GURDJIEFF’S ‘MISSING’ PARAGRAPHS related to the LOSS OF KEYS TO LEGOMONISMS
This is an invitation to explore the relation between the ‘missing’ paragraphs and the loss of the keys in G. I. Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson. I’ll come back to precisely which paragraphs and which keys later.
This enquiry was prompted by work done recently in a series of seminars I attended relating to a critical reading of Biblical texts (*see note below).This has re-introduced me to examples of oral structures used in writing. I’d already found evidence of oral structures in the Tales, for example, Gurdjieff’s long sentences which run on and on without the paragraphing structure we expect, are termed paratactic, (or loose structured) and are found in archaic epics and poetry.
... The seminars have made me curious to look at the Tales again, specifically in relation to patterning known as ring composition (or chiasmic patterning).
Ring composition is a narrative technique said to be characteristic of preliterate peoples and oral modes of composition. [ …]. In ring composition, a narrator touches on a number of topics until a significant topic is reached, then continues on in the narrative by retracing in reverse order the topics which were mentioned on the way to the significant point. Ring composition is an important element in epic poetry like Beowulf, Homeric epics, [ … ] and in many other traditional texts that show signs of being composed orally. [ Mary Douglas, Thinking in circles: An essay on ring composition, Yale Univ. Press, 2007]
In the Tales, the missing paragraphs are:
‘two paragraphs omitted even from Orage’s cyclostyled edition of THE BOOK. They were circulate among New York groups as separate fragments .’Webb, James. The Harmonious Circle, The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky and their Followers, London, Thames and Hudson, 1980. 549, Webb’s emphasis; retrieved 16.3.2012)
The 1950 edition is currently available as a photographic facsimile of the original 1950 English edition from Two Rivers Press. Since the Two Rivers Press publication is a facsimile of the original 1950 English edition it does not include various minor corrections which were made in reprintings by earlier publishers after the original 1950 publication. The two missing paragraphs and the errata are now being included as a bound-in appendix to this edition. _http://www.dolmenmeadoweditions.com/5_BeelzebubsTales/BeelzebubsTales-History.htm (retrieved 16.3.2012)
(These missing paragraphs have been inserted in a searchable online version of the Tales. If you do come across this, although extremely useful in many ways, its worth noting that there is an inaccurate indication of the Tales pagination within the online pages, so the ‘missing paragraphs’ are not placed on the same page as in the original edition.)
Although the paragraphs were not printed in the 1950 edition we do have an indication of the exact place the paragraphs should go: this is after line 18 on page 568 and so, thinking about ring structuring, I wanted to see if these paragraphs were central to the whole book, they were not; nor were they central to the Second Book- chapters 29 – 39 of the Tales; they were however exactly on the central page of Chapter 32, Hypnotism.
