Reading Bello's ode to tropical agriculture, it was totally easy to see his disdain for the spanish conquistador bros. He was all up their grill, blaming them for a significant portion of the problems in south American colonies. He blamed them for inciting urban civilization and making the natives lazy alcoholics. It's hard to understand, from an outside perspective, how people could drag civilization down into sin like this, but like we talked about in class the other day, they really brought down the quality of the civilization by essentially banning art and literature. I guess my naivety can blind me. I'm so sheltered. It's definitely reasonable that he would be Bolivar's teacher, though, considering Bolivar's strong opposition to the Spanish occupancy of South America. And speaking of Bolivar, I still think that the reason he didn't make a reference to Christian God, despite the fact that many of his followers were assuredly devout Christians, was that he was trying to disconnect himself with European religious beliefs. I was also thinking while I was reading, it is rather unbelievable that he would see the face of god, even if he was supposed to be on a higher plane than everybody else. It reminded me of something I heard one time--this, in fact
"when you see the face of god you will die
and there will be nothing left of you
except the god-man, the god-woman
the heavenly man, the heavenly woman
the heavenly child
there will be terror under this day of night
there will be a song of jubilee waiting for your king
there will be nothing you will be looking for in this world
except for your god"
It makes it seem as though if you see the true face of god, it is impossible to return to the world of the living. I'm not sure though, It's all a pretty foreign concept. That's my couple of cents.
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i suppose i can dig that. i'll comment mostly on the delirium seeing as that is what i wrote about. I really like teat point that he didn't want to see god because of the breaking ties with European religion/ aristocrats thing. It is hard to prove but i like ti because it fits in so nicely with the overall personality of Bolivar. i feel like everything he did tied back into the main goal of politics and liberation. maybe because we only read about his goal , but i feel like it was always on his mind and because he devoted his life to independence that even when he wasn't trying too, something subconsciously was still working. so even when he was in a total state of delirium and the easiest figure to see would be god, he still kept himself in check-knowingly or unknowingly.
on the other hand and on a completely different note i also would concur about the whole"if you see god, you're dead" thing. Also if you think about this it means that Bolivar litteraly rose above absolutely everything but he was not on par with god and he had not become immortal and he was not perfect and ascending into the after life. This means he was as absolutely high as he could possibly be before actually dying which in a sense seems like he did more. for iunstance if he saw god and was immortal than the stuff he did would seem easy. like i wouldn't be impressed if i saw hercules lift up a wagon. but the fact that he stayed mortal the entire time meant he had to deal with a lot more. the endurance and success he had as a mortal made it monumentally greater than if he was considered something else...
-good post chaz
icecream
Interesting stuff about seeing the face of God. This is related to the idea of his name being "unpronounceable", beyond the limits of language, which we will see when we get to Borges. You're talking about the ineffable here, something that transcends both out capacity to see (we can't see the face of God) as well as the descriptive capacity of language (we can't pronounce his/her name). Does Bolívar (or any other writer of literature for that matter) try to attain this godliness, this inexpressibility through his writing? Could the idea of not naming God, indirectly be a more accurate way of making reference to him/her?
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