Speaking of Subalterns: Siege and Surreality in Sarajevo, 1993

        Speaking of Subalterns: Siege and Surreality in Sarajevo, 1993

            Some things can't be true even if they really happened.
                —attributed to Ken Kesey

    To summarize the brutal absurdity in less than 100 words: The longest military siege in modern history occurred in a European capital city in the final decade of the twentieth century. For 47 months—between March 1992 and February '96—Sarajevo was the target of almost daily bombing campaigns and subjected to a brutal series of sniper assaults.
    Although the greater conflict involved a dizzying number of belligerents—Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, Kosovars (Albanians living in Kosovo), the list can be extended from there—the Siege of Sarajevo can be narrowed to basically three antagonists: 1) The Sarajevans, people who remained after the siege began, and identified themselves as being residents of Sarajevo before any ethnicity or nationality; 2) The Bosnian Serb military and milita who carried out the systematic campaign of artillery shelling and snipering in an attempt to "cleanse" the city of those who were not Bosnian Serb; and 3) the United Nations—known colloquially as "Smurfs" due to their powder blue helmets and always-clean white Armored Personel Carriers—it was the UN's embargo that prevented Sarajevo from defending itself, and the UN's inept cultural and political indifference that allowed, and at times, outright encouraged, the Bosnian Serb military to increase their siege of the city for almost four years.
    The Bosnian Serbs were under the political leadership of Radovan Karadžić and the military command of Ratko Mladić. The Bosnian Serbs were, according to political convenience, either controlled, or not controlled, by the Serbian President neé dictator, Slobodan Milošević. In a larger perspective of the war and its causes, to declare absolutely that Serbia was to blame, is simplistic and exonerates atrocities committed by Croats, Montenegrins, Kosovars, and Bosnians themselves. But, without a doubt, when perspective is narrowed to Sarajevo, the beseged bombardment of the city is the direct handiwork of nationalistic ideologues, Karadžić and Mladić. The hundreds of snipers who preyed upon citizens are not without their blame and shame in the matter, but that's the topic of another story, another essay, another presentation.
    For now, the perspective is narrowed to the absurdist construction of a theatre of cruelty in an atrocity exhibit afternoon matinee showing of:

