The Revelation of John: III

11:2,3 The precision of numbers here certainly tempts one to figure out exactly what it means.  I recall the religion of my upbringing managing to make it all about them and how awesome they were to have the only possible interpretation of anything ever.

11:4-6 Again, far too specific to resist prying just a little.  The whole vision has the flavour of a dream that one remembers in vivid detail.  Just two nights ago I awoke with the lyrics and melody of an entirely original song still lingering in my mind.  What did it mean?  And what did it mean that a man named Iain rode toward me on a blue ATV, and wanted to take pictures of me on the beach while I did a headstand?  The vibrancy, clarity, and specificity of this dream beg for interpretation . . . as do John's.

11:7-9 And as tempting as it is to leave it there, to assume that John's vision meant no more or less than my own, I can't resist sampling some modern interpretations of it--much as I would if I were reading Blake or Coleridge.  No doubt the things these men saw were only preternaturally vivid altered states, and not divinely inspired visions of the future.  Still, what if?

A trip down the rabbit hole reveals a lack of scholarly agreement on the topic of the 1260 days, as well as the identities of the two witnesses.  Many seem to feel that the latter represents a time of papal rule, starting in the time of Justinian.  But though the beginning of such a period can be supported, it seems a stretch to say that the time of papal authority ended, well, ever.  Likewise, there is a general consensus that the most likely identities of these witnesses are Moses and Elijah, but such an interpretation seems meaningless.  Are those two meant to return in some way, or is this a reflection of past events after all? I even went so far as to choke down the bile and review the propaganda with which I was raised.  It remains as I remembered: "We are the two witnesses, cause we are awesome and right about everything."

I am reminded again about my particularly vivid dream from the other night.  Taken as a whole, it is all fairly inscrutable.  But the individual elements, the source of each of those is readily identified.  I did indeed know a fellow named Iain.  And the scene of the dream too, although unconnected with that fellow in reality, was also a real place that I remember.  In fact, everything in the dream came from my real experience, or something close to it.  It is merely the juxtaposition that muddles them.  Is it such a stretch to suppose that John, in a dreaming or otherwise altered state, mashed the time period that he likely knew well from Daniel up with other, unrelated but similarly flavoured elements?   This is very much how dreams work.

11:13 And John would have also had memories of Earthquakes in Jerusalem during his lifetime (33 AD).

11:15-18 This verse presents problems for all of the literal interpretations of the 1260 days (years, according to Daniel's rules).  After the time period in question, the two witnesses are called to heaven and the Messiah takes possession of the "Kingdom of the world".  At which point, the wrath of God comes, the time for judging begins, and rewards are doled out to all who fear His name.  If this happened at the end of the 1260 days, either in 1798 or at some other time supposed by scholars, it is remarkable that the subsequent events went without notice.

12:5 This is perhaps the most significant event that John has recorded yet.  The woman giving birth!  Clearly of divine origin, she is an underscrutinized figure.  I am reminded of interpretations that this woman (conflated with similar figures elsewhere in the Bible) is actually The Holy Spirit, or the Wisdom of God.  The child she bears is irresistibly Christ-like.  The problem with all of the interpretations that spring from that is one of timing.  Is this divine birth after the second woe or Ch. 11?  If so, whom could it possibly be? And what is meant by the period of exile for this woman and her child, also conveniently 1260 days?

A lot of these problems stem from the assumption that John is seeing these events unfold in linear time.  Such a viewpoint is not only difficult here, but also in 8:4 and 9:11, to name just a few that have jumped out on this reading.  But it is not by any means the only interpretation of time.  Boethius, and all who drew from him, work from the assumption that time, when seen from divine eyes, is not linear, but simultaneous.  If one adopts such a perspective, a Tralfamadorian reading of The Revelation so to speak, a lot of these difficulties fall away, and it's rather more easy to believe that John was not just dreaming.

12:13-18 Which reinvests the reader in the fate and identity of this woman.  Her battles seem to be every bit as relevant as those of her son, even though they be unseen or metaphorical.

