Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Szilvia Nagy: I Can Operate in the Dark—Bodies are Phosphorescent... Occult Modernism and Myth-Making in Djuna Barnes 's Nightwood

Gurdjieffs school of thought was often referred to as "the primordial tradition," and his program indeed involved a kind of prehistoric state to be recovered. Sandra M. Gilbert identifies a similar search for the "androgynous wholeness and holiness of prehistory" (217) as the prime objective of many modernist women writers. I think it neither necessary nor feasible to prove whether all female modernists were influenced by Gurdjieff, but the common line of thought is obvious. He alluded to the regaining of a sense of cosmic wholeness in a time when the human psyche was cluttered with deceptive notions about self-realization, and Mircea Eliade describes this same sentiment, only in connection with the ceremonial transvestism of many non-Western peoples. She writes that these societies practiced rituals whose purpose was "a coming out of one's self, a transcending of one's own historically controlled situation ... in order to restore, if only for a brief moment, the initial completeness, the intact source of holiness and power ... the undifferentiated unity that preceded Creation" (qtd in Gilbert 217). George Baker and Walter Driscoll also mention the Gurdjieffian idea of certain reintegrative moments "in which thought, feeling and sensation of one's physical presence were in an unmistakable relationship," moments which Gurdjieff calls special "I am" moments of "remembering oneself." The Shaman's Lore Barnes's profound esoteric interest probably extended beyond the teachings of Gurdjieff though. There are other traditions relevant for the ensuing discussion of Nightwood that share many of the characteristics of the Gurdjieffian ideas, mainly because Gurdjieff knew them from his early studies. Allen Holmquist and Ralph Metzner both group together several frameworks of thought, including shamanism, meditation, alchemy and ancient mythology, under the name 'traditions of transformation,' because they all address the notion of reconciliation of polarities. Holmquist identifies three major oppositional pairs that, according to shamanism, need to be integrated so that the individual may experience a wholeness of the psyche that was lost with the emergence of Western society. These pairs are male/female, human/animal, and good/evil, and the way to work with them is a three-stage process: one perceives the presence of dualities, 70