Questions without answers

"We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -T.S. Eliott

I think I've type this quote for just about every other blog I've written this semester but I feel like it fits yet again. It's been a couple weeks since I finished The Magus so sifting though its pages again tonight has brought be back to exactly where I started- confused and desperately grasping for something that is just out of my understanding. This is a feeling that I have gotten for quite a while now in this class. Its a lot like the sensation of having a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can't remember except on deeper level. I feel like I am reaching out in to a cloud of mist and there is something- a big, important, possibly omnipotent idea or answer- right beyond my intellectual fingertips. I can guess what it is too- the answer to the question posed during one of our first classes together:

"Given things as they are how shall one individual live?"- Annie Dillard

The problem is (as much as I don't I don't want to believe it) I don't think there is a definite answer. I fear that the answer I am reaching for is nothing more than a wisp of smoke- translucent and insubstantial. My questions have no answers.

Central to The Magus are the subjects of questions, answers, truths, fiction, and reality. Throughout the novel the reader (and Nicholas for that mater) are lead to believe many things which are later discovered to be fictions. I use the word fiction here instead of lies because, though I know that the majority of the novel was characters acting instead of behaving "honestly," I feel that the line between "truth" and "lies" has been blurred.

"Human truths are always complex" (Fowles 231)

The idea that truths (specifically designated as human truths here) can be complex seems like a contradiction. If its true then (logically) there should be no complexity... but yet there is. Humanity isn't simple; neither is understanding what is true. Is there such a thing as absolute truth? What is truth? A dictionary will tell you that truth is the quality of being true and the definition of true is that it agrees with reality. The etymology of truth (here) links the word back to the Mercian word "treowd" meaning "faithfulness, quality of being true" and from "triewe, treowe" which means "faithful." So if truth is linked with faith... well that is a mind bender.

 "Never take another human being literally." (Fowles 231)

 Ahh the literal. As we already know the literal is linked with the anagogical. What I think this particular quote is talking about falls more alone the lines of a person being more than the sum of it's parts. What they are is more than you can understand from your usual surface view. In reality, though we have shared a class twice a week for almost two months now none of you really "know" me. That's ok of course because there is more to people than the literal; so of what they portray is lies other things just never come up. The Billy Joel song The Stranger comes to mind as a good example of this. (For those of you unfamiliar it is linked here.)

"Nothing is true;everything is permitted" (Fowles 529)

Great. Now even if I could understand exactly what truth is now there is no truth...

 "But in the godgame we start from the premise that in reality all is fiction, yet no single fiction is necessary." (Fowles 627)

If reality is actually fiction in the "godgame" then what is real? Is anything real? Or because there is no truth then there is no reality? Can there be reality if there is no truth?

"And the one common feature of all the gods he has said it to is that not one of them has ever returned an answer."
"Gods don't exist to answer. You do."
"I am not going to venture where even the gods are powerless. You must think that I know every answer. I do not." (Fowles 185)


Even the gods and the "Magician" doesn't know the answers. I've asked quite a few questions in the post but doubt greatly if I will come to any answers. This irks me slightly. I want to know the answers; that's why I asked the questions. I want to believe in truth and reality and that someday my questions will be answered.

"An answer is always a form of death... I think questions are a form of life." (Fowles 626)


If life is questions and death is answers, then do we die because we know the answers? We talked earlier about answers being a death to possibility and knowledge. When we get the answer we no longer think about it or learn about it any more.
What if in death do we find all the answers? I hope this one is true. I am ok with spending my life asking questions. Would I like the answers? Of course. But I can hold off a while on finding the answers to my big questions if understanding them means the end of this journey.