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LITR 4231 Early American
Literature Sample Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 2 |
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Jonathon Anderson
4/20/2014
Why is Paradise to the West?
“[A]ll to whom this undertaking was mentioned, unanimously declared it to be a
delusion.”
1.
Departures
In the first few weeks of class, one of the basic patterns we examined was the
experience of Europeans exploring the western side of the Atlantic. Rereading
the Eden story from Genesis in conjunction with a selection of Columbus’s
letters on his discoveries suggested a mythic frame of reference for his
voyages, and the detail that God “drove
out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a
flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life”
evoked an intriguing idea of cultural, possibly subconscious,
significance for the movement west. We’ve seen that the Pilgrims and Puritans
came west seeking to escape their contentious European existence and dreaming of
utopias of social simplicity and spiritual innocence. The apopheniac impulse
began generating questions: Is it related to the universal East-West orientation
of the daily solar cycle? Is it a result of the geographical coincidence that
European cultures evolved with a vast unexplored ocean to the west? If so, how
far back does the significance of the west go? To these emerging questions, Dr.
White added the suggestion of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis, which
also addresses western movement in the specific context of North America.
2.
Cultural Baggage
An initial query into the direction “West” helped focus my research on a few key
cultures that seem to have echoes throughout the Western World, namely Ancient
Egypt, Ancient Greece, Judeo-Christian tradition, and, since the colonization of
the future United States seems to begin with the British Isles, the Celts. In
“Sacred Directions, Orientation, and the Top of the Map,” B. L. Gordon observes
that “for the pagan Romans and Greeks, and for the Jews, Christians, and
Muslims, the principal cosmographic axis was aligned east-west” (218).
Egyptianmyths.net adds that “for the ancient
Egyptians, the west (specifically the desert west of the Nile) was the
destination of the dead. This is because the sun died every day in the western
horizon, only to be reborn the next morning in the east.” Yi-Fu Tuan
corroborates this in his essay “Ambiguity in Attitudes Toward Environment,”
writing that “in the ritual that deifies the king, the body proceeds westward
from the valley temple to the pyramid at the edge of the desert” (415). The west
was likewise the destination of the dead for the Greeks and Celts, and the
direction “has persistently symbolized Satanic darkness, grief, and death for
the Christians” (Gordon 214). Although associated with darkness and death in
Jewish tradition as well, access to the temple required movement to the west, so
it is also associated with a “restored unity with God”
(adventistbiblicalresearch.org). That these cultures would orient themselves by
the movement of the sun makes sense; not only is sunlight required for life, but
sunrise and sunset can be overwhelming aesthetic experiences. Not surprisingly,
“both the Jews and the Christians have tried to disassociate east from the
worship of the sun” and “frequently condemned [it], since [the] confusion of
symbols occurred repeatedly,” as in Ezekiel 8:16 in which the “hand of the
Sovereign Lord” in the form of a man shows the prophet a group of men at the
entrance to the temple praying to the sun (Gordon 213). The theological value of
the east-west orientation maintained its allure, however, as Gordon also
mentions on page 216 that “Romanesque and Gothic sculptural programs generally
have the Last Judgment on the west end.” The significance of the sun’s rising
and setting is clearly a deep-rooted impulse with easy associations of rebirth
and death, respectively.
The geographical feature of the western sea also seems to have a prominent role
in the symbolic concept of direction. The word for west in Hebrew,
yam, means “sea,” and the cardinal
archangel of the western corner of the earth, Gabriel, is evidently the
elemental angel of water (http://eteacherbiblical.com/articles/four-cardinal-directions;
http://thefourelementsearthwaterairfire.wordpress.com/tag/four-cardinal-archangels/).
The vast body of water to the west of the European (and African) continent is
integrated into these cultures’ concepts of death, the unknown, and Paradise in
sometimes remarkably similar ways. The Greeks and Celts both thought of the land
of the virtuous dead as being to the west (Elysian Fields for the Greeks and Mag
Mell for the Celts), and, although the Egyptian paradise was in the east, the
entrance to the underworld that had to be traversed to arrive there was in the
west. Also to the west are the mythical lands from which the Egyptians
supposedly originate. Diodorus of
Sicily writes in 8 BC: "The Egyptians were strangers, who, in remote times,
settled on the banks of the Nile, bringing with them the civilization of their
mother country, the art of writing, and a polished language. They had come from
the direction of the setting sun and were the most ancient of men"
(atlantisquest.com). Despite the general regard for Atlantis lore as
pseudoscience, or as pure speculation based on the fanciful description
Plato gave it while attributing it to the Egyptians in 360 BC, it does seem to
have some value as myth, especially in conjunction with similar myths of other
ancient (occasionally seafaring) cultures (see Brasil in Celtic lore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasil_(mythical_island))
and with the consideration of the North American continent on the other side of
the “western sea.”
