Nothing New Under the Sun

Pictured above: Northrop Frye (top) and Carl Gustav Jung (bottom)

I was writing in my prayer journal this morning (which also functions as a recording journal for my observations, obsessions, literary amblings, and frustrations), and ended up exploring a topic that I had not intended based upon a quote that I read from A.S. Byatt's novel, Possession. The following is the quote, and my recorded thoughts:

"Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or be confined by." - Roland

For some reason this quote made me daydream this morning about teaching the novel in a college setting. I was telling the students... well, reciting to the students... this quote, and afterward I continued by saying (in my mind, of course)... "No - I didn't write that quote, though you may perhaps think that as a professor of literature we should all spout such literary brilliance... but no. There is nothing new under the sun - at least according to the work of Jung and Northrop Frye." --

And then my daydream stopped because I realized that this is not just a concept that Frye and Jung wax lyrical upon - but certainly a thought-process layed out in the Bible. We may have found new ways of doing things (or in the case of Jung and Frye - writing, reading, and recording thoughts), but none are "new" - there is no originality.

So what happens if we aspire to be "true originals"? First of all, truth seems to be a relative concept; and, if it is applied by yourself [upon yourself] a certain bias would creep in; if applied by others, how do you know the parameters of what you are being measured against?

And no originality under the sun - I wonder if it only comes at night, then? Yes, I am being facetious - but, in all honesty, how depressing to believe, think, realize that there is absolutely nothing new that you will ever write?

But then again, maybe it is the effort to tell/write in a different way or manner the same concept that is the joy and task at hand.

And perhaps since I have yet to discover the difference, I have just provided an explanation for my anti-proliferate status... perhaps.

But, I still love Jung and Frye - their concepts struck a chord within me - as when you read something and realize that you have believed this for years, but had never written it down - therein lies my fascination.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV) states, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun." [italics, mine]

In some sense this is depressing, and in another way - it is reassuring. Depressing that we cannot be "original" and most likely never will be... reassuring in that everything we do - God has seen it before. There is no shock value, no breach of knowledge. In our very human-ness, He knows us, and He can see through to the basic elements with which we are constructed. He knows our hearts, our souls, our minds, our reactions, our thoughts... He is God.

I find that a comfort.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. - I Corinthians 10:13