Skeins of the Infinite - A Fractal Tapestry of Song

Epoche: A Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2018

Dance is intimately connected to both Kierkegaard's personal life and his life in writing, as exemplified in his famous nightly attendance at the dance-filled theater, and his invitation to the readers of "A First and Last Explanation" to (in his words) "dance with" his pseudonyms. The present article's acceptance of that dance invitation proceeds as follows: the first section surveys the limited secondary literature on dance in Kierkegaard, focusing on the work of M. Ferreira and Edward Mooney. The second section explores the hidden dancing dimensions of Kierkegaard's "leap" and "shadow-dance" (Schattenspiel). And the third section reinterprets the pseudonymous works richest in dance, Repetition and Postscript, concluding that the religious for him is the lighthearted dance of a comic actor through the everyday theater of the world.

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 2009

Different interpretations are evaluated for their contribution towards a better under-standing of the theology of Song of Songs. Chapter 4:16-5:1 is presented as the structural centre of Song of Songs. Linear, cyclic and concentric structures point to the centrality of this passage. It has a key-function for the theology of the book which is understood as creational theology because love recalls paradise. God is identified with the third voice, encouraging the lovers to enjoy love in all its fullness.

Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy, 2019

This paper seeks to establish a link between the referential process and the creative representation of the spiral as a symbol that derives from a fantasy plan common to different times and cultures. It is possible to find in different places of the world several archaeological references, from the Neolithic to Ancient Greece, from Brazil to Malta, etc., a common denominator that cannot be ignored. Its cultural expression can start from experiences in non-ordinary states of consciousness such as the shamanistic dimension of certain tribes, but can also be present in the popular and decorative expression of various non-industrial artefacts. In the artistic dimension, we will highlight some examples of contemporary artists who have been sensitive to this Spiral theme. Their inspiration was guided by images of the unconscious and by the golden ratio or certain visual harmonies that depart from mimetic references in nature. In any case, these works of art refer more to a natural and symbolic aesthetics than to the rational use attributed to them.

In many myths and fairy stories, spinning appears as a symbol of creation: it is to fashion the very thread of life. In these tales, spinning, singing and dancing 1 are magical actions that create and sustain life. Mythologies and religions are packed with symbols of this sort that must be disentangled exactly as if we were unravelling a thread. As Jean Houston says, "A myth is something that never was but that is always happening" 2 . The poetic and symbolic language that is used in all traditions when trying to address subjects of great importance is the only one that takes us to the boundary between the human and the divine, the visible and the hidden. Spinning and unravelling are highly symbolic in their own right. This paper sets out to look closely at the mythological figures who spin and to give examples of how they have been represented at different periods in the history of art.

2018

The subject of my reflections are the songs of the eastern Ash kenazy Hasidim, which serve them as a means of communicating with the transcendent world in their religious practices. I shall endeavour to outline the symbolic order expressed by these songs and also to explain their social function. In order to understand the social context of communication via music among the Hasidim, one needs to be aware of Jews' predilection for the esoteric, confirmed in the times of misfortune which have befallen them, from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem to contemporary times. Successive mystical movements within Judaism have clearly been the consequence of the persecution experienced by the Jews and their wish to escape from the gloomy realities into an inner world. The Hasidic movement, which began to develop during the second half of the eighteenth century in Podolia and Volhynia, was intended to remedy the discontent that perdured within the Jewish community as a result of the weakening of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, which led to the Partitions, Bohdan Chmielnicki's Uprising and the Cos sack Wars. Of considerable significance was the admission into this movement of the lower social strata, marginalised by the Orthodox Jews. The spiritual father of the movement is considered to be Israel ben Eliezer, known as Baal Shem Tov ('Master of the Good Name'), or Besht for short (c. 1700-1760). The eastern Ashkenazy Hasidim adopted in their mystic conceptions the 'Lurian Kabbalah', created among the mystics of Safed-a town in northern Israel which arose after the Jews' expulsion from Spain. This doctrine concerns the divine, angelic and demonic spirit world and the world of humans in its spiritual and corporeal dimensions, and the mu tual relations between the two. It attributed to musical notes a special power of influence, in connection with the manifold links with the cosmos that are ascribed them.

Can The Golden Bough be taken seriously in this day and age? Or, is it time to let go of this Tylorian survival that today stands largely uncited except as an example or error? In this article, I return to The Golden Bough with the idea that if it is in error, then the nature of this error also deserves attention. Using Lévi-Strauss' approach to the analysis of myth, I investigate the tension between Frazer's classical exegesis of the priesthood at Nemi and the scientific aspirations of his comparative study. These very different projects are each associated with narrative forms and are caught between enforcing the distinction between the truth of science and the error of magic and upholding their continuity (as common products of the human mind). looking at Frazer and lévi-Strauss, I seek to recover some fragment of the spirit of their inquiry and uncover the mind as their fundament. With their notion of mind in sight, I find inspiration for a new model of ethnography, one based not on understanding the mind of another but on attending to worlds that open when walking alongside them.

The symbolism connected with the fiber arts is remarkably consistent throughout the world and contains a number of common themes of which the most important is the “Thread-Spirit” doctrine, found in many cultures—Hindu, Islamic, European, Chinese, Amer-Indian—suggesting great antiquity. The doctrine, once understood, gives meaning to the varied symbolism derived from the related arts of knotting, sewing, spinning and weaving. The doctrine is expressed both in language and art and appears in various forms in the folktales of the world as well as in the sacred writings of the world’s major religions.

Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2019

Fear and Trembling’s goal is illuminating the nature and difficulty of faith. To this end, Silentio, Kierkegaard's pseudonym, introduces two ideal types, the knight of resignation and the knight of faith, to stand as examples of the extremes of human possibility. At a key juncture in his argument, Silentio blends the ideal type of the knight with a new ideal type, that of the ballet dancer; he claims that although both knights are "dancers," only the knight of faith can dance perfectly, doing what perhaps no actual dancer can do: he does not “hesitate” in the moment between landing from his leap and assuming the position from which to reengage with the ordinary world of finitude. Kierkegaard deploys a surprisingly precise grasp of classical ballet’s vocabulary of movements, positions, and leaps, and of its aesthetic of lightness and defiance of gravity -- something passing almost unnoticed in the literature -- and I examine how these concepts provide him additional power to clarify the essence of faith.

2021

Unlike Barth, Coover assumes that his readers already count themselves among the intellectual elite that enjoy the exoteric pleasures of post-contemporary literature. That assumption precludes the necessity of Barthian didacticism, but it does create different problems for the writer who must entertain this audience While Cover need not persuade his already converted readers of the value of performance literature or of the necessity of careful reading, he must address their demand for innovative techniques even as he tries to use these techniques for his own peculiar aesthetic purposes. More specifically, Coover typically attempts to fulfil his sophisticated audience’s desire for the unusual at the same time that he argues for the value of literature that he argues for the value of literature that appeals to the dark elements of our psyche. For in his reconstruction of...folktales and Bible stories, in his construction of tales from elements of popular culture, Coover seeks to revea...