6 ½ years ago, on July 20, 2014, I posted an enthusiastic rave about a book I had just finished reading called the Ark before Noah by an extraordinary scholar named Irving Finkel. Several days ago I stumbled on this one hour YouTube video of Finkel talking about Babylonian cuneiform tablets. I spent a delightful hour watching it and if you are looking for some way to pass the time while in virtual quarantine, I recommend it to you. Truly great scholars are a bit like virtuoso classical musicians. Watching them, listening to them, letting their learning and their enthusiasm wash over you is one of the great experiences in this life. I was fortunate enough as an undergraduate to study with such a scholar – Harry Austryn Wolfson. Finkel is one of that rare breed. In these terrible times I find it comforting to remind myself every so often of what the human spirit is capable of. Listening to Yo-Yo Ma play the cello has the same effect on me.
Enjoy.
19 comments:
What a coincidence.
This past week-end I was pondering whether the Jewish Torah preceded the Code of Hammurabi, and if not, whether scholars had concluded that the Torah was derivative from the Code of Hammurabi. As it turns out, the Code of Hammurabi, as it turns out, the Code of Hammurabi was promulgated during, of course, the reign of King Hammurabi, which was from 1792-1750 B.C.E. This pre-dates the promulgation of the Torah, which, if you believe the Old Testament literally, occurred in approximately 1200 B.C.E., when Moses received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Bible historians, including Israeli historians, dispute this, and believe that the Torah was written while the Hebrews were in exile in Babylonia after the Babylonians defeated the Assyrians and conquered the southern state of Judah (the northern state of Israel had been conquered in 722 B.C.E. by the Assyrians, resulting in the dispersion and disappearance of the 10 Lost Tribes). The Babylonian conquest and expulsion of the 2 remaining tribes of Hebrews to Babylonia occurred in 586 B.C.E. (These events and dates are not apocryphal; they are confirmed by accounts recorded in cuneiform and Akadian.) The scholarly account of the writing of the Torah dates from the exile, which lasted until 538 B.C.E. when the Persians (current day Iranians) under King Cyrus conquered the Babylonians and allowed the Hebrews to return to Judea. Since the Torah post-dated the Code of Hammurabi, and, at least to the biblical scholars, was written during the exile in Babylonia, did the Torah derive from the Code of Hammurabi, and imitate it? The consensus answer is No. The Code of Hammurabi was limited to laws relating to business relations and criminal punishment. The Torah goes beyond these, to include laws about human relations, spiritual matters, justice and ethics.
Where am I going with this? I will tell you where I am going with this. The Code of Hammurabi was discovered in 1901 by Egyptologist Gustave Jequier, at the site of Susa in Khuzestan. It was inscribed on a diorite stele. The stele had been brought there by King Cyrus, after he defeated the Babylonians. The stele had many of the laws scraped off. How had they been scraped off? They were scraped off by King Shutruk-Naknunte, king of Elam, who ruled from 1184 to 1155 B.C.E. Does the name Shutruk-Naknunte sound familiar? (No, he was not Donald Trump’s great-great-great-great-great-great grand uncle, who, like the Donald, was fond of obliterating laws from stelae). Those of you who have seen the movie “The Emperor’s Club,” starring Kevin Kline as a history instructor at a wealthy private school, will recall that at the beginning of the movie, Kline gives a speech about the impermanence of fame and power, referring to the stele of Shutruk-Naknunte, which he recites as follows:
"I am Shutruk-Nahhnte, son of Hallutush-Inshushinak, beloved servant of the god Inshushinak, king of Anshan and Susa, who has enlarged the kingdom, who takes care of the lands of Elam, the lord of the land of Elam. When the god Inshushinak gave me the order, I defeated Sippar. I took the stele of Naram-Sin and carried it off, bringing it to the land of Elam. For Inshushinak, my god, I set it as an offering."
If you have not seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It is about honesty and dishonesty, and the value of the former over the latter, regardless the material advantages which a life dedicated to the latter may bring one.
Sorry about the repetition of "as it turns out, as it runs out, the Code of Hammurabi." I have a slight stutter.
Cicero said that some laws are shared (as Natural Law) between religions, cultures, and civilizations, and some laws are specific to various groups of peoples. Even the physical universe has common and uncommon laws. E.g. common laws (or Natural Laws) might be Einstein's Relativity, and Newton's 'every object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force.' While an uncommon law may be the different orbital paces of the Earth, Mars, and Jupiter around the Sun. (But common through the calculations of calculus.) So I agree that just because the Code of Hammurabi came before the Torah that doesn't mean Moses copied Hammurabi. Most of the shared laws could be considered following under the category of Natural Law. Meaning, I believe the Deity approves of both common and uncommon laws universally & put those he approves of into the Mosaic Law.
