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EXEGESIS: A New Feature On this page, we will post close readings of poems by
authors whose work has appeared in
The Deronda
Review (or its predecessor, The Neovictorian/Cochlea), on the principle that
newly-published poems may also merit the kind of attentive scrutiny that is
usually reserved for the “classics.”
Interpretations for posting on this page should be sent to derondareview@att.net. Wise
on Cameron's "Ta'anit Ester" We begin with a poem by Ida Fasel that appears
in Vol. I, No. 1 of The Deronda Review. A FEW WORDS O:P>
With God,
every
breath is
an
angel; with angels,
their
every word is hineni –
"Send me."
Father,
may
I serve you
all
my life, flying a
little
lower than angels, a
blue
bird.
This poem consists of two
cinquains – a syllabic form in which the
lines contains 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables. The
first stanza is a theological statement about God and His angels, in which the
longest line ends with the Hebrew word “hineni,”
which the last line translates. The translation is not literal; what it
translates is the willingness which the word (which means literally “here am I”)
generally expresses in the Biblical text. The second stanza is a prayer
addressed to God, expressing a willingness to serve
or at least a willingness toward that willingness, though this can only an
approximation of the perfect willingness of the angels. Seen from below, a
“blue bird” (not: “bluebird”) might seem to be absorbed by the color of the sky,
almost as the angels are nothing but the breath of God.
The word “angel” originally
meant “messenger,” and even that is not quite an accurate translation of “malach,”
which might better be rendered “worker.” (“Malach”
is from the same stem as “malachah,” the “work” we
are commanded not to do on the Sabbath.) The main difference between the
malachim and humans is that
malachim do not have free will. They have neither the ability nor the
desire to rebel against their Maker. For this reason, some commentators
actually identify them with mechanical forces. (It is said, for instance, that
it requires forty thousand angels for a human being to lift a finger.) This
curious coincidence of the mechanical and the spiritual has struck some Western
writers too (cf. Rilke’s treatment of the angel and
the puppet in the fourth of the Duino Elegies).
And yet at certain moments
humans do approximate the angels’ perfect acquiescence in the Divine will. In
the Biblical text these moments are often marked by the use of that word “hineni.”
In fact the word is never used by God or an angel in that sense, but only by the
human who is called and answers. Thus, it is really from these moments of our
own that we glean an intimation of what angelic existence might be like. And
moreover, the word “hineni” is sometimes spoken in
answer not to God but to another human. In the episode of the “binding of
Isaac,” Abraham first answers “hineni” to God, and
then, a few lines later, to his son. When Samuel answers “hineni”
to God’s call in the night, he thinks that it is his teacher Eli who is calling
him. Thus, the ultimate model for angels’ acquiescence in the Divine will may
be the moments when we “are there” for other humans.
In the Jewish
prayerbook, in the morning prayer, there is a
passage about the angels: “They are all beloved; they are all flawless; they are
all mighty; they all do the will of their Maker with dread and reverence [...]
they all accept on themselves the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven from one
another, and grant permission (reshut) to one
another to sanctify the One who formed them, with tranquility, with a clear
language (safah brurah),
and with sweetness...”
The – somewhat wistful –
application of this passage to our own condition is well understood. The
Artscroll prayerbook
comments: “Unlike people whose competitive jealousies cause them to thwart and
outdo one another, the angels urge one another to take the initiative in serving
and praising God. Conflict is the foe of perfection, harmony is its ally.” The
phrase “a clear language (safah
brurah)” is a quotation from a passage which likewise originally applied
to humans. “For then I will turn unto the peoples a clear
language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him
with one shoulder” (Zephaniah, ch. 9)
In pursuing these
associations, I am thinking especially of one class of humans – poets. Poets
after all have an “angelic” vocation; the poem is a response to a call in the
night. Yet we often fail to be there for one another. Our rivalries are
proverbial, and my impression is that few poets would include an effort to read
and understand other poets among their professional obligations. (Harold Bloom
has devoted two books to this quirk – The Anxiety of Influence and
A Map of Misunderstanding.) Is this
tendency insuperable?
Consider another class of
human beings – the scientists. Scientists are said to be competitive; but when
one scientist makes a discovery, the others acknowledge and build on it. In
that respect scientists are a good deal more like angels than poets are!
Perhaps, indeed, it is because they deal with purely mechanical forces, with
which, as noted above, the angels are often equated. If poets could learn to
relate to one another a little more like scientists, perhaps the “clear
language” might yet become audible.
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