Lang/Lit VIII 1

Lang/Lit VIII:

Chapter Fourteen: “Northing”

  • We quickly move through Septemerb and Octoerb deep into Novemerb
  • The main topic is the restlessness of the animals to migrate somewhere
  • She says she shares the same urge as the animals and insects around her
  • There are very few solitary creatures or trees in this chapter
  • Every she sees is en masse
  • Crowds of ants, flocks of goldfinches, robins, woolly bear caterpillars, and caribou
  • The central event of the chapter is Dillard’s description of the Monarch butterfly migration
  • No mention of The Monarch though (see right)
  • It’s a five day inundation which leaves her feeling as if the year itself were “molting and shedding”

Go North, Young Woman

  • The narrator persona shares this desire but it’s a bit perverted[1] as she wants to go north for the winter
  • It’s unclear why the north calls her so strongly
  • She says she wishes to hunker down and go to Point Barrow, Mount McKinley, Hudson’s Bay (all places far to the north)
  • What she wants is a metaphorical “northing,” that is a movement toward a northern latitude
  • She defines this as a “shedding, a reduction, a sloughing off”
  • This is quite reminiscent of Thoreau’s exhortation in Walden to “Simplify, simplify!”
  • Yet instead of going like the animals, Dillard chooses to wait
  • The other creatures can migrate but she wants winter to come to her (uh, ok)

A Little Religion

  • She refers directly to God twice in this chapter
  • First she references a psalm in which the God of the Israelites arrives like a “consuming fire… a mighty tempest”
  • She then draws the analogy between that divine arrival and the arrival of winter[2]
  • Or even just the force of nature coming onward
  • Secondly, she recalls the ancient Israelite rite of Thanksgiving in which a priest would be at an altar and wave a dead ram’s breast toward God as an offering
  • It would be connected with another Israelite offering, the “heave shoulder”
  • These are ways of giving thanks for the beauties that Dillard finds in the world
  • She makes subtle connections between natural phenomena and religious practice

Chapter Fifteen: “The Waters of Separation”

  • This chapter begins with an epigraph from the Koran that reads, “They will question thee concerning what they should expend. Say: ‘The abundance.’”
  • It’s an enigmatic (mysterious) quote much like the first one from Heraclitus at the start of the novel.
  • The narrator then tells the reader that “Today is the winter solstice” which invokes the pagan Yule holiday and ultimately Christmas
  • It’s all about death and rebirth as nature dies for winter yet Jesus is reborn
  • The narrative then moves happily about Tinker Creek and the persona recounts the major evens of the previous fourteen chapters
  • It’s much like a high school paper which summarizes the conclusion of the overall experiences of the past year
  • This retrospective approach is a bit more self-reflexive than nostalgic
  • That means she’s looking back more at her own life and thoughts than of what actually happened at the creek for the past year

Words of Wisdom

  • By the end of the novel, it seems that Dillard has more questions than answers
  • She wonders how many people have prayed for their daily bread only to starve to death
  • She kind of directly questions the deity and then withdraws
  • She claims to be a “sojourner” (a wanderer) in search of signs
  • She then catalogs those signs in the final chapter: bloody paw prints, dead empty frog, creek, mountain, landscape, puppy, suffering, and religious rituals
  • All that she has at the end is her own language of “praise,” the last word in the book (stay out of intergalactic hotels with soul-taking monsters, see right)

Annie Dillard is a mystic, as anyone familiar with her work knows. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that some of the richest and most mean ingful insights of her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, reflect a mystical tradition. The book is written according to a specific structure, one based on two ancient mystical concepts found within the Christian tradition that classically were used to define an approach to the doctrine of God. These concepts are via positiva and via negativa. These concepts form the structural and theological undergirding for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and for certain sections of her collection of essays entitled Teaching a Stone to Talk. The notions of via positiva and via negativa aid Dillard in presenting a stark and challenging notion of God and the nature of the spiritual life.

The via positiva is an approach to the doctrine of God that assumes the presence of God in nature. This affirmation is based on the assumption that God is knowable in some sense, if not in essence, at least in action. Dillard's affirmation of this notion is expressed in the simple statement, "you see what kind of Creator it is by looking at the creation" (Yearbook 114). The via positiva, also known as the cataphatic way, makes statements and draws conclusions about God by what can be seen in the natural world. The Victorines, for example, an order influenced by the writings of Dionysius the Areopa gite, saw the universe "as a book written upon by the hand of God and as a mirror in which the thought of God is reflected." Dillard, in keeping with this idea, asks what is to be thought about the universe with all its forms, variations, cycles, seasons, and vast stretches of nothingness she has gone to nature to derive her theology. Eugene Peterson suggests, and rightly so, that Dillard interprets the text of creation the way that biblical scholars might interpret the text of the Bible. She studies the text of the universe in order to determine the message and nature of the author or creator (Peterson 178). Obviously, for Dillard there is no inherent discontinuity or animosity between God and the universe. She, like the Victorines, sees the creation in its totality as being a text written upon by the hand of God.

