Reading Biblical Poetry

Reading Biblical Poetry

READING BIBLICAL POETRY An Introductory Guide

J. P. Fokkelman

Translated by Ineke Smit

Westminster John Knox Press LOUISVILLE • L O N D O N

Copyright © 2001 J. P. Fokkelman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy­ ing, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address West­ minster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396. Cover design by Night & Day Design Interior design by Sharon Adams First edition Published by Westminster John Knox Press Louisville, Kentucky This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39.48 standard. @ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 — 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fokkelman, J. P. Reading biblical poetry : an introductory guide / J.P. Fokkelman.— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-664-22439-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Hebrew poetry, Biblical—History and criticism. 2. Bible. O.T.— Language, style. I.Title. BS1405.2 .F67 2001 221.6'6—dc21 2001026227

Contents Preface 1

2

3

vii Preliminary exercise A strophe by Isaiah and a poem by David T h e art of poetry: a definition and analysis Components I and II: language and number

1

15

A text model and h o w to use it Language and number (continued)

37

4

Parallelism: cola and verses

61

5

T h e strophe

87

6

T h e stanza

117

7

T h e p o e m as a w h o l e

141

8

In search of the correct division The power of repetition

159

W i s d o m literature The book of Job

175

Love p o e t r y The Songs of Songs

189

T h e reader's attitude Productive questions and hints

207

9

10

11

12

Guidelines for further reading 150 and more poems, and their divisions

211

Glossary

225

Bibliographical notes

229

Notes

231

Index of biblical passages

237

Preface This b o o k is intended for those w h o do n o t read H e b r e w but have to rely o n a translation of the Bible. I have tried to put myself in their position as m u c h as possible, and w h e n I started writing I was fully resolved to refrain entirely from using information from the original texts, or at least to limit references to the original text to the utmost m i n i m u m . N o w that the b o o k is finished, however, I find that I have n o t always succeeded in this aim. Occasionally I have b e e n forced to refer to the original language after all, in order to keep m y argument transparent, and because the p o e m u n d e r consideration d e m a n d e d it. Moreover, I have frequently resorted to using m y o w n translations. This is not surprising. Poetry is the most ingenious form of ver­ bal expression. F u r t h e r m o r e , the poet's virtuosity permeates every level of the text, from sounds and syllables to strophes and even higher textual units; there is a b o x of tricks for every layer. T h e result is that anyone w h o discusses p o e t r y should be able to draw o n a similar extensive repertoire of tools; dealing w i t h poetry is a m u c h m o r e technical j o b than interpreting narrative prose. T h e n there are the readers, from w h o m considerably m o r e patience and stamina is required than in the case of prose w i t h its familiar forms of organization such as plot, time, etc. This b o o k is the c o m p l e m e n t to Reading Biblical Narrative, the A m e r i c a n edition of w h i c h appeared in 2000. At the same time, however, Reading Biblical Poetry is perfectly able to stand o n its o w n . This time I have m a d e m o r e allowances for the fact that the b o o k will b e consulted by college students. For their convenience, I have taken t w o measures: in the first place, every n o w and then there is a footnote containing a reference to the H e b r e w Bible or secondary literature. Secondly, I have also taken great pains over chapter 12, "Guidelines for further reading," w h i c h offers, a m o n g other information, for the first time ever the strophe divisions for

viii

Preface

all psalms.These data may serve as an incentive and a guide to the reader to try his or her o w n hand at tackling these puzzles. Even those "average" readers, w h o lack knowledge of the original text, will find that the tools offered here will enable t h e m to embark on this challenging enterprise. February 2001

1 Preliminary exercise A strophe by Isaiah and a poem by David

I n search o f t h e p o e t s o f t h e B i b l e W i t h i n the Bible, poetry is almost exclusively confined to the O l d Testament. Although poetic lines do occur regularly in the Gospels and the letters of the N e w Testament, these are actually quotations from the Psalms and the Prophets. In the first chapter of his Gospel, Luke includes two poems: the song of praise spoken by Mary w h e n she visits Elizabeth, w h o is later to b e c o m e the mother of J o h n (w. 46—55), and shordy afterwards, w h e n J o h n is born, the prophecy spoken over the child by his father Zechariah (w. 68—79). Both texts, however, owe everything to Hebrew poetics and its rules; they are mainly a collage of expressions and phrases from the O l d Testament. This means that we can safely confine our attention to the O l d Tes­ tament, which I will henceforth refer to as the H e b r e w Bible. This is a t e r m that is better suited to the Scriptures of both Ancient Israel and Jesus of Nazareth, as it is a collection of writings whose origin predates the Greek of the N e w Testament by centuries, and is totally independent of it from b o t h a literary and a religious point of view. W h e r e do we find the poems?The Hebrew Bible consists of 1,574 printed pages in the standard edition that is used worldwide for the study of the original text. A fairly accurate estimate would be that more than 37 percent of these, about 585 pages, contain poetry These figures, however, are fluid, as especially in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Ecclesiastes it is hard to determine the proportion of poetry to prose. Some scholars see more prose there than I do. If I h u m o r t h e m and lower my figure to 550 pages, this still means that almost 35 percent of the pages in the standard edition consists of poetic lines. If we take into account that these pages contain more white space than do the pages of the histories and law, w e can conclude that roughly one third of the Hebrew Bible consists of poetry. I call that quite a lot. 1

2

2

Reading Biblical Poetry

W h e r e exactly are the poems situated? For most texts, there is a quite definite answer to this question. T h e books of Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Lamentations consist exclusively of poems, the b o o k of J o b almost exclusively. T h e books of Isaiah and the twelve so-called M i n o r Prophets (bar o n e ) were also largely written in poetry; the fact that the demarcation of the poems is often difficult does not alter this. Finally, there are a n u m b e r of indi­ vidual poems, distributed throughout the narrative prose. T h e y occupy carefully chosen positions; varying in length from a few words to many strophes, they articulate the mass of narrative prose, throughout the entire "history" track that runs from Genesis through to Kings. I will m e n t i o n only the most important ones here: the strophes in w h i c h Jacob, and Moses after him, character­ izes the tribes (in Gen. 49 and D e u t . 33), Moses' Song at the R e e d Sea (Exod. 15), his long didactic speech in D e u t e r o n o m y 32 (no fewer than sixty-nine full poetic lines in twenty-seven strophes), Deborah's Song of Victory in Judges 5, the Song of H a n n a h in 1 Samuel 2:1—10, David's lament in 2 Samuel 1:19—27, and his great Song of Thanksgiving as king in 2 Samuel 2 2 . 3

4

5

6

This is all very well, but can w e actually see the difference between prose and p o e t r y in our Bible translations? This is a question w e have to ask, as I a m writing primarily for the m a n y readers w h o do n o t read the Bible in the original languages. T h e difference b e t w e e n prose and poetry has generally b e e n carefully observed in recent translations, as for instance the bestselling N e w International Version (1978, revised 1983), and the Jewish Publication Society's 1985 translation of the H e b r e w Bible: prose has b e e n printed continuously, but p o e t r y is immediately conspicuous by its typography: the lines are ragged instead of j u s ­ tified. In the older translations—the many reprints of the King James Bible and the widely available Revised Standard Version of 1946—52—this is unfortunately n o t the case. In these versions, only t h e Psalms, Proverbs, Job, S o n g of Songs, and Lamentations are p r i n t e d in the desired typography of true poetic lines. T h e abundant Prophetic texts have regrettably been printed as prose, often in t w o columns per page. T h e unfortunate results of this will soon b e c o m e clear, as I introduce two of the greatest poets by dis­ cussing a strophe from Isaiah and a lament of David's.

3

Preliminary Exercise Wash y o u r s e l v e s , m a k e y o u r s e l v e s c l e a n (Isaiah 1)

T h e first thing that strikes us w h e n w e o p e n o u r translation is the typography in w h i c h the poems are presented: their appearance o n the page. H e r e is a passage from Isaiah in the R S V rendering: [16] Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, [17] learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isa. 1:16-17) Typography like this blocks our view of the true literary situation by printing the text continuously, as if it were prose. Moreover, the text is printed in two columns per page, a procedure w h i c h in itself is already detrimental to the poetry. T h e t w o biblical verses I just q u o t e d are actually composed of three verses in the literary sense—i.e., full poetic lines—which each consist of three seg­ ments. T h e i r 3 x 3 exactly fill o n e strophe, and thus the unit may also be printed as follows:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice; support the oppressed, provide justice for the fatherless, plead for the widow.

line la lb lc 2a 2b 2c 3a 3b 3c

This is a w o r k i n g translation that keeps a bit closer to the o r i g ­ inal text. T h e r e is o n e substantial difference from the R S V r e n ­ dering, w h i c h appears at the b e g i n n i n g of the third verse. T h e H e b r e w w o r d hamots usually refers to an oppressor ("oppression" in t h e first q u o t e ) , but this time (line 3a) the object of this action is m e a n t . In the following, I will have to resist the t e m p t a t i o n to go back to the Hebrew, as this introduces information the reader c a n n o t check, w h i c h is s o m e t h i n g I w a n t to avoid. For o n c e , however, I will depart from this rule, and for a g o o d reason: the

4

Reading Biblical Poetry

very articulation of the third trio guides us in the choice o f t h e right object. T h e correct arrangement or division of the strophe is the ideal starting point for a compact and simple analysis of the structure. T h e presentation of Isaiah 1:16—17 as three trios offers a perfect view of w h a t happens. Each verse contains three forms of the imperative (in the plural). Although the first verse is about physi­ cal cleansing, the focus is o n the symbolic and moral meanings. W i t h these three verses w e are in the middle of a long p o e m in w h i c h t h e deity itself is fulminating against the corrupt c o m ­ patriots of the Judaean Isaiah; this is the long oracle* of d o o m of Isaiah 1:2—20, some forty poetic lines. T h e addressed have to cleanse themselves because they have blood o n their hands (thus the end of verse 15, w h i c h immediately precedes o u r strophe), and because their cult is only a lot of p o m p and show ( w . 11-14). +

T h e second verse is a n e w series of three, w h e r e the imperative (another three times, all of t h e m in the plural) always has an abstract n o u n as its object: do evil, good, justice. In line 2a I used the w o r d "evil" for the first object to show in m y translation that this makes the phrase an e c h o of the evil in line l b . This instance of repetition is linked to another in the second verse: the root for "just" appears in 2c and is also used in 3b, in favor of the oppressed. T h e central c o m m a n d imparting m e a n i n g to the nine injunctions is 2b, "learn to do good," and starting from this pivot there are only positive commands in the text. T h e p o e t does n o t get bogged d o w n in a n o n c o m m i t t a l e x h o r ­ tation t o such abstract virtues as " t h e good." In his last trio h e p r e ­ sents the practical application.The c o m m a n d s (another three, still in the plural) of the third verse all have concrete direct objects: people of flesh and blood w h o are u n d e r great duress and deserve to be protected. So m u c h for our brief analysis of the structure of the strophe; it has n o w b e c o m e obvious that line 3a indeed refers to the object of oppression rather than the subject, and the m o r e recent translations have fortunately seen this. A sentence such as "I have seen y o u " or "You will praise h i m " needs only o n e w o r d in Hebrew. Moreover, the classical poets aim t The first occurrence of each glossary term is marked by an asterisk (*) follow­ ing the word.

Preliminary Exercise

5

for succinctness even by H e b r e w standards. This is w h y in English w e almost always n e e d far m o r e words to render a verse than there are in the original. A n d this in t u r n creates the situation that b i b ­ lical p o e t r y works w h e n each segment (half-verse, colon) is given a line of its o w n in the typography. T h e complete verse in transla­ tion simply becomes t o o long to b e printed o n a single line. Let us see h o w this works for Isaiah 1:16—17: Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; / remove the evil of your doings / from before my eyes! Cease to do evil, / learn to do good, / seek justice! Correct oppression; / provide justice for the fatherless, / plead for the widow. Even n o w it hardly works, although I have used a smaller font. As a staccato of commands, phrase after phrase, the passage is so dense that even by H e b r e w standards it is exceptional; in terms of meter, w e here have three times 2 + 2 + 2 beats. In the following, I will call the first segment of a verse the A-colon, the second the B-colon, and the third the C-colon. F r o m a visual point of view it is g o o d practice to indent the B-cola in translation, and then indent the C-cola o n e extra level, so as to show staggered articu­ lation, w h i c h is the true hallmark of the poetic line. For a good understanding of a p o e m it is essential to discover the contours of the units or textual layers above the level of the verse. This form of structuration and other matters will b e dis­ cussed together w i t h David's p o e m ; I will first print it in its entirety, in a w o r k i n g translation of my o w n .

