Great Awkward Gold

"But it isn't imagination that the Christ gold is of universal, though uneven, distribution. It is found forwards and backwards in time, it is found in macro and in micro space. It's on every level of geography and cognition, and in every medium. Homer is gold-speckled with the coming of Christ. Virgil knows everything except the name . . . . The Redemption is inextricably in all myth fabric since its happening and in most before." — R.A. Lafferty

Someday we will have a complete English edition of Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods to put on the shelf beside Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae Harvard UP has already released two volumes of the Pagan Gods translation, up to Book X, with the second volume having appeared in 2017. When finished, the entire work—covering all XV books—will be invaluable for English readers who want to dive into medieval thinking about myth. Boccaccio’s work stands as perhaps the greatest compilation of an extensive pre-modern mythological encyclopedia; he not only "traces" the genealogy of the pagan gods and tells their stories, but also compiles Christian allegorical interpretations of classical mythology. Its influence was profound during the Renaissance. My own interest in this subject grew during my graduate school years when I worked as a research assistant to Jane Chance, whose three-volume Medieval Mythography is a good resource on the topic.

One reason Lafferty fascinates me because of his deep, almost instinctive grasp of the odd, intricate layers of tradition. And I'm primarily interested in understanding him on his own terms. Almost every story he wrote contains a spark of this gold, though in his work it has been carefully selected or altered. In his professional role as a "smelter," he seemed drawn to thinking about what he valued as gold, and we find it repeatedly in his non-fiction, with him using the gold analogy over one-hundred-fifty times. It was his natural way of thinking about aesthetic success and failure. Of something in a story he admired, he once wrote:

"The material of this story is sheer gold; it is only the workmanship of this golden material that is wavering and impossible."

If Lafferty often criticized the goldsmithing of others, we should consider how he worked his own. Did he refine the raw ore? Smelt out impurities? Hammer and shape it with precision? How did he etch his strange patterns into the metal, inlaying it with unexpected alloys?

This conceit of "plundering the gold of Egypt" has deep roots. The image—whether as metaphor, type, or antitype—originates in the Book of Exodus, when the Israelites, on the night of their departure, take gold and treasure from their Egyptian captors. Not long after, at Mount Sinai, this same gold is melted down to form the Golden Calf, an act of apostasy that nearly leads to their destruction. Yet later, the remaining gold is purified and used to construct the Tabernacle, the dwelling place of God among His people.

The Church Fathers, notably Augustine—particularly in On Christian Doctrine—saw in this narrative an analogy for the relationship between Christianity and pagan wisdom. Just as the Israelites plundered the riches of Egypt—some misused for idolatry, some transformed into divine architecture—so too could Christians extract the best elements of pagan thought—Greek philosophy, Roman law, artistic traditions—and refine them for a higher purpose.

Here is Augustine exhorting Christians to take whatever has been rightly said by the heathens and appropriate it for their own use:

"Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it. For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use..." — On Christian Doctrine, II.40

This idea gave rise to a great mythopoetic tradition, developed from Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) to Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375)—a lineage that Lafferty himself playfully extends into the twentieth century.

He gathers the gold of the past—myths, philosophies, histories, and fragments of human thought—and subjects them to a transformative fire. But this always calls on readers to exercise critical judgment. Attempts to categorize him too neatly—whether as a tall-tale fabulist, eccentric Catholic reactionary, or postmodern trickster—flatten the elements that make his work alchemical. Blunt critical tools do not reveal gold—they crush it. And, of course, there is the danger of mistaking one’s own critical commitments for clarity—seeing the other as the flattener while failing to notice where one’s own interpretive hammer has struck too heavily.

Here, the Egyptian gold metaphor can turn back on itself: when does interpretation refine, and when does it distort? If Lafferty’s gold has already been purified and remade, a critical re-melt carries the risk of turning the Egyptian gold into the calf.

Augustine warns of this when he argues that misunderstanding figurative language—treating signs as things rather than recognizing their deeper meaning—enslaves the mind to the letter and leads to dead, rather than living, interpretation:

"For when what is said figuratively is taken as if it were said literally, it is understood in a carnal manner. And nothing is more fittingly called the death of the soul than when that in it which raises it above the brutes, the intelligence namely, is put in subjection to the flesh by a blind adherence to the letter." — On Christian Doctrine, III.5

One challenge in reading Lafferty is measuring how he expands our imaginations without undoing the refinement that gives his vision its force. This entails avoiding two mistakes: mistaking the Christ gold of Bezalel for the calf gold of Aaron, or falling into the error Lafferty describes through Chesterton:

"In one of Chesterton’s stories, a man inherits all the gold of a household. He takes it all—gold coin, gold plate, gold leaf, even the gilding on ornate capital letters in old books. He cuts out the thin gold in pictures and manuscripts, leaving behind puzzling holes."