🦋 Mystics
Recall that fearsome sentence of Carlyle, who read -- not without benefit -- Swedenborg, and who said: The history of the universe is a scripture which we have, which is read and is written constantly. And it's true: we are continually presenting the history of the universe, and we are actors in it. And we are also letters, also we are symbols: A divine text in which we are written. At home I have a dictionary of correspondences. One can look up any word of the Bible and see what is the spiritual sense Swedenborg gave it.
I wonder how much of my response to Borges' lecture on "Emanuel Swedenborg" is what I'm bringing to the reading, how much is Borges' intent. As I'm reading it, this lecture's principal subject is William Blake: Borges mentions Blake at a couple of points in the lecture, and always with the sense that Blake is where to go from Swedenborg, Blake is why you would want to understand Swedenborg:
The kingdom of heaven is owned by the poor in spirit, etc. This is what Jesus said. But Swedenborg adds more to that. He says that that is not enough, that a person must also save himself intellectually. He imagines heaven, above all, as a series of theological conversations between the angels. And if a person cannot follow these conversations, he is unworthy of heaven. Thus, he must live alone. And then comes William Blake, who adds a third salvation. He says that we can -- that we have to -- save ourselves also through the medium of art. Blake explains that Christ too was an artist, who did not preach through the medium of words, but of parables. And that parables are æsthetic expressions. That is to say, that salvation should be through the intellect, through ethics and through works of art. And here let us recall some of the phrases in which Blake moderated, in a way, the great sentences of Swedenborg: The stupid one will not enter into heaven for being saintly. Or: Refuse sainthood; invest in intellect.
And in the closing words of the lecture we see the same construct:
And then comes Blake, who adds that man must also be an artist to save himself. It is a triple salvation: we have to save ourselves through goodness, through justice, through abstract intelligence; and then through works of art.
The portion of the lecture where Borges is recommending that his students can't go wrong by reading a bit of Swedenborg's writing sounds to my ear like a throw-away -- he's obviously much more interested in the man's intellectual heirs. Besides Blake and Carlyle he mentions Emerson, William and Henry James, George Bernard Shaw. A nice bit of background: Borges introduces his topic by saying that Voltaire said the most extraordinary person in history was Charles XII, that he is instead going to talk about a subject of Charles XII. Well -- I had not even known Voltaire wrote any history. But sure enough, he wrote a biography of King Charless XII of Sweden; you can read it at Google Books.
 Also, from Wikipædia comes this fantastic bit of knowledge: Johnny Appleseed was a Swedenborgian! I had no idea! Swedenborgianism in the news: the Springfield, IL News-Sun runs a profile of the Urbana Swedenborgian Church.
posted evening of Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
➳ More posts about Borges oral
➳ More posts about Jorge Luis Borges
➳ More posts about Readings
Great post! It's amazing that the concept of Christ as an artist still seems so radical to me. Religion, esp. fundamentalist versions, seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to control artists. The Bible opens with God as Divine Creator. Mystics and artists throughout time have felt ceaseless emanation of Divine creativity. I see it as more proof that people don't really want God or the creative chaos that entails. They just want the safety of their view point validated.
posted morning of February 25th, 2009 by painterofblue
Thanks. I'm going to buy "Selected Non-fictions"
D.T. Suzuki wrote a book about Swedenborg called "Buddha of the North". He lived in New England for awhile, studied transcendentalism, and was married to an American woman.
Karl XII was amazing. I've written a piece on him, at the link, and plan to write something longer, more accurate, and even more fun.
Baudelaire's theory of correspondances is also thought to trace to Swedenborg.
posted afternoon of February 25th, 2009 by John Emerson
Good deal. Note that this lecture is not in Selected Non-Fictions (lots of other good stuff is, though).
posted afternoon of February 25th, 2009 by Jeremy
painter, the concept of Christ as an artist seems worth while to me, and I'm always turned on by ecstatic Christianity; but somehow it seems like a natural historical progression to my mind, from orthodoxy, to ecstatic Christianity, to skepticism. Luther to Swedenborg to James. I don't know how well-equipped ecstatic Christianity is as a meme, to survive. It's great for getting people free of orthodoxy; but once they realize they don't need God to save them from damnation, how are you going to keep them on the theistic farm?
posted evening of February 25th, 2009 by Jeremy
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