Situating G. I. Gurdjieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men

Authors

  • Vrasidas Karalis The University of Sydney

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.v27i3.26146

Keywords:

Gurdjieff, Meetings With Remarkable Men, literary tropes, confabulation, autobiography

Abstract

G.I. Gurdjieff’s masterwork, Meetings with Remarkable Men (published posthumously in 1963), the second part of his All and Everything series, is probably one of the least studied books in the field of spiritual literature and has never been approached in regards to its literary structure. While the personality of its writer has monopolised the interest of most scholars, and the veracity of what is described in its pages has become the permanent obsession of many readers, the book itself as narrative structure, dialogic form and autobiographical self-revealing has remained a mystery and a veritable cryptogram. This article is focused around the dialogic form of the book and excavates its literary texture in order to frame the semantic centres of its discourse. Gurdjieff’s serpentine prose aspires in recapturing implied rituals and modes of wordless interaction. It is constructed around forms of ritualistic unfolding of words circumscribing the core of an argument without ever articulating it, reinventing the literary tropes of the travel-writing genre. The absent yet ubiquitous enunciation of the semiotic centre is the most significant aspect of this narrative. This article briefly analyses the generic keys of Gurdjieff’s prose and delineates his attempt to create space for pre-verbal, and occasionally post-verbal, self-presentation.

Author Biography

  • Vrasidas Karalis, The University of Sydney
    Vrasidas Karalis is the Sir Nicholas Laurantus Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Sydney. His research interests include Modern Greek, Byzantine Studies, Cultural Studies, and more recently New Testament Studies. He has also worked in translation, especially of the Australian Nobel Laureate Patrick White, translating three of his major novels into Greek (Voss, The Vivisector, A Cheery Soul). He has published on the aesthetics of G.I. Gurdjieff and has an ongoing interest in the Gurdjieff literary corpus.

Published

2015-03-03

How to Cite

Karalis, V. (2015). Situating G. I. Gurdjieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 27(3), 303-324. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.v27i3.26146