EVERY REVELATION, STILL A SECRET

All we communicate to others is an orientation towards what is secret without ever being able to tell the secret objectively.-- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Here we run into a dilemma, for what is truth and what is illusion? John Briggs, paraphrasing Martin Heidegger, has described truth as "the freedom of letting things reveal themselves as they are-- but... when anything is revealed, other things are concealed."-- DREAMS OF ISIS (1995), Normandi Ellis, p. 266.

These two quotes both appeared in separate sections of the Ellis book, which is that author's personal account of her experiences with examining Egyptian concepts of spirituality and/or occultism. It's an interesting book, and I've read a considerable number of similar accounts from dubious biographies like the Don Juan chronicles and theoretical studies like those of Colin Wilson. While I've had occasion to believe in the reality of certain so-called "psychic" events, I hold no firm opinion one way or the other on subjects like soul transmigration or the existence of archaic gods, even on something akin to the "astral plane." I suspect that much of my interest in the occult stems from my desire to know, as much as any individual can, the outward limits of the imagination. I have a dim memory of a Percy Shelley reminiscence, in which he claimed that in his youthful years he read a lot of mystical literature because he was seeking "metaphors for poetry." However, I haven't troubled to look for that particular quote.

As for the quotes above, I knew Bachelard by reputation but have not yet read POETICS OF SPACE or any other work by him. I have read a little Heidegger, though not enough to have any notion as to what he may've said that author John Briggs paraphrased, or the context Briggs had in mind when he made the comment in his book FIRE IN THE CRUCIBLE. Still, Briggs' purported ideas on aesthetics might prove interesting to my ongoing project. Bachelard's evaluations of science might draw some intriguing comparisons with the works of Whitehead on that subject.

Though about thirty years separate the quotes of Bachelard and Briggs, they seem to complement each other not a little in speaking of the difficulties of communication. Reading both quotes out of context naturally means that I don't know what general argument either writer was making, but I can respond to what the quotes suggest in themselves.

Starting with Bachelard, it's fascinating that he asserts that all one can communicate is something subjective, something that is explicitly not objective in nature, and that, even that "subjective something" is not the actual secret of the person transmitting it, but an "orientation" toward that secret. The opposition bears a structural similarity with Plato's synopsized view of Art: a "shadow of a shadow," the originary shadow being the phenomenal world, which is itself "cast" by the Eternal Forms. But for Plato, the Forms were objective reality. Centuries later, materialist philosophers would regard all the phenomena associated with "the real world" as the only measure of objectivity, while all things subjective were at best epiphenomenal. I would guess that when Bachelard says that the implied "we" cannot "tell the secret objectively," he's at least partly agreeing with the materialist idea that subjectively speaking every man is an island, and that every such island harbors secrets that cannot be communicated as such to any others. Yet Bachelard is perhaps more hopeful than the materialists in saying that though subjective secrets of a private mind cannot be communicated-- possibly because they stem from so many intertwined, personal factors-- "we" can communicate orientations, as one presumes, for example, Socrates did to Plato. Last month I touched on similar limitations with regard to literary experience, under the heading of "intersubjectivity:"

But subjectivity doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and so we must speak of intersubjectivity as a way of understanding how persons from all walks of life can see reflections of themselves in the works of strangers, often strangers from other times and cultures. Thus, when we feel affection for the works of Shakespeare or of Bill Finger, what we “love” are shadows of our own tastes and personalities. -- THE CARE AND ESTEEMING OF LITTLE MYTHS, PART 1.

Of course, I don't know if Bachelard is using the word "secret" with any special connotation in mind, but for the present I view it as general subjectivity. "Orientation" would be the part of an individual's secret subjectivity that can be transmitted to others, though always with the likelihood of misprision of some kind, like, say, Plato recording those aspects of Socrates' philosophy that resonated best with Plato himself.

Now Briggs' quote sounds a little more pessimistic, a little more "one step forward, two steps back." Briggs doesn't confine himself to communications between human beings; for him, even "things" can reveal themselves-- and conceal themselves, too. I assume that "things" would include all phenomena, from human beings to all aspects of the environment in which humans live. Shamanistic accounts, such as those on which Carlos Castaneda probably based his books, would allow for human beings to receive communications from birds or insects or even stones. 

However, in the folklore we have on such subjects, such communicates reveal, but they don't also conceal. So I tend to think Briggs is, in the final analysis, still talking about human communication, just like Bachelard. 

How does one reveal and conceal at the same time? In OEDIPUS TYRANNUS the Delphic Oracle reveals what is destined to happen to Oedipus. But the Oracle conceals the relevant info that he is not related to the two people Oedipus thinks are his natural parents. Revealing that, of course, would spoil the story, which depends upon a reaction to limited knowledge.

 In the world of intersubjectivity, too, Reader A can feel that this or that work by Author B feels revelatory. But of course, Author B is only revealing what is important to him, and in communicating one thing he may conceal a hundred others, both from himself and from others. Percy Shelley's incantatory poetry reveals his superabundant talent for versification. But nothing in the poetry will reveal many other aspects of Shelley, aspects that might distract from his poetry. In a somewhat more intentional concealment, Karl Marx enthralled countless believers into a sincere belief in his myth of the proletariat, but he omitted anything that might hinder that revelation.  And often there's no intent to conceal. If one chooses to follow one philosophy, it will always remain concealed as to what another path might have revealed.

And possibly the greatest concealment is that I have found both quotes to have revelatory content, though since I haven't read them in context, I might be "concealing" some or all of their "real" meanings.