More Life: The Blessing Given By Literature

     I don't know about you, but as I get older, I find myself falling asleep earlier and earlier. This leads to waking up frequently in the night, lying there overcome by memories. The other night, in the small hours, a repeating image (that I have written about before in this space) of my grandmother came back to me. Vividly, I saw myself, a boy of four or five, playing on the kitchen floor of my grandparents home in Beals Island, Maine. My grandmother (Nonnie, as she was known to me), after she had finished making the Sunday meal after the morning church service and snacks after the evening service (there were a lot of church services for Protestants back in the day), was making popcorn in this oversized pot as darkness fell on the coast...Down East, as the locals call it. Joining me on the kitchen floor was Pal, the Wonderdog. Part spaniel, and part human, we dove for the popcorn every time Nonnie would ever so slightly lift the lid on the large black kettle, sending popcorn flying through the air and onto the kitchen floor where Pal and I would dive for the treasure at hand. I was the first grandson, and I was happiest when Nonnie and I were alone together. As I crawled on the floor with Pal, I would reach out and touch my grandmother’s slippered foot, and she would rumple my hair and murmur her affection for me.

    Over the years my grandmother told me that I was born around noon on June 6, 1962, after a brief and painless labor...Messiah-like! Well, maybe not so brief and painless, and I suppose not so Messiah-like, either. But that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! During this dream of images and brief snapshots, I could see her setting the table and lighting candles as the family prepared for the blessing of the meal. “Thank you, Lord, creator of the universe, for this wonderful bounty we are about to receive...” When I awoke from this dream, a reverie took shape in me on the secular blessing given to me by the highest literature, from Homer and the Hebrew Bible through Dante and Chaucer and on to Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Milton, and the tradition of Western literature that culminates in Proust and Joyce. 

    The original meaning of the state of being blessed was to be favored by Yahweh. Since I do not share in my family’s faith in the actual existence of Yahweh, let alone the faith and trust that Christians and Jews place in so untrustworthy a character, I long ago transmuted the Blessing into its prime form, which is our love for others. I turned to the reading and studying of literature in search of the secular blessing, because I figured out that we cannot love enough people. They die and we abide. Literature has become, for me and many others, almost spiritual…a crucial way to fill ourselves with the blessing of more life. 

    As I have written before in this space, I interpret the Blessing as meaning “more life into a time without boundaries.” The writer John Ruskin once remarked, “The only wealth is life.” The presence of Yahweh is declared by his mysterious name. When Moses asks for that name, the God replies, “Ehyeh asher ehyeh,” which the King James Bible translates as: “I Am That I Am.” For me that means: “I will be present wherever and whenever I choose to be present.” But as many people have discovered, the corollary of that is, “I will be absent whenever I choose to be absent.” And if you’re a believer, you understand that he is absent a lot. 

    But what is presence? We speak of it as charisma or as superb poise. Originally presence meant “being at hand,” but the Latin original passed through Old French and became the English “presence.” Western literature distinguishes between God’s presence or absence in the natural world and God’s presence among all women and men, or, most crucially, in each of us. I associate presence with the presentation or showing that is part of the process in instruction. The selfish idea I have of persuading friends and readers of the “literary” vitality of the the Hebrew Bible as opposed to its “literalness.” And my continuing idea that even though much of what we call The Bible is a literary work, very much like Shakespeare’s plays, it contains wisdom of the highest order. 

    In Genesis, Yahweh’s blessing passes from generation to generation, by hook or by sleazy crook, of his chosen people. Of those he favors, two of the most remarkable personalities are Jacob, who became Israel, and David, who replaces Saul as king and fathers the wise Solomon upon Bathsheba. Jacob is an old kind of man, cunning and persistent in his drive for survival and for the blessing of Yahweh. David is something new, and his literary progeny/characters in literature includes the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Hamlet. 

    The best commentary I know that deals with the Yahwist’s Jacob is in a now sadly unread comic masterpiece, Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers, composed between 1926 and 1942. It is long and wonderful...and give me a call if you’d like to borrow it. I have the best translation by John E. Woods (2005). 

    Whereas elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible the Blessing is simply “May you be fruitful and have many descendants,” in the texts composed by the Yahwist, I interpret the Blessing as a promise that your name will live on in the memory of others and so will not be scattered.

    Jacob comes up out of the womb with his hand taking hold on the heel of his brother Esau, who will grow to be a hunter while Jacob will be a tent dweller. Their mother, Rebekah, loves Jacob, while her husband, Isaac, prefers Esau. In a scene of remarkable pathos mingled with comedy, Jacob deceives Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing. The aftermath is troubling and memorable: 

    And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting.

    And he also had made savoury meat, and brought it unto his father, and said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son's venison, that thy soul may bless me.

    And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn Esau.

    And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.

    And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.

And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing.

    And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me?

    And Isaac answered and said unto Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him: and what shall I do now unto thee, my son?

King James Version, Genesis 27: 32-37

    It is only in the next chapter that our sympathy for Jacob is renewed, when he dreams of a ladder between heaven and earth, with angels ascending and going down. Above the stairs Yahweh stands and reaffirms the Blessing. An even grander epiphany takes place in Chapter 32, with its endless vision of Jacob wrestling a nameless one among the Elohim: 

    And he rose up the same night, and took his two wives, and his two maids, and his eleven children, and went over the ford Jabbok.

    And he took them, and sent them over the river, and sent over that he had.

    Now when Jacob was left himself alone, there wrestled a [a]man with him unto the breaking of the day.

    And he saw that he could not [b]prevail against him: therefore he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was loosed, as he wrestled with him.

    And he said, Let me go, for the morning appeareth. Who answered, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

    Then said he unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

    And said he, Thy name shall be called Jacob no more, but Israel: because thou hast had [c]power with God, thou shalt also prevail with men.

    And Jacob demanded, saying, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore now dost thou ask my name? and he blessed him there.

    And Jacob called the name of the place, Peniel: for, said he, I have seen God face to face, and [d]my life is preserved.

    And the sun rose up to him as he passed Peniel, and he [e]halted upon his thigh.

    Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank in the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the sinew that shrank in the hollow of Jacob’s thigh.

Geneva Bible, Genesis 32: 22-31 

    A man is one among the Elohim in the Hebrew. Is it the Angel of Death or Yahweh himself playing the Death role? We are not told. But this is not a loving encounter. Jacob will limp forever after this battle, and the nameless one fears daybreak. The astonishment is that Jacob, strong only in his cunning, should have the strength to hold a dangerous angel to a standstill. The name he wins, Israel, means, for me anyway, “To strive with the Almighty.” 

    Jacob knows that soon after dawn he will have to confront his vengeful brother, Esau. In this extraordinary anticipation, he strengthens himself for that encounter and in doing so prolongs his survival.

    Since I was young, I would hear my Father, Uncle, and Grandfather preach this story. As I got much older, and more understanding settled into my addled brain, I always wondered about the beginning of Israel and battling the Angel of Death. And how Israel and Death seemed to go hand in hand. I'm weird that way. But maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's my life-long battle with belief and family. And maybe it's the battle of everyone I have known, loved, and mourned. In the half-light of my increasing spells of nocturnal wakefulness, I begin to conceive of it as the struggle of every solitary deep reader to find in the highest literature what will call out to him or her. As always, carry the fire. 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com