In my course on the Book of Job and the arts today, it was time for Archibald Macleish's 1958 play "J. B." - my own introduction to Job, back at Torrey Pines High School all those years ago. (I was Messenger 2, as I recall.) Most of the students hadn't read it yet - their discussion sections are later in the week - so I tried to whet their appetites by exegeting some choice passages without giving away the whole story. This whole story is prefigured in a singsong we hear from Nickles, the washed-up actor turned circus popcorn seller who will go on to play the part of Satan.
NICKLES:
I heard upon his dry dung heap
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
"If God is God he is not good,
If God is good He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could
Except for the little green leaves in the wood
And the wind upon the water.” (11)
The third and fourth lines have a life of their own in the literature on the Problem of Evil, but there's more here. Take the even, take the odd refers to J. B.'s acceptance of evil with the good. The next two lines, however, refer to his wife Sarah, who will ultimately try to kill herself, only to be stopped in her tracks by a new leaf (forsythia) growing in a ruined landscape. And the last line? It's complicated, and rich, I told them. There are references throughout the play to wind and water, as in the psychoanalyst-comforter Eliphaz's exquisite image for the ego's illusions of autonomy.
ELIPHAZ:
Science knows now that the sentient spirit
Floats like the chambered nautilus on a sea
That drifts it under skies that drive:
Beneath, the sea of the subconscious,
Above the winds that wind the world.
Caught between that sky, that sea,
Self has no will, cannot be guilty. (122)
But of course wind upon the water is also a reference to the very beginning of Genesis, when the spirit moved on the water, to the world human beings love into being despite the terrors and trials of existence, to the endless consternation of the Nickles and Eliphazes, Bildads and Zophars, Marxes and Freuds and Becketts.
J.B.:
He does not love. He
Is.
SARAH:
But we do. That’s the wonder. (152)
I hope the students find the time to savor this magnificent play!
NICKLES:
I heard upon his dry dung heap
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
"If God is God he is not good,
If God is good He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could
Except for the little green leaves in the wood
And the wind upon the water.” (11)
The third and fourth lines have a life of their own in the literature on the Problem of Evil, but there's more here. Take the even, take the odd refers to J. B.'s acceptance of evil with the good. The next two lines, however, refer to his wife Sarah, who will ultimately try to kill herself, only to be stopped in her tracks by a new leaf (forsythia) growing in a ruined landscape. And the last line? It's complicated, and rich, I told them. There are references throughout the play to wind and water, as in the psychoanalyst-comforter Eliphaz's exquisite image for the ego's illusions of autonomy.
ELIPHAZ:
Science knows now that the sentient spirit
Floats like the chambered nautilus on a sea
That drifts it under skies that drive:
Beneath, the sea of the subconscious,
Above the winds that wind the world.
Caught between that sky, that sea,
Self has no will, cannot be guilty. (122)
But of course wind upon the water is also a reference to the very beginning of Genesis, when the spirit moved on the water, to the world human beings love into being despite the terrors and trials of existence, to the endless consternation of the Nickles and Eliphazes, Bildads and Zophars, Marxes and Freuds and Becketts.
J.B.:
He does not love. He
Is.
SARAH:
But we do. That’s the wonder. (152)
I hope the students find the time to savor this magnificent play!
