It's about time that I explain why LUTHERAN surrealism.

Basically, what bugs me about American religions is the strange enthusiasm. Lutheranism is diffident, paradoxical, dialectical, and it imposes limits on what we can expect from this world.

At the heart of Lutheranism is the two kingdoms' theology of Luther (it stretches back to St. Augustine).

While Anabaptists declared the world to be Paradise in the city of Munster in May 1534 (see Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces, p. 91 if you want to find this in a book that might be on your shelf), they kicked out Lutherans, and said that all women were to be married in polyamorous arrangements and "established a theocracy." Like David Koresh 500 years later, or like Bin Laden and his crew of theocracy-heads, like the early surrealists under Breton, or the Sex Pistols that Greil Marcus writes about, the Anabaptists of 1534 declared that the immediate fulfillment of THEIR desire was Paradise.

"Spectacles were staged: great dinners, followed by beheadings. Black masses were held in the cathedral, gutted long before... John of Leyden feasted, and dressed in gold and silk" (92).

People refused to work, and sex for young women was enforced.

This might not sound evil, but it is the devil's work.

All ideas of good and evil were put aside. The notion that Aristotle held of a middle way was in abeyance. Passion and excess were the rule. This is fun if you are a tough man. If you are a woman or a child, it is not fun.

Utopians are "invincibly ignorant" -- Aristotle, and there is probably no way to convince any of them that the immediate fulfillment of desire is a bad thing.

What James Madison proposed in the US Constitution was a system of checks and balances so that no one desire could ever dominate the others. Madison studied with Witherspoon at Princeton. Witherspoon, according to my retired pastor, was an Augustinian. St. Augustine developed the two kingdom's theory that was later refined by Martin Luther.

The whole ballgame is laid out in Federalist Paper #10, where Madison opines that many factions in competition would produce a better society than one faction dominating over others. One faction, such as the communist party, or one leader, such as David Koresh, invariably produces a pig-headed state.

What is needed is variety and competition. English civil society since the Magna Carta had sought to set up a counterbalance to the power of the state. By the time of the American Revolution the idea had been around for a while. It's clearly stated in Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic that the difference between England and Germany lay in the many different classes that competed for power in England, while in Germany there were only the rich and the peasants.

Marxism, with its two-tiered system of those who are oppressors and those who are oppressed, describes German society, which was slow to adopt liberal structures of government. English and American society are profoundly different.

All that aside -- in this world what is wanted in government is competence, not a party of the faithful.

This is also what we should seek in terms of toilet paper manufacturers and carpenters. Competence, not faith.

Anabaptism, Calvinism, and Marxism are one-kingdom routes to hell.

It is only a handfull of the Lutheran faithful that are holding the pass at Thermopylae against the one kingdom invaders from the left and from the right. Lutheran surrealism has donned its shield, and is now looking for a helmet big enough to suit its jarhead, determined to defend the narrow path.

These are some writers with whom Lutheran surrealists feel little affinity. In some cases there was once an affinity, but our patience is gone. In other cases, our patience never got far. In every case below, I've read at least one book. In Milton's case, I've read most of it. It reminded me of driving across Montana, and how that never seems to end.

John Milton
John Milton
John Milton
Marcel Proust
Ernest Hemingway
John O'Hara
Gertrude Stein
F. Scott Fitzgerald
James Joyce
Toni Morrison
John Milton
John Milton
Georg Hegel
Michel Foucault
The early LANGUAGE poets (they've lightened up recently -- we've always enjoyed their poetics, but rarely their poetry)
Arthur Schopenhauer
Andrea Dworkin
Warren Farrell
Robert Bly
Joseph Campbell
Carl Jung
Robert Lowell
e.e. cummings


At any rate, that's off the top of our Lutheran surrealist head. Generally, we disapprove of writers who don't crack jokes. Even cheap, dumb jokes are often appreciated. We like all silent comedy stars, for instance. There are two jokes in Hegel's Phenomenology. We appreciate them. We didn't appreciate going through 500 pages to find them. We feel therefore that Hegel's philosophy is a very poor joke. There is one joke in Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality Part One. It's a pun on the name Jouy, and appears in the early pages. Toni Morrison doesn't appear to be interested in humor. But the biggest loser if we were to rewrite the canon would be John Milton. We wouldn't keep a single page. We would keep the one line that he ripped out of Luke "I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven" (Luke 10:18). Satan is a serious sort, and never makes me feel the joyous laughter. He takes himself too seriously. So, too, does John Milton. We prefer his nemesis Sir John Suckling.

