The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Harry Hillman Chartrand
April 2002
THOMAS MANN
|
PRELUDE * 2 {Of the Relativity of Time} 3 {Of theOriginal Text} 4 {Of Civilization} 5 {Of the Past Present} 6 {Of the Great Tower} 7 {Of the Location of Paradise Page 3 8 {Of the First Man} 9 {Of the Fall} 10 {Of Life & Death} *sub-chapter titling 2-10 by HHC |
JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS
Prelude
Translated by
H. T. Lowe-Porter
NEW YORK ALFRED A.
KNOPF
1945
Copyright 1934 by Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc.
Published June 6,
1934
Reprinted Eight
Times
Tenth Printing, January
1945
Originally published
as
JOSEPH UND SEINE
BRÜDER
Der erste
Roman:
DIE GESCHICHTEN
JAAKOBS
Copyright
BERLIN: S. FISCHER
VERLAG
out of which the world is formed. Again it is said that this human
light-essence, issuing from the paternal primitive source, descended through the
seven planetary spheres and the lord of each partook of his essence. But then looking down he perceived his
image mirrored in matter, became enamoured of it, went down unto it and thus
fell in bondage to lower nature. All which explains man’s double self, an
indissoluble combination of godlike attributes and free essence with sore
enslavement to the baser world.
In this narcissistic picture, so full of tragic charm,
the meaning of the tradition begins to clarify itself; the clarification is
complete at the point where the descent of the Child of God from His world of
light into the world of nature, loses the character of mere obedient pursuance
of a higher order, hence guiltless, and becomes an independent and voluntary
motion of longing, by that token guilty.
And at the same time we can begin to unravel the meaning of that “second
emissary” who, identical in a sense with the light-man, comes to free him from
his involvement with the darkness and to lead him home. For the doctrine now
proceeds to divide the world into the three personal elements of matter, soul
and spirit, among whom and between whom and the Deity there is woven the
romance, whose real protagonist is the soul of mankind, adventurous and in
adventure creative, a mythus, which complete by reason of its combination of
oldest record and newest prophecy, gives us clear leading as true site of
Paradise and upon the story of the Fall.
It is stated that the soul, which is to say the
primevally human, was, like matter, one of the principles laid
down
39
from the beginning, and that it possessed life but no
knowledge. It had, in fact, so
little that, though dwelling in the nearness of God, in a lofty sphere of
happiness and peace, it let itself be disturbed and confused by the inclination
- in a literal sense, implying direction - towards still formless matter, avid
to mingle with this and evoke forms upon which it could compass physical
desires. But the yearning and pain
of its passion did not diminish after the soul had let itself be betrayed to a
descent from its home; they were heightened even to torment by the circumstance
that matter sluggishly and obstinately preferred to remain in its original
formless state, would hear nothing of taking on form to please the soul, and set
up all imaginable opposition to being so formed. But now God intervened; seeing nothing
for it, probably, in such a posture of affairs, but to come to the aid of the
soul, His errant concomitance. He
supported the soul as it wrestled in love with refractory matter. He created the world; that is to say, by
way of assisting the primitive human being He brought forth solid and permanent
forms, in order that the soul might gratify physical desires upon these and
engender man. But immediately
afterwards, in pursuance of a considered plan, He did something else. He sent, such literally are the words of
the source upon which I am drawing, He sent out of the substance of His divinity
spirit to man in this world, that it might rouse from its slumber the soul in
the frame of man, and show it, by the Father’s command, that this world was not
its place, and that its sensual and passional enterprise had been a sin, as a
consequence of which the creation of the world was to be regarded. What in truth the spirit ever strives to
make clear to the human soul
40
imprisoned in matter, the constant theme of its
admonitions, is precisely this: that the creation of the world came about only
by reason of its folly in mingling with matter, at once it parted therefrom the
world of form would no longer have any existence. To rouse the soul to this view is the
task of the reasonable spirit; all its hoping and striving are directed to the
end that the passionate soul, once aware of the whole situation, will at length
reacknowledge its home on high, strike out of its consciousness the lower world
and strive to regain once more that lofty sphere of peace and happiness. In the very moment when that happens the
lower world will be absolved; matter will win back her own sluggish will, being
released from the bonds of form to rejoice once more, as she ever did and ever
shall, in formlessness, and be happy in her own way.
