The Good Ship Lollipop (TsimTsum)

Sitaram · The Good Ship Lollipop (TsimTsum)

The Good Ship Lollipop (TsimTsum)

Question: How many religions does Pi practice?

Question: How many toes does the sloth in Chapter 1 have?

Think about it.

For me, the most significant single aspect of “Life of Pi” is the name of
the Japanese cargo ship, “Tsimtsum.”

Among thousands of URLs returned by Google on a search of “Life of Pi”
and Tsimtsum, only a very few directly discuss the significance of the
name Tsimtsum.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780676973778

http://www.24hourscholar.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_7_40/ai_84182763

http://www.powells.com/fromtheauthor/martel.html

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/life_of_pi1.asp

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780676973778

From Pi one gleans that faith -- one of the most ephemeral emotions, yet
crucial whenever life is one the line -- is rooted in the will to live.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/newface/martel.php

"A storyteller, in order to enchant, must lie, and then must convince us
that he is not lying. This novel is all about storytelling."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/booke...2002/story/0,12350,794491,00.html

http://www.americamagazine.org/Bo...;articletypeid=31&issueID=430

http://www.theverandah.net/verandah/article.asp?id=130

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/1082/yann_martel_page.html

http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/...life_of_pi/martel_life_of_pi.html

For Sitaram, the most significant single aspect of “Life of Pi” is the name
of the Japanese cargo ship, “Tsimtsum.”

Among thousands of URLs returned by Google on a search of “Life of Pi”
and Tsimtsum,

Only a very few directly discuss the significance of the name Tsimtsum.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780676973778

(Start of excerpt):

"Japanese Cargo ship Tsimtsum" - Chapter 35 page 90 - "The concept of
Tsimtsum is a 16th century kabbalistic explanation of how God, if infinite
and omnipresent, could form a material world. God contracted Itself into
Itself - Tsimtsum - bringing into being a vacuum in which to create
something OTHER than Itself" - Yann Martel's naming of the ship in which
Pi loses his family seems to be another nod at the cosmogony of the Book
of Genesis. If you're looking to read another novel alongside Life of Pi,
might I suggest Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man? I read this back to
back with Life of Pi. Alex-Li Tandem's best friend, Adam, is obsessed by
the Zohar and the Hebrew alphabet. Just as God had to withdraw to
create the cosmos, so the Tsimtsum sinks. By using this name of
Tsimtsum, does Yann Martel mean to suggest that God has effectively
absented himself from Pi's struggle, and that this is the ultimate test of
Pi's faith? "This paradox of Tsimtsum -- as Jacob Emden said -- is the
only serious attempt ever made to give substance to the idea of Creation
out of Nothing. Incidentally, the fact that an idea which as first sight
appears so reasonable as "Creation out of Nothing" should turn out upon
inspection to lead to a theosophical mystery shows us how illusory the
apparent simplicity of religious fundamentals really is. Scholem, Major
Trends, Schocken 1995, p.253". "The most recent book that conveys a
distinctly Jewish anomie is The Far Euphrates, a first novel by Aryeh Lev
Stollman, which concretizes this dilemma in its story of a perplexed boy
who isolates himself from his rabbinical family by locking himself in his
room for an entire year. Avowedly, this mournful youth is reenacting the
Kabbalistic doctrine of tsimtsum or retreat, by means of which God
separates himself from the primordial universe, thereby making space for
flawed humanity" - so, it could very well be that Yann Martel is aiming for
the same effect as Stollman, with Pi playing the role of God withdrawing.
But does Pi separate from the 'primordial universe' or does he, in fact,
join with it? As Ephraim Carmel writes, Yann Martel would not be the first
author in English to grasp the concept of tsimtsum in order to write of
'Paradise Lost' -

"One of the most daring of Cabalistic concepts found it's way into Milton's
'Paradise Lost ': "...I uncircumscribed myself retire, and put not forth my
goodness, which is free to act or not ". The doctrine of 'Tsimtsum' is a
highly mystical one, though it's initial starting point is a gross and naive
naturalism. With God's infirmity being all and feeling all, there was no
space for creation. God therefore withdrew " Himself from Himself ", not
concentrating at a point but retreating away from His center to His
circumference as it were. He now no longer fills all, but leaves, in the
middle of Himself, a vacuum in which creation can take place. It should be
noted that God does not construct or concentrate, but rather retires
sideways to the periphery. This retraction of 'Tsimtsum' is a dynamic act,
the first step in the dynamic of creation. When Milton in his 'Paradise Lost'
discusses the place of individual being he had a problem. From the
absolute, nothing can proceed. As Milton says, he was neither reason nor
power to change into a less perfect state. How is it possible then to derive

from the absolute, the only necessary cause of all that is, the existence of
limited individual being? This is the most important problem for all
philosophies of the absolute, for they recognise that here exists an
unexplainable, an irritational abyss, between God and his creatures,
between the absolute and nature.