We also dislike e.e. cummings. He thought he was funny, but he wanted to be taken seriously for this. Listen to one of the tapes where he reads his poems and see if YOU can keep from throwing up. We would like to dig him up and hit him in the head with a baby, but would that be Lutheran? I'd worry about the baby. So, ok, we'd hit him with a brick.

Everything that is not humorous is humorless.

Here are some authors/books of whom Lutheran Surrealists never tire:

Pierre Klossowski
Sir John Suckling
Gregory Corso
Ludwig Wittgenstein (esp. on aesthetics)
Philippe Soupault
Elaine Equi
Andrei Codrescu
Norwegian folk tales
Charles Willeford
Kingsley Amis
Richard Brautigan
John Updike
P.G. Wodehouse
Paule Barton
Edward Lear
Larry Semon (silent film star)
Shakespeare's Mercutio
Peter Sellers
Aristotle's poetics
Ron Silliman's blog

I should make another list of things for which Lutheran Surrealists have no patience. Perhaps we will have another little moment this week for the compilation of a list along those lines.

Yesterday we went again into the Episcopalian Church on Main St. of Delhi, NY. Like Louis Agassiz, cited in Ezra Pound's primer, we feel that the more we look at something, the more we will see. And we believe that we can never see it all even in something so apparently simple as a bluegill. In a church, even in a small one, we can never exhaust the symbolic or the real in terms of trying to grok them.

As we went in (the whole family was along this time) Father Hardt appeared. A youthful man, he was straightening Bibles in the pockets behind the pews, and said -- "This church burned down in the early 1900s. You can see where the old division was --" he pointed to a place on the wall where the texture of terra cotta changed to something else -- "up here," he pointed, "is where a man wanted to be buried right within the church, but it never came to pass."

I was told during Sunday school this morning by my own pastor John Priest that there was a time in which parishioners were often buried within their own church, until 19th century discoveries of virus and bacteria made hygiene the greater value and graveyards set well away from the living were established.

Calvinist cemeteries in Switzerland under the actual eye of Calvin apparently were filled with simple white stones not even naming the occupant. God knew their names, and that was apparently enough.

I do not really know the history of the Episcopalians. They apparently began in response to Henry VIII's requirement that he ditch Katherine of Aragon in order to marry a Lutheran woman who he later had beheaded. Since then, the Episcopalian church, largely theorized by Thomas Cranmer, has become a widely respected and very wealthy denomination. The local minister, Father Hardt, is very well-respected and quite orthodox. But their churches as a whole are supposedly rather "latitudinarian" implying that there is more than one way to be a Christian? Bishop Spong, one of their most liberal bishops, has even argued that we should accept the devil.

Lutherans haven't gotten that far but we do have a bedevilling two kingdom's theory.

Calvinists, unlike Lutherans, argue against the two kingdom's theory. Karl Barth, one of the most striking Calvinist geniuses of this last century, writes in reference to the Lord's Prayer, that, there are not two spheres -- one of which is metaphysical, and concerned with theology, and the other concerned with business, sex, and social relationships. "Nothing is so pernicious as the illusion of two compartments" (Prayer 51).

Moreover, Calvinists do not think there is a progression through time. Barth argues that everything that we pray for has already in a sense happened. This kingdom is already God's -- so when we say, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," -- what Barth argues is "It is done and it is being done in Heaven" (Prayer 63).

How can something already be accomplished and yet still be unfolding itself in time?

This is strikingly similar to the Marxist idea that he understands the unfolding of history as if it has already been done, and yet we must still struggle to make sure that it is accomplished.

This notion of predestination appears to be a great difference between Marxism and Calvinism on the one hand, and Lutheranism on the other. The Episcopalians are yet another format. We like their stained glass windows. Oddly, the major stained glass window has a Jewish star of David in the center between Moses and David depicted on the bottom and Christ on the top. In what way does this mirror the two kingdoms? Perhaps the political leaders on the bottom, and the leader of heaven on the top? Lutheranism is paradoxical, it offers a strange separation between two kingdoms. This kingdom is filled with errors, and with men who would be saints. Luther denied the reality of saints. Lutherans do not sanctify men or women as we believe that what can be done in time is necessary, but often evil even without our realizing it. Time is a mystery for us and is fraught with ironies.

