The paradox of creation

As we discussed yesterday, the Entwives move further east over the Second Age, crossing the River Anduin to pursue the work of cultivation. In doing so, they abandon their husbands the Ents and thus abandon the ability to have and raise children with them. In essence, they abandon the creative work of procreation for another creative endeavor, cultivation. 

This is far from the first time that readers can observe this tension in different creative desires. The example that immediately comes to mind for me is the story of Persephone and Hades. Like the Ents and Entwives, this is a story of marriage and of nature. Like the Ents and Entwives, it is also a story of paradox and of contradiction in creation. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Persephone is at once a kore (maiden/virgin) and Hades’ parakoitis (bed partner), but importantly, not his gamete (wife). Her pomegranate points to both male and female imagery, both a seed fruit and a womb shape full of bloody liquid. The floral symbolism both signals her untouched innocence and her fertility. However, most importantly, her marriage can never be fruitful. As the child of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, the earth can only bear fruit when Persephone paradoxically leaves her husband. Her marriage, in an inversion, leads the fertility of the earth to wither as Demeter holds the crops in stasis. Therefore, Hades and Persephone never have children in the Homeric Hymn.

This same paradox is also (sort of) present in Genesis. Before the Fall, a crucial characteristic of the earth is its bountiful fertility: the plants yield seed, the birds and fish fill the skies and seas, and the earth brings forth wild animals in abundance (Gen 1:11, 22, 24). This all happens even before God has created Eve, so necessarily, fertility of nature pre-dates human fertility. 

However, I do not want to conflate cultivated bounty with natural bounty. Obviously, the difference between what the Ents and the Entwives do remains a central theme; the Ents create within the natural boundaries and the Entwives seek to bind nature by convention. What is so striking about Persephone and Demeter is that Demeter is the goddess of the harvest — necessarily something done by men with tools — not of nature itself. She also has divinity over the hearth, again, a place only created when men emerge from a natural state and start to establish formal homes (in Fustel De Coulanges’ The Ancient City, the author even suggests that the hearth is the basis of civil society). In contrast, Adam and Eve are told to “be fruitful and multiply” before the punishment of strenuous work is placed upon Adam for the Fall. Likewise, their own procreation is inhibited by the pain of childbirth. But here, the fertility of man and woman is limited at the same time that they find a need and gain access to tools. 

Despite these complications, in all three of these stories to one degree or another, we see a tension between the fertility of sexual union and fertility by cultivation of the natural world. What is behind this? Perhaps I am cursed by having written about immortality through marriage for my thesis, but I now see these principles everywhere. Something that Plato and Aristotle both bring up at many different points in their corpora is the notion that man has a natural drive to immortality. Plato specifically in the Republic and Symposium brings up three ways that this can be accomplished: through procreation, through fame, and through participation in eternal ideas (philosophy). I would also add that immortality with God through salvation can be a fourth way, obviously not present in Plato, but accessed through revelation. 

I’m sure we’ll get into this next class, but perhaps the Entwives and even we, through creation, attempt to preserve a piece of ourselves for eternity through a sort of fame. However, taking the principles from the Child and the Shadow, part of our own creation as a reflection of us is wrapped up in our profound relationship with evil. I don’t think it’s possible to reconcile these two types of immortality (procreative and creative) in a fallen world due to scarcity, both in time and in abundance. As stated above, the Fall specifically affects the fertility of both nature and man and thus also the bounty through cultivation. Likewise, Persephone’s descent makes her and the earth barren: she must choose cultivation over procreation. In this same way, the Entwives make this choice when they arrange their orchards away from their husbands. In a finite world filled with people who have a boundless desire for immortality, these stories show us the cost of picking one sort of eternity over the other.

(As an amendment, neither of these immortalities — procreation or fame/subcreation — last forever. Crops are consumed/wither, art is lost, family lines die out, nations fall. Of course, this reflects the point that all of our creations necessarily inherit our relationship with evil/death. Strauss, for example, sharpens Plato’s three immortalities to say that participation in philosophy is the only lasting form because it traffics in eternal ideas. However, a state built on philosophy is impossible too: philosophers must be compelled to participate in things of this earth. This is why he reads the Republic as an exhortation against political idealism. I think that I would conclude that immortality through God is the only lasting form but this is enabled only by extreme amounts of grace — i.e. power and goodness can only unite in God, the church and what she makes possible would not exist without constant supernatural favor. Is this a call to abandon lay vocations? I do not think so, but rather to recognize their limits. I’m sorry to have gone so far with the weird philosophical implications of this. Hopefully, this makes even a little bit of sense.) - KW