Wu Cheng-En: Journey to the West

I am entirely inadequate to the task of doing this epic justice at this moment.  Think of it as a Ming dynasty Lord of the Rings crossbred with The Fairie Queen, and you will have some idea of the narrative and allegorical treasures held within.  Each passage holds the promise of a mystical secret that a lifetime of study would be insufficient to explicate, almost as layered and inscrutable as the I Ching, but with a veneer of plot that begs to be read, rather than consulted.

As impossible as the task of explicating these 1400 pages properly is, I have at my disposal a lovely tool provided in undergraduate days by the venerable C.K. Pellow: a truly great work of literature will contain in individual passages a microcosm of the whole.  Each individual segment will carry the attributes of the whole, just as a molecule is a reproduction of a galaxy.  Accordingly, in the event that one cannot address an entire work, one has the option of addressing a small passage that contains the entirety of the work within itself.  To wit:

 意馬心猿都失散，金公木母盡凋零。

黃婆傷損通分別，道義消疏怎得成！

 The Thought−horse and the Mind−ape had scattered,

The Lord of Metal and the Mother of Wood were dispersed.

The Yellow Wife was damaged, her powers divided,

The Way was finished, and how could it be saved?

All five characters in the book are contained herein, though it requires some explication to identify them.  The thought-horse and the mind-ape are the most easily identified, and even this half of a line is bursting with insight.  One common Western conception of identity is that of a dichotomy and opposition between the mind and the heart, thoughts and feelings.  Wu Cheng-En (heavily influenced by Buddhist, Confucianist, and Taoist thought) reveals the problem with such a dichotomy by giving voice to the fact that the thoughts and the mind are not necessarily one unit.  The thoughts, like the dragon prince in Journey to the West, are clear, discrete, sequential, and can be led to an extent.  They are tools, a service animal that helps us to carry our burdens and complete our tasks.

The mind, however, is neither so easy to define, nor so generally helpful.   It is not our thoughts that cause us suffering, it is our mind--specifically the monkey mind that seizes a thought, twists it into a narrative, and uses it as an excuse to run around making irreparable damage in our lives.  In some ways the entire book is the story of the maddeningly headstrong and willful Sun Wukong learning to channel his marvelous abilities in the service of some greater good.  It would be difficult to argue with a similar interpretation of my life in particular and, I suspect, any human's life.  

All of which is a fairly straightforward and defensible interpretation.  But in the second half of the line, it gets considerably fuzzier.  The structure seems to imply that the two entities mentioned in the second half are parallel to the two entities in the first half, but such a parallel is unsustainable.  Elsewhere Zhu Bajie and Sun Wukong are conflated with the elements wood and metal respectively, so a reading that identifies them in this phrase is all but mandatory.  The characters in the story are not not only parallel to parts of the identity, but also to the five natural elements of Chinese medicine and philosophy.  Zhu Bajie, introduced into the equation here, corresponds to the body on one side and to wood on the other:  driven by biological imperatives to eat, drink, and procreate, just as a tree is occupied with the natural physical process of absorbing, becoming, and expressing.  And just as it is in the mind-ape's nature to destroy and ruin all it touches when left to itself, so too does the body-pig make a mess of things when led entirely by its own desires.  

If only the parallel continued so simply!  In the next line, Sha Wujing is added to the recipe as "The Yellow Wife", and takes his place in the alchemical parallel as Earth.  But what is his corresponding role in the self?  If the Dragon Prince, Monkey King, and Pig General are thought, mind, and body respectively, what role does the sand monk play?  That of spirit? Of heart?  Neither of these interpretations is supported explicitly by the text, nor is there any convenient traditional parallel between the five elements and the parts of the self with which to fill in the blanks.  Rather, a picture begins to develop of the relative importance of the three elements Metal, Wood, and Fire in Chinese alchemy, and the corresponding unimportance of Fire and Water.  While all five are believed to be in a pentalectic of birth and suppression, the former three have a unique relationship.  Each of them correspond to two trigrams, colors, planets, etc. while Fire and Water are only assigned one each, allowing the cross-cultural sum of seven to be reached.  

The story of the Journey to the West, therefore, is not simply the story of how one overcomes the wildness of the mind and the desires of the body, but the story of how these two work in concert with a third thing, a catalyst, to achieve balance.  Left to their own, either Sun Wukong or Zhu Bajie cause nothing but chaos.  But with the addition of Earth--Sha Wujing--the pilgrims are completely unstoppable.  This triune division is as ubiquitous in Chinese thought as it is textually in Journey to the West, and is known by far more names than I could explicate or even identify:  the three treasures, the three jewels, the Three Pure Ones, and--perhaps most relevant here--the three bases: energy, vitality, and spirit.  To a Western mind, this division is inscrutable, and it remains largely so to me, but I will hold it in my active concepts folder.  What or who is Friar Sand?  He is the necessary third thing, which has no name in English, and no place in our mind/body dichotomy.  He is the center, the intermediate, the root and the base.  Without his perspective, we are lost.

And it is in the fourth quarter of the passage that we come to realize what the entire book is about.  In contrast to the other four characters, Tang Sanzang corresponds with neither an element or an aspect of the self.  It would be tempting, based on both this fact and the narrative as a whole, to interpret that as meaning he is the whole self:  the pilgrim going on a journey, in the course of which he strives to ovrecome his inner demons as much as any external ones he meets.  But the book is not "The Golden Cicada", and he is not "the self" in this passage.  The story is not of the pilgrim, but of the journey, and Tang Sanzang is "The Way" personified.  He is the result when the three elements work together: earth, wood, and metal; energy, vitality, and spirit; Lao Tze, Kong Tze, and Siddhartha; the plantain fan, the seven-star sword, and the dazzling rope.  At his final goal, he watches his body drown and float away, utterly without remorse or attachment, as though Dorothy wakes up and realizes that the journey took place entirely within herself.