13:2 Approaching these visions from a Boethian perspective ertainly opens up some possibilities.  The assumption in most exegesis that I have found is that this beast is a different one than Daniel saw in his Ch 7.  Surely, since John's vision is taking place centuries after Daniel's, and presumably after the fulfillment of the latter, we are seeing a separate, still future event.  But time in visions and in spirit does not necessarily work that way.  There is nothing to prevent us from wondering if this beast is the same as Daniel's fourth beast, and whether John's attention wasn't simply grabbed by different details than Daniel was.  it's the same instinct that prompts us to wonder whether John's vision in Rev. 4 isn't simply Ezekiel 1 seen from above.  The blind men all touch the elephant in differen tplaces.  To one, it is much like a wall.  To another, like a sword.  And to a third, it is a beast with seven heads and ten horns.

13:5-9 And if we take the assumption that this beast is indeed the same as Daniel's, this is a pretty accurate description of what awaited the "saints" after John's death.

13:11-14 But here John is seeing something that Daniel did not seem to.  What arose after, propped up, and gave breath to the Roman empire after its nearly mortal blow?  Surely the papacy is a strong contender.  Strictly speaking from chronology, the Byzantine empire is also a strong candidate.

13:17 Which interpretation would mean that the symbol in question is actually the cross . . . I can't imagine that interpretation getting much traction though.

13:18 The most interesting and underanalyzed aspect of this verse is the fact that the number of the beast is "the number of a person".  What could this mean?  Is it an ordinal number?  The 666th of something?  Or some play on words, a person named Sextus or some such?  Among Eastern Emperors, there was a VI of Constantine, John, Leo, and Michael.  None of them seem to have been particularly significant though.  When I get to those rulers in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, maybe more will be clear. At any rate, the mark of the beast is not its number, as is commonly thought.  The number is in some way tied to the name.

A lot of people, and most scholars, seem to get tied up in conflating the identity of this beast with the Antichrist, assigning the latter a prominence in the scriptures that is unearned.  There is nothing to tie the two entities together, and nothing particularly identifies the Antichrist as a literal figure. Conversely, the Bible has a well-established pattern of using beasts to represent, not individuals, but entire empires.  John's two-headed beast, if one is consistent, and the name/number/mark that goes with it, seem unlikely to be that of a single person.

14:1 A prime example of how John's visions operate very much like dreams.

14:4 If these 144,000 are to be taken as a literal group of people, with a literal number, then it seems inconsistent to suppose that they are anything other than literal virgins.

14:6 I had never before stopped to suppose exactly what "midheaven" means, assuming that it just meant "in midair".  But the Greek here is literally in the middle of heaven, not air or sky, and occurs only in Revelation.  Having no concept of atmosphere, outer space, or anything beyond the literal sky, one must wonder exactly what John saw here.  An actual celestial realm, separate from full heaven?  What did it look like?  How did he know what he was seeing?

14:8 Here is our clearest argument yet for a Boethian approach to this vision (and others?).  Babylon the Great has not even been introduced yet, let alone the scene of her demise described.

14:10 This torture by fire and sulphur is used, I would imagine, to support an idea of hellfire.  But it is worth noting here that it is "in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb" that it seems to take place--in the same heaven as the rest of the chapter.

14:13 It's been a while since we heard from the Spirit in this book: not since chapter 3, and even then the words of the Spirit were second hand, conveyed by "one like the Son of Man".  In that former passage, it would have been easy to interpret it as a metaphorical or impersonal force, perhaps one of the seven that he held in his hand.  Here it is definitely given a persona, though, and agency.

14:14 Speaking of whom, here again is "one like a Son of Man".  Is it his voice that we heard in the previous verse, and by extension, was he referring to his own words in 2-3?

14:18 It's tempting to take the definite article here as a doorway into some metaphysical explication of the duties of various angels.  The idea that there is one angel in charge of fire certainly predicates some very polytheistic questions.  But the Greek here has no definite article, even though such is common in Greek--merely a relative pronoun.

15:1 I've lost track.  Which scroll, trumpet, and woe are we on?  Is this the third woe?  All of these marker seem a lot fuzzier than one could be led to believe by reading exegesis of them.

15:5 This is the only mention that I can remember of "The temple of the tent of witness".  Traditional interpretation has heaven itself as being the prototypical temple of God, not merely its location.  Is this a separate temple?  One devoted to a special purpose?  If so, for what is it the archetype?

16:1 An argument could be made based on this verse that it is the Most Holy of the tabernacle and subsequently of Solomon's Temple, the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, and by extension of the Divine presence.

