I remember discussing numerology in "Epithalamion" with undergrads years
ago. A student remarked that this (the numerology presumed to be in the
poem) is like time--our awareness of time. I found her remark memorable.
Ever since, I've asked classes, does it make a difference to know "this,"
by which I mean the larger and relatively more credible constructs of
numerology, and we proceed to whether and how.
At a very simple level, I think the difference, at least for the process
of making meaning, is rather like knowing that a text is considered
sacred, whether you are a believer or not. There is a difference, that
is, an awareness, to consider, analyze, historicize, neutralize, whatever.
Judith
On Sun, 24 Apr 2005, Harry Berger, Jr. wrote:
> >>Let us say that Prof. Hamlin's very sensible tests for an
> >>empirically-verifiable numerical construct in some literary work have
> >>been met. We can admire the author's cleverness in concealing, or at
> >>least coyly enticing the reader to find, numerological relationships.
>
> O.K., let's say that's the case. The poet hides Numbers like Easter
> eggs behind every stanzaic bush or tree. And let's say he knows there
> are readers who may both admire his cleverness and be enticed by the
> egg hunt even if they don't expect it to affect their possibilities
> at the Last Judgment (there might be a few of those, though). And
> let's say further that the poet in question partly shares Stephen
> Willett's view of the matter but is so good at what he does that he
> nevertheless goes on hiding eggs for potential egg-hunters who will
> then, he knows, be disdained by readers like Willett and Berger, or
> at least by readers who may also have questions about his conduct of
> some of the other nice cultural games or "Paternes" he provides for
> the literate kiddies-for example, the games in which he represents
> his (or the tradition's) exemplars of Holiness, Temperance and
> Chastity.
>
>
> >> But how does the mere presence of, say, an arithmetic ratio in a
> >>poem provide any more value to our response than the type font or the
> >>paper watermark?
>
> Depends on how "mere" it is. The quality of mereness needn't be
> "strain'd" if it drops gently from the heaven of the poet's ironic
> invention.
>
> Now back to paper-grading. The egg-hunt is over.
>
>
>
>
>
> >On Apr 24, 2005, at 2:07 AM, HANNIBAL HAMLIN wrote:
> >>
> >>I didn't mean to sound generally skeptical about numerology -- I'm
> >>alarmed at generating a response from Anne that's even a little
> >>defensive! Her readings of Fletcher are splendid, and convincing, and
> >>I also take David Wilson-Okamura's point about the numbers mentality
> >>(counting, counting) likely to have been induced by an education in
> >>quantitative metrics. All this makes perfect sense. And I find the
> >>studies by Hieatt, Fowler, Rostvig and others illuminating (indeed I
> >>dip into numbers briefly myself in my work on Psalms). My concern is
> >>mainly with the kind of probability tests that Anne uses -- i.e., we
> >>do need to use them.
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >>Patterns involving calendrical numbers (hours, days, weeks, years,
> >>etc.) seem especially reasonable to me, especially when, as in Anne's
> >>example, they can be connected to the sense of the poem. When we move
> >>into more arcane numbers, I begin to be more skeptical. The same
> >>tests apply, of course, and if the numerological patterns are
> >>consistent, demonstrable, and enhance the meaning of the poem, they
> >>seem valuable. But the more abstract the calculations become, and the
> >>more they depend on various mystical understandings of numbers (and if
> >>one yokes together all the ancient number systems, there are a LOT of
> >>numbers that are significant -- almost any number can be made
> >>significant somehow), the more rigorously I think we ought to apply
> >>our tests.
> >
> >Well, I mean to be broadly skeptical about numerology, which has been a
> >crackpot science for several millennia in both the ancient Classical
> >world and the Near East. There may be some historical utility in
> >analyzing a literary text that contains numerical patterns that the
> >author intentionally wove into the poetic pattern, but I doubt there is
> >any 'value' to the exercise for aesthetic analysis and evaluation.
> >Having read most of the studies listed above and many more--there's a
> >handy bibliography of numerology at Bar Ilan University listed
> >below--and having had some aspects of it forced down my graduate school
> >throat, I have never found a single case where it enhanced my immediate
> >or long-term enjoyment of a work. That judgment, I must add, also
> >applies mutatis mutandis to Dante.
