Tropology or the doctrine of realities?

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Svetlana Neretina is trying to promote and update the medieval discourse and way of thinking – the doctrine of tropes (tropology). In the book "No word is better than another. Philosophy and Literature" she discusses the work of A.V. Korchinsky "Formats of Thought: Literature and Philosophical Discourse" and in particular writes. "I proceed from other premises. Firstly, from the idea of the work (whether philosophical, literary) by which, I repeat, is meant the mastery of time and which is not production (Heidegger, Bibler – each gave a brilliant differentiation between a work and a product), but there is a desire through this opus to transform the being of a human creator who comprehends his personal meaning in it.

Secondly, I proceed from the logic of the tropes, the turns necessary on the path of the desire to escape from the traditional, everyday life, the events of which are absurd and random. Logical turns imply not only a wave-like transition, but also a sharp change of events ...". ^{[2, p. 336-337]} At the same time, Neretina objects to the identification of tropes with realities, saying that "transference and rotation do not always imply the replacement of realities ... reality, res, presupposes the unity of word-thing-deed, and the trope also should (Peter Komestor wrote: propology determines what should), i.e. obliges to explain the same thing." ^{[2, c. 338-339]}

For the time being, I will note two points: not just discourse, but "the desire to escape from traditional, everyday life, the events of which are absurd and accidental" and the fact that the trope obliges to explain the same thing. We will discuss these points further, but in the meantime, I will draw attention to the fact that Svetlana Sergeevna briefly notes that in modern times "the term "trope" in relation to everyday speech for some reason has ceased to be used ..." ^{[2, p.26]}

I agree with the first position that the work is a way of transforming a person, I do not understand the idea of tropology well yet (I will clarify this idea in this work), and where Neretina talks about paths and turns, I usually use the expression "change of realities" or "change of events in a certain reality" ^{[4; 8]}. One of my tasks is to understand the areas of use of these different concepts (tropology and the doctrine of realities), maybe they are complementary, maybe just different.

First of all, I will note that the concept of tropology is medieval in origin, and Neretina talks about trails as if we are talking about a modern, working concept. That's why I asked Svetlana Sergeevna such a question. "It turns out that Augustine or Boethius are almost our contemporaries, they think more correctly than many modern philosophers. But they thought differently than you or me. Or do you think like Augustine?". To which Neretina replied to me: "I think it is. Philosophy is alien to time in this sense, times are simultaneous in it: Hegel, and with him McTaggart are right ? we have different phenomena, different attitudes, different concerns, but the concern about the meaning is the same, we can ignore the truth ? this makes her neither hot nor cold, but we continue to COMPARE, which means we have to grasp something from there, not to mention the desire to fasten everything to ourselves. Another thing is that the language meanings are unrecognizable and it is possible that we are busy and see completely different beginnings, but they remain beginnings ? they make sense."

Such an answer with regard to tropes and tropology can be understood in the sense that these concepts work, but perhaps in order to introduce them into modern discourse, they need to be comprehended and spoken anew, which Neretina does in her books and articles. Then what is their content? The main thing: not just a turn and a change of position, but changing vision and thinking, further, a change in the basic reality (there was a God, there was a Word, then the world created by the Word), and yet, a turn is also understood operationally, simply as a cardinal turn, not necessarily as a change in the basic reality.

"The idea of tropology," writes Svetlana Sergeevna, "as a conscious idea arose in the Middle Ages... reading about creation in the Bible, we discover a pure Divine act. God said and did, where “said" means the same thing that He did. The spoken Word, however, is not quite the Word that was in God and was God himself: thrown out of silence, it became a path, a turn, it had a different substance than God...". ^{[2, c.27]}

The creation that has become a path, or rather, "in the form of a path", is characteristic not only of the Creator and the appearance of the basic reality, but also of human creativity and the world created by him. "It is easy to compare this with the fact of the Christian creation of the world according to the Word, which we discussed at the beginning of the article, with the difference that here the word and deed do not belong to the only Creator, but – I repeat the words Virno – to any speaker ..." ^{[2, p. 50]}

