Once upon a time man lived close to the gods; in fact, too close. Luckily, we (and by "we" I guess I mean we Greeks and we Hebrews, which may be the roots of a wonderful conspiracy) -- anyway -- we noticed that that closeness carried with it a lot of nasty, brutal stuff. We ended up defining barbarism and superstition in terms of that closeness. Thus, began the process of redefining our relationship with the god(s) in terms of distance, and that distance in terms of the language appropriate for representing them (him). This took a number of forms. (of course discovery of the alphabetic technology fits in here, but none of that for now!)
The one I am interested in is that pertaining to the birth of literature and the arts out of ritual and what we later would call "religion." The project, within classical Greece, of creating distance took us from priests to rhapsodes to poets to dramatists to rhetoricians. I would note in passing that "philosophy" was born in this context of articulating what that distance from the gods really meant (and maybe that is what philosophy is).
Anywho... along came Christianity (too make a long story short), that great mediator between Greek and Hebrew, and redefined presence -- what it meant to live close to the gods. This re-construction somehow was free of the irrationalities of the past presences.
Thus (ironically or dialectically) it somehow cooperates in the overall rationalizing process of distance. Distance, now, from what? Closeness to what? Somehow, a new notion of presence filtered through the various Jesus movements (some of which were deemed latently nasty, some deemed o.k.) and the Roman church. It was again re-instated with the advent of the printed vernacular Bible. (Again, the sacrament-centered Roman church and the book-centered vernacular churches are probably dialectical cousins cooperating in the process of reconstructing an idea of religious presence).
To cut to the chase, what came out of this was secular literature.
I think what we call the "literary" is that which stayed within the old, archaic vein of presence -- which I am inclined to call a mimetic sense of presence; but in doing so had to continue to go forward with the project of constructing distance. This lead to literary realism.
To be an inspired poet now means to be inspired by something other than the spirit of the gods. (Does anyone take Milton seriously -- including himself -- when follows the epic form of invocation"?) And the ability to weave a coherent tale does not make the divine present. At most, it may serve as teaching a moral a lesson or serve as an allegory for the truly inspired tale of the New Testament. But neither one of those scenarios are "literary" -- properly speaking.
On the other side of the coin, what we now call "religion," uses a wholly new sense of presence that is non-mimetic. How ever it that is God is made present, it is not by recounting anything, or imitating anything or re-presenting anything. Whatever it is, it is an immediate presence. Even if such was not achieved in practice immediately, this, I think, is the wedge that served to separate religion from art. And though it may seem like common sense now, I think quite a lot of conceptual reconstruction had to go down before that was possible.
Again, I am asking how did narratives -- which originally meant, literally, stories about gods -- become stories just about people (and what is meant by "just" in this case). This is mainstream literature -- just stories about people or verses expressing the feelings of people. Yes, I am asking you to question what normally passes by unquestioned. Yes, it is hard for me too, to keep the question present before my mind.
I really feel the need to explain/understand how there could be such. I think "secular literature" and "religious presence" co-evolved somehow as partners. To assume that literature just is secular -- even to presume "secular" or "religious" by themselves are coherent notions -- begs the key questions.
- Why are the significances in this "literature" perceived to be other than the significances in "religion"? To explain it merely as a matter of sects and denominations misses the point.
- How did we become able to compartmentalize things in this way?
- Why does no one read (perceive) a Greek myth as a religious tract? (It is not just because their gods are weird. There are plenty of weird things that, rhetorically, we perceive as "religion.")
- Why is there no real history of christian literature? Why do the modern counter examples prove the rule?
- Why is Dante or Milton considered literature and not religion and read from the pulpit?
- Why was the book closed on the possibility of (someone new) making god present through inspired literary writing?
- How was the Bible so excellently insulated?
- Why does literary criticism of the Bible always seem like an external threat to its integrity?
- Why is the phrase "christian-literature" not redundant?
- What ideological scaffolding is necessary to see sacred or spiritual literature as some specialized sort?
I think the answer to these things has to do with how we understand closeness (presence) and distance. Somehow we have learned how to keep "religious" presence separate from "literary" presence whatever that might be.
I am realizing that all the theorists I like violate this separation of religion and literature -- but I have not yet understood what fundamentally supports that act -- I mean the basis of their views and how they came to be transgressive in the first place.
Thank you, friends, for reading this. I would be grateful for any light you may shed on these matters.
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