3.
Frontiers
Consequently, colonists crossing the Atlantic in the 16th and 17th
centuries brought with them thousands of years of superstition and anxiety about
the west. In discussing “the habit of differentiating space into center and
periphery,” which “seems to be worldwide,” Tuan describes the significance of
the journey away “from [a culture’s] sacred center, [as] space radiates outward
and becomes increasingly profane, ending in wilderness or in a ring of
primordial waters” (416). Europeans identified America as precisely that kind of
wilderness that “was the realm beyond God’s presence and somewhat beyond his
control” (420). Tuan also notes,
though, that the “image of wilderness was not wholly dark. In the Old Testament
the pre-exilic prophets…interpreted the forty years of wandering in the desert
as a period when God was especially close to Israel.” Christ went to the
wilderness to be tempted by Satan and withdrew from men into a lonely spot in
order to pray. A “high mountain” was the setting for both temptation and
transfiguration. Tuan points out that “from the second to the fourth century,
hermits ventured into the Egyptian wilderness as spiritual athletes…to
strengthen their souls by doing battle with Satan in his own realm…[yet] the
hermits also saw themselves as living in Edens of innocence.”
Frederick Jackson Turner sees a similar ambiguity toward “wilderness” in his
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” describing the
quintessential frontier experience as the “meeting point between savagery and
civilization.” He seems to see the movement away from cultural center into the
unknown threats of the wilderness as one of the defining features of Americans,
writing “[the] perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of
primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.” Like Tuan,
Turner recognizes the benefits and drawbacks of civilization. Tuan sees “the
Eden myth…locat[ing] temptation in the heart of the landscape of innocence,”
where the isolated and organized world that protects and nurtures also smothers
because of its inherent lack of challenge and change (421). Turner sees the
process almost in Hegelian terms of continual becoming, where each new frontier
is a catalyst for further development enriched by the successes and errors of
previous frontiers in a dynamic evolution. The inevitable arrival of advanced
social structures as more people settle (and crowd) any given frontier in turn
motivates the attainment of the next wilderness, since “the frontier is
productive of individualism,” the tendency of which “is anti-social, produc[ing]
antipathy to control” (Turner). In other words, were we to flip the binary
east-west or civilization as good/wilderness as bad polarity, we could make an
inference from Sartre’s famous line: if “hell is other people,” paradise must be
solitude. Turner seems to anticipate this attitude when he says that each
frontier is “a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and
confidence, and scorn of older society.” If we entertain this reading of the
American experience, the American character does indeed seem to be something
new. The concept of paradise would have to be revised from the traditional
existence without want or suffering to an existence of individual free will and
an enthusiastic embrace of the threat of the unknown.
4.
Next Steps
Dr. White warned me early on that this question of the cultural significance of
direction and its relation to the concept of Paradise may prove to be more of a
preliminary survey of the question than an exhaustive consideration. I have
tried to give an overview of the beginnings of my investigations into this
subject while pointing to further possibilities. One thing I would like to do to
further this endeavor is to consult the primary sources for the Egyptian, Greek,
Judeo-Christian, and Celtic traditions in order to track their further
resonances. Any one of these topics, along with the study Turner encouraged of
our own culture’s development, only seems limited in its vastness by the
ambitions of the individual’s pursuit.
Wikipedia has grown to function as a sort of (very convenient!) thumbnail
sketch of topics for quick reference and comparison, but for all its utility,
only the primary sources contain the sundry details that encode authenticity and
furnish the myriad links that allow us to fashion our intertextual webs of
meaning.
It may all reduce to geographical, and astronomical, coincidence. The
information I found certainly fits that theory. Step one: planet rotates toward
the east. Step two: various story-telling peoples happen to settle a land
bordered on the west by an immense (possibly endless) body of water. Step three:
add to the equation people eager to rush into the face of the unknown for
dubious distinction. Step four: land on the shore of a new paradise – that paid
off; keep moving west. Much like Henry James said of a work of fiction, we must
grant the starting point. The stories we assemble from the innumerable stories
already told can only have value inasmuch as they explore new frontiers of
wonder.
Works Cited
Gordon, B. L. “Sacred Directions, Orientation, and the Top of the Map.”
History of Religions. 10.3 (1971):
211-227.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. “Ambiguity in Attitudes toward Environment.”
Annals of the Association of American
Geographers. 63.4 (1973): 411-423.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” University of Virginia Department of English. Univ. of Virginia, 30 Sep. 1997. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
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