At the foundation of the world there comes into play an illogical power,
which has no common measure with reason. Milton saw the problem. He
found no solution that could be drawn from the scripture of theology. So
he boldly took this concept from Lurianic Cabala and made it the very
center of his metaphysics. According to his plan, God withdraws his will
from certain parts of himself, and delivers them up, so to speak, to
obscure latent impulsions that remain in them. Through this "retraction",
matter is created; through this reaction, individual beings are created. The
parts of God thus freed from his will become people" -

I believe that the concept of Tsimtsum also plays a major role in how
Yann Martel has structured Life of Pi. There is something very circular in
telling Pi's story in exactly 100 chapters. Also, when Pi uses pi to work
out the circumference of that strange anti-Eden he lands on, you can't
help but acknowledge that there is some great deal of thought in Yann
Martel's naming of Pi, since pi is synonymous with circles. When God
creates his vacuum, one can only imagine a circular shaped hole.
Galaxies certainly resolve around black holes.

The following quotation from Karen Armstrong seems to answer some of
my questions from above, and seem to fit Yann Martel's purpose here: -

Luria confronted the question that had troubled monotheists for centuries:
how could a perfect and infinite God have created a finite world riddled
with evil? Where had evil come from? Luria found his answer by imagining
what had happened before the emanation of the sefiroth, when En Sof
had been turned in upon itself in sublime introspection. In order to make
room for the world, Luria taught, En Sof had, as it were, vacated a region
within himself. In this act of "shrinking" or "withdrawal" (tsimtsum), God
had thus created a place where he was not, an empty space that he could
fill by the simultaneous process of self-revelation and creation. It was a
daring attempt to illustrate the difficult doctrine of creation out of nothing:
the very first act of En Sof was a self imposed exile from a part of
himself. He had, as it were, descended more deeply into his own being
and put a limit upon himself. It is an idea that is not dissimilar to the
primordial kenosis that Christians have imagined in the Trinity, whereby
God emptied himself into his Son in an act of self expression. For
sixteenth-century Kabbalists, (tsimtsum) was primarily a symbol of exile,
which underlay the structure of all created existence and had been
experienced by En Sof himself. (Armstrong, 267)

- there is no evil in Pi's life before the sinking of the Tsimtsum.

Seraphim Joseph Sigrist writes of tsimtsum and creativity, another theme
that would appear to be close to Yann Martel's heart as an author -

You remember the text was from the Gospel where Jesus says "If anyone
will be my disciple let him deny himself..."

and the question, does denial of self mean denial of creativity?

But it seems to me that on the contrary creativity begins with a certain
denial of self. There is the Jewish conception which seems to me very
deep that it is by a contraction of Himself that God made a space for the
world... by a withdrawal, and this is called

the "Tsimtsum" ,or "Sod ha Tsimtsum" --Mystery of the drawing back of
God.

An ancient Indian poet Tulsi Das, rewriting the oldest of stories, and one
of the best, the Ramayana ,adds this "the gods themselves live by
forbearance"... they live by drawing back.

And so it is written of Jesus in Philippians that he "took on himself the
form of a servant..." The Greek word Kenosis or self-emptying can
parallel the Tsimstsum and perhaps each word enriches the other a little.
Unfortunately few people have set them together! But you and I may
today and see therefore the sign of the cross on the creation of the world
itself, and then the cross as no isolated moment

but the heart of a deep mystery of creation-by-making-space.

Into that space which God made, light entered... and from the light came
all the worlds and all the persons and you and I...

And the creation goes on in and through us... Because we too can learn to
step back from all our hopes and fears and dreams and all our sorrow
and the terrible pain our worlds(each person is a world) contain and yes
the happiness too, and all our habitual thoughts, the explanations to
ourselves which we make as well as we can and which fill our minds...and
even from all the joy that God gave

us yesterday and which we remember with gratitude... and which was
beyond our expectation or hope. step back from all of this

and make a space for God to create something more in us, and make a
space where we also can create...

