Into the Darkness, with Poetry

Hezekiah and Isaiah, by Matthaeus Merian the Elder, 1625-30.

Wednesday evening: I just got back from a long Tenebrae service, to begin the Holy Week observances at the cathedral. This is part of my new volunteer job as a choir member: chanting psalms for an hour in increasing darkness as the lights and chandles are gradually extinguished. We also sang three pieces by Lassus and some Gregorian plainsong. I wished for younger eyes, larger print, and more light.

Compared to our orthodox, Hindu, and Buddhist brethren, I'm not sure we western protestants chant very well. In the case of our choir, the chanting is almost perfectly done, but rarely meditative and certainly not ecstatic! When you're chanting psalms to plainsong tunes, you're reading the words augmented with "pointing": marks in the text that show you what words and syllables to sing on the same note, and where to change to the next note or pattern of notes. And, of course, as a choir we are supposed to do this in perfect unison, which creates a more meditative effect for the listeners. As a less-skilled singer, faced with new texts I had never sung straight through, I was concentrating very hard, so as not to make mistakes... and even the words themselves sometimes don't sink in.

Still, there were moments that felt pretty piercing. One was when my friend Cynthia, one of our soprano soloists, sang words from Jeremiah, warning the Israelites to repent and return to God, her voice so full of lamentation that I trembled. And when we chanted the Song of Hezekiah, I felt the immediacy and power of its ancient poetry.

Hezekiah was King of Judah, and became deathly ill from blood poisoning. Isaiah, whom he consulted, told him to make a poultice of figs and put it on his boil, and he would recover. This was done; Hezekiah regained his health and lived another fifteen years. When he recovered, he gave thanks in a psalm-like poem. While I don't share the belief that our lives are solely in the hands of God, the despair and gratitude here touched me in their timelessness and humanity. I especially loved the lines about the weaver and the loom. (The passage is Isaiah 38:9.)

9 A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah after his illness and recovery:

10 I said, "In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years?"

11 I said, "I will not again see the LORD, the LORD, in the land of the living; no longer will I look on mankind, or be with those who now dwell in this world.

12 Like a shepherd's tent my house has been pulled down and taken from me. Like a weaver I have rolled up my life, and he has cut me off from the loom; day and night you made an end of me.

13 I waited patiently till dawn, but like a lion he broke all my bones; day and night you made an end of me.

14 I cried like a swift or thrush, I moaned like a mourning dove. My eyes grew weak as I looked to the heavens. I am troubled; O Lord, come to my aid!"

15 But what can I say? He has spoken to me, and he himself has done this. I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul.

16 Lord, by such things men live; and my spirit finds life in them too. You restored me to health and let me live.

17 Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back.

18 For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.

19 The living, the living—they praise you, as I am doing today; fathers tell their children about your faithfulness.

20 The LORD will save me, and we will sing with stringed instruments all the days of our lives in the temple of the LORD.

Comments

[Dave]

Thanks for reminding me of Isaiah 38:13. I was just taking a break from looking at this to come here.

[Dick]

Such radiant, stirring verse. Dave King at Pics and Poems - http://picsandpoems.blogspot.com/ - has a fine post about myth in which he makes reference to Wallace Stevens' assertion that poetry has the capacity to supplant religion ('If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution'). For me, even as I recognise and accept entirely its context, the richness and resonance in the glorious passage above is all in the poetry.

[lucas]

In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years?... no longer will I look on mankind, or be with those who now dwell in this world.

Beth, I’ve been thinking a lot about the resonances between the old Hebrew poems and the Greek ones. One thing I like a lot about the Iliad is how it switches cameras from the main action of battle to linger, for brief moments, on the sorrow of dying. The story comes, at those moments, from the point of view of the dying one, on whose eyes “the mists of darkness” are closing. Homer might have been cheerfully recording the gore of this same young man’s mortal wound in the preceding line, but we’re now suddenly made to see that he’s human being just like ourselves: reluctant to go, sad at being compelled to do so by “the strong destiny,” the “hateful darkness.”

He spoke, and as he spoke, the end of death closed in on him, and the soul fluttering free of his limbs went down into Death’s house mourning her destiny, leaving youth and manhood behind her.

Often these young men, after taking the mortal wound, weep. It’s terribly moving, these macho men reduced to sobs by the sheer elemental love of life. The thought that flashes through my mind, always, is “I wouldn’t want to go either.”

The Christian overlay I could do without.