And when we're chickens we don't know why we're crossing the street
M.S./S. Chase: All hail the king of Babble-on.
jeffrey g. kessen,
You seem somewhat schizophrenic. Just the other day, you were bemoaning the absence of comments by me. And now, you castigate me, in rather underwhelming terseness, for offering what you asked for. Make up your mind.
P.S.: You really should watch "The Emperor's Club." You might learn something about ancient history, as well as the unappealing character trait of being a petulant wise aleck.
I had the pleasure of seeing Yo-yo Ma at a church in Oakland CA about 10 years ago.His command of the instrument is total. It was a solo performance to support a charity and it was stunning. I’ve had several of these kinds of experiences. The most impactful was hearing the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1961 or 62. I had 6 years of classical training at that point but I had no idea how he was doing what he was doing and I just had to know how to do it. I told my piano teacher the next week I wanted to learn to play jazz. He initially resisted my weekly entreaties. He had been trained at Juilliard and was a jazz player and he finally gave in.
Bella Fleck is another virtuoso who can blow you away. Among other things, he plays Bach on the banjo. I saw him, and his band, The Flecktones, play with four Tuvan throat singers. Tuvan throat singing can knock you off your feet when you hear someone sing two notes at once, typically a drone note with a melody above. To hear three singers together was amazing, then add in a jazz band accompany the singing and improvising. I saw Fleck play with the recently deceased jazz pianist Chick Corea and it was another totally encompassing experience of beauty.
Rodin’s Gates of Hell, or the Burghers of Calais, Monet paintings, great architecture, even places (Canyon de Chelly or Chaco Canyon) can have that power to totally take over one’s mind due simply to what they are. Thankfully our species is not simply an instrumental one.
Oh, I've got plenty of voices in my head, to be sure. You, on the other hand, seem to have but one voice in your head---yours.
MS, Sam Chase, Julius La Rosa, Graham Greeene and others,
You're our Trump. We detest you, but we get off on our indignation about your being around. Righteous indignant is as good as cocaine.
Actually, you have a lot in common with Trump. Trump appeared as an overweening tidal wave in the Republican Party, insulting and disqualifying all possible rivals, just as you appeared here insulting and disqualifying everyone. With the same dominating force of personality. Most of us are "snow-flakes" (your term) here, without your true grit (your term again, indicative of your 1950's John Wayne macho mentality) and a couple of the best of us (Jerry F. for example) wisely left when you appeared and insulted them.
It became impossible to hold the kind of innocent snow-flake conversations we used to hold here because inevitably, you with your Trumpian true grit would intervene putting everyone down.
Just as Trump took over the Republican Party, you took over this forum.
I guess wisdom would indicate reading Professor Wolff's philosophical interventions (which are always worth reading) and otherwise leaving you this space to perorate in.
s. wallerstein,
May I change the subject? May I come back around to Professor Wolff's subject of virtuosi and ask you a question?
Lately I've been reading the poetry of Pablo Neruda, whose work I read a bit in my twenties. I'm also reading Mark Eisner's biography as part of my study of his poetry. So my question is: is Pablo Neruda still read in Chile? Are his works still popular (for example, 20 Poemas de amor y una Cancion desesperada)?
s. wallerstein,
Ignoring my more prudent instincts, I am going to respond to your comment. And I say the following not in jest, nor as parody, and not as satire. I am damned serious. What you have written about my persona, Samuel Chase, is absolutely false and defamatory. I am nothing like Trump, in any manner whatsoever. Trump was and is a pathological liar; a crook; a misogynist; an illiterate boob; a racist; a vile human being who engages in indiscriminate insults of anyone who disagrees with him or has the backbone to stand up to him. I am nothing like that, and in none of Samuel Chase’s comments on this blog, other than my comment today in retaliatory response to j. kessen’s first insult of me, did I insult anyone. I challenge you to identify any comment submitted by Samuel Chase which displays any of the reprehensible anti-social attributes repeatedly displayed by Trump. Where in my comment yesterday, regarding the Code of Hammurabi and the Torah, did I insult anyone? Where in my prior comments regarding the impeachment, the trial, the lawsuit initiated by Rep. Thompson (other than calling the lawsuit frivolous) did I insult anyone? Where in my good-natured responses to I.E. Rabinovitz did I insult him? Your suggestion that I deliberately slurred R McD by addressing her as R. MacDonald, was off the mark, because I was not even thinking of the MacDonald clown when I wrote that commen, and then I apologized to R. McD for having mangled her name.
