36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein Page B

journalist. But do, please, have a care for my suffering sensibilities! Now it is Darwinism with which I must contend.” He turned his head away so that his mournful countenance fell upon the non-Darwinians in the room. “As I have oft warned those of you who have any proclivity to receive my instruction, most of what passes for science is merest scientism.”
    The moments while Klapper spoke had at first borne the true marker of a nightmare: too perfect a realization of one’s worst fears not to be a dream delivered sizzling from hell. Horrible disbelief was followed by far more horrible belief, and for the remaining hours of this first meeting of “The Sublime, the Subliminal, and the Self,” as Jonas Elijah Klapper’s voice continued without interruption, not even Gideon Raven hazarding a comment, Cass sat unmoving, unhearing, almost unexisting, deliquescing into a numbness that approached the state of being nothing at all.
    The two-and-a-half-hour seminar was drawing to a close. Professor Klapper was speaking of next week’s assignment, Aristotle’s
Poetics
.
    “…
answering the challenge that his discarded teacher, Plato, issued after he had symbolically, if not diabolically, banished the poet from his city of reason. As Plato wrote in his
Republic”
—Klapper was staring off into the inscribed distance—“‘Let us, then, conclude our return to the topic of poetry and affirm that we really had good grounds then for dismissing her from our city, … for reason constrained us. And let us further say to her, lest she condemn us for harshness and rusticity, that there is from of old a quarrel between philosophy and poetry.’ I skip over a few lines here, not from lack of recall but lack of relevance, and proceed:
‘
But nevertheless let it be declared that, if the mimetic and dulcet poetry can show any reason for her existence in a well-governed state, we would gladly admit her, since we ourselves are very conscious of her spell.’
    “Now, my creatures of sweetness and light”—this was one of his endearments for his students—“it is in the context of this gauntlet flung down by Plato that Aristotle’s
Poetics
must be read. Aristotle is answeringthe older philosopher’s challenge by pragmatically—I use the word in the sense of William James, which is my own as well—connecting it to psychopoiesis.”
    Cass recognized the word from his summer studies of the twenty-eight tomes. Psychopoiesis. Soul-making. The coinage was, so far as Cass knew, Klapper’s own, struck out of the ancient Greek.
    “Poetry is in the business of psychopoiesis at least as much as philosophy is. And if I might be permitted, humbly, to stand between Plato and Aristotle and offer my emendation, you will hear me fervently whispering ‘oh more, far more!’
    Cass was suddenly called back into himself by the pain squeezing his heart as he contemplated that all but he and the girl who had voluntarily departed under the professor’s gaze would be returning next week to hear the dialogue between Plato, Aristotle, and Jonas Elijah Klapper. Even those three undergraduate lovelies, who had managed, over the course of the seminar, to progress from chattering neophytes to wide-eyed acolytes, would be allowed to attend. He alone was to be cast out for the sin of his unclothed ignorance and arrogance.
    And then, suddenly, Jonas Elijah Klapper was addressing him again, all vestiges of vexation vanished.
    “Mr. Seltzer, I would like you most especially to pay keen attention to Aristotle’s concept of peripeteia. Would you, by blind chance or happy happenstance, happen to know what peripeteia means?”
    “Reversal of fortune.” Cass’s hoarse voice sounded unfamiliar to him. It sounded older, the voice of an ancient knowing that the best has been and will be no more.
    “Excellent! Peripeteia! Reversal of fortune! Exceedingly excellent! It’s a most un-Darwinian concept, wouldn’t you say, my dear boy? Now you are thinking! Yes,