As I mentioned in a comment to the last post, I will no longer be updating this blog.

While that is of course a tragedy to none, I was touched by those who commented, or e-mailed, asking me to continue. Alas, my schedule makes that infeasible; Sirocco has to call it quits.

Thanks to all who have dropped by! My e-mail address will still be working.

To go out in style — and as a hat tip to fellow Zapffe aficionado Mr. P (we few, we happy few, we band of brothers!) — I will sign off with two final translations of the great existential pessimist. The short pieces in question represent, respectively, the first and the last by the adult Peter Wessel Zapffe. As usual, the originals are better.

One night, man was seated upon the curved back of the earth, and there were stars on the vault and a stone below his bottom. Then he felt that he was there, and that it was him, and he was deeply puzzled, for he had not known before. And he spoke aloud and said: Lo, I am pushed from below and stars are above my head! Yet as he heard his own voice, he became anxious and began to shout more loudly: Lo, I am pushed! And it was as if he drew it from his angst.
     From this day hence he did not eat, and his brethren he knew not any longer. Whenever his angst appeared he would scream the same words, but each time in a new way, as if always seeking a better one. And at times, his eyes would shine as he screamed. Those who met him would sometimes pause to wonder at the strange sound of his voice.
     Then his heart burst, and people gathered to remember him. None had understood him, himself least of all, but all felt that his words were the highest wisdom.

Dear all of you who have come to say goodbye to the incarnation that was made available as an abode for my spiritual life. Say goodbye to the inscrutable synthesis that emerged in 1899 and kept together for 90 years, before it again disintegrated back into its inorganic elements.

Thank you for coming, all of you, and each specifically, each with his own perspective on this that has happened, in part foreseeably and in part as a fruit of pure happenstance. This, which we partly owe gratitude and must partly consider our perfidious foe – if we imagine a governing consciousness behind it all.
     And if we do not, then we have in part been lucky in the great lottery, and in part drawn blanks or actual harm. But it often feels as though some consciousness is waiting in ambush to strike us in our vulnerable moments. In any case, we come from nothing and go to nothing and that is nothing to worry about.
     Goodbye, everyone.

The first two of the poems below were contributed in comments by my friend and reader Gal. Wislawa Szymborska, with whom I was unfamiliar, won the Nobel Prize in Literature 1996. Naomi Shihab Nye is an American poet of Arab descent. Thanks again, Gal.

The third inclusion is the epigraph to an essay by my great compatriot Jens Bjørneboe, best known for his novel trilogy The History of Bestiality. This year is the 30-year anniversary of his untimely death by suicide.

Finally, I highly recommend going to this indymedia site and listen to a reading of ‘From Beirut’ by Mahmoud Darwish, the most esteemed living Arab poet. The Palestinian Darwish wrote this poem during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Darwish’s long, essayistic stream-of-consciousness poem ‘Memory for Forgetfulness’ (Dhakira lil-Nisyan) is available here. Published in August 1982, it is a remarkable work of art that affords a strong sense of déjà vu.

When I posted my unauthorized translation to English of Jostein Gaarder’s essay ‘God’s chosen people’, I had no idea of the amount of international attention it would attract. Had I known that it would be quoted in Haaretz and, in a crossposted incarnation at Booman Tribune, quoted and linked to by Time Magazine’s blog and linked to by Der Spiegel, I would certainly have spent more time on it, though it still strikes me as mostly accurate.

Yet my surprise at the brouhaha pales to insignificance compared to the author’s shock at the firestorm his piece set off, especially in Norway but also abroad. The debate has been raging for a week among intellectuals, writers, politicians, and thousands of Joes and Janes writing LTEs or duking it out online: Is the essay foul and dangerous anti-Semitism, or simply a brave calling out of a country in the process of committing moral suicide before our eyes?

Despite my intention not to post more on this subject, I guess I owe it to Jostein Gaarder to also translate his follow-up op-ed, wherein he answers his critics. As I thought, he does not advocate the abolition of Israel as such, but cautions that “Israel’s intransigent policies with respect to its neighbors may in the long term pose a threat to Israel itself.”

As before, the translation is unofficial and neither solicited nor reviewed by Jostein Gaarder.

An attempt to clarify

Jostein Gaarder, Aftenposten 12.08.06
From the Norwegian by Sirocco

I evidently have been misunderstood by many due to the literary technique I used when writing the op-ed about “God’s chosen people,” and I therefore find it necessary to return to the Aftenposten op-ed space with an attempt to clarify.

We need discussion

The genre proved demanding, and I regret if I have hurt anyone — though I intended and still intend to be harsh in my critique of the state of Israel. However, we need the discussion and exchange of views of public conversation. I mean by this fair discussions and exchanges of view — not inarticulate abuse.

The dream of dialogue

I give thanks for all rational criticism — and naturally, for all declarations of support. I also noticed a wise and sober commentary piece by the chair of The Mosaic Religious Community, Anne Sender. We have disagreed fervently in this matter, but I share with her the “dream of dialogue.”

In my Aftenposten op-ed on Saturday August 5 I wrote among other things: “We recognize and pay heed to Europe’s deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home.” It is on this background and from this fundamental premise — to wit, the recognition of the state of Israel — that I sharply criticize the state of Israel’s policy of war.

What ‘recognize’ means

The op-ed begins with this rhetorical touch: “It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel….” It has no doubt spawned much confusion that I have here deliberately played on several meanings of the word ‘recognize’. I refer at one point to the international legal recognition of a state, but I also use the word in the sense of being recognized for a practice, win recognition, enjoy recognition, etc. Or as in my op-ed: “We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance… etc.” And towards the end: “We do not recognize the state of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath.” (italics added) The op-ed was written on the same day that the pictures from Qana reached us.

