The Hebrew Bible contains national laments. The most famous communal lament is the book of Lamentations. Tradition often connects this collection of poems with the prophet Jeremiah. This collection consists of five chapters. Four chapters of Lamentations are acrostic poems. That is to say they use the alphabet as a structural element. The Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two elements.
Kathleen O’Connor in her book Lamentations & The Tears of the World has noted several classical works that attend to the themes of Lamentations. Thomas Tallis (“The Lamentations of Jeremiahâ€), Pablo Casals (“O Vos Omnes†English “O Ye Peopleâ€) Leonard Bernstein (“Jeremiah†symphony), Igor Stravinsky (“Threni†in 1958) The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Dixie were songs that began as anthems of regional causes that emerged as elegies and laments for lost dreams and lives. Hungarian composer Lajos Bardos wrote a setting for eight verses of chapter five. He wrote this for Lent of 1956 as an interpretation of ht e Soviet occupation of Hungary.
The laments, whether national, communal or personal, all begin with a world gone wrong. The relationship of privilege has disintegrated. This posited election separates the Hebrew laments from the blues of today. Even if election is a fiction it acts as a necessary component for the poetic logic of the lament. O’Connor says “Lamentations opens upon a universe of sorrows.†(17) This universe of sorrow is a scientific fiction world. If there is a world of matter it is the world of anti-matter. It is the place where election becomes derision. The universe of sorrow is an alternate reality, even if the world of reality posited by the lament is itself but a fiction.
The first two chapters acrostic poems twenty-two verses of three lines each, one verse per letter with a total of sixty-six lines. O’Connor calls this “pain and suffering in alphabetical order.â€(p12) Other biblical acrostic poems include: Pss 9-10, 25, 34, 119, 145, Na 1; Prv 31:10-31. (See Soll, “Acrostic†in the Anchor Bible Dictionary) A careful examination of these parallels indicates that most of these are wisdom poems that use the acrostic as a pedagogical rubric. However, O’Connor makes the point that the writer of Lamentations does a very different strategy. The acrostic is a very structured genre. The universe of sorrow on the other hand chaos permeates the universe of sorrow. Just as one might use the sonnet as a way to sing the blues, the writer of lamentations uses the structure of the genre to combat the contingency of life.
When one reads the history of ancient Israel and Judah, or even our history, one understands that he stability imputed on the past is usually at some level a fiction created by history writers in order to accent the present crisis.
Monthly Archives: July 2010
I wonder what Gardner would say? Is there a difference between biblical Hebrew prose and poetry?
I have a friend who a Milton scholar Gardner Campbell. I wonder how he puts poetry, prose and narrative together. I thought of him as a read Adele Berlin’s Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism. The question is the role of parallelism in defining poetry. Here she brings into the conversation James Kugel’s work the Idea of Biblical Poetry. Berlin writes “Kugel not only questioned the equation of parallelism with poetry, but attacked the whole notion that one can differentiate prose from poetry in the Bible.†(Berlin 4) There is a context for Kugel’s observations in the reception history of his argument as well as the various elements of his argument. As I read this at first I remembered the work of A.B. Lord, The Singer of Tales that was a key resource for the emerging biblical form critics of the mid twentieth century. This book published in 1961 using comparative literature perspective blurred the line between narrative prose and poetry. Lord, a professor of Slavic and comparative literature spun a story of a band of singers who would perform the epic narrative of the countryside. Those captured by the compelling picture painted by Lord could easily blur the borders of narrative prose and poetry. Duane Christensen’s work on meter in biblical Hebrew narrative in Deuteronomy would seem to confirm this blurring.
However, Berlin takes Kugel to task this background notwithstanding. Not all poetry is parallelistic and symmetrical as demonstrated by Psalm 119 and 122. Berlin accuses Kugel of posing “that not all poetry is parallelisms and not all parallelisms are poetry.†(Berlin 4) According to Berlin Kugel makes two mistakes first he “tacitly accepts the equation of parallelism with poetry…†Second in order to make room for non-poetic parallelism he uses the language of “elevated speech†to describe the overlap of poetry and prose that use parallelism. Berlin observes “The truth is, as linguists have shown, that parallelism is not in and of itself a mark of poetry as opposed to prose…†(Berlin 4) Ultimately Berlin and Kugel agree that there is a continuum of elevated style in the Bible. However, Berlin does come to a clear position. “It is not parallelism per se, but the predominance of parallelism, combined with terseness, which marks the poetic expression of the Bible.†(Berlin 5)
Ternseness and a parataxis, that places elements side by side without an inherently determined coordinating and subordination. That is to say, the relationship is key to understand elevated speech but the nature of the relationship remains open to interpretation, multivalent. “Parallelism, because it involves linguistic correspondences, increases the feeling of connectedness…†(Berlin 6)
What makes a poem not parallelistic elevated styles is that he poem has parallelism as a constituitive device, namely a device on which the artifact is created.
