\u201cDo you want to talk about it?\u201d Llewellyn inquires softly. She has been sitting patiently, while I absorb the implications of a lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell-it\u2019s just that,\u201d I stumble, trying to distill my impressions into inadequate verbal code. \u201cOkay, it\u2019s like this-if you\u2019d ever asked me who I felt to be the greatest English-language novelist during the first half of the last century, I\u2019d have told you, without hesitation, Joyce. He represents the quantum leap in form and structure in fiction, every bit as much as Einstein forever changed the way physicists think about their work. Yet I\u2019ve always profoundly disagreed with him about his theory of literary art.\u201d<\/p>\n
Llewellyn is wearing her therapist\u2019s mask. \u201cYou know, I read Portrait of the Artist<\/em> probably ten years ago, as an undergrad. I can\u2019t really say I remember his ideas on the subject clearly, if I ever did really understand. Perhaps you could describe the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n I inhale. Lecture time. \u201cFor one thing, I\u2019ve always objected to his veneration of Aristotle and Aquinas. Heavyweight minds, certainly; but wrongheaded. In a philosophy-paper kind of way, they could just about equally share the blame for Western civilization\u2019s ongoing rape-and-pillage approach to other cultures. And some of their thinking was quite absurd. Aristotle \u2018proved\u2019 the impossibility of the atom, showing quite clearly that there could never, logically, be a point beyond which matter could not be divided and retain it\u2019s basic character. He also provided an excellent case for slavery and the subjugation of women. Aquinas \u2018deduced\u2019 the existence of a Christian god from the widespread success of Christianity; for how could it have taken over the \u2018whole world\u2019 otherwise?\u201d I shake my head. \u201cNitwits.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFurthermore, I\u2019ve never really understood what Joyce meant by his contention that Art should be \u2018static, not kinetic\u2019. As I\u2019ve been made to understand this vacuity, the duty of the writer is to abstract his judgments from his work. To be a landscape painter with words. To reflect through the mosaic life itself. Not settle personal scores.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, when I read this, I was enraged! It immediately sounded all wrong, narrow. Were Huxley, Orwell, mere propagandists? The whole point of literature, I\u2019d always felt, was to move<\/em> you. If I had a novel political or religious view, I owed it to both myself and the reader to make the idea available. Not through rhetoric but technique. If I were clever enough, you\u2019d never know you\u2019d been changed, but there\u2019s no finer and more delicate art than counter-propaganda. It\u2019s why<\/em> I write. Yet to James Joyce, I am a desecration.\u201d<\/p>\n Llewellyn nods sympathetically. \u201cThis must be confusing for you.\u201d<\/p>\n I find to my surprise she\u2019s mistaken. \u201cNo, actually, things are clearer now. I\u2019ve always felt a bit of terror in opposing the notions of a much greater writer. What did I fancy I knew that he didn\u2019t? Now I just know Joyce-or, rather, I in the incarnation of James Joyce-was wrong. Victim of Jesuit propaganda. There can be no such<\/em> thing as static literature, because selection of subject matter represents a kinetic decision in the production of art!<\/em> By choosing what you write about, at the minimum, you are manipulating your audience! He was as guilty as anyone. How could you read Portrait<\/em> and not be moved against the Catholic Church?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a fairly common phenomenon,\u201d Llewellyn says, nodding. \u201cPeople who discover that they\u2019d been famous figures find frequent points of similarity-underlying personality traits and life-struggle themes-but as often harbor a strong distaste for the previous incarnation\u2019s major premises.\u201d She smiles. \u201cIt\u2019s a symptom of growth. I happen to know the reincarnation of Karl Marx, as it happens, and she feels the same way. Now she\u2019s working on a spiritually-based social philosophy called \u2018Tribal Collectivism\u2019. A hippie chick. Used to go out with Crazy Bear, in fact, and he<\/em>\u2019s the earliest recorded reference we have. Sonofabitch is in the Bible<\/em>. Numbers. Look it up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCrazy Bear? In the Bible? Who was he, Moses?\u201d<\/p>\n Llewellyn laughs. \u201cNo, and it\u2019s a good thing he didn\u2019t hear you say that. No, on the contrary, our friend was a little-known insurrectionist named Korah. Led an uprising against<\/span> Moses and Aaron in the desert, said they were incompetent, any moron could have moved the Hebrews past the Sinai peninsula in a few weeks. According to the Bible, he and all his supporters, their families and livestock, were swallowed alive by the earth, which opened at God\u2019s word to obliterate them. Of course, that\u2019s not how C.B. tells it.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m curious. \u201cWhat\u2019s his side?\u201d<\/p>\n She shrugs. \u201cIt was a straight political execution. God had nothing to do with it. Moses had studied Atlantean magic as a prince in Egypt, which is the same place he got the idea for monotheism. The peasants honored as many gods as the market would bear, but the Pharaohs and their offspring worshipped the Sun, just like their ancestors from the Island. Moses had an Atlantean power rod, a crystal-tipped copper tube device for channeling TK. He used it to bury them alive. That\u2019s also, of course, how he split the Red Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow about you?\u201d I ask, realizing she\u2019s never peeped a word about her own transmigration. \u201cWho have you been?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo one important, I\u2019m afraid. Midwife and witch. Shaman. In every life I\u2019ve recovered, I\u2019ve been some kind of healer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat seems very<\/span> important.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t get you into the history books, that\u2019s for sure. Except occasionally as a statistic. I\u2019m fairly sure I was burned at least once, during the Inquisition. It\u2019s a recurring nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n Something\u2019s been nagging at me. \u201cYou said \u2018we.\u2019 \u2018He\u2019s the earliest recorded reference we<\/span> have.\u2019 Who\u2019s \u2018we\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n She hesitates. \u201cA group. We compare notes on reincarnation.\u201d She doesn\u2019t elaborate and I decide not to pursue it. Why force her to lie to me?<\/p>\n \u201cThank you,\u201d I swear I hear her say, though her lips don\u2019t move. Then, most definitely aloud, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we get you back into a trance, see what else we can come up with? You seem especially tuned in today.\u201d She raises the volume on the music a notch. I close my eyes and ride the wave of time away from the shore.<\/p>\n * * * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDo you want to talk about it?\u201d Llewellyn inquires softly. She has been sitting patiently, while I absorb the implications of a lifetime. \u201cWell-it\u2019s just that,\u201d I stumble, trying to distill my impressions into inadequate verbal code. \u201cOkay, it\u2019s like this-if you\u2019d ever asked me who I felt to be the greatest English-language novelist during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[16,19,21,25,26,28,32,33,34,37],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transmigrant-blues","category-transmigrant-blues-round-3","tag-desert-trance","tag-finnegans-wake","tag-james-joyce","tag-novels","tag-past-lives","tag-past-life","tag-raves","tag-reincarnation","tag-stream-of-consciousness","tag-ulysses"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}