1948 versus 1967

Regarding matters of international law, I specify, as I have also tried to emphasize in all interviews: “We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948.”

I thus do not dispute the state of Israel’s right to exist within the borders of 1948, but the border extension of 1967 by means of military force violates international law. In this I have both the UN and the majority of world opinion with me.

No god-given mandate

Many have expressed a view that I conflate religion and politics. I tried to do the exact opposite. When I have entitled the op-ed “God’s chosen people,” it is in order to emphasize that we must never accept that any party to a conflict can claim a god-given mandate.

Here it is primarily what we may call “Christian Zionist” notions I have had in mind, i.e. notions that God still has a plan for the Jews, and that what is going on in the Middle East today is an omen of the Acopalypse, the Second Coming, etc.

Back to Israel

One instance of what I warned against is the fresh statements from a representative of the Pentecostal movement’s work in Israel. He points out that the Second Coming and salvation for the believers are tied to Jews being able to return to Israel. By Israel he means “From the wilderness, and this Lebanon, even to the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun” (Joshua 1,4).

According to a recent edition of a newspaper he says: “How can we trust God if He does not fulfill these promises? This is of the essence for many Evangelical Christians, among them 70 million in the USA.” He continues: “Neither Judea nor Samaria have been part of the Arab realm. Why does one persist in using the concept ‘occupied land’?” Corresponding conceptions are also represented among Orthodox Jews, especially some settlers in the occupied areas.

Richer in humanism

I do not believe that Jewish thought and practice have been any less humanistic than what is found in Christian or Muslim history. Maybe quite the contrary; I think a comparative study might have to conclude that the culture and practices of Jews have by and large been richer in humanism and freer from religious fanaticism than what the Christian cultural area has to show for itself (with its crusades, conquistadors, inquisitions, persecutions of Jews, and the Holocaust, etc.).

Different interpretations

But that was not the point. Only in regard to the very notion of “the Kingdom of God” do I believe that Jesu’ preaching and what I take to be Christianity have had a more humanistic interpretation than the late-Jewish, and now Christian Zionist, notion of a political restoration of the Kingdom of David as a “Kingdom of God” for the people of Israel. I am here referring to different interpretations of the religious message — be they Christian or Jewish — and to the problems we all encounter when extreme interpretations are put into life.

A symbol of intransigence

“May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel,” I write. Thus I hope that diplomacy and intellectual force will suffice to convince Israel that the illegal wall on occupied land must be torn down, not least because it will otherwise remain as a monumental symbol of intransigence. The wall does not only cause daily irritation and harm to the Palestinian people, but may in a somewhat longer term be a greater danger to Israel than the country will appreciate.

In other words, I fear Israel’s intransigent policies with respect to its neighbors may in the long term pose a threat to Israel itself.

Violence against civilan population

I naturally do not advocate that any citizens of Israel should ever have to leave their country. I do not even consider it a possibility. When I evoke an image of Israeli civilians fleeing the ‘occupied areas’ (such as Jerusalem and the West Bank), I realize that this may elicit strong emotions.

Yet the message is crystal clear: Whatever the background and context — whatever religious or eschatological conceptions we might have — we never can tolerate violence against a civilian population.

Triggering anti-Semitism

And finally: It can be outright irresponsible to prematurely accuse a debater of anti-Semitism — simply because it may serve to legitimize and trigger anti-Semitism. (If he or she is an anti-Semite, hey, maybe it ain’t so bad….) When one of the provincial councils in Norway decided to boycott Israeli goods, this was in certain Jewish circles said to be “in the spirit of the Nazis,” and they concluded that “this is unquestionably an expression of anti-Semitism.”

Well, such characterizations are in my view not only highly irrational. In the long term they can prove fatal. For how are we then going to describe Nazism and anti-Semitism?

Missiles and bombs

I hope I have cleared up some misunderstandings with this entry. Meanwhile the missiles and bombs are raining; civilians are dying; roads, water supply, and healthcare are being set back decades. We all owe the victims of war a cry of distress.

Let us now concentrate on the matter of substance.

Andrew “Flytrap” Sullivan slams Jostein Gaarder as an anti-Semite calling for the “obliteration” of Israel and for Jews to “surrender.”

These are certainly misinterpretations of the furious, fire-and-brimstone essay I translated. The prophetic voice, speaking in the first person plural, explicitly recognizes the “internationally lawful” Israel of 1948.

True, the voice is at points unclear in separating policy recommendations from the expected bad consequences of ignoring same. In my reading, however, the message is that the Israeli state we know today is no longer sustainable, having forfeited its legitimacy in the eyes of the world:

This is an uplifting prospect, the prophetic voice suggests, for it signals the abolition of apartheid-like injustice:

Let us briefly pause for a historical sidebar:

The ensuing liberation struggle was predominantly non-violent yet eventually succeeded in ending oppression, with equal rights for all featherless bipeds entrenched in a new constitution. By no means did it involve the physical “obliteration” of South Africa. This is therefore an optimistic forecast, though as Robert Sharp and many others (including Norwegian debaters) rightly complain, it is not made explicit.

Later on, the prophet cautions that the demise of Israel in its current form could also come about in a darker way:

Thus, if Israel elects to continue its self-destructive policies of occupation and aggression, then the international community is not obliged to prop it up when the tables ultimately turn. This does not, however, amount to “calling for the obliteration of Israel.”

