You had to give the LA some credit.
Out of the chaos presented to their youthful
imaginations by the fragments and by our
turbid Reservoir, they’d generated,
in quite a short span of time, a series of texts
that in likelihood would serve the diversity
of legal, sacred, pedagogical
and theoretical needs that would certainly
present themselves as time went on. Look what they’d made
of my feeble attempt to convince them
of their folly. In the passage quoted above
from the Commentaries, they have taken the three
predominant elements that had gone
into the making of my improvisation
(the ideas of truth and of reality,
together with the image of a hole,
which they have interpreted – erroneously,
for it surely wasn’t part of my intention –
as an allusion to the Breach), have made
the initial pair of elements laughably
and perhaps usefully obscure by submitting
them to contradictory logical
operations (the real is the true and vice
versa; in the same instant, however, the true
is not the real, the real is not the true…)
and have done the same with the first two elements
(the real and the true) with respect to the image
of the hole (what emerges from the Breach
is true and not true, real and not real, and so on).
Note the great ambiguity of sentiment
that characterizes the plethora
of formulations concerning the Breach. The Breach
evinces non-comprehension, detestation,
but also resignation, submission,
ultimately even respect – the various
possible attitudes revealed in the later
commentaries that would aid in guiding
the diversification of the Menahmen
faith into its subsequent sects and divisions
as effectively as dikes and sluices
conduct water into parched soil in primitive
irrigation. At this early stage, however,
the multiplicity of sentiments
and affects induced by the Breach creates a blend
whose product is a rudimentary scripture –
simplistic, certainly, though compelling,
with its simple images and earnest appeals
to the follower/pilgrim. This passage also
marks the entry into Menahmenan
scripture of the “unmade” – an idea that plays
a crucial role in the early development
of the Menahmenan theology.
The concept has a dual signification
in that “unmade” can refer either to things that
were not wrought of the hands of the people
of the Venue or, more ponderously, to that
which has been “undone” through the event of the Breach
in a post-lapsarian reversal
of Menahmen’s creation. This ambiguous
notion becomes crucial for the early Venue’s
conception of reality. Many
things that appear real in our daily life in fact
stand over against us; they comprise the Unmade
and are “unmade” in one of two senses:
on the one hand, they are not the work of women
and men known to us; on the other hand, they are
the unfortunate products of the more
real things that were “unmade” or “undone” by the Breach –
not so much pale reflections as shattered remains.
It would be epochs before the Venue
would develop a socio-political
theory making possible widespread awareness
of the material conditions that
produced its early legends and philosophies.
To an extent, the idea of the “unmade”
reflected the fact that men and women
could not recognize themselves in the chaotic
array of objects of which the Breach had disgorged
itself that at the same time were very
obviously not things of nature as were, say,
the rivers, the stars, the hills with their ferns and stones.
Unlike such natural things, all or much
that the Breach had tossed up was ostensibly made.
But, since much of it consisted of gadgetry
certainly in advance of anything
that the men and women of the early Venue
were capable of, it appeared to them “unmade.”
Thus, the idea expresses as much
an attempt to put their confusion into words
as a description of what had actually
happened, as it was certainly correct
that the Breach had severely “undone” creation
(or much of it) – whether that of Menahmen or,
more likely, that of the men and women
who had lived prior to the event of the Breach.
Although it is predominantly a prose work,
the monotony of tone that all too
often characterizes the Commentaries
is relieved from time to time through the insertion
of poems – chiefly limericks – which express
in a metrical shorthand the main ideas
of the frequently redundant commentaries.
The limericks were inserted some time
after the initial broadsheet distributions
that took place on the Venue Floor and represent
an impulse of Early Venue scripture
towards aesthetic refinement and literary
stylization. The following exemplary
limericks conclude the commentaries
to the celebrated saying I’ve credited
to myself (although I feel it necessary
to protest that the so-called “Greater Men”
were allotted nothing more than anonymous
collective credit, and it eventually
became a matter of bitter dispute
among us as to who had been responsible
for what specific bit of nonsense that managed
to find its way into the Analects).
Of things that were lost in the Breach,
There is much that remains out of reach.
To the True and the Real
We make our appeal
In renewed supplications of speech.
* * *
Insofar as the Real is displayed,
Its look is of something unmade.
The Breach is a flap
On reality’s map
Through which the unreal has strayed.
[Next: One Venue, One Accord]