Reading of the so-called news was cut short by that of Imre Kertész’s Kaddish: les grands livres nous dispensent de ce qui passe pour être nouveau. Commentary on Todesfuge page 73, talking about his writing and more to the point literature in general, and East European literature in particular (and its compromissions and the uncertainties one is in as to aesthetic
judgment, clouded by all sorts of political and other considerations):

insofar as I am and must be at all—oh, what do I have to do with literature, with your golden hair, Margarethe, for a ballpoint pen is my spade, the sepulchre of your ashen hair, Shulamith;

Aqiba being burned and the letters of the torah in flying sparks over the fire (and a sweet smell from inside the acrid, putrefying one, as in Samson’s story?). “… truth is what consumes you, I wrote” (page 84).

That I write only because I have to write, and I have to write because I am whistled up every day to drive the spade deeper, to play death on a darker, sweeter string?

On original sin, or (shall I say) a version of it: el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido (Calderón, quoted page 93).

Quoted from the charming David Brooks about debts and the shared responsibilities of lenders and borrowers in today’s NYT:

And now the reckoning has come. The turn in the market punishes many of those seduced by financial temptations. (Sometimes capitalism undermines the Puritan virtues, but sometimes it reinforces them).

The example of a single divorced woman whose story he summarizes above in his column may fit, but Brooks doesn’t engage the real issue, namely that it is necessary for the thing he glorifies as “capitalism” to have ever-increasing consumption by the likes of this woman. And it is not true that capitalism undermines Puritan values only “sometimes”. It does so always, I rather think. Divorce, for instance, in this case, might be frowned upon by a Puritan-in-name society or today’s conservatives, but it does mean doubling your housing, transportation, toys for the kids, phone, washing machine, etc. What is there not to like by greedy money makers? And aren’t the tears shed by family-value supporters crocodilian? Much of the US economy is consumption driven: meaning immediate consumption. Brooks also doesn’t say (and here he lies by omission) that the most important group of those “seduced by financial temptations”, in the banking and insurance industry, will not be punished. He continues:

Meanwhile, social institutions are trying to re-right the norms. The government is sending some messages. The Treasury and the Fed are trying to stabilize the system while still ensuring that those who made mistakes feel the pain.

But he lies again when speaking of re-righting “the norms”. The so-called risk-takers of financial capitalism are protected after all, because, as is explained, feared, or tolerated, no matter the excesses, it would be worse for everyone if the “structure” were to collapse. Would it? Yes the Fed is trying to stabilize the system (system here is little more than saying that greed is systematic, that is to be found always and everywhere), but “ensuring that those who made mistakes feel the pain”? Well, Brooks has chosen his side: let them be punished, those idiots who didn’t know how to save and thought the good life would last (that is: who were not smart, speedy, greedy, lucky enough to make a killing on the market in time before its downturn).

An article published over a year ago in Hebrew describes a very important find that may lead to a reassessment of messianic beliefs in Judaism, the early Jesus movement, and Jesus himself. The article by A. Yardeni and B. Elitzur, published in a Spring issue of Cathedra (issue #123, Nisan 2007, pages 155-66), is available here. Today, an article of the NYT picked up the story and describes the stone and some of the claims made about it in some detail. More on this later.

A letter I read today in the NYT, and which reacts to a piece by Thomas L. Friedman:

When Thomas L. Friedman says, “It still is not clear that Iraq is a country that can be held together by anything other than an iron fist,” it made me heartsick. I thought of the countless lives lost or broken and the untold treasure expended on this needless war, only to have us come to the same conclusion as Saddam Hussein.

T. Friedman was willing to sell this Iraq war to the public, from the get-go, then became critical right before the 2004 election, and ever since has been selling it again, or elements of it. He is not the only one: the NYT and the US media in general were willing to sacrifice Iraqis and US soldiers for something they should have known couldn’t work. Oh, but it is working, we are assured. The sunnis are sufficiently paid or cowed into submission. The shi’as understand the wisdom of order. Iron fist, indeed, though it can keep some of its softness still, as the US talk of 50 bases for who knows how long….

What it is not: the hope that the trickling of time, drop by drop, will wear out or efface the fault or offense, as if it were sand and not very consistent. Would that forgetfulness would erode the fault with the memory of it! “Time heals”? or, “after all, this is how history works…” Id est, violence, injustice, etc., lose their capacity to hurt and be recognized as something that may happen to oneself and become part of the machinery or unfolding of history. Perhaps, as in a misunderstood concept developed by Adam Smith, history too, or the somnolence of time, like the market, would correct things magically, with the wave of an invisible hand. No anamnesis here, or painful effort to recognize something or someone and at least mark a possible ground for forgiveness. No, rather forgetfulness and a naturalizing of history.

What it is not, to continue with Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Le pardon (1967): an effort to understand all the dimensions and causality of an act, however wicked or offensive, because “tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner”. It was a question of knowledge or lack thereof, after all, ignorance. Proper knowledge would have set things right.

Not a resetting of accounts either, or an attempt to set the counter back to zero, in a seemingly magnanimous gesture of “letting go”. No consignment to silence of this kind.

What is it then? the opposite of this weak hope of “wearing things out”. A confrontation done with some urgency, and a painful remembering, with another person, not an image or reconstruction of it. It cannot excuse on “rational” grounds. It is irrational to forgive, or must feel so. The gratuity or grace of the act, surely this is a waste, when rationality is about balance, measure, reciprocity, calculations of one’s due. One’s due: no forgiveness without a strong sense of justice, and even without the capacity to inflict punishment, at least on the horizon. No forgiveness if one cannot hurt the other party. On the other side of forgiveness, the recognition that the transformed landscape is as it should be, a new rationality.