> >
> >Let us say that Prof. Hamlin's very sensible tests for an
> >empirically-verifiable numerical construct in some literary work have
> >been met. We can admire the author's cleverness in concealing, or at
> >least coyly enticing the reader to find, numerological relationships.
> > But how does the mere presence of, say, an arithmetic ratio in a
> >poem provide any more value to our response than the type font or the
> >paper watermark? Kazantzakis intentionally cast his "Odusseia" in 33,
> >333 lines. They may have had some mystical significance for him, but
> >they have none that I can see for any serious reader. Hunting for such
> >relationships seems about the same as hunting for four-leaf clovers in
> >a pasture. For those who maintain that verifiable numerological
> >constructs have a value, I'd like to see an argument that clarifies
> >just what that literary value may be. Number symbolism of the kind
> >practiced by the Pythagoreans, Plato, Hrosvita of Gandersheim, Nicolas
> >of Cusa, Spinoza in his ethics more geometrico, Novalis, Kepler and
> >many another depends on the belief that mathematical laws and the
> >mathematically-analyzable harmony of nature are both aspects of the
> >divine mind. Well, if modern literary numerologists would like to
> >ground the ultimate value of their practice on the divine mind, I have
> >nothing to object. But think of the pedagogical consequences: claiming
> >a special literary merit for this kind of number symbolism requires the
> >introduction of a religious belief system into criticism. Strip away
> >the mysticism and you strip away the value, if not the existence, of
> >numerological relationships. Those who ground number symbolism on the
> >divine mind should, I suppose, recite to their students and colleagues
> >the old expression that the mathematical Pythagoreans kept repeating:
> >
> >arithmwi de te pant' epeoiken ("all things are like number").
> >
> >Sextus Empiricus subjected mathematical Pythagoreanism to a withering
> >critique in his "Pros arithmhtikous" (the fourth book of "Pros
> >mathhmatikous") that still seems to me quite effective. The
> >Pythagoreans attributed a special significance to the number ten, which
> >they called the 'tetraktys' because the first four numbers add up to
> >ten. They called it, quoting Sextus, "Phghn t' aenaou phusews
> >rizdwmat' ekhousan" ( "the fount containing the roots of everlasting
> >nature"). Sextus proceeds to show the problems inherent in claiming
> >that the universe and the individual soul are both governed by numbers.
> > I am not, let me hasten to add, advocating a radical skepticism
> >against number mysticism, only trying to draw out what seem to me the
> >unexamined consequences for aesthetic criticism.
> >
> >I am also dubious about Prof. Wilson-Okamura's remark that a numbers
> >mentality would have been induced by quantitative metrics. Classical
> >poets learned meters as whole structures and did not have to count,
> >which would have made no sense anyway with the triadic structures of
> >Pindar, Aeolic meters and stanza forms, dactylo-epitrite meters or
> >virtually any other metrical unit. I suspect he had the dactylic
> >hexameter in mind, where one could I suppose count off a sequence of
> >six dactyls and spondees. But the Greek dactylic hexameter was not a
> >linear sequence of feet (much as that may be taught in school). The
> >verse really consists of two cola divided by a medial caesura: the
> >colon - u u - u u - (occurring independently as the hemiepes, usually
> >symbolized by D in Greek metrics) is the structural unit. As M. L.
> >West points out in _Greek Metre_, the hexameter is essentially D u | u
> >D - ||, where the two short syllables on either side of the caesura
> >could be replaced by one long syllable. The Latin hexameter was
> >probably learned and conceived in the same way, since its practitioners
> >all knew Greek. Greek and Roman poets thought and felt rhythm in terms
> >of cola, not in terms of feet. Counting played no role in composition,
> >though it may in the much narrower accentual-syllabic meters of
> >English. Much as I love English, it suffers from a poverty of metrical
> >as opposed to free verse resources.
> >
> >Here is the short bibliography of numerology I mentioned above:
> >
> >(http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~barilm/bibnumer.htm)
>
>
>
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