- Perhaps you have wondered my the innocent suffer in God’s world? Well, the Swahili for “innocent” is “moogaboog” which is a play on “mookapoog,” which means “ouch.” That settles that.

Back to Nemerov, though. I think the movement at the end of the poem is toward linking the ‘blabbing-ness’ of man’s speech to something more eternal and profound. Nemerov plays with the idea that all the controlled exhalation of speech is linked to the mysterious source of breath. The allusion to John is there because Nemerov wants to import that very poetic and powerful notion of the Evangelist that God is the Word… that somehow words (or words + all the other senses of logos) are deserving of the supreme elevation that “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God” affords them.

Let me go even further with this– man is caught up in the eternal act of God creating the world. I believe it was Augustine who had the idea that the Word mentioned in John is something that is still, ever, being uttered; the utterance is the unfolding of time. Mankind participates in this unfolding creation because his words are also the Word. But, of course, the unfolding of creation is not working out so well in many ways. Man’s role is not, as it might have been in Eden, just to be the vessel of God’s word but to suffer… to some end one can hope. So, man, by his privileged participation in the work of the Word must fall, must eat the apple, must live with the world as it is. I still contend that this is both burden and opportunity.

Brian - kudos again, this time on your Miltonian syntax.

“Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers!
For in possession such, not only of right,
I call ye and declare ye now, return’d
Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth
Triumphant out of this infernal pit
Abominable, accurs’d, the house of woe,
And dungeon of our tyrant! Now possess
As lords a spacious World, to our native Heaven
Little inferior, by my adventure hard
With peril great achiev’d. Long were to tell
What I have done, what suffer’d, with what pain
Voyag’d th’ unreal, vast, unbounded Deep
Of horrible confusion–over which
By Sin and Death a broad way now is pav’d,
To expedite your glorious march; but I
Toil’d out my uncouth passage, forc’d to ride
Th’ untractable Abyss, plung’d in the womb
Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild,
That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely oppos’d
My journey strange, with clamorous uproar
Protesting Fate supreme; thence how I found
The new-created World, which fame in Heav’n
Long had foretold, a fabric wonderful,
Of absolute perfection; therein Man
Plac’d in a Paradise, by our exile
Made happy. Him by fraud I have seduc’d
From his Creator, and, the more to increase
Your wonder, with an apple! He, thereat
Offended–worth your laughter!–hath giv’n up
Both his beloved Man and all his World
To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us,
Without our hazard, labour, or alarm,
To range in, and to dwell, and over Man
To rule, as over all he should have rul’d.

Milton has Satan enter the serpent in Paradise Lost. From Book 9, lines 74-96:

In with the river sunk, and with it rose
Satan involved in rising mist, then sought
Where to lie hid; sea he had searched and land
From Eden over Pontus, and the pool
Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob;
Downward as far antarctic; and in length
West from Orontes to the ocean barred
At Darien, thence to the land where flows
Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roamed
With narrow search; and with inspection deep
Considered every creature, which of all
Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found
The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.
Him after long debate, irresolute
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide
From sharpest sight: for in the wily snake,
whatever sleights none would suspicious mark
As from his wit and native subtlety
Proceeding, which in other beasts observed
Doubt might beget of diabolic pow’r
Active within beyond the sense of brute.

I can’t say whether Milton was the originator of either of these. I’d be surprised if no one had Satanized the serpent prior to Miton. But the apple I can believe no one had bothered with previous.

1. How did the common belief arise that the fruit Eve ate was an apple?
2. In Genesis, God punished the serpent—not Satan, but the animal—for seducing Eve to eat of the tree. He cursed it above cattle, and caused it to crawl on its belly. He also put enmity between the serpent and the woman, and their respective seeds: the serpent is doomed forever to be stepped upon. Popular understanding, of course, puts Satan into the serpent role. Anyone know how or when that substitution took place? Is it part of the ancient Hebrew tradition, or is it a more modern development? I ask in all seriousness; I haven’t a clue.

All - “word” was changed to “world.” Was it wrong from the beginning of all this? More apologies… Lesson learned: copy the poem by hand, don’t google and grab.

I certainly can see a nod to (though not an invocation of) the evangel’s gospel. I am not a biblical scholar by any means—most of my familiarity with the anthology comes from reading Voltaire—but my KJV capitalizes the Word, and not the deific pronouns. Pilate’s words also stand out quite obviously. The shadows of Genesis are more difficult to see. Except for possibly identifying breath with spirit (is his breath “his spirit telling the numberless tale” or just “his spirit”?), I don’t see them at all. Of course, I don’t recall any conversation about bricking bricks, and again, most of my biblical “knowledge” was filtered through the Philosophical Dictionary. Perhaps that explains many of my reading difficulties generally…

Man: paragon of prattle, tower of babble.

Anyway, it’s far from obvious that there’s anything especially religious about this. It’s not His untold word. It’s his untold Word, this common man’s untold Word. We’re reading in the shadow of John and Genesis, but just the shadow.