The other half of this scenario involves the concept of the via negativa,which has as its underlying assumption the hiddenness of God, not the overt visibility of God. Dillard, like the mystics of the Christian tradition, acknowledges the hiddenness and mystery of God and thus employs the via negativa, or the apophatic approach, in attempting to explicate further her view of God and of the life in pursuit of God. Throughout Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, while declaring the wonders and horrors to be seen from the hand of God, Dillard reminds her reader that nature and/or God is apt to hide itself. She tells stories of trying to catch glimpses of fish in deep water, of stalking muskrats in the woods for hours, of turning just in time to see the final flash of a fleeing squirrel or bird. All such stories are metaphors for a fleeting God, a God that must be sought, stalked, waited out, patiently and tirelessly. The mystical experience results from the expansion of the via negativa concept to include not only God, but also the individual in pursuit of God. In other words, the via negativa initially defines an approach to understanding the nature of God. But, as Dillard uses this concept, it applies also to the kind of attitude required of the seeker of God and to the mystical experience that results from that quest.

Experience of and encounter with God come at a price and are as often frightening and terrible as they are glorious and beautiful. As God told Moses on Sinai, no one can see God's glory fully and live to tell the story. Yet, this danger does not warrant ending the pursuit of the fleeting God, at least for Dillard. Chapters fourteen and fifteen of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek express this desire for experience of God and the price she is willing to pay-the price one ought to be prepared to pay-for such an incredible and permanently altering experience. In these chapters, Dillard tells of observing the restlessness of various animals in the fall as they begin their migration to distant places. Dillard continues and speaks of her own restlessness. She wants to accomplish a northing, "a single-minded trek" toward a specifically designated and inaccessible place. She brilliantly expresses this northing idea as a metaphor for the quest for God in the chapter "An Expedition to the Pole" in Teaching a Stone to Talk. In this lengthy essay, she weaves together stories about her personal experiences in a liturgical church service and historical bits about expeditions taken to the North Pole during the nineteenth century. This essay speaks clearly and most importantly of the via negativa. The Absolute, the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility, is what the polar explorers tried so desperately to reach. Dillard describes the Absolute as ... that point of spirit farthest from every accessible point of spirit in all directions. Like the others, it is a Pole of the Most Trouble.

Of course, the metaphor is obvious. The Absolute, The Pole of the Most Trouble, is God. Dillard tells of the harsh conditions under which the polar explorers lived in order to reach the Pole. They suffered frostbite, hunger, bleeding gums, mental confusion, and more. Most of them died trying to reach the Pole, and one is given to wonder whether or not they knew they would probably die before they embarked on their journey, and even more, whether or not they cared one way or the other (29). Dillard says that "it is for the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility I am searching, and have been searching, in the mountains and along the seacoasts for years" (44).

One must be willing to go out to the furthest edge of the mystery that is God, a place where one may be allowed a brief glimpse of glory, and might also die in the process.

So, for Dillard, the concept of via negativa means acknowledging that God is as much hidden and mysterious as present and that experience of this God requires pursuit. Furthermore and more importantly, this pursuit is often lonely and involves a sort of mental asceticism, a preparedness to have comfortable conceptions about God altered significantly and one's own life painfully altered in the process. This, in fact, is the primary point of Dillard's use of the concepts of viapositiva and via negativa. The common affirmation of both approaches is that in dealing with God one must brace oneself for the gaining of a greater experience or a greater truth, a truth that may be uncomfortable or disconcerting.

Section III in the USAD Guide: Selected Poetry and Short Works of Literature

Introduction

  • In this section there are eight poems and one prose narrative (essentially a short story)
  • These were chosen and arranged to represent one set of literary responses to the accelerating human mastery of the Earth’s resources, the Industrial Revolution, and the human destruction of landscapes throughout the globe
  • These works directly or indirectly offer insight about innovation
  • Some of the writers focus on the energy captured by the machines to work and modify the environment
  • Others talk about the energies of trade and communication
  • Still others try to mediate the horrific effects of the rapid expansion of human civilization
  • All of the texts offer some literary statement about the relationship of human beings with the biophysical environment

Tomorrow Is Another Day

  • Lots of Keywords
  • Possibly Some Biographies
  • Some Discussion of Essay Writing for AD
  • No Actual Analysis of These Works until Next Week
  • Betting Good Money There’s an Essay on Tuesday

[1] Oh, that awoke Adrian again

[2] So the God of the Israelites is the God of Winter?