It was recently announced that a bust of Julius Caesar was discovered last year in the Rhône river near Arles, a city founded by him. The marble piece probably dates to 46 BC and would be the oldest image of Cesar known so far.

Dans un article des Annales (“L’écriture de l’histoire et la représentation du passé”, No. 55, 2000, pp. 731–47), Paul Ricœur discute vers la fin les idées de Hayden White. A propos de S. Friedlander et du défi que présente la Shoah aux théoriciens du relativisme historique (Probing the limits of representation), il écrit:

H. White, interpellé, fit courageusement face au défi, en réitérant son argumentation et en avouant que sa rhétorique tropologique ne lui fournissait aucun critère immanent au discours pour distinguer la réalité de la fiction. La distinction, concédait-il, doit procéder `d’une autre région de notre capacité réceptive que celle éduquée par notre culture narrative.’

Il me semble que la réponse à cette question, ou plutôt un commentaire, se trouve dans l’essai de J. Cayrol, Pour un romanesque lazaréen et peut-être (moins) dans le style de La nuit de Wiesel. Le monde d’Auschwitz réside sinon hors discours, hors le mien, parce que tout discours (dis-cursus…) même bancal se rattache encore à l’idéal du discours, qui est d’être beau, convaincant, et imitant un déroulement de temps, et que cet idéal est lié à l’effet d’illusion créé par l’écriture. La prétention seule qu’il a d’imiter le déroulement du temps montre ses limites: que peut-il lorsque le temps est à la fois vidé et éternisé par la torture?

Re-reading M. Daraki’s book, Du stoïcisme d’Athènes à Saint Augustin, p. 214, in a section titled, “Le Dieu personnalisé et la Nature sacrée”:

In any case, cosmological dualism is a datable product. Man is wont to think of nature as matter as soon as he begins to transform it. The God of judaism became angry at first against technological hubris, then he saved what could be saved by focussing sacredness in sacred space. But profane space grew and grew, since man can’t be humble on all planes. He submits to an authoritarian Father and submits nature to his power. In this exercise, man ended up becoming more and more intelligent. From now on, he feeds daily on the fruit of knowledge that the humankind of another time had held as forbidden. And he hardly can believe anymore in a God whom he disobeyed with such admirable results.

I interpret the history of Judaism and Christianity in the reverse direction. Meaning, sacred space was broadened, or rather the possibility of a sacred-profane dialectics now extends to all aspects of human life and is not anymore a matter of external calendars and sacred space. It may play itself out in the soul.

The world Evangelical alliance, whatever that is, publicized again its intention to continue proselytizing among Jewish people in a statement page A13 of today’s NYT. I say again, because such declarations have surfaced from time to time. Note the condemnation of antisemitism, the declaration of friendship and love for the Jewish people, but the absence of mention of a covenant between God and his people. The latter is not surprising, since one would have to go through the Paulinian gymnastics of Romans 1–11 again and again…. Note also the language about deception or coercion: those Jews who convert to evangelical christianity do remain Jewish, by Christian fiat. Here is the text of this declaration:

The gospel and the Jewish people, an evangelical statement:

As evangelical Christians, we want to express our genuine friendship and love for the Jewish people. We sadly acknowledge that church history has been marred with anti-Semitic words and deeds; and that at times when the Jewish people were in great peril, the church did far less than it should have.

• We pledge our commitment to be loving friends and to stand against such injustice in our generation. At the same time, we want to be transparent in affirming that we believe the most loving and Scriptural expression of our friendship toward Jewish people, and to anyone we call friend, is to forthrightly share the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
• We believe that it is only through Jesus that all people can receive eternal life. If Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jewish people, He cannot be the Savior of the World (Acts 4:12).
• We recognize that it is good and right for those with specialized knowledge, history and skills to use these gifts to introduce individuals to the Messiah, and that includes those ministries specifically directed to the Jewish people (1 Corinthians 9:20–22).
• We deplore the use of deception or coercion in evangelism; however, we reject the notion that it is deceptive for followers of Jesus Christ who were born Jewish to continue to identify as Jews (Romans 11:1).
• We want to make it clear that, as evangelical Christians, we do not wish to offend our Jewish friends by the above statements; but we are compelled by our faith and commitment to the Scriptures to stand by these principles. It is out of our profound respect for Jewish people that we seek to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them, and encourage others to do the same, for we believe that salvation is only found in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world.

It is frightening though not surprising to see the Federal Reserve stepping in these past few days as lender of last resort to credit markets that were freezing up. Two hundred billion dollars! In effect, it is nationalizing the debt instruments so eagerly developed and gulped up by private banks and investor funds. The latest interventions by the Federal Reserve essentially mean that worthless or near-worthless instruments can now be put up as collateral (at face value?) by the banks. I understand that the credit markets needed to be jolted into making liquidities available again, but I fear the consequences of the moves. And I find it tragically maddening, rather than ironic and contradictory (which I find it to be also), that a government hell-bent on privatizing everything from health to education and social security, ends up picking the pockets of the public when there is need to correct the “irrational exuberances” of the private equity markets or ensure private control of energy sources. For the war in Iraq, public money too is just poured out to the tune of almost three trillion dollars into a national professional army *and* almost as vast a privatized military operation to serve (ensure, continue, bolster?) an entirely privatized energy policy. So here we are: robbing the nation and privatizing everything of real value, essential to life, but financing out of the public treasury (actually through indebtedness) the results of gross financial mistakes and foreign adventures that mostly large private interests profit from.