Roberto Calasso - Literature and the Gods

An immense distance separates the from the lógos of Saint John’s Gospel. Lógos is articulate discourse, a concatenation of meanings. is the irreducible vibration that precedes meaning, composes meaning, but is not absorbed into it. When , the Great Syllable, is identified in a sound, that sound is om , which is an interjection, not a noun. Om is “the syllable that expresses assent.” Before stating anything about the world, gestures its acceptance of the world. The very moment it sets out to articulate, the word approves the world. And that moment will remain forever pre-eminent over whatever meaning is then attributed to the world, just as the moment of waking stands out from the flow of consciousness that follows. And still today, “the cry OM! is the commonest sound heard at the sacrifice.” An incessant “yes” encompasses every gesture and every word. That “yes” to all existence, which for Nietzsche would coincide with the revelation of the eternal return, had always been there throughout every Vedic rite, its sound halo.

From the syllable one passed, imperceptibly, into the meters. The Vedic meters were the first example of the worship of form. And it was a pure form, an empty form that preceded any meaning because itself invested with the highest meaning of all: “Oh Gāyatrī, you have one foot, two feet, three feet, four feet; you do not have feet [pad] , because you don’t fall [you do not perish, na padyase].”

But if the meter does not perish, what about those who use it? Mounting on the meters, the gods conquered the heavens — immortality. And men? Beside the “unborn” gods there are gods who achieved their state “with actions.” Could men do it too then? “The immortal has the same origin as the mortal,” say the hymns. So the Vedic seers didn’t exclude this eventuality. But has it ever happened? At least once — or so we are cryptically told. And to three brothers, the Rbhus. Their names were Vāja, , Vibhvan. “Sons of men,” like everybody else, but unusual for their eyes, because they had “eyes of sun,” , like the gods. Their family name includes the r- which designates that which is well articulated: above all , the “order” that is “truth.” The heraldic word of the brothers was -, “to fashion,” the same word used to describe the syllable that “fashions” the meters and the waters. Before anything else they were great craftsmen: carpenters, blacksmiths. For the Aśvins they fashioned a three-wheeled chariot that roamed the heavens without reins. They made it “with the mind, with thought,” mánasas pári dhyáyā . For Indra they caused two bay horses to appear. But they also contributed to the work par excellence, which is the sacrifice: “For Agni the Rbhus fashioned sacred formulas [ bráhma ].” which men then used in their rites. So those who sacrifice today consider themselves “children of the .”

In the end, with the strength of their works, they conquered the heavens. Not because they were devoted to form, but because they practiced the devotion that is form: “By means of the arts by which you gave form to the cup, by means of the invention by which you made the cow from hide, by means of the thought with which you composed the two bay horses, by means of all this you three have achieved divine status.”

Stella Kramrisch wrote of them: “The are the archetype of the artist.” Of the kind of life they led on earth we know very little: once they fashioned a cow from cowhide and reunited “the mother with the calf.” When their parents were left lying on the ground, like “sacrificial poles decomposing,” they poured youth back into them.

In the heavens, Indra and the Aśvin twins welcomed the as friends. They had a great deal in common. But the other gods were generous too, conceding the the third libation in the sacrifice. This is all the more remarkable since, having achieved immortality, the gods had always been spiteful and treacherous towards men. Never did they show greater zeal than when wiping out the last traces of their successful sacrifice on earth so that men wouldn’t be able to follow suit. But this happy ending in coelestibus was not, as it turns out, the end of the brothers’ story. That would have been too straightforward, too clear, too unambiguous. And no artist’s story is ever straightforward, clear, and unambiguous. Paradoxically, although they’d made it to the heavens, the had not yet accomplished their real work. Getting there had just been a preparation. Now came the big gamble. One day, “having wandered about a great deal,” the arrived “in the house of the sacrificer Savitr.” A little-known god, Savitr is the Impeller, the Agohya , “he from whom nothing can be hidden.” It was Savitr who gave the the seal of immortality. And it was in his house that the slept for twelve days, a prodigious suspension of time, during the winter solstice. Thanks to that sacred hibernation the grass would sprout again on the earth far away when winter was over. The brothers were woken by a dog, who was the celestial Dog. But the most important thing that happened at house was that the , who were human craftsmen, met , the divine Craftsman, jealous custodian of the soma . Thus began the most mysterious phase of their lives. What we know of it is fragmentary and comes without a shred of explanation. As follows: the cup from which the gods and drank the soma was unique. It was the only one. The looked at it, studied it. Then they “reproduced that cup of the Asura [ ] that was unique four times over.” How did they do it? By taking careful measurements: using their art, which was māyā , “the measuring magic,” as the illuminating translation of Lilian Silburn puts it. eyes gaped when he saw “those four cups, shining like new days.” And at once he said: “We shall kill them, these men who have profaned the divine cup of the soma.” Quite what happened next is not clear. Female shadows appear on the scene. Of it is said that he took refuge among the wives of the gods. Of the we hear that “they led the maiden to safety, under another name.” But we don’t know who the maiden was. Only one thing do we know for sure: those four shining cups, perfect copies of the unique cup, ruined forever the relationship between the gods and those first artists, those first men to share divine immortality. The had trespassed too far into the place where fetish and reflection grow together and part. So long as the unique exists, the simulacrum is its prisoner within. But no sooner are the cups multiplied than an unstoppable cataract of simulacra rains down from the sky. The world has lived off them ever since — all this was hardly likely to please the gods; for if the copy cancels out the unique, then in the wake of the copy comes death. What are the first simulacra if not images and apparitions of the dead? Which takes us back to that long-lost time when the gods too trod the earth, as mortals. It wasn’t something they wanted to be reminded of.