What does Neretina empirically refer to as trails? "The main five tropes: metaphor, metonymy... a kind of metonymy – synecdoche ... oxymoron ... irony and everything else – epithet, allegory, sarcasm...". ^{[2, p. 26]} It seems to be quite earthly representations of artistic creativity, where paths, indeed, act as a condition for turning meanings and understanding. But how does this relate to the idea of a cardinal turn that changes the basic reality (remember, "the desire to escape from traditional, everyday life, the events of which are absurd and random")? Probably, Svetlana Sergeevna believes that any genuine creativity is always a communion, if not with God, then with higher principles, no matter how to understand them, mystically or rationally. As she recently told me: "I still believe that poetry is the best, the highest; a tense word passes through a person like electricity ? you're her receiver. ...I still think that we are not the creators of the word."

There are two questions for me here: does any good creativity presuppose such communication, and does there currently exist a basic reality similar to the medieval one? Maybe the postmodernists are more right, claiming that there are no meta-narratives, and every artist and even scientist builds a language game according to their own rules ^[1]. After all, if there is no such one meta-reality (God, Nature, Culture, Society, "Cosmobiosocial reality" in one of the author's recent books ^[3], History, etc.), then it is not a turn within the path in this meta-reality, but simply a change of narratives and realities (not trails, but "thinking-navigator in the realities of different realities").

I will now propose an analysis of two literary texts in which metaphors were clearly used, in order to demonstrate reconstruction using the concepts of the doctrine of realities, as well as to test the possibilities of tropology. The first text is a fragment from the novel "Esav" by Israeli writer Meir Shalev. "The father of the main character, Abraham Levi, a baker, when he was still young, returning from the war to his hometown of Jerusalem, fell into a family of Russian immigrants and fell in love with Sarah, the only girl in the family (there were also father, mother and brothers). He marries her and takes her to Jerusalem, where she gives birth to his twin sons. Brought up in love and freedom and, in fact, on a farm, far from big cities, Sarah cannot get along with the traditional Jerusalem society. Unable to stand the attitude towards her, including her mother-in-law, she takes her children and forcibly her husband, steals the Greek patriarch's carriage, harnesses it like a horse and runs through Israel in search of a place where she could live with her family" ^{[5, p. 35]}.

"On the twelfth of July, 1927, at about three o'clock in the morning, a "Tak" suddenly burst out of the Jaffa Gate – a chic light carriage belonging to the Greek Patriarchate. She lacked, however, the usual group–the patriarch himself, his Arab coachman and a white Lipitian horse. Instead of a rider and a coachman, two children sat on the box, clutching the reins in their hands, and instead of a horse, a tall, fair–haired, broad-shouldered and beautiful young woman (Sarah, the heroine of the novel, the mother of two twins. - V.R.) was harnessed to the wooden shafts... Covered with empty flour sacks and foam of impotent rage, Little frail Abraham cursed the day when he brought his wife from Galilee to Jerusalem. He no longer had the strength or patience to endure her manners– these habits of a loving mare, as the neighbors said– because of which he became a laughing stock in the courtyards of the Jewish Quarter, and the whole of Jerusalem, too…  Bulisa Levi, Mrs. Levi, Abraham's grumpy mother, couldn't sleep a wink either. “I have a daughter–in–law-if you can't buy cheese from her, you will certainly get cuffs," she sighed. "I'm telling you, Abraham, this woman you brought into the house, I'll see the white crows before I'll have peace from her.”…

“Just think, Princess de Sutlach, she has a holiday all year," relatives and household ladies were indignant, having gathered at the well. ”She drinks milk all day long, even if she's not sick."