 16:4 Is "The angel of the waters" merely the angel who poured the bowl into them, or is it a more managerial position?  It would not be the first time that such positions have been hinted at in this book, on both sides of the divine rivalry.

16:7 Which altar?  From back in 6:9?  Or is this the actual voice of the altar, not merely of those sacrificed on it?  What would that even mean?

16:8 All of these plagues so far seem terribly modern.  The pollution, disease, rising temperatures, vanishing marine life . . . one prone to apocalyptic thinking might have a lot of fun with these verses.

16:10 But this verse is a little more specific and a lot more obscure.  If one sees a nation suddenly plunged into darkness, not only will we have identified the "beast", but also the end chronology.

16:12 After which one would expect China to invade Iraq, I suppose.

16:16 One of my favorite misinterpretations of scripture.  Armageddon is not an event; it is a place.

16:19 Referent failure!  The last great city mentioned was heavenly Jerusalem.  Surely it is not being referred to here.  If one acts under the assumption that John meant for his vision to be understood, then his omission of identifying details means he expected his readers to be able to know what he meant by "the great city", arguing for either literal Jerusalem or Rome.  But John clearly does not give a withered fig if his audience is as confused as he must be.

16:20 Another very modern, or near future, sign.

Haruki Murakami: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

I have some good news, and I have some bad news.  And they are the same news, as they always are. During a moment of weakness in Sofia, Bulgaria, i made the mistake of letting my guard down and trusting the general good intentions of people.  I was rewarded with a stolen phone, and a bruised ego.  This cast a shadow over the rest of my European tour, and I suppose that's the bad news.  But the books I was reading, the online games with which I spent too many hours, and the constant flow of communication I used to numb my foolish brain disappeared with it.  That was the good news.  I suddenly had nothing but my thoughts to entertain me, and had to hunt down a few real books to keep that from driving me crazy.  I read five books in the final week of my trip, and each in its own way was exactly what I needed.

The good news and the bad news, in Literature as in everything, are the same news.  Books are often like tarot cards, not saying anything themselves--try though they might--but merely providing the vocabulary necessary for us to think about that which we already knew.  And so it is that what I take away from a given book is what I needed to receive from it (that's the good news), which may or may not have anything to do with what the book was really about (the bad news).  Books--and art, music, film, relationships, the whole spectrum of human experience--are powerless in the hands of the creator, and omniscient in the hands of the reader.  To say that they are as colorless as the title character of this book is an example of the liberty that one may and must take as a reader.  Murakami's meaning clearly has nothing to do with readership, literature, and interpretation.  But that is the thought that I went into the book with so that is the meaning I found.

And the characters in the book were manifestly not meant as allegories for people in my own life.  Even forced into those roles, they served only imperfectly.  None who know me would describe me as colorless, and yet I am.  I have very little identity of my own, and the colors people see in me are more often than not their own color, amplified and reflected.  I am not an empty vessel, tormented by a confusion about my own identity, but as I became Tazaki, I also wore this part of him.  And the answers that satisfied him also satisfied me, until I put the book down, and again became myself.

Umberto Eco: Numero Zero

Much like with The Name of the Rose, I feel like I must be missing something here.  Eco is widely regarded as a great writer, perhaps one of the greatest, and has legions of devoted fans.  What are they seeing that I am not?  Very nearly half of this book was themeless, plotless recountings of historical events, most of which seem to be invented, but were not.  The general impression is that Eco embarked on a long line of research, discovered the potential for a conspiracy theory, and shoehorned it into a detective novel.  Perhaps Italian audiences, being more familiar with the names dropped in huge piles on every page, were more receptive to or interested in these sort of speculations.  Perhaps the whole novel is really a cover for Eco's theory that Mussolini's death did not occur as in the textbooks.  But the entire plot he concocted as a setting for the plot he thought he uncovered was bald and superficial, offering nothing particularly inventive or engaging.

With the exception of a few character points that I found applicable to my life.  The character of Maia is described as constantly jumping trains of thought, and scarcely noticing that others had a hard time following her.  I have known, and was borne by, such people.  This was a nice way of capturing their essence.  And the protagonist may well have been me when he observes that only losers know very much.  How simultaneously true and depressing.

Ursula LeGuin: Changing Planes

This is not a book that bears up to deep scrutiny.  It begs to be read, not at a desk with a notebook at hand, but in the very place where it was inspired and set:  the misery, irritation, and suffering of an airport. 


