Poetry and Narrative (3 of 7)

Everything I said yesterday about the uncertainty and openness of meaning in the Old Testament refers specifically to the narrative sections of that document. The so called "Books of Poetic Wisdom," especially Psalms and Proverbs, usually make their meaning much plainer and more definite.

This runs counter to our modern notions about poetry, but it makes sense from another angle: in narrative, we are in the realm of events, a realm where first things happen, then we try to understand them. But in lyric poetry (the mode of Psalms) and wisdom poetry (the mode of Proverbs) we are in a realm of emotional interpretation and judgment: here, interpretation comes first and other things follow. If there are events, they come out of emotion and recollection (in lyric) or in the service of a particular lesson (in wisdom poetry). In these forms, then, details emerge under the aegis of a guiding thought; they are born already under the light of a reason that does not fit them into a pattern after they emerge, but rather draws them up out of darkness in the very process of pattern-making.

It is interesting to remember that narrative has this inherent capacity: not to interpret the world but to give us the world prior to interpretation.

But, of course, a narrative is also inevitably a pattern.

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