Lu
Xun, 12/20/1924
Tr.
Huiwen Zhang 12/5/2012; revised 2013
Because
he believed himself the Son of God, the King of Israel, he was to be nailed to
the cross.
Soldiers
clothed him in a purple robe, put on him a thorn crown, celebrating and
congratulating him; they took a reed to beat his head, spat on him, kneeled to
worship him; once the mockery came to an end, they stripped him of the purple
robe, left him clothed as he was.
Behold,
they were beating his head, spitting on him, worshiping him…
He was
unwilling to drink the myrrh-mixed
wine, aiming to get a distinct taste how the Israelites treat their Son of God and
for a relative eternity to pity their future yet hate their present.
All around
was hostility, all deserving pity, all deserving damnation.
Ping
ping. The tip of a nail penetrated the center of the palm, they would soon nail
to death their Son of God; pitiable people, ho, made him hurt tenderly. Ping
ping. The tip of a nail penetrated the back of the foot, smashing to pieces a
bone, and anguish penetrated heart and marrow.
Yet they were nailing to death their Son of God; damnable people, ho, this
made him hurt blissfully.
The
cross arose; he was suspended in the void.
He did not
drink the myrrh-mixed wine, aiming to
get a distinct taste how the Israelites treat their Son of God and for a
relative eternity to pity their future yet hate their present.
All passers-by
cursed him, the chief priests and scribes mocked him as well, the two robbers who
were nailed with him also ridiculed him.
Behold,
those nailed with him…
All
around was hostility, all deserving pity, all deserving damnation.
In the anguish
of hands and feet, he tasted the sorrow of the pitiable people who were nailing
to death the Son of God and the joy of the damnable people who would soon nail
to death the Son of God, anticipating the Son of God to be nailed to death soon. Suddenly, the supreme anguish of the smashed
bone penetrated heart and marrow, instantly he sank into Euphoria and Compassion.
His stomach
rose and fell: waves of anguish from pity and damnation.
Everywhere
was dark.
“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” (which
is, being interpreted: My God, why have you abandoned me?!)
God had
abandoned him. He was, after all, a “Son of Man”; yet the Israelites nailed to
death even the “Son of Man.”
The
bodies of people who nailed to death the “Son of Man” compared to those who
nailed to death the “Son of God” are particularly blood-stained, blood-reeking.
"Suspended in the void" calls to mind two things:
ReplyDeleteThe first is the concept of "ballon." Ballon is roughly translatable as "buoyancy," but more specifically it means the ability of a dancer to hang in the air for a moment. It has been a highly-admired quality since the beginnings of ballet. It poses the ultimate challenge to gravity.
Second is a novel called "House of Leaves." The book explores fear of darkness, fear of the unknown, and the natural terror that comes in the face of impossibility.
At one point, a character is falling in an endless space. It is so dark that he cannot see any part of his body, and he falls for so long (and in such a windless space) that he becomes uncertain whether he falls, flies, or hangs in the air. He truly is "suspended in the void," and there are psychological consequences (although not necessarily negative ones, despite his failing body) for those long hours.
Your comment about suspension in the void reminds me of sensory deprivation tanks. These are tubs of water designed to reduce/eliminate sensory input. Ideally they are perfectly dark, perfectly silent, and the water is at body temperature so that it cannot be felt. You just float in there in the absence of external stimuli (with your face above the water to breathe) and there are, as you say, some interesting psychological consequences.
ReplyDelete-Bryce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank
Religion
ReplyDelete“The two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
“The cross arose; he was suspended in the void.”
ReplyDeleteVoid, as Bryce said, is like a gulf of sensory deprivation; when I think the word, I see blackness all around me. So when I thought of the cross RISING from the ground, yet Christ on the cross being suspended in blackness—the dichotomy between the two (the cross tethered to the ground; Christ though on the cross, completely suspended and grounded to nothing)—I pictured Salvador Dali’s painting Christ of St. John of the Cross (1951). (See http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/godandthemachine/files/2012/05/salvador-dali-the-christ-of-st-john-of-the-cross.jpg )
Dali had been inspired by a dream to create an image of Christ on the cross unlike any of the standard images that saturate our culture. When he told of his dream to his confessor, his confessor referred him to St. John of the Cross’s sketch of the crucifixion. (See http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/godandthemachine/files/2012/05/drawing-by-st-john-of-the-cross.jpg ).