Furthermore, it is unclear to what ‘occupied areas’ refers. If this is simply the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Sheeba Farms, the Golan Heights, and so forth, then the statement is relatively unproblematic.

Otherwise, however — and arguably, in any case — the prophet should not limit himself to petition the victors to give the Jewish refugees free passage (plus “milk and honey”). He should councel letting them stay as citizens of a new and better state, be it called Israel, Palestine, or whatever. Possibly the author has here been tempted to echo his literary model:

Be that as it may, this is a serious flaw in Gaarder’s cri du coeur. And it is not the only one. Many critics, including yours truly, have noted how it lumps together a questionable construal of Judaic religion with the state of Israel. It is fair to say that Gaarder has hardly gone out of its way to avoid misunderstanding of his real intent.

Then again, as the Jewish Norwegian journalist Mona Levin — the essay’s fiercest detractor — agrees, that intent is not anti-Semitic.

One last point. Part of my own motivation for translating this piece was to show the extent to which Israel’s international image, outside of the American bubble, is in tatters. Before the ongoing demolition of Lebanon over two abducted soldiers and the engineered humanitarian crisis in Gaza, I doubt that it would have seen print in a major newspaper.

Accordingly, if one insists that it does reflect genuine anti-Semitism, then it also illustrates how Israel’s behavior qua self-declared “Jewish State” unfortunately makes fertile ground for such. As I put it in a previous post:

But that is of course a fact which Flytrap Sullivan and his ilk would never dream of acknowledging.

Update: Gaarder reflects on his essay in an interview with Aftenposten.

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Jostein Gaarder, the author of the global literary phenomenon Sophie’s World (printed in 26m copies in 53 languages), launches a scorching attack on Israel in Aftenposten, Norway’s paper of record. Gaarder, a historian of ideas, describes himself as a friend of the Jewish people but doubts whether Israel truly is the same. Suffice it to say that this will not appear in the New York Times anytime soon.

The form of Gaarder’s condemnation is inspired by Amos, the first Judaic prophet whose message is preserved in scroll (ca. 750 B.C.). Quoting Wikipedia: “The central idea of the book of Amos according to most scholars is that Yahweh puts his people on the same level as the nations that surround it — Yahweh expects the same morality of them all.”

Please note: the below is an unofficial translation with no connection to Jostein Gaarder. Any errors are mine alone. On the other hand, I do not endorse all the views expressed: see my postscript.

God’s chosen people

Jostein Gaarder, Aftenposten 05.08.06
From the Norwegian by Sirocco

There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.

We do not believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this people’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

Limits to tolerance

There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.

We call child murderers ‘child murderers’ and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!

Unscrupulous art of war

We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe’s deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flouted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

Without defense, without skin

May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the civilian population. For it is not civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.

We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of apartheid.

They celebrate their triumphs

We do not believe that Israel mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as “fitting punishment” for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.

For we have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and torment across the fronts.

The retribution of blood vengeance

We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

He said: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We do not recognize a state founded on antihumanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and war religion. Or as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: “Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.”

Compassion and forgiveness

We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David, but that the Kingdom of God is within us and among us. The Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness.

Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were operating.

Israel does not listen

For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisee that helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a Palestinian. For we are human first of all — then Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: “And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?” We do not accept the abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government ministers.

We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God’s assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians have so many other countries, certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.

The USA or the world?

Or as the highest protector of the state of Israel puts it: “May God continue to bless America.” A little child took note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: “Why does the President always end his speeches with ‘God bless America’? Why not, ‘God bless the world’?”

Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: “Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?” It was he that wrote so beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God’s chosen people. He personally liked to call himself a Muhammedan.

Calm and mercy

We do not recognize the state of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the population have to flee the occupied areas into another diaspora, then we say: May the surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is forever a crime without mitigation to lay hand on refugees and stateless people.

Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!

Let not one Israeli child be deprived of life. Far too many children and civilians have already been murdered.

Postscript by Sirocco: I am quite ambivalent about this piece because of how it seems to lay the crimes of Israel at the feet of Judaism, implying that the Jewish religion has failed to absorb the humanism and universalism of Christianity. I think a more apt perspective is the following.

The ideology of hardcore Zionism has evolved into a religion unto itself, bearing a striking resemblance to the pre-Talmudic Judaism of old. However, unlike the latter, it courts a tribal war god that really does exist, and which, unlike Yahweh, demands no sacrifice or expiation of its chosen people, the Jewish citizens of Israel. This God of Zionism is the world’s only superpower, the USA.

Yet its blind patronage may not last forever. And without it, Israel will reap the whirlwind.

Update: Here is my translation of Gaarder’s follow-up article, wherein he clarifies his stance.

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Today is the centennial of Henrik Ibsen’s death. My modest — and no doubt idiosyncratic — contribution to the commemoration of this immortal playwright is the below translation of a short essay by Peter W. Zapffe, the great philosopher of tragedy whom Ibsen’s work inspired and strongly influenced. In this succint meditation on the human condition, Zapffe puts forth for the first time the existentialist philosophy he developed at length in his 1941 magnum opus, On the Tragic.

The piece originally appeared in Morgenbladet on September 21, 1932. As with my other renderings of Zapffe, available in the Philosophy category, I have used British spelling for this likely first translation into English.

Ibsen aficionados may note that the term ‘hobgoblin thoughts’ alludes to Act Five, Scene Five of Peer Gynt.

