dublinka

The literary guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, has a nice little essay in it, about the characteristics of ancient Hebrew poetry. It was written by Alter himself, and discusses a clever system of parallelism used by Hebrew poets, which allows a growing crescendo of images, meaning and complexity, to slowly gather force and intensity as the poem develops. As Alter warns us however, it is not merely saying the same thing twice in different words, but the subtle extension and progression of the idea/sound/image/metaphor. I like it. It's one of those useful techniques, which when done well, masks itself. In fact, if you look carefully, you'll see that it's also used in soaps quite frequently. The rest of the book is full of fascinating commentary on the structure of the Bible and is dense with references to poetry. A nice guide for the lost sheep.