Thus far the doctrine and the romance of the soul. And here, beyond a doubt, we have come to
the very last “backward,” reached the remotest human past, fixed upon Paradise
and tracked down the story of the Fall, of knowledge and of death, to its pure
and original form. The original
human soul is the oldest thing, more correctly an oldest thing, for it
has always been, before time and before form, just as God has always been and
likewise matter. As for the
intelligent spirit, in whom we recognize the “second emissary” entrusted with
the task of leading the soul back home; although in some undefined way closely
related to it, yet it is after all not quite the same, for it is younger: a
missionary sent by God for the soul’s instruction and release, and thus for
accomplishing the dissolution of the world of form. If in some of its phases the dogma
asserts or allegorically indicates
the higher oneness of soul and spirit, it probably does
so on good ground; this, however, does not exclude the conception that the human
soul is originally conceived as being God’s champion against the evil in the
world, and the role ascribed to it very like the one which falls to the spirit
sent to effect its own release.
Certainly the reason why the dogma fails to explain this matter clearly
is that it has not achieved a complete portrayal of the role played by the
spirit in the romance of the soul; obviously the tradition requires filling out
on this point.
In this world of form and death conceived out of the
marriage of soul and matter, the task of the spirit is clearly outlined and
unequivocal. Its mission consists
in awakening the soul, in its self-forgetful involvement with form and death, to
the memory of its higher origin; to convince it that its relation with matter is
a mistaken one, and finally to make it yearn for its original source with ever
stronger yearning, until one day it frees itself wholly from pain and desire and
wings away homewards. And therewith straightway the end of the world is come,
death done away and matter restored to her ancient freedom. But as it will sometimes happen that an
ambassador from one kingdom to another and hostile one, if he stay there for
long, will fall a prey to corruption, from his own country’s point of view,
gliding unconsciously over to the other’s habits of thought and favouring its
interests, settling down and adapting himself and taking on colour, until at
last he becomes unavailable as a representative of his own world; this or
something like it must be the experience of the spirit in its mission. The longer it stops be1ow, the longer it
plies its diplomatic activities, the more they suffer from an inward breach,
not
42
to be concealed from the higher sphere, and in all
probability leading to its recall, were the problem of ~ substitute easier to
solve than it seems is the case.
There is no doubt that its role as slayer and
gravedigger of the world begins to trouble the spirit in the long run. For its point of view alters, being
coloured by its sojourn below; while being, in its own mind, sent to dismiss
death out of the world, it finds itself on the contrary regarded as the deathly
principle, as that which brings death into the world. It is, in fact, a matter of the point
view, the angle of approach. One
may look at it one or the other. Only one needs to know one’s own proper
attitude, that to which one is obligated from home; otherwise there is bound to
occur the phenomenon which I objectively characterized as corruption, and one is
alienated from one’s natural duties. And here appears a certain weakness in
the spirit’s character: he does not enjoy his reputation as the principle of
death and the destroyer of form - though he did largely bring it upon himself
out of his great impulse towards judgment, even directed against himself - and
it becomes a point of honour with him to get rid of it. Not that he would willfully betray his
mission. Rather against his
intention, under pressure, out of that impulse and from a stimulus which one
might describe as an unsanctioned infatuation for the soul and its passional
activities, the words of his own mouth betray him; they speak in favour of the
soul and its enterprise, and by a kind of sympathetic refinement upon his own
pure motives, utter themselves on the side of life and form. It is an open question, whether such a
traitorous or near-traitorous attitude does the spirit any good, and whether he
cannot help serving, even by that
43
very conduct, the purpose for which he was sent, namely
the dissolution of the material world by the releasing of the soul from it; or
whether he does not know all this, and only thus conducts himself because he is
at bottom certain that he may permit himself so much. At all events, this shrewd, self-denying
identification of his own will with that of the soul explains the allegorical
tendency of the tale, according to which the “second emissary” is another self
of that light-man who was sent out to do battle with evil. Yes, it is possible that this part of the
tale conceals a prophetic allusion to certain mysterious decrees of God, which
were considered by the teachers and preachers as too holy and inscrutable to be
uttered.