We must presume that humans are the only species on Earth with a capacity for self-consideration, the ability to reflect on its particular circumstances and assess them in relation to those of other beings. By virtue of our spiritual endowment we not only can adapt to this given environment, but by means of techical remedies even survive changes of environment that would mean death for all other creation. If equipped with the bare capacity for reflection, we would however soon see through the repetitions of nature and know them as a mounting nightmare; and a sober comparison of the benefits and the costs of existence would swiftly lead to life’s voluntary surrender. Serving as a check on this danger is the relentless yearning that has no particular object and is independent of fulfillment, persisting as a static condition of variable magnitude. The toothache offers a metaphor of this. Working in tandem with our yearning is the imagination, which incessantly presents new singular goals, diverting from the hopelessness of the necessary conclusion that our yearning is unfounded in reality, that all speculations are but paper money without security in gold.
    Our form of existence is thus not conducive to bliss. Simpler organisms are more fortunate in this regard. The human being is, as an organic experiment, so highly driven as to approach an oscillation, an inner explosion. Cognition hands us more than we can carry. We suffer from the constant tension, the back-and-forth undulating battle between what drains the will to live and what builds it up. This is the pain of living. In certain moments we can immediately experience what it means to be of human birth, what it involves to be a thinking and feeling being, forged into an organism that follows alien laws. When exposed without mediation to those certainties and possibilities that the range of our faculties makes us liable to, when lonesome and naked under the cosmos — then we call it Weltschmertz. It is the purest form of suffering, the profoundest, truest and strongest emotion a human being can have. Popular it is not. It is often mentioned with a tentative irony to camouflage the horror. One is led to think of passengers joking about the breaker between their ears. Perhaps only those have fully felt this who were rendered unfit for life. The ancients called it to see Jehova.
    The struggle for existence, then, is only in its outward respect a fight for the daily bread. The real battle rages over the ghost of life within ourselves — where we ourselves are both the warriors, the battleground, and the strife.
    From the great bewilderment, the panic of living, has the theater, as well as cultural life in general, emerged. There is something eerie about a type of being sitting down to watch its own mode of existence and characteristics. But the idea is clear. In the theater, the battleground is moved from the mind onto the stage. We become mere spectators, relieved for a time of the burden of existence. Our own secret distress is seen to be borne by others and brought to solutions that comfort and soothe us, be it direct or indirect ones, elementary or involving high ideas, familiar or new. We look for a web of meaning and context that may isolate and shelter us from the hobgoblin thoughts. The theater is to some what mass is to others. Katharsis, said the Greeks, meaning thereby a moral purification. But the notion can be extended to signify cosmic hygiene. At worst we are led from despair to uncertainty, induced to think: Maybe still. Will and faith can be passed from spirit to spirit, especially when the donor is in command of form. The play is the most effective form there is.
    Thus the theater is directly enrolled in the service of struggling life. It stretches a bridge of purpose over the abyss, pushing with dynamic élan whenever it creaks. By cultivating the joys of experience it becomes a greenhouse for life-affirming values. The social prestige, the artistic strength, the architectonic power, the confidence of the stage machinery, and the insuperability of the entire task to any one individual endow the voice of the theater with a persuasive authority that the words by themselves might lack.
    Even in tragedy the idea, more or less manifest, should survive the disaster. There is in society a tacit understanding that the natural shall not be tolerated. A man who weeps on the street is removed, not for his own sake, but for others. The raiment of the minds is taboo.
    The state has a direct interest in this effect of the theater’s activity. Like a log driver on his logs, life jumps from creed to creed. It is imperative that the current one not be allowed to sink before the next one is within reach.

Stanislaw Lem (1921–2006)

I remember stumbling upon, as a kid, The Book of Job in a family bible. Set in archaic language and almost indecipherable gothic font, it was a struggle to get through; but the story was absorbing and the poetry, otherworldly. Like countless readers before me, however, I was baffled by the ending.

Years later, the existentialist philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) helped me make sense of it at last. His classic essay on The Book of Job is adapted from his masterpiece, On the Tragic, published in 1941 under German occupation. It is a subversive and blasphemous reading of this ancient meditation on the Problem of Evil, which Zapffe understood as an indictment of the human condition. The final paragraph never fails to send a chill down my spine. As promised to a commenter a while ago, I have attempted to render the essay; presumably for the first time in English.

My previous translations of Zapffe are here, here and here. As before, I have chosen British spelling. The prose is extraordinary and I have no illusions of having done it justice.

But then, where is justice found in this world?

The problem of interpreting a text that is either difficult to make particular sense of, or else allows more than one reading, is in theory the same for a work of today and one of bygone times. Only factually does there tend to be a difference — in the access to means and material. The interpretation may be determined by its causae, its effective causes; such is the case when the interpreter by means of historical and biographical knowledge seeks to present the author’s supposed intentions, or reconstruct the contemporary reception. But it may also be determined by its telos; such is the case when the interpreter asks, How does the text affect a reader of today — what does it yield when studied in terms of our present-day preconceptions?
     In the case of The Book of Job, we lack direct knowledge of the `author intention’ or the attitudes of the recipients upon its `publication’. Schück places the poet in Alexandria in the 4th century B.C.E., suggesting that he, in the context of an ancient myth, voiced his own heartfelt views on the philosophy of religion. Theodicé, the `defence of God’ as opposed to `criticism of the world order’, gained burning relevance as Judaism and Hellenism clashed in the minds. Both causae and telos are thus at play in the following interpretation.

