Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - Zsolt K. Virágos: The American Brand of the Myth of Apocalypse

progression of time each event moves toward its goal which lies at the end of history. Thus the Hebraic interpretation of time also suggests that the end of the world can only occur once. According to the logic of apocalyptic thinking, however, history without God would be meaningless because there would be no script. "The optimism of the apocalyptic tradition cannot be separated from the vision of God as controlling history" (Bergoffen 29). Thus the critical difference between the historical orientations of the traditional and current apocalyptic visions is that the contemporary visions are basically nonteleological. This new emphasis on the lack of any progressive design appears consistent with the pessimistic annihilations that R. Sukenick suggested in "The Death of the Novel," maintaining that "...time doesn't exist ... God was the omniscient author, but he died; ... Time is reduced to presence, the content of a series of discontinuous moments. Time is no longer purposive, and so there is no destiny, only chance." Thus it should come as no surprise that the very act of writing in accordance with the logic of Sukenick's extreme stance could be reduced to one of the "ways of maintaing a considered boredom in the face of the abyss" (41). The idea of Apocalypse without God creates a totally different set of priorities because the Biblical vision of things to come is a metaphoric itinerary for God's inevitable victory over evil and the removal of God from his own scheme virtually collapses the myth. The nature of the dilemma is thus clear: if there is no script, and if time is not purposive, man is left only with the visions of violence (as detailed, for instance, in the Revelation of St. John) and an inscrutable, impersonal retributive power. Moreover, if the future breaks into the present unaccountably, if history itself is degenerative and malign, if human freedom within history is denied, if there is no rationale for viewing calamities as merely crises with a potential for correction and renewal (which actually means the disruption of the creative dualism of the inherited Biblical model: the undoing of the dialectic tension between chaos and order, tribulation and triumph, ultimately between cataclysm and millennium), man is incapable of understanding the 131