D a v i d ' s l a m e n t for Saul (2 S a m u e l 1) T h e situation at the end of the first book of Samuel is as follows: under the command of king Saul and three of his sons, the Israelite army tries to fend off an attack by the Philistines, but is utterly defeated. Three days later the bad news reaches David in Ziklag, in the south­ west of Palestine, where he is formally still the vassal of one of the Philistine kings. H e composes a dirge for the fallen king and his first­ b o r n Jonathan, w h o is Davids closest friend.The text is in 2 Samuel 1:19-27; the author of the book first provides some information (w. 17—18) that in three prose lines tells us a surprising amount about 7

6

Reading Biblical Poetry

subject, genre, aim, target group, and source of the painful message, and as such helps to guide our reading: David composed this dirge over Saul and his son Jonathan and he said [in order to instruct the Judaeans through the hard message; see, it is recorded in the Book of the Upright]:

[prose]

[w. 17—18]

strophe stanza Your glory/gazelle, O Israel, [lies] slain on your heights; how have the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, do not proclaim it in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult. Hills of Gilboa, [let there be] no dew and no rain on you, fields up high, for there the shield of the mighty was desecrated, the shield of Saul is anointed with oil no more. Without the blood of the slain, without the fat of the mighty the bow ofJonathan did not come back, and the sword of Saul never returned empty. Saul and Jonathan, the beloved and most dear, in life and death they never parted. They were swifter than eagles, mightier than lions. Daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in crimson and finery, who decked your robes with jewels of gold. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle! [It is] Jonathan [who is] slain on your heights! I am devastated because of you, my brother, Jonathan, you were most dear to me, your love is a miracle to me, more than the love of women. How have the mighty fallen, the instruments of war perished!

Ill

Preliminary Exercise

7

T h e seven strophes have b e e n arranged into three stanzas, as a short analysis must show. T h e first strophe consists of only o n e tripartite verse (a so-called tricolon), and has to serve as an introduction in m o r e than o n e respect. T h e very first w o r d of strophe and p o e m is ts vi in the original language (also spelled Zvi) and wrong-foots us o n purpose: w e just cannot understand it at this stage.The w o r d is a h o m o n y m * that means b o t h "jewel, glory" and "gazelle," and w e are forced to defer o u r decision as t o w h i c h m e a n i n g to choose. Moreover, w e do n o t k n o w w h o or w h a t the m e t a p h o r * refers to. T h e information that Zvi lies slain o n the heights of Gilboa—the l o w table-mountain w h e r e the battle t o o k place—suggests that w e have to d o w i t h o n e or m o r e persons, but w h o ? Is it the king, w i t h the princes at his side, or the army? Here, too, w e have to defer our decision—and, as w e shall see, as far as the final strophe. In other words, the p o e t immediately presents us w i t h a riddle. e

T h e second sentence of the p o e m is the C - c o l o n of the o p e n ­ ing verse. W h i l e the first sentence contained an unevenness because of the awkward position of the vocative* and remained incomprehensible, the rhetorical exclamation is smooth and simple. M o r e than that, it is a cliché, a general statement that also might have b e e n exclaimed after the battles of Waterloo or Hastings. At the same time, however, its " n o r m a l " and cliché character is u n d e r ­ m i n e d by a strategic decision. T h e p o e t makes this exclamation a seed that will grow. At the end of strophes 6 and 7 the sentence returns, first accompanied by an adjunct o f place, and then (at the end of the p o e m as a whole) w i t h a n e w clause in the B - c o l o n as its counterpart. For this reason, " h o w have the mighty fallen!" merits the label of "refrain phrase." T h e worst cliché effect has b e e n removed anyway, as it has b e e n placed after the sentence about Z v i : fortunately, the p o e m does n o t start w i t h a platitude.The r i d ­ dle of Zvi I will call t h e t h e m e phrase. Stanza I consists of t w o strophes, w h i c h are b o t h d e t e r m i n e d by t w o c o m m a n d s placed in front, followed by t w o negative sen­ tences. In strophe 2 David forbids certain persons to carry the "joyful message" to the Philistine h o m e front. B u t w h o exactly are these people? In reality, the cities o n the coast have heard of the o u t c o m e of the war at least two days before David does, and e x u ­ berant festivities must long since have started in the Pentapolis, the

8

Reading Biblical Poetry

league of the five major cities of the Philistines! I conclude that here David is addressing imaginary messengers in a desperate attempt to reverse reality. As yet, he absolutely cannot bear t h e thought that the other camp is n o w joyously celebrating its t r i ­ u m p h o n the battlefield, and tries to prevent this party by magicalpoetical means. This is indicated by the double "lest." In strophe 3 David again opens with two prohibitions, in sen­ tences w h i c h have b e e n so shortened by anger that they do n o t even contain a verb. T h e i r content is remarkable: h e curses the slopes of M o u n t Gilboa. David tries to c o n d e m n t h e m to p e r m a ­ nent infertility by blocking the supply of life-giving water. B u t w h i c h person is capable of stopping rain? T h e r e is only one: the deity. In the Song of the Vineyard (Isa. 5:1-7), G o d does indeed c o m m a n d the clouds n o t to grant their rain to the vineyard h e has decided to curse. All this demonstrates h o w David here tries the impossible, exactly as in strophe 2. Against his o w n better j u d g ­ m e n t h e places himself in the position of God. H e feels so p o w e r ­ less in the face of this catastrophe that he deploys all the p o w e r tools in the language he must w o r k w i t h as a poet, in order to t u r n back the clock. In this way, great poetic expressivity becomes the mask and the sign of complete impotence. All these prohibitions of David's, so characteristic of stanza I, are apotropaic*: they aim at fending off disaster by denying and aveng­ ing the inexorable course of history. T h e poet makes a titanic effort to eliminate the fait accompli. This in itself is also a message: the warding-off gesture is a form of avoidance. David will n o t and cannot relate to the catastrophe directly and personally at this point, w h i c h may in t u r n be explained by his distress and pain. After t w o strophes, David still has n o t reached that point. Stanza II stands out sharply from its surroundings—i.e., the first and last stanzas—by referring to the times before the battle, and surpris­ ingly exchanging the m i n o r key of the complaint for the major key of a song of praise. This central part praises the courage and victories of Saul and J o n a t h a n as the heroes of earlier battles. Stanza II is a eulogy* that forms the center of an elegy*.The m a x i m u m contrast b e t w e e n center and flanks creates a formidable dynamic in the perception of the p o e t and the empathetic reader. I have rendered the usual " h e r o e s " of the refrain phrase by

Preliminary Exercise

9

" m i g h t y " here, as the root "strong, m i g h t y " is an important key word in the song. It occurs in v. 25a and parallel to this in v. 27a, indicating a closure or finish at strophe level, and it is the c o u n ­ terpart of the n a m e "Saul" in the strophe about the shields (v. 21). T h e most telling aspect, however, is its placement in w . 22a and 23b. Its position o n the edges of the central stanza gives the root a structural function, that of demarcating and framing that unit. Moreover, here it appears with a reversed key signature. In the verses of the flanking stanzas I and III, " m i g h t y " is in a m i n o r key and refers to the fallen heroes of David's o w n party; at the top and b o t t o m of the middle stanza its effect is exacdy the reverse: in v. 22 it refers to Saul's and Jonathan's former enemies, and at the end of v. 2 3 it aims to h o n o r father and son themselves: "they were stronger than lions." At the beginning of stanza II, Jonathan receives a m u c h longer sentence than his father.This is mainly because the w o r d "empty," w h i c h further specifies the return of Saul's sword, is the exact counterpart of two wordier complements that characterize the return of Jonathan s b o w : " n o t w i t h o u t the blood of the slain . . . n o t w i t h o u t the fat of the warriors." Formally speaking, o u r atten­ tion is directed toward the weapons rather than their bearers. T h e same already happened in strophe 3, w h e n the poet's gaze discov­ ered " t h e shield of the mighty, tainted" o n the battlefield, and " t h e shield of Saul [was] anointed w i t h oil n o more." Polishing one's shield w i t h oil was o n e of the things a soldier had to do in prepa­ ration for battle; this was supposed to make blows from the e n e m y glance off it. B u t the introduction of " o i l " in this strophe is first and foremost a subtle allusion to Saul's status: he was the Lord's Anointed, m e a n i n g that h e held the sacred office of king, and as such was inviolable. N o w , the shield smeared with blood and m u d symbolizes the terrible and desecrating end he m e t with. T h e shift to speaking of weapons instead of their bearers is an example of m e t o n y m y * . This f o r m of indirectness again betrays the poet's emotional condition: h e is still intent u p o n avoidance. At this point, however, strophe 5 appears as a c o m p l e m e n t . S u d ­ denly, father and son are juxtaposed, and the order of their names has b e e n reversed. T h e two names are followed by t w o apposi­ tions ("beloved and most dear"), and t w o adjuncts o f time o f

Reading Biblical Poetry

10

m a x i m u m contrast,"life and death." Finally, in the last position of the double verse, the actual sentence core follows: "they never parted." This predicate* is the only element in the sentence that is n o t duplicated. For the Israelite, life and death cannot be meaningfully linked or united in any way: they form the ultimate polarity of h u m a n existence. Here, however, their opposition is p u t in perspective, I w o u l d almost say negated, by the mutual loyalty of father and son, whose force is so strong that it cannot be split up. Verse 2 3 is an arena in w h i c h unity and duality are at war, and all duplications in the [outer] form ultimately prove to serve the Saul-and-Jonathan unity. T h e entire p o e m is a chain of twenty-five predicates in all. T h e middle o n e — n u m b e r 13—is this o n e verb that, thanks to the negation, conquers or surpasses polarity and division, and so tries to exorcise the divisive ravages w r o u g h t by death. T h e distribution of the two proper names t h r o u g h o u t the p o e m is in itself an important beacon, w h i c h points the way to the solution of the Zvi-riddle. W i t h i n stanza II, b o t h names occur twice, in a chiastic* order. If w e take strophe 1 to be a part of stanza I, a pattern becomes visible: I

Zvi

Saul

II

Jonathan Saul Saul Jonathan

III

Saul

Jonathan

T h e balance b e t w e e n these occurrences is the first clear sug­ gestion that the n a m e Z v i might b e the cover for the person most beloved by David. If this is true, the t w o names u n d e r III mirror the t w o of the beginning in a crosswise construction. In that case, the p o e m starts and ends w i t h the o n e person w h o s e loss David can never get over; first d e n o t e d enigmatically as the glory of Israel, h e appears u n d e r his o w n n a m e in the final strophe, w h i c h clearly forms the climax. Stanza III consists of t w o strophes. T h e first, strophe 6, is devoted to the king; the other one, the seventh and last of the song, speaks about Jonathan. In the o n e strophe the w o m e n lament the king; in the other David himself, in the first person, laments the prince, his b o s o m friend.

11

Preliminary Exercise

A r o u n d the center, w h i c h was in a major key, the poet creates a balance between stanzas I and III.This is immediately visible in the exhortation of strophe 6. W h i l e in strophe 2 the p o e t refuses all j o y to "the daughters of the Philistines" (as the original text lit­ erally reads) and h e n c e tries to stop the message of victory by means of a prohibition, in strophe 6 he issues a c o m m a n d , so that t h r o u g h o u t the land " t h e daughters of Israel" express their grief in m o u r n i n g rituals. T h e y should weep for a king w h o gave t h e m prosperity in better days. Saul's care is expressed through attributes and terms of outward p o m p , and a chiasm* keeps the core of the strophe together: [weep over Saul]

who clothed you who with jewels of gold

in crimson and finery, decked your robes.

This is followed by the exclamation about the mighty having fallen, w h i c h as a repetition of v. 19c b e c o m e s the refrain sentence and concludes the strophe. T h e final strophe is m u c h m o r e personal, w i t h its intense exchange b e t w e e n " m e " and "you." B o r r o w i n g a t e r m from love poetry, David calls J o n a t h a n " m y b r o t h e r " — w h i c h is w h a t t h e girl from the S o n g of Songs calls her lover (and h e can address h e r as " m y sister"). In the center, the p o e t applied the adjectives " b e l o v e d " and " m o s t dear" to t h e k i n g and his son in a rather objective t o n e . T h e s e t w o terms n o w t u r n o u t to have b e e n used in preparation for t h e final strophe as well, w h e r e the w o r d " l o v e " appears twice exclusively in h o n o r o f J o n a t h a n , and fol­ lows "dear." T h e relationship w i t h t h e middle of stanza II is again chiastic: Saul and Jonathan: the beloved,

the most dear . . .

Jehonathan, you were most dear to me

your love is a miracle to me, more than the love of women.

