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Vocation
At the end of the 20th century, in all but isolated islands
of our culture, VOCATION means nothing beyond its dictionary
entry. CAREER is our secular substitute. That spiritual or
theological constellation (the sense of a cosmic metropolis
to which each of us is called to participate—and in an
ultimate, fateful fashion) no longer rises over the horizon
of our unbelief.
This slow change, as the Romantics recognized so long ago
now, involved a decapitation of Orpheus or a castration of a
vital aspect of the poet's traditional role. This was a
natural process (however violent—Darwinian?) and probably
all for the best—let the regal, clay-footed, weeping
statues tumble down. What remains now, between the Alpha and
Omega of vOcAtion? Only vacations (if the poet's lucky
enough to have a "job"). Poets know there's no vacation from
their vocation—it's an unpaid sinecure; conversely, the
"workaday world" views the poetic vocation as a permanent
vacation from reality.
This too was played out long ago. The poet as exile; a
fragment, a splinter of driftwood, the Outsider, the Gypsy
synecdoche reflecting the cold- shouldered Whole. The
problem with this arrangement is that driftwood is deadwood,
by definition. The pharmakos, the drop of death-dealing
poison... all these characterizations have their interest.
But it cannot be denied that Orpheus-Osiris is scattered
irretrievably.
Take Shakespeare or Dante as exemplars of the former
condition: of poiesis as cultural Power. For them and
theirs, the vocation of the poet is to evoke and vocalize
the matrix of our shared vocations : a global civitas. But
we no longer have words for "vocation"; without a word for
God, vocation is an empty cipher—a vacated—cipher.
Vacancy may be our condition; nevertheless, we no longer
wish (nor feel obligated) to make obeisance to a Nietzschean
god (or Kafkaesque idol) whose name is Power.
Let us imagine another possibility: God as unspoken word.
Let us figure all language as a formalization of unspoken
speech, following Giambattista Vico: i.e., language is a
latecomer, an offspring of intuition, unspoken picture
language, gesture. Let us imagine, with Vico, the cyclings
and recyclings of history as a human creation under the
inexpressible ordering of an unspoken divine Providence.
As we inhabit this dream (temporarily) let us look within
ourselves: our professions, our careers, our lifestories,
follow from an original silent calling-into-being. So divine
Providence represents the ordering (under the sign of the
future) of the human race's global calling-into- being. And
the verbal FORMALIZATION of this general calling—this
"still, small" whisper in our ear canals—is the project of
all the Bibles, the epic songs and cycles, the
philosophies... the project of the poets, in other words. To
summarize: species Man invents language as the expression of
an unspoken calling-forth. Then ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny: the poet invents the Poem: a formalization of a
formalization.
One could argue: all this is a kind of backward-looking,
wishful, reactionary replaying of an abandoned
logos-project. I would answer with three questions: what did
Vico mean to Joyce? And what inspires a Joyce so full of
JOY? Whence proceeds so much divine—yea, providential -
laughter?
Henry Gould