The Transcendent
Signified, Part II -

A sequel to my recent entries
The Transcendent Signified and
Catholic Tastes

From a July 28 New York Times story on a controversy over the Latin Mass:

"Granted, most of the people don't understand Latin," he said, "yet they understand its evocation of the transcendent."

-- Father John A. Perricone

From the excellent site

Quotations on Sound,
the Name, and the Word:

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Part 2: Interviews with Bill Moyers --

Campbell: "We want to think about God. God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea, but its reference is to something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought. My friend Heinrich Zimmer of years ago used to say, 'The best things can't be told,' because they transcend thought. 'The second best are misunderstood,' because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts. 'The third best are what we talk about.' And myth is that field of reference, metaphors referring to what is absolutely transcendent."

Moyers: "What can't be known or can't be named except in our own feeble attempt to clothe it in language."

Campbell: "And the ultimate word in our language for that which is transcendent is God."

Midnight Cowboy

A Last Hurrah for Harold C. Schonberg, New York Times music critic (not to be confused with Arnold Schoenberg, composer):

"His criticism of music he disliked could be harsh, and in a valedictory essay published at the time of his retirement as senior critic, he explained himself unrepentantly.

'I thought the serial-dominated music after the war was a hideously misbegotten creature sired by Caliban out of Hecate, and I had no hesitation in saying so,' he wrote. 'Nor has it been proved that I was all wrong. Certain it is that the decades of serialism did nothing but alienate the public, creating a chasm between composer and audience.'"

The serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg, on the other hand, wrote:

"I believe what I do and do only what I believe; and woe to anybody who lays hands on my faith. Such a man I regard as an enemy, and no quarter given!"

Schoenberg

To which the appropriate reply is:

"Here's a quarter, call someone who cares."

-- Travis Tritt, CowboyLyrics.com

Harold C. Schonberg

Catholic Tastes

In memory of New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, who died Saturday, July 26, 2003:

Nous Voici Dans La Ville - A Christmas song from 15th century France (midi by John Philip Dimick).

In memory of my own youth:

Formaggio Address Paseo del Conquistador # 144 Food Type Italian Dress Casual Tel 777-313-0584 Comment Chef Lorenzo Villagra is formally trained in Italian Cuisine. Great food and views of the valley of Cuernavaca.

In memory of love:

Volverán del amor en tus oídos

Las palabras ardientes a sonor;

Tu corazón de su profundo sueño

Tal vez despertará;

Pero mudo y absorto y de rodillas,

Como se adora a Dios ante su altar,

Como yo te he querido…desengáñate,

¡Así no te querrán!

-- from "Rima LIII"
    by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
   (1836-1870)

Translation by Young Allison, 1924:

Burning words of love will come
Again full oft within thine ears to sound;
Perchance thy heart will even be aroused
From its sleep profound;

But mute and prostrate and absorbed,
As God is worshipped in His holy fane,
As I have loved thee…undeceive thyself:
Thou wilt not be thus loved again!

The Robert Lowell version of
the complete poem by Bécquer:

Will Not Come Back
(Volverán)

Dark swallows will doubtless come back killing
the injudicious nightflies with a clack of the beak:
but these that stopped full flight to see your beauty
and my good fortune... as if they knew our names--
they'll not come back. The thick lemony honeysuckle,
climbing from the earthroot to your window,
will open more beautiful blossoms to the evening;
but these... like dewdrops, trembling, shining, falling,
the tears of day--they'll not come back...
Some other love will sound his fireword for you
and wake your heart, perhaps, from its cool sleep;
but silent, absorbed, and on his knees,
as men adore God at the altar, as I love you--
don't blind yourself, you'll not be loved like that.

"...my despair with words as instruments of communion is often near total." -- Charles Small, Harvard '64 25th Anniversary Report, 1989 (See 11/21/02). Perhaps dinner and a movie? The dinner --  at Formaggio in Cuernavaca. The movie -- Michael.
Lucero (Bright Star), portrayed by Megan Follows	Hoc est enim corpus meum... See also A Mass for Lucero.

See, too, my entry for the feast day of
Saint Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer,
which happens to be December 22.

