Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Another bit of Grossman, this one in strange correspondence to Nada's Laura Riding post:"Poetry in the usage of Western language may sometimes be called 'divine' or sacred; but for the Jew there is always a sense (a profound understanding beneath all other understandings) that the category of the sacred and the category of the poetic repel one another—because the poetic defers the sacred, which is, nonetheless, the destination of all things." For "sacred" here we might read "the good," the poetic that which represents the good (but can therefore by definition never be the good). For "Jew" we might read the poet who waits upon the good, who seeks it with the only/the inadequate means.

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