Discoveries in Multiple Kinds of Sacred Space
Finding a new Abiola Irele Essay Amidst the Cultural
Delights of Cambridge
Discovering a New Abiola Irele Essay : An Invitation to Delights of Conceptual Density and Stylistic Creativity
I am writing this to announce to anybody who is interested that I just discovered a new essay by the philosopher, literary and cultural critic Abiola Irele.
Why should I be so happy to discover an essay by anyone? Is he a writer whose work has long been out of circulation and badly needs organization into an accessible format? Is it like a Vincent van Gogh work, one of those lost Van Gogh sketches, perhaps one of those he gave up to a landlord in payment for rent in the hungry years when he was building his art, a discovery that could net me a fortune? Imagine the irony-Van Gogh died desperately poor in 1890, of a self inflicted gunshot wound in a sanatorium. Yet, when an airline a few years ago wanted to advertise how much they can save companies that fly with them, they did not use any words. They simply showed the picture of a Van Gogh painting as the value of what could be gained by using their services. . Van Gogh has become so priced that many museums cannot afford his work. Is the discovery of the Irele essay in that magnitude of fortune?
Not in a monetary sense.
Irele is very much alive and well at Kwara Sate University in Nigeria [ This essay was written in 2013. The master transitioned in 2017]. The essay is in a modern book in a bookshop just down the road from the central public library in Cambridge. I feel fulfilled because it means that I have seen an Irele essay I did not know about before.
Why is an Irele essay important to me and possibly to others?
It is so because Irele's writing is great in conceptual density and stylistic creativity. Anything written by Irele is an event. His sentences and paragraphs constitute research projects, so loaded are the lines with ideas, a radiant dynamism of ideation and expression evoking glimpses of a cognitive universe beyond, of which the sentence is a peak rising above a vast world lying beneath.
Correlative Sacred Spaces : Places of Worship and Places of Learning
Where did I see this essay?
I came across it as I was browsing through the Cambridge University Press flagship bookshop on Trinity Street, Cambridge. I had settled down to work in the Cambridge Central Library when I became restless and decided to go for a walk. I have learnt that such restlessness is often productive. It means my spirit wants to show me something. I put it that way because that need to wander towards an unknown destination always leads to inspiring discoveries.
Cambridge bookshops and Cambridge college chapels and churches are two correlative forms of sacred space, the spatial density of both within the city centre evoking most powerfully the alliance of spiritual seeking and learning that is at the centre of the history of the university city. The cloistered silence, the magnificent interiors of the chapels and churches encase wonderful spaces where the mind can roam at will in seeking that which is not named yet is the mother of the ten thousand things, to evoke the philosopher Lao tzu in his Tao te Ching.
These explicitly sacred structures resonate ( a word I learnt from Irele through the term "articulated resonance" describing the task of the literary critic in his "The Criticism of Modern African Literature") with the cathedral splendour of the bookshop, be it Heffers, with its magnificent cascades of shelving, located on Trinity Street, the same street housing the ancient façade of Trinity College, where Isaac Newton would have taken his solitary walks pondering celestial immensities, his mind revolving with the orbits of the celestial bodies, capturing those grand revolutions in numerical relationships and precise verbal descriptions now known as the theory of gravity. " So I walk the same streets as the master of space", would be my thought as I lay my hand on the ancient door to Trinity.
The intimate grandeur of the Magdalene College chapel, in its balance of grace and radiant dignity, evokes the contained splendour of Waterstones bookshop, on Sidney Street, itself echoing, by contrast, the now vanished spaces of the colossus of bookshops, Borders, which, in comparison with the more limited spatial aspirations of other bookshops, recalls the absolute command of space, the transformation of the surrounding landscape into the awesome depths of oceanic infinity, an impression created by the sheer bulk and awesome grace of that structure resting on the desert sands, as one observer describes the experience of confronting the wonder of the ancient world represented by the Pyramids of Giza, Borders, whose death was one of the great losses of the world, the end of a wonder of civilization.
The jewels of the Oxfam bookshop further down on Sidney Street, the density of texts in the Amnesty International bookshop on Mill Road, the treasures of G. David beside the watching gravestones congregating in the churchyard of St. Edward's Passage, the wonderful bargains of the Angel Bookshop and the eye opening, never ending discoveries of the market booksellers, the uncompromising wealth of the cognitive density and sheer expansiveness of the Cambridge University Press Bookshop, all these recall the wealth concealed in the resonant silence of St. Bene'ts church on Bene't street, small in space but manifesting a core of silence that evokes unspeakable treasures at the intersection of the source of being and the world of becoming.
