🦋 Eden and intention: In the beginning were Chaos and the Word
¿Que cómo era el Edén? En corto: no era como es aquí. (p. 31 I§2)
Whenever I have looked at the Eden story, the question that always bugs me is what is YHWH's intention? Why create Eden and Adam and Eve and give them a commandment in order to punish them and destroy what has been created? I never really get past this. It seems to me like God is pure intention, and if I can't understand the intention what hope do I have of believing the story...
Boullosa's approach is intriguing: Eve, Adam, Eden, (and heaven, and even angels!) but no YHWH. As noted in St. Teresa's censorious foreword, these "pages do not recognise what is most righteous, the majesty and grandeur of the Creator of all things." There is a world, and a garden of Eden, and maybe-divine Thunder which resounds within and around it, but how it came to be is not addressed. (Well not yet anyways, I'm only starting to read the book.)
Eve describes the garden and its denizens as having substance but no qualities. She and Adam have eyes, but they do not see each other, they only look up towards the heavens. They eat and are nourished, but they do not taste, do not smell, until she finds the "apple" (though she notes that things did not yet have names in Eden) -- look at this beautiful passage: The delicious fruit awakened my sense of smell. I perceived an aroma for the first time.The scent prompted me to reach with my arm, to open my hand, to take what was hanging from the branch, to bear it to my mouth. My eyes played no part: it was by way of its aroma that the fruit came to my mouth. I felt its fresh, smooth skin with my lips, with my tongue; my teeth sank into it. (p. 30-31)
What I am thinking as I read is roughly, the world outside Eden is a Chaos of unnamed perceivable qualities, Eden is organized Substance, words without referents -- by eating the "apple" Eve becomes able to perceive the world and to have intentions. This thought is very rough still, I will work on developing it as I read.
posted morning of Monday, November 30th, 2020
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