Throwback Thursday: Introduction to Unremembered History of the World

What follows is the introduction to my story Unremembered History of the World, which appeared in my short volume of stories titled Unremembered Histories.
 

Introduction to Unremembered History of the World 

There are some who have proposed that it is sheer vanity for us to imagine our earth as the only heavenly body populated by creatures with intelligence and personality. I propose that it is equally vain to imagine that our history, the one recorded by our historians, the one we know as "recorded history," is the only valid history for mankind here on this earth. 

To imagine life on other galaxies and to search for it are not unrelated. As is well known, steps have already been undertaken to find evidence in support of this hypothesis. 

 
In regards to the notion that there exists the possibility of an infinite series of parallel times, verification of this theory is a task whose path is less self-evident, obscured as it is by mists. And yet, we see glimpses of it, reflected here and there, from the great minds that were not bound to earth by the pettiness that so smothers us.

Goethe noted that his heart contained the capacity for all acts, from the most heinous to the sublime. Could he have been standing on the threshold of those infinite courses that sweep into other avenues of time, unseen, unknown and unremembered?
 
Bernard Yachtmann records instances where people have had glimpses of other histories, reiterating the conviction that time contains an infinite number of parallel streams, and in each there are alternative histories, of an infinite variety.

While not every act leads to significant consequence, many acts do, and what if in an alternate history the consequences of those acts were indeed being played out. Likewise one can find similar references by Marconi, Hasjammer, and Brandt, and an exhaustive treatise along these lines by Don Luis de Nativo.
 
While at the University of Salamanca at the turn of the century, Don Luis de Nativo wrote extensively on this theme. Though his manuscripts remained mostly unpublished and were eventually lost, the man de Nativo is best remembered as an archetype of de Unamuno's "man of passion" as fleshed out in The Tragic Sense of Life, de Unamuno's master work. (I have been told that it was a chance meeting with Joseph Conrad which prompted de Nativo to pseudonymously publish his epic work El Mundo Gordo.)
 

In other words, to get right to my point: my proposition is not original. It has been well documented by others as a reasonable conjecture. No doubt it is my own insecurity that forces me to cite other, more significant voices, as if the testimony of my own experience will be insufficient.
 
Those of you who know me know that I often have unusual dreams. Oftentimes the dreams unfold as detailed stories. I recently dreamt a short skit which became a television commercial. I've had prophetic dreams, including a dream which showed me that my firstborn would be a son. I've also had other dreams which I believe were gifts from God.

In September of 1984 I had a strange dream. As is my custom, I recorded the images of my dream, in as much detail possible, and its effect.

Two months later, while looking for a book by one author or another at one of our local used bookstores, I happened upon a small, Irish green, clothbound book called Flight of Gypsies. It was one of those moments when a decision carries weight, when you feel compelled to act irrationally. The price, eight-fifty, was higher than I would have expected, especially considering the broken binding and what appeared to be several loose and missing pages. Yet when I opened the book and randomly read about five sentences, I knew that I must have the book.

I'd no sooner gotten the book home than I regretted the decision. The volume was more or less a compendium of prophecies by various gypsy seers in England, from 1632 to 1785. The purpose, I could only surmise, was to assemble a record of prophetic utterances for verification purposes. For the most part, the sketchy accounts were repetitive and tedious and I soon found myself bored. There were prophecies about early deaths, unhappy marriages, deformed children, and blights on households to the third and fourth generations, utterances about flea infestations, curses of blindness and baldness, worms, contagion, and dementia. I put the book on a shelf in our garage.
 
The next day I found one of the pages lying on the floor next to my desk. With no intention of reading, I picked it up to toss it in the trash when the name Thomas Olney caught my eye. Olney was the name of the man in my dream. To this man and his family I will return, in order to strengthen my arguments and make plain my case.
 
Not all dreams are stories, nor do all dreams reveal secrets about the nature of the universe -- though many reveal secrets about ourselves, and I am often quite impressed with the power of this magic mirror of our souls. Nevertheless, that night I began a quest, the result being my story about one of our unrecorded and unremembered histories.... one of many, I might add... and one which we may all, with longing, seek to re-attain... if not for ourselves, then for our heirs. Of this I am most serious.