These bibliophilic luminaries imply that I am like a person faced by an awesome landscape as described by Immanuel Kant on the Sublime in his Critique of Judgement, reduced to smallness by the sheer scope of variegated possibility, and yet vastened by the enlargement of self represented by the self reaching out to embrace this ever expanding universe of knowledge.
The Cambridge University Press Bookshop
It was in that spirit I stumbled on the Cambridge Companion to the African Novel. edited by Abiola Irele. Ahhhh Irele...hmmmm, it would be good to see what he has to say about the African novel, particularly at this point in time. When was it published? 2009. Not too far away, not very near either.
Looked through the list of contents. Saw Dan Izevbaye, one of those who defined the landscape of writing about African literature some years ago. Saw Ato Quayson, who has written some theoretically rich and sophisticated works I have come across. Looked quickly through the others. I put the book down. Will come back for it later. Looked at other books.The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism. Very promising. Mysticism, the idea that it is possible to experience God directly, face to face, to put it in one way. Anything on African mysticism? None on display nor do I expect any in publication here. A new field, which I intend to contribute to building [ I have begun with these essays : "Mystical Theory and Experience Across Cultures" Part 1 and Part 2]. Any other books on mysticism? Yes, I am told. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism and another on mysticism and negative theology-the idea that God is best described in terms of what he is not rather than of what he is, to summarize one definition.
Saw the names of the immortal greats in literature, theology etc- Cambridge Companion to Kafka,Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth etc. "When are you going to publish a companion to my work?", I feel like asking the booksellers with a very serious face, the way that the other day, grasping the Dictionary of Fellows of the Society of Engineers at the Oxfam bookshop, I challenged the bookseller "Why is my name not here?!" The man laughed. Or the time in the bookshop in Finchely, London, when, with a dead earnest face, I queried the bookseller, "When are you going to carry copies of my book?!" The poor man thought I was serious until I explained the joke.
Went upstairs. How, in the name of God, am I going to cart all these books to my library? Imagine the empowering wonder of being surrounded by all these books, from mathematics, to physics, to philosophy of science, to ecology to architecture, to philosophy and more. Imagine if they were all mine, safely enthroned in my own space, to be read at will. Imagine what I would become!
I had to ask the bookseller on the top floor, "Does your publishing house give book advances?" Perhaps I could join this select club of authors and be fortunate enough to make some money in the process. "No. The books are not expected to sell in large numbers, so only a small print run is anticipated for each book, relatively few copies of less than a thousand are expected to be printed, and will be bought by institutional collections. In such a tight market, not much money is being made, even by the Press. The best the Press can do is give royalties. People don't publish with Cambridge to make money. Its is the brand. The prestige. Keeping that in mind, the brand is so carefully monitored each book goes through a panel of assessors to determine if it is a book we should publish in terms of its contribution to knowledge".
True. It truly is grand. I see the books are so rich, so powerful that even with their often daunting prices it is clear you have to read them if that is your formal field of study or interest. It is beyond compromise. Anything else would be self cheating. Cambridge UP has such a solid grounding in hard core knowledge in various fields that their books are unavoidable..
There is this absolutely mouthwatering series the Cambridge History of Science. Fantastically rich in scope and perspectives, described as the "first comprehensive history of science in 30 years...The contributors, world leaders in their respective specialties, engage with current historiographical and methodological controversies and strike out on positions of their own", yet the price of even one volume of the eight volume work, the cheapest being £100, does not seem to call out for immediate purchase as you are drawn to it.
"Exactly. That kind of book would have been worked on by many contributors over a long period of time", the bookseller responds. "How is such a work to be priced? Who is expected to read it? Who will buy it? It will be read, it will be bought but its direction is specialized and those institutions that must have it as part of their foundations of knowledge have budgets for such acquisitions", is my summary of the bookseller's further justification of the Press' strategy. "We produce works that constitute the very foundations of knowledge in various disciplines, the inescapable summative and critical engagement with both the cutting edge and the state of the field within both historical and contemporary lenses in each field, the bedrock on which other works stand", is how I sum up the vision of his presentation of the vision of Press, and he concurs.
