Like post-modernism, “post-monotheism” isn’t so much an interpretive framework or a movement as a sensibility. It’s a spiritual return to the Stoic perspective that is upgraded with a persisting belief in whatever the term “God” once signified, but seeking a more ameliorate understanding of the divine.
Post-modern Mankind should no longer be jaded, as the existentialists and deicidists believed was the case for modern Man. Nor should we tremble and bow before the idol of contemporary technology’s God-like power as the Cold War generations did. We should instead be historical in our mindset and take to heart the Koranic creed, “Man is destined to march from state to state.”
The central analogy of post-monotheism is the storywriter, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet the symbol. I’ve read this play frequently and often sensed that somehow, though Hamlet was “nothing more” than a creation of Shakespeare, he was actually alive, propelling the story forward with the fuel of his own personality. To me the most critical line of the whole play is not his famous, “To be or not to be — that is the question,” but instead his dying words:
“O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
absent thee from felicity awhile,
and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
to tell my story.”
I’ve long thought there are two avenues to interpret the ramifcations of this line: (a) Horatio was Shakespeare’s stand-in within the story, and so the play was the retelling; and (b) Hamlet was Shakespeare’s reflection or inner man, and the fictional Denmark the interior world of the playwright. According to the first intrepretation, Shakespeare was his own character’s best friend and compatriot; according to the second, the ghost of the king was Shakespeare himself, appearing as a deity-penman, urging and guiding the young prince toward the climatic moment of judgement. These two interpretations complement each other, for essentially they describe the mirroring and partnering of creator and creation.
Every author leaves his imprint upon his creations, but by writing’s end, in the experience of penning whole personalities and societies into being, the creations themselves leave their imprint upon the author. They are thus bonded in an intimacy, longing, and affection that bridges emotion, intellect, and soul, and together they work toward the establishment of a masterpiece.
We may use the analogy of God-as-storywriter to approach once more the vicissitudes of historical experience: tragedy and cataclysm are the spilled blood-ink of ever-creation. It is as much in our pain and loss as in our joy and gain that the greatest drama has been, will be, and is this very moment is being written. To paraphrase Hamlet, our tears are pregnant with possibilities not yet dreamt of in our philosophies.