Job is a kindred spirit of Prometheus; they both suffer godly malice and appeal to the principle of justice. Furthermore, a network of historical arteries is believed to link Aischylos’ play to the form given The Book of Job in canonical Scripture.
     The textual history is interesting — with the `traditional book’ as the source and servile theologians carrying a train of piety along. Together they frame a gem of world literature. It is a man of deeply personal acquaintance with pain, tremendous passion, and a reason of incisive clarity who meets us here, a thinker with a fanatic will to intellectual honesty and a poet of soaring cosmic pathos to match his flair for bestowing a blinding satirical form upon his abysmal hate of the god. There is a golden irony in the destiny of the writing: through the interpolations of the pious, this book of revolt, with all its smoking imprecations, has gained a place among the rocks of faith upon which people build their metaphysical consolation even today.
     The poet takes as his point of departure the tradition that Job was great in the eyes of his tribesmen in terms of religion, status, and wealth. He was `blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil’, and self-effacingly helpful too. He was the greatest of all the people of the East, happy and highly esteemed by young as well as old, poor as well as rich. There is none like him on the earth — so says the Lord himself. In other words: Job is perched at the pinnacle of his society’s culture, and just those rare and fine qualities that placed him there become in turn the direct cause of his destruction, of his biological, social and metaphysical ruin. He is to be a bone of contention among the powerful; a victim, in a sense, of an inverted `envy of the gods’.
     For the Lord brags to Satan about his servant Job — what must not I be like, who am feared by a man like Job, and Satan replies: Hah! Job worships you merely in tribute to your patronage. Now deprive him of his assets, and we shall see. Jahve agrees to the bet, and soon Job is struck by two fearsome floodwaves of disaster until his life is barely left him. God wants to show his adversary that Job serves and fears him (love is not at issue here) whether blessings or curses are sent, simply for `God’s own sake’ — however that is supposed to be motivated. Job has to prostrate himself unconditionally, humbly conceding — what? God’s might or God’s right? Well, that is precisely the burning question in what follows.
     And Job really bows, as he has been taught is the right thing to do, during both of his ordeals. In the traditional book he is also promptly rewarded, but this is where the poet enters to request a place for human nature in Job. And the human is more than a docile slave to his image of the god; he brims with earthly life and élan. So Job gives God what is God’s due, but like Jeremiah, he curses the day he was born. It is better to be dead than to lead a life like this; still better, to never be born. Why does God force those to live who do not wish to do so?

These thoughts provoke an outpouring of eloquence from the `friends’ Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. It is in reply to their more or less unthinking dogmatic cant that Job is to make an accusation of timeless dimensions, attaining a voice that concentrates all of humankind’s prayers and threats, laments, hopes, and curses into a few immortal verses. Above the vital biological interests of the people and humanity, whose assurance was hitherto the only purpose of the pact with Jahve, the poet now elevates a new interest: The Book of Job is a drama about the emergence of culture; a depiction of a spiritual `mutation’ comparable to Prometheus, The Eumenides, and Grillparzer’s Libussa. One can perceive a new metaphysical consciousness crystallise under the maximal pressure of agony — a consciousness of the fundamental conflict between the god (or by analogy, natural forces) as the environment’s master, and the sacred human demand for meaning in what happens.
    The friends’ traditional doctrine claims, with minor variations, that God rewards the righteous (law-abiding) and punishes the ungodly (law-infringing) in this life — a creed that Job too has grown up with. As Job is now `unpunishable’, says the old Eliphaz, God will certainly deliver him from agony if only he endures in patience while recognising God’s rightfulness in doing all this to Job. No man is perfect to God, not even you, which is why you now suffer. But when the cup of suffering is full, you will be reestablished in your former bliss. During the ordeal you may cry out as much as you like; none can hear you. Be grateful for His scolding of you; it only proves that you are in His hand.

I may perhaps have made too much of it, Job meekly replies, but this I simply cannot take! I have no peace while I swallow my spittle; I am after all a human, not a mineral! And yet I will try to be humble, if only you explain my fault to me, the fault that earned me such a treatment. For it can hardly be my impatience now after the fact that brought down my misadventure! — Neither here nor later on is there any sign that Job equals himself with God in moral stature — the respective demands are also different, to put it mildly. Job is merely requesting a reasonable proportion of `punishment’ to imperfection, especially inasmuch as perfection is entirely beyond human reach. He must, given the central dogma, be free to compare his fate with those of others, and this is where he grows sceptical about the distribution of goods and ills. But his friends misjudge his zeal in pleading his innocence, suspecting a mad pride behind it: that Job regards himself as `absolutely’, not `relatively’, faultless. The source of Job’s fervour is another, however: it is for the sake of the problem, in the interest of clarity, that he reviews his conduct. He queries what they mean by sin when basing their defence of God on the doctrine of the sinner’s doom and the righteous person’s vindication. It is easy for you to preach, he concludes in his reply to Eliphaz, who have all your assets intact. My life is in tatters; I shall soon perish from this disease, and then there is no more. Those are different terms, indeed. And since I have no more to lose, nor anything to gain by keeping quiet, I might at least indulge in lamenting my plight.
     And now he directs his words straight at his, and his friends’, God. What is the point of all this? Do you find me a worthy object of your destructive power? Have you no better things to do? Do you not think you lessen yourself by going on like this? Mightn’t you stop while I am still alive and grant me a moment’s peace - for when I shortly die, you must, after all, stop anyway!
     The young Bildad then repeats Eliphaz’ claim, applying it to Job’s sons. They must surely have sinned egregiously who were so swiftly slain, for God’s justice cannot be doubted.
     True enough, Job ponderously replies; it is futile for a human to challenge God. But now the critical breakthrough occurs in Job’s thought: How so? Is it because we are so feeble in our sense of justice that we should bow our heads in shame if God the Lord were to explain to us the least of his motives? No, he infers with desperate rigour, it must rather be due to his overwhelming power relative to ours, his greatness in meters and kilos, that we cannot prevail against him. Our rightness or wrongness in the human sense makes no difference whatsover. It is immaterial twice over: firstly, he cannot be summoned for negotiations; he is invisible, exempt from our limitations, has no need for our facilities, and does not communicate with us as we do among ourselves. And secondly: even if he did arrive for negotiations — what good would it do? No umpire could arbitrate between us; he does not accept to be bound by even one explicit principle of justice. He is an absolute autocrat by virtue of his strength and knowledge; mercy I may appeal for, but no justice. Indeed, he can render the innocent guilty, twisting the sense of justice in his chest and forcing him to convict himself. Let him make us equal before the law, and I will answer him. As long as he keeps me on the rack, standing above me as an executioner, there is no basis for negotiation. Accordingly, even an indictment from God would be invaluable.