The Transcendent
Signified

"God is both the transcendent signifier
and transcendent signified."

— Caryn Broitman,
Deconstruction and the Bible

"Central to deconstructive theory is the notion that there is no 'transcendent signified,' or 'logos,' that ultimately grounds 'meaning' in language...."

— Henry P. Mills,
The Significance of Language,
Footnote 2

"It is said that the students of medieval Paris came to blows in the streets over the question of universals. The stakes are high, for at issue is our whole conception of our ability to describe the world truly or falsely, and the objectivity of any opinions we frame to ourselves. It is arguable that this is always the deepest, most profound problem of philosophy. It structures Plato's (realist) reaction to the sophists (nominalists). What is often called 'postmodernism' is really just nominalism, colourfully presented as the doctrine that there is nothing except texts. It is the variety of nominalism represented in many modern humanities, paralysing appeals to reason and truth."

-- Simon Blackburn, Think,
Oxford University Press, 1999, page 268

The question of universals is still being debated in Paris.  See my July 25 entry,

A Logocentric Meditation.

That entry discusses an essay on
mathematics and postmodern thought
by Michael Harris,
professor of mathematics
at l’Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot.

A different essay by Harris has a discussion that gets to the heart of this matter: whether pi exists as a platonic idea apart from any human definitions.  Harris notes that "one might recall that the theorem that pi is transcendental can be stated as follows: the homomorphism Q[X] --> R taking X to pi is injective.  In other words, pi can be identified algebraically with X, the variable par excellence."

Harris illustrates this with
an X in a rectangle:

For the complete passage, click here.

If we rotate the Harris X by 90 degrees, we get a representation of the Christian Logos that seems closely related to the God-symbol of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  On the left below, we have a (1x)4x9 black monolith, representing God, and on the right below, we have the Harris slab, with X representing (as in "Xmas," or the Chi-rho page of the Book of Kells) Christ... who is, in theological terms, also "the variable par excellence."

Kubrick's monolith

Harris's slab

For a more serious discussion of deconstruction and Christian theology, see

Walker Percy's Semiotic.

Funeral March

John Schlesinger dead at 77; 'Midnight Cowboy' director   Anthony Breznican Associated Press Jul. 26, 2003 12:00 AM LOS ANGELES - Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger, who daringly brought gay characters into mainstream cinema with Midnight Cowboy and tapped into nightmares with the teeth-drilling torture of Marathon Man, died Friday at 77. The British-born filmmaker.... died about 5:30 a.m....

Schlesinger also directed The Day of the Locust, based on a novel by Nathanael West.

See Heaven, Hell, and Hollywood and

Dogma Part II: Amores Perros.

From the latter:

"Then you know your body's sent,
Don't care if you don't pay rent,
Sky is high and so am I,
If you're a viper -- a vi-paah."

— The Day of the Locust,
    by Nathanael West (1939),
    New Directions paperback,
    1969, page 162

This song may be downloaded at

Pot Culture, 1910-1960.

That same site begins with a traditional Mexican song...

"La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
 ya no puede caminar,
 porque no quiere,
 porque le falta
 marihuana que fumar." 

("The cockroach, the cockroach,
 can't walk anymore,
 because he doesn't want to,
 because he has no
 marihuana to smoke.")

This suggests an appropriate funeral march for John Schlesinger:

"Ya murió la cucaracha, ya la llevan a enterrar..." - La Cucaracha

Those attending Schlesinger's wake, as opposed to his funeral, may wish to perform other numbers from the Pot Culture page, which offers a variety of "viper" songs.

Bright Star and Dark Lady "Mexico is a solar country -- but it is also a black country, a dark country. This duality of Mexico has preoccupied me since I was a child." -- Octavio Paz, quoted by Homero Aridjis
Bright Star	Amen.	Dark Lady

For the meaning of the above symbols, see
Kubrick's 1x4x9 monolith in 2001,
the Halmos tombstone in Measure Theory,
and the Fritz Leiber Changewar stories.

No se puede vivir sin amar.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript:

Oh, yes... the question of
Heaven or Hell for John Schlesinger... 

Recall that he also directed the delightful
Cold Comfort Farm and see
last year's entry for this date.

