clear why I consider Baha'ism to be an interesting attempt to adapt pre-modern Muslim religiosity to modern circumstances. Despite themselves, Baha'is are Muslims. They are, in fact, near cousins to the Ahmadis of South Asia: modern Muslim messianists.

But now, a word on the persecution of Baha'is in Iran: I condemn it without qualification. As a scholar, however, I must also attempt to understand it. As is typical of the U.S. media, the persecution of Baha'is by the Iranian government is routinely chalked up to the religious intolerance for which Islam is (in the MSM narrative) "famous." As is typical of such media accounts, the truth is far more complicated.

As a Tolstoyan, I would never be (nor would I ever be asked to be) a representative of a regime of a nation-state; but, as a Tolstoyan, I am able to imaginatively project myself into the shoes of someone who is.

If I were such an individual--i.e., someone who represented the present regime in Iran--I would find problematic the Baha'is' principled refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Iranian government by non-participation in the party politics established by the Iranian Constitution. Moreover, I would view with suspicion the degree to which well-heeled foreign nationals (many from Europe and the U.S.) have been involved in the movement from its earliest days. I would probably be somewhat envious of the amount of international funding that has supported the movement since its founding and that has allowed it to evolve with surprising speed from a local dispute among Iranian Muslims into a "world religion." My investment in the present status quo in Iran would prevent me from seeing the Baha'i phenomenon as just a matter of religious freedom. It would look to me to be a foreign-backed attempt at subversion, i.e., treason.

Unwilling to confront the Baha'is' principled non-participation in party politics as a legitimate mode of religious opposition to the State, I would adopt a strategy of attacking the Baha'is as heretics.

And this is what appears to be happening in Iran with the persecution of the Baha'is. Once again, I wish to emphasize that comprehension is not to be confused with condoning. I do not condone the persecution of Baha'is in Iran or anywhere else on this planet.

As a Tolstoyan, I proclaim my solidarity with all those who engage in principled opposition to the violence of State coercion. Furthermore, I lament the fact that the U.S. government is no less prone than is the Islamic Republic of Iran to employing such violence against principled dissent with respect to its own policies--indeed, with respect to the existence of the State itself. Witness the crushing of the OWS movement.

I take to heart Jesus' admonition to extract the plank from my own eye before attempting to remove the speck from the eye of my brother.

Becoming Tolstoy's People

Clay S. Jenkinson's Becoming Jefferson's People: Reinventing the American Republic in the Twenty-First Century (2004) is a wonderful read--despite the fact that it is destined for an undeserved obscurity that it probably acquired as soon as it left the press.

Jenkinson's desire to "reinvent" the American Republic is as heartfelt and righteous as it is quixotic. Readers of this blog (both of you) will no doubt recognize that the Mazeppist sees no shame in quixotic projects; in his view, they are the only avenues of individual liberty left us in the interstices of manufactured consent.

As a Tolstoyan, there is much to commend in Jefferson's worldview: indeed, Jefferson's Enlightenment-inflected Left agrarianism was, in many respects, a Tolstoyanism avant la lettre.

At the same time, however, there are significant differences to be observed--even beyond the fact that Tolstoy manumitted his slaves during his lifetime, whereas Jefferson did not. Jenkinson himself acknowledges a key issue: "By believing or pretending that the irrational was not fundamental to human experience, Jefferson effectively abandoned it to its own libidinal energies, when he ought to have attempted to channel and discipline it, in the manner of Carl Jung [!]. It seems clear to many that we are now a runaway materialist empire and that the most important work of the soul has been neglected in western civilization, and particularly in American civilization" [Jenkinson, 108].

This point appears to locate the worm in the Jeffersonian apple, and helps to account for Jefferson's unconscionably nonchalant attitude towards revolutionary violence and the sexual exploitation of slaves.

Tolstoy is criticized as a Puritan for his straightforward approach to such issues--which is to be expected in a country that operates routinely on hypocrisy and bad faith. To dignify such criticisms with a response seems to me to be counter-productive, if not a complete waste of time and mental energy.

In the end, I support Jenkinson's desire to "re-invent" our long lost republic in a Jeffersonian vein; I think such re-invention would be an inevitable way-station on the road to becoming Tolstoy's people. And becoming Tolstoy's people is a more worthy goal than to become Jefferson's. Of course, I suffer no illusions: neither dream has the slightest chance of becoming a reality.

The Wisdom of Humankind

"To say that Tolstoy was a very great writer, or even that his stature surpassed that of any twentieth-century theologian, may be very safe and trite. But a much bolder claim is worth considering: perhaps he is more important for the history of religion during the [20th century] than any theologian; perhaps he has contributed more of real importance and originality and issues a greater challenge to us" Walter Kaufmann, Religion From Tolstoy to Camus, New York: Harper Torchbooks (1964), 1.

Kaufmann's "much bolder claim" is, in my view, amply justified by Shaykh Tolstoy's final attempt to compile a comprehensive work that would serve as an encyclopedic summary, synthesis and, in characteristic fashion, Tolstoyan interpretation of "the wisdom of humankind." It was to be his legacy to the ages; the result was first published in Russian in 1911, a year after his death.

After 17 years of work, Guy de Mallac, one of the few academic Tolstoy scholars who may also be considered a convinced Tolstoyan, produced an abridged English edition of the text in 1998. De Mallac taught Russian literature at the University of California, Irvine, for almost three decades and died on November 17, 2007.

In his Introduction to Tolstoy's Wisdom, de Mallac observed that this final effort of the great novelist "embodied an ideal toward which he had long been striving--the fusion of his discourse with that of the New Testament and other spiritual texts. His aim was to emulate the directness, simplicity, and compelling force of Scripture in order to achieve the striking effectiveness of scriptural discourse" [de Mallac, 12-13].

De Mallac's translation and condensation of Tolstoy's desire to produce a viable Scripture for the modern age is a great service to Tolstoyans everywhere. The general neglect of Tolstoy as a religious genius is but a reflection of the degree to which he strikes a nerve on every page.

We ignore him because we know that he is right.