    Waiting for Godot: Siege and Surreality in Sarajevo

    In December 1992, standing under UN guard on the tarmac of the runway at Sarajevo International Airport, UN Negotiator Lord David Owen told Sarajevans, "Don't, don't, don't live under this dream that the West is going to come in and solve this problem … don't dream dreams." A few months later, a 960 meter tunnel was completed that linked the UN-controlled airport with a house in the neighborhood of Butmir. It was through this tunnel that Sarajevans smuggled enough meals, medicine, and munitions to survive the 47-month siege in which little international aid was sent and even less survived the UN arms embargo and politically-protected black market.1 2ab It was through this tunnel that numerous people paid hundreds of German deutschemarks to escape the city's slaughter. It was also through this tunnel in July, 1993, that American author, theorist, and activist Susan Sontag smuggled herself into Sarajevo. Her purpose, ostensibly, was to direct a theatrical play: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Her purpose, alternatively, was both hailed for its bravery and criticized for its arrogance.
    From a certain perspective, Sontag's visit and one critic's opinion of it, serves an analogous microcosm to the entirety of the Siege. Sontag herself voiced several possible reasons she was in Sarajevo—in addition to being there to direct a Bosnian version of Waiting for Godot, she wished to "express" her "solidarity with the people of Sarajevo" and to make a "small contribution to cultural life"3 there—however, Irish critic and journalist Kevin Myers took exception not only to the production of the play itself, but to Sontag's very presence in Sarajevo. "If ever a single person was living proof that intelligence is a meaningless quality without modest common sense," he recalled, "it was Susan Sontag."4
    John F. Burns, writing in the New York Times, describes the artistic intent: "The choice of Waiting for Godot was almost inevitable. Like the outcasts, Sarajevo has waited for relief from afar," because, Sarajevans believed, Western intervention was "the only thing that can stop the Serbian nationalist forces . . . from destroying" the city.5 While bureaucracy played out between men in formal suits who chatted over drinks in presidential palaces, Sontag and her cast scrounged for props and lit their bomb-shelter basement theatre with candles. During rehearsals, Sontag tells of how the she and the cast "tried to avoid jokes about 'waiting for Clinton,'" but she admits, that was the metaphor looming over the absolute "Chekhovian ... pathos."6
    Kevin Myers began his criticism with the production itself. Through "personal reckoning," Myers recalls that the "performance lasted as long as the siege itself. It was mesmerisingly precious and hideously self-indulgent," while Sontag's obvious choice to have "each of Beckett's characters played by a Bosnian Muslim, a Bosnian Serb, and a Bosnian Croat" was, in his mind, "inexcusable" and "pretentious twaddle." Re-gauging the aim of his animosity from production to person, he declares, with the tone of an abusive father, that it was his "abject failure" to "put the wretched woman over my knee and give her a sound spanking." He attacks Sontag as being "degrading and insufferable as her conduct towards the Sarajevans. And as far as I could judge," he railed, "she never listened to any of them, but only uttered lordly pronouncements as she held court in the Sarajevo Holiday Inn, while outside scores daily died." Such a fatalistic comment impels the question: would the scores of Sarajevans have died just the same with or without her pronouncements? Did her coming to Sarajevo cause further destruction? And, when casting such accusations, what was Kevin Myers doing to end the degrading and insufferable circumstances in which Sarajevans were living?
    Myers actually goes a step further, summoning violence upon Sontag (and, grandly humanist, himself as well), wishing for both their deaths because of the ideological differences he perceives. "My real mistake," he confesses boastfully, "was not radioing her co-ordinates to the Serb artillery, reporting that they marked the location of Bosnian heavy armour. My own life would have been a cheap price to pay."7
    In this contentious bombarded city, there is a café called To Be Or Not To Be that remained open throughout the Siege. The owner of the café, Enis Selimović, crossed out the words Or Not, because, he said, in the midst of a military siege where others wish you dead, not being is not an option. The owner of To Be Or Not To Be, like most every Sarajevan, may or may not share Myers' opinion of Sontag, but no one in the city would agree that a life is a cheap thing to pay for any wish, especially one so vulgar and dispassionate as his. Myers indulges in the violent verbal tactics and ultimatums that escalated in the collapse of Yugoslavia, the Siege of Sarajevo, and worst massacre on European soil since WWII.8
    The play's producer, Haris Pasović, voices that art and culture defies "barbarism and fascism,"9 and suggests that art could, or perhaps must, come from such injustice and annihilation. Sontag's own declaration about the Siege sounds more like a manifesto than an artist's statement. Sontag asserts that
Sarajevo is the Spanish Civil War of our time, but the difference in response is amazing. In 1937, people like Ernest Hemingway and Andre Malraux and George Orwell and Simone Weil rushed to Spain, although it was incredibly dangerous. Simone Weil got terrible burns and George Orwell got shot, but they didn't see the danger as a reason not to go. They went as an act of solidarity, and from that act grew some of the finest literature of their time.10
    In a vitriol-filled obituary published in the UK newspaper, The Telegraph, Kevin Myers contends that "[s]uch bilge [as Sontag's writing and activism] can only exist in Eng-Litish, the impenetrable campus-dialect in which English literature is analysed, discussed and then buried. Susie's gone now," Myers snides, "but no doubt some other tongue will soon be babbling comparable Eng-Litish gibberish in her stead." His parting shot at Sontag came post-mortum, so, like hundreds of thousands of Sarajevans (and Bosnians, Serbians, and Croats), she could not respond to her accuser.
    However, most Sarajevans understood as much about this written battle over Sontag's wartime visit to their city as the rest of the world understands about the Siege of Sarajevo. Myers criticism and accusations of Sontag are those of a Westerner who speaks with the comforts and bravery of being out of range while firing off volleys of violent words from afar. To Sarajevans, Kevin Myers is merely a name in newsprint, distant and unknown. But ask a Sarajevan who Susan Sontag was, and most everyone of them can reply that she was an American writer who came to Sarajevo during the Siege; the city's Siege Museum displays numerous photographs and handbills of her theatrical productions. Regardless of her reason and intent, she is remembered in Sarajevo not because of what she wrote, but because of what she did.
    But the alternative, as Kevin Myers would have it, is that Sontag's anguished cry that Sarajevo "the Spanish Civil War of our time" should have never been uttered, never been written, and certainly never acted upon. Kevin Myers then, would have her to exercise her American right to remain silent because, like the opening line in Waiting for Godot, he suggests, there is "[n]othing to be done."11
    Critical theorist Gayatri Spivak controversially posits that the subaltern—that is, any oppressed and marginalized people—cannot speak (being the oppressed, and thus subject to having no self-agency, their voices go unheard even when they do speak).12 Philosopher Linda Alcoff warns about the epistemological traps and hazards of speaking for, or even about, others.13 Given this, is there, as suggested in Godot, nothing to be done?
    Sontag might have been the arrogant intellectual Myers accused her of being. Yet for her, doing nothing was not an option. She smuggled herself into a bombarded, embargoed city, not to speak for, nor even about, others. But to be with those others. And that shared company performed an absurd play by candlelight as the siege of a European capital city entered its 18th month. Despite Myers self-aggrandized emoting, the Sarajevan performance of Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy lasted only two hours, the conclusion, however, of the non-theatrical absurdist tragicomedy of the Siege itself, would require waiting 29 more.
    Following the Siege, more than 15 years after the wars in the former Yugoslavia ended, Susan Sontag's name was dedicated to a public square in the heart of Sarajevo.
    The square is in front of the National Theatre.