Walking through the stone alleys, accompanied by a faithful and vicious goose, brought by her from Galilee, Sarah made her way through the intricacies of customs and the thicket of decency, feeling the probing glances that measured her from head to toe and drilled into her skin. Looks surprised, lustful, curious, hostile. Passersby made way for her, pressing against the walls. Some with a nasty wet smile, some with a breathless sigh of lust, and some – splashing curses. With a confused grimace trembling at the corners of her lips, she hunched over and absorbed her broad shoulders, as if trying to shrink in size…

It was three o'clock in the morning. The young woman stopped the carriage at the city wall and looked around cautiously. Her gaze lingered on several fellahs who had come to the city before dark and were now waiting for the markets to open… Suddenly the donkeys roared, wrapped their necks and jumped on the spot in incomprehensible fear. The Fellahs, who rushed to calm them down, saw a stroller and a young blonde woman frozen between its shafts. They were terrified…

    The young woman lowered the shafts of the stroller to the ground and, trying to clear her way, furiously stamped her foot, threw her head high and let out a terrible wolf howl. In response, she immediately heard a terrible rumbling from the depths of the earth. Mighty stones suddenly rolled from the top of the city wall, frightened screams of people were heard from all sides, roosters and dogs howling, flocks of pigeons and bats rose from the cracks in the city, from the cracks in the towers, from the shaken dungeons…

–Get inside," the woman shouted to the little twins. She herself was horrified for a moment, thinking that her scream had broken the shackles of the earth, but she immediately came to her senses – her eyes froze angrily and stubbornly, and a deep crease lay between her eyebrows. The red-haired boy got scared, hurriedly crawled inside the stroller and hid behind a cloth canopy near his bound father. But his brother only opened his dark eyes wider and remained on the driver's seat.

The young mother tightened the harness to her shoulders, picked up the shafts again and squeezed them with a vengeance. Then she took a deep breath and started running. Rushing past the crumbling walls, under a rain of stones and screams, she swallowed the road with long light steps, jumped elastically over the crevices that opened under her feet and tore with her body the shroud of smells that enveloped the city, vapors that rose over burning bakeries, over burst spice jars, over stinking sewage that escaped from sewage drains, over puddles of spread coffee left over from those who came to morning prayer ahead of time. She, who had only drunk milk all her life, hated the Jerusalem custom of starting the day with a cup of coffee and now rejoiced at the misfortune of all her haters…

The woman turned her head towards the city and spat angrily. Then she smiled contentedly, wrapped up the hem of her dress, pushed it into her belt and started running again. Her bare feet moved in the dark with noiseless confidence, like the strong white wings of that owl that lived in the Karaite cemetery, de los Karaites, and which used to frighten us in childhood. Through the small holes in the cloth canopy to me (we are talking about the memories of Sarah's second son. ? V.R.), the envious and encouraging cries of the mentally ill could be heard – when they saw us, they pressed themselves against the bars of their windows and accompanied our flight with longing and greedy glances. I saw the blur of Jerusalem receding, the face of my twin brother Jacob, laughing, clutching his mother's reins, saw the long, tirelessly moving wings of her hips, inhaled her abundant sweat, heard the hum of her pink lungs, the beating of a mighty heart, driving blood into her indomitable body. I imagined in my mind the strong tendons of her knees, the elastic pads of her heels, the biceps breathing under the skin of her thighs, all of her–my mother, the converted Sarah Levy, the "white witch", the "yellow-haired Jew", Sarah Levy of the Nazarov family"^[9]. 

"It's not worth much practice in constructing analogies, they are quite obvious, I'll just list them. Sarah, harnessed to a carriage and running easily on Israeli soil, resembles a beautiful centaur. Here she "furiously stamped her foot, threw her head high and let out a terrible wolf howl," stones immediately fell down and the earth trembled. Before us is not just a man-horse, but a mystical being, which is also characteristic of a centaur. In comparison with the Jerusalem townspeople, Sarah is really a wild person, and a wild goose protects her, emphasizing the justice of the nickname "white witch" that has stuck to her. From the point of view of urban political correctness, Sarah's reaction to strangers who threaten her family is also wild" ^{[5, p. 37]}.