[middle of strophe 4]

N e x t to this u n i q u e praise for his friend, David places his personal pain—a formidable contrast. H e speaks his n a m e twice, in its full form Jehonathan (literally: "Yahweh has given"), and n o w expresses his grief uninhibitedly and directly w i t h "I am distressed for

12

Reading Biblical Poetry

t h e e " — f o r once I will use the English of the almost fourcenturies-old King James Bible. T h e original text literally says something like "I a m hard-pressed," in the sense of "I a m in a ter­ rible plight." T h e avoidance stage has passed, and David is n o w ready for the naked truth. H e is crushed and shocked. His grief makes h i m aware of the full depth of their love for each other, while the love lends depth and a voice to the grief. Meanwhile, David as a speaker has made his most surprising move o n the threshold of the strophe. H e started it with a n o m i ­ nal sentence, w h i c h is n o t h i n g but the t h e m e phrase v. 19a w i t h w h i c h the p o e m opened: "Jehonathan—[lies] slain o n y o u r heights." H e has changed only o n e element: he has replaced the word Z v i with his friend's name! Suddenly w e have received the poetic answer to the question of w h o is h i d d e n b e h i n d the metaphors "jewel" and "gazelle." T h e substitution of the n a m e Jonathan for the very first word, together with the hint provided by the structure, proves that Jonathan = Zvi. W h i l e the last strophe sings of t h e love of J o n a t h a n (for David), and immortalizes this w i t h a u n i q u e c o m p a r i s o n — " y o u r love is m o r e wonderful to m e than the love of w o m e n " — w e may call the love for Jonathan (on David's part) the alpha and omega of the song as a w h o l e . T h e refrain phrase " h o w have the mighty fallen" is repeated, and is expanded even further than in v. 25a, as it is given a parallel in the i n d e p e n d e n t clause that flanks it: "the weapons of war have perished." This last clause combines the shields, the sword, and the b o w u n d e r o n e heading, and so concludes the metonymical speech. This half-verse about the weapons thus also refers to the owners of the weapons and their deaths. T h e indirect character of the reference n o w n o longer means avoidance, but offers a discreet way to provide the lament w i t h a n o t - t o o - v e h e m e n t ending, by means of a certain distance. These preliminary exercises already demonstrate that the H e b r e w p o e t is a master of proportions. At every position in the p o e m , and at every level—whether w e are dealing w i t h sounds and words, or w h e t h e r w e are looking at half-verses or verses, strophes or stanzas—he always adapts himself to t h e proper d i m e n ­ sions of his material. H o w e v e r conscientious, a translation can never take into account all subtleties of style such as alliteration*,

Preliminary Exercise

13

n u m b e r of syllables, rhyme, and such, but at the levels above v o c a b ­ ulary even a translation can show m u c h of the poets' measured composing. W e have already seen this in the meticulous as well as playful handling of the "three-units" principle in Isaiah. T h e p o e m s in the Bible are extremely varied.We notice this w h e n w e look at genre: there are proverbs and p o e m s from the W i s d o m tradition, songs of victory and defeat, lamentations by individual voices or groups, hymns, songs of thanksgiving, love poetry, ora­ cles of d o o m or salvation p r o n o u n c e d by the prophets, and m u c h more. B u t however diverse the poems, they have a n u m b e r of powerful rules and literary conventions in c o m m o n ; and after w e have learned to recognize and apply these, t h e texts are generally self-explanatory: this is the subject of the rest of this b o o k . T h e n u m b e r of English-speakers w h o read classical H e b r e w is so small that I will here assume the position of readers w h o have to take recourse to translations. I want to find an answer to the question of w h a t the primary tools are that such readers require for an independent and creative reading of the translated p o e m s . I will start from the reality that there are three c o m m o n l y used translations: the A u t h o r i z e d (or King James) Version (usually in some sort of m o d e r n i z e d spelling), the 1946—52 Revised Standard Version, and the N e w International Version. I will regularly q u o t e from the Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh translation, 1985.

Legend I must first point out a pitfall: the t e r m "verse" is ambiguous . W h e n I write "v. 1 6 " or "verses 1 0 - 1 4 , " I a m referring to the traditional verse n u m b e r s of the transmitted text. T h e numbers here indicate biblical verses. A biblical verse can b e prose or poetry, and its length may vary from a few words in o n e sentence to as many as ten sen­ tences and thirty words. T h e y have b e e n transmitted or d e m a r ­ cated as textual units by the rabbis, for the purpose of recitation in the synagogue. In a b o o k about poetics, the other t e r m "verse" is m u c h m o r e important: this refers to the complete poetic line, as w h e n w e talk about texts by Yeats or Wallace Stevens, lines by H o m e r , Horace, and Shakespeare—the verse in the literary or

14

Reading Biblical Poetry

poetical sense. In the H e b r e w Bible, the traditional verse n u m b e r s almost always coincide w i t h the actual poetic lines in the books of Job and Proverbs: a happy coincidence. Outside these, however, in the Prophets and in the books of Psalms, Song of Songs, and Lamentations, or in the strophes that here and there adorn and enrich the prose from Genesis through to Kings, the biblical verse is n o t at all the same as the (literary) verse = the poetic line. As I expect this b o o k also to be used or consulted by all sorts of students, I have added endnotes to each chapter at the end of the b o o k w h i c h may b e of service to Hebraists. Readers w i t h o u t knowledge of the original languages can safely skip t h e m . For these readers I have included a glossary of foreign and technical terms at the end of the b o o k . T h e first occurrence of such a t e r m (for instance, " m e t o n y m y " or "merism") has b e e n marked by an asterisk, indicating that it will be explained in the list. Finally, I should point o u t an important terminological distinction: I use the word " p o e t i c " as an adjective relating to poetry (i.e., primary liter­ ature), and the w o r d "poetical" as an adjective referring to the scholarly discipline of poetics, w h i c h produces secondary literature about poetry.

2 The art of poetry: a definition and analysis Components

I and II: language and

number

D e n s i t y ; l a n g u a g e as a s y s t e m o f differences Sensitivity to verse has something to do w i t h aptitude, and a lot to do w i t h the proper training. A correct perception of poetry is based o n the art of reading. C o m p e t e n t reading, and the right kind of experience, I consider m o r e essential than drawing u p a defini­ tion of the art of poetry. Yet, it is w o r t h the effort to try and define H e b r e w poetry. A n adequate set of specifications has many p r a c ­ tical advantages and will lead to effective insight and increased pleasure in reading. W h a t exactly is "poetry"? T h e G e r m a n t e r m for it, Dichtung, by a lucky coincidence sounds as if it was derived from the G e r ­ m a n root dicht, m e a n i n g "dense," a similarity I simply must take advantage of. T h e sounds create an association that w e can put to g o o d use, even if it is n o m o r e than m y o w n opportunist popular etymology*. W h a t a p o e t undertakes does have a lot to do w i t h creating "density." Poetry is the most compact and concentrated f o r m of speech possible. By making the most of his or her linguistic tools, the p o e t creates an immense richness of meaning, and this r i c h ­ ness becomes available if w e as readers k n o w h o w to handle the density: h o w w e can cautiously tackle complexity, probe the vari­ ous layers o n e by one, and unfold t h e m . T h e p o e t creates this abundance of meanings by visiting all the n o o k s and crannies of the language, and by b e i n g an expert at it. I may draw a comparison here w i t h the visual arts: it is a wellk n o w n fact that the greatest painters and sculptors spend their entire lives lovingly studying their materials and e x p e r i m e n t i n g w i t h t h e m : paint and canvas, clay and b r o n z e . T h e same holds true for the poet: his raw material is language, in the first instance, and

16

Reading Biblical Poetry

very few p o e m s are b o r n w i t h o u t the poet's exploring and trying out various forms of language and style, w i t h o u t outlines and deletions. O u r language is a well-ordered and subtle system of signs, w h i c h may be described as a n e t w o r k of relations and differences. These forms of cohesion were discovered only at the beginning of the twentieth century, w h i c h means that scholarly attention to t h e m is comparatively recent; the poets, however, have b e e n actu­ ally w o r k i n g w i t h t h e m for thousands of years. T h e y brilliantly exploit the differences and contrasts inherent in their language as a system. In the case of Hebrew, an additional factor is involved: the dif­ ference between that language and English. We should remain aware of that difference w h e n reading translations of poems from the Bible. H e b r e w needs fewer words than o u r m o t h e r tongue. Take, for instance, the sentence: "I have listened to you." In H e b r e w this is only o n e word, of three or four syllables, w h i c h moreover contains an extra element of information as compared to English: it shows w h e t h e r " y o u " (the direct object) is a m a n or a w o m a n . A phrase such as "the people w h o pursue m e w i t h o u t reason" in the original language consists of only two words, five syllables in all. Because English needs m o r e words, it is often impossible to print a complete verse o n o n e line (as w e have already seen in the Intro­ duction). As a result, the RSV, NIV, and many other translations have had to decide to print o n e verset (colon, plural cola) per line in their presentation of biblical poetry. A n d sometimes even that is hardly feasible. I will illustrate this by an extreme case of divergent lengths. In Psalm 69:5a/5b, the H e b r e w text contains 5 + 4 words filling cola of regular length. Two popular D u t c h translations print the equivalent of these words (taken from the RSV) as follows: More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause; mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies. A rather unfortunate typography. T h e text itself consists of t w o cola, because w e easily recognize t w o sentences of almost c o m ­ pletely parallel structure. T h e translators needed a lot of words (no

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

17

fewer than sixteen) to render v. 5a, and have succumbed to the temptation to cut the first sentence in two. T h u s they have divided a syntactically and rhythmically close-knit unit into t w o lines, o n the basis of a criterion that has n o t h i n g to do w i t h w r i t i n g H e b r e w verse but is d e t e r m i n e d by the receiving language: the length of the translated English phrase. W h i c h leads to a second mistake: printing the B-colon in the position of an A - c o l o n . T h e R S V cuts b o t h sentences in two, w h i c h leads to the illusion that w e have t w o A-cola and two B-cola here. T h e p o e t traverses the system of relations formed by the lan­ guage, and is very adroit at exploiting the differences that as it were form the clue to this system. Below I a m giving a list of the most important differences determining the usage of the H e b r e w language. As in English, many of these contrasts are binary*: • masculine/feminine • singular/plural • past/present/future • stating, noting, or describing versus wishing, begging, and commanding • positive/negative • figurative/non-figurative • active/passive • transitive*/intransitive* • speaking about/speaking to • abstract/concrete • regular/irregular word order This list is mainly about language and text signs (signifiers*), but w e could go o n w i t h a list of meanings (signifieds*), i.e., c o n ­ cepts and things the language refers to: • high/low • God/man • native/foreign • good/evil • joy/distress • fear/security • trust/despair . . . etc., but I have to admit that this short list is fairly arbitrary.This second list, however, makes us realize something m u c h bigger: the

Reading Biblical Poetry

18

n u m b e r of meanings or subjects is simply inexhaustible, so I will immediately stop adding o n to it. H o w e v e r many there are, all these differences do not yet have a specifically literary quality; they also may be observed and studied in an ordinary newspaper article or some other piece of everyday language. So, it is time to consult the p o e t himself and see h o w h e juggles binary and other differences. H e r e is a short p o e m from the Psalter, a unit of nine verses: verse

Psalm 113

la b 2a b

O servants of Yahweh, give praise, praise the name of Yahweh. Let the name of Yahweh be blessed, now and forever.

3a b 4a b

From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of Yahweh is praised! Yahweh is exalted above all nations, His glory is above the heavens.

5a b 6a b

Who is like Yahweh our God, who is enthroned on high, who looks far down, in heaven and on earth?

7a b 8a b 9a b

W h o raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people, who gives the barren woman a home, as a happy mother of children.

strophe

1

2

3

4

We only need to look at the kind of sentences, and the use of space on the page, to find the right way into the work and to be able to see its articulation in various parts. T h e division into verses and the way they have been cut into halves (cola) originates from the Jewish text tradition and is undisputed.The division into four strophes, h o w ­ ever, is mine, and therefore need not be accepted without question. In w . 1-2 w e notice t w o verbs in the imperative, followed by a wish. This volitive* quality sets off the first strophe from the second, w h i c h contains positive sentences. In this indicative*

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

19

m o d e they point to attributes of the deity; hence, there are n o actions here, b u t rather three ways of saying "is." Speaking to ( p e o ­ ple) has b e e n replaced by a hymnic speaking about (God). Verses 5 - 6 are again different in tone, as they form a rhetorical question. T h e four versets are parts of a single syntactic u n i t . T h e point of the question is that G o d is incomparable. In v. 6b w e r e c ­ ognize the very first merism* of the Bible (as w e find it in Gen.1:1), pointing to the domains of G o d and man: heaven and earth, respectively. This pair has b e e n placed in a remarkable posi­ tion: the t w o halves do correspond to God's activities—i.e., being e n t h r o n e d and looking d o w n — b u t they have been cut loose from these and placed together as the final line of the strophe. In this way, the p o e t has avoided writing a three-part verse, w h i c h w o u l d run: " w h o is likeYahweh, our God, / w h o sits o n high, in heaven, / and looks far d o w n , o n earth?" His actual point is slightly differ­ ent. F u r t h e r m o r e , h e wanted to stick w i t h his bicolic* design, and has created a third quartet of cola. 1

T h e center of this foursome, w . 5b—6a, is taken u p by a spec­ tacular vertical axis linking the provinces of G o d and m a n . T h e axis is e m b e d d e d in descriptions of G o d , and in the t w o halves of the spatial m e r i s m . T h e words for G o d and for cosmic space form t w o pairs, w h i c h provide a g o o d balance and a perfect finish to the strophe. T h e only remaining question n o w is w h y the p o e t has delayed using the terms of space until v. 6d, and there presents t h e m together. T h e answer is that in so d o i n g h e has t h e m w o r k in t w o ways: n o t only as an explanation and topographical i n d i ­ cation of God's actions (being e n t h r o n e d / s e e i n g ) , b u t also as a gauge of God's uniqueness. Strictly speaking, the point of the strophe is: neither in heaven n o r o n earth do w e find anybody comparable to H i m . T h u s , w e may also reorganize the quartet, and interpret it as: W h o is likeYahweh our God, / in heaven and on earth? There is nobody who sits so high / and looks down so far! R e a d i n g on, w e reach strophe 4 and see six rather than four versets.These are largely adjective clauses, and w e are struck by at least three transitive* verbs indicating sovereign action. Although w e all k n o w the answer to the rhetorical question in the exact center of