·—ж—·

1. Andreas, Peter. Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2008.
2. a) Death of Yugoslavia. Series Prod. Norma Percy. BBC. 1995.
     b) "Death of Yugoslavia Archive, 1985-1996." Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. King's College London.
3. Sontag, Susan. "Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo." Performing Arts Journal 16.2 (May, 1994).
4. Myers, Kevin. "I wish I had kicked Sunsan Sontag." The Telegraph. 2 Jan. 2005.
5. Burns, John F. "To Sarajevo, Writer Brings Good Will and 'Godot'." New York Times 19 Aug. 1993.
6. Sontag. ibid.
7. Myers. ibid.
8. United Nations. "UN World Court acquits Serbia of genocide in Bosnia; finds it guilty of inaction." UN News Centre. 26 Feb. 2007.
9. Burns. ibid.
10. Sontag. ibid.
11. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. 1954. New York: Grove Press, 1982.
12. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana-Champaign: Illinois UP, 1988.
13. Alcoff, Linda. "The Problem of Speaking for Others." Cultural Critique 20 (Winter, 1991-1992).

Quantum Mechanics as a Branch of Primate Psychology (c. 1980)

Quantum Mechanics
as a Branch of Primate Psychology

by Simon Moon (*)


According to the Copehnhagen Interpretation
invented in the middle of the Carlsberg brewery in 1926
by Neils Bohr
the world-as-known-to-science
is not a model of
the real world
but is — at one step remove —
a model of the human mind
building a model of
the real world.
The science of science, then,
THE SCIENCE, the fountainhead,
becomes epistemology,
which is a branch of human psychology,
which is a branch of primate psychology
and of
primate neurology.
The primate genetic imperatives of territoriality,
pack heirachy,
rage-threat relexes,
rule by alpha male,
all play a role in
the theorizing/modeling of
domesticated primates
like us.
Or, as Eddington said,
"We have certain preconceived notions
of location in space
that have come down to us from
ape-like ancestors."
Get into your brain,
into the Jungian "collective unconscious,"
the DNA archives.
to find the origin of
philosophy, art, and
modern physics including
the Copenhagen Interpretation.

