Why Four Gospels?
Last week, I finished reading Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy‘s The Fruit of Lips or Why Four Gospels. ERH is a challenging writer and thinker, and it’s not always easy to figure out what he’s saying (largely because he assumes you’re thinking on his wavelength). Nevertheless, he’s also often fascinating, even when you don’t know what to make of what he’s saying.
The Fruit of Lips is largely a study of the four gospels, which ERH sees as four movements of a symphony, each one picking up where the other left off and developing the themes further. Toward the end, he writes:
If you hold that Dante’s Divine Comedy was written verse after verse, and no verse in it related to the end from the beginning, then you must also judge the Gospels as separate entities. However, you then must forgive me if I am not interested in your views because you prove yourself a complete barbarian in matters of creation. A great symphony first exists as a whole and later it unfolds in its single movements. Quacks may patch four movements together; that, however, entitles us to call them quacks (p. 133).
A challenging read, yes, but probably one that I’ll keep thinking about. I really ought to read more of ERH’s stuff….