I have always hated airports.  Everything about them seems designed to inspire contempt, and the moment a human enters one of these infernal portals, she or he is primed with a hatred for fellow travelers and becomes by virtue of that disgust a perfect target for the glowering disdain of all the similarly affected pilgrims around.

While the conceit of the book is inspired, the book itself is not particularly so.  Each of the stories told here was worth telling, but perhaps some of them were worth telling at greater length.  None of them were long enough to have said anything, and merely glanced at rather heady and poignant questions: to what extent are each of us an individual?  Do our traditions serve or enslave us?  What is the nature of language?

But it only paused long enough at each moment to ask the question, never long enough for an answer to be an option.  And perhaps that was for the best.  Who wants to read the Critique of Pure Reason while enduring the misery we call air travel?  Certainly not I.  I'm glad I read this on the way to Brussels instead.

Vincent Van Gogh: Peach Tree in Blossom

It's likely a surprise to no one that I approach Art much as I approach Literature. Books and paintings can be merely appreciated: viewed or read, judged as pleasing or not, and then set aside.  But Art and Literature offer a deeper pleasure: that of being understood.  Works that deserve to be included in these capitalized categories are very much like stacks of old transparencies, such as one used to find in the middle of encyclopedias, each system of the human body printed on a separate plate, and then bound together as a unit.  One could certainly look at the stack and see the marvelous, complicated unity of the system, but what sort of barbarian would stop there?  Who could resist lifting away the topmost plate and seeing what lie underneath?

The trick is to find the loose corners, the passages that don't seem to fit with the rest of the work, the words that an author uses more or differently than she or he might have, Coleridge's eyes, Eliot's Iphigenia, and in this case, Van Gogh's shadows.  I wrote years ago about Van Gogh's curious affinity for Bunyan, and how that author was a loose edge that allowed one to lift a layer of the artist's work and see a bit of what was underneath.  The gist is that Van Gogh seemed to see himself in Christian, the eponymous pilgrim, and many of his paintings can be seen as an allegorical journey.  I was quite pleased with this analysis at the time, but had merely lifted up the first layer.

As I walked through the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I was not even looking for a new analysis.  I didn't expect to find any dogeared corners, any loose edges begging to be lifted up, but I found one, and it is this painting.  I walked past the rows of haystacks, the sunflowers, the Dutch working class who were turning into the potatoes they ate, but was stopped in my tracks when I came to "Peach Tree in Blossom".  Something was not right about it.  It didn't make sense, and I stared at it for some minutes trying to put my eye on exactly what was different about it.  Wasn't it just like all the others?  But no, it was all wrong.  The shadows were all wrong.  

Where is the light source in this picture?  It seems to be a low sun off canvas to the left.  The tree in the back is casting a long shadow on the fence, and the palette is that of near sunset.  But the tree in the front.  Its shadow is cast directly underneath.  Was this a mistake?  Where is this other light source?  And why does it not catch the tree in the background?  And the tree itself is uniformly lit.  Seemingly from the front.

An impressionist would never have done this.  Monet et al were fastidiously faithful to the light they saw.  But Van Gogh was creating an expression, not an impression.  This was not the light he saw; it's manifestly impossible for the shadows to have been cast in this way.  And it is not as though he was incapable of or averse to capturing realistic shade. 

Note how faithful to the single light source he is in this self portrait.  In fact, all of his self portraits have this quality, and nearly all are from this angle (it is worth noting that self portraits as an artist, by title or with an easel are nearly all from the opposite angle).  Having lifted up this corner, one begins to notice other inconsistencies.

What is the difference between these two sunflower still lifes?

The former, by Monet, has a clear light source and casts a shadow.  The latter is manifestly impossible.   There is light in the picture, as seen from the reflection on the vase, but it has two strange features:  it is cast from directly in front of the painting, and its shadows do not follow the laws of nature.  This was not a light he saw; it was a light that lived only in the mind of the painter.  

Once attuned to this inconsistency, one sees it everywhere.  I noticed it again at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin in "Le Moulin de la Galette":

The shadows here are all over the place.  In fact, there is only one possible source for the light in this painting, and again it is directly in front of the canvas. The figures on the left are casting a shadow to the right.  Those on the right are the opposite.  And the figure in the rough center is casting a shadow directly underneath or behind.  The light is coming from behind the artist, and by extension, the viewer.