All of which, wordy and seemingly thorough as it was, is only to say that I have opened a single crack through which to begin to understand two lines out of 1400 pages.

Carlo Goldoni: Comedies

The excellent (though inexplicably unidentified) editor/translator of this volume accurately predicted my response to this author when ze compared him to Moliere.  I don't think of Moliere as particularly special, and neither do I Goldoni.  Both of them have their place, know their audiences, and above all know the stage and what will play on it.  Nonetheless, to this reader they serve as moderately entertaining, but unmemorable bookmarks.  In Goldoni's case, that bookmark is to show the intermediate step the Italian theatre took after the antics of the Commedia Del'Arte grew stale.  Significant, yes, and on the stage likely quite entertaining, but on the page a fair sight short of brilliant.

Elizabeth Strout (ed.): The Best American Short Stories, 2013

Cullen, that trivial little ninny, thought he was being clever leaving a bag of books at my place on his last day in Korea, instead of asking whether I wanted any of them.  And perhaps he was.  If he had asked whether I wanted to add a half dozen unread volumes to my stack, I would definitely have said no.  But here we are, him thumbing his repatriated nose, and me with several books that I would definitely not have chosen for myself.

I have read items in the "Best American"$ before, and am usually not disappointed.  I don't remember the quality being quite this good though.  Every story in this selection was well written and engaging in its own way.  But perhaps due to some disagreement between the editor and myself about the definition of a "story", I also don't remember quite so many of them feeling incomplete.  I'm sure it's my particular prejudice that assumes something must happen for the label of "story" to fit.  Many of the items in this volume, however, did not meet that criterion.  Rather than stories, they felt like vignettes, tableaux, mere descriptions.  I was left with the impression that they were (albeit well-chosen) excerpts from some larger story, or that the story had already happened, and the players were being wheeled out for me on an ekkyklema. 

For my money, the only real stories here were the ones were I was pressed into service alongside the characters, experiencing some process alongside them, as in Kirstin Valdez Quade's remarkable  "Nemecia", or Suzanne Rivecca's riveting and brutal "Philanthropy".  And the pinnacle for me, as it would be for most readers, was when the journey that I took with the characters coincided with some journey that I was also taking alone, in so-called "reality".  It is for this reason that Joan Wickersham's "The Tunnel, or the News from Spain" was my favorite.  I feel only too keenly the mix of resentment and affection that comes from a mother who needs too much, and becomes an emotional drain through no fault of her own.  It is an irresolvable dilemma that I would not have been able to express with such an honest and compassionate voice. 

Sullivan's Travels

This movie wasn't really that good, let alone great.  Never fully committing to its idea, and offering only occasional glimpses of skill from Veronica Lake, it would be easy to write this off as a middling romantic comedy. Which is, of course, purposeful.  In the course of delivering on its explicit promise of lighthearted but meaningless entertainment, it not only manages to comment on the type of movie it purports to be, but also sneakily to be exactly the opposite.

The film's central conceit of making a lighthearted romantic comedy about making lighthearted romantic comedies is the earliest example I can think of what has now come to be termed" meta".  Such an idea is positively pedestrian nowadays, and a film that attacks it has to do rather a lot to justify its existence.  Insofar as Sullivan's Travels treads this ground decades in advance of any other, it can be forgiven for being occasionally unfocused or pedestrian.  It travels a lovely thematic arc from "movies should be meaningful and serious", through "that's not as easy as it seems, and is frankly pedantic and insulting", ending up at "maybe a pie in the face isn't such a bad thing after all".  At each step of this journey, it not only delivers the message, but at the same time is the message, its own form and tone displaying in the macro what it's purporting to say in the micro.  If it were a little more artfully or skillfully done, one might be tempted to call it literature.

But the real cleverness (the clumsiness of the execution standing in the way of calling it genius) of the film is that the opposite idea, that movies should "mean" something, runs in a countercurrent underneath the film even as it is being mocked.  The film portrays the title character with a laughable and oblivious white savior complex that is rooted in ego, rather than in empathy--a phenomenon that is all to familiar today.  But even as that caricature is exhaled, and the idea that such a director is to be mocked, writer/director Preston Sturges sneaks a real picture of injustice, hardship, and inequality under the inhalation.  It's quite postmodernist and sophisticated, and insofar as such a thing was done before "modern" was a thing, let alone "postmodern", it can be forgiven for its clumsy, and ultimately only marginally successful, attempt.

자유부인

이러한 신파극에 의미가 숨어있을까요? 한형모 감독이 그런 목표로 촬영했는지 아니면 그냥 이익을 위해서 했는지 잘 모르겠지만 뒤늦게 보면 사회적인 영향을 받았다는 게 확실이다.  감독이 사회적인 영향을  일부로 강화하든 함부로 하든 결국은 마찬가지다.

자유부인에 무슨 영향이 미치냐면 작품명과 동일 한 자유가 아니다.  오히려 자유는 한국 부인을 부패하게 만드는 것으로 다루고 있다.  파방판에는 그 부패된 부인을 가부장제만 살려줄 수 있다.  그래서 이 작품에 "자유가 위험하다"는 의미가 숨어있다고 할 수 있다.

