Karen Armstrong, "The Spiral Staircase"

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Karen Armstrong, "The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness" (2004)

 

뉴욕 타임즈 서평

 

Karen Armstrong의 이 회고록은 The Book Stack에서 우연히 눈에 띄어 샀는데 재밌게 읽었다. 책을 읽고 나니, 그녀의 "The Case for God" (2009)은, Lousie May 도서관 라운지에서 두 번이나 뒤적여보고 나서, 읽을 만하지 않다고, 그리고 "A History of God"(1993)은 Robert Wright의 "The Evolution of God"(2009)을 읽은 거로 충분하고, Axial_Age를 다룬 "The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions"(2006)나 읽어볼 만하겠다고 한 내 생각이 더 굳어진다.

 

서두의 시: T. S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday, I

 

아래는 본문에서

 

I recalled Wordsworth's decision, when he realized that the glory of the world that he had experienced as a boy had gone forever:

 

            We will grieve not, rather find

            Strength in what remains behind.

 

Perhaps i could take that as a mantra. (p. 129)

 

In some of the poems of Ash-Wednesday, the Dame [Dame Helen Gardner] pointed out that February morning, the experience of spititual progress and illumination was represented by the symbol of a spiral staircase.... In the very first poem of the sequence, ... the verse constantly turns upon itself in repetitions of word, image, and sound. Repeatedly the poet tells us, "I do nnot hope to turn again," and yet throughout the poem, he is doing just that, slowly ascending to one new insight after another. And even though he insists that he has abandoned hope, I felt paradoxically encourged. (p. 140)

 

But what thrilled me most about Eliot's poem were the words "because" and "conseguently." There was nothing depressing about this deliberate acceptance of reduced possibilities. it was precisely "because" the poet had learned the limitations of the "actual" that he could say: "I rejoice that things are as they are."

 

            Because I cannot hope to turn again

            Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

            Upon which to rejoice

 

(pp. 141-2)

 

The countries of northern Europe were indeed responding to the peculiar strain of the late twentieth century be renouncing religion. For many God had died in Auschwitz. The church had been implicated in the Holocaust.... The United States ... was becoming more religious all the time: by the year 2000 it would be the second most religious country in the world after India. (p. 202)

 

It was Saint Paul, not Jesus, who was the founder of Christianity, and even he would have been dismayed by some of the theological conclusions that were later drawn from his letters. I now discovered that Paul's epistles are the earliest extant Christian documents and that the gospels all written years after Paul's own death, were penned by men who had adopted Paul's version of Christianity. Far from Paul perverting the gospels, the gospels, it seemed, owed their version to Paul.... Further it appeared that not all the epistles attributed to Paul in the New Testament were actually written by him. And this radically altered my view of Paul himself, Some of the most misogynist passages, for example, were almost certainly written by Christians some sixty years after Paul's death. (p. 232)

[지금 보니 Wright의 책을 읽고서의 내 포스팅에 유일하게 인용한 구절이 Paul에 대한 Karen Armstrong의, 2022년, 언급이다.]

 

"There is no need to be a polite lady here in Israel. We are not formal people. There is no point to speak if there is nothing to say." (p. 240)

 

A passing Brahmin priest once asked the Buddha whether he was a god, a spirit, or an angel. None of these, the Buddah replied: "I am awake!" (p. 271)

 

We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind. There may even be a biological reason for this. (p. 279)

 

Compassion does not, of course, mean to feel pity or to condescend, but to feel with. This was the method I found to be essential while writing Muhammad. (p. 290)

 

 

 

이 책에서 저자의 "Muhammad: A Biograph of the Prophet" (1991)에 관한 얘기(p. 273-290)를 읽으면서, Ayatollah Khomeini로부터 사형 판결(fatwa 파트와)을 받은 Salman Rushdie의 소설 "The Satanic Verses"의 문제 부분이 Part II Mahound인 걸 알게 되어, 갖고 있던 "The Satanic Verses"를 40쪽이 채 안되는 그 부분만 얼른 읽고서 도서관에 기증했다. 거의 600쪽인 데다 전에 읽다 만 그의 소설 "The Moor's Last Sigh"와 비슷한 스타일과 분위기여서 읽기 싫던 책이라 시원했다.

 

 

 

Salman Rushdie, "The Satanic Verses: a novel" (1988)