See: Unremembered Histories: Six Stories with a Supernatural Twist

Introduction to William H. Gass by Means of His Temple of Texts

"The only problem - if we can call it that - with this collection of critique, biography, and philosophy is that the professor is frequently operating at depths nearly inaccessible to the rest of us mortals."
-- Il'ja Rákoš, Amazon Reviewer

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William H. Gass. Creative Commons

As usual I have too many books going at once. The stack to the right of my easy chair here has That Hideous Strength (C.S. Lewis) on top of the pile because I am trying to finish it. Below that are two thin volumes on journalism and How to Control the Military by John Kenneth Galbraith, both of which I have finished this month but not returned to my shelves because I want to write something about them. Beneath that is Russell Brand's Mentors, of which I read the audiobook in February and bought this little hardback volume in order to read it again.

Evan Hughes' Literary Brooklyn is below that, as a book to dip into when I need something different. The rest of the pile includes Graham Greene's Ways of Escape, Bob Hoffman's Advertising for Skeptics, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and P.M. Forni's The Thinking Life. This latter is a library book, so I will have to return it someday.... when the public library opens its doors again.

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The purpose of this blog post is to introduce readers to William H. Gass. I was familiar with him only because of the essays of his which appeared occasionally in Harper's Magazine. Here's a description of the book I borrowed from the library to write about.

Winner of the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, "A Temple of Texts" is the latest critical collection from one of America's greatest essayists and novelists. Here, William H. Gass pays homage to the readerly side of the literary experience by turning his critical sensibility upon all the books that shaped his own development as a reader, writer, and human being. With essays on figures ranging from William Shakespeare and Gertrude Stein to Flann O'Brien and Robert Burton, Gass creates a "temple" of readerly devotion, a collection of critical explorations as brilliant and incisive as readers have come to expect from this literary master, but also a surprisingly personal window into the author's own literary development.

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From the NY Times' William Gass Obituary

He used ordinary words to great effect, as when he described a character as having “a dab of the dizzies,” but it was his metaphors (which he said came to him in “squadrons”), his rhythms and the effort he put into each sentence that made him the object of other writers’ admiration.

Mr. Gass was widely credited with coining the term “metafiction” to describe writing in which the author is part of the story. He himself was one of the form’s foremost practitioners.

* * * * 

Excerpt from a Paris Review interview, 1976:

INTERVIEWER
Have you spent a good part of your writing life getting even?

GASS
Yes . . . yes. Getting even is one great reason for writing.

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As indicated above, I am simply making an introduction here. Please go read my Medium story The Erudite William H. Gass: A Writer of High Degree

Introduction to the Story of Samson and Delilah

"Man is not a god, Dostoevski asserts, and the individual man's inner voice will always tell him this truth." ~ Rene Girard

"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant." ~ Plato

What follows is the introduction to a manuscript written by an unnamed man who signed his name N.


An Introduction to the Story of Samson & Delilah

From my earliest youth I have wondered - not in these exact words, of course, but with an earnestness as perpetual as consciousness itself - how can God, who is perfect, work through man, who is imperfect, to achieve His immutable purposes?

Whether this question was born into my heart from above, or cultivated in me by the priests and Levites who instructed our family in the ways of Yahweh, I do not know. These were the days when Israel was without a king; these were the days of Samson. Indeed, what better example of the Great Riddle than the life which Samson lived in our midst for more than twenty years?

Through the stories I am about to relate, God, in His great and infinite mercy, has in a small measure given me an understanding of this impenetrable mystery.
·
Here is what I believe: we receive that for which we hunger. He whose longing is for riches, to him riches will flow. That man whose mind dwells on things carnal will find a world of sensuality beyond his wildest imaginations. These satisfactions are not without a price, however. For this one thing I have seen: that a man not only receives that for which he longs, in the end he always gets more than he bargained for.

My longing was for understanding. I hungered. I thirsted. And I believed my desire -- to grasp with my full consciousness the deep things of God that were hidden in the womb of this dark mystery -- would be satisfied.
·
Here is something else I believe: each of us is unique, with unique experiences that enable us to discover things that no one else has ever thought about, has ever heard, having never had our own experiences.

Our experiences, as well as their unique lessons, are not only ours to learn, they are ours to share. If, in fact, once having learned we fail to share, we are violating, even thwarting the purposes of God in His self-revelation. (Are there not sins of omission as serious and equally terrible as any we commit?)

Why do we hold back then? Because we believe we have nothing worthwhile to say? Because we believe everyone has these insights, this understanding?

Believe me, everyone does NOT have your insight. And the world is poorer by the very degree to which you keep silent.

Organize your thoughts; sift what you know, and present, then, your offering. Take courage. Honor God and speak! Spill out your heart! We are a world in darkness; we are in need of your light. In service to those who do not, can not, know the messages of life you bring: speak the words you alone can speak. Speak, that we may understand.