20

Reading Biblical Poetry

the p o e m ("nobody," of course!), the poet has decided to seize his opportunity and add an answer of his o w n after all. H e again p r e ­ sents a series of actions o n God's part, w h i c h at last govern the object omitted in v. 6: here we see the people, m o r e specifically the weak and needy, w h o appear in the position of beneficiaries. T h e three transitive verbs demonstrate the constitutive power of God's liberating initiative. G o d proves to b e a totally c o m m i t t e d person, instead of a neutral physical p h e n o m e n o n . His proper name occurs, in descending frequency, three, two, one, and zero times in strophes 1—4. His activity shows a reverse development: it started at zero and reaches its m a x i m u m in strophe 4. T h e strophes not only show variation of tone and m o d e (in the verbs),but also form a quartet on their own level,in an AB-B7V pat­ tern: first, they view the earth/heaven, next heaven/the earth. T h e characters w e meet in t h e m are arranged in a similar crosswise struc­ ture: the people are exhorted to action in strophe 1 and liberated in strophe 4, while G o d is praised in the central strophes 2 and 3. T h e lyrical world as evoked by this p o e m is o n e of sheer space, and t h e reader is provided w i t h plenty of space thanks to the inter­ secting horizontal and vertical axes, w h i c h have b e e n dynamically positioned by the poet. In the second strophe, v. 3 shows the h o r ­ izontal axis at its widest by tracing the course of the sun from East to West. Verse 4 duly follows w i t h the vertical axis, for a m o m e n t showing us G o d e n t h r o n e d high above the h u m a n struggle. B u t not for long: in v. 6b t h e hymnic question that constitutes the poetic axis and points to God's uniqueness reverses the order earth/heaven, so that o u r attention is bent back toward the earth, following God's gaze. N e x t , strophe 4 fills u p the plane of our his­ tory w i t h the images of God's intervention. In this plane, too, the horizontal and vertical axes are contrasted. T h e p o o r are raised from the dust, and w e can see h o w this sym­ bolizes the reversal of their fortunes; they are n o w able to straighten their backs.The horizontal orientation of w . 8—9 is n o t prominent, but certainly recognizable and lends an aspect of har­ m o n y to the people gathered there. T h e y are presented in the plural (princes, children), by w h i c h the poet takes us back to the beginning. In this way h e effectively rounds off his song w i t h a form ofinclusio*, a frame. O n l y after w e have crossed the finish d o

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

21

w e realize that there are excellent reasons for the call to "praise G o d " in v. 1: these are given in the long final strophe. T h e prosody* of Psalm 113 cannot b e called representative of biblical poetry, for a positive reason: this p o e m is one of the top five as regards regularity. By way of exception I will demonstrate this by a count of the syllables in the original Hebrew, so that these exact figures may again give the reader an impression of the precision the poet can employ at will. T h e left-hand column shows the n u m b e r of syllables per word o n either side of the caesura* (indicated by a slash), and the middle column adds up the totals for the versets: verse 1 2

3.2.2 / 3.1.1.2 1.1.2.3 / 3.2.2

7 + 7 = 14 7 + 7 = 14

strophe 1 = 28

3 4

3.1.1.3 / 3.1.2 1.1.1.2.2 / 1.3.3

8 + 6 = 14 7 + 7 = 14

strophe 2 = 28

5 6

1.3.4 / 4.2 4.2 / 3.3

8 + 6 = 14 6 + 6 = 12

strophe 3 = 26

7 8 9

3.3.1 / 3.2.2 4.1.3 / 1.3.2 3.2.2 / 1.3.3

7 + 7 = 14 8 + 6 = 14 7 + 7 = 14

strophe 4 = 42

T h e total n u m b e r of syllables is 28 + 28 + 26 + 42 = 124. W e may b e allowed to rewrite this as 40 (a very biblical number, the total of w . 5—7) plus 3 x 2 8 . T h e greatest regularity is found at verse level: eight out of nine verses contain fourteen syllables, a total that in five cases has been reached, moreover, by doubling the sacred n u m b e r seven. T h e minimal variation in colon length, w h i c h n o w h e r e exceeds a range o f 6—7—8 in the p o e m , is n o t represen­ tative either: there are quite a n u m b e r of psalms using a range of five to twelve syllables (as a measure of colon length); there is usu­ ally considerable variation within o n e p o e m .

T h e old definition o f H e b r e w poetry Until some thirty years ago, Old Testament scholars entertained a rather inadequate view of H e b r e w poetics. Exegetes worked with a

Reading Biblical Poetry

22

seriously flawed definition of poetry, and I fear that it is still floating about in a n u m b e r of heads. Nevertheless, their view of H e b r e w verse contains two small grains of truth, which are worth m e n t i o n ­ ing. I will therefore use the old formula as a starting point for a quest for a comprehensive definition: a formula that will do full justice to the true riches and complexity of the p o e m , rather than reduce it. T h e old definition rests on two pillars, as it holds that the b i b ­ lical p o e m is d e t e r m i n e d by a) meter, and b) the parallel arrange­ m e n t of versets (for w h i c h the technical t e r m is parallelismus membrorum). In h o w far is this correct? I will discuss the first pillar, that of meter, only briefly as the details are relevant only to readers of Hebrew. In the nineteenth century, biblical scholarship reached an important negative conclusion: h o w ­ ever strong the impression of rhythm emanating from the verses in the H e b r e w Bible, they are obviously subject to rules totally differ­ ent from those governing the metrics of G r a e c o - R o m a n poetry and its various branches and offshoots in the poetry of the European lan­ guages. H o m e r and Virgil, Sophocles and Plautus used quantitative meter, based o n an unambiguous distinction between long and short syllables. In Arabic, too, poets have the option to work with verse feet that may be determined quantitatively—Arabic is related to H e b r e w within the Semitic family, and it was the world language with which Jews in the Middle East, N o r t h e r n Africa, and the Iber­ ian peninsula came into contact more than a thousand years after the canon of biblical books had been finalized. In classical Hebrew, the distinction between long and short syl­ lables does n o t work. At the end of the nineteenth century, schol­ ars concluded that the H e b r e w poetic line was best described as a string of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables: it is an accen­ tual verse. W h a t we n e e d to do is c o u n t the n u m b e r of stresses (beats) per colon, while between the beats there is a varying t h o u g h not too large n u m b e r of unstressed syllables. A verse may be schematically represented as separate syllables, or in a short notation.This looks as follows (for once, I will give some H e b r e w words in a scholarly transliteration—Ps. 44, v. 7): I do not trust in my bow / it is not my sword that gives me victory. e

e

ki lo b qashti ebtah / w harbi lo toshi 'eni

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

23

to be pronounced roughly as follows: kee lo b kashtee ebtakh

/

n^kharbee lo toshee-eini

o

/

00

e

600

606

6600

60

A n " o " represents a syllable; accents indicate a beat or stress. T h e practical short notation for this w o u l d be 3 + 3 , w h i c h has led the Germans to call this sort of line a Doppeldreier. Frequent patterns are 2 + 2, 2 + 3, or conversely 3 + 2, 3 + 3 , 4 + 4, and 4 + 3 or the reverse. Half-verses often differ by o n e accent or beat (one point). A pattern such as 3 + 3 for a two-part verse (a bicolon) may be nicely varied by 2 + 2 + 2 in a tricolon (three-part verse), so that the total of six syllables remains the same. I realize that all this is n o t going to help the user of a Bible trans­ lation m u c h . A n d there are two m o r e pieces of bad news. First, scholars are often bitterly divided on the correct scansion*, as of course borderline cases constantly crop up—for instance, about the question w h e t h e r a specific secondary stress may b e viewed as a metric accent, i.e., a beat. Second, there is the question that strikes at the very roots of the problem: can w e speak of metrics at all in connection w i t h H e b r e w verse? T h e interpreters w h o s e sen­ sitivity to verse I admire almost all answer in the affirmative, but there are r e n o w n e d scholars w h o radically deny the possibility of d e t e r m i n i n g any meter at all. In short, there is a v e h e m e n t discus­ sion about the point, or lack of it, of scanning H e b r e w verse, and it is highly unlikely that the debate will ever reach a consensus. T h e consequence of this battle is that this first pillar of the clas­ sical definition is tottering, and has probably fallen already. W h a t can w e do? M a k i n g a virtue out of necessity, I can point to two escape routes. In the first place, this b o o k exclusively deals w i t h Bible translations. A rendering of a H e b r e w p o e m in English can­ n o t h o p e to approximate the r h y t h m and m e t e r of the original, due to the e n o r m o u s gap between source and target languages, and the fact that H e b r e w uses far fewer words. Consequently, w e had better leave the entire complex of metrics and scansion aside. Yet, the text that is left in translation still shows two faces. Even t h o u g h meter has gone, there is still a powerful rhythm, w h i c h is even stronger in H e b r e w and is not denied even by scholars w h o

Reading Biblical Poetry

24

have n o time for metrics. T h e r h y t h m is kept reasonably intact thanks to parallelismus membrorum, w h i c h will be discussed in the next section; I will return to r h y t h m in due course. T h e second escape route from the y e s / n o metrics deadlock is a r o u n d a b o u t one. It is possible to circumvent the entire issue, and go back to counting the original syllables to measure and describe the powerful r h y t h m of H e b r e w verse. I return to Psalm 44, v. 7: the 7 + 8 = 15 syllables that I just presented as an accentual verse were also 15 in the old H e b r e w from centuries before C h r i s t . S o m e 65 percent of the cola in the b o o k of Psalms are seven, eight, or nine syllables long. R e c e n t investigations have shown that the poets themselves counted their syllables, and often used the sylla­ ble totals to make patterns in their verses and strophes. H e n c e , the poems have an explicit and precise numerical aspect—in Hebrew. As this is taking things t o o far for most readers, I refer the Hebraists a m o n g t h e m to n o t e 2 o n page 232 for m o r e information. Still, in the previous paragraph I have lifted a corner of the veil: the fig­ ures for Psalm 113 are a g o o d example of numerical precision. 2

3

Parallel a r r a n g e m e n t o f versets T h e second pillar of the obsolete definition is k n o w n a m o n g scholars as parallelismus membrorum. T h e Latin plural " m e m b r a " has the same m e a n i n g as the Greek plural "cola"; the singular " c o l o n " means "a member, a part." This way of arranging verse parts is n o t u n k n o w n to us. Take for example the most straightforward example from our o w n literature: Here lies Fred: He is dead. 4

Words and syllables coincide; this 3 + 3 is a miracle of efficiency, certainly if you realize that even a haiku still needs seventeen syl­ lables. T h e lines start w i t h an alliteration because of the h, and their first words, here /he, indicate the spot and the man. T h e verbs are intransitive* and static: they indicate duration and condition rather than action; the consonant s provides assonance*/phonetic c o h e ­ sion. By their rhyme, the line endings best demonstrate the i m p o r ­ tance of sound. T h e rhyme Fred/dead invites us to semanticize*:

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

25

w e make a semantic link b e t w e e n t w o words that was n o t there before, and find that the m a n becomes fused w i t h his horizontal, still position. It is a kind of identification that leads to the point of the p o e m : an attitude of complete acceptance of the end, and o n e of great sobriety and dry h u m o r . This preliminary exercise shows h o w each w o r d in o n e line has its counterpart in the other, in the same position even, and also h o w essential is the function of the sounds. O n l y if w e pay close attention, and appreciate even the smallest detail, d o w e fully real­ ize h o w m u c h sheer technique has gone into this. A n d then I a m n o t even talking about everything w e d o n o t see, i.e., everything that has been left out. Back to the biblical verse (in the sense of poetic line). T h e importance of parallelismus m e m b r o r u m has b e e n clear since the middle of the eighteenth century, w h e n the English bishop R o b e r t Lowth wrote a b o o k about it. His discussion of the p h e n o m e n o n has long set the t o n e for the study of biblical poetry. H e described parallelism at verse level, distinguishing three types: if the parallel versets say the same thing, Lowth called it synonymous parallelism; if o n e is opposed to the other w e have antithetical parallelism; and if there is a different relation, it is called complementary or synthetic. This is demonstrated by examples (a), (b), and (c) below: 5

(a) Ps. 2:1

Why do nations rage and peoples plot vain things?

(b) Ps. 1:6

Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed.

(c) Ps. 3:5

When I cry aloud to Yahweh, He answers me from his holy mountain.