Especially when people are at their most pious, and their most sentimental, and their most rigid, is when Lutherans suspect the devil is present. It is only in chaotic laughter that we feel grace. In our church there is a tremendous amount of laughter. The pastor's sermons typically present at least one joke. Before and after the church, there is constant joking. Piety is valued, but piety can also be discovered through the jest. I think this points to the Lutheran understanding that this world is a limited one, and will always remain such, and that we must retain this perspective and not take others or esp. ourselves too seriously.

Lutheran Surrealism is convulsive with laughter, or not at all.

Within the utterly irrelevant avant-garde Lutheran surrealism sees Marxism as its chief rival for insignificance.

Once we were bumped to first class on a plane going from Houston (where we were enjoying the Magritte exhibition at the Menil) to Minneapolis (where we were going to the Walker to look at an exhibit of hand-made books) when we happened to sit next to Gus Hall, the long-term presidential candidate for the Communist party. Too large to fit with the proletariat in the cheap seats, Gus Hall was barely contained by the enormous first-class chair.

We enjoyed a lengthy conversation. Then, at one point, I said to him, "If you were to win the presidency, what would be your policy in regards to art?"

At this point we were flying over some low-level mountains. He pointed down.

"If they illustrated our ideas and played ball, then we would reward them handsomely. If they didn't, they would be in a prison down there."

To be honest I didn't say another word to the man. It reminded me of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in which a man goes to Siberia for eight years for the crime of having told a joke against Stalin. Under Maoism, there was the famous speech "Let a hundred flowers bloom," after which anybody who had spoken out against the government found herself in prison. Under Pol Pot the government of the Khmer Rouge killed anyone who could read or write so anxious were they to control what could be thought and said.

Under political correctness (which we believe to be a mild form of communism, sort of like a sniffle as opposed to a full-blown flu but still sick) what can be said and by whom is coordinated by a cadre of rainbow warriors. The idea that one group can decide for all what can and should be said is wrong because any one group will always oppress others.

Therefore, Lutheran surrealism is liberal in its politics. We believe in the freedom of speech for all. In aesthetics, we go one step further. We are utter anarchists.

The surrealists had an early alliance with the communists that ended in the mid-1930s when major surrealist writers were forbidden to speak at The Congress of Culture. Slowly the surrealists turned toward anarchism. Breton denounced the Soviet Union as early as the 1930s. He denounced Maoism as early as the 1950s.

Martin Luther's Wittenberg was a cradle of artistic endeavor and like Breton Martin Luther was a libertarian in regards to art. Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Durer worked at Wittenberg, and formed close friendships with Luther. They painted nudes and self-portraits right under Luther's nose. Luther argued that theology has no right whatsoever to monitor or to judge art, as they belong to separate realms. Just as there is no such as a Lutheran car mechanic (as the mechanics of cars do not correspond to theology) so there is no such as a Lutheran aesthetics.

We believe that every artist should be free to use whatever material she likes willy-nilly, and that no one knows what or how or if art is good for us. Art is an aspect of our Freedom.

We believe in the right of artists to make whatever they want, using whatever materials they choose. We believe that criticism should not be able to avail itself of the police force, and that no artist should be harmed in any way for what they have written or painted. Let the spider spin its web without a government oversight committee.

The great reformer Jacob Riis was a Lutheran from Denmark who in 1890 published a book How the Other Half Lives. This side of Lutheranism remains an enormous puzzle to me, but it indicates something about the Protestant nature of folks such as Riis and George Templeton Strong, and other late 19th century Protestant reformers. Walking into tenements in which over 150 child slept in rags, they tried to DO SOMETHING. In this sense, they are quite like the Marxists. Unlike the Marxists, they believed in beauty.

Riis wrote, "Rough as he is, if any one doubt that this child of common clay has in him the instinct of beauty... Let him take into a tenement block a handfull of flowers from the fields and watch the brightened faces... I have seen instincts awaken under their gentle appeal..."

http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/chap15.html

(Scroll down to section 3.)

Beauty awakens morality. Morality awakens a wondering as to the creator of our world. In short, beauty awakens an interest in God. With the notion of a loving God, the chain continues. Would God want these children to live without once having seen a field of lilies, having read a great poem and understood it, having a beautiful home with running water in which to reside?

