The Ritual of New Creation (28 page)


Of oil, of blood and stain, Wine of grass and juice of Violet, a final


White, here at the point of Sky water and field all Plunged in their own deep well


Of color whose bottom Is all of the darkness. (3940)

The promise of
tikkun
is unmistakable, for the smashed vessels will be recompounded and the white light of transcendence will shine forth against the well of darkness.

Even so, in the prose passage that closes the poem, such transcendence is finally recognized as unattainable even in death, for

Page 96

"morning will bring no light along the right-hand path on the margin of the dark." Instead, the poet has "his old man's dream of dawn that unrobes the violet, allows the early rose to take her morning dip": a dream of returning to spectral beginnings so that he can live through the mortal cycle again. As we are told,


He remembers this, and thinks not to quest among the regions of black for what lies beyond violet,


But would stay to hum his hymn of the hedges, where truth is one letter away from death, and will ever so be emended. (42)

Content with the cycle of the lesser quest, he remains an aggadic writer, following the rabbinic injunction to put a hedge around the truth of the Law. Hollander has learned the lesson of the golem legend, when the aleph in the word
emet
(truth) is removed to make the word
met
(death), returning the golem to lifelessness. To play with divine truth, even if it could be done, is to play with the danger of nothingness as well. It is best to remain in the world of emanations.

Page 97

Chapter 6
Judaism and the Rhetoric of Authority: George Steiner's Textual Homeland

In a perceptive if not modest moment, George Steiner describes himself as "some kind of courier carrying urgent letters and signals to those few who might respond with interest and, in their turn, pass on the challenging news." These words have a distinctively Kafkan echo. Throughout the Diaspora (and for Steiner, all those who might respond to his signals live in exile), the courier brings the Word, but cannot guarantee that it will be deciphered. In Kafka's brief parable of cosmic exile called "Couriers,"


They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each othersince there are no kingsmessages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service. ²

In bringing this parable to bear upon Steiner's situation as a modern Jewish writer and critic of culture, I do not mean to imply that the messages this courier conveys have become meaningless. As we have seen in our consideration of his contemporaries, when the Kafkan sensibility reshapes a Jewish writer, transmission in itself becomes a virtue, however much a gesture of futility it may be as well.

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