This was the main idea of the little sermon, and I remembered our
Natasha's words that "at most conferences people think only of their own
lectures and what people will think of them, but we have left a space for
silence and for caring for each other" (I paraphrase her words changing
them slightly but this was the idea) I think it was true of us in these days
in Riga.

Well, that is almost all of the sermon unless I have forgotten something.
There is also this ,that it means that we create by being created, that
every story comes from silence, that every gift comes from poverty, that
every love comes from a place where there is nothing but

openness to love.

it is the rhythym and deep truth of the prayer attributed to St Francis
"Lord make me an instrument of thy peace..." which you know well I am
sure. We do not know if this is actually his prayer, but it is his spirit and
that of the Lord Jesus and that of the one who made space for the worlds
at the beginning and today...

Carol Ochs writes of tsimtsum in yet another way, as a way of discussing
self-creation. Pi, is after all, a teenager when the Tsimtsum sinks. He's
about to discover who he really is, and what he can become, in the most
brutal way possible -

Miriam's Way reminds us that we all have experiences that require our
self-limiting and self-emptying for the sake of a greater life. Our greatest
creativity, exercised when we form a relationship, comes from divesting
ourselves of self in order to make room for an independent life. In the
sixteenth century Rabbi Isaac Luria gave a name to this process, teaching
that the great moment of creation was not "And God said . . ." but the
moment before that, tsimtsum, when God's self contracted to make room
for independent creatures. Tsimtsum is not necessary for all creations,
only those that will be independent, because only an independent being
can come into a freely chosen relationship with God. God's creation of
beings in freedom shows us that beings need independent space to form
relationships, and we must try to emulate this creation of space. In
pregnancy, physical displacement takes place so new life can exist. As the
body undergoes radical transformation, so does the soul -- in this case, a
decentering of ego. But not all of our creations are babies. The new life
that grows within may take the form of ideas, institutions, and --
especially --relationships; all require a self-emptyyiing that allows space
for freedom.

Tsimtsum is something that Adam refers to in Zadie Smith's The
Autograph Man, when he refers to God leaving his "bits" behind. Daniel J.
Elazar gives a more concise explanation of what Adam was talking about,
using the metaphor of "repairing the vessels". Pi must be repaired
before he fully rejoins humanity -

The kabbalists understood God's making of space for humanity as
tsimtsum (contraction), God's withdrawal from a part of the world to allow
a material creation. After withdrawing to make that space, God then made
an effort to fill that space with emanations of His energy, but those
emanations were too strong for the material vessels of this world that
were to contain them and the vessels were shattered in the process of
receiving the emanations. This phenomenon is known in kabbalah as
shevirat hakelim (the breaking of the vessels), and is the source of
trouble and evil in the world. Thus, a major task of humanity, working in
partnership with God, is tikkun olam (the repair of the world), or more
explicitly, repairing the vessels to make them whole again, at which point,
according to the kabbalists, the messianic age will be achieved

(end of excerpt)

http://www.24hourscholar.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_7_40/ai_84182763

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of peripatetic Canadian parents. He
grew up in Alaska, British Columbia, Costa Rica, France, Ontario and
Mexico, and has continued travelling as an adult, spending time in Iran,
Turkey and India. After studying philosophy at Trent University and while
doing various odd jobs -- tree planting, dishwashing, working as a security
guard -- he began to write.

http://www.powells.com/fromtheauthor/martel.html

The other animals in the lifeboat — the zebra, the hyena and the
orang-utan — arose naturally, each one a function of a human trait I
wanted to embody, the hyena cowardliness, the orang-utan maternal
instincts and the zebra exoticism.

I chose meerkats because I wanted a small ferret-like creature without
the connotations that ferrets have. I wanted a neutral animal upon which I
could paint a personality of my choice. Also, meerkats rhymed somewhat
with mirage and meekness.

