Abstract
If the mystical perspective offers a vision of unity or oneness with whatever in a nonmystical perspective seems to be separated or alienated from the self, then one possible interpretation of the modern—and postmodern—sense of alienation and absence is the loss of this perspective. This observation appears to be valid in the context of popular culture as well as on the level of theoretical academic thinking. As far as popular culture is concerned, in his book titled Mysticism: Guide for the Perplexed, Paul Oliver explains that contemporary interest in different versions and trends of mysticism has to do with the anxiety of living in a world “which is fragmenting more and more and showing more and more signs of diversity.” The remedy for this, he says, is not yet more fragmentation, but, on the contrary, a feeling of unity or unification. “It may be,” he notes, “that people are trying to find confidence and reassurance in the idea that they are linked to the rest of humanity, and that they are linked to the rest of the natural world on the planet. This idea of connection and linkage is central to mysticism.” “For many of us,” he adds, “the idea that we are part of something greater, which is also a part of us in return, is a reassuring idea.”
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Notes
- 1.
Paul Oliver: Mysticism: Guide for the Perplexed. London, New York, 2009, Continuum, 2.
- 2.
Oliver, ibid.
- 3.
Idem, 3.
- 4.
See for example Kathleen Lundeen: ’Who has the right to feel? The Ethics of Literary Empathy.’ In Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack (eds.): Mapping the Ethical Turn. A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory. Charlottesville and London, 2001, The University Press of Virginia, 83–84.
- 5.
See Rudolf Otto: Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism. Transl. by Bertha L. Bracey and Richenda C. Payne. New York, 1962, Collier Books, 80.
- 6.
Ibid., 95.
- 7.
I have not traced the origins of the distinction between extroverted and introverted mysticism. In theory a well known formulation comes from Rudolf Otto (1962), but see also the earlier Practical Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill (first published in 1914; second edition: Columbus, Ohio, 1987, Ariel Press). It is used by W. T. Stace in his classic Mysticism and Philosophy (London 1961, Macmillan & Co. Ltd.), and widely referred to in more recent works. See Robert K. C. Forman: Mysticism, Mind, Consciousness. Albany, 1999, State University of NY Press, 6; James R. Horne: The Moral Mystic. 1983, Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 3. etc.
- 8.
The summary below is based on an extensive reading of Frye’s major works, primarily Anatomy of Criticism : Four Essays (1957, Princeton University Press); The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York, 1982, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich); and Words with Power . Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (New York, 1992, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).
- 9.
See for example Frye: Words with Power , 87.
- 10.
Ibid., 42.
- 11.
Northrop Frye: Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World. Robert D. Denham (ed.). 2 vol. Toronto, 2000, University of Toronto Press, 427–428.
- 12.
Northrop Frye: The Great Code, 224.
- 13.
Ibid., 166–167.
- 14.
Qtd in Otto: op.cit., 80.
- 15.
Ibid., 85.
- 16.
Ibid., 86.
- 17.
Northrop Frye: Myth and Metaphor. Selected Essays, 1974–1988. Charlottesville, 1990, University Press of Virginia, 118.
- 18.
Qtd in Otto: op. cit. 86.
- 19.
Frye: Late Notebooks, 196.
- 20.
Qtd in Otto: op. cit. 86.
- 21.
Frye: Myth and Metaphor, 118.
- 22.
John 6:55; see Frye: Great Code, 55.
- 23.
See Otto: op. cit. 71.
- 24.
See Frye: Myth and Metaphor, 42.
- 25.
See for example Northrop Frye: Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts. Robert D. Denham (ed.). Toronto, 2003, University of Toronto Press, 103 and 248.
- 26.
Paul Ricoeur: “The Nuptial Metaphor.” In André LaCocque and Paul Ricoeur: Thinking Biblically. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago and London, 1998, The University of Chicago Press, 301–303.
- 27.
Frye: Words with Power , xv.
- 28.
Frye: Great Code, 136.
- 29.
Frye: Word with Power, 114. (Frye fully develops his theory of kerygma only in Words with Power .)
- 30.
Qtd in Paul de Man : Semiology and Rhetoric. In Paul de Man: Allegories of Reading. Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven and London, 1979, Yale University Press, 13.
- 31.
Ibid., 15.
- 32.
See Paul de Man : The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York, 1984, Columbia University Press, 203–204.
- 33.
Jacques Derrida: The Gift of Death. Chicago and London, 1992, The University of Chicago Press, 68.
- 34.
Slavoj Žižek: Only a Suffering God can Save us. Web. 16 September 2013. http://www.lacan.com/zizshadowplay.html (The Slovenian Marxist philosopher is an exciting contemporary reviver of the twentieth century theological tradition of Christian atheism.)
- 35.
Michael Dolzani. Wrestling with Powers: The Social Thought of Frye. In Alvin A. Lee and Robert D. Denham (eds.): The Legacy of Northrop Frye. Toronto, 1994, University of Toronto Press, 102.)
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Tóth, S. (2017). A World in Which Everything Is “Here.” Northrop Frye’s Immanent Vision of the Divine. In: Vassányi, M., Sepsi, E., Daróczi, A. (eds) The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45069-8_19
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