So many radicals feel that just changing the language is their job. That if we outlaw certain words, or change vulgar epithets into prettier words, that life will change for the 600 million of India who do not have a toilet.

Urban ecotheology, as a branch of Lutheran surrealism, would have us try to understand the aesthetics of cities from a larger perspective.

Jacob Riis was a forerunner in this project. We do not need so much to change words, as to resurrect the spirit of beauty in our slumbering citizens. Having awakened beauty, she will be the mother of morality. Having awakened this, we will see the eternal God that drove the Lutheran Jacob Riis, as it did so many other reformers.

Could poetry have a role at the heart of Lutheran surrealism? Only if the emphasis is once again turned to beauty. A love of beauty is at the heart of our project, but it doesn't end there. That is only the root and stem. The flower will be the Lutheran surrealist city, of which we can now only dream.

We have never had a Lutheran president, nor have we had a surrealist president. Therefore, I have decided to throw my hat in the ring under the banner of Lutheran Surrealism. Therefore, I, Kirby Olson, declare my candidacy for the presidency as the candidate of the Lutheran Surrealist Party. We are also running for Vice-President, although we do not believe in vice!

First I will look at precedents, and then talk about my platform.

John Hanson was technically the first U.S. President, but he was President only for a year at a time in which the Articles of Confederation had been written but the Constitution itself had not been signed. Hanson's father was a Lutheran pastor, and his grandfather was one of the founders of New Sweden.

Other important Lutherans include former Senator Paul Simon of Illinois (now deceased), and Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, and Supreme Court judge Carl Rehnquist.

If the People were to make me President I would therefore be a denominational oddity in American history. While there are a great number of Presbyterian and Episcopalian presidents, I would be the first Lutheran president.

My policies however would also have to come out of surrealism. So many issues to consider!

Iraq? We'd give it to Uruguay.
Uruguay? We'd give it to Iran.
Iran? We'd give it to Switzerland.

Oh, wait, we are only the president of this country!

So, Vermont? We'd give it to Wyoming.
Wyoming? We'd turn it over to Delaware.
California and New York we would turn into one another,
but they would both be presided over by Rhode Island, but Rhode Island would be presided over by Delaware, while Florida would rule Delaware, and Florida in turn would have an oversight committee that mandated four out of five legislators would be retired circus midgets from New Jersey.

That gives an idea of our view of local government.

Art? We'd pay citizens to stop making it, but not very much.

Economics? We'd turn this over to theologians.

Biology? We'd let the linguists have their say.

At present there are many issues but only two parties. How is it that this government expects all of the people to fit into one of only two camps? If I am a "Democrat" am I supposed to go along with what the party says in terms of environment, abortion rights, welfare reform, the role of our military in international affairs, education spending, tax cuts for the middle-classes, the role of the NEA, and if I am a "Republican," am I really supposed to be the exact opposite, as if there are only two groups of people in America, and they are neatly divided at birth?

Lutheran surrealism, in the grand tradition of third parties, offers the return of an individualistic approach to government. We believe in Change, often at the drop of a hat. We also believe in tradition, esp. when those traditions move our bowels. We believe in the morning constitutional! Vote Lutheran Surrealist next November!

PART II

I only got half-way through my blague of this morning when I realized my kids wanted to ride their bicycles, and since it was a nice day (the first in months) I owed it to them. So I posted what I had, and have only now realized how cursorily my morning's post read as a result of this cheerful disruption.

What I was trying to say when I was so rudely interrupted is that Paul Tillich is probably the best Lutheran for connecting the avant-garde and the historic church. He was a friend of artists such as Saul Steinberg, and knew the work of Picasso as well as he knew the work of Cranach. He also knew the limitations of the Lutheran churches of Germany in terms of their connoisseurship. He spent the last decades of his life in America. After his death his wife pointed out that he was a rake in her autobiography (it's o.p). Among the other charges against Paul Tillich are that he liked to update the Passion by playing porn films against a cross on a blank wall. He supervised orgies, too, some say. I wasn't there, so I wouldn't know.