44
the question, why He did not refrain from issuing a
prohibition-which, being disobeyed, would simply add to the malicious joy of His
angelic host, whose attitude towards man was already most unfavourable. But the expression “good and evil” is a
recognized and admitted gloss upon the text, and what we are really dealing with
is knowledge, which has as its consequence not the ability to distinguish
between good and evil, but rather death itself; so that we need scarcely doubt
that the “prohibition” too is a well-meant but not very pertinent addition of
the same kind.
Everything speaks for such an explanation; but
principally the fact that God was not incensed at the yearning behaviour of the
soul, did not expel it nor add any punishment to the measure of suffering which
it voluntarily drew upon itself and which indeed was outweighed might of its
desire. It is even clear that He
was seized if not by understanding at least by pity, when He saw the passion of
the soul. Unsummoned and
straightway He came to its aid, and took a hand personally in the stuggles of
the soul to know matter in love, by making the world of form and death issue
from it, that the soul might take its pleasure thereupon; and certainly this was
an attitude of God in which pity and understanding are scarcely to be
distinguished from one another.
Of sin in the sense of an offence to God and His
expressed will we can scarcely speak in this connection, especially when we
consider the peculiar immediacy of God’s relation with the being which sprang
from this mingling of soul and matter: this human being of whom the angels were
unmistakably and with good reason jealous from the very first. It made a profound impression
on
45
Joseph, when old Eliezer told him of these matters,
speaking of them just as we read them to-day in the Hebrew commentaries upon
early history. Had not God, they
say, held His tongue and wisely kept silence upon the fact that not only
righteous but also evil things would proceed from man, the creation of man would
certainly not have been permitted by the “kingdom of the stern.” The words give us an extraordinary
insight into the situation. They
show, above all, that “sternness” was not so much the property of God Himself as
of His entourage, upon whom He seems to have been dependent, in a certain, if of
course not decisive way, for He preferred not to tell them what was going on,
out of fear lest they make Him difficulties, and only revealed some things and
kept others to Himself. But does
not this indicate that He was interested in the creation of the world, rather
than that He opposed it? So that if
the soul was not directly provoked and encouraged by God to its enterprise, at
least it did not act against His will, but only against the angels’ - and their
somewhat less than friendly attitude towards man is clear from the beginning.
The creation by God of that living
world of good and evil, the interest He displayed in it, appeared to them in the
light of a majestic caprice; it piqued them, indeed, for they saw in it,
probably with some justice, a certain disgust with their own psalm-chanting
purity. Astonished and reproachful
questions, such as: “What is man, O Lord, that Thou art mindful of him?” are
forever on their lips; and God answers indulgently, benevolently, evasively,
sometimes with irritation and in a sense distinctly mortifying~ to their pride.
The fall of Shemmael, a very great
prince among the angels, having twelve pairs of
wings whereas the seraphim and sacred beasts had only
six apiece, is not very easy to explain, but its immediate cause must have been
these dissensions; so old Eliezer taught - the lad drank it in with strained
attention. It had always been
Shemmael who stirred up the other angels against man, or rather against God’s
sympathy for him, and when one day God commanded the heavenly hosts to fall down
before Adam, on account of his understanding and because he could call all
things by their names they did indeed comply with the order, some scowling,
others with ill-concealed smiles - all but Shemmael, who did not do it. He declared, with a candour born of his
wrathfulness, that it was ridiculous for beings created of the effulgence of
glory to bow down before those made out of the dust of the earth. And thereupon took place his fall -
Eliezer described it by saying that it looked from a distance like a falling
star: The angels must have been
well frightened by this event, which caused them to behave ever afterwards with
great discretion on the subject of man; but it is plain that whenever sinfulness
got the upper hand on earth, as in Sodom and Gomorrah and at the time of the
flood, there was rejoicing among the angels and corresponding embarrassment to
the Creator, who found His hand forced tp scourge the offenders, though less of
His own desire than under moral pressure from the heavenly host. But let us now consider once more, in the
light of the foregoing the matter of the “second emissary”of the spirit, and
whether he is really sent to effect the dissolution of the material world by
setting free the soul and bringing it back home.