T h e first notable aspect of example (c) is that it contains a c o m ­ p o u n d sentence, the parts of which—subclause and main clause— neatly coincide w i t h the cola, and present the actions of the speaker and his G o d . H e n c e , in this case the complementary aspect has b e e n realized mainly by sentence structure and consecution (progress of the action). In example (b) w e immediately recognize the simple opposition g o o d / b a d . W h i l e the righteous is " k n o w n " by G o d , something w h i c h to an Israelite implies attention and

26

Reading Biblical Poetry

support, the wicked dies a miserable and lonely death, as a result of w h a t seems a quasi-autonomous process: the intransive verb does n o t m e n t i o n an agent. Consequently, w e have a second c o n ­ trast, conveyed by the difference b e t w e e n the verbs: the first is transitive, the second is not. In example (a), the synonymy is based o n t w o w o r d pairs. T h e terms in o n e colon are illustrated and explained by the terms in the other colon. Lowth's division of "parallelism of the versets" into three types has b e e n influential, and there are still theologians w h o consider it adequate e n o u g h to w o r k with. Yet, the triad s y n o n y m o u s / antithetical/complementary cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Already if w e take L o w t h seriously at the level of his o w n words, we immediately see that the label " c o m p l e m e n t a r y " is a basket t e r m that covers everything that cannot be called synonymous or contrasting. T h u s , the t e r m is exposed as a counsel of despair, and this realization immediately strikes at the root of the entire triadic structure. W e n o w have entered the path that leads toward an adequate definition of H e b r e w poetry, and in order to clear it, m o r e radical criticism of Lowth's three-part structure is needed. I see three main areas of objection: an approach that m o u n t s an epistemological attack o n his terminology, a strictly literary counter-campaign, and an insight of a structural nature. In the following explanation I will make use of examples (a), (b), and (c) above, all taken from the b e g i n n i n g of the Psalter. I will play the amateur philosopher for a m o m e n t and look at the binary division, synonymous versus antithetical, from the p e r ­ spective of observation and epistemology. If you call the segments of a verse synonymous, you obscure the fact that actually they are not the same. Because their words are never identical, they do n o t really have the same meaning, and this opens up a crack b e t w e e n them. It is this crack that invites us to open the d o o r wider. By " w i d e r " I m e a n the following: in a case of synonymous parallelism we first notice, as L o w t h did, the great similarity in meaning. W i t h ­ out losing sight of the resemblance, w e nevertheless should n o t stop there and think w e have finished. T h e similarity b e t w e e n the two cola, as for instance in the case of Psalm 2:1a and l b in e x a m ­ ple (a), becomes a j u m p i n g - b o a r d or take-off point: against the

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

27

b a c k g r o u n d of the similarities, subtle differences begin to stand out. T h e nervous bustle of the peoples—they rage, as example (a) says—is further clarified in the B-colon, w h i c h disqualifies their activity as vain plotting. W e n o w understand that the verse as a w h o l e w i t h its " w h y " (which does double duty, i.e., governs b o t h cola) is n o informative question, but a rhetorical and caustic one. T h e r e are thousands of verses that at first sight seem to consist of synonymous cola, but u p o n closer scrutiny t u r n out to cover p o t ­ holes of difference. This is not to say that w e should start express­ ing the relation b e t w e e n the similar and the different in figures or percentages; poems wilt w h e n subjected to this sort of boorish and w o o d e n treatment. L o w t h s second t e r m deserves similar criticism. If you call t w o elements X and Y antithetical, you have in fact already seen or assumed a significant relation b e t w e e n the two. O n l y w h e n X and Y have something in c o m m o n is it possible and meaningful to speak of an antithesis b e t w e e n t h e m . This dialectic consideration may b e illustrated by example (b):"Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is d o o m e d " — a verse that forms the conclusion of t h e first Psalm. T h e entire p o e m has b e e n based o n the opposition b e t w e e n g o o d and bad, to such an extent that there are only few cola in w h i c h the righteous or the wicked are presented with their o w n qualities, but many cola w h e r e they appear as the opposite of the other, by means of the w o r d "not." I will print the negations in strophes 1 and 3 in italics, and follow the JPS here, w i t h some small adaptations. 6

Reading Biblical Poetry

28 verse

Psalm 1

strophe

la

Happy the man

b c d 2a b

who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, who has not taken the path of sinners, and has not joined the company of the insolent; but finds his delight in the teaching of Yahweh, and studies that teaching day and night.

3a b c d

Yea, he is like a tree planted beside streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, 2 whose foliage never fades; whatever he does, prospers.

4a b 5a b

Not so the wicked 3 rather, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not survive judgment, and the sinners will not [survive] in the assembly of the righteous. For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed.

6a b

1

T h e poet's moral preferences are made clear by the fact that he grants the short middle strophe to the righteous, and honors h i m by speaking figuratively. T h e long strophes flanking the center, h o w ­ ever, show a remarkable reciprocity: the first strophe "defines" the righteous by contrasting h i m with the wicked, and the opposite happens in the third strophe. This is a balance of mutual exclusion. W i t h this symmetry the composition as a whole reveals that the g o o d / b a d antithesis has a basis: one solid set of values that is firmly oriented toward the "law" (torah, strictly speaking "teaching") of God. T h e opposition between b l o o m and destruction is traced back in the final verse to the j u d g m e n t of one person, the deity. T h e p o e m is an arena w h e r e the forces of inclusion and exclusion engage in battle, but the conclusion of the song is to opt for the Torah. T h u s , the antithesis did not have the last word. If w e look at the concluding bicolon from a more verse-technical point of view, w e also notice that there is n o t only opposition: b o t h versets employ the same word "way" and subject it to a subde change in syntax*. In v. 6a, the way is the object of God's care; in 6b it is promoted to the

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

29

function of subject. This, however, is a last piece of irony directed against the wicked, as their paths will lead t h e m to destruction. T h e conclusion of this first exercise in radical criticism must b e : in every case of synonymous parallelism differences remain visible b e t w e e n cola that partner each other, and in every case of antithe­ sis or rivalry b e t w e e n adjoining versets there is a c o m m o n basis, or w e still see elements that the cola have in c o m m o n . R e c e n t scholarly efforts in the United States have produced a sec­ o n d avenue of criticism against Lowth's triad, m o r e linguistic and lit­ erary than the first type. "Biblical parallelism is of one sort . . . , or a h u n d r e d sorts; but it is n o t three." It would be wise to use the t e r m "parallelism" as a very broad category, and then make subdivisions within this wide concept. C o n t e m p o r a r y research into the factors contributing to parallelism of versets has uncovered so many dif­ ferent linguistic devices at the poet's disposal that Lowth's division into three has b e c o m e o u t m o d e d : it is arbitrary, and far too r o u g h . 7

8

O n the level of the poetic line alone, at least four layers, or gate­ ways into the p o e m , may b e distinguished. Parallelism may be based o n phonological or morphological, lexical or semantic text data.To put it in plain English: the poet may create parallelism by means of the tools of sound and grammatical form, and by means of vocab­ ulary and meaning. Surprisingly enough, w e can already see this in the six short syllables by Walpole. " H e r e lies Fred; he is dead." Phonology is represented by the poet's acoustic tools: alliteration, assonance*, and rhyme; the balance of the syllables is also a factor. Morphology, or the study of linguistic forms and structures, ana­ lyzes the poet's choice of grammatical forms: the lines are o p e n e d by words with a fully or partially demonstrative function (here/he), after that w e get intransitive verbs in the present tense (lies/is), and finally two nouns indicating the m a n and the main predicate to b e applied to him: dead. These aspects are implied in the vocabulary, and the w o r d order also provides parallelism. T h e circle is closed w h e n the established parallelism invites us to semanticize, to p o n ­ der w h e t h e r there is any difference left b e t w e e n " F r e d " and "dead." In t h e next chapter, these various linguistic layers will also b e discussed, o n the basis of poetic lines from the Bible. H e r e I will n o t e only h o w limited Lowth's m o d e l turns out to be: it neglects or ignores the contributions of phonological or grammatical

Reading Biblical Poetry

30

factors, and concentrates almost exclusively o n the level of v o c a b ­ ulary and w o r d meanings. N o t i n g these defects takes us to the third approach of radical criticism, w h i c h will uncover even m o r e serious defects. This line of criticism originates from my o w n structural view of poetry, as demonstrated in almost every chapter of this b o o k . I hold that for any p o e m there is m u c h m o r e to be probed than just the layer of words and their meanings, and that a complete ladder of paral­ lelisms should b e climbed if w e want our attention and e m o t i o n to cover the possibilities and effects of p o e t r y in a satisfactory way. I purposely use "parallelisms" in the plural here: there are par­ allelisms at virtually all levels of the text, and they require detailed elaboration in the following chapters.To p u t it differently: the text is a hierarchy of layers, each layer having its o w n characteristics and rules and making its o w n particular contribution to the overall effect of the w o r k of art o n the reader. This textual hierarchy consists of eight layers in the case of short and m e d i u m - l e n g t h poems, and nine in the case of long p o e m s as D e u t e r o n o m y 32 or Psalm 8 9 . T h e y may b e represented as a series of steps: levels in the poem

step no. the poem as a whole sections stanzas strophes

verses versets words syllables sounds

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

T h e five lower levels constitute the traditional field of linguistics and style analysis. I have inserted a blank line to show the boundary with the larger textual units. Levels 6—9 have only recendy b e c o m e avail­ able for systematic research, thanks to the fast developments in lin­ guistics and the study of literature during the twentieth century. For the poets of ancient Israel, it was a standard part of their craft to w o r k at perfect expression and form on all these levels.

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

31

A n e w , c o m p r e h e n s i v e definition T h e p o e t sets out to w r i t e a verse. T h e r e is a m o r e than 95 p e r ­ cent chance that it will b e b i - or tri-partite. To fill that space, and to remain w i t h i n the poet's o w n cultural environment and its lit­ erary rules (which will t h e n be understood by readers), the poet thankfully exploits parallelism as a means to balance the m e m b e r s of the verse and control the subject matter. T h e poet creates equiv­ alence by introducing "parallelism of members." 9

At this point in the first stages of the poet's creative w o r k I will switch to the domain of sentence structure, and describe in syn­ tactic terms the four possibilities the poet may choose from: 1) A n attractive and obvious decision is to fill the verset (colon) u n d e r construction w i t h o n e short sentence of t w o to five words. T h e compactness of expression of the H e b r e w language makes this easy. In this case, clause (a simple, n o n - c o m p o u n d sentence) coincides w i t h colon. W h e n the poet repeats this and creates a dis­ cernible cohesion w i t h the aid of sound, grammatical form, or w o r d meaning, a complete verse has b e e n b o r n , a bicolon that in characteristic H e b r e w fashion realizes "equivalence" by the paral­ lelism of its members. This situation occurs thousands of times in the H e b r e w Bible. 2) T h e p o e t may also decide to employ a c o m p o u n d sentence. This is a syntactic c o m p l e x consisting o f a main clause and o n e or m o r e subclauses. If the sentence is c o m p a c t e n o u g h , it may fit into o n e colon, b u t this is rarely the case. W h a t the p o e t usually does is neatly allocate o n e colon to every part of the c o m p o u n d sentence, and because t h e same t e r m clause is used to indicate the parts of a c o m p o u n d sentence (or period), situation 2 is often just a n o t h e r instance of the equation " o n e clause = o n e colon." A sim­ ple example of this arrangement is the o p e n i n g of Psalm 1. T h e p o e t immediately starts his main clause, w h i c h is nominal (i.e., does n o t contain a verb): " H a p p y the man"—fortunately, most translations manage to avoid inserting " i s " or " b e " (subjunctive m o o d ) . T h i s main clause is v. la, and it completely coincides w i t h t h e sentence core (subject plus predicate). T h e p o e t continues w i t h an adjectival clause in order to tell us w h a t sort of m a n he has in m i n d , and uses this clause to fill the B - c o l o n . N e x t , h o w ­ ever, a spectacular decision follows: the p o e t adds m o r e adjectival

32

Reading Biblical Poetry

clauses.There are n o less than four, two negative followed by t w o positive clauses: v. la b c d v. 2a b

Happy the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, who has not taken the path of sinners, strophe 1 and has not joined the company of the insolent; but finds his delight in the teaching of Yahweh, and studies that teaching day and night.

T h u s , this o n e move o n the part of the composer creates many forms of equivalence or balance: each of the three full lines c o n ­ tains equivalence of the versets, and there is also equivalence at the level of the verse as a w h o l e . Moreover, in the same move, this syn­ tactic design creates a higher textual unit, as the three poetic lines in w . 1—2 form a ready-made strophe. T h r e e lines about scum in the plural are framed by three positive lines (la and 2ab) about the m a n (singular) w h o remains o n course thanks to "the teaching of Yahweh" (two m o r e singular forms). In this way, the shape of the strophe suggests an encircling: the scum are kept in check. 3) T h e poet may also decide to w r i t e a l o n g — n o t c o m p o u n d — sentence that exceeds the b o u n d a r y of a single colon. In that case, the p o e t will usually arrange the material so that the sentence core is in o n e colon, possibly accompanied by a direct object, and any further adjuncts occupy the other colon; this happens, for instance, in the tricolic verse that depicts the "raging of the peoples" in Psalm 2: v. 2a b c

The kings of the earth take their stand and regents intrigue together against Yahweh and his anointed.

Cola a and b contain the first main clause (again: clause = colon) and the core of the second main clause, after w h i c h the C - c o l o n is filled u p w i t h the adjunct that concludes the second sentence. T h e poet, by the way, thinks of m o r e than just syntax, and at the end even manages to effect a form of balance: h e places two people in the C - c o l o n , the deity and the king, and this pair is intended to counterbalance the w o r d pair kings/regents. H o w d o G o d and

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

33

king fare in the rest of Psalm 2? If w e read on, w e find that the first strophe ( w . 1—3) prepares the reader for a harsh confrontation, and that the bosses o n earth are in for some hard knocks. 4) T h e independence of the colon is n o t affected if the p o e t includes t w o different predicates. In that case, the verset contains t w o short sentences. This situation is n o t u n c o m m o n ; take for example the B - c o l o n of a tricolon from Psalm 2: 1 0

v. 7

Let me tell you of Yahweh's decree; He said to me:You are My son, I have fathered you on this day.