From the point of view of the doctrine of realities, three realities can be distinguished in this text: the artistic reality of the novel, where Sarah behaves like a centaur, although she still remains a woman, the mother of twins and the wife of her husband, the reality of the image of a centaur woman and the reality of an ordinary young woman with a cool, independent character. The events of these three realities have their own peculiarities, obey different logic, but due to a single narrative-image, a new "objectivity" is generated – Sarah in Shalev's novel behaves both as a centaur and as a person (she can run across the whole country with a wheelchair, cause an earthquake, scare the fellahs, take care of children, in further parts roman is threatening to protect her children, to love her husband, who is indifferent to her, however, if necessary, tie him up to move him to a new home).

I can guess how the image of Sarah was created. In one interview Shalev says: "In Greek mythology, there is a nymph named Atalanta. As far as I can tell, heroines like her appear in my books every now and then: in "Esava", in "Fontanelle", to a lesser extent in "Russian Novel". This is a physically strong woman, of mighty build, of enormous stature. I've been thinking about her ever since I first read The Golden Fleece by Robert Graves at the age of 15—and Atalanta, as you remember, was the only woman among the Argonauts. I guess I have some kind of fixation. I have never met her in my life, but I do not stop dreaming about her" ^[10]. 

Reading the novel shows that Shalev needed an image reminiscent of the one he dreamed of. Solving this problem, Shalev creates two schemes, two images (a woman with a cool character, loving her husband and children, independent, in conflict with Jerusalem society, deciding to start an independent life; and she, who stole a stroller, running like a beautiful horse across the country, protecting her children and family like a wild beast). These schemes define the reality in which Sarah lives, the reality whose events readers live and experience. At the same time, it can be assumed that they will admire Sarah if they themselves dreamed of something similar, well, let them not dream, but admired a person with similar traits.

If now Shalev's fixation-dream is taken as an invisible, partly transcendental content, and the schemes and images created by him for his "speech" (the story he is composing), then the twists and turns of fate and Sarah's decisions can be interpreted in tropical logic. But if we follow the analysis we have proposed, we can do without it, considering that everything can be comprehended in the logic of the doctrine of reality. Let's move on to the second text. In 2008, I wrote the following poem to my wife on Valentine's Day.

I had a strange dream,

That we both died,

And like birds light

They ascended into the heavens.

In the shining halls

They appeared before the Lord,

There are guardian angels there

Voices were heard.

"Repent, my travelers" -

The Creator said calmly.

And a thick book of destinies

I took it out of the locker.

"Sins of varying severity

A lot has accumulated in my life" -

Page by page He

He leafed thoughtfully.

And choirs of angels sang,

So scary and beautiful.

Listening to us and the Lord,

Inclining his gaze to the floor.

That we're like at a concert

They listened involuntarily,

Forgetting why hurriedly

They came to this city.

We woke up from the voice

The guardian angel.

"Let me put in a word" -

He asked the Lord.

The Creator nodded affably,

He slammed the mournful book,

And a beautiful head

On the clouds inclined.

"I'm sorry, Heavenly Father,

We do not deny our sins.

We know about them ourselves,

We suffer and blame

Myself for indifference,

For those who have been forgotten,

Who was not helped

Although they were with him.

But maybe worthy

We are still descents,

Because they lived honestly

In patience and hard work.

They managed to raise the children,

Although they are, of course,

Well, not really, of course,

How I would like to–Ah!"

"Go with God, children,  -

The Creator answered the angel, -

Love washes away sins,

Like pure water.

Did you love your parents,

Their children and grandchildren,

Did you love each other,

You've always been sorry.

An angel took us by the hands

I put it on the cloud.

It's like an air balloon

It floated across the sky.

"Now you are angels yourself" -

The keeper said sadly.

And, spreading the feathers,

We lay down on the wing.