아직도 자유부인의 자손된 현재 한국 드라마에 같은 가부장제를 강화하는 내용을 찾기 어렵지 않다.  자유러운 여자가 남자 없이 잘 사는 장면을 언제 까지 기다려야 할 건가?

연세대학교 출판부: 주제가 있는 한국어 읽기 (5급)

다음달의 한국어 능력시험에 신청했다.  더 이상 미루면 그냥 쓸모없는 흔해빠진 중년 백인 아저씨가 됬다고 할 수 있을까 걱정이 돼서 마침내 마음을 먹었다.  생각 보다 무서운 일이네.  시험을 본 후 4급으로 나오면 그 지난 8년 낭비한 셈이다. 사실 온 지 8년이 됐어도 아직 실력이 낮은 것에 부끄럽다. 

그래서 이 책을읽은것이다. 읽어보니 더 무서워졌다.  시간 제안 없어도 이해하기 어렵다면 현실 시험은 어떻게? 특히 마지막 장인 "서편제"에 내용 이해 질문을 맞기는 커녕 등장인물 몇 명이 있는지를 말 할 수 없겠다. 

제 언어 습득에 어려운 당계를 당도한 것 같다.  앞에 지름길이 없겠으니 열심히 공부 하기 밖에 방법이 없다.

Amy B.M. Tsui: Understanding Expertise in Teaching

The problem with this sort of academic writing is summed up in something one of my favorite professors, 조현용 once said (roughly translated): "Academic writing requires you to write 30 pages for the right to propose a single line."  And that's basically what Tsui has dutifully done here.  I will save you all the trouble of reading the "30 pages" of theoretical underpinnings, research methodologies, and background information, and skip directly to the "single line", the kernel of insight that she had to work so hard to justify proposing:

"The findings of the case studies suggest that the critical difference between experts and nonexperts is not that the former solve more and more problems, because problems often do not present themselves as such.  It is their capability to 'see' what appears to be unproblematic as problems that distinguishes them from nonexperts" (271).

This insightful distinction, not between experts and novices, but between experts and experienced nonexperts, is at the heart of this research.  The ability to problematize, analyze, and improve things that experienced nonexperts would view as "ain't broke" is what makes a true expert, in teaching and presumably across fields.  While I find myself woefully short of expert in many ways, this salient perspective identifies a way forward and offers a way around the trap of becoming just another mediocre white guy teaching English in East Asia.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

There seem to be two things that people get wildly, carelessly wrong about Nietzsche--the sort of ignorance that comes from having read a few decontextualized quotes or believed one's undergraduate intro to philosophy class a little too willingly.  The first is that Nietzsche is a philosopher at all.  There are no reasoned propositions here, no analyses, proofs, or theses to be found.  This is poetry first, and philosophy only insofar as all poetry has a secondary claim to that label.  This book, and what little else of his I've read, is neither rational nor objective, but the pure and beautiful wailing of an anguished spirit, put into words where such should have been impossible.

Which leads rather naturally to the second thing people--by which I chiefly mean tepid, unremarkable straight white men with a desire to appear profound but nothing interesting of their own to say--get wrong about Nietzsche.  If one approaches a book like this with a meatheaded belief that it will be philosophy, the natural next question is, "What school of philosophy is it?  What label can I put on it, and then on myself to spare me the realization that I have nothing interesting to say?"  The answer that some come up with to that question is "Nihilism", a term which then gets further warped into "belief in nothing", and ultimately results in conveniently unassailable laziness.

But to assert that Nietzsche believed in nothing is manifestly ludicrous.  The passion with which this book seethes is in stark contrast to the numb, mushy life that so many who say they embrace Nietzsche live.  Nietzsche believes, not in nothing, but in nothingness: in the wild and creative power of the void.  When he wrote in "Beyond Good and Evil" that if you "gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you", he was referring to its power, not its danger.

That abyss, void, longing, desire, against which so many rail and resist is for Nietzsche not an enemy.  The gaping maw that yawns at our core is terrifying, and so many make the mistake of fleeing from it, covering it up, or trying to fill its insatiable mouth.  Its hunger begs to be satisfied, but is there a more Sisyphean task?  The desire of the abyss cannot be silenced, and neither is it meant to be.  That desire is the reason for its existence, and it is out of that desire, if we stop and gaze, that truth comes.  The abyss does not devour; it delivers.  It does not consume; it creates.

How ludicrous to suppose that Zarathustra in this book--and Nietzsche, to the extent the two overlap--have any truck with Buddhism.  The latter's dismissal of desire is completely incompatible with the former's embrace of it.  The sky calls to Zarathustra, to be sure: the soaring, liberating abandonment of this world's petty concerns.  But so does the earth call to him: desire, rage, and struggle.  There is an upward motion to our journey, an ascent to the peak of a mountain, at which point we have no choice but to sprout wings.  But there is also a going-under, a return to the darkness of discontent and agony, that is equally necessary.  It is this darkness, in fact, from which we get some of our truest light, if we can bear its gaze.  Wonderful things can come from the void, and Nietzsche here helps us to look at it without going mad, resting a comforting, but rough, hand on our shoulder as it opens up in us and produces, for example, verses like this of mine, a tribute to his vision:

Becoming a tree means grasping the earth, as surely as clutching the sun,
Seizing the soil for all that its worth, in the forest of two unfolding as one.

