At 05:46 PM 10/27/97 -0500, Rudy Leon wrote:
<snip>
>First, this is for a religion course, and I was very struck by the way
>LeGuin reclaims cyclical time as profane time/everyday time, which really
>fits into my idea of religion as absolutely intimate, not set apart/sacred.
>If religion is looked at this way, everything one does is affected by, or
>organized by, one's religion (ideology? I'm not sure if they are
>different). Similarly, I see that all the events in the book are intimately
>affected by an idea of time as cyclical and synchronous at the same time
>(Principles of Simultinaity and Synchrony).. the shape of the book does this
>(parallel events in Shevek's past and present), as does the epithet on Odo's
>grave _To be whole is to be part/The journey is return_ or something close
>to that.
>
>The physics seems to carry a philosophy and an ethics and a religion that
>would be so useful for thinking about our own world, and so much a carrier
>of LeGuin's, the message of the book, but I can't seem to untangle it
>myself....any thoughts on this?
Le Guin's work is much influenced by Taoism (she read and fell in love with
the _Tao Teh Ching_ when she was 12). Rather than a religion, it perhaps
functions for her as a "world view". It is even more evident in _The Left
Hand of Darkness_, _Always Coming Home_ and the _Earthsea_ series.
The _Tao Teh Ching_ says:
"To be great is to go on,
To go on is to be far,
To be far is to return."
and
"The Core of Vitality is very real,
It contains within itself an unfailing Sincerity.
Throughout the ages Its Name has been preserved
In order to recall the Beginning of all things.
How do I know the the ways of all things at the Beginning?
By what is within me."
These notes are sounded time and time again in Le Guin's writing, as are
the concepts of true names and the interdependence of darkness and light
(yin and yang).
-- Janice
p.s. in this message I have drawn upon Larry McCaffery's _Across the
Wounded Galaxies_, an excellent book of interviews with SF authors and the
Shambala Publications "mini" of the Tao Teh Ching
-----
Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT
http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm
Listening to: Radiohead, OK Computer; Tricky, Pre-Millennium Tension
"...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected;
the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and
servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
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