But surely there is at least a meaning in the misery, even if at odds with the idea of justice? Let me know then why you harass me! I am, after all, your own creation wholly; in the name of reason you must have a motive for destroying it. The call for comprehension erupts like a flame toward the heavens; Job is hammering God’s ear in hope of striking a humanly related cord. If you probe my sin and delinquency, there must at least be a chance of contact on a single point; one common principle must apply to your judgment and mine. If there is any truth in your claim to have made us in your image, then something must be commensurable in our respective views and verdicts, and this must also pertain to my sense of justice, which you created together with the rest. For if the god’s understanding of justice deviates from humanity’s, then it is as good as arbitrary for us; then our last chance is lost, there is no pathway of hope through perfectibility, we are surrendered to a metaphysical sweepstake, and there is no longer any guarantee that our highest virtues, faithfulness, humility and benevolence, are not in fact the broad path to damnation. But then, if his notion of justice deviates from ours, we will no more use the word `justice’ of his dispositions. Nor will we condone the fraud inherent in the theodicé of the pious: calling an act the most heinous crime and irredeemable offence when performed by a human, but inscrutable love when by God. It is one out of two: same law and same verdict for both, or different laws and verdicts. If we are to accept the governance of our world as just, says Job, it has to be just in the human sense. Otherwise God can be as `just’ as he likes in his own language, but in ours it is called unjust.

The same consideration applies to experience, Job affirms. When I see that a man is a crook, and he nonetheless, or precisely therefore, fares jolly well, the apologist cannot claim that he fares badly without giving a wholly new sense to the words. If he now pretends to use them in their ordinary senses, he is being dishonest in logical terms. So when Zophar, on God’s behalf, repeats the hackneyed dogma that virtue shall be rewarded, and so on, Job is seized by the ruthlessness of battle. He takes on the creed of his friends (or foes), exposing it as nonsense by the standards of reason and experience — the only ones we may decently apply. After all, even animals can sense their subordination to forces that have nil to do with good and right, and as for the human world, injustice is rather the prevailing principle. The human condition is dreadful from the vantage point of death. You should not go so far to save your illusory grounds of consolation as to defend God by pure deceit. If someone can convince me, I will concede, but not to manifest folly. Nor will I yield to the talk of God’s mysterious ways, for if I cannot form an image of him, neither can you; then we all stagger blind about.

Bildad’s second entry introduces a new element: Of what significance are you, and your demand for justice, to the entire worldly household? This is the Stoic philosophy; it sits uneasily with the principle of retribution, but Bildad ties them together with a well-known apologetic trick: to connect the incompatible items with a `nonetheless’. Job takes no solace in the fundamental unimportance of his fate; he has no use for a world-scheme where humans play no part. The call for meaning erupts in him more insistently than ever; against Stoicism he demands that his destiny (i.e. all people’s) be graven into the legend of the universe with everlasting letters. And his challenging thought proceeds to a higher authority than the god he was taught about but is dismissing, to one whose interests connect with the most sacred of human needs. Job has risen high above his individual pain and is speaking on behalf of all humanity; his sense of justice is incorruptible, ascending in merciless majesty from his despair. He even rejects the clause that the evil of `ungodly’ ancestors be visited upon descendants, for any `punishment’ must befall the delinquent in the flesh.

But now Bildad comes along with his last bullet: God’s greatness of quantity; if sitting in the entire colloquium, he has either failed to understand a thing or refused to do so. As Job lacks the Lord’s astronomic dimensions, he should not try to prevail. Baffled by the argument, Job asks: With whose help have you uttered words, and whose spirit has come forth from you? Being only too acquainted with this aspect of the Lord’s exertions, Job schools Bildad in the sublime poetic art of extolling the many mechanistic wonders that we cannot copy. But then — Job ominously concludes — that also circumscribes his powers; he can storm and roar as much as he likes, that does not help one iota in the matter at hand. On the contrary: the Lord abused his might to violate my right. At this point I must stand firm, for I cannot betray my conviction without harm to my soul. And I do not shy from calling any cosmic force ungodly that strays from the rightful path. If Job’s expression `my enemy’ refers to Jahve, as the context suggests, then he here puts forth a novel theology: the notion `divine’ shall not conform to `the god that be’; rather, the god we can accept shall conform to the norm of divinity — to our conception of the ideal god by the token of humanity. And so we require the god to embody the highest wisdom, shooting all creation through with order and meaning. Where, then, is the well-spring of wisdom, inquires Job — where is the source of spirit that animates god and human alike? Jahve is obviously not this source, though he alone knows the origin of spiritual power. And to what end has he put it himself? To wreak havoc with wind and rain and lightning, playing war games on humanity. `Fear Me and depart from evil’ — that was all he got out of it.