허영만: 식객

세상에 많은 재미없는 얘기 중 하나는 "지금 하는 걸 말고 우리옛날에 했던 걸 해라"는 얘기다.  시간이 흐르는 것과 마찬가지로 틀림 없이 모든 세대가 이런 말을 먼저 들어야 하고 마침네 해야한다. 그래서 "지금 먹는 음식 말고 우리 옛날에 먹었던 음식을 먹어라"는 책을 쓰려면, 이 뻔함을 어떻게 피할 수 있을까? 따분하고 재미없는 말을 재밌게 하는 방법은?

허영만 작가가 매체를 잘 산택한 것으로 이 도전에 성공했다.  만화의 특장은 독자의 방어를 낮추는 것이다.  아무리 교문적이라도, 글을 만화에 싸주면 광객이 잘 받을 것이다.  그러므로 이책에 담겨있는 역사, 요리법, 논평을 웃기고 담동적인 식사로 맛있게 먹었다.

하상욱: 서울 시 2

간결은 기지의 본질이라는 속담이있으므로 이책은 짧아도 기지로 가득해있다.  한국어의 많은 동음이의어, 동철이의어들의 도움을 받아 한 문장 속에 한 문단의 내용을 숨었다.  그러한 놀라운 정직성이 방패 세울 수 있기 전에 당도하여 골수에 사무치게 한다.  60% 웃기고 50% 현명하고 30% 통찰하고 30% 감정적이고 30% 그냥 설렁하며 단권에 두권의 보람이 있다.

김주영: 홍어

이 책을 불완전히 이해를 하는 것은 나의 즐거음에 장벽이 아니었다.  서양의 책을 읽는 것에 단어단어로 이해 해야 의미를 풀어 감상할 수 있다.  동양의 문학은 그렇게 읽으면 낭비다.  나무만 보고 숲을 보지 못하는 것이다.  나는 이책을 읽으면서 어떤 문장을 이해했고 어떤 다른 문장을 추측해서 해석했고, 또 다른 문장을 단어단어를 사전에 찾아보고 사투리 때문에 찾지 못 해서 포기 했다.  전체적인 소감은 쓰러져서 눈 더미에 빠진 것과 비슷하다.  눈송이들 모두다 유일무이하며 아름답지만 잠깐 추위를 느끼는 것도 알음답다.

Nashville

To the extent that the goal of art, in cinema or otherwise, is the clear and inexplicable crystallization of even the smallest moment of humanity, to exactly that extent this movie is a crowning glory.  To be sure, there are other goals of art: to tell a story, to inspire reaction, to simply exist in its beauty, and Nashville meets each of these goals almost as well.  But I can think of no other movie that captures and seals in amber exactly what it means to be a human the way this one does.  It tells no story completely, and doesn't need to.  It is unsatisfying and even ugly at times.  It means at once nothing and everything.  I am not any of the characters in this movie; I cannot relate to them at all.  I am instead the movie itself: a dizzying medley of experiences and stories that mean nothing individually, but everything in their whole.

Luigi Pirandello: The Late Mattia Pascal

What a joy and what a mercy it is to be free.  To be free from the limits of interpretation, to not ask "What does it mean?", and to experience a book as an event, rather than as a coded message of some sort, how lovely and kind.

And yet, as the title character found in his adventures here, every freedom is a tyranny of its own.  Yes, he loosed himself from the bonds of family, duty, and obligation; he escaped from the prison of his life.  But this freedom closed off to him that which he really wanted: stability, connection, and especially love.  He set about painting a new picture of himself, and, "determined to begin  new life from this point, [he] was filled and uplifted by a fresh infantile happiness" (83). Nonetheless, he found himself staring at the unfinished, unfinishable portrait of himself and growling at it, much as Pepita did later in the book (201).

Reading this book on its own terms, in perhaps something approaching an Asian style, I found myself immersed in its world, and as often happens, let the book escape from itself and read me back, even reading the other books I was working through with me.  But what did it mean?  Why did I read it?  Am I missing something, perhaps hidden in Paleari's theories of light and darkness (114-16)? Is the life that I have reconstructed to escape my former life as hopelessly untethered to reality as that of Adriano Meis?

Igor Stravinsky: An Autobiography

This is exactly what a memoir should be.  Stravinsky's approach to the recounting of his life is directly in line with his approach to music.  Of the latter, he says: "The interpreter, of necessity can think of nothing but interpretation, and thus takes on the garb of a translator . . . this is an absurdity in music" (34).  He later explains, "All these misunderstandings arise from the fact that people will always insist upon looking in music for something that is not there.  The main thing for them is to know what the piece expresses . . . They never seem to understand that music has an entity of its own apart form anything that it may suggest to them" (162). 

And it is the same objectivity that Stravinsky demands in music that he brings to narrative.  The reader of his autobiography "will not have found any lyrical outpourings or intimate confessions" (174).  Said reader will merely find a very straightforward account of his life, complete with colorful anecdotes.  What does that, or any, life mean?  One can no more answer life than one can answer music.  Both simply are, and must be appreciated and experienced on their own terms.

Slavoj Žižek: Trouble in Paradise

At first I gave this lecture the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps it was merely my expectation of a Western/English discourse pattern that made it feel jumbled, pointless, obscure.  Slavic/Russian discourse patterns often appear inconsistent to us imperialist Yankees.  Perhaps what I perceived as self-indulgent and pompous was only so seen through my conditioning.  Was I being a bad global citizen, imposing my American expatations [sic] on  world literature?  Were the blinders that kept me from enjoying this book also limiting my access to other literature?

