Joseph and His Brothers, page 61
He had the anguish of leisure to put fear, remorse, and sympathy to the test, and, though despairing for his Hfe, to beUeve nevertheless in God's wise and healing future purposes. For, awful as it is to say, he was to remain in his prison for three days, three days and nights, naked and exposed and bound, lying in rot and dirt, among the insects and reptiles of the well's floor, without sustenance or solace, without comfort or any reasonable hope of ever seeing the hght again. And he who would tell of it must take care to picture it rightly and with a shudder paint what that means, particularly for a father's boy who had never dreamt of such hard extremity: how the hours dwindled miserably away until his wretched scrap of daylight through the gap in the stone died and in its place a compassionate star sent a diamond spark down to him in his grave; how new light from above awakened there a second time, feebly endured, and perished again; how in the twilight he peered intently up at the round walls of his house to see if there might not be some thought of ascent and escape with the help of chinks in the wall and bushes rooted in the mortar, or at best some hope of it—even though the covering well stone and his ropes, each for itself and certainly taken together, nipped every hope in the bud; how he twisted in his ropes, trying to find some less painful position to sit or lie, which even when found after a fashion was soon as unbearable as its predecessor; how thirst and hunger tormented him and his empty belly burned, sending pains through his back; how, like a sheep, he soiled himself with his own filth, sat in it sneezing and shivering until his teeth chattered.
We are greatly concerned to impress upon everyone's imagination a lively and real sense of such all-embracing discomfort. And yet, precisely for the sake of life and reality, it is likewise our task to ameliorate things out of a concern that imagination not gain the upper hand and lose itself in empty emotion. Reality is sober and unimaginative—that is its character as reality. As the epitome of facts—undeniable facts with which we must come to terms—reality demands that we adjust and quickly hews its man to the needs of the moment. We are easily moved to call some situation unbearable—it is the protest of fiercely outraged humanity, well intended and even beneficial for the person suffering. Yet such protest may easily also seem a bit ridiculous to someone whose reality is "unbearable." Those who feel outraged sympathy find themselves in an emotionally impractical relationship with a reality that is not their own; they
put themselves in the situation of someone else who is already in it— an error of imagination, for precisely because of his situation he is no longer like them. And what does "unbearable" mean when it must be borne and one has no choice but to bear it as long as one's senses are intact?
Young Joseph had not been fully and clearly in his right senses for a long time now, not since the moment when his brothers turned into wolves before his eyes. The storm that had broken over him had greatly dazed him, resulting in the diminishment that something "unbearable" requires in order for it to be borne. The thrashing he received had left him numbed, as had his incredible transport down the well hole. The condition induced was one of painful despair, but at least the horrible events themselves had come to a standstill, had advanced to a certain fixed state, and his condition, however objectionable, at least had the advantage of security. Hidden in earth's womb, he did not have to fear further acts of violence and had time to pursue his thoughts—which at times almost entirely excluded physical discomforts from his conscious mind. Security, moreover (if that word is permissible in the face of probable, indeed almost certain death—although death is always certain at some point, despite which we still somehow feel secure), that sense of security, then, helped him sleep. Joseph's exhaustion was so great that it vanquished all the terrible discomfort of his circumstances and submerged him in sleep, so that for long periods of time he knew little or nothing of himself. When he awoke, his amazement at the refreshment sleep was able to provide all on its own, without any assistance from food or drink—for sleep and nourishment can replace each other for a while—was mixed with his horror at his ever present and ongoing misery, which had never left him entirely even in his sleep, but whose worst rigors had begun, if only in a manner of speaking, to ease a bit. There are no rigors, no bonds that do not loosen a little over time, providing small concessions in terms of freedom of movement. We are thinking of the rope and of how by the second and third day, its loops and knots no longer retained the tautness of that first hour, but provided a little slack and reached a kind of accommodation with the needs of Joseph's poor limbs. This, too, is noted in order to bring sympathy and sober reality into balance. Even when we add that Joseph was, of course, growing ever weaker, we do so only in part to keep sympathy alive and not let our
cares fade, for on the other hand, his increasing weakness and de-cUne also meant practical alleviation of his sufferings, so that, in his own eyes, the longer the situation lasted the better things got, so to speak, since in the end he scarcely still noticed his misery.
His thoughts, however, continued to work actively despite the almost forgotten life of his body, and in such a way that the musical composition that they represented, those "shadows," that "ground bass" that lay beneath all the rest emerged ever more strongly thanks to his dreamy weakness, finally almost drowning out the treble voices entirely. That upper voice was the fear of death, which, as long as his brothers had been nearby, had poured out as urgent wails and entreaties. But once the ten had moved off, why had it fallen entirely silent to the world outside, and why did Joseph no longer release haphazard cries of help and distress from the depths? The answer is: He completely forgot it given the urgency of those trains of thought that we have already hinted at and that concerned explanations for his sudden downfall, for the past and his own past mistakes—perhaps willed by God, but no less grave and serious for all that.
