I've been inspired by Bill Rogers' recent artwork. Not inspired to do all of the work needed for something great, but inspired enough to put up a brief poking, plodding blog post in the hopes that someone else will run with the idea and write the essay I want to read, but don't want to write.
Bill's art: https://www.flickr.com/photos/giveawayboy/36831469492/
"I found that there are more mysterious creatures inside of every person than there are persons in the world."
I'm no Greek scholar. Not even a Greek amateur. It's all Greek to me. But I am able to find my way around Greek "study tools" such as dictionaries and concordances.
Lafferty's "ktistec" is an obvious derivation of the greek verb "ktizó" (I'm going to be using transliterations instead of copying and pasting the actual Greek here). Specifically, Ktistec is from the noun "ktístēs": Creator. http://biblehub.com/greek/2936.htm
After his birth, Epikt the machine is immediately baptized in wine and named by Valery (one of Lafferty's greatest characters).
“Epiktistes!” Gregory crackled. “That can not be its name. That means the ‘creative one,’ and it is ourselves who are the creative ones. This thing will be a mere receptacle and reactor.”
In Greek as in English (following the Latin), there is a closeness in the language to describe two very distinct things. Ktistes is the creator. Ktistis is the creation. Lafferty very clearly uses the 'e'. Our favorite machine is indeed the created Creative One.
With this naming begins one of the key themes of Arrive at Easterwine, that of creating, creation, new creation, and creatureliness.
A search for "creat" in the digital text of Easterwine reveals that the root "creat" appears 54 times in the text. It's often Epikt referring to others as creatures. Epikt never forgets that he is a created being, a creature, and he relates to others as such. "Creature" stresses the created reality of each.
Also, from his beginning Epikt is given a fundamentally creative objective:
“It is necessary now that we state our purpose,” Gregory insisted (horrendous blasting and that urbane maniacal laughter at the front door again!), “that the mechanismus should become the paragon of group-man, I have said; and that it will attempt the next steps in man that man himself is incapable of taking. But this fine-honed machine (though you do seem a little rough yet, Epikt) must now be set to three primary tasks. These may be the types of all tasks and problems there are. The three tasks (and I will outline them as briefly as possible, no more than an hour to each) will be to establish or create—” “A Leader,” said Valery. “A Love,” said Aloysius. “And a Liaison,” said Cecil Corn.
Besides the creation talk, there is some related "generation" and "generating" talk throughout the book.
And probably the most obvious connection to all of this creation talk is that Lafferty begins Chapter 1 with the powerfully resonant phrase, "In the beginning," echoing the book of Genesis (and maybe perhaps also an echo of the Gospel of John's own echoing twist on Genesis; Lafferty does also play with the language and idea of Logos as well as the "central terminal" of Easterwine).
That's all I've got. I haven't actually re-read the book or put any work into this idea. I'm just rambling as usual. I'm hoping that maybe my rambling post will lead to new posts from Daniel and Kevin on anything. I know I came late to the blogging party. But I'm here insisting that the party is NOT over!! I've also been eagerly awaiting Andrew's next Archipelago post. Please, Andrew, come back to us! More Archipelago! Even better than hearing from any of those guys, maybe I'll convince someone else to take up the task of blogging about Lafferty. "Hey, if that idiot John can do it, I can do it better!" Yes, you can! Do it!
I confess that I've been in a dry period of Lafferty reading myself. Besides re-reading a few of the essays a month or so ago, I haven't read any Lafferty since reading Not to Mention Camels (which is a very bad book. I shouldn't have used it). I've been reading Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (my first time tackling more than the first novel, which I read nearly 20 years ago) and the usualy stack of non-fiction (most notably for Lafferty-related thought, I'm re-reading Augustine's Confessions and see plenty of connection between Augustine's descriptions of the dis-integrated self and Lafferty's work). When I'm finished with that, I'm hoping to tackle either More Than Melchisidech or East of Laughter. There's an essay that's long been bubbling inside of me about the Argo trilogy and Lafferty's alcohol use and abuse, so I need to, you know, actually finish the trilogy(!) before I can re-read it and then finally start to intelligently comment on it. But I'm currently leaning towards a first read of East of Laughter. The recent passing of Robert Jenson had me re-reading this essay:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/03/how-the-world-lost-its-story. The same day had me searching Daniel's blog for something I half-remembered, that the Jenson essay had stirred in me:
http://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.com/2011/08/they-learned-that-quest-for-reality-is.html
They also learned that they themselves were outside of reality, that they had never touched it at even one point, but that sometimes they came close. They were imbrued, all through their happy suppertime and into the night hours, with an almost-happy philosophy. They hadn’t yet come to the centrality of the philosophy, but they found themselves more and more on the near fringes of it as they discussed and reveled and studied. They learned that a quest for reality is possible.’