Perhaps the above accusations are well-founded.  But the moment Žižek stooped to defend himself against his detractors, he revealed my reaction to be at least partially warranted.  If he had not quoted one of of his critics as saying "Žižek is once again making a muddled word salad in an attempt to dress up commonplaces as profundity" (207), I might not have found the confidence to believe my own assessment, or the words to express it. 

But while Žižek's "word salad" is indeed without purpose, other than seemingly to convince himself that he is worth listening to, the individual ingredients in that salad were quite tasty.  As with so many other silly, autoerotic contemporary scholars, they often strike a point that is relevant, and occasionally even original.  If only these few moments were developed, distilled, and extrapolated; if only they were the main dish, instead of garnishes meant to lend an otherwise bald and aimless diatribe an air of legitimacy, then I would be swayed, rather than swyven.

Giorgio Vasari: The Lives of the Artists

I wonder if Vasari was satisfied with his life.  Here we have a seminal work, indispensable to historians, art and otherwise, filled with delightful and quirky anecdotes that are seemingly found nowhere else.  And neither does he seem to have been the sort of creator who was unappreciated in his own time, apparently on friendly terms with the some of the greatest minds and artists of all human history.

Was it enough for him?  Was he content to have documented the lives of these demigods, knowing full well he would never be one of them?  If something of him still remains among us, is he upset or content that his name is known only as a writer, not as an artist, and that by only a small fraction of a fraction of people?

If it is any consolation, Vasari, I am glad to have met you.  You seem to have been a pretty unremarkable fellow, and both your writing and your art leave something to be desired.  But fate dropped you in your proper slot, and you did what was required of you.  One could wish for nothing more.

Benjamin Law: Gaysia

Reading this delightful, if harmless, item left me filled with emotions.  There were those the book intended to inspire--sympathy, hope, pity, and awe--but I also experienced plenty that were likely less intended: jealousy, judgement, and bitterness.  Law's breezy, aphoristic style only occasionally betrays the effort of coming up with original ways to describe his experiences (one of my favorite examples: "I spent the evening rushing to the toilet every hour, close to tears, leaking what felt like hot soup.  It was if my guts had become a faucet of horror, passionately rejecting something evil inside me [274]). His way with words, his access to the resources necessary for such a journey, his constant reference to his skinny, youthful body and "criminally handsome boyfriend", all overlaid the reading with a hunger on the part of this reader that was uncomfortable and cowing.  It was a good book.  He seems like a good guy.  I'm happy for him.  I am.

Al-Baqarah

1: I'm only on the first verse of this book, it is only three letters long: الم, and I have spent nearly thirty minutes pondering it.  Suffice it to say that the Al-Muqattaat have captured my attention and imagination, and I am eager to see what they reveal.  They beckon me in the same way that the void does, with the promise to reveal.

2: I refuse to get my hopes up that that this book will actually offer a sunnatullah, an explanation of the actual mechanics of things.  But I am not above imagining if it did.

3: The insistence on unrequited spending of one's essence already sets this book at odds with the majority of The Bible, which makes worship far more transactional.  Who is the We, here, however, and why are they capitalized?

4: I believe in nothing else than what has been revealed to me from my essence.

5: To make an attempt at applying this verse seems premature in this reading, but it could not be more in line with my own current thoughts about the definition of success.  To perceive and love the individual expression of a universal truth that one has come to name "I" (Rabb), and to extrapolate that perception and love into all reality (HUDA).

7: Here is a familiar thought, however.  This might as well have come directly from 1 Corinthians 3.  And I take the same exception with it as I do with that verse: if it is Allah who has veiled their insight, in what way is their suffering of their own desert?

8: A second mention of the divinity of the letter B, one that causes me to doubt the objectivity--though not the usefulness--of the Sufi translation I have received.  This addition seems to be a liberty, and one with no perceptible corrolary in other translations or in the original Arabic.

10: Another verse with a strong corollary in Thessalonians 2:10.  It is out of line with what seems to be the Sufi interpretation of the Divine to say that it punishes one by amplifying imperfection.  Especially insofar as the sin in question is one of inability, not error.

11: This is a rather loaded verse.  I shudder to think how many harmful and mutually contradictory stances it could be used to justify.

12-15 This is an interesting way to begin a sacred text.  The Bible reserves these admonitions for Paul to deliver after corruption has reared its head, not as an introduction before the religion has even begun to exist.

16: I love this verse.  There are those who we rather be right than happy, and those who would rather have comfort than truth.  I hope that I am on the right, or at least the profitable, side of each of these equations.

17: Another beautiful and edifying observation.  There are those who can only see what is outside them, which is the same as seeing nothing at all.

20: I am becoming simultaneously more and less skeptical of this translation.  The substitution of "His Names Sami and Basir" for "hearing and sight" seems at once to be a liberty of interpretation, and a faithful nod to the layers of the language.

22: Whereas the liberties taken here are rather more without linguistic justification.  To add that setting up rivals to Allah is to fall into shirq is not at all present in the original text.  It is becoming necessary to reference two other versions of this book while reading Hulusi's "translation" because he is so unreliable in marking his additions.

23: But this extra effort is more than made up for by the attention he gives to perils of translation, such as his lengthy treatment here of دُون

25: Again, one of Hulusi's seeming liberties relates to the addition of Shirq.  There is no justification for the addition here, and it is a bald insertion of the assumption that purification is freedom from duality (a supportable liberty) and the corresponding transfer of that modifier from its original referent (أَزواجٌ) to another (وَهُم), which is entirely unsupportable.  And again, this seeming linguistic carelessness is balanced by a stimulating explication of the shades of meaning arising from the former.  If I were blessed with أَزواجٌ, it wouldn't matter to me in what sense of the word it came to me.