Here, the king is being addressed by G o d , and w h a t h e hears is that G o d has elected h i m "today." To this end, the poet puts terms of elementary kinship in God's m o u t h : the words " s o n " and "fathered" are metaphors that vividly and "physically" express proximity. T h e p r o n o u n s m e / m y and I / y o u effectively serve to link the sentences 2—3—4, a nice t o u c h that again expresses p r o x ­ imity and reciprocity. To recapitulate: the versemonger has four possibilities to fill a colon. T h e poet can use a phrase (usually a syntactic adjunct); a short independent sentence; often t w o short sentences; or a part (clause) of a c o m p o u n d sentence. W h a t I described as option 1 may n o w safely be called the central option because, of the four possi­ bilities, a simple (main) clause coinciding w i t h the colon is the r e p ­ resentative situation: a complete sentence is finished within a single colon. Labeling the simple sentence (the only case of sentence = colon) the central option or starting point of verse making also receives support from statistics: this type of simple cola constitutes the majority of cases. O p t i o n s 2 and 3 b o t h imply that the syntac­ tic unit extends beyond the boundaries of a single colon. This means that the sentence continues across the caesura, a form of border crossing that is our first acquaintance with enjambment*. It is time I presented an adequate definition of a H e b r e w p o e m . In m y b o o k Reading Biblical Narrative, t h e c o u n t e r p a r t to this volume, I have explained h o w the narrator uses m o r e than o n e ingredient: n o t only language, but also time. Every sentence in a story has a c o m p l e x relationship w i t h time, if only because

34

Reading Biblical Poetry

the tension discourse t i m e / n a r r a t e d time is always there. A simi­ lar circumstance applies to the poet, w h o is n o t only engaged in shaping a c o m p l e x message t h r o u g h a subtle selection of linguis­ tic tools, but is also constantly watching the proportions of the textual units. T h e cola fit a specific verse m o d e l , t h e p o e t keeps the verses within the prescribed boundaries of the strophe, and the strophes, too, follow an articulation w h o s e extent is controlled by t h e poet. This last statement may b e put differently, using the vocabulary of equivalence and parallelism. Parallelism is not restricted to the level of the versets; w e also observe it in verses, strophes, and stan­ zas. In the same way that equivalence provides cohesion for the cola and knits the verse together, this is also the purpose of the composition—literally " p u t t i n g t o g e t h e r " — o f the higher textual levels. Equivalence of verses guarantees the internal cohesion of the strophe, and by creating a specific balance b e t w e e n strophes the p o e t is able to shape stanzas. In all these forms of articulation, however, time again plays a part. T h e sentences of a story take u p discourse (narration) t i m e — the time it takes to recite or read t h e m — a n d refer to narrated (story) time. Analogously, w e might n o w say of the p o e t (who his­ torically speaking was often a singer, for instance during worship, and w h o s e transmitted text makes the voice of the poet-singer audible even for us): the verses take up singing t i m e — t h e time it takes to recite or read t h e m — a n d the proportions of cola and verses, of strophes and stanzas lend structure b o t h to this singing, and to m e a n i n g and content of the song = p o e m . T i m e is present here in the form of proportionality. T h e measures of all textual lev­ els together, from syllables through to stanzas or sections, I s u m ­ marize in the w o r d prosody. This Greek w o r d originally means the "progress of the singing." In practice it is often reduced to metrics, b u t this betrays rather sloppy thinking. In m y view, the concept of prosody deserves a broad definition w h i c h takes into account the various levels of the text, i.e., covers its hierarchical structure. In that case, prosody implies that the p o e t watches and controls the dimensions of the textual units, and as such means regulating and controlling quan­ tity, at all levels of the text.

The Art of Poetry: A Definition and Analysis

35

I will n o w link this u p w i t h the w o r d quality.This w o r d may be used effectively to refer to the poem's main task: conveying m e a n ­ ing and sense. It is the poet's j o b to relate quality to quantity. H o w ­ ever, since this sentence may equally well apply to the r u n n i n g of a supermarket, w e n e e d to narrow d o w n this statement and apply the abstract concepts of quality/ quantity in a truly literary w a y W e are approaching the definition of poetry. Such a definition will w o r k only if it takes into account b o t h ingredients used by the poet: language and prosody, or observing proportion during the creation of m e a n i n g and sense. M y defini­ tion of a H e b r e w p o e m , then, is as follows: A poem is the result of (on the one hand) an artistic handling of language, style and structure, and (on the other hand) applying prescribed proportions to all levels of the text, so that a controlled combination of language and number is created. I will end this chapter in the same way as I began it. W h e r e p o e t r y is concerned, literary sensitivity and an o p e n m i n d are m o r e valu­ able than constructing definitions. Love and concentrated atten­ tion are far superior to theories. Nevertheless, it will be a challenge in the following chapters to show h o w m a n y insights and tools may be gained from a view of the p o e m as a well-constructed hierarchy.

3 A text model and how to use it Language

and number

(continued)

A m o d e l o f t h e biblical p o e m Poetry is primary literature; poetics, being a scholarly discipline, produces secondary literature. M y decision to give priority to lit­ erary sensitivity over theorizing about p o e t r y remains valid w h e n I construct a m o d e l of the H e b r e w p o e m . T h e three main collec­ tions of biblical poetry are the books of Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. T h e advantage they offer over the p o e t r y in the books of the Prophets is that w i t h these three, w e k n o w w h e r e w e are: there are hardly any instances w h e r e the boundaries of the literary units are uncertain, as almost all the poems have b e e n correctly demarcated by the tradition. In these collections, the following m o d e l applies; these rules are also useful w h e n reading p o e m s from the Prophets, even t h o u g h the m o d e l is employed less rigidly there. A p o e m has: 1

2 2 2 2

to or or or

4 beats/stresses per colon 3 cola per verse 3 verses per strophe 3 strophes per stanza

These characteristics n e e d some clarification. T h e m o d e l should n o t b e viewed as a closed system, and cannot b e taken as an absolute standard. T h e r e is n o call for mathematical rigor in the playful world of poetry. M y discussion starts at the beginning, w i t h the verset. If, like me, you have the courage to believe in metrics in H e b r e w p o e t r y you may continue to use the t e r m "beats" to indicate the length of a verset. Should you consider metrics nonexistent or improbable, however, there should b e n o problem; after all, the words still have stresses, and these can b e counted. According to the model, each colon has two to four stresses, but this is n o t an absolute limit. It

Reading Biblical Poetry

38

does apply to the overwhelming majority of cases, but every o n c e in a while w e c o m e across a verset w i t h only o n e main stress or beat, or, conversely, w e find a verset containing five stresses. All this applies only to the original H e b r e w text, and is consequently of n o great importance for this book; the reader may file it away in a footnote. T h e next layer is that of the verse in the literary sense: the full poetic line. T h e verse almost always consists of t w o or three cola, never more. Sometimes, however, w e e n c o u n t e r a verse that c o n ­ sists of only o n e c o l o n . T h e b o o k of Psalms contains t w e n t y - o n e of these versets functioning as verses. T h e r e are n o n e at all in Job, and almost n o n e in Proverbs. Such m o n o c o l a are literally marginal p h e n o m e n a , usually functioning as markers at the b e g i n n i n g or end of a higher-level textual unit such as a strophe or stanza. O f m u c h greater importance is the proportion of t w o - p a r t to three-part verses. T h e vast majority of verses are bipartite, i.e., bicola. This is clear from the percentages of tricola: almost 12.5 percent of the verses in the Psalms are tricola, in J o b only 8 p e r ­ cent, and in Proverbs even less, 4 percent, w h i c h means many of the p o e m s it contains are completely bicolic. W e ascend to the level of the strophes. These usually consist of two or three verses, but some shorter or longer strophes do occur. T h e Psalter contains forty-one one-line strophes; a few examples are: the hymnic verse that opens Psalm 8 and returns at the end, or the "verses" (here: biblical verses) 7 and 16 that articulate Psalm 50 in three parts; the ending of Psalm 90 (v. 17, a tricolon), or the refrain verses 57:6 = 12 and 59:7 = 15.1 estimate that J o b contains some ten strophes consisting of only o n e poetic line, and Proverbs even less. Every n o w and then an extra-long strophe materializes. I could point to five four-line strophes in the Psalms, and J o b 3 contains t h r e e . At the top of the list w e find t w o strophes consisting of as many as five verses; these are Psalm 18:21-25 and Psalm 1 1 5 : 4 - 8 ; the latter is a passage about the gods outside Israel, w h i c h I will quote here: 2

3

4

5

6

v. 4 v. 5

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands; they have mouths, but cannot speak,

A Text Model and How to Use It

v. 6 v. 7

v. 8

39

they have eyes, but cannot see, they have ears, but cannot hear, they have noses, but cannot smell, their hands—but they do not touch, their feet—but they cannot walk, they can make no sound in their throats, Those who fashion them, shall become like them, all who trust in them.

T h e indentation of the B-cola (and the surplus in v. 7 w i t h its remarkable C - c o l o n , w h i c h is n o t there for n o reason) here r e p ­ resents the typography as offered in several translations. I have, however, added something extra by having "verses" 5—7 indent o n e m o r e level. As a threesome they are clearly distinguished from v. 4 and v. 8, since they are an obvious enumeration, and w i t h all these nonfunctioning b o d y parts constitute attractive polemics*. T h e surrounding verses have clearly b e e n synchronized. All refer to people and contain the point: w h o w o u l d be so naive as to w o r ­ ship their handiwork? T h e C - c o l o n of v. 7 concludes the central series w i t h a slightly different pattern, and together w i t h (the " m o u t h s " in) v. 5a makes a frame around the core of the evidence. At the last m o m e n t , it seems as if the p o o r wretches want to cry o u t in distress after the merciless trouncing by the poet, but they cannot manage this—they really are d u m b . This core of three verses relates to the framing verses 4 + 8 in the same way that an example relates to a general rule. We may therefore also view the frame as a split-up short strophe, the halves of w h i c h n o w function as an envelope, while the enumeration ( w . 5—7) is a regular three-line strophe. Something similar applies to Ps. 18:21—25. Viewed in this way, these five-line strophes are exceptional and creative applications of the standard dimensions for the strophe (two or three poetic lines), rather than breaks in the p a t t e r n . 7

I will n o w leave the exceptions—the frayed edges that p u t the strict rules of the m o d e l into perspective—and again look at the bulk of the strophes. It seems sensible to adopt labels for t h e t w o line and three-line strophes. F r o m n o w o n I will call the main g r o u p S(hort)-strophes, and the small g r o u p of strophes contain­ ing three verses L(ong)-strophes.These abbreviations enable us to

40

Reading Biblical Poetry

record the structure of a p o e m in shorthand: Psalms 1 and 113, for instance, w h i c h have already b e e n quoted in their entirety, may n o w b e w r i t t e n as LSL and SSSL, respectively. W e n o w see at a glance that the short and metaphorical strophe that forms the c e n ­ ter of Psalm 1 has a symmetrical frame, and that Psalm 113 places its only L-strophe at the end, by way of climax. A n example from Job, w h e r e the biblical verse usually coincides w i t h the poetic line, looks like this (ch. 9):

cola syllables

L L L S 6 6 6 4 47 51 44 33 98

77

/ /

+

L L L L 6 6 6 7 48 50 48 50 98

98

/ /

S L L L 4 6 6 6 32 46 48 51 78

99

I have added the n u m b e r of cola per strophe, and the figures for the strophes (the n u m b e r s of their original, i.e., pre-Masoretic syl­ lables). T h e slashes in the diagram indicate that this p o e m of thirtyfour verses consists of three parts. T h e notation in capital letters immediately shows that the text has a completely symmetrical structure, and that t h e only t w o S-strophes frame the center. T h e twelve strophes have b e e n grouped in pairs, so that the three sec­ tions contain six stanzas. T h e precision of the prosodic design is revealed in the stanzas w h e n w e count the original syllables; these totals are given in bold typeface. Let us return to the c o m p o n e n t s of the model. It is a great pity that o u r Bible translations achieve precious little in the way of indicating strophes. People just did not realize they existed, in the old days, and then of course nowadays there is the dying-out breed of scholars w h o do n o t wish to know. In the many translations dat­ ing from the middle of the twentieth century the demarcation of strophes by means of blank lines is utterly arbitrary and even absent most of the time; often a blank line has been inserted to mark a stanza boundary, i.e., a higher textual level. M o r e recent transla­ tions are little better, sometimes worse if o n verse level they d o n o t indent B-cola and C-cola. O n l y in the very rare instances w h e r e the text really is completely straightforward do the translations manage adequately. In t h e so-called Bible de Jerusalem, a translation supervised by t h e Dominicans of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem,

