HYPER_REALITY AND NOSTALGIA IN THE HOLY LAND
Here's my paper which I wrote for a class on travel literature in the 1600s at the Santa Fe campus of the Breadloaf School of English in 2000. Seems like an appropriate time to share this!
HYPER-REALITY AND NOSTALGIA IN THE HOLY LAND
In addition to
this act of penitence and grace, the journey to Jerusalem also held deep
mystical and legendary meaning for medieval men and women, for the scared city
was believed to be the center of the world, the omphalos or navel, the scared
hub of the world's orb. At the same time, it was the ideal of the sacred city -
for Jerusalem was both the center of Christian history, the stage of Christ's
redemptive sacrifice and resurrection, and the end of all history.
(From the
Introduction, Guide to the Holy Land, Theoderich - Ithica, 1986)
Guide to the Holy Land is a medieval
guidebook written by Theoderich, a German monk of the 12th century.
It is a text that explores the sacred geography of Jerusalem, and allows us, as
contemporary readers, to follow some of the ideologies, stories and sights
important to a twelfth century Christian pilgrim. We are led, in this process,
through the pathways of mediaeval Christian constructions of Jerusalem as a
holy city, and end up with a virtual tour of a hyperreal space built out of
exclusions, ahistoricism, mythic realism and nostalgia. Following the
constructions of space throughout this text is akin to a guided tour to the
appropriation of Jerusalem for Christianity.
Written in the detail-oriented language of
the guidebook, the text is bare of emotions, and except for the rare spiritual
epiphany, does not allow the narrator to interject his subjectivity. The book
focuses exclusively on the spatial and architectural aspects of the city,
leading people up and down buildings, churches, historical sites, stories and
relics with the same dispassionate interest. While the text is very clearly a
guidebook, it is written in a style that hails the reader as a pilgrim present,
virtually, in the space as Theoderich leads ahead through the alleyways and
city boundaries of the Holy Land. In the prologue, Theoderich writes:
"This we have done in order that, according to the best of our ability, we
may satisfy the desires of those who are unable to proceed there in describing
those things that they cannot see with their own eyes and hear with their
ears." The text, then, is a virtual tour, inscribing within its words the
sacredness of the architecture, and leading people on a tour through the
process of reading.
The Twelfth Century Renaissance, which led
to a renewed interest in the classics, as well as re-readings of the Bible,
meant Theoderich was addressing a well read audience, familiar with aspects of
the Bible. It was believed that through the act of pilgrimage, people could
reenact the sufferings of Christ and gain redemption. In addition, there was a
resurgence of popular spirituality, with interests in the relics of saints.
Medieval pilgrims re-enacted the suffering of Jesus and of the saints by
thronging to major pilgrimage sites. Jerusalem was the most popular. For people
who might not be able to make the actual physical trip, the guidebook served as
a metaphorical journey, one that brought alive the sights and sounds of a space
of sacred cosmology.
The book leads us into the maze of
buildings, providing us an exhaustive and omniscient tour. A description of The
Church of the Holy Sepulchur, takes us, step by step, through its importance, a
historical note of its royal patron, its shape, its orientation, its exterior
and interior frameworks, each door, the sepulchur, the altar, the paintings
that adorn and illustrate each Biblical event that is believed to have taken
place in that altar. The minute details of mosiac, gilt and gilded crosses
function to heighten the sense of realism that pervades the description. The
architecture, in this way, becomes constructed as a natural frame to contain the
scriptures, reproduced in the forms of quotations, which reiterate, again and
again, the death of Christ and his suffering.
The earthly Jerusalem was clearly not the
heavenly Jerusalem, built out of jewels and twelve pearly gates. And yet
pilgrimage to the earthly Jerusalem, envisioned to be the center of the world,
was seen by many to lead them to a vision of the heavenly city, fulfilling the
prophecies of the Apocalypse. The apocalyptic visions were translated, at this particular point in
history, by the first Crusaders, who had occupied the city. This military
presence and occupation is never mentioned by Theoderich, except in oblique
references. This piece of selective exclusion, we can assume, was either
because Theoderich presumed that his audience would know about the Crusades
already or because he did not want to draw attention to irregularities in his
carefully drawn picture of a naturalized Christian space.