You claim that I resemble Trump because I have somehow monopolized this blog by my comments. Trump is illiterate. I challenge you to identify any comment I have submitted which is marked by ignorance, illiteracy, or stupidity. Macho mentality? You know absolutely nothing about me. I have not picked a fight with you, but you, for some indiscernible reason, have chosen to pick a fight with me. I demand an apology.
Pablo Neruda:
I don't believe that people under 40 or so read anything, still less Neruda, but they are supposed to read him in high school. Neruda is the unofficial national poet in the sense that Whitman was (and maybe still is, I have no idea) in the U.S. when we were in school. A few years ago they were talking about naming the Santiago airport, Pablo Neruda airport. His several homes are tourist attractions.
Neruda has been very criticized by feminists in recent years. Some of his poetry (Versos del Capitan, for example) is very machista and in his autobiography (I Confess that I have Lived) he narrates an incident where he effectively rapes a servant girl: although he does not call it "rape", people do now. I don't know how deeply the feminist criticism will affect Neruda's reputation in the long run and I do note that Santiago's cultural center has been named after Chile's other Nobel Prize winning poet, Gabriela Mistral, a woman, but Chileans over 50, unless they are on the far right, grew up with Neruda as we did with Shakespeare and Whitman.
s. wallerstein,
Thank you for your response. Decades ago I read both Versos del Capitan and his autobiography, but I'm afraid I remember almost nothing about them (except the rain in his autobiography). Even 20 poemas can be ridiculously machista. However, at the time it came out, it was apparently popular with both men and women. Neruda was, as all artists, very much of his time.
It was interesting to read that Gabriela Mistral was Neruda's mentor for a time. That Neruda and Mistral should have lived in a relatively out-of-the-way place (Temuco) at the same time was lucky for Neruda.
@ Christopher Mulvaney
I knew Yo-Yo Ma slightly because (though he is a bit older than I am) we overlapped in college (and I played an instrument, though, needless to say, not with his level of virtuosity by any means). One of the things that always struck me about his playing, apart from the technical mastery, was the way he conveyed his emotions and the music's emotion -- he is completely unafraid of, when it is appropriate, throwing his head back, closing his eyes, and communing with whatever hovering deities, so to speak, are present, and in the next minute, again as the situation calls for it, he will be looking at the conductor or the orchestra or his fellow chamber musicians. All good musicians do this to one extent or another, of course, but his display of emotion always struck me as completely authentic and in sync with the music. It's also, perhaps, something that is somewhat easier to do physically when you're playing the cello (or other stringed instrument) than when you're playing a wind instrument (though there certainly are ways of doing it in the latter case).
The other thing about Yo-Yo Ma's playing -- and again, this is not unique to him -- is that it does not call attention to itself so much as to the composer. Many years ago there was a piece in The New Yorker about Ma, and the writer, commenting on a performance by him and some others, remarked that the real star of the performance was not any of the performers but, rather, Beethoven (who I think was the composer they happened to be playing on that occasion -- or it may have been just Yo-Yo and Emanuel Ax, I forget). Anyway, just thought I'd throw in my two cents here fwiw.
Since you already know a lot about Neruda, maybe you are aware that there is a musical version of his Alturas de Machu Picchu (Heights of Machu Picchu) from his masterpiece, Canto General, performed by the Chilean folk group, Los Jaivas. Several versions available in Youtube.
Thank you for letting me know about that. I recently read Alturas de Machu Picchu and listened to a recording of Neruda reading it. How uncanny his reading style is. I will check out the Los Jaivas musical.
In this connection the five Neruda Songs by Peter Lieberson should be mentioned. He wrote them for his wife, mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; she performed, and recorded them in 2005-06, and died shortly afterwards at age 52. Her recording won a posthumous Grammy. The poems he set were these:
I. Si no fuera porque tus ojos tienen color de luna (trans. "If your eyes were not the color of the moon")
II. Amor, amor, las nubes a la torre del cielo (trans. "Love, love, the clouds went up the tower of the sky")
III. No estés lejos de mí un solo día, porque cómo (trans. "Don't go far off, not even for a day")
IV. Ya eres mía. Reposa con tu sueño en mi sueño (trans. "And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream")
V. Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres (trans. "My love, if I die and you don't")
Very much worth a listen. (Mostly available on various YouTubes.)
A strong recommendation on Neruda: I have only a fragmentary and at best very basic reading knowledge of Spanish, but I learned an enormous amount about and greatly enhanced my appreciation of Neruda by reading John Felstiner's book Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu. Felstiner is perhaps better known for his fundamental book on Paul Celan, but I found the book on Neruda even more illuminating.
Thanks for the recommendations, Warren Goldfarb and John Rapko.
About Felstiner: I highly recommend his biography and translations of Paul Celan. If his book on translating Neruda is even more illuminating, then that is high praise, indeed. I will look for it.
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