“In literature it is only necessary to outline the steps. Let the people dance!” (Anthony Kerrigan, Introduction to Ficciones, 10).

Sometimes I feel as though people read way too much into things. I’ve always had the thought, “what if the authors really didn’t mean anything when they wrote it? What if they just wanted to watch everyone else interpret meaning into a meaningless story, poem, etc.?” This quote feels exactly like that to me…

The authors can make up whatever “steps” they want! Make it as ridiculous and impossible as they want! They don’t have to actually dance the dance. They get to watch us as we awkwardly try to follow in their written footsteps.

For example, I found this on-line:

A Meaningless Poem

Sounds
When they follow you like dogs
In the forest of silence,
Itch-afflicted, skeletal loneliness
When it litters
Offspring of dreams
In shallow ponds of evenings;
The crows perched
On branches of the sun
Then fly away. 

By Naseer Ahmed Nasir

As I started reading it I just thought of how ridiculous it was. It makes absolutely no sense! But then somewhere deep inside my humanities brain there is a voice that says that there has to be some sort of meaning in this. It can’t really be meaningless! That has meaning in and of itself, right? The fact that it’s supposed to have no meaning? But then my mind again goes to the little detail that the author just won by getting me to think that at all; he got to watch me dance his nonsense dance right in front of him! How embarrassing…

So can there truly be something that has no meaning? Are our minds so intent on putting a label on everything that we can never let something just be? And if so, why do we have to give it meaning? And can there ever be just one “right” meaning?

 Jose Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus painting in Mexico.

 

What initially drew me to this painting was the title. In my Greek and Roman Mythology class we talked a lot about Prometheus and how he stole fire from Zeus and brought it down to earth. I found out that Orozco did a mural of almost this same thing earlier that same year in the United States.

Jose Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus mural at Pomona College in California.

  

So, why are they different? Well, for Orozco everything that he painted had a reason, and not merely to look cool. The fire Prometheus stole usually represents wisdom or new knowledge (which seems fitting for a mural at a college). In the mural there is a good mix of people reaching for and embracing the fire and people looking away from it in fear. In the painting, there are only two other people and they are cowered in fear. Again, what is that supposed to mean? Wouldn’t people be so excited to have more knowledge and wisdom?!

At this point, the Mexican Revelution had just happened. Although many thought the revelotion was wonderful, Orozco saw it in more of a different light in that it brought about some great changes but with some bad consequences.  The sense of this painting is exactly that—with the good comes the bad; it’s not always strictly the good OR the bad.

I think a lot of times in life we want to label an event that happened in our lives as a good thing or a bad thing. The fact is that all of these “things” whether good or bad have equally significant meaning in our lives in both good and bad ways. It’s important to step back and take a look at how these “good” and “bad” events are actually shaping our lives in ways we didn’t realize; we need a dose of pserspective.

“But a humane social order is not always achieved without the grotesque, and sometimes not without the cruel” (Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Father versus Mother, 89).

The minute I read this my mind flashed back to the movie The Prestige. It went specifically to near the beginning of the movie when they are at a magic show and see the trick of the vanishing bird cage. You find out later the way they did it was through killing the birds in a collapsible bird cage.

Going to a magic show is a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment. Everyone loves watching amazing, seemingly impossible feats become possible right before their eyes. To keep up with this natural societal order of watching magic they on occasion used some “grotesque” methods to keep ahead in the game.

But how could that still be considered “humane” as Machado states? Part of me thinks we desensitize ourselves as a people. One person calls something normal that may not be quite so normal, and everyone believes him because they want to enjoy whatever he called normal. For example, people liked watching the bird cage disappear and decided it had to be fine then. It’s all about fitting in, about being in the social “norm” of things.

Another part of me thinks it has to do with the fact that everything has its opposite. Maybe we need the “grotesque” and the “cruel” to know when something actually is humane and decent. Without it, there is no way to measure the difference or the progress.

So does Machado’s statement actually have hints of truth laced in it, or is it yet another one of his overtly sarcastic remarks?

“He then separated himself from her in order to have the pleasure of returning to her” (Jose de Alencar, Iracema, 77).

How often do we do this in life? We love something so much that after we are with it for a bit we put it back in its box, or room, or wherever it came from just so we can come back to it later and love it just as much as the first time we were with it? For example: a delicious chocolate cake.

You eat a piece of it and love every bite. Then you put it away for a while and come back to it later to enjoy yet another wonderful piece of chocolate cake. You find yourself doing this again and again because it is just that amazing! If you ate the whole cake at once the joy and deliciousness of it would wear off and even have the risk of becoming loathsome to you.

Some would say that is too much of a good thing...

On the other hand we have the Mexican painter Jose Maria Velasco who was born and raised in Mexico and painted the valley of Mexico countless times, always finding new aspects of beauty and wonder in the landscape around him. He never seemed to tire of that valley.

