Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past…
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
-T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton I
I could not stop thinking about this passage while reading and I believe it raises several interesting observations/questions about our Connecticut Yankee and Camelot:
*The new Camelot which Hank is building literally is ‘time future contained in time past’.
*Does time travel make time redeemable?
*If the past is eternally present, then are we really constantly making progress—or getting closer to perfection?
The first statement is more of an observation—a fundamental thought on which we could maybe build an argument. As such, it’s probably more prudent to jump straight into the second issue—the question of whether time travel makes time redeemable. After several hours of consideration, I have arrived at, well a headache, but also the following conclusions:
First, I should explain for the purpose of clarity that I am considering ‘time’ to be a largely linear concept—it has the irritating habit of constantly moving forward (particularly when one is close to finals or graduation). Working with this as a starting point, it seems that Eliot’s assertion of time being ‘unredeemable’ is correct.
By sending Hank Morgan back through time, Twain plays on our desire to “get back time” or, further, to “change” things of the past. Put another way, he teases us by suggesting it is possible to redeem time. “Redeem” is a tricky little word though. To illustrate my point, below is a list of definitions from the OED in the order they were presented (note that the ‘biblical’ definition appears first, Morgan would be so thrilled):
1. “Deliverance from sin and damnation”
2. “The action of freeing a prisoner, captive, or slave by payment; the fact of being freed
in this way”
3. “Expiation or atonement for a crime, sin, or offence; release from punishment”
4. “A recompense, a compensation”
5. “Purchase of membership of a society, guild, or company”
To take each of these definitions in turn and apply them to the notion of time yields some intriguing results:
1. Does time require ‘deliverance’ from some sort of sin? Maybe the passage of time is a form of damnation in and of itself. It could be that Time is the one which is troubled by the requirement of continually moving along (much like Sisyphus and his boulder or Tantalus and the fruit which can never be reached).
2. The second definition seems to have two important elements; the thing being freed must be in a forced custody, and the freeing must require ‘payment’. Time, then, would either be a prisoner or a payment. Or maybe it’s both. It would seem to me that the figures of Chronos and Kairos lend themselves to the latter. Also, prisoners and payments are of great concern to Hank Morgan.
3. Can time atone? Does time have anything to atone for? Is it innately neutral, or not so much? Morgan seems to invest in the concept that progress occurs—thus the lack of time, or the ‘younger/barbaric’ ages have some atoning to do.
*then the definitions tend to switch in their nature
4. Time as compensation—this is only one step away from being a gift. If time is compensation, what is it for? What is the act or event which requires this recompense? Is Hank being compensated via his time travel? It certainly paid off for him initially.
5. If time is unredeemable, then it cannot join a society? Okay, this one may be the most interesting as it implies that time is not a currency which can ‘purchase’ membership. But isn’t the aristocratic set-up of Camelot based in families being of ‘old’ stock? Nobility comes at the very price of time; ie the older one’s lineage the greater his position?
See, very headache inducing. And all this is simply general speculating on the matter—you should see my notes for the next blog.
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The idea of "redeeming the past" is fascinating . There are two different definitions of redemption that I believe are relevant in different ways: the first and the third ones. The first one, as you said, is this idea of time being a form of damnation. However, I would like to sort of invert this idea and think about time as being the thing that needs to be redeemed. There have been events in the history of mankind that we would like to have "do-overs" on. From wars, movement, and other acts, our world's history is far from perfect. With the ability to go back and have a "mulligan" of sorts, history can be changed and, therefore, redeemed in a sense. If time itself has been damned, there is only one way to fix it: go back and redeem it. Without the ability to reshape time, all of the events that have occured become our history. The ideal of time travel, though, allows us a second chance at mistakes, and allows for errors to be redeemed at last.
ReplyDeleteThe other definition of "redeem" that I want to look at is the third one, which looks at the word as a form of atonement. Instead of looking at "time travel", though, I want to look at "time" itself. When I think of the term "atonement", I envision something that needs to be made right for one reason or another. Thinking of time itself as a form of atonement, however, seems rather contradictory to me. Time is the thing that has created problems; thus, we have history. I cannot see time, then, as a form of atonement, as it itself is the thing that needs to be redeemed! One can argue that time can be a form of redemption in the sense that the future allows for one to make up for past offenses. However, one must then define "time". Is time the past and the present? Is it the past, present, AND future? If one looks at time as the past and present, than it cannot be a form of atonement; it must be atoned for. If the future counts as time, though, it can be argued that time is a form of atonement, as it redeems past actions. Personally, I do not consider the future as "time", since it has not happened and is hypothetical in nature. Therefore, I believe that time is not a form of atonement, as something which needs atonement for can not be a form of atonement itself at the same time.
On that note, my head hurts, and I am going to bed.
Reading the excerpt from T.S. Eliot reminded me of a quote from a video game I used to play a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteIn "Command & Conquer" one of the characters, Kane says, "He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past."
Apparently it's a twist of another famous quote but I don't remember exactly how that other one goes.
The way that time is seen as both something redeemable and conquerable almost makes time a commodity in a way. And in Twain's book, I think Hank Morgan is doing both things.
When he arrives in the past, he sees how "savage and childlike" the inhabitants are and so he wants to redeem or free them from the ignorance of being born in a certain part of time.
Also Hank wants to take innovations/inventions from the 19th century -- things he thinks defines that century -- like the telephone or democracy and sell them back to the people of Arthur's time. What he's doing is taking little bits of "time commodity" and selling them back to the past -- thus having "time future contained in the past." And the goal of all this commerce is to conquer the past in order to reshape it to look like the future.
This is starting to get confusing so let me just try to quickly recap. Time can both be redeemed or conquered. The result of those actions makes time a commodity that can be sold. Or something along those lines.
All of this reminds me hugely of Vonnegut's philosophy of time... which I don't know nearly as well as I feel I ought, but the gist (as I understand it) is that the present is the past is the future is the present. More or less (or more).
ReplyDeleteOoooh, Vonnegut! Good one. Very interesting discussion, folks. I'm sure when Bobby checks back in, he may have a thing or two to say about Slaughterhouse-Five.
ReplyDeleteAs for me, Kiana, I think I see time being redeemed along the lines Michael sees it, or like the 4th definition you provide, as if we could compensate for the past, do it over perhaps, or somehow undo what was wrong with it, perhaps to make the present better.
What's interesting here is how Hank is like a temporal imperialist. He sees no need to make change to improve the present - for him, it seems, the present is GOOD. Therefore, he instead seeks to impose the present on the past, or sell it to them, as Bobby suggests.
Very interesting discussion. To come back to Eliot:
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
This makes when we consider that redemption requires the passage of time. Something must be in the past to be redeemed, so if all time is eternally present, there is nothing to look back to, no distance between then and now. If anything, Hank isn't seeking to redeem the past, but perhaps the present, his present, that is the future of the past he goes back to, although perhaps Twain wants us to realize that this is simply impossible.
Ok, now my head hurts... Good night.