Besides the heavenly and the earthly
Jerusalems, then, we can posit a third one: the hyperreal Jerusalem. As defined
by Baudrillard, the hyperreal is when an image no longer has a referent, no
longer has any connection with any basic reality - it becomes it own pure
simulacrum. This simulacra, or copy, has no reality behind it, other than its
own. In Theoderich's account, we see this construction of a hyperreal
Jerusalem, see this as clearly as if it were being drawn in front of our eyes,
with the words and images of Biblical references, with the selective omissions
of other religious groups, with the minute awareness to physical details that
eradicate all other realities. The city stops being an idealized space drawn on
the moorings of the ideological frameworks of Christianity, and starts to take
off as a pure simulacra.
The guidebook is constantly constructing
and reconstructing a perfect Jerusalem. The construction of space that occurs
throughout the guidebook, drawing mainly from legendary stories from the Bible,
shows us how Theoderich spatially takes over the city for Christianity. This is
a city which has been woven out of the tangled threads of many histories for
centuries, moves in and out of conflicting versions of history. By eradicating
all political, economic and religious ambiguities, and highlighting very simple
narratives taken from the Bible, Theoderich manages to construct an elegantly
reductive version of history, using the architecture as "proof" and
historical evidence of their actual occurrence. The ordering of space, in this
way, becomes linked to the ordering of a atemporal History. This
epistemological takeover of the city for Christianity becomes a symbolic part of the Crusades, even though the
author refuses to draw a linkage to his ostensibly spiritual project, and their
"political" one.
Theoderich, drawing upon the historical
understandings of his time, places Jerusalem at the center of the world. The
world, envisioned as a mandala-like circle, places Asia at the top, Europe at
the bottom, and Jerusalem at the center of this circle. The orientation of this
map reflects the importance people put on the centrifugal energy that drew and
attracted all sources of power to the Holy Land. Readers, thus, are
interpollated as pilgrims, real or virtual, present or potential, into this
religious and spiritual mapping of geographical space.
Like all pilgrims, they needed a guide, a
map, a bounded route and a translator in order to show them the correct path,
and to dechiper the meanings of unfamiliar signs and symbols. By serving as
guide, Theoderich not only creates the itinerary of the pilgrimage and
determines the pathways the potential pilgrims will take, but he also has a
hand in the policing of meaning that goes with any act of translation. As the
authority on the boundaries of the Holy Land, he has authoritarian control in
deciding which monument is important enough to be on the tour, why a relic has
meaning, why a certain sight should be illustrated with that story, and not any
other. In the introduction, we are told that his guidebook was one of a kind,
an eyewitness, personalized account unusual for the time. His striking emphasis
and knowledge of architecture - which has led people to hypothesize that he
might have had some training in the field - and his usage of it as
"material proof" and rack on which to hang certain mythic stories,
shows as the power the author has in shaping meaning even in a seemingly
innocuous genre like a guidebook.
Architecture, in Theoderich's hand, becomes
conflated with Evangelical significance and meaning. The architecture is used
to reproduce a specific ideology of Christianity - Jesus was murdered by the
Jews, he suffered, and this is all inscribed in the rooms, the steps, the
mundane details of the buildings. In the very first chapter, we learn that two
Roman princes have driven out the "murderers" of Christ out of their
own land to live among foreigners, and many of the names of places have been
changed.
We are given no information about any
conflicting claims on religious monuments made by the large Jewish and Muslim
populations living within the city. Jerusalem's sacredness has been
appropriated by Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups for their own ideological
purposes for millenia, but we only get oblique references to this, as in the
story of the Temple of Solomon, which is built and razed and rebuilt through
successive regimes of Christians and Jews. This careful construction of
boundaries, architecturally and symbolically, around the terrain of meaning
sets up an invisible wall around the dangerous Other, who are never addressed except
as passive background figures, or dangerous infidels - potential but containable threats.
The emphasis on spatial clarity and
organization, ironically, also functions to obfuscate the complex political and
economic structures of the Holy Land. Jerusalem, as a trading city, located in
the crossroads of commerce, was mined with economic and political interests. In
the introduction, we are told that the pilgrims often came back loaded with
trade goods, including slaves, that would offset their travel expenses, but we
are not told who they traded with. What were the sectarian linkages in that
time and place? Who traded with whom, and for what purpose? All of this is
obfuscated, and lost, in the myriad of small details that make up the image of
a land replete with buildings, and absent of human presence.
