John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Are you?” the Sunlight Man asked sharply.

Only later, sitting bent over the tape recorder in his attic, would he know what had gone before.

CLUMLY: So you came. ( Long pause.) So you came.

SUNLIGHT (angrily): What are you fiddling with, there inside your shirt?

Ah yes, of course. I might have known. Very well, just as you please. (He laughs. Then, soberly, his anger suppressed now:) As I said on the phone, we have problems to talk about. As you know, I let one of your prisoners out. I’m afraid I didn’t anticipate the complications his … enthusiasm … would introduce. (Laughs grimly. Pause.) We now have on our hands, you and I, two murders. I thought it might be helpful if we could come to an understanding of our rather different positions. I respect you, you see. But I’m in fundamental disagreement with your philosophy of life. I thought if our two stands were clearer, perhaps … Are you listening? (Enraged:) — Are you?

CLUMLY: Yes yes! What?

SUNLIGHT (after a long pause, in control again): My feelings about murder are ambivalent. It’s antisocial, granted. But then, society itself can be murderous. I’m an authority on that. Let me tell you about ancient Mesopotamia.

CLUMLY: What?

SUNLIGHT (in the voice of a lecturer): You’re familiar, I suppose, with the conflict of the Old Testament Jews and the Babylonians? Our whole culture is a product of the Jewish point of view, and we tend to take their side without bothering to reflect. But the Babylonians were an interesting people. Consider their ideas about the gods—”sticks and stones,” the Jews used to call them. What do you think of when you think of God?

CLUMLY: Why, I think … ( Pause.) This is very irregular!

SUNLIGHT: Yes.

CLUMLY: I think of (pause) a spirit.

SUNLIGHT: Excellent! Exactly! That’s the Jewish point of view. But the Babylonians saw the matter quite differently, if I’m not mistaken. All the evidence we have — fragments, representations, clay replicas, even literary evidence — indicates that the Babylonian gods were conceived as actually residing in their images, effective only within the substance of their images. As ineffective without the physical image as a radio wave without a radio to receive it. You follow me, I take it. You see how clearly I explain things. A talent I have. Very well then. The images. Excuse me, but I must expand on this. You’ll soon see the reason. All right. The gods. They were made of rock or of precious wood and covered with fine garments and plated with gold. For eyes they had precious stones — sometimes really magnificent stones — huge rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. Dressed very much, I might mention, in the style of Mesopotamian kings. Distinctly. A point which gains importance when we observe that their temples were arranged and adorned exactly in the manner of the kings’ palaces — with one significant exception, of which I may speak, if I remember, sometime later. They were not kings, however. To modern eyes some of them looked like artistic representations of certain human ideals — the dignity of old age, the innocence of youth, the technical struggles of the craftsman, and so forth — or sometimes they looked like representations of ideals beyond human understanding: Amu, the Sumerian sky god, for instance, was misanthropic, and Enlil (or Illil, as some texts say), the underworld god, was totally indifferent to man. Curious? As for gods reflecting aspects of the human condition, some were perfectly clear and reasonable in meaning — some were representative of the grace and majesty of femininity, for instance — but others were baffling, for example the bull-shaped son of Samas, with idiot’s eyes and a crown of unbelievable splendor. What were such creatures worshipped for? we ask. What the devil did they mean? But of course we don’t ask it very seriously, coming, as we do, from the Judeo-Christian line. We appreciate the noble mystery of whirlwind-voiced Jehovah, all-powerful, all-knowing, as irresistible and unknowable as the universe itself, a God in whom, as in the universe itself, the ends meet and all seeming contradictions form an order, or so we prayerfully trust — an order merely too vast for human understanding. He he he! (Soberly:) We appreciate even the Eastern Buddhas, in whom confusion is resolved to an unearthly smile, that is to say, a renunciation of substance and all the Manyness which clings to it — the exultant pale smile of victory that comes from withdrawal from this world of mutual conflict into the oneness of flawless spirit. The East and West come together at least in this: they are both of them rational, succinct with the dignity of mind’s separation from matter. But the ancient Middle, that’s something else!

Listen! Consider with your soft Judeo-Christian eyes the flat absurdity of the Mesopotamian gods. They’re man-sized. Think of it! Not huge and awe-inspiring, like the greatest of the Buddhas in China or the forests of India. And neither can we excuse them as we excuse the manettes, the household images, the icons of sensible societies: our small images of holiness are not worshipped as holy in themselves, they are symbolic reminders of the larger, grander Buddhas of the forest, or humble symbols of the unspeakable, itself by no means humble. The Mesopotamian gods, on the other hand, reside in their images, and the images are nothing more, nothing less, than dolls. Hacked out by men, dressed, painted, adorned by human hands. They play house. They eat breakfast, dinner, supper — served by their priests. They are undressed every night, put to bed with their wives, re-dressed in the morning. They go to parties, they ride into battle on gilded litters, they even ride horses and occasionally go out, with the help of priests, on hunts! Fantastic. Imbecilic! Surely the people who worship them must be insane! No wonder the Old Testament prophets pour out the acid of their derision on the idol and its maker. Who but a halfwit Mesopotamian, some blundering antique Arab, would believe it! And yet think of this: the religion survived for thousands of years, it was embraced by some of the greatest generals who have ever fought on the face of the earth, and some of the greatest poets, magicians, statesmen, artists, and, above all, architects. Were they all doubters? Were they all fools in one huge area of their experience? Unbelievable!

(A pause. He calms himself, then continues.) Consider the feast of the gods. We have a number of cuneiform descriptions, luckily. A table was brought in and placed before the image, then water for washing was offered in a bowl. A number of liquid and semiliquid dishes in appropriate serving vessels were placed on the table in a prescribed arrangement, and containers with beverages were set out. Next, specific cuts of meat were served as a main dish. Finally, fruit was brought in in what one of the texts takes the trouble to describe as a beautiful arrangement, thus adding an aesthetic touch comparable to the Egyptian use of flowers on such occasions. Musicians performed, and the cella was fumigated. Fumigation was not to be considered a religious act but — an important detail — a table custom to dispel the odor of food. Eventually, the table was cleared and removed and water in a bowl again offered to the image for cleansing of the fingers. Having been presented to the image, the dishes from the god’s meal were sent to the king for his consumption. Always and only to the king, you understand — except in one case, as far as we know. Never mind. Clearly the food offered to the deity was considered blessed by contact with the divine and capable of transferring that blessing to the person who was to eat it. Baffling, isn’t it! Come now, you must admit that the whole thing’s incredible.