Or is it?  Such a mental placement works for "Le Moulin", but it can't account for "Sunflowers" or "Peach Tree".  There is no literal light source that would behave that way.  The light in these paintings cannot be literal.  And what about when Van Gogh tries to capture an actual light?  Say, a candle?

This candle casts no shadow!  Such a thing is possible because this is not a painting of a candle.  It is an allegorical portrait of Gaugin.  An artist.  A light without a shadow.  The light in Van Gogh's paintings is not coming from behind him.  It is him.  No wonder that the only realistic shadows he painted were on his own face.  And when you look at a Van Gogh, you necessarily adopt his perspective.  You see what he saw, and you know what he knew:  that the light is not coming from behind you; it is you. You are the light in Van Gogh's paintings.  You are the traveler.  You are the pilgrim.  You are the candle, as much as he was, and the shadows you cast are bizarre, irregular, and unreal. 

Kurt Vonnegut: Galapagos

Usually when a one realizes how a trick is done, the magician's spell is broken.  Not so with Vonnegut.  I have read enough of his work that a pattern has become clear:  each book succeeds on the deft juggling of three tricks.  Each of his maneuvers is a staple of writers everywhere; none of them is unique to this writer. But a combination of his refusal to repeat himself--never executing any of his moves in the same way twice, a wildly creative imagination, and a fearless willingness to take seemingly absurd premises to a satisfactory conclusion, causes each of his books to come out as a fully realized, unique philoso-literary tapestry that is part of a greater multiptych.

Trick one: An amusing orthographic or lexical innovation.  In Galapagos, this is manifest as an asterisk before the name of characters who are about to die.  Because why not?  The asterisk in Breakfast of Champions was used in the same way to entirely different, rather more intestinal ends.

Trick two: A driving structural conceit.  In Galapagos: the story is gradually revealed to have been written by the ghost of a dock worker.  In the air.  With his immaterial finger.  See also: the memoir conceit of Bluebeard, the novel within a novel of Champions, etc.

Trick three, which is not really a trick: A brilliant and insightful kernel of truth about the way Vonnegut sees the world and existence, and which invariably happens to be something this reader wanted or needed to hear.  In Galapagos, the central idea is that everything bad that ever happened is because of our big, dumb, human brains and our need to do something with them.  How true!  Even now, I can be seen wondering about what this book means and how to analyze it, instead of glorying in its humor and aphorism.  And as soon as I hit publish, no doubt I am going to start using all my extra brain on the problem of what I should do with my life, what is my purpose for existing, and what on earth I mean by "I" anyway.  How silly these big brains of ours are!  How unnecessary and troublesome!  Who can doubt that it would be better swim all day, rut in the sand without wonder, and then fart wetly to the unanimous laughter of our peers?

Dante Alighieri: The New Life

This brief volume didn't offer me a lot of literary pleasures in and of itself.  The type of love Dante enshrines here is of dubious character, for one thing.  I have, once or twice, felt the sort of overpowering obsession, the worshipful adoration that he tries to capture.  The object of such love very nearly seems like a gift from heaven; he can do no wrong, is free from flaws, and light seems to radiate from his very face.  But I have an advantage over Dante: those whom I have seen in such a light didn't die before I learned the truth.

Dante calls this experience "love", but he does so seemingly without consciousness of the blurriness of that word.  It is a cliche, but nonetheless a useful one, to draw attention to the fact that "I love pizza" and "I love Pablo" are referring to two very different things.  Any objective observer, or even a compromised one who knows of what ze speaks, will recognize in Dante's rapture something much more closely resembling the former than the latter.

Too often, we say, feel, or think that we love something, when in fact we merely desire it.  Did Dante love Beatrice?  How could he have?  They scarcely met.  This is not to say that his feelings for her were not real, or that they were not as powerful as he describes, simply that he has misidentified them.  I, for my part, love sushi in the sense that I desire it.  I love Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, in the sense that I can never seem to get enough of them.  I have even told myself, in the literal sense of the thought arising in my mind unbidden, that I love Pablo.  This too turned out to be more accurately called desire.

Which begs the question "what is love?" The answer to that question is beyond both the scope of this reaction, and perhaps beyond my capacity to write about in any medium.  But I feel confident in my assessment that it is equally far from Dante's capacity to have written at the time of The New Life.