At the end I still wonder what would Gardner say about prose, poetry and narrative.
Add to Any Button
I am hoping that the Add to Any button will promote great collaboration and interaction.
Shareaholic
The idea of collaboration as a part of a blog is a idea that takes more of my attention.Shareaholic is button that all students should use for their web browsing.
Parallelism Poetry and the Jazz of Dizzy Gillespie
Parallelism Poetry and the Jazz of Dizzy Gillespie
Robert Lowth set the stage for the continuing conversation on Hebrew poetry with his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews published in 1753. By 1778 in his work of Isaiah Lowth further defined his understanding of the special structure of Hebrew poetry as parallelism. Three types dominate the discussion, synonymous, antithetical, and synthetic. Another way to think of this as two hard types and one type that is neither of the other two.
A spate of important linguistic studies of biblical poetry is out there. (See T. Collins, A. Cooper, J. deMoor, S. Geller, E. Greenstein, P. Miller, M. O’Connor, D. Pardee, S. Parker, S. Segert, and W.G.E. Watson. Kugel and Alter build on the work of Lowth and provide a non-linguistic but helpful entry to the subject of biblical poetry. Berlin considers Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism as the intersection of “the convergence of the linguistic study of poetic discourse and the non-linguistic study of parallelism.†(xvii)
David Noel freedman says in his foreword “Robert Alter and James Kugel, as well as Stephen Geller and Michael O’Connor, among others have treated the subject, but Berlin’s book distinguishes itself by integrating Russian linguist Roman Jakobson’s pioneering work as the theoretical foundation…†(x) Berlin perceives her work as a confirmation of the general direction of Kugel and Alter.
“Parallelism is linguistic phenomenon.†(2) The essence of parallelism is the correspondence of one this with another. These relationships may be characterized by equivalence, opposition and contrast. At base the study of parallelism biblical and other wise explores these relationships.
When one investigates the bebop jazz movement pioneered by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker one notes the role of equivalence, opposition, and contrast. This can be done through rhythm, harmonic and discordant play in the event of improvisation.
Facebook and Blog Encounter
I have found an app that allows my blog posts to show up on my Facebook page.
Reading Diasaster
The way we read has changed in two fundamental ways. The historicist hermeneutic posited the text as an object. A post-historicist hermeneutic treats the text as a subject that the reader enters a type of relationship. The reader’s perspective now plays a more significant role. Hence the particulars of the reader’s life looms more on the interpretative horizon. With this in mind we see the disasters human and natural. The article in Wired magazine “Organizing for Armageddon†outlines how relief agencies are learning from the spate of recent natural disasters. As I read the article I found their findings interesting but more than anything I was impressed by the ubiquity of natural disasters. This post historicist hermeneutic and the greater awareness of disaster generates an increased sense of contingency.
Life after the Summer Faculty Institute: Towards a Life of Co-Inherence
The next several posts will be my attempt to debrief the Summer Faculty Institute at Baylor. Daily brief sessions became the watchword of the Baylor Summer Faculty Institute (SFI). Today’s Summer Faculty institute began as the Teaching Institute. How do you balance teaching with the rigors of publishing for tenure? You don’t it is all integrated. From the Cappadocian view of the trinity research and teaching co-inhere like the elements of the trinity. How does one use a principle of co-inherence to improve the balance and synergy of research and teaching? Our facilitators asked each participant to determine a discrete number of questions that we could contribute to the broader debate? For me this meant to identify the key problems in OT that I can solve or make a good beginning in solving
Even today the SFI continues the emphasis on teaching but with the principle of co-inherence, a term coined by the Cappadocian Fathers to talk about the Trinity that has been applied to the interface of teaching and research by Charles Talbert allows the present SFI to reflect the values of Baylor University as articulated in the Baylor 2012 documents. ? The SFI facilitators Tom Hanks and Lenore Wright invited us to think of this as a time to reflect on what it takes to flourish at Baylor. Flourish was an apt verb. It
Once one has the key problems and questions then one can ask what research program will best approach these questions. But it does not stop there. One should ask how this informs the teaching task. It can be as small as the readings that you have students review or it may mean something much more substantive.
Baylor University requires those seeking tenure to devise a research agenda and successfully accomplish that agenda. Hanks and Wright were able to place this research agenda in a broader context. Tom reminded us about the Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock who shared several sources of ideas.
Where do you find your ideas and problems?
1. Dissertation: for the first five to ten years
2. Conferences this is the most up to date conversation
3. Journal conversations focus here books are behind the field
4. Teaching
What are the key questions that are worth the next several years of your life and research?