Nostalgia, according to Baudrillard,
assumes its full meaning when the real is no longer what it used to be. As
Jerusalem was stirred by the turmoils of the Crusades, the moral line between
right and wrong, between the oppressors and victims must have become muddier.
Could the Christians have avoided internal moral questionings as they tried to
take possession of the city, bringing conflict and a military regime to the
Holy Land? It is in this moment of crisis, when the holiness of the land, made
sacred by Christ's suffering, threatens to disappear under the suffering of the
ostensible "oppressors", that the reality principle must have become
less absolute. And it is in this moment of crisis when there is the clearest
imperative for nostalgia, for bringing up the loss of what used to be, but
perhaps never was. It is, in this moment, that it is most important to
ressurect the figurative, and this is what Theoderich does with such immense
power.
His guidebook, in this way, comes alive
with the myths of the Bible. We are told about the cradle where Christ used, we
are given Mary's lock of hair, we are shown the Cross on which he died. There
is no way to refute the materiality of such absolute evidence. In fact, the
mythical figures are much more vivid, present and alive than the real human
beings who live and farm in the land at that moment in time. Nostalgia, again
is in evidence, through this fetishization of the lost object. A nostalgic
sacredness is constructed by privileging of this mythological history. This
privileging serves a double function by inflicting symbolic violence against
the Other until they are virtually erased, while at the same time heightening
the "reality" of the Biblical tales. By making the Jews invisible,
and voiceless, for instance, he can them proceed to tell miraculous tales like
the one where the Jew who tries to tear Mary's shroud from her dead body sees
his arms wither without loss of realism. Architectural solidity forms an unshakable
foundation for the miracles.
Jerusalem, in this narrative act,
turns into a clean museum, a theme park of Christianity. The Holy Land is
captured and memoralized as a trendy and fashionable relic through the
preservationist attempts of the text. It is a city consisting of a few iconic
buildings. There is no cityscape, no bazzars, no life beyond that of the ones
that Theoderich selectively maps onto his bounded space. Even the peripheral
cities, which are given some marginal afterthought, seem to appear only in
order to validate the center. The outsiders who are recognized, are placed
within the proper place in the hierarchy within the map of Christianity. It is
a text that manages, every effectively, to control its alien Others through a
ethnocentric and Eurocentric frame.
Pilgrimage,
a seemingly innocuous cultural phenomena, was used as a process of staking a
claim, and putting up boundaries, around a spiritual center. The military
regime protected the pilgrims that moved about the city. Pilgrims, by becoming
part of the symbolic landscape, validate the sanctity of geography, and also
gave a reason for militarization. Human beings were needed in order to stake a
claim to possession, whether spiritual, religious or economic, and pilgrims
fulfilled these function in mass, voluntary numbers. The Holy Land, in addition
to other material resources, also lay claim to producing holiness - a commodity
that could produce spiritual benefits to the one doing the consuming, and
therefore, worth fighting for.
Theoderich
ends as he began - with no definitive beginning, or closure. His is a truncated
account, with no explanation of the process of arriving and leaving. His
interest in pilgrimage as an unmediated interaction between the Holy Land and
the pilgrim, points to his belief that spiritual development is attainable
without mediation. As a universalized, complete, definitive, text on the Holy
Land, his book provides a self help guide in that direction. His text closes
with a reiteration of his original purpose: that the mind of the pilgrim might
awaken with love for Christ with the knowledge gained about the Holy Land. The
circularity, and echoing of purpose, in some way points to a non-linear
framework where time has not progressed, and re-echoes his view of an atemporal historical space
within his narrative.
The function of a travel narrative is often
to create a fabulous world that prepares people for a material reality. Through
expectation, people come to demand what has been given to them virtually. By
this subtle act of claiming - through nostalgia, and through an ending of
history - Theoderich stakes a claim on Jerusalem for Christianity, and in the
process delegitimizes the claims of all other groups on its physical and symbolic
terrain.
I wrote this paper for "TRAVEL LITERATURE THROUGH THE 1600s," which I took during a summer at the Santa Fe Campus of the Breadloaf School of English in 2000.
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