There are more independent realities here: firstly, the reality of my communication with my wife on Valentine's Day (I am composing a poem for her, she is traditionally expecting it, she is ready to read and disenchant it), secondly, the reality of a dream, the events of which can be the most unusual (in this case, passing away, flying to heaven, meeting with God, transformation into angels), thirdly, the fantastic reality of communication with the Creator, fourthly, ordinary human reality (listening to the concert of angels), fifthly, the reality of understanding the life lived and experiencing guilt (the children were not quite as they wanted, were indifferent, etc.), in-sixth, the reality of the dream of eternal life.

Again, there was the content that was revealed in this poem (in this speech, as Neretina writes). I have a book dedicated to the work and personality of Emanuel Swedenborg ^[6]. There is such a plot in his teaching: every person is a spirit; the one who loves good after death (this is not even death, but transfiguration) becomes an angel and ascends to heaven to serve God, and those who gravitate to evil become demons and descend into hell. That is, again a vivid metaphor. Why not, I thought, imagine that my wife and I died and became angels, having undergone a transformation after confession to God? Well, yes, we had such a dream, and we are not just angels like Swedenborg, but after confession. He began to build reality, at the same time coordinating events with each other, supporting one another, strengthening with rhythm and stanzas. I chose the rhythm and rhymes after several trials, and played them all the time, repeating the same thing to myself many times. It was difficult to unfold the planned long story, so I broke it into separate fragments, starting and ending each time with a separate theme and stanzas. To make everything more convincing and realistic, I came up with a concert of angels, filled the confession with content, introduced a guardian angel into the game. I tried to see everyone as alive and familiar, like this I came to the image of God, who put his head on the clouds, or my wife and I as birds (“we lay down on the wing”).

In the book of Svetlana Sergeevna, the following example of the trope is given: "the king had two bodies: divine and mundane, was both "by the grace of God" and "the first among equals." This is discouraging..." ^{[2, p. 134]}. This duality can be viewed from two points of view. If we are interested in a change of ideas about the king and his behavior, then we really have a trope in front of us. But if, as I am interested in, among other things, the peculiarity of the medieval king as a subject, as a special new objectivity, formed precisely because two different realities interact – sacred and profane – then in this case it is not a trope, but a new objectivity. Similarly, Sarah, as an integral personality, summarizes the characteristics and features of two realities – centauric and purely human. Taking care of the children, she is a loving mother, but when she let out a terrible wolf howl and stamped so hard that stones fell and an earthquake began, there was a path in front of us. My wife and I, as the heroes of the poem, combine six realities in our behavior and personality at once (i.e., I have constructed a new objectivity), but if I am interested in turns – from sleep to death, from death to a flight to heaven, from a flight to a concert of angels, from a concert to a conversation between God and a guardian angel, from If this conversation leads to transformation, then in this case there is hardly a better means for understanding than tropology.

At this point, an attentive reader may object:  in this case, we are talking only about such an understanding of the path as a turn, a cardinal change, but what about the basic reality ("the desire to escape from traditional, everyday life")? If in your first example, about the king, the trope is both a turn and a turn within the framework of the Christian worldview, then the second example points to a reality that is difficult to identify with the main one (due to the fact that we have now either lost its understanding or are dealing with many, different realities in the absence of the main one). In the third example, it is said either about splitting from the Christian ultimate reality, yet one of the main characters is God, or simply about a conceivable and imaginary reality, which is naturally very problematic to implement. I think this remark is correct. Currently, different ideas are put forward for the role of the main reality, however, there is no universal consensus about them, they do not become the ultimate ontology of the world, which they are ready to accept together God or Nature, or Culture (Society), or History. One can understand "the desire to escape from the traditional, everyday life, the events of which are absurd and random," but the question is how to do it, and whether it is possible at all.

I don't know about the readers, but personally I figured out in the first approximation what tropology is, realizing that the discourse of tropology is complementary to the author's discourse of the doctrine of realities.