St. John’s hasty sketch was what he had seen in a vision: the crucifixion from the heavenly perspective. Yet Dali’s interpretation deviates from St. John’s sketch in that it contains two perspectives: one heavenly, one earthly. Arguably, the painting may actually contains three perspectives: one heavenly, Christ’s, and one earthly. The heavenly perspective arises from its bird’s-eye view point of Christ on the cross; the earthly, from its direct landscape of the fishermen’s boats on the sea. What is unexplained by either of these perspectives is what I would call “Christ’s perspective”—it is the engulfing black that wraps around the cross. This black void could only be from Christ’s perspective because, if the whole picture was from the heavenly perspective, what need would their have been for the blackness? Many have interpreted the black void to be merely a visual tool Dali used to emphasize the crucifixion as an act outside of time, an act which effected and effects all human history; however, I believe that that could have been effectively portrayed in a number of other ways. To me, the charged blackness implies something more—the feeling of emotional separation, Christ’s isolation—essentially, his suspension in the void. I believe Dali, an outcast, a man before his time (very similar to Lu Xun), wanted the viewer somehow feel this perspective of suffering.
The whole time while reading “Revenge II,” I’ve had a thought that I’ve pushed away and this thought nags at me, too, when I look upon Dali’s Christ of St. John of the Cross; the thought is that what would appear to be a heavenly or outside, omniscient perspective (implied by Lu Xun in his use of “he” and, in particular, in the tone of the last two paragraphs; implied by Dali in his birds-eye view of the cross) might actually be the viewpoint of Christ after death, the Christ after the act, outside of his body. (This is not an accurate theological description, but that would not be truly necessary or applicable to Lu Xun’s “Revenge II”, so I’m not going to go into details there). This would explain the flowing back and forth of the view point, and, in many instances, of time because the one describing the event is outside of time, but immerses himself back into it at different points to relive the experience. This might explain why the narrator is separate and outside the happening and yet can still know the inner feelings and have the same expressions (“ho”) of the one experiencing it.
~Mary Carol
"Blood-stained, blood-reeking"
ReplyDeleteBlood only appears in two of the Biblical versions, Matthew 27 (4,6,8,24,25) and John 19 (34). In Matthew 27, blood is used in connection with the concepts of betrayal and guilt. For instance, after Pilate symbolically washes his hands of the blood of Christ, the multitude almost eagerly take the guilt upon themselves, saying: "His blood be on us, and on our children." Of course, "his blood be on us" can also have a very gruesome literal reading.
In John 19, blood only appears once and is (ostensibly) used literally: "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water."
I also noticed there is a slight problem with the bloody/bloodless slaughter dichotomy we built in our discussion group: nailing to death the Son of God is not bloodless at all, in fact Lu Xun implies that it is very bloody when he says "even more".
I am still intrigued by the fate of the nailers. Boredom is usually thought of as a state of high arousal, but low engagement. In other words, you have a lot of energy but nothing to direct it towards. Low arousal/low engagement would simply be relaxed, and high arousal/high engagement would be excited or actively involved. We discussed the possibility that "relative eternity" refers to the subjective experience Jesus has of his pain, but it could also refer to being bored... in fact, I think boredom is one of the implications of Nietzsche's eternal return. That even a great, fulfilling life, if lived again and again, would become painfully boring. As Jesus hangs on the cross and the excitement of the crucifixion slowly fades, I can see time stretching into a "relative eternity" for the nailers, until they (to quote Revenge I) "look at one another in blank dismay and slowly walk away".
Another possible read of the ending is to recall that there are two card-carrying "Son of Men" with no pretensions of divinity being crucified at exactly the same time. In fact, one interesting way to read this is to assume that the narrative jumps around in both time and subject; that the "he" is occasionally Jesus, occasionally one of the robbers, occasionally both.
The opening lines remind me of Zarathustra: "I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart. I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still. And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself." Because Zarathustra is a mountain-climber, he seeks out mountains to be climbed. His future is a function of his self-conception. Likewise, Jesus conceives of himself as the Son of God and because of this his crucifixion is necessary and inevitable: "he was to be nailed". There is no will on the part of the nailers because it is Jesus' own will to be nailed.
- Bryce
On "Suspended in the Void":
ReplyDeleteThe gates to nowhere multiply and the present is so far away, so deeply far away.
— Mark Strand, from “Bury Your Face in Your Hands”