Ecclesiastes: The Absurdist Commentary . . . Last Page

July 4, 2015
Free at Last

1:2, 5, 7, 6, 15, 13-14.  Vanity of vanities, fog of fogs! –

all there is, the Preacher says.

The sun rises and the sun sets,

the sun rises again.

The rain falls and rain rises,

and rain falls again.

The wind blows every which way,

but the fog doesn’t lift:

What God made crooked cannot be straightened
and what God made infinite cannot be counted.

So, sit down, figure it out – all of it; this business that God has given us to be busi with. 
See everything there is to see, and what will you see? – that you cannot see very far: all
is emptiness wrapped up in fog, and you are beating and eating the air.

* * * * *

Sartre’s conception of freedom wiped away the last traces of the Enlightenment’s belief 
in man as a naturally social being.  It also fiercely negated the world as it is consti-
tuted by modernity.*

Or, what we thought worked does not. But neither does what we think. Therefore,

A Spirit Appeared to Me

A spirit appeared to me, and said

‘Where now would you choose to dwell?

In the Paradise of the Fool,

Or in wise Solomon’s hell?’

Never he asked me twice:

‘Give me the Fool’s Paradise.’^†

Well, maybe.

_______________

  * Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History, 338.

  ^†               Herman Melville. See 7:4.