But I would say that there is a point at which progressiveness turns back on itself and becomes regressive. Therefore, I am at least as interested in classicism as I am in the avant-garde. The older, in some ways, the better, not only in terms of art but in terms of morals. Time, in some ways, moves forwards, but this is an illusion. In the timeless is where truth resides. Tillich was an avant-gardist to the hilt, and he shows us the way, but he also reveals some disturbing truths about the progressive movement. The Pelagian heresy stems from this kind of progressivism -- that we and we alone can create Paradise.

Tillich was a German. Involved in the Socialist movement of Germany, he was however a Religious Socialist. He did believe in the proletariat, and wanted them to have signs of hope. But this was not his Ultimate Concern. He writes of religious symbolism in Dynamics of Faith:

"Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate...

Symbols have one characteristic in common with signs; they point beyond themselves to something else. The red sign at the street corner points to the order to stop the movement of cars at certain intervals... The same is true of letters and numbers and partly even words. They point beyond themselves to sounds and meanings....

A picture and a poem reveal elements of reality which cannot be approached scientifically...

Symbols cannot be produced intentionally...

They grow when the situation is ripe for them, and they die when the situation changes...

They die because they can no longer produce a response in the group where they originally found expression...." (41-43).

It seems that the three youth who stole the stop sign, the gnome, and the Lutheran sign were in search of some symbol that would help them understand existence. They confused signs and symbols. A stop sign is a convention that tells our cars to stop. The gnome is a reference to a fabulous creature "an ageless and often deformed dwarf of folklore who lives in the earth and usu. guards precious ores or treasure" (Webster's New Collegiate). The Lutheran sign -- a delightful sign with an elaborate border and with the precious symbol of the cross laid into the center of a circle, and surrounded by a heart lying on a bed of roses -- shows that at least these youthful criminals have good taste and an interest in a higher spiritual life. Which of the three objects in their possession did they value most highly? Which was their ultimate concern? What world of myth and imagination had they built around these symbols?

At a time in which most Americans worship money itself as the ultimate concern, and would gladly change money to read, "In MONEY We Trust," these youth give us hope that the quest for a miraculous emblem or symbol has not ended, and that the Holy continues to call out. An inadequate sense of the Holy, however, can destroy.

This is why I sympathize with Marxists and Jungians -- but feel that their closure of the world into a knowable world of signs -- is inadequate and ultimately destructive. As Tillich points out, "literalism kills faith," and an "infinite passion is necessary to have a genuine faith" (119-120). For the Marxists there is an end to history that is purely determined by man. For the Jungians, all symbols ultimately refer to human destiny. We feel that a greater myth is presented by historical Christianity, in that it is one that opens up a world of meaning that is not bound only by humanity, but by the Creator of All Things.

These young hoodlums reveal their true danger to us through their eclecticism. "Tolerance without criteria or intolerance without self-criticism" (Tillich 123) are twin dangers on the path. While we salute the search for a higher relevance and adequate symbols to summarize it, these young knights of faith need a good guide if they are to join us on the road to the New Jerusalem. Lutheran Surrealism does not dare to present itself as the community to join. We do not possess a large enough community nor a deep enough past to reveal ourselves as free from heresy. We are probably a heresy, therefore. An anomaly at best. We do wish to continue Paul Tillich's attempt to reconnect the avant-garde to the classical tradition. Meanwhile, we counsel youth to join a respectable church and to keep the Sabbath, to honor their parents, to not commit adultery or fornication, and to respect the name of God, as well as not to kill, and to keep all the commandments, especially and crucially the injunction not to steal.

This week the sign at the Lutheran church of Delhi was stolen by three teenagers. They also stole a stop sign, and a gnome. Because of the theft of the stop sign they are being charged with reckless endangerment. These three symbols probably meant nothing to the three youths in question. It was something to do, and stealing symbols, in a small town like this, is high drama.

The symbol of the Lutheran church is a black cross on a red heart laid into the center petals of a rose. I don't know who originally drew this symbol. The symbol itself is so much in the background that I rarely visualize it. This symbol was painted on a blue wooden board and hung between two posts. The posts remain in front of our church, but the sign is now in the police department's evidence room awaiting the trial of the three.

It brings up again the question of symbolism. Symbols cannot remain static. The surrealist use of symbols was daring and shocking, and continues to have a kind of reckless brilliance to it in its finer poems and art works. In the Protestant churches there is very good music but poems and art works have not been updated since the late 19th century. In our church there is a painting of Christ, and the church itself looks like an inverted ark from inside. There is also the unadorned symbol of the cross.