But
according to David Bohm 1952
the quantum jump is
controlled by a subquantum
hidden variable
which is nonlocal:
here, there, and everywhere in space:
now, then, and everywhen in time.
If Bohm is right,
the primate brain
(whic devised Lear and
Beethoven's Ninth and
tic-tac-toe along with
quantum mechincs)
is the product of
DNA architectural design
to terraform Terra
which is dependent upon
quantum bonding of the DNA helix
which, in turn, is determined by
quantum jumpiness
determined itself by
the hidden variable
nonlocal in spacetime
omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent
as any theologian's God.

If Bohr is right,
the primary study is that of
the brain and consciousness
(primate neruology);
but if Bohm is right
the primary study is that of
the hidden variable
nonlocal in spacetime
(cosmic organization: negative entropy, inc.)

Since Bohr himself said
"The opposite of a trival truth
is false; the opposite of a great truth
is also true,"
we can synthesize Bohr/Bohm
and conclude that
primate neurology = the hidden variable
which in prescientific language
would read
the soul = God
except that to be true to Bohm
and to Bell's Theorum 1964
primate neurology (the soul)
also = any other point-event
so that if the
hidden variable = God
so does the lampshade
or the blue spruce
(which is what any Buddhist
or acid-head will tell you
even without studying
quantum mechanics).



        (*) ―Robert Anton Wilson



~•~

To Love and Murder Easily

[careful. the love and anguish of murdering easily applies to the opening sentence. if i tortured syntax like that very often, i'd be facing charges in the hague.]


ENG 201-013
6 December 2010

To Love and Murder Easily

The Balkans...is...a gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered foods, drank strong liquors, wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for starting wars. Less imaginative westerners looked down on them with secret envy, sniffing at their royalty, scoffing at their pretensions, and fearing their savage terrorists. Karl Marx called them “ethnic trash.”
        I, as a footloose youngster in my twenties, adored them.

                   ——C. L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles, 1969.


    Cultural critic Theodor Adorno famously—or perhaps, infamously—is quoted from an essay in 1949 as saying that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,” a statement he defended several times (in 1955 and 1962) before backing away from such a stance a few years before he died (he stated in one of these essays that not only poetry was barbaric but that, indeed, “all culture after Auschwitz, including its urgent critique, is rubbish”) (“Negative Dialektik,” Adorno). He elucidated upon what he meant in a 1962 essay by responding to a treatise by Jean-Paul Sarte: “The question asked by a character in Sartre’s play Morts Sans Supulture, ‘Is there any meaning in life when men exist who beat people until the bones break in their bodies?’, is also the question whether any art now has a right to exist...” (“Commitment”). This line of thinking infuses virtually every form of art, poetry, literature, and music that has come about since World War II, and has been retroactively applied to examine events predating the mid-20th Century. It would be a futile and quickly dismantled argument to claim that there is no link between events of great barbarity and the art which follows it, but to debate the points of to what purpose is an artist using such events is a question as old as “barbaric” art itself and, in a more modern context of a culture saturated by media, the question is added of when it becomes acceptable to do so.

    Whether it is Sylvia Plath using Holocaust imagery to reflect her own personal tragedies or the ancient Hebrew people singing victory songs about the vanquished enemies they themselves annihilated (that is, committed genocidal ethnic cleansing upon), the grotesque paintings of mass murder and neighborly atrocity as depicted by Vasily Vereshchagin and Pieter Bruegel, the fact that art and literature has been created from such massacres is not the point of debate. The question, as posed by Adorno’s stance becomes, is it barbaric to do so?

