Solomon’s Song of Songs

I have been interested to see this Old Testament book treated a little like a step-child, in the negative sense of the word.  I’ve never seen it quoted by people to prove a point or referred to, perhaps in a sermon.  In fact, for some religious people, I’ve seen a sort of quick avoidance and ‘let’s move onto something else’.  Is the presence of this book in the scriptures an embarrassment to some?   

One commentator has called ‘Song of Songs’ a ‘celebration of sexual love.’  If you measure this with the frequency with which the sins of sexuality are mentioned in the Old Testament, ‘Songs’ is dwarfed.  And it is unique, as far as I know and I’m open to  correction. 

The dating of ‘Songs’ seems to present problems.  Some have said that it was written in the time of Solomon (970-931 bce) by Solomon as the title says.  Others have argued that in style, vocabulary and content a later date must be set, for example, 3^rd-century bce.  Commentators have pointed out the similarity between ‘Songs’ and some Greek poetry, possibly suggesting a non-Hebrew authorship.  Yet there does not seem to have been any doubt that it belonged to the canon. Fragments of ‘Songs’ were also found at the Qumran caves, that is, the Dead Sea Scrolls, testifying to a long-standing inclusion in the scriptures.

In Wikipedia we read, ‘The verse has been interpreted both literally (describing a romantic and sexual relationship between a man and a woman) and metaphorically (describing a relationship between God and his people.)’  I find the latter a strained attempt at keeping ‘Songs’ in the canon.  We have heard so much about Solomon’s many wives or concubines and his relationship with the Queen of Sheba.  And the question arises:  why should the relationship between God and his people be depicted in sexual terms when the tradition of the Old Testament is so different in this regard? 

I can quite imagine, reading ‘Songs’ in my time, that quite a bit of censorship took place over centuries – some of the imagery, as is often said, is quite erotic.  It strikes me as being part of a long tradition of love and erotic poetry, from the Middle East to the Far East.  But perhaps we owe a debt to the metaphorical interpretation in that it has saved it from being axed from the scriptures.   

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:

For thy love is better than wine.

Thine ointments have a goodly fragrance;

Thy name is as ointment poured forth …

©  Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Bridgewater, Somerset West

February, 2023

Wikipedia: Solomon’s Song of Songs’,  ‘Solomon’

The image is from The Song of Songs, The Folio Society, London 1967. 

Coriolanus

I recently re-read Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, not one of the popular plays.  T.S. Eliot, though, said that it is one of his very best and certainly better than Hamlet.  What struck me was how strongly one feels the growing tragedy in the narrative, more so, I feel, than the other plays.

What struck me too, was how applicable the play was to the contemporary political scene.  If only, I thought, we had a hero, a man or woman who rise above it all and change things, a person of integrity.  I can hear Shakespeare saying to me read that text properly and ask yourself whether you would not be one of the commoners that shouts “Kill him!” about Coriolanus.

 As a hero, Coriolanus is a remarkable, charismatic warrior.  He is also seriously flawed as a person.  His integrity about not flattering the masses to get their votes (sound familiar?) becomes a stubborn arrogance.  Interestingly, what confirms his heroism is not as a warrior.  In a profound moment, he crumbles into tears at his mother’s plea for him to stop the war.

It is a play about the complex plait between how our psychological selves manifest in our public selves.  I can’t help thinking of Hitler’s horrendous childhood and his psychopathic leadership of Germany.  And, viewing daily political news on television, we see again how brilliantly Shakespeare understood us. 

©  Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Bridgewater, Somerset West

February, 2023 

Shakespeare:  Coriolanus.  Oxford Univ. Press.  New York. 1994. 

BOOK COVERS

        Because people do judge books by their covers, publishers have for many years spent much to have riveting covers for their products.  It’s a good thing because they have used art works in some cases that people would never otherwise have seen.  The story, of course, is not always so positive as I have discovered to my cost.  Sometimes stupid people and ignorant, have designed book covers that have destroyed books.  Ask me how I know.

This novel is a dark, quietly nightmarish book dealing with a man who is arrested for a misdemeanour that he knows nothing about.  It is about alienation in the modern world.  The image on the cover is by the painter Lotte B. Prechner and has the feel of Expressionist anguish in the modernist period.

This is W.A. de Klerk’s book ‘The Puritans in Africa’.  The subtitle of the book is ‘A story of Afrikanerdom’.  The image shows ‘Sir Paul Kruger’, as he is named on the blurb, getting ready to settle his gripe with ‘John Bull’, a French satirical cartoon. The French were in favour of the Boers in the turn-of-the-century war.  Note the image of Queen Victoria on the wall.  It is telling that W.A. de Klerk chose this image for the book.  Kruger was soon to leave the country. 

Perhaps the best known South African novel has, amongst the images of many previous editions, a fitting cover image, in my opinion.  The tragedy that these pages unfold is quietly stated in the static figures and their pastel colours.  The painting is by Marianne Podlashuc.

#  Roy Armes Film and Reality

This book is about film as a relatively new art form in the modern world.  The image on the cover is a still from the well-known surrealist film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ made by Buñuel and Salvador Dali  –  a hand crawling with (Spanish?) elephant ants, one of the many shocking images.

This book, translated from Russian and published in English in 1924, was an experimental novel revolutionizing the form.  Zamyatin was one of the artists that took Russian art far beyond its traditions, a movement that was eventually crushed by Stalin.  The cover is ‘Suprematist Composition’ by Casimir Malewitch, a modernist painter who developed abstraction.

This book deals with the phenomenon of aggression in animals, birds, insects and human kind.  Lorenz was a multi-sided Austrian academic who greatly contributed to this important topic.  The painting shows ‘Lion attacking a Horse’ by George Stubbs.  This painter’s 18^th-century work usually shows splendid horses in peaceful landscapes.  This painting breaks away from all of that, aggressively. 

©  Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Bridgewater, Somerset West

January, 2023

These images are on books published by Penguin/Pelican.

Lorenz’s book was published by University Paperbacks.