Paul Tillich argued that visual and literary art needed to be updated in Protestant congregations. He was writing along those lines in the 1920s. He himself never became very familiar with American art and poetry, and used largely German art and poetry (Rilke and expressionists) to make his points even late into the 50s.

So there is not much theoretical background for us to begin with.

In the Maritime Museum of Paris there is a painting of the disastrous Laperousse expedition which had gotten lost trying to find the Northwest Passage. The painting depicted a ship the size of my hand navigating between walls of ice as high as my entire body. A polar bear looked on impassively from a distant ice floe. Many Europeans died trying to find the way to the northwest.

It reminds me of Christ's saying that the only true road is a narrow one. A narrow one sidestepping Bolshevik bullies, mincing Maoists, frustrated Freudians, postmodern pud-pounders, and lotus-land drug dealers of every variety.

Matthew 6:13-14: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Our colleague JR Caines from Chatanooga sends another potentially Lutheran surrealist poem. This is an odd poem that terrified me. I felt that he was leaking and his substance pouring out into the ether. I like the idea that God has limits. Caines does not, I think. Where does God end and I begin? Descartes tried to put this in the pineal gland. Laughable, but fun. I is another, said Rimbaud. I am I because my little dog says so, said Stein. I yam what I yam, said Popeye. The question of the subject, Breton said, needed more looking into. In this poem by Caines, we see the sense of an I losing its definition. I think that he likes this, but I do not. Again, this poem is surrealist, but is it Lutheran? The stuff flowing out the nose is light and air. Is this spirit? This is still not canonical, as no truly Lutheran surrealist poem has ever been written, but this one points the way.

>
>*
>I am flowing into God
>like a river
>emptying into him
>
>Part me leaf and leaf
>I am not the leaf
>I am flowing into God
>
>Honeysuck me
>You will eat chalk
>Light and air will flow out your nose
>
>Try to find my house
>in the fog
>I am flowing into God
>
>

DELHI WALK

Walked the circle 8 after 9 pm
Stars clear, Mars 50 million miles away
Blurry cat tinkled across the lawn its bells
Saves mice
Down the crumbly roads
Priest is asleep as is Sandman
The Campbell’s TV on
The hinkmeisters are already down
Tastebuds still happy over ginger jelly
My nose whistles to the neighbors
Which project shall I start tonight?
Shakespeare, or only Updike
The squirts are asleep at 10:41, & have been down
3 hours!
I have so much to read I don’t know where to begin
How much time is left?
Subtraction is the melody of God as I disappear
Like the trickling of the two kingdoms
In a sand-clock

Lutheran Surrealism was originally intended as an explosive compound. In moments of dismay, it can seem to be an emulsion. An emulsion is two liquids such as oil and water which separate when not actively mixed.

Only ceaseless experiment will tell -- but the explosivity potential is what we are hoping for.

We urge all those who believe they have successfully mixed the two to contact us at olsonjk@delhi.edu

The spirit craves fellowship.

I received the following from an actual Presbyterian minister by the name of JR Caines who works in or near Chatanooga, Tennessee. He got interested in Lutheran Surrealism, and asks if these following verses would qualify:


The milk of zero
>and the meat of wind.
>
>I set my table with the sauce of the sun,
>the bowl of prayers,
>and the rice wine of fairie stories.
>
>I ride with seven marvels;
>I sit among the stitches of the sea.
>I listen to sand arriving.
>
>I have food to eat
>of which I know nothing.


I think the question of food is a major problem for Lutheran surrealism. As these verses imply, the poet is mystified by food. Why this mystification? Nothing can be eaten that wasn't once living. Since each life is valid and has a greater and greater ontological status the longer we have to deal with Darwinism, the bizarre ethical problems that arise from eating confound people of all denominations. This poem, which appears to be untitled, deals with the absence of food -- meat of zero -- milk of wind -- or vice versa -- and thus appears to be rather pure.

But the last line denies this abstinence. He has food before him. What kind? A huge bloody steak? A stalk of asparagus?

The mystery of the last supper, the multiplication of loaves, the creation of outstanding wine at weddings were some of the marvels that Jesus performed. It remains a mystery why we are tubes. Gracile tubes in the case of models, perhaps, and lumpy tubes in many other cases, but tubes nevertheless.