So what makes the difference? Are some people born with that feeling of the need to change, keep moving on to new things, or do people chose that kind of a mentality? And if you are born with a certain outlook, can you change that perception with time or is it simply too ingrained in your nature?

Is there any real way to find out?

“The honey of Iracema’s lips is like the honeycomb which the bee makes in the trunk of the Guabiroba: poisonous is its sweetness” (Jose de Alencar, Iracema, 26).



Iracema the Guardian

All throughout history we hear/read/watch things about a beautiful woman who has a dangerous secret within her that usually ends, inadvertently or not, in tragedy, grief, pain, etc. Iracema is a classic example of this. As also is Pandora. They are both seen as women “born” from nature in a way. Iracema is the essence of nature, and Pandora was created by the gods from the earth. They both innocently bring sadness into the world, Pandora with her box containing all the evils of the world and Iracema betraying the secret of the Jurema. Yet in spite of the sadness they bear children who become the principle people of new nations. Out of tragedy comes miracles; out of death comes life.


Pandora's box

 

This brings me to the question of why we see this pattern so often in history. As Octavio Paz put it, “woman is a living symbol of the strangeness of the universe…the supreme mystery” (The Labyrinth of Solitude, 66). Women are confusing; they are a mystery to the world. No one quite understands them which I think is what makes them such great characters to portray. There is this quest to find out if they really are perfect through and through as their beauty portrays or if there is something deadly within them just below the surface.

 

Being a woman, I think it is safe for me to say that there is more to a woman than meets the eye. I am positive that this topic will continue to be seen in different mediums as time ticks on. This shows just how influential women really are that authors, artists, and directors will still continue to try and solve this great unsolvable mystery known as the woman.

"Though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains...and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor...and though I give my body to be burned...and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. When I was a child, I spake as a child...I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. But now abideth faith, hope, love...These three. But the greatest of these is love" (The Mission).

Rodrigo was reading from 1 Corinthians at this point in the movie. This theme of love stuck out strongly to me throughout the whole movie. Rodrigo progressively learned more and more about what love truly is. It started out with more of a lustful love. He is in love with a woman who no longer loves him but loves another man. Rodrigo ends up killing the guy in a dual because of the pain of lost love he felt. He thought he knew love and it ran away from him.

He then becomes a Jesuit and studies about what love is in the Bible. As he does this he puts this study into action and helps the Indian tribe build their new town. He begins to understand how much more to life there really is and how filling your life with that kind of love is worth more than anything else.

Then comes the test; when the people are ordered to leave he decides to fight with them, renouncing his vows as a Jesuit. Now, at first this seems like he is putting his love for these people above his love for God. Father Gabriel has made the choice that his love for God will come first and he will die keeping his vows to Him. This made me question if Rodrigo had actually learned what love really was and how God always should come first. But as I thought about it, God has given us our freedom and lets us protect that right. So, did Rodrigo do right by having such pure love for the Indians that he died fighting with them? Had he learned what true love was? Or would it have been better for him to die as Father Gabriel, faithful in his vows to the end, showing God his love and devotion to Him? Would that have been a more correct form of love? Honestly, I feel both demonstrated love in its purest form as they died. There is no wrong way to express true love such as this.

 

“This phenomenon of a return to the maternal womb . . . is without doubt one of the determining causes of the swift popularity of the cult of the Virgin. . . . The Catholic Virgin is also the Mother . . ., but her principal attribute is not to watch over the fertility of the earth but to provide refuge for the unfortunate. The situation has changed: the worshipers do not try to make sure of their harvests but to find a mother’s lap. The Virgin is the consolation of the poor, the shield of the weak, the help of the oppressed.” (Octavio Paz, “The Labyrinth of Solitude,” 84-85)

I served a Spanish speaking mission in Arizona and La Virgen de Guadalupe was everywhere:

shrines outside houses,

cars,

cakes,

bottle cap openers...

I knew she was important (being the mother of Jesus and all), but I never understood why Catholics worshipped and adored her so much. Paz sheds a great deal of light on this subject. He takes it back to their origin. They had formerly been worshiping male gods of all types. When the Spaniards came and took over they banned this kind of practice. They tore to shreds everything that the Mexican Indians had believed and everything they had done for the past years. I can imagine they were a little shaken up. So to make up for it they focused their adoration on a more motherly figure, whether consciously or unconsciously. We all have this innate knowledge since the time we are born that our mothers love us. As we grow they nurture us and somehow, magically make everything better. When we get hurt we go to our moms to bandage us up. When we are sick we go to our moms to make us all better. Paz describes how the Indians did this same thing. They went to the Virgin to find solace and peace.

“In sum, she is the Mother of orphans.” (Octavio Paz, “The Labyrinth of Solitude,” 85)

From what I said earlier I agree that the Virgin could be considered “the Mother of orphans” seeing as the Indians lost their first idol gods, or their first “parents.” Being an orphan wasn't all sunshine and roses for them, so  they looked to the Virgin as their newly acquired mother.