A later author finds no way to save the three reproachful friends. Job has torched every imaginable argument — yet cannot in all decency be ceded the dispute without further ado. Thus he adds a fifth character, Elihu, who is previously unmentioned and supposed to speak the timely words to satisfy the demands of both faith and experience. However, despite notable pretensions, he is able only to rehash and vary what has already been said. It must therefore mystify the reader that the Lord, when the Day of Reckoning arrives, does not rebuke him for heresy together with the other three. Even more surprising is it, though, that he hauls them over the coals after repeating the gist of their lectures himself. But we are only mystified because we still retain some notions about the divine logic. After the Lord has made his personal introduction, there shall be nothing more to surprise us.
     For this speech of God must be one of the most marvellous passages in the whole of canonical Scripture. Job, for one, is clearly perplexed by the rich demonstration of all that is weird and wonderful in nature.
    And when the Lord expectantly prompts his reply, Job says rather quietly: You know what I think of my misery. These zoological conjuring tricks hardly concern our differences. What else do you want me to say?
     So the Lord is compelled, however reluctantly, to address the question of justice. (God was careless enough to show up on the scene; he cannot pull out now without loss of prestige. And in prestige, vanity, is perhaps the deepest motivation for this god’s benighted rule.) How dare you allege that I am unjust?? asks the Lord in the whirlwind. Do you not see my strength and do you not hear how terribly I can roar? Prove that you have my might, and I will bow to recognise your right. Only might carries weight in my eyes. Do you know what is the apex of my creation? Not the human spirit with its sickly sense of justice, as you fool believe, no the hippo sir! Its legs are copper pipes and its bones like iron rods! A far cry from you effeminate whimp with all your tender sensibilities. Now maybe you think Man is second to the hippo? Oh far from it, the crocodile is its only equal. It has armor plates, that one, but what have you? Aye, you are quite someone to lecture me about justice!

One can imagine Job’s boundless consternation at this tangible appearance of Jahve. Here Job has been attributing to his problem the profoundest, most crucial significance of principle — assuming himself faced with an adversary who should convince him to the point of mortal shame as soon as his tongue touched the burning questions — a god so dignified and sacred and pure that even his indictment must cause exultation! And now he is met with a grotesquely primitive world-ruler, a cosmic caveman, a blustering braggart, almost endearing in his utter ignorance of spiritual culture. Job also readily realizes that it would be laughably naïve to raise theoretical questions here; to assert a persuasion requires an adversary who is equipped to comprehend it and to see the argument as common ground. Nothing could be more misplaced than to beat his chest in a display of moral heroism until Jahve puts his paw down to squash him like a flea. He might as well take his high-minded stands vis-a-vis the hippo and the crocodile, who much more than Job are created in the Lord’s image. The situation is utterly transformed now that Jahve has made the mistake of revealing his true nature and no longer benefits from the idealising human imagination. `I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes’. Job is paying lipservice to God as one does to the mentally unbalanced. His battle with God was based upon a false premise. What is news to Job is not God’s greatness of quantity, which he fully knew beforehand. It is the poorness of quality. His loftiest belief, his conception of the god, has taken a fatal blow. To this inane ur-force, Job can yield without the slightest shame, since the `battle’ left his principled stance untouched. A spiritual force may be annihilated, but not `defeated’, by the annihilitation of its corporal vehicle. Not even corporally is Job `defeated’, for in that area he did not fight. He is unpersuaded of having erred about the justice of the worldly order; on the contrary, his views are borne out. By so capitulating, he deals the tyrant the most damning insult there is: that the adversary does not even merit a fight.

One who does not smell a rat is Jahve: thrilled as a child by his `triumph’, he initiates a grand reconciliation. The poor friends, who thought they had served their master diligently, adhering to the law that has just been confirmed by personal revelation, and even foretelling the reconciliation itself — those are harshly dealt with, while Job, who has still not recovered from his initial shocks, sees the return and doubling of his chattel and wealth. He gets as many sons and daughters as were crushed in the beginning — it is clearly the Lord’s opinion that no harm is done as long as the number is preserved. What an unflattering light does not fall on this godly Caliban, who believes he can make it all up with money and cattle when Job has put his finger on the rotten rub in the very world machinery!
     Thus ends this grand metaphysical confrontation in blind comedy. Job keeps wisely quiet in his newfound bliss, but he shall hardly forget the glimpse that he, in his time of terror, caught behind the scenes of creation, even as he grows to be 140 years old and full of days.
     Has Satan lost his bet? If he is of Jahve’s caliber, he has. But if he is a clever Mefisto, then he and Job now share a little secret. Within, Satan achieved a victory far more precious than one without: the colossus has exposed his weak spot, allowing his arch-enemy a grip on the human mind previously unthinkable. God missed the scope of Job’s test; a ruler’s whim during merry recreation has turned into a deadly serious affair.

