It's amazing what this beleaguered Soviet thinker endured. Like Akhmatova his brilliance and originality upset the very system that should have embraced him: seeing that his writing on Rabelais ramified the from-the-ground-up process of revolution. Or perhaps that's the reason why he worked in, not just obscurity, but enforced obscurity, an exile imposed by spite from academic gate keepers. His work on Rabelais and carnival is an enlightening read. I'm seeing the gospel and much else in a very interesting light. Not that it's the only way to read things: but imagine, as you read say Matthew 12 - 14 Jesus walking through a countryside peopled with lepers, outcasts, widows, dull disciples, feeding thousands, and giving anxiety to a somewhat henpecked ruler - that's carnivalesque! I'm reminded of paintings by Breugel (his battle of canival and lent); Bosch (Christ carrying his cross; man of sorrows); and Ensor (Christ entering Brussels). Chuck and Stan taught a class on carnival two years ago or so, but we didn't touch on Bakhtin this way (or if we did I didn't get it then). I think we needed more pertinent examples: Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare - which are Bakhtin's; instead we focused on modern phenomina - which Bakhtin ways are watered down from the ancient and medieval predecessors. Ancient carnival combined the grotesque with the comic in a folk celebration: laughter is the key. What if today we found a way to laugh at the face of terror: terror from our government as well as the purported terror from them "over there." We should be prepared to fight authoritarianism on all fronts: not just fleeing behind the power of establishment authoritarianism in the face of terrorist authoritarianism.Does all this talk of carnival figure in the hospital? Probably, but it is a place that strains our capacity for laughter, my capacity at least, even in the face of no lack of the grotesque. In the hospital it can be asked "what can happen to the human body?" and an answer is at the ready. Laughter though is supposed to be the best medicine; according to Ecclesiastes it strengthens the heart. Much was made in ancient commentaries that Jesus isn't recorded as laughing. But I think the one verse "Jesus wept" proves the opposite, in that the one time Jesus isn't laughing, it gets recorded. Paul now, may not have laughed.
What do y'all think?
3 comments:
Paul, never ever laughed. For any reason. Or so I'm told.
I guess we can agree that Paul never left. He did use profanity to describe his righteousness under the law: it was shit. The use of profanity and abuse is part of the carnivalesque; I suppose the question with Paul is whether such profanity was joined with laughter.
Calvin of course never laughed. He hated Rabelais, but other reformers liked him.
Luther for instance certainly laughed.
Paul never laughed. Not left. Although did Paul ever left? I don't know.
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