Books, Cookers, Suits and Shoes
Aga Range Cookers were on display a short distance from the library. Constructed with the power of trucks and the elegance of a modern jet. Price- £10,000. Hire purchase-£250 down payment and about £150 or slightly above monthly payment. According to the salesman, they last for generations. An Aga kitchen is associated with a certain kind of person and a certain kind of home. For some people, it is a way of signalling they they have arrived, is his summation of the meaning of the brand.
Loakes Shoes,with the sleek lines of a jaguar and the feel of tender power, in the Charles Clinkard shop near the library are priced at almost £200 and above. I see people wearing such shoes. Some of the nearby Charles Tyrwhitt's suits, solid, delicately cut, are labelled £229 and £349.
On the online Style Forum, discussing men's shoes, someone comments: "I am thinking to go for C&J Hallam in black. This is my first pair of Oxford. Do you think the front of the shoe(toe cap?) look[s] a bit weird? Is the price of USD333 reasonable?"
Moving from the Web back to Cambridge, away from the city centre past King's College, you get to Ede and Ravenscroft opposite Corpus Christi College on Trumpington Street. Quietly powerful with the potent elegance of the suits on display. You are confronted with a world whose distinctiveness is evident, distinct even from the costly elegance of the shops on the high end Grand Arcade where you find Anga, Loakes and Charles Tyrwhitt. At this point, you have entered a lifestyle enculturation zone, where you distinguish between the suit for weekend wear and the suit for formal wear. For the weekend, you are spending about £400 and above for a suit and £295 for an umbrella walking stick . For a suit for formal wear, you spend £450 to £550.
Beyond the pedigreed world of Ede and Ravenscroft is the uncompromising focus on elegance at the highest pitch at Anthony on Trinity Street, where all other Cambridge clothes shops are dwarfed in terms of price and perhaps in sheer refinement of the art of men's clothing. The ties, the shirts, the jackets, are obvious expressions of a pinnacle in the glory of clothing, that transformation of necessity into art central to much of civilization.
"You could buy a suit here for a £1,000 but it would be a very good suit" the man in charge inside Anthony dressed in the sharp but sober accents evident in the display on the shop window declares. The shop's offerings are largely Italian and are clearly different from anything else in shop window displays in Cambridge, even though it stocks the same standard line of suits, jackets and ties as the others but with a touch that stands out with a subtle and yet definite uniqueness. "Do you think Italians demonstrate more style than the English?" I ask him? "Of course. The Italians do not compromise. They are in a different class entirely" is my understanding of his response. "If someone wished to shop at the best place in Italy for the most elegant attire, without the trouble of flying there – Anthony's is the perfect service" is the testimonial of Professor A.Gibson, Cambridge, on their website.
I never fail to notice and stop to gape with veneration at the window display. "This is how a human being should be clothed", is the impression it gives me. Clothed in fabrics and a flawlessly stylish cut that reflects the serene perfection of the art of nature as demonstrated in the human frame. Beside the gloriously sharp shirt and eloquent delicacy of the ribbon that is the tie beside it, is the statement of the monetary value of this arrival at true recognition of how to honor the human being through sartorial culture:
"Canali suit: £995; Canali silk jacket: £795; Working watch cufflinks- small watches in the form of cufflinks: £95".
"Anthony is a shop that brings the essence of Bond Street and quality of Savile Row to Cambridge" states their website. You need to experience the concentrated sophistication of the commercial and lifestyle nexus that is Bond Street in London to grasp the point being made, added to the evocation of Savile Row as the heart of the most exclusive menswear industry in England.
The Savile Row reference leads you to another world entirely, where "your needs, hopes and desires" for your suit are crafted into the suit, handmade especially for you alone, with suits in the "golden mile of tailoring" as Wikipedia puts it, starting at around £3,000.
One totally bespoke or total tailor made suit outfit in Cambridge is Tailor and Cutter in the exotic sinuous weave of All Saints Passage, the shop space evoking nothing more than the workmanlike innards of a workshop, an eschewing of elegance understood by the cognoscenti as a focus on process leading to an exquisite product, a product that is so unique no example needs to represent it in the name of a window display. An outfit so confident of their clientele and image, they don't bother to use email. The customer base finds you even outside of such modern innovations, or so I had thought, until I saw their mail address on their website.