26: Certainly a parallel with 1 Cor 2:14, and compatible also with various Buddhist approaches.  The most fascinating implication, though, is Husuli's non-translation of رَبِّهِم, which in the other texts I'm referencing is "lord"but here appears simply as "Rabb".  According to his glossary, it is not simply the object of one's worship, but one's divinity in a precise sense: the unique way in which the divine is expressed in oneself. It's maddening to be at once furious with Hulusi for his seeming arrogance, and fascinated by what he reveals.  I would be unable to forgive this linguistic heresy if it were not so fascinating.

27: Here, Hulusi's interpretation requires no linguistic acrobatics to be justified, and one begins to see where he got it, though I still look at him askance for inserting it elsewhere.  The central conceit is that Allah is not a "He" or even an "It", but rather the state of perfect indivisibility. The "shirq" (I wish I knew how to write this in Arabic) that he keeps inserting elsewhere into the text is the corruption of duality, an idea which finds a very natural home in this verse.

28: This verse is ripe with layers of meaning, coming from the possible meanings of تَكفُرونَ. One translation renders it "disbelieve", another "be unfaithful".  Hulusi, in what is becoming a familiar fashion, goes further and injects "deny that that names of Allah comprise your essence".  Insofar as for him, the self is an expression of Allah, this makes perfect sense.  For this reader, admittedly susceptible to such an approach, it still doesn't justify the alterations made to the text.  I'm still fascinated by the puzzle of Hulusi's parenthetical (why are some of his additions parenthetical, and others treated as though there are in the original text?) fixation on the letter B.

29: And the subtleties of هُوَwould most definitely be overlooked if I had been relying on one of these other translations, without Hulusi's announcement that this is one of the Names of which he speaks.  Indeed, without his commentary, inexcusably invasive though it is, the Quran would indeed sound much like a generic religious text to me.  No wonder that all Muslims insist it can't be read in English.  Perhaps I can begin to ease up on him a bit.

30: Here's another place where other translations ("viceroy" and "successive authority") would have been meaningless without Hulusi's linguistically unjustifiable insertion of "conscious beings who will live with the awareness of the names".

31: There's a shift here that seems to mark a transition from invective to narrative.  If the preceding can be called an introduction, it's a very different one than is found in many other religious texts, and feels more well thought out.  A potentially revealing detail is that the Names which Adam is taught (and of which he is composed, according to Hulusi) get a feminine pronoun, while the referents of those names get a masculine pronoun.

32: It will be interesting to see if this is the final word in the opposition between men and angels, or if it's setting up a lengthier conflict.  At any rate, the angels in the Quran are much more flavorful than those in the Bible or Torah.  I like Hulusi's choice to leave  العَليمُ الحَكيمُ untranslated. The other translations I'm referencing render them "knowing" and "wise", which feels flat by comparison.

33: And Adam being invested with both the knowledge of the Names and entrusted with their transmission is another huge departure from the Biblical Adam, who is rather a schlub.

34: Here's the beginning of the conflict.  So much to unpack in this verse.  Iblis' sin is similar to that of Satan in that it comes from his arrogance, but there are two telling distinctions. Satan is framed as rebelling against God; Iblis is (so far at least) rebelling more against man.  Further, framing of egoism as the source of the conflict carries more meaning here, insofar that the first 30 verses have taken care to set up Allah as a manifestation of unity, and to caution against belief in separateness, division, and individuality.  Against this background, Iblis' problem is not that he wanted to be greater than others, as Satan did; Iblis problem is that he believes that such a thing--hierarchy, comparison, and separateness from the all--is even possible.

35: So much here as well.  The We is an important pronoun choice, as opposed to the I of the Bible, and more in keeping with the theme of multiplicity, infinity, and unity.  The sudden appearance of Adam's spouse, who seems to be given neither an origin, a name, nor a gender, lends itself to Hulusi's interpretation that it is not some "other" that he is to dwell with in peace; it is his life and condition.

36: The "all of you" here is frustrating in its seeming lack of referent.  Does it refer to Adam and his "other"? or is Satan included in the going down?  One tempting interpretation is that the one with whom Adam shares his condition and life in 35 is an aspect of himself, and the going down here is separation from that self.  By a similar token, what is the relationship between Satan and the Iblis of 34?  Is Allah not the only one with multiple names here?

37: Quite a turnaround from the Genesis account.  Adam is forgiven for his transgression, but not freed from its consequence: a separation from the paradisaical condition of unity.

38: I'm getting used to Hulusi's habit of leaving words with subtlety that would be damaged in translation untranslated.  This treatment of  هُدًى here prompts a little digging.  The word in question is translated as "guidance" in the other two translations I'm referencing, but it seems to also carry the sense of "gift" according to the dictionary.  Hulusi, of course, takes it to mean the comprehension of one's own reality, which would cover both meanings.

39: This is a verse where the three translations (Hulusi's and two other more conventional ones) diverge on a key point: the meaning of أَصحابُ.  Hulusi renders it "abide", and the other, unattributed translations choose "inmate" and "companion", a wide semantic gap.  From a strictly dictionary definition, a better translation might be "owners", which widens the gap even further.  I begin to forgive Hulusi for his liberties, insofar as its clear that all translation of the Quran must necessarily be an interpretation.  At least Hulusi is more or less transparent about it.