A Text Model and How to Use It

41

the translators were obviously o n the l o o k o u t for strophic units, but they nevertheless often get it w r o n g . Finally, w e climb u p o n e m o r e level, to the stanza. This h i g h level textual unit is usually a collection of t w o or three strophes. H e r e , too, the dividing line between strophe and stanza is n o t a firewall: at times, o n e long strophe will coincide w i t h a stanza. A n example of this is the middle strophe of Psalm 10, v. 9—11. These verses depict the absolute nadir for the harassed p o o r and consti­ tute an L-strophe, and hence, a stanza.This unit is part of the highly regular structure of Psalms 9 - 1 0 , w h i c h together form o n e p o e m , and apart from this strophe consist exclusively of stanzas of t w o S-strophes (= four poetic lines) each. 8

At the other end of the standard dimensions w e find stanzas containing four strophes. D o w e really? I k n o w of some: stanza IV of Psalm 69, for instance, comes immediately after the center (= stanza III, the prayer for salvation of w . 15—21) and distributes its verses 22—29 over four S-strophes in w h i c h the poet asks G o d to punish his enemies; this stanza is in part a curse. A n d lo and behold, there is o n e single stanza in the Psalter (none in J o b or Proverbs) containing as many as five strophes: this is Ps. 18:8—16, a passage k n o w n as the t h e o p h a n y * . T h i s text is a g o o d example of the thesis that recognizing the structure is the instant proof of the correct strophe division:

42 v. 8a b c v. 9a b c

Reading Biblical Poetry Then the earth rocked and quaked, the foundations of the heavens shook, rocked by his indignation, Smoke went up from his nostrils, devouring fire came out of his mouth, live coals blazed forth from him.

v. 10a b v. 11a b

He bent the sky and came down, darkness was beneath his feet. He mounted a cherub and flew, gliding on the wings of the wind.

v. 12a b v. 13a b

He made darkness his screen: dark thunderheads, dense clouds of the sky. Out of the brilliance before him fiery coals blazed.

v. 14a b v. 15a b

Then Yah weh thundered from heaven, the Most High gave forth his voice. He let fly his shafts and scattered them, he discharged lightning and routed them.

v. 16a b c d

The ocean bed was exposed, the foundations of the world were laid bare By Yahweh's mighty roaring, at the blast of the breath from his nostrils.

strophe 4

strophe 5

strophe 6

strophe 7

strophe 8

H e r e w e have five S-strophes, b u t the first o n e has b e e n weighted d o w n : the verses are tripartite, so that the unit contains six rather than four cola, the same length as a regular L-strophe elsewhere. T h e strong cohesion w i t h i n this spectacular passage may be sketched in a few strokes. Strophes 4 and 8 show h o w the entire cosmos is in disarray as a result of God's anger, and strophes 5 and 7 present h i m as a warrior descending in order to intervene o n earth, o n behalf of King David. It is David w h o is the speaker in this l o n g Song of Thanksgiving, and h e is so focused o n the inter­ vention of the G o d w h o has affiliated himself to h i m that h e does not even grant his enemies an antecedent*: he quickly disposes of t h e m by means of the short " t h e m " in verse 15, at the m o m e n t w h e n they enter the picture as the target of God's missiles. In the center w e find the mystery of the light that should b e surrounded, if not protected, by darkness in order to describe the appearance

A Text Model and How to Use It

43

of G o d . In short: the strophic structure in this stanza follows an A B X B ' A ' pattern, and this concentric design is the best possible guarantee for the unity of the stanza. T h e A B X B ' A ' pattern is a concentric design: anger and earth­ quake constitute the correspondence A - A ' , war and God's m o v e ­ m e n t from heaven to earth are B - B ' , and X is the u n i q u e pivot w i t h its paradoxical view on G o d . This first climax of the song inspired the poet to create even m o r e rings w i t h w h i c h to sur­ r o u n d the theophany: v. 7a b c d

In my distress I called onYahweh; cried out to my God. In his temple he heard my voice, my cry to him reached his ears.

strophe 3

[here vv. 8—16: the theophany = strophes 4—8] v. 17a b v. 18a b

He reached down from on high, he took me, he drew me out of the mighty waters, He saved me from my fierce enemy, from my haters, who were too strong for me.

strophe 9

W e d o see t w o strophes here, b u t they b e l o n g together as i n e x ­ tricably as answer belongs to question, and neither corresponds to preceding/following strophes. I therefore see t h e m as the result of (again) a splitting-up: together, strophes 3 and 9 constitute t h e stanza of distress and salvation. N o t until after God's intervention is finished does David b o t h e r to use some verse space to refer to the victims in words: " m y fierce e n e m y " together w i t h " m y haters" form an obvious w o r d pair in v. 18. T h e balance b e t w e e n the t w o strophes is reflected in the subject of the action: in stro­ p h e 3 , David is the " I , " addressing G o d , whereas in strophe 9 G o d as t h e powerful agent is the subject, while David is object and beneficiary. As a stanza often contains six to ten verses—and t w o or three stanzas will in this way quickly add u p to a p o e m of fifteen or t w e n t y verses—there are few p o e m s that contain a textual unit o n t h e level b e t w e e n t h e stanza and t h e p o e m itself. O f t h e 148 p o e m s in the Psalter, a b o u t 120 can b e p r i n t e d o n o n e page (in H e b r e w , w h e r e a c o m p l e t e verse fits o n o n e line). T h e r e are,

Reading Biblical Poetry

44

however, a n u m b e r of m u c h longer p o e m s , for instance, D e u t e r ­ o n o m y 32, Judges 5, and Psalms 18, 6 8 , 69, 7 8 , and 89; these in t u r n g r o u p their stanzas in (what I call) sections. T h u s , t h e S o n g of D e b o r a h a c c o m m o d a t e s its fifty verses in t w e n t y strophes, w h i c h together f o r m seven stanzas; the latter units are arranged into three sections. 9

At this point, a critical reader w o u l d b e perfectly justified to object that this m o d e l is a product of m o d e r n scholarship, being forced o n to the text like a straight]acket. It is a pleasant surprise, t h e r e ­ fore, to find this poetic m o d e l neatly b o r n e o u t by the so-called alphabetic acrostics of the Bible. T h e H e b r e w alphabet consists of t w e n t y - t w o characters d e n o t ­ ing consonants. T h e vowel and accent signs w e n o w find in the Bible were added by the Jewish tradition o n e or t w o thousand years after its composition, in order to ensure an exact recording of the correct classical pronunciation (in the synagogue). T h e first four consonants are called aleph, beth, gimel, and daleth, words w e recognize through their Greek corruptions alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. Sometimes, poets—and also writers from Ugarit, three c e n ­ turies before David—regarded constructing a text based o n the letters of the alphabet in order as a challenge: the first verse had to start w i t h an aleph, the second w i t h a beth, etc., right d o w n to v. 22, w h i c h would start w i t h the last consonant taw and conclude the p o e m . In this way, an alphabetic acrostic has b e e n created. (Such acrostics were w r i t t e n in English by Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe.) T h e r e are a dozen of these acrostics in the Bible, and their d i m e n ­ sions reveal exacdy the contours of the text model. T h e y differ widely as regards length, and precisely because of this they d e m o n ­ strate that the poets did indeed work with cola, verses, strophes, and stanzas. T h e alphabet provides an acrostic arrangement: • per colon, in Psalms 111 and 112, • per poetic line, in Psalms 25, 34, and 145, and also in the concluding poem of Proverbs, the praise of "the capable wife," 31:10—31, • per strophe in Psalm 37, and in four of the five poems which make up the short book of Lamentations, • and per stanza in the longest psalm, 119.

A Text Model and How to Use It

45

This is a remarkable g r o u p of p o e m s , and incontrovertible p r o o f that t h e poets k n e w exactly w h a t constituted a colon, a verse, a strophe, and a stanza. Psalms 111 and 112 are adjacent in t h e Bible, w h i c h is n o coincidence, as they have b e e n completely synchronized. T h e i r themes are c o m p l e m e n t a r y : Psalm 111 praises G o d s uprightness, and Psalm 112 mirrors this by placing t h e u p r i g h t m a n alongside it. B o t h p o e m s e n d w i t h a double t r i colon as t h e final strophe, and they are so perfectly t w i n n e d that they have exactly t h e same length: b o t h have 168 syllables in t w e n t y - t w o cola. T h e poems in Lamentations have b e e n constructed in such a way that the letter from the alphabet at the top (Greek aero-) of the strophe always opens an L-strophe in chs. 1 and 2 and an S-strophe in ch. 4. Chapter 3 also contains L-strophes, b u t the special situa­ tion here is that the acrostic consonant appears three times in every strophe: at the b e g i n n i n g of each verse in the strophe that it gov­ erns. T h e first strophe opens all of its three verses w i t h an aleph, the fourth strophe contains the daleth three times, etc. Finally, o n stanza level there is the acrostic Psalm 119—a rather special text, w h i c h at first sight seems fairly indigestible as it is so very pious. R e a d in the original language, however, the p o e m is very stimulating, a multicolored pyrotechnic of variations and other formal devices glittering against the background of a baf­ fling synonymy. W i t h its 176 poetic lines, this Psalm is the longest in the entire Psalter.The Unes have been g r o u p e d into t w e n t y - t w o octets and are almost all bicolic. In each stanza (i.e., always eight verses), every line starts w i t h the acrostic consonant in question. O f the t w e n t y - t w o octets, nineteen have a rigidly binary structure in halves of 4 + 4 verses, w h i c h w e may call substanzas and w h i c h themselves may b e divided as 2 + 2 verses. T h u s , the substanza consists of two S-strophes.

I will n o w draw t w o conclusions from the presentation of the m o d e l and its illustrations. First, the numbers two and three prove alldefining on the four central levels of the poem as a hierarchical structure: colon, verse, strophe, and stanza, i.e., o n all levels above that of the w o r d and below that of t h e p o e m as a w h o l e , or its sections. These are the very layers w h e r e language acquires its literary added value

Reading Biblical Poetry

46

from the poet. Second, t h e m o d e l also reveals that three building blocks are fundamental: • • •

the colon (to prosody), the verse (to semantics* or meaning), and the strophe (to the rhetorical or argumentative design).

T h e verset or colon is already fundamental, as in general it is the smallest independent text unit by virtue of having a predicate (= it contains a verb, states something): it is a unit of m e a n i n g that may be understood in itself. To the poet, attempting to control proportions, it is also fundamental as a first building block of prosody, since it is exactly colon length (= the n u m b e r of syllables) that received particular attention from the H e b r e w poets—see below. T h e verse is fundamental to poetic semantics, as this is the level w h e r e for the first time a systematic exploitation and application of parallelism takes place, the "parallelism of the members." This p h e n o m e n o n will b e discussed in detail in the next chapter. A p o e m is at t h e same time, however, a particular f o r m of p e r ­ suasion or argument: n o t the sort of a r g u m e n t that allies itself w i t h logic, or a discourse governed by a plot, w h i c h arranges events thematically—these are characteristics reserved for narra­ tive p r o s e — b u t nevertheless a string of language acts in a p a r t i c ­ ular order (often not immediately clear), the aim of w h i c h is to persuade. This last w o r d ties in w i t h the classical definition of rhetoric: the art of persuasion (by means of language). In their o w n way, poets are just as c o n c e r n e d w i t h this as the philosopher, the w r i t e r of a newspaper article, or a Speaker of the H o u s e of Representatives. T h e H e b r e w poet produces lyrical (in the Psalms and the ora­ cles, and in the snatches of p o e t r y that lard the long story from Genesis through to Kings) or didactic poetry (in the representa­ tions of the W i s d o m literature, Proverbs and Job). T h e H e b r e w poet, too, wants to persuade, by means of poetry, by the c o n d e n s ­ ing of language. Rarely, however, does the p o e t leave this to o n e single verse; h e n c e the scarcity of one-line strophes. T h e p o e t shores u p the verse w i t h o n e or t w o m o r e verses, and c o m b i n e d

A Text Model and How to Use It

47

into a strophic unit these represent a step or phase in the poet's argument. This is eminently clear in the b o o k of Job, w h i c h of course is o n e long debate, first b e t w e e n four and later b e t w e e n six speakers, about the most profound existential questions. T h e poet of J o b has his characters present their arguments by strophe. A n example of this will b e discussed in chapter 9. Elsewhere, too, the strophe serves as the rhetorical building block—as may b e c o n ­ firmed by rereading the texts already discussed from Psalms 1,2, 18, and 113 (and Ps. 114 further down) or David's Lament. T h e perfect tool to forge verses into a strophe that will w o r k as a unit is offered by semantics*: applying parallelism o n verse level, i.e., o n e level higher than Lowth's parallelismus m e m b r o r u m . In the next chapters w e will see h o w the p o e t uses this device. I have pointed to three building blocks, thus distancing myself from the unfruitful discussion that sometimes erupts b e t w e e n scholars, about w h e t h e r the basic c o m p o n e n t of the H e b r e w p o e m is the colon or the verse. This shows that these scholars are looking for only o n e c o m p o n e n t ; actually, there are three, each o n its o w n level. G o i n g back to the basic level of the verset w e m e e t a second series of crucial numbers. As these are found by c o u n t i n g the syllables in the original, pre-Masoretic H e b r e w from the first millennium BCE, I can offer n o m o r e than a cursory discussion of t h e m in this b o o k . The numbers 7-8—9 are also essential, and demonstrate that the colon is thefundamental building block of Hebrew prosody. This is proved by a surprising circumstance o c c u r r i n g in n o fewer than eightyfive psalms (eighty-three poems): these p o e m s score an integer for the average n u m b e r of syllables per colon; this is usually eight, sometimes seven or nine. This highly remarkable finding can b e explained only by assuming that the poets themselves c o u n t e d syllables. As w e have seen, a simple example is Psalm 1, w i t h 144 syllables in sixteen cola; the average (number of syllables per colon) here is the integer 9, instead of the fraction that w o u l d b e likely to occur had the poets failed to count their syllables and left their n u m b e r s to chance. W e arrive a fraction if a p o e m has for instance 168 syl­ lables in t w e n t y - t w o cola: this division yields 7.63, the fraction that 10

