Anticyclone rolling stone / Preacher from the east

the apostopsicle

November 13, 2014*

Blinded by the light                                           (continued from the previous post)

 

We left Saul, longer than I intended, in almost suspended animation, captured along the road to Damascus by Zeno’s paradox, falling to his knees by halves. That he somehow escaped Zeno and got to Damascus we do know. Whether he went down onto his knees we don’t. (Those that doubt it have called the episode a “cloud of unbending.”)

          In Damascus, someone thrusts a pen into his hand. Then, as the scales fall from his eyes, he begins to write - or, if the scales do not fall, he begins then to talk. 

          The same that believe that though every knee should bow Saul’s did not, tend also to hold to the notion that he did not regain his sight, moreover that he never left Damascus but inspired like blind Homer he imagined the epic journeys of Paul the Apostle. And he (Saul) “wrote” (with the sharpened end of his tongue) both the story in Acts, chapters nine and following,  and the several letters bolstering that fiction, “to the Romans,” “to the Corinthians,” “to the Thessalonians,” “to the Galatians,” “to the Ephesians,” “to the Philippians,” and “to the Colossians”; also letters to Timothy and Titus , a note to Philemon, and in his old, old age, a windy prose poem now called “to the Hebrews.” 

          So while blind Saul (in the character of Paul) may have written of “sighs too deep for words,” he couldn't do without them. He could not stop speaking long enough to take a breath, much less to heave a sigh.

          But, however much he spoke, however rapidly, Zeno’s paradox continued to hold Saul, and he never got more than halfway. So, he wrote only of God’s solemn side. His story of Paul is one of contentious trials and dark imprisonments, of dangerous roads and stormy seas. There are few pranks – only when Eutychus pretends to fall asleep and then out the window. There are no sunny roads, travelers making the journey light with Canterbury tales. There are no calm seas for smooth sailing; and when the stern hero is spit up by the whale onto a beach of one of the Greek isles, there can be no time for him to stop to enjoy the sun and the sand and the salt air. In short, Saul is far too serious about far too many things.  He knows too much of Plato and has neglected Aristippos; he has read Aeschylus but not Aristophanes -

          or Hume. He is Saul and not David.

 m

____________________

* Friday the thirteenth, she come on a Thursday this month.