Realism in Literature:
Under the Volcano

Mexican Volcano Blast Scares Residents By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:13 p.m. EDT Friday, July 25, 2003 PUEBLA, Mexico (AP) -- Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano shot glowing rock and ash high into the air Friday night, triggering a thunderous explosion that panicked some residents in nearby communities.

Here are 3 webcam views of the volcano.   Nothing to see at the moment.

Literary background:

Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano,

Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star,

A Mass for Lucero,

Shining Forth,

and, as background for today's earlier entry on Platonism and Derrida,

The Shining of May 29.

Vignette For more on Plato and Christian theology, consult the highly emotional site Further Into the Depths of Satan: "...in The Last Battle on page 170 [C. S.] Lewis has Digory saying, 'It's all in Plato, all in Plato.' Now, Lewis calls Plato 'an overwhelming theological genius' (Reflections on the Psalms, p. 80)...." The title "Further Into the Depths of Satan," along with the volcano readings above, suggests a reading from a related site: Gollum and the Mystery of Evil: "Gollum here clearly represents Frodo’s hidden self. It is 'as if we are witnessing the darkest night of the soul and one side attempting to master the other' (Jane Chance 102). Then Frodo, whose finger has been bitten off, cries out, and Gollum holds the Ring aloft, shrieking: 'Precious, precious, precious! My Precious! O my Precious!' (RK, VI, 249). At this point, stepping too near the edge, he falls into the volcano, taking the Ring with him. With this, the mountain shakes.' "

In the above two-step vignette, the part of Gollum is played by the author of "Further Into the Depths of Satan," who called  C. S. Lewis a fool† "that was and is extremely useful to his father the devil."

† See Matthew 5:22: "...whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." 

For Jung's 7/26 Birthday:
A Logocentric Meditation

Leftist academics are trying to pull a fast one again.  An essay in the most prominent American mathematical publication tries to disguise a leftist attack on Christian theology as harmless philosophical woolgathering.

In a review of Vladimir Tasic's Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, the reviewer, Michael Harris, is being less than candid when he discusses Derrida's use of "logocentrism":

"Derrida uses the term 'logocentrism'... as 'the metaphysics of phonetic writing'...."

— Notices of the American Mathematical Society, August 2003, page 792

We find a rather different version of logocentrism in Tasic's own Sept. 24, 2001, lecture "Poststructuralism and Deconstruction: A Mathematical History," which is "an abridged version of some arguments" in Tasic's book on mathematics and postmodernism:

"Derrida apparently also employs certain ideas of formalist mathematics in his critique of idealist metaphysics: for example, he is on record saying that 'the effective progress of mathematical notation goes along with the deconstruction of metaphysics.'

Derrida's position is rather subtle. I think it can be interpreted as a valiant sublation of two completely opposed schools in mathematical philosophy. For this reason it is not possible to reduce it to a readily available philosophy of mathematics. One could perhaps say that Derrida continues and critically reworks Heidegger's attempt to 'deconstruct' traditional metaphysics, and that his method is more 'mathematical' than Heidegger's because he has at his disposal the entire pseudo-mathematical tradition of structuralist thought. He has himself implied in an interview given to Julia Kristeva that mathematics could be used to challenge 'logocentric theology,' and hence it does not seem unreasonable to try looking for the mathematical roots of his philosophy."

The unsuspecting reader would not know from Harris's review that Derrida's main concern is not mathematics, but theology.  His 'deconstruction of metaphysics' is actually an attack on Christian theology.

From "Derrida and Deconstruction," by David Arneson, a University of Manitoba professor and writer on literary theory:

"Logocentrism: 'In the beginning was the word.' Logocentrism is the belief that knowledge is rooted in a primeval language (now lost) given by God to humans. God (or some other transcendental signifier: the Idea, the Great Spirit, the Self, etc.) acts a foundation for all our thought, language and action. He is the truth whose manifestation is the world."

Some further background, putting my July 23 entry on Lévi-Strauss and structuralism in the proper context:

Part I.  The Roots of Structuralism

"Literary science had to have a firm theoretical basis..."

Part II.  Structuralism/Poststructuralism

"Most [structuralists] insist, as Levi-Strauss does, that structures are universal, therefore timeless."