48

Reading Biblical Poetry

applies to Psalms 111 and 112. T h e 9 that w e have just discovered to b e the n o r m in Psalm 1 is at the same time a signal for the c o m ­ plete Psalter. T h e 9 is the ceiling: n o psalm exceeds 9, although there are a dozen that score exactly that. If the n u m b e r of syllables in the Psalter (the actual text, n o t including inscriptions and the like), i.e., a total o f 4 5 , 7 2 5 , is divided by the total n u m b e r of cola (5,712), the result is also 8—deviating only from the integer in the third decimal (i.e., 8.005). J o b and Proverbs even exclusively aim for the 8 as the n o r m figure. S o m e of their poems score exactly 8; the average n u m b e r of syllables per colon in the others is always close. All this w o u l d seem to indicate that the n u m b e r 8 deserves the title of "central n o r m figure of prosody." This is the beacon that the poet bears in m i n d w h e n constructing the cola. It completely dominates the longest psalm by linking up with the alphabet and the acrostic arrangement, so that this technical tour deforce (as w e have seen) consists of t w e n t y - t w o o c t e t s . 11

It is totally unnecessary for poets to give all their cola the same length (= n u m b e r of syllables); it is equally unnecessary that a large n u m b e r of cola actually realize the n o r m figure. Rather, in p r a c ­ tice poets employ a w i d e range of colon lengths, but at the same time take care to have an exact average (i.e., an integer instead of a fraction). This range of figures (indicating the n u m b e r of syllables per colon) may b e beautifully demonstrated by Psalm 97; it is an example of the precision w i t h w h i c h the poets w o r k e d — a preci­ sion they did not need to maintain o n syllable level, but w h i c h they occasionally liked to realize, as a challenge. If w e read v. 5 of Psalm 97 as the tricolon that it actually is, this song contains twenty-eight cola, w i t h 224 syllables, and thus realizes the n o r m figure 8. T h e way in w h i c h this happens is rather unusual: 1 colon has 5 syllables 2 cola have 6 syllables 4 cola have 7 syllables 14 cola have 8 syllables, 4 cola have 9 syllables 2 cola have 10 syllables 1 colon has 11 syllables

i.e., a total of 112

A Text Model and How to Use It

49

This concentric regularity is built up of seven symmetrical layers. O n t h e axis w e notice that exactly half of the total of twenty-eight cola realize the n o r m figure 8. These fourteen cola contain exactly as many syllables as the other fourteen together. Meanwhile, the n u m b e r 7 is also active in various ways. To n a m e only t w o : the n u m b e r of cola o n either side of the normative axis is 7 + 7; if w e multiply 7 by the n o r m figure, w e get 5 6 — a figure of w h i c h 112 and 224 are multiples. This figure is the total o n b o t h sides of the a x i s . 12

I have drawn t w o conclusions, establishing the p r o m i n e n c e of the n u m b e r s 2 and 3 , and the fact that there are three building blocks. I will draw a final conclusion from these two: that the poets paid meticulous attention to the numerical aspect of their work, and that c o m p o n e n t II will prove to b e essential—the figures for the main textual levels, or rather the care taken about the correct proportions, w h i c h these figures represent and constantly exude.

T h e reader's c o n t r i b u t i o n ; basic t o o l s Poets spend great care and love o n their work. W h o are w e n o t to follow their example? W e are the readers—but what exactly is read­ ing? R e a d i n g is not a passive business; while w e read, w e d o not merely undergo something. Even the description "receptive" for this activity is inadequate, as w e do m o r e than just receive. W h e t h e r they realize it or not, readers, w h e n engaged in the act of reading, are extremely involved: they infuse a text with meaning. O u r interest is part of the living text; in our capacity as readers— i.e., through our reading activity—we are a part of the structure of the w o r k of art, however strange this may sound. O u r involvement as conferrers of meaning may b e given its due recognition as fol­ lows. A text that is not read is a cluster of latent meanings. It can­ not exercise any influence; its meanings cannot have any effect. T h e unread text leads the life of a ghost in the underworld. N o t until it is read does the text b e c o m e a " w o r k " in the full sense of the word. It needs readers in order to come alive; as soon as w e start listening to a text, but only then, it starts to speak. Imperfect listening leads to bad articulation and erroneous interpretation; good listening leads to correct understanding. T h e

50

Reading Biblical Poetry

reader w h o is unfamiliar with the rules governing the text will produce an i n c o m p e t e n t reading, preventing the text from attain­ ing its full potential. C o m p e t e n t readers k n o w h o w to handle the conventions and techniques employed in the text, and manage to do full justice to it.The meanings that lay d o r m a n t in the t e x t - n o t yet-read are activated by the act of reading. W h a t was latent becomes patent in a mysterious process: a fusion b e t w e e n the meanings hidden in the text and the m e a n i n g being conferred during the act of reading—or, n o t to put t o o fine a point o n it, conferred by the reader. T h e p o e m comes to life only through us, and in n o other way. This saddles us w i t h a great responsibility for the soundness and life of t h e text. Because of their semantic density, poems are often hard to understand. We as readers w o u l d therefore d o well to exercise some patience. W e n e e d n o t set ourselves the goal of understand­ ing everything in a single sitting, or even of getting "the message." It is better still if w e manage to rid ourselves of the m o d e r n desire for instant satisfaction. T h e p o e m suffers if w e focus o u r reading o n determining o n e m a i n point, preferably within a short time. We will, however, reap its rewards if w e manage to discard the image w e have formed of the text after a few reading sessions and start afresh, looking for n e w meanings; these will certainly appear, in p r o p o r t i o n to our openness and alertness to surprises. In o u r quest for m e a n i n g w e do well to accept the basic c o m ­ ponents in their proper value; in the case of literature this means understanding, and profiting from, the fact that the raw material here is language.The language aspect is basic, and w e will be m o r e flexible if w e k n o w h o w to use the simple instruments that demonstrate or explain the workings of language. W e really can­ not do w i t h o u t the basic terms of grammar, as verse after verse w e will b e confronted w i t h the dialectics and tension b e t w e e n sen­ tence and verse structure. In the following, I will n e e d grammatical terms every n o w and then to b e able to describe efficiently what is happening in a verse. M a n y readers will k n o w these terms; they may skip the next para­ graph. T h o s e readers, however, for w h o m grammatical analysis is not a part of their daily routine also deserve to be enlightened; I will refresh their m e m o r i e s by means of a few simple examples.

A Text Model and How to Use It

51

Take for instance a sentence such as: "I have listened to you." In a syntactic analysis,"I"is called the subject,"have listened" the pred­ icate, and " t o y o u " is the object (governed by a preposition). In the H e b r e w text, this is a direct object (no preposition here) and the entire sentence occupies just one word, but otherwise the syntactic functions remain the same.The subject-predicate combination I call the sentence core. This core is often explained or modified by an adjunct: of time, place, or mode. Adjuncts may refer to various sen­ tence components. In "Anna eats cornflakes with sugar," the adjunct "with sugar" qualifies the object: the cornflakes. But in "Anna eats cornflakes with a fork," the adjunct refers to the predicate: it explains h o w she eats—in this case, which implement she uses. Grammatical analysis can be very useful. Its instruments enable us to discover h o w sentence and verse (or colon) are related, and w e b e c o m e m u c h m o r e sensitive to the r h y t h m and character of the sentences: are they long or short, d o they describe or report, beg, c o m m a n d , or complain? Grammatical analysis sharpens our observation of discrepancies and transitions. In this way, w e learn to recognize strophe boundaries, and sometimes w e are even able to correct the verse division in o u r Bible translation. T h e conclu­ sion of Psalm 69 is a g o o d example. B o t h the original text and most m o d e r n translations represent w . 36—37 as a tricolon plus a bicolon: v. 36a b c v. 37a b

For God will deliver Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah, so that they may dwell there, and inherit it; the offspring of his servants shall possess it, and who cherish his name shall dwell there.

T h e Masoretes (the rabbis responsible for the transmission of the biblical text) and the translators have here let themselves be fooled by the transition by means of "so t h a t " and the w o r d "there," w h i c h refers back to Judah; and even m o r e by the position of " t h e offspring of his servants." This subject does n o t appear until the fourth line, but is actually already active in 36c. I will first switch the order to bicolon + tricolon, and t h e n make some minimal adjustments to the English:

52 v. 36a b c v.37a b

Reading Biblical Poetry For God will deliver Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah, So that they may dwell there, and inherit it: the offspring of his servants shall possess it, and who cherish his name shall live there.

For m y defense of this adaptation I use such elementary tools of lin­ guistic study as the differences between singular and plural, and between subject and object. Two lines have been devoted to G o d and his transitive actions: 36a + b. These are the only two lines to contain proper names. N e x t , n u m b e r and subject are turned around: there are n o w three lines dealing with the people, and their status as beneficiary is raised to that of subject. A quick switch from linguis­ tics to literature proves the decisive factor: w e observe the effect of parallelismus m e m b r o r u m , and note a neat pattern in the verbs of the tricolon: two intransitive verbs frame two transitive ones. This is an A B - B ' A ' pattern, and it governs the series dwell-inherit / p o s ­ sess—Hve.The intransitive verbs "dwell" and "live" are an official word pair, as are the transitive verbs "possess" and "inherit." We also need to be aware of linguistic aspects w h e n w e observe the contest b e t w e e n sentence and verse structure. In D e u t e r o n ­ o m y 32, Moses recites an awesome didactic p o e m and starts off straight away w i t h a well-wrought L-strophe containing the o p e n ­ ing exhortation: v. la b v. 2a b c d

Give ear, O heavens, let me speak, let the earth hear the words I utter, May my teaching come down as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like showers on young growth, like droplets on the grass.

T h e core is simple and consists of t w o short sentences: the c o m ­ m a n d "Give ear, O heavens!" and Moses' wish that " m y teaching may bear fruit." W e are not, however, meant to smother p o e t r y in such simplifications, b u t w e should analyze and enjoy h o w the core has b e e n w o r k e d up, unfolded, and decorated—so that w e may t h e n discover that this elaboration opens up all sorts of w i n ­ dows and dimensions t h r o u g h w h i c h we may catch sight of the added literary and spiritual value of the p o e m .

A Text Model and How to Use It

53

In the first poetic line, the elements of the half verses have b e e n arranged according to an abc / / a'b'c' pattern. W h a t u n d e r c was still a verb, "let m e speak," has already in the second colon b e c o m e nominal, "words." This in t u r n enables an inclusio of the verse by parts of the body: l a starts off w i t h ears and thus straightaway anthropomorphizes the heavens; l b ends w i t h Moses' m o u t h . In this way, a balanced c o m m u n i c a t i o n also has b e e n achieved: t h e m a n speaks, and the surrounding world listens. Parallelismus m e m b r o r u m enables the p o e t to divide the world into t w o areas, i.e., the merism "heaven and earth." R e r e a d i n g the verse, w e realize that these represent the domains of G o d and of man, respectively, and that here already the question is implied w h e t h e r there will be h a r m o n y b e t w e e n the two. T h e i r "vertical" relation is still effective in 2a and 2c, since the rain comes d o w n from heaven. In this way, Moses suggests at the same time that his lesson is of heavenly quality. This is n o t arrogance o n Moses' part, since in the preceding chapter, D e u t e r o n o m y 3 1 , w e have b e e n prepared for the song by some explanatory prose telling us that G o d himself has composed it, and that h e also c o m m a n d e d Moses to d o something that is u n c o m m o n in ancient Israel: record the text in writing. Verse 2 starts w i t h t w o m o r e lines/cola containing verbs, i.e., the n e w sentence core (two parallel lines, because of duplication), b u t 2cd n o longer contains any verbs. W e notice that the sentence runs o n and reaches a broad conclusion in an (again double) adjunct. After this initial excitement the strophe lands, as it were, in t h e quiet of green pastures. This is also the result of consider­ able enjambment: the sentence transcends n o t only a colon boundary, but also a verse boundary. T h e cola of 2ab constitute n o t only the numerical center; they are a sort of anchor or point of attachment for two p r o m i n e n t quartets arranged along vertical lines: t h e terms for the didactic p o e m , and the fourfold application of simile*.The interlacing of the t w o quartets in the middle makes for a tightly constructed first strophe:

Reading Biblical Poetry

54 I speak my words my teaching my speech

> >

> >

<