The author of “Life of Pi,” Yann Martel, writes:

I felt terribly lonely. One night I sat on my bed and wept, muffling the
sounds so that my neighbours would not hear me through the thin walls.
Where was my life going? Nothing about it seemed to have started or
added up to much. I had written two paltry books that had sold about a
thousand copies each. I had neither family nor career to show for my 33
years on Earth. I felt dry and indifferent. Emotions were a bother. My
mind was turning into a wall. And if that weren't enough, the novel I had
planned to write while in India had died. Every writer knows the feeling. A
story is born in your mind and it thrills you. You nurture it like you would a
fire. You hope to see it grow and eventually be born on paper. But at one
point, you look at it and you feel nothing. You feel no pulse. The
characters don't speak naturally, the plot does not move, the descriptions
don't come to you — everything about your story is thankless work. It has
died.

I was in need of a story. More than that, I was in need of a Story.

Suddenly, my mind was exploding with ideas. I could hardly keep up with
them. In jubilant minutes whole portions of the novel emerged fully
formed: the lifeboat, the animals, the intermingling of the religious and
the zoological, the parallel stories.

Where did that moment of inspiration come from? Why did I think that
religion and zoology would make a good mix? How did I think up the
theme that reality is a story and we can choose our story and so why not
pick "the better story" (the novel's key words)?

I now had a reason to be in India.

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/life_of_pi1.asp

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780676973778

As the days pass, Pi fights both boredom and terror by throwing himself
into the practical details of surviving on the open sea -- catching fish,
collecting rain water, protecting himself from the sun -- all the while
ensuring that the tiger is also kept alive, and knows that Pi is the key to
his survival. The castaways face gruelling pain in their brushes with
starvation, illness, and the storms that lash the small boat, but there is
also the solace of beauty: the rainbow hues of a dorado’s death-throes,
the peaceful eye of a looming whale, the shimmering blues of the ocean’s
swells. Hope is fleeting, however, and despite adapting his religious
practices to his daily routine, Pi feels the constant, pressing weight of
despair. It is during the most hopeless and gruelling days of his voyage
that Pi whittles to the core of his beliefs, casts off his own assumptions,
and faces his underlying terrors head-on.

As Yann Martel has said in one interview, “The theme of this novel can be
summarized in three lines. Life is a story. You can choose your story. And
a story with an imaginative overlay is the better story.” And for Martel,
the greatest imaginative overlay is religion. “God is a shorthand for
anything that is beyond the material -- any greater pattern of meaning.”
In Life of Pi, the question of stories, and of what stories to believe, is front
and centre from the beginning, when the author tells us how he was led
to Pi Patel and to this novel: in an Indian coffee house, a gentleman told
him, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” And as this novel
comes to its brilliant conclusion, Pi shows us that the story with the
imaginative overlay is also the story that contains the most truth.

Pi one gleans that faith -- one of the most ephemeral emotions, yet crucial
whenever life is one the line -- is rooted in the will to live.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/newface/martel.php

"A storyteller, in order to enchant, must lie, and then must convince us
that he is not lying. This novel is all about storytelling."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/booke...2002/story/0,12350,794491,00.html

http://www.americamagazine.org/Bo...;articletypeid=31&issueID=430

At a coffeehouse in Pondicherry, India, the author is approached by an
elderly man who says, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.”
He directs the author to Mr. Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi for short) in Toronto,
who narrates most of the novel. The grown Pi takes us back to a time
when he was 16 years of age (Pi is the 16th letter in the Greek alphabet),
growing up in an eccentric and loving family, presided over by his father,
who gave up a career as hotelier to become a zookeeper. Pi notes, “My
alarm clock during childhood was a pride of lions.”

The boy owes his name to a fabled swimming pool in Paris, and although
his peers nickname him “Pissing,” the connotation of fish-like adaptability
is a consoling prognostication of the piscine skills he will need later during
227 days adrift at sea. His name also has a mathematical connotation as
the never-quite-finished calculation of the relationship of a circle’s
circumference to its diameter, which is suggestive of the relationship
between linear journey and cyclical pattern. On one level, Pi’s narrative
concerns a voyage from India to the coast of Mexico, but it is also caught
up in the diurnal cyclical patterns of life at sea, and the cycle of doubt and
faith.

The youthful Pi has a strong penchant for religious faith. Initially steeped
in Hinduism, he encounters Christianity at age 14 and asks to be baptized.
Subsequently he also embraces Islam. He intends to follow all three
faiths simultaneously, but the strategy backfires when a priest, imam and
holy man happen to meet him and his parents all at the same time.

http://www.theverandah.net/verandah/article.asp?id=130

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/1082/yann_martel_page.html

The Good Ship Lollipop (TsimTsum)

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