Part III.  Structuralism and
             Jung's Archetypes

Jung's "theories, like those of Cassirer and Lévi-Strauss, command for myth a central cultural position, unassailable by reductive intellectual methods or procedures."

And so we are back to logocentrism, with the Logos — God in the form of story, myth, or archetype — in the "central cultural position."

What does all this have to do with mathematics?  See

Plato's Diamond,

Rosalind Krauss on Art -

"the Klein group (much beloved of Structuralists)"

Another Michael Harris Essay, Note 47 -

"From Krauss's article I learned that the Klein group is also called the Piaget group."

and Jung on Quaternity:
      Beyond the Fringe -

"...there is no denying the fact that [analytical] psychology, like an illegitimate child of the spirit, leads an esoteric, special existence beyond the fringe of what is generally acknowledged to be the academic world."

What attitude should mathematicians have towards all this? 

Towards postmodern French
  atheist literary/art theorists -

Mathematicians should adopt the attitude toward "the demimonde of chic academic theorizing" expressed in Roger Kimball's essay, Feeling Sorry for Rosalind Krauss.

Towards logocentric German
  Christian literary/art theorists -

Mathematicians should, of course, adopt a posture of humble respect, tugging their forelocks and admitting their ignorance of Christian theology.  They should then, if sincere in their desire to honestly learn something about logocentric philosophy, begin by consulting the website

The Quest for the Fiction of an Absolute.

For a better known, if similarly disrespected, "illegitimate child of the spirit," see my July 22 entry.

Democracy in America

Jay Leno's man-in-the-street "Duh" interviews are no longer funny.  See

America's Ignorant Voters and

Voting Machine Fraud Likely.

Intelligence Test

On July 17, my entry "British Intelligence" linked to a Guardian story about a bumbling amateur spy organization set up by the Bush administration.  The headline of that entry, together with Tony Blair's remark quoted there, implied that The Guardian was a much better example of real British intelligence than Blair's minions.

On July 21, my entry "Meet D. B. Norton" attacked Blair as a puppet of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

Now The Guardian has come through with a story confirming the picture of puppetmaster Murdoch.  See

This BBC row is not about sources - it is about power Downing Street and Rupert Murdoch want revenge on the corporation Jackie Ashley Thursday July 24, 2003

For background on Rupert Murdoch, see

Murdoch's Mean Machine
How Rupert uses his vast media power
to help himself and hammer his foes

in the Columbia Journalism Review

Edward Arnold portrays Rupert Murdoch
as he hears of
Wednesday's 400-21 House vote
against media tycoons.

For more details, see

Congress Vote May Stymie Murdoch and

Scramble to Overturn House Media Bill.

Being Pascal Sauvage

Pascal

"Voilà ce que je sais par une longue expérience de toutes sortes de livres et de personnes. Et sur cela je fais le même jugement de ceux qui disent que les géomètres ne leur donnent rien de nouveau par ces règles, parce qu' ils les avaient en effet, mais confondues parmi une multitude d' autres inutiles ou fausses dont ils ne pouvaient pas les discerner, que de ceux qui cherchant un diamant de grand prix

Diamant

parmi un grand nombre de faux, mais qu' ils n' en sauraient pas distinguer, se vanteraient, en les tenant tous ensemble, de posséder le véritable aussi bien que celui qui, sans s' arrêter à ce vil amas, porte la main sur la pierre choisie que l' on recherche, et pour laquelle on ne jetait pas tout le reste."

-- Blaise Pascal, De l'Esprit Géométrique

La Pensée Sauvage

"....the crowning image of the kaleido­scope, lavishly analogized to the mythwork in a three-hundred-word iconic apotheosis that served to put the wraps on the sustained personification of “la pensée sauvage” in the figure of the bricoleur, in an argument developed across two chapters and some twenty pages in his [Claude Lévi-Strauss's] most famous book...."

-- Robert de Marrais in
Catastrophes, Kaleidoscopes,
String Quartets:
Deploying the Glass Bead Game

Pascal Sauvage

Chiasmus

For more on pensée sauvage, see

"Claude Lévi-Strauss,

Chiasmus

and the Ethnographic Journey."