The garment his brothers had ripped from his body—at times, horribly enough, even using their teeth—played a prominent role in all this. That he should not have paraded before them in it, not have forced them to see it as his possession, and, most especially, not have approached them in it here and now, was so overwhelmingly obvious to him that he would have clapped a hand to his forehead if his ropes had not prevented it. But even as he did so in spirit, at the same time he admitted the pointlessness and peculiar hypocrisy of such a gesture, for it was clear that he had always known this and yet had done such things anyway. He gazed in amazement at the riddle of self-destructive arrogance offered by his own perplexing behavior. It was more than his reason could solve—indeed, it is beyond all reason, since far too many incalculable, irrational, and perhaps even holy factors are involved. When he had trembled for fear that Jacob might discover the ketonet in his table pouch, he had been trembling for fear he might be rescued. For he had deceived Jacob, taken advantage of his lapse of memory by secretly packing the heirloom, not because his view of the effect the sight of the veil was sure to have on his brothers was any different from his father's. He had been of the same opinion and had packed it nonetheless. Could that riddle
be solved? But since he had not forgotten to assist in his own downfall—why had Jacob forgotten to prevent it? Here was another riddle. Surely it should have been as important to a loving and anxious father for the coat of many colors to be left at home as it was to an overeager Joseph to smuggle it with him. Why had love and anxiety failed to upset overeager plans and prevented something so important from coming to mind? If Joseph had succeeded in wheedling the splendid garment from the old man in his tent, it was only because they were playing the same game, and Jacob wanted the robe to be his son's as much as Joseph desired it for himself. The practical application followed soon enough. Together they had brought the lamb to the pit, and now Jacob would fall back in a faint.
That could very well happen to him, and, afterward, he might consider the great mistakes of the past they shared in common, as Joseph was doing now here below. Yet again he admitted to himself that his oaths, swearing that he would report nothing of this to his father if he should be given back to him, had been made only out of a superficial fear for them both and that if the old state of affairs before the pit were ever restored—something Joseph fervently desired, of course, with one part of his being—he would inevitably and without fail tell Jacob everything and his brothers would end up on the ash heap. Which is why another part of his being did not want such a restoration, which was out of the question in any case—as to that he was in agreement with this brothers, so much so that he would have liked to return the blown kiss that Dan had wanted to send down into the pit to him, because for the first time he was among them as if among brothers and was allowed to hear about everything, including the blood of the kid that was to represent his blood, for all this went beyond his own life and was kept safe with him as if in the grave.
A strong impression had been left on Joseph by Dan's declaration that they could speak in front of him however they pleased, since every word only enhanced the impossibility of his returning home, that it was in fact a good idea to say things in his presence that went beyond his life, because this was a way of firmly binding him to the underworld, like a dead spirit to be feared; and in his own mind those ideas played the role of a counterpart to and reversal of the assumption that had ruled his life until now—that he need not take other people into account because they all loved him more than
they loved themselves. And now it turned out that they no longer needed to take him into account, and this experience shaped the flow of that shadowy ground bass that ran below the upper and middle voices of his thoughts and, the weaker he became, gained ever more sonorous dominance over them.
But they had already been set into motion along with others much earlier, at the first moment when the provocation he never suspected became reality, as the slaps and blows landed and he had reeled back and forth among his brothers while they ripped the robe of symbols from his body with nails and teeth—for voices had spoken from the start, and in the midst of that pelting hail of horror his ear had heard them in large part. It would be wrong to assume that Joseph might cease to play and dream under such deadly earnest circumstances—if playing and dreaming may still be called that given such conditions. He was the true son of Jacob, the man of dignified ponderings and mythic knowledge, who always knew what was happening to him, who in all his earthly dealings gazed up at the stars and knotted his life into the divine fabric. Granted, Joseph had a different, less emotional and more wittily calculating method for linking his life to the world above in order to lend it rightness and reality than was the case with his father; but he, too, was convinced that life and action that lacked proof of the authenticity of a higher reaHty, that did not base and support itself on what was sacred and known, that was incapable of finding its reflection in the heavens in order to recognize itself, was not life and action at all; just as he was totally serious in his belief that what is below would not even know to happen and never occur to itself without its starry model and counterpart, for the principal certainty of his life, too, was the unity of duality, the constant present of the revolving sphere, the inter-changeabiHty of above and below, with each becoming the other, with gods capable of becoming men and men of becoming gods. It was not for nothing that he was a pupil of Eliezer, the old man who knew how to say "F' in such a bold and easy way, till one's gaze was lost in pondering his appearance. The transparency of being, its character as repetition and return of the prototype—this fundamental creed was also in Joseph's flesh and blood; and every sense of spiritual dignity and significance seemed to him bound to that same self-awareness. That was in the order of things. What was no longer
quite in the order of things, what playfully deviated from dignified significance, was Joseph's tendency to take advantage of this general scheme of thought and thereby dazzle people in the very process of consciously shaping himself.
