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Re: a question of meaning



JLuvzMusyk at aol_com wrote:

> In a message dated 10/26/2001 7:55:01 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
> japhy at mail_utexas.edu writes:
> 
> 
>>"isaac's knife can cut away /all the poison of yesterday." now, i am
>> taking a class on kierkegaard and began to wonder about this. today i
>> decided it has several meanings.....
>>
> 
> hey, i wrote a paper last week for my existentialism class on the use of 
> messages from kierkegaarde and sartre when leading people living with the 
> aids virus in therapy.  did it in an hour, got an a-.  sometimes i wonder why 
> i don't apply myself...


What I think is *most* interesting about the lyric is the grammer: why 
is the knife Isaac's? You'd think it'd be Abe's knife, not Isaac's.

But the line does make you think. Is it simply asking for a 
Kiekegaardian leap of faith? What is "the poison of yesterday?" Is the 
song's prescription of Isaac's knife for that poison applied to just 
Abraham, or does it apply to Isaac also? I mean, Abe doesn't even get a 
mention in the song in the first place.

I like the song's piture of relationship w/the Divine-- that of a moth 
batting itself against a light, burning itself on a flame. OtR uses a 
lot odfviolent imagery to describe that relationship-- I'm think of 
"Gentle Wounds" here, or "If I'm Drowning," or even "Hapy to Be So," 
where prayer is imaged as a game mof red rover in which the singer takes 
"a real good run at it yes I do, but I can't break through." There's 
this kind of fate-accepting faith about praying and parying and praying 
when you don't hear anything back.

Oh... I'm tired. Must stop typing. Naptime.

-John




-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"The market is the reason our housing is so expensive. It is the reason 
our public transportation is lousy. It is the reason our cities sprawl 
idiotically all across the map. It is the reason our word processing 
programs stink and our prescription drugs cost more than anywhere else. 
In order that a fortunate few might enjoy a kind of prosperity unequaled 
in human history, the rest of us have had to abandon ourselves to a 
lifetime of casual employment, to unquestioning obedience within an 
ever-more arbitrary and despotic corporate regime, to medical care 
available on a maybe/maybe-not basis, to a housing market interested in 
catering only to the fortunate. "
	-Thomas Frank
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.johnpauldavis.org

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