It is possible to argue that this is not God’s
meaning
47
and that the spirit was not, in fact, sent down
expressly after the soul in order to act the part of grave-digger to the world
of forms created by it with God’s connivance. The mystery is perhaps a different one,
residing in that part of the doctrine which says that the “second emissary “ was
no other than the first light-man sent out anew against evil. We have long known that these mysteries
deal very freely with the tenses, and may quite readily use the past with
reference to the future. It is
possible that the saying, soul and spirit were one, really means that
they are sometime to become one. This seems the more tenable in that the
spirit is of its nature and essentially the principle of the future, and
represents the It will be, It is to be; whereas the goodness of the form-bound
soul has reference to the past and the holy It was. It -remains controversial, which is life
and which death; since both, the soul involved with nature and the spirit
detached from the world, the principle of the past and the principle of the
future, claim, each in its own way, to be the water of life, and each accuses
the other of dealings with death. Neither quite wrongly, since neither
nature without spirit nor spirit without nature can truly be called life. But the mystery, and the unexpressed hope
of God, lie in their union, in the genuine penetration of the spirit into the
world of the soul, in the inter-penetration of both principles, in a hallowing
of the one through the other which should bring about a present humanity blessed
with blessing from heaven above and from the depths
beneath.
Such then might be considered the ultimate meaning and
hidden potentiality of the doctrine - though even so there must linger a strong
element of doubt whether the
48
bearing of the spirit, self-betraying and subservient as
we have described it to be, out of all too sensitive reluctance to be considered
the principle of death, is calculated to lead to the goal in view. Let him lend all his wit to the dumb
passion of the soul; let him celebrate the grave, hail the past as life’s unique
source, and confess himself the malicious zealot and murderously life-enslaving
will; whatever he says he remains that which he is, the warning emissary, the
principle of contradiction, umbrage and dispersal, which stirs up emotions of
disquiet and exceptional wretchedness in the breast of one single man among the
blithely agreeing and accepting host, drives him forth out of the gates of the
past and the known into the uncertain and the adventurous, and makes him like
unto the stone which, by detaching itself and rolling, is destined to set up an
ever increasing rolling and sequence of events, of which no man can see the
end.
In such wise are formed those beginnings, those
time-coulisses of the past, where memory may pause and find a hold whereon to
base its personal history - as Joseph did on Ur, the city, and his forefather’s
exodus therefrom. It was a
tradition of spiritual unrest, he had it in his blood, the world about him and
his own life were conditioned by it, and he paid it the tribute of recognition
when he recited aloud those verses from the tablets which ran:
Why ordainest thou unrest to my son Gilgamesh,
Gavest him a heart that knoweth not
repose?
49
Disquiet, questioning, hearkening and seeking, wrestling
for God, a bitterly sceptical labouring over the true and the just, the whence
and the whither, his own name, his own nature, the true meaning of the Highest -
how all that, bequeathed down the generations from the man from Ur, found
expression in Jacob’s look, in his lofty brow and the peering, careworn gaze of
his brown eyes; and how confidingly Joseph loved this nature, of which his own
was aware as a nobility and a distinction and which, precisely as a
consciousness of higher concerns and anxieties, lent to his father’s person all
the dignity, reserve and solemnity which made it so impressive. Unrest and dignity - that is the sign of
the spirit; and with childishly unabashed fondness Joseph recognized the seal of
tradition upon his father’s brow, so different from that upon his own, which was
so much blither and freer, coming as it chiefly did from his lovely mother’s
side, and making him the conversable, social, communicable being he
pre-eminently was. But why should
he have felt abashed before that brooding and careworn father, knowing himself
so greatly beloved? The habitual
knowledge that he was loved and preferred conditioned and coloured his being; it
was decisive likewise for his attitude towards the Highest, to Whom, in his
fancy, he ascribed a form, so far as was permissible, precisely like Jacob’s.
