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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

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

"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.

...

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.

....

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' -

...

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.

...

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...

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

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.

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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I singled out this passage from "The Life of Pi" by Yann Martel after
reading a post at another forum entitled "The Bloat that is Don Quixote".
Someone wanted to know why Cervantes book was so long and rambling.

I think that Yann Martel touches here upon something basic in human
needs.

I think that, 400 years ago (the anniversary of Don Quixote's publication
is this year) people appreciated have one large book that they could loose
themselves in. I think that The Anatomy of Melancholy by Richard Burton
was another such long rambling book that served this human need.

Chapter 73

My greatest wish --- other than salvation --- was to have a book. A long
book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with
new eyes and a fresh understanding each time. Alas, there was no
scripture in the lifeboat. I was a disconsolate Arjuna in a battered chariot
without the benefit of Krishna's words. The first time I came upon a Bible
in the bedside table of a hotel room in Canada, I burst into tears. I send a
contribution to the Gideons the very next day, with a note urging them to
spread the range of their activity to all places where worn and weary
travellers might lay down their heads, not just to hotel rooms, and that
they should leave not only Bibles, but other sacred writings as well. I
cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a
pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book
of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little
girl's kiss on your cheek.

At the very least, if I had had a good novel!

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