What follows here are the words I alone can speak, for the story of Samson and his struggles - with God, with himself, with obsession - is my story. That is to say: For this I was born, to listen and to hear, to record what I have heard, and to make an offering of this record to the world.

*

The beginning of my own personal illumination came during my imprisonment at Gaza. Up until that time, I had been a self-centered youth, wholly engaged in self-destructive behaviors which brought me a great deal of attention but little self-satisfaction. Once garrisoned, I was assigned to the task of taking care of a blind man, which included his feeding, clothing, bathing and, from time to time, the dressing of his wounds. The privilege was all mine, for this helpless man was Samson. Because of his fame, there is not a Hebrew among us who did not know of his exploits, his mighty deeds, how he
led Israel for more than two decades before being betrayed and subdued.

There is a sense in which none of us can know the mind or plan of God with anything approaching certainty. Yet there are times and circumstances, upon which God has His hand, and we know by some inner knowing that, “Yes, this is God’s arrangement.” Such was my feeling in that prison, that having fallen so far, into such a darkened estate, I was not left abandoned, that there was yet hope for my life, that I might again know freedom, and joy.

*

The swarthy, weathered Samson I had first encountered was less than the man I expected. I am not refering here to his punctured, sightless eyes. He was only of modest physical stature, surpassing six feet in height by half a hand’s width at most. His forearms and biceps were certainly powerful, but the overall impression was somewhat less than what legends had led me to imagine. It was difficult to connect the stories to the man.

Equally dissimilar was the interior Samson. I expected someone spoiled and egocentric — in all likelihood someone more like myself! — or, more in keeping with a common stereotype we Hebrews have, a rather large dimwitted sort of fellow. I hardly expected the intelligence and sensitivity this man possessed. His mind was ever alert and active. Perhaps even too active. “I think too much,” he was fond of saying, sometimes with a laugh, and sometimes with remorse.

*

For weeks I had been longing to ask the question, “How could a man so wise, so seemingly intelligent and alert, have been so foolish, so stupid? You knew this Delilah was only out to destroy you. How could you have shared with her the secret of your strength? Wasn’t it obvious, Samson, what she was trying to do?”

I felt myself impertinent, but at this point it was the burning question. And that morning — it was a bad dream I had which set the whole thing off — I feared we weren’t going to be together that much longer. We’d been sharing deeply many things up to this time, of God, of our hearts, of our understanding of life and its meanings, but I could not fathom how this great hero of our people had fallen so badly, so decisively. What kind of love is this that blinds one so utterly and completely to dangers and snares so clearly designed to undo him?

When I finally asked my question, Samson did not reply. For the whole of that afternoon he seemed buried in his thoughts, sad and absorbed. Even at supper he was silent, drawing around himself a barrier which I feared to penetrate. That night, too, hardly a word passed between us and I was disgusted with myself for my intrusiveness. Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I burst out, “I’m sorry I said anything. I’m sorry, it was foolish of me to stick my nose in your business. Please, forgive me.”

He seized my arm and shook his head emphatically, chestnut hair flying off from his shoulders (for it had been growing long again). “No, my young brother, it is a good question. It is the right question. It comes from the deep places of your heart. You long for understanding. Is this not a longing born of the Spirit of Yahweh? And is it not as God’s agent that you ask this question? You have spoken God’s word, my friend, and I am challenged. I cannot answer lightly and without deliberation. Yes, I have been giving it thought. Tomorrow I will tell you my story. Perhaps we will both learn something. It is possible that no one can truly understand a fool in his folly. Still, I will speak of my life, as honestly and clearly as I am able, and in some small measure you will be satisfied with my answer.”

*

More than ten years have passed since our shared experiences of that Gaza prison. That is why Samson’s story has been recorded here in such a piecemeal way, for which I am solely to blame. As much as possible, I have attempted to capture the actual flow of his thought and patterns of speech. Where necessary, I have elaborated portions of stories where he had himself previously painted a scene and did not embellish it when recounting this last portrait of his life.

We were together for nearly six months, though many of those early months were spent in non-communicative brooding on both our parts. Over a period of time, as we shared more, we began discovering many parallels in our life journeys, which led us to a profound sense of brotherhood.

In the end, Samson believed I had been sent by God to hear his final confessions. After recounting the whole of his life in one final summation, we spent the rest of the night in prayer. The dawn broke with such splendor we could hardly help but sing with the birds who welcomed it. This was our last night together. The coming evening, Samson sacrificed his life with a feat that slaughtered three thousand Philistines in a single stroke, more than he had killed in all the years he had lived. Even in death, he amazed us.

Here is the story Samson told.