40: Wait, what?  Children of Israel? This is highly unexpected.  I had heard that Abraham et al were revered by Islam, but the writing of this book clearly took place in, and was intended for, nobody living in what we today call Israel.  I wonder if Muslim people consider themselves Children of Israel even today?  This is a point on which I expect far more to be revealed as I progress.

41: Another verse in which Hulusi's explanations are helpful but not to be taken too seriously.  His treatment of "what I have revealed" as the Quran, and "that which is with you" as the Torah makes perfect sense, but by no means the only possible interpretation.  And his translation  of وَإِيّايَ فَاتَّقونِ  as "protect yourself from me" is far more ominous than the "fear me" and "be wary of me" in other translations.

42: This verse is one of which the translations are far more consistent, and a very nice general rebuke of cognitive dissonance.

43: I am again appreciative of the choice here to leave الصَّلاةَ untranslated, for it seems to carry more meaning than just "prayer".  It's tempting to view this as the Islamic equivalent of Acts 15:28,29--namely, a simplification of what is required for believers.  By a similar token, "To bow with those who bow" asks to be taken as a parallel to Hebrews 10:25, although naturally Hulusi's explanation is far more metaphysical.

44: Perhaps I'm in a certain frame of mind as I read these verses, because I am again beset by the parallel to Acts 17:11.  It's interesting that the voice here keeps summoning Paul, rather than any Hebrew prophet.  At any rate, here is another marvelous and highly applicable verse.

45: I'm pleased with my decision to read this translation alongside two others, insofar as the interposition of "this is difficult for the ego" is entirely Hulusi's invention, but not clearly indicated as such.

46: Although the Sufi idea that Allah is a manifestation of one's Rabb is certainly a welcome one here, and no doubt casts the entire book in a light that I can appreciate, it's becoming exceendingly clear that it is not a mainstream Muslim idea.  I wonder if the Bible could benefit from a similar reading.  I certainly cannot overstate how appealing the idea of knowing my Rabb is.

47: Again, the Children of Israel are addressed, although their blessing is knowledge in the Sufi approach, not prosperity.

48: The idea that the day of judgement is the day of death, rather than the advent of a divine war, is certainly appealing in its obviousness and simplicity.

49: Whereas both of the other translations I'm referencing render رَبِّكُم as "Lord", here it is left as "Rabb", which in the Sufi perspective is not an external force, but the unique way in which the Names are manifested in you as an individual.  This approach opens up and degausses a whole range of interpretations, both of the Quran and of the Bible.

50: And it is in this verse that Hulusi's Sufi approach gains a little credence.  The most straightforward translation renders بِكُمُ as "for you", which is in line with the Pentateuch's narrative.  But Hulusi gives the much more wordy and metaphysical "by manifesting the forces of Allah's names in your essence" for the same word.  The answer to this dichotomy is revealed in the third translation (I wish the translators of the other two were not anonymous so I could refer to them more properly).  It is there rendered "with you", and given the footnote "through your entering it".  The word itself is far beyond my ability to parse in this context, given its widely various meanings (a quantifier meaning "how much", a noun meaning "muteness", and a seemingly all purpose preposition), but the average of the three translations seems to imply something like "through you, by means of you", which is certainly in line with Hulusi's ideas.

51: Another example of how the Quran is claiming the origin stories of the Pentateuch for itself.  Insofar as Abraham's descendants never returned to anywhere near Ur, this seems pretty anacrhonistic.

52: But of course the people were not grateful for very long.

53: Another chance for me to appreciate Hulusi leaving وَالفُرقانَ untranslated as "Furqan".  Its rendering as "criterion" in the other translations is rather opaque.

54: A rare example of the other translations taking a liberty that Hulusi does not.  أَنفُسَكُم is quite clearly "yourselves", so to kill the ego within ones self is a very reasonable interpretation.

55: Well this is a departure from the Pentateuch's version.  The Israelites did not say any such thing according to Exodus, and the rays from Moses' face were an unavoidable side effect of his divine encounter, rather than a conscious punishment.

56: "Give thanks" is clearly a better translation of تَشكُرونَ than Hulusi's "evaluate", both here and in 52.

57: Interesting that the blessings (shade, quail, manna) were provided to "you", but the errors were committed by "they".  This is consistent across translations, though it is not clear what it might mean.  What is clear is that nothing is exempt from Hulusi's metaphoric lens, and even the most straightforward and seemingly literal of narratives become metaphysical in his hands.

58: One of the potentially most interesting elements of this project will be the extent to which the narrative of the Quran supplements or elaborates on the narrative of the Pentateuch, as here.  There is no mention in the latter of the children of Israel stopping for succor at Jericho, and the detail adds weight to their later, bloodier return.

59: But one leaves this moment dissatisfied with the knowledge that there was an incident at (what may have been) Jericho, but that the Pentateuch doesn't mention it, and the Quran is maddeningly vague.  Hulusi, of course, is not interested in the narrative at all, and even goes so far as to suppose that the sky itself here is merely a metaphor for the amygdala.  Rather a stretch, if you ask me.

60: A fascinating intersection of Exodus, Al-Baqara, and Josephus here.  The former two are rather in agreement on what happened, though I don't recall Exodus including the detail that each of the tribes had its own stream of fresh water.  Tacitus, however, relies on the more mundane Hebrew oral tradition that Moses simply followed a herd of wild asses to where there was water just under the ground.