This effort by JR Caines is closely related to our own work. We try to be somewhat more conclusive when writing poetry. This poem or fragment is fraught with ambiguity. The Lutheranism in Lutheran Surrealism aims at clarity, and the attainment of a finished speech-act -- although we realize that "a stand taken is a fall invited," as Corso put it in his poem against Cuban communism. This poem leans into surrealism, but while it deterritorializes, it doesn't reemerge with a clear purpose of some kind, and so it isn't Lutheran. Therefore, it isn't Lutheran Surrealist, but it's surrealist, and yet it appears to be edging toward completion.

We enjoyed this, but will not incorporate it into the canon at present, or at least until the poet knows something clearly about food, and that knowledge is clearly and forcefully enunciated. We would like to learn something about food. But it's dinner time, and we must exit or else cease to exist.
>

The Good Samaritan parable of Christ's is only 150 words in length. I can't get much said in that space, but will try to limit myself so as not to go more than four times over that word count today. The GSP -- Good Samaritan Parable -- tells the story of how a member of a rather scorned sect -- a Samaritan -- had a sense of decency where a priest of one's own faith did not. Christ, it seems, is trying to get us to see that in our traditional enemies there may be something good if we'd only look. It's a parable against prejudice.

Marxism seems to argue almost exactly the opposite. We are to band together and see good only in terms of our own class, or race, or gender. We are to see the faults of our enemies, and expand upon them, and meanwhile bond with our own kind in an effort to stomp this other group.

Marxism therefore appeals to the lowest aspect of human nature. Identity politics asks us to be our worst selves. This is all too easy to do.

Christ is asking us to do almost the very opposite. To see the good in people who we would traditionally scorn.

This means that we must continue to see the good side of the Iraqi people, for instance. This is something I continually lose sight of -- but the folks in charge seem to have a limitless optimism in the Iraqi people, and seem to know it to be a fact that they will turn into a democracy on June 30. What faith.

Should we even see the good in Marxists? Most of my friends through graduate school were Marxists, and many of my favorite people today continue to be Marxists.

Just because somebody subscribes to a system that we cannot find much good within, doesn't mean that we can't find good within that individual. People often forget their programs, or systems, and are just people. All people have a deep rich heritage, and an interesting sense of humor. Marxists can make you laugh when you least expect it.

Besides, there aren't any other Lutheran surrealists. Not yet, at least!

The symbolic dimension of poetry is rarely commented upon except insofar as it has a political dimension. During this week I had a few minutes to myself and went into St. John's Episcopal Church on Main St. of Delhi. The church is almost 200 years old, but burned down, and most of it now dates from 1936. Red brick with turrets on the outside, on the inside it sports wondrous stained glass windows, and something called Teaching Tiles. These are terra cotta fabliaux. The tiles were made by anonymous artisans in Italy "steeped in this heritage." A 2$ booklet accompanies the teaching tiles.

"The life of the scarab beetle culminates in the hatching of the beetle from apparent barren earth. Thus it came to mean both the hidden secret of eternal life and resurrection" (7).

This symbol frames a link between Egyptian and Christian religions. The tile itself is difficult to really see -- it is a drab brown, and appears to be covered with notes for the liturgy. The scarab is climbing an oak tree -- another symbol of endurance, apparently.

We never once discussed symbolism in graduate school. This mode of study belongs to an earlier criticism that has been eclipsed by Marxist political criticism. As a result, it is hard to understand the French symbolist movement. One of its poets -- Henry J.-M. Levet -- has a poem that I translated for a journal entitled Common Knowledge -- Fall 1992 -- in which a Scarab beetle is making its way --

The sand is gay, from singing rivers it comes --
The Scarab -- its armor of sparkling light
Reflects the sky's gold and spring's green
Swims tranquilly on milky stones,

Alone; and his disdainful big bug eyes incline
-- mercifully! -- toward the lesser insects of Earth
Those a perfumed morning gently seduces;
To watch their coupling, beautiful loner!

Toward the peak desired by white daisies,
Toward the fresh calyxes cultivated by the heavens --
Oh, to drink droplets from a lily's cup,
To this end, the frail gnats rise...

Regretting his too big but too little state:
Love being too low, the vainglorious flower too high
In the middle of the narrow path, in gaiety stops
And, sad and handsome, wishing to pass away nobly --

Is trampled by the aromatic feet of the Manor's lady...