A higher replica of his father, by
Whom, Joseph was naïvely convinced, he was beloved even as he was beloved of his
father. For the moment, and still
afar off, I should like to characterize as “bridelike” his relation to Adon the
heavenly. For Joseph knew that
there were Babylonian women, sacred to Ishtar or to Mylitta, unwedded but
consecrated to pious devotion, who dwelt in cells within
50
the temple, and were called “pure” or “holy,” also
“brides of God,” “enitu.” Something of this feeling was in Joseph’s
own nature: a sense of consecration, an austere bond, and with it a flow of
fantasy which may have been the decisive ingredient in his mental inheritance,
and which will give us to think when we are down yin the depths beside
him.
On the other hand, despite all his own devotion, he did
not quite follow or accept the form it had taken in his father’s case: the care,
the anxiousness, the unrest, which were expressed in Jacob’s unconquerable
dislike of a settled existence, such as would have befitted his dignity, and in
his temporary, improvised, half-nomad mode of life. He too, without any doubt, was beloved,
cherished and preferred of God - for if Joseph was that, surely it was on his
father’s account! The God Shaddai
had made his father rich, in Mesopotamia, rich in cattle and mu1tifarious
possessions; moving among his troop of sons, his train of women, his servants
and his flocks, he might have been a prince among the princes of the land and
that he was, not only in outward seeming but also by the power of the spirit, as
“nabi,” which is: the prophesier; as a wise man, full of knowledge of
God, “exceeding wise,” as one of the spiritual leaders and elders upon whom the
inheritance of the Chaldaean had come and who had at times been thought of as
his lineal descendants. No one
approached Jacob save in the most respectful and ceremonious way; in dealings
and trade one called him “my lord” and spoke of oneself in humble and
contemptuous terms. Why did he not
live with his family, as a property-owner in one of the cities, in Hebron
itself, Urusalim or Shechem, in a house built of
stone and wood, beneath which he could bury his dead?
Why did he live like an Ishmaelite
or Bedouin, in tents outside the town, in the open country, not even in sight of
the citadel of Kirjath Arba; beside the well, the caves, the oaks and the
terebinths, in a camp which might be struck at any time - as though he might not
stop and take root with the others, as though from hour to hour he must be
awaiting the word which should make him take down huts and stalls, load poles,
blankets and skins on the pack-camels, and be off? Joseph knew why, of course. Thus it must be, because one served a God
whose nature was not repose and abiding comfort, but a God of designs for the
future, in whose will inscrutable, great, far-reaching things were in process of
becoming, who, with His brooding will and His world-planning, was Himself only
in process of becoming, and thus was a God of unrest, a God of cares, who must
be sought for, for whom one must at all times keep oneself free, mobile and in
readiness.
In a word, it was the spirit, he that dignified and then
again he that debased, who forbade Jacob to live a settled life in towns; and if
little Joseph sometimes regretted the fact, having a taste for pomp and worldly
circumstance, we must accept this trait of his character and let others make up
for it. As for me, who now draw my
narrative to a close, to plunge, voluntarily, into limitless adventure (the word
“plunge” being used advisedly), I will not conceal my native and comprehensive
understanding of the old man’s restless unease and dislike of any fixed
habitation. For do I not know the
feeling? To me too has not unrest
been ordained, have not I too been endowed with a heart which knoweth not
repose? The
52
story-teller’s star - is it not the moon, lord of the
road, the wanderer, who moves in his stations, one after another, freeing
himself from each? For the
story-teller makes many a station, roving and relating, but pauses tentwise,
awaiting further directions, and soon feels his heart beating high, partly with
desire, partly too from fear and anguish of the flesh, but in any case as a sign
that he must take the road, towards fresh adventures which are to he
painstakingly lived through, down to their remotest details, according to the
restless spirit’s will.
