46
PARTISAN REVIEW
Western plot. The age of the Web, with its instant cutting in of so many
stories, brings us closer to this Talmudic poetics.
I've been obsessed with the question of erasure, of trying
to
run away,
to
repress. I've even coined for mysel f a term: "hidden voices"-voices
inside the tradition that do not resonate with whatever is on the agenda
of the dominating group. Those hidden voices bursting out are the cen–
tral forces in renewing mythos and integrating catastrophes. for exam–
ple, the expulsion from Spain was addressed by an extraordinary image
of the breaking of the vessels, by a mythology that starts with big failure
and brokenness in the Godhead, in the divinity. The only way the Jewish
people could go on living with this crazy God after all the catastrophes
and still believe in Him was by agreeing that God is not perfect either–
nor is the story. [n a way, the story retold itself once and again, with these
amendments, pretending it's still the same story. This is another form of
"Jewish schizophrenia," which is another way of living in different sto–
ries, in different promises, and in different plots at the same time.
Exile as a form of temporizing the Jewish story, is an extraordinary
element of a constant deferral inside a Messianic tradition. There is a
wonderful joke about Abraham, the simpleton of the village, who could
never get a job. Someone comcs to the village and sees him standing on
top of a mountain, and he is glowing with happiness. The person asks
him, "Abraham, what happened?" and Abraham answers, "finally, I
have a stable job." "What is your job?"
"I
stand here in order to
announce to the people when thc Messiah will come." This is the stable
job. The irony of the stable waiting, of which deferral is a part. An
example for such repressed voice are the extraordinary Halachic laws–
the .Jubilee year, the Sabbatical year (the Shmita)-that introduce the
possibility of giving up the possession of the place as a condition of pos–
session. There are so many more hidden voices in this complex story
that can inspire us to invent outrageous new waves of the story, and that
will still be linked to the ongoing Biography, resonate within it.
Victor Kestenbaum:
I
am a professor of philosophy and education here
at Boston University. My question is simple but has ramifications. To
what is imagination responsible?
I
ask because if one were to ask what
answer has been offered to the title of this session, "How True
to
Life
is Biography?" one might say, on the basis of the papers, not very, or not
necessarily. That is, it depends on the thrust, the verve, the aspirations,
of the imagining faculty.
Kant, perhaps, would be happy. Wittgenstein would worry about
Mr. Meyers, of course, asking him who is the inner person, what inner
