The Affirming Flame

by Friedman, Maurice S.

• ISBN13: 9781573922593
• ISBN10: 1573922595
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-01
• Publisher: Prometheus Books

Summary

Professor Friedman explores the rich tapestry of our humanness as we strive to find meaning in our experiences, even in the midst of the evil and death that threaten to put an end to it all. This struggle is vividly captured in literary and poetic works that epitomize what Friedman describes as our effort to hold the tension between affirming where we can affirm and withstanding where we must withstand.

Author Biography

Maurice S. Friedman is professor emeritus of religious studies, philosophy, and comparative literature at San Diego State University and co-director of the Institute for Dialogical Psychotherapy in San Diego.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	11	(6)
Preface	17	(4)
Introduction: A Poetics of Meaning	21	(12)
Part I---Finding Meaning in the Lived Concrete
Mystics of the Particular	33	(14)
Taoist, Zen, and Hasidic Masters
Traherne, Whitman, Black Elk, Dostoyevsky, Heschel
Poets of the Here and Now	47	(18)
Rilke, Levertov, Berry, Dillard
Part II---Evil and the Absurd: The Threat of Meaninglessness
The Shattering of Security	65	(8)
Melville's Moby Dick and Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Faith, Anguish, and Doubt	73	(22)
Dostoyevsky, Dickinson, Hopkins, and Levertov
The Demonism of Nature
Melville's Moby Dick	87	(8)
Human Demonism	95	(14)
Black Elk and Rabbit Boss, Morrison's Beloved, Primo Levi
Part III---Holding the Tension between Affirming and Withstanding
Kafka and Kundera: Two Voices from Prague	109	(20)
Franz Kafka's Castle: The Calling and the Call Milan Kundera's Immortality: Deconstructing the Illusion of Personal Uniqueness
The Harmonic, the Tragic, and the Grotesque	129	(12)
Yeats, Auden, Neruda, Milosz
The Scandal of the Particular	141	(16)
Amichai, Levertov, Dillard
The Shoah---Our Ultimate Confrontation	157	(30)
Andre Schwarz--Bart's The Last of the Just
Primo Levi, Nellie Sachs and Paul Celan
Conclusion: Confronting Death	187	(22)
Hermeneutical Appendix: Toward a Poetics of Dialogue	209	(24)
Notes	233