Already we are well under way, we have left far behind
us the station where we briefly paused, we have forgotten it, and as is the
fashion of travellers have begun to look across the distance at the world we are
now to enter, in order that we may not feel too strange and awkward when we
arrive. Has the journey already
lasted too long? No wonder, for
this time it is a descent into hell! Deep, deep down it goes, we pale as we
leave the light of day and descend into the unsounded depths of the
past.
Why do I turn pale, why does my heart beat high – not
only since I set out, but even since the first command to do so - and not only
with eagerness but still more with physical fear? Is not the past the story-teller’s
element and native air, does he not take to it as a fish to water? Agreed. But reasoning like this will not avail to
make my heart cease throbbing with fear and curiosity, probably because the past
by which I am well accustomed to let myself be carried far and far away is quite
another from the past into which I now shudderingly descend: the past of life,
the dead-and-gone world, to which my own life shall more and more profoundly
belong, of which its beginnings are already a fairly deep
part. To
die: that means actually to lose sight of time, to travel beyond it, to exchange
for it eternity and presentness and therewith for the first time, life. For the essence of life is presentness,
and only in a mythical sense does its mystery appear in the time-forms of past
and future. They are the way, so to
speak, in which life reveals itself to the folk; the mystery belongs to the
initiate. Let the folk be taught
that the soul wanders. But the wise
know that this teaching is only the garment of the mystery of the eternal
presentness of the soul, and that all life belongs to it, so soon as death shall
have broken its solitary prison cell. I taste of death and knowledge when, as
story-teller, I adventure into the past; hence my eagerness, hence my fear and
pallor. But eagerness has the upper
hand, and I do not deny that it is of the flesh, for its theme is the first and
last of all our questioning and speaking and all our necessity; the nature of
man. That it is which we shall seek
out in the underworld and death, as Ishtar there sought Tammuz and Isis Osiris,
to find it where it lies and is, in the past.
For it is, always is, however much we may
say It was. Thus speaks the myth,
which is only the garment of the mystery. But the holiday garment of the mystery is
the feast, the recurrent feast which bestrides the, tenses and makes the
has-been and the to-be present to the popular sense. What wonder then, that on the day of the
feast humanity is in a ferment and conducts itself with licensed abandon? For in it life and death meet and know
each other. Feast of story-telling,
thou art the festal garment of life’s mystery, for thou conjurest up
timelessness in the mind of the folk, and invokest the myth that it may be
relived in the actual present. Feast of death,
descent
54
into hell, thou art verily a feast and a revelling of
the soul of the flesh, which not for nothing clings to the past and the graves
and the solemn It was. But may the
spirit too be with thee and enter into thee, that thou mayest be with a blessing
from heaven above and from the depths beneath.
Down, then, and no quaking! But are we going at one fell swoop into
the bottomlessness of the well? No,
not•at all. Not much more than
three thousand years deep – and what is that, compared with the bottom? At that stage men not wear horn armour
and eyes in their foreheads and do battle with flying newts. They are men like ourselves - aside from
that measure of dreamy indefiniteness in their habits of thought which we have
agreed to consider pardonable. So
the homekeeping man talks to himself when he sets out on a journey, and then,
when the matter becomes serious, gets fever and palpitations none the less.
Am I really, he asks himself, going
to the ends of the earth and away from the realms of the everyday? No, not at all: I am only going there and
thither, where many people have been before, only a day or so away home. And thus we too speak, with reference to
the country which awaits us. Is it
the land of nowhere, the country of the moon, so different from aught that ever
was on sea or land that we clutch our heads in sheer bewilderment? No, it is a country such as we have often
seen, a Mediterranean land, not exactly like home, rather and stony, but
certainly not fantastic, and above it move the familiar stars. There it lies, mountain and valley,
cities and roads and vineclad slopes, with a turbid darting arrowy among the
green thickets; there it lies stretched out in the past, like meadows and
streams
in a fairy tale. Perhaps you closed your eyes, on the
journey down; open them now! We
have arrived. See how the
moonlight-sharpened shadows lie across the peaceful, rolling landscape! Feel the mild spring freshness of the
summer-starry night!
56
End