On inquiry, I am told a jacket would cost about £800, a two piece suit £1,200. The Savoy Taylors Guild/Moss Bros opposite the imposing beauty of St. John's college chapel tower on St. John's Street describes this process in its formula "Go Bespoke from £295" : "Customise your cut ( "alter the cloth to flatter your shape"). Choose your cloth (" Choose the fabric that feels right for you"). Create your suit" ( "Add character through details that are exclusively yours"), with the powerful sartorial forms on display cut down in price in a near mid-year sale : Suit- £499 now £299; £399.
Between Limited Means and Ever Expanding Ends
So, what are we saying?
One view of economics is that it is the study of the management of scarce resources, implying that since supply and demand can never be equal and disposable income is never equal to demand, opportunity cost, whether in terms of tangibles or intangibles must be factored into all transactions. For every choice made is a price not paid? Is something not always given up to get another thing? Even a hermit who owns nothing except his life which he might not even own since he can't prevent it from ending its terrestrial existence, must pay a price to own nothing. Some Indian hermits go naked because they worship the One Who Owns Everything and therefore Possesses Nothing.
"These books are not such that they are expected to be bought by individuals. It is not expected that a person would just walk in and buy one off the shelf. That would be so for the cheaper works like the "Companion" series [ which, even then, cost more than the average book] , but the broad range of books are expected to go to institutional libraries which have budgets for such acquisitions" sums up the Cambridge University Press bookseller.
Of course, to a person like myself, such strictures do not apply. As far as I am concerned, budget or no budget, where book acquisition is concerned, I am equivalent to an institution. I will do whatever it takes to get them. In all circumstances, my library must grow. All materiel considerations, all comforts, may be postponed till tomorrow but a book missed represents opportunities lost forever. Even if the book is bought another day, the particular intersection of opportunity and capacity for illumination in the fertile soil represented by the state of the mind at the point in time when the book is first encountered cannot be regained.
What scope of finances is required to truly fulfill such a philosophy? What are the chances of acquiring such finances from within a radically bibliophilic existence? Are these questions not an analogue to the relationship between finitude and infinity? How did Dante put it at the climax of Paradiso? "I tried to understand how that contradiction could be, how the human image could fit into the Other, but it was impossible, like a geometer trying to square a circle, but a sudden light smote my understanding so that I knew, but knowing without thought" is one way of paraphrasing the wondering description of the Florentine master.
Infinity of Learning and Scope of Being
"I hold the buying of more books than one can read as nothing less than the soul's reaching towards infinity, which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts" -Anonymous- Waterstones Cambridge bookshop inscription.
J. Ki-Zerbo in the wonderful essay on "African Prehistoric Art" in the fantastic UNESCO General History of Africa Vol.I : Methodology and African Prehistory argues that the creation of art is the one cultural form that marks humanity as distinct from animals. It has been proven that animals make tools. Perhaps Ki-Zerbo is not accurate even with the focus on art. Bees are described as constructing intricate movements to signal to other bees the distance to locations of food. Is that not dance, a form of art? Philosophies of nature which do not limit sophisticated cognition to human beings are more diffident, more qualified about what constitutes the distinctively human or what represents the most valued qualities within the tapestry of nature.
To such schools of thought it is not true that nature is meaningful primarily because it comes within human comprehension, as Julian Thomas on "Archeologies of Place and Landscape" in Ian Hodder's edited Archeological Theory Today describes a point made by the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Others were here before you and have developed means of awareness and of being very different from yours and from whom you can learn, if you adapt yourself to them, such views would assert. "The Gods of the world are trees and animals, long, long before they entrust their sacrosanct magnificence to a human figure" declares Susanne Wenger in Hotter and Brockmann's Adunni: A Portrait of Susanne Wenger. Within such contexts, considerations of cultural forms and their relative value take on a different hue than in a human focused universe.
What would such views hold about the unfulfillable yearning to learn represented by the infinity of books as raising the human being above animals? I would not know but it might be held that that tree might have much to teach you that might not be available from any book. Yes, you can cut the tree down in a short time. It is defenceless to you just as you are defenceless to the vagaries of accident and the relentless entropy of time, an outcome beyond your control. Perhaps the tree and yourself exist within different but convergent universes of value, a symphony in which various harmonies conjoin to create a rhythm so blinding in its intensity we cannot see its pattern but only its units, so thinking ourselves alone in awareness of the experience of being.
Having been both made small, on account of seeing how little I am in the forest of learning, and vastened since I aspire to know as much of that forest as possible, realizing the capacity for this achievement within me, I return to the library to tell you of my adventure this morning.
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