Hassagot השגות

Dracula: Not a Jewish Book

I enjoyed listening to Bram Stoker's Dracula very much. I note briefly here that the work is suffused with Christian anxieties. The role of blood is explicit and highly developed: Dracula sucks blood; his victim Mina Harker sucks his blood and thereby undergoes a "vampire baptism;" blood transfusions unite souls. The opposition between Dracula and the sancta of Catholicism are also clear: Dracula cannot bear the presence of the Host; a crucifix keeps him at bay. But the opposition suggests a higher unity: Dracula is part of the spiritual economy of Catholicism.

I do not know if Stoker was a Catholic (he was from Dublin, Ireland, according to Britannica Online). His Anglican characters (not including Prof. Abraham Van Helsing, who is a Catholic) must overcome their sense that the crucifix is mildly idolatrous.

I do know that the specific anxieties about blood in Dracula are not shared in Jewish thought and imagination. What would the elements of a Jewish gothic tale be? A story such as that of the Golem suggests that the power of speech, and its misuse, might be useful elements.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Thoughts on Science Fiction 1

One of my favorite activities is to listen to books on tape as I drive to work. I am currently listening to Bram Stoker's Dracula. I am in the middle of cassette 4, so not very far along.

It is striking how Stoker weaves together elements of modern technology (typewriting, telegraph, phonograph, "Kodak" [=camera], stenography) with a dark and pre-modern ethno-topology (the realm of Castle Dracula, the problematic crucifix of the early chapters, etc.). I propose that we consider it a species of science fiction.

I do not mean by doing this to show honor to science fiction. I don't find the category useful at all.

"Science fiction" seems to me to denote literature in which modern technology is introduced into a world where dark and inexplicable forces tend to reign supreme. What is most important are precisely those forces. Science fiction is not about the future, or even the present. It is about abiding, primordial struggles. George Lucas got it right when he put it this way: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." . Star Wars is not about the future. Technology is not about the future unless you live before tools and the wheel.

Science fiction (of which I am not a devote) allows modern people access to the dark and primordial struggles that modern technology is expected to obviate but may actually abet. Science fiction really belongs in the realm of the folk tale or the epic.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Opening of Hope

The mother of settlements bore me
through an opening of hope.
I turned so soon to many other lands.

I've sought a center for my spinning top
in time, not space, and found it
surely then, not there.

Some, firmly planted, safely loose their doors.
These feet cross shaking thresholds
on my hopeful way from was to will.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

"When you asked me to make seven"

When you asked me to make seven
marks upon my arm each morning
did you have in mind that other numbers
might be set beneath the skin?

Those numbers fade with passing years
and mine with passing hours--
a morning substitute that cannot mollify
the seething stain that troubles dreams beyond the years.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

A poem of Judah HaLevi

יום שעשעתיהו עלי ברכי
וירא תמונתו באישוני
נשק שתי עיני מתעתע
את תארו נשק ולא עיני

When upon my knees I dandled him,
And in my pupils saw he his image,
He kissed my two eyes cheekily,
His visage did he kiss and not my eyes.

transl. H. A. Massig

R. Judah HaLevi knew his Bible through and through.
Note:
dandling on knees: Isaiah 66
kissed my two eyes: Note Jacob's comment to Rebecca והייתי בעיניו כמתעתע "I would be in his [=Isaac's] eyes like a deceiver/trickster"