Job’s tragedy is, in the first regard, the outer one that he is broken along with his household for being the most praiseworthy person in the land. But here the causal chain is ascribed to a Prolog im Himmel and cannot be tied to known earthly conditions. True, wealth might attract robbers, but storms and leprosy are accidents in the light of experience. So this tragedy is rather bereft of philosophical substance.
     All the weightier is the inner tragedy. Firstly, his sense of justice (the new greatness evoked by the outer tragedy), unique to Job within his circle and his finest quality in the eyes of the modern reader, brings him melancholy and Weltschmertz, the severest of mental anguish. Secondly, Job’s vivid imagination and noble spirit render him especially prone to such anguish — he is dismayed when the Almighty gives him `the visions of the night’. Shallow natures are spared such deep Hamletian vistas, and the `ungodly’ have no analogous problem of justice. This dilemma concerns us all the more for being somehow `eternally human’.
     But the god in The Book of Job — does he concern us? Is there anything more to it than poetic play with a conception of god now exotic and obsolete? Do we know this god? Indeed, we do from the history of religion; he is the god of the Old Testament, the god of wars, armies and divisions, the jealous, or as we would say, the harsh and vigilant Jehova. But does he only dwell in the history of religion? We are hardly so fortunate: he holds sway in experience as well, today as 2,400 years ago. He represents a familiar social and biological environment: the blind forces of nature oblivious to the human craving for order and meaning, the unpredictable strikes of disease and death, the ephemerality of fame, the betrayal of friends and kin. He is the god of machines and might, of rule by violence, Moscow tribunals, party yoke and conquest, of copper pipes and armor plates. Job is not alone to confront him with weapons of the spirit. Some are trampled underfoot in heroic martyrdom; others see the limitation even of martyrdom — they bow in outer things, but hide despair in their hearts.

Crossposted from European Tribune.

Sunday philosophical food for thought: I have translated an essay by Toril Moi, a Literature professor at Duke University, from the current edition of the weekly Morgenbladet. Those so inclined can skim the text, whose point is the succint existential question of the final paragraph.

Short note on the characters: Henrik Ibsen does not really need introduction. He is widely regarded as the creator of the modern drama and the second greatest playwright of all time; his masterworks like Ghosts, Rosmersholm, and The Wild Duck are constantly performed around the world in ever new interpretations. Once seen (or even read) they are never forgotten, and could easily affect your life.

Then there is… Paul Heyse. Whoever is this? Well, read on to find out.

In 1874 Georg Brandes [Danish progressive critic, tr. n.] was 32 years old and on his way to making a name for himself on the European cultural scene. Three years earlier he had already given the first in the long series of scandalous lectures collectively known as Major Streams in European Literature. In June 1874, Brandes visited Ibsen in Dresden, whence he continued on to Munich. In a letter to his mother he wrote disparagingly about Ibsen:

As I read this, I raised my eyebrows. Who on earth was this Heyse whom Brandes esteemed so much higher than Ibsen? My astonishment was unabated as I discovered that when Ibsen moved to Munich in the spring of 1875, he wrote Brandes of his “great keenness to make the acquiantance of Paul Heyse,” and asked Brandes to “put in a few good words” for him with Heyse. If this man was so impressive, how come I had never heard of him? A quick quiz among colleagues and friends revealed that I was far from the only one who didn’t know who he was. Curiosity drove me to do some research. What I found gave ample cause for reflection.

In 1875 Heyse, not Ibsen, was the grand celebrity. Paul Heyse (1830-1914) was actually Germany’s unrivaled literary lord. People would flock to Munich to meet with Heyse, who was often called Goethe’s successor.

Born in Berlin, Heyse grew up in a cultivated family with the nation’s foremost artists and intellectuals in its social circle. At the tender age of 24 he was summoned to be poet laureate at the court of Maximillian II, King of Bavaria. The assiduous Heyse never lacked inspiration: He wrote a total of 150 short stories, eight novels, more than sixty plays, and countless poems.

But Heyse was not just prolific; he was also handsome and charming, and in time, extremely rich. He was honest, principled, and loyal. He was magnetically attractive to women and a sympathetic and hospitable host to a whole network of famous male friends. His second wife was an 18 year old beauty from the high society of Munich. In 1873 he built a splendid Italianate villa with a big garden, in which Brandes was a frequent guest. Villa Heyse was the scene of a flourishing social life. One of Heyse’s many soirées was in honor of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson [Norwegian author and liberal intellectual, tr. n.], and Ibsen was often there. No wonder that Brandes, in sheer entrancement, wrote that Heyse is “the chosen favorite of the gods, Fortuna’s own spoiled child.”

Not only was Heyse respected, he was also a bestselling author. In 1897, Hjalmar Johansen [Norwegian polar explorer, tr. n.] wrote Heyse to thank him for the great reading joys he had given the crew of the Fram as they were drifting about up there in the icy nothingness. In 1910, as he turned 80, Heyse was knighted. In December that year he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Paul Heyse died in 1914. In 1920, he was forgotten.

Ibsen never won the Nobel Prize. He was not in the least magnetically attractive, neither to men nor to women. The older he got, the more asocial he became. In an 1875 letter to Brandes, Heyse reports that he has now finally met Ibsen, who appeared stiff, formal, private, and uneasy. Heyse himself was of course worldy-wise, relaxed, warm, and empathetic.

Last year I went to Munich. In the city’s finest book store I requested books by Paul Heyse. Noone had heard of him. At the house in Maximillianstrasse where Ibsen’s apartment used to be, there is a big memorial plate. There is none at Heyse’s villa, which I only found after a thorough quest. Most of the house had been converted to a lace factory. Within two meters of the windows on what was once the facade to the garden, there is now a wall. There is a Paul Heyse Street in Munich. The short street is located in a down-market district and ends, symbolically enough, in a black hole: a subway underneath the railroad.

The question I am now left with is this: Which life is preferable? Ibsen’s, or Heyse’s?

By Toril Moi 2005. Translation by Sirocco.