THIS complicated poem can better be understood through its symbolic dimension. The part cited is only one of five sections to the poem (the fifth section makes a direct reference to John the Baptist! for whom this beautiful little Delhi church is named). It seems to me that in this poem the Scarab beetle is crushed by the aristocracy, and thus eternal life itself is snuffed out, rather by accident. It is a strange joke, by a strange joker. Levet's 25 pages of poetry possess marvels of humor that the poet put together in his short lifetime before succumbing to consumption before age 30. He was a powerful influence on the surrealist movement, especially on Philippe Soupault (my favorite of the surrealists).

The symbolic dimension -- a language forgotten by all but a few -- is traced in the bibliography to the little booklet sold by the Delhi Episcopal church.

Who among us has read these books, even though they are still in print?

George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, Oxford Press.

Mircea Eliade. Images and Symbols, republished by Princeton UP.

Helen Gardner. Art Through the Ages. Harcourt Brace.

John and Katherine Paterson. Consider the Lilies. Thomas Crowell Publishers.

I ordered all of these, and about ten more that are listed in the booklet. The booklet is itself written by Naomi Westbrook, who, as it turns out, lives near me and who I see working on her garden almost every day during the summer months when I take the children for a walk. I haven't had any idea that she would be the key to the strange loveliness hidden inside this oddly fascinating church. I hope I get the chance to bring this up with her, and to thank her for this brilliant booklet that opens up further steps on the narrow path.

How does Lutheran Surrealism work? Stemming from Breton's work on surrealism as the Black Pope, Lutheran Surrealism is surrealism REFORMED. In the same way that Martin Luther became disgusted with the indulgences of the Papacy, we are disgusted with many of the indulgences of the surrealists. We believe in true love, mercy for the poor, kindness toward children, and iconoclastic poetry.

So, we are not an authoritarian outfit, but we ARE moralistic. The Lutheran surrealist has the right to consider whether his or her work fits into the parameters of Lutheran surrealism, but prefer to keep the moniker for ourselves. Breton let so many people into his movement that the purity was lost. What we like about surrealism is the hopefulness of the movement and its humor. We don't like authoritarianism. Therefore, nobody else will be allowed in for at least a while, so that we can pretend to be liberal. We have a hard enough time with inner schisms of our own.

The style of surrealism, which was not entirely created by Breton although he was its top theorist, is therefore what we wish to keep from that movement. The content is however derived from Reformation ideas, and principally from Martin Luther. However, the entire Christian iconic tradition fits into our purview. In poetry, we place a high value on miracles such as multiplying loaves, walking on water, and the resurrection (for more on this see the recent article by Pastor Baue in Logia's Postmodernism Issue). Miracles are needed to combat a culture that believes only in the dead hand of science.

We've squibbed this poem as an example of Lutheran surrealist poetry:

SHAPE IS DETERMINANT OF MEANING

Eggs are ovals
And cars flutter by on wings
Trash cans are cylindrical
Basketballs are spherical
Stars are pointy like star-fish
Nobody knows the eyes are stars

Everything that I know indicates
That the truth shall be known
A circle shall amuse itself


April 5, 2004

I have been wondering how to create a blog. Finally poet Anthony Robinson told me to come here and follow the directions.

My blog will be a place where I discuss Lutheran surrealism. Originally, this is a phrase that I invented four years ago in the Exquisite Corpse cafe.

Interested in surrealism for most of my life, I went back to the Lutheran tradition when my daughter was baptized at a Lutheran church in Kitinoja, Finland four and a half years ago. I also enjoy the fact that this blend seems to irritate almost everybody that I know.

Especially me. Part of the problem with having your own ideas and not following the crowd is that you are frequently hated. Since the advent of my movement, a thousand armies have marched against me.

And yet, a thousand armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come. It is now time for Lutheran surrealism.

How did I ever go back to being a Lutheran? Maybe it was the music. Was it Bach? I don't know. Maybe it was my lovely daughter all arrayed before the congregation for her entrance into the world. Who knows? But it was an upheaval that I am still trying to deal with. I meet on a weekly basis with a very orthodox Lutheran pastor, and attend a church regularly in Delhi, NY.

I am still very interested in surrealist iconoclasm. The two paradigms rub against one another and create a sort of fiery blend that I find rather warming and cheerful. I especially enjoy that one is ancient and one is still somewhat avant-garde.