He had paid close attention from the first moment on. Believe it or not, in the most turbulent confusion of the surprise attack, in the worst rush of fear and looming death he had opened his spiritual eyes to see what was "actually" happening. Not as if fear and distress were in any way diminished by this, but there was also a kind of joy, indeed of laughter, added to them, and a rational serenity had illuminated the terror in his soul.
"My robe!" he had screamed, and begged in fearful anxiety, "Don't rip it!" Yes, they had ripped and shredded it, the mother's garment, and the son's as well, so that both wore it by turns, becoming one by means of the veil, god and goddess. His furious brothers had unveiled him without mercy—as love unveils the bride in the bedchamber, so their rage had unveiled him and known him as he stood there naked, shudders of deadly shame passing through him. In his mind the ideas of "unveiling" and "death" dwelt close together—how could he not have held the tatters of the garment to him and begged, "Don't rip it!" And how in that same moment could the joy of reason not have filled him as it found the coupling of those ideas confirmed in what was happening, made present in them? No agony of flesh or soul could kill his mind's attentiveness to the accumulation of allusions through which what was happening revealed itself as a higher reality, as transparent and prototypical, as the present of the revolving sphere—in short, as star-born. And such attentiveness was very natural, for these allusions dealt with being and identity, with the vista onto his own self, which recently he had opened slightly to Ruben—much to his great bewilderment—and which grew ever brighter in the course of events. He had wailed in his misery when big Ruben had given his consent to have him thrown into the pit, but in that same moment his reason had laughed at the joke, for the word Ruben had used was replete with allusions. "Bor" was the word his brothers spoke in their language, a monosyllable that expressed multiple meanings, for that one syllable contained both the concept of the well and the prison; and the latter, then, was so closely associated with the idea of the lower world, the
realm of death, that prison and underworld were one and the same thought and each was merely another word for the other, particularly since a well by its very nature was tantamount to being an entrance to the lower world and the round stone that usually fit over it even suggested death itself, for the stone covered its circle like the shadow that is the dark moon. Shimmering through what was happening to light Joseph's attentive reason was the archetype of the dying star—with the dead moon that one did not see for three days until its gentle rebirth and, more especially, the dying of the gods of light, who fall prey to the underworld for a period of time. And when that horrible concept became reality and his brothers heaved him up on the open well, at the rim of the pit, and he had to descend into its shaft with whatever tense agility he could summon, his quick mind had clearly grasped the allusion to the one star that of evening is a female and of morning a male and that then sinks into the well of the abyss as the evening star.
It was the abyss into which the true son had descended—he who is one with his mother and wears the robe with her by turns. It was the underworldly sheepfold, Etura, the realm of the dead, where the son becomes Lord, shepherd, martyr, victim, the mutilated god. Mutilated? They had only ripped open his lip and lacerated his skin here and there, but they had torn the robe from him and ripped it with nails and teeth, those red murderers and conspirators, his brothers, and they would dip it in goat's blood, which was to represent his own, and bring it before their father. God demanded from the father the sacrifice of his son—demanded it of the gentle man who had admitted with a shudder that he "could not do it." That poor man would have to be able to do it, and it was just like God to pay so little regard to what humans imagine themselves capable of.
At this, Joseph wept amid the transparent misery over which his reason presided. He wept for poor Jacob who would have to be able to do it, and over his brothers' trust in death. He wept, weakened and dazed by the vapors of the well; but the more wretched his condition grew in the course of the seventy-two hours he spent here below, the more strongly the lower voices of his thoughts emerged and the more deceptively his present state was mirrored in heavenly prototypes, so that in the end he no long distinguished at all between above and below and in the dreamy vainglory of death saw only the unity of duality. This may rightly be understood as a measure taken
by nature to tide him over something unbearable. For natural hope needs some reasonable justification for clinging to life to the very-end, and Joseph found it in these confusions. To be sure, it went beyond life, this hope that he would not perish for good and all, but somehow be rescued from the pit—for on a practical level he regarded himself as dead. He found the proof that he was dead in the confidence his brothers shared, in the blood-soaked garment that Jacob would receive. The pit was deep, and there could be no thought of rescue and return to the life before his plunge into the depths—a thought as absurd as for the evening star to return from the abyss into which it has sunk or the shadow to be drawn away from the black moon, making it full again. But the concept of a star's death—the descent of the darkening son who then takes up residence in the underworld—included the idea of Hght's return, of new light and resurrection; and it was in this sense that Joseph's natural hope for life justified itself by faith. His hope was not pinned upon the return from the pit to what had been—and yet the pit was vanquished in that faith all the same. And Joseph no longer nurtured that faith for and by himself alone, but he nurtured it in the old man's stead, together with whom he had been brought down into the pit and who would fall back in a faint at home. Jacob's receiving the bloody garment surely meant something beyond the son's life. And if only his father, following ancient expectation, might simply have faith in something beyond death, so Joseph thought in his grave, the blood of the animal would, as once before, nonetheless be accepted as the blood of the son.