61: More interesting pronoun shenanigans here, enough to make one wonder how person designation works in Arabic:  the ingrates referring to "your" Lord, rather than "our"s, and another sudden shift from second person to third as in 57, this time without any correlation between time or judgement.

62: Whooooa this verse could be seen as a game changer, and certainly a welcome divergence from Christian dogma.  Even non-Muslims who call upon the Names of Allah (and there are many) are considered saved here.  This needs deeper scrutiny.

63: Two interesting things here:  firstly, that the Torah is charactarized not as God's promise, but as the Israelites' promise, accepted by God.   And secondly that the mountain itself was raised up (in all three translations to which I am referring here).  In what sense?  In the sense that the mountain itself is a testimony?  Or more literally?  When faced with such a dichotomy, it is a fair bet that Hulusi would choose the former.

64: خاسِرينَ is a very telling choice of epithet for nonbelievers.  Reliably (by which I mean all three translations agree) translated as "losers", it speaks to the way that the errant have been treated so far here:  not as wicked enemies, but as pitiable misguided.

65: A tempting question in light of this verse is why Muslims do not keep the Sabbath in the same way as the Jews did.  There is no distinction drawn so far between Jews and Muslims as an audience for this book.

66: Was the punishment here simply the spurning mentioned in 65?  It certainly seems to be referring to a specific event, lost to time and history, rather than a general practice.

67: A semantically difficult verse.  What is the relationship between the Jews' question and Moses' answer? At any rate, it is clear that up until this point the idea of sacrifice was rather alien to the Hebrew exiles.  And it is no doubt from this verse that the entire book takes its name, so one is tempted to view "sacrifice" as a continuing theme.

68: Another moment where I'm quite fond of Hulusi's leaving Rabb untranslated.  No doubt the vast majority of Jews and Muslims would take issue with his interpretation of it as one's own personal relationship with the divine, but the determiner "your" instead of "our" here and below certainly supports Hulusi's interpretation, albeit circumstantially.

69: The fact that Moses came back with a specific answer indicates that the questions were not, at Hulusi would have it, unnecessary.

70: The almost obsessive narrowing of the field says something about the Jews' desire to be as precise as possible, and also about Allah's willingness to indulge them.

71: It is almost as if they were not satisfied until the task was sufficiently difficult, and there was a real risk of failure.  It is very human to not see the value in something unless it is difficult.

 72: Another incident seemingly not recorded in the Pentateuch.  Unless the Egyptian killed by Moses is the murder in question here, but that seems a rather tenuous connection.  What murder could be referred to here, for which the entire tribe bore accountability?  Or is Allah indeed talking directly to Moses here?

73: Certainly I need to readjust my perception of this book.  I've been reading it as a declaration from Allah to the ancient Jews, misled by references to Israel et al.  But I need to recalibrate my pronoun references.  "You" here seems to be Arabs of Jewish descent, and the book is not a retelling of history, a la the Pentateuch, but a contemporary admonition given long afterward., in the seventh century.  This opens up the possibility that these verses are in fact referring to the death of Jesus--which still begs the question who the "We" refers to, since Muhammad himself is not a candidate during that time period. More pronoun trouble, though.  What is the "it" with which they were to strike the "dead" man?  Hulusi's assumption that "it" refers to a part of the sacrificed cow is echoed in other interpretations, but is not helpful.  I suspect that if the meaning of this cow is revealed, the name of the book itself would become clear.

74: What a wonderfully evocative verse.  The stones that gave forth their water to Moses, the stones that rolled away to reveal Jesus' empty tomb, even the stony hearts of the target audience here give way before the piercing insight of Allah.

75: Certainly not the last time this accusation could be leveled against the audience of this book.

76: A very specific indictment of those who learn and understand, but do not disseminate their understanding.

77: The concealment itself here is thesin.

78: Hulusi chooses to add the transliterated "ummiyyiina" (أُمِّيّونَ) here, which leads me to try and explicate the meaning.  One other translation renders it simply "them", as hulusi does here, while another choose the more specific "unlettered ones".  Various dictionaries render it "illiterate" or "uneducated", which gives credence to the latter translation, and explains why Hulusi felt it necessary to elaborate.

79: The condemnation here, then, is not of those who don't know.  Indeed, ignorance is forgiven earlier in verse 62.  But ignorance with a protestation of knowledge--that is what brings "woe".

80: So many of these people around, even today.

81: And the fire that they wish to avoid, whatever it is, is exactly the fire in which they will end up dwelling.

82: Whereas those who dwell in the righteousness of their Rabb will not be rewarded at some future point, but have already been rewarded by living in the paradise of truth.  But this is entirely my extrapolation.

83: Prayer and charity remain among the pillars of Islamic practice, but the key here is not the practices themselves, but the keeping of one's word to Allah.

84: Another reference to an unrecorded covenant, but one that makes it more clear that "you" are the Jews who settled at Medinah.  The specific promises made, however, are irrelevant.  It is the adherence to one's word, both individually and institutionally, that has been the focus of this entire section.

85: The Day of Resurrection is treated as a known dogma here, without further explication.  Such a promise enters into religious thought sometime after Jesus' death, and is so clearly established by this time that it's seen as self-evident.

86:  The idea of an afterlife, on the surface, seems incompatible with a Day of Resurrection.

87: It is my personal belief that the line of Rasuls (again helpfully untranslated by Hulusi) has never stopped.  Who are they today, though?  Each translation and dictionary has a different rendering of رَسولٌ--apostle, prophet, messenger--so Hulusi wisely leaves it here in the original.