A Reader on Reading

Memory lends context to what we are and what we see. In one of the last books of the Iliad, the murderous Achilles runs after Hector, the murderer of Achilles’ friend Patroclus. Both are soldiers, both have blood on their hands, both have loved ones who have been killed, both believe that their cause is just. One is Greek, the other Trojan, but at this point their allegiances hardly matter. They are two men intent on killing each other. They run past the city walls, past the double springs of the river Scamander. And at this point, Homer (that ancient presence we call Homer) breaks off his description of the fighting and pauses to remind us:

And here, close to the springs, lie washing-pools

scooped out in the hollow rocks and broad and smooth

where the wives of Troy and their lovely daughters

would wash their glistening robes in the old days,

the days of peace before the sons of Achaea came

Past these they raced. [trans. Robert Fagles]

Past these they race still.

Art and Blasphemy

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” said the Mouse, getting up and walking away. “You insult me by talking such nonsense!”

“I didn’t mean it!” pleaded poor Alice. “But you’re so easily offended, you know!”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 3

READING IMAGES CAN BE A perilous enterprise. No one ignores that in 2005 the publication of several caricatures of Muhammad in a number of periodicals around the world (first in Denmark, as a joke, then in other countries, as an act of defiance) ignited the furious protest of various Islamic groups. History repeats itself: faith, which is supposed to be the unmovable pillar of a true believer, seems to shiver and shake when confronted with a mere artistic creation, with a brushstroke or a few scribbled words, while, in the name of the Supreme Being, His followers announce the imminence of a fit of divine temper.

That a cruel or violent act might infuriate the Creator of the Universe (or His Prophet) is understandable, since no author (with or without a capital A) enjoys seeing his work mangled or destroyed. To kill, to torture, to humiliate, to abuse a fellow creature is no doubt a crime in the eyes of God, and I suppose that believers have every right to see in the fact that a new Universal Deluge does not take place every month proof of the inexhaustible divine patience. That creatures such as Augusto Pinochet, George W. Bush, and Osama bin Laden are allowed to lead a comfortable existence shows that God certainly possesses a most inhuman patience.

But to declare, at the same time, that a cartoon, a joke, a play on words might offend Him for whom eternity is like a day, or His blessed elect among all men, seems to me the greatest of blasphemies. We, feeble human beings, may feel bothered by someone making fun of us; but surely that can’t be the reaction of a being we imagine supreme, incorruptible, omniscient. Borges suggested that of God’s literary tastes we know nothing; it is difficult to imagine that Someone who knows everything and whose generous aesthetic sense led Him both to the creation of the poetic antelope and the tasteless joke of the hippopotamus, would ban from His night table the works of Denis Diderot, of Mark Twain, of Salman Rushdie. Muhammad was all for laughter: “Keep your heart light at every moment, because when the heart is downcast the soul becomes blind.”

The great religious figures of the past, because they were also intelligent human beings, did not lack a sense of humor. Christ (in Jerome’s Latin version) made fun of Peter with a silly pun. “Your name is Peter (Petrus) and upon this rock (petram) I’ll build my church.” When Buddha was about to cross a desert, the gods, with the intention of protecting Him from the sun, threw down parasols from their various heavens. So as not to offend any of them, the Buddha politely multiplied Himself and each of the gods saw a Buddha carrying the parasol he had sent Him. According to the Midrash, Moses was asked why God (who knows everything) had asked, “Adam, where are you?” when He sought him out in the Garden after the episode with the apple. Moses answered: “Thereby did God attempt to teach us good manners, since it is not polite to enter someone else’s house without announcing yourself first.” In the first volume of the Al-Mustatraf it is told that a poor man came to see Muhammad and asked him to grant him a camel to ride. “I’ll grant you the young of a camel,” said Muhammad. “But the young of a camel will not stand my weight!” the man complained. “You asked for a camel,” Muhammad answered. “Don’t you know that every camel is by force the young of another camel?”