    To answer this, an examination of five topics related to the Bosnian Genocide in the 1990s will be discussed: a keynote address concerning the importance of the artist living in a barbarous culture, a contemporaneous film currently being made about the genocide, an American author and activist who smuggled herself into Sarajevo during its siege years, some anecdotal evidence gained from first-hand accounts from two indigenous artists in the Balkans (a poet and a film-maker), and a privately-printed memorial poem concerning the Srebrenica Massacre in 1995.

    In a keynote address at the Streamlines Conference in November, 2010, Dr. Jonathan Barz commented that he had “read that the Iranian government was gravely concerned about the number of their college students who were majoring in the humanities” (Barz) and quoted the article as saying “[Khamenei] called the humanities a field of study that ‘promotes skepticism and doubt in religious principles and beliefs,’ and that it was worrying that almost two-thirds of university students in Iran were seeking degrees in the humanities” (qtd. in “Crackdown”). Barz went on to clearly state his opinion on this matter by saying “Is it just me, or is there something wonderfully affirming about hearing that our field of study cannot be tolerated because it is inimical to repression and thought control?” This “field of study” being, of course, that of literature; including the barbaric poetry written after Auschwitz. The two major points Dr. Barz implored his audience to consider about the study and reading of literature—especially controversial literature—was that “literature invites us to develop the habit of moral reflection” and that “literature reshapes our character by encouraging empathy.” these are crucial points to consider when assessing the place “barbaric poetry” has even in, as Adorno stated, a culture of rubbish. While the debate about culture is better left to another thesis, the importance literature plays in casting light and reflection upon genocide is paramount. But, even in challenging Adorno’s stance on the subject, there is a wide ground to consider before staking an empirical response to declare what is, or is not, beyond the pale of acceptance.

    Consider that in the late summer of 2010—15 years after the political end of the Bosnian War—one of the biggest names in Hollywood film-making began production on a project she wrote, and is producing and directing. According to several local news services in Bosnia and Serbia, the film Angelina Jolie (who is also a “Good Will Ambassador” for the UN) is making concerns “a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) woman who falls in love with her Serb rapist and commander of a wartime prison camp in which she is held” (“Suspends Permission”). This is, of course, an extremely controversial subject in the area from all sides involved. There is concern that Jolie’s film will profit on the romanticized misery of the victims of the war without shedding light upon the actual trauma and daily struggle many still face. The government agencies involved with issuing work permits for the film initially denied, then later granted permission to film the movie in Bosnia (“Suspends Permission” and “Reissues Permit”). However, due to protests against the film, production in the country was cut short “partly due to bad weather, but also because of politics,” as a spokesman for the production company stated; Jolie herself was never present on the set in Bosnia (“Cuts Filming”).

    Based on the information gleaned in news reports as the actual script for the movie has not been made public—this could be seen as a case in which barbaric art is taking advantage of the victims of a tragedy and reflects in a very direct way upon both of Adorno’s points. One, that making art from another’s misery is distasteful, and, two, that such actions promote a culture which caters to the worst elements in it. These points are in direct opposition to the status both Dr. Barz and the Ayatollah Khamenei place upon literature and the arts: that of encouraging moral reflection while simultaneously promoting skepticism of any proffered narrative. How then to bridge the gap between opposed ideologies through art? Should we accept that making art from cultural trauma is ethically wrong?

    When the Bosnian War was going on—when the city of Sarajevo was under military siege and international embargo—the American author, critic, and political activist Susan Sontag saw it as an opportunity to comment on the larger issues at hand. Unlike the overwhelming majority of people, politicians, and, more to the argument at hand, artists, did not even acknowledge the events that were transpiring in Europe as they blithely went on with their routines steeped in the safety and comfort of the objectively peaceful United States. What Sontag did in smuggling herself into a city being bombed was to do the only thing an artist is capable of doing. She made art. Produced in a theatre lit only by candles, enacted with local Sarajevan actors, Sontag directed a version of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. The line in the play “Mr. Godot told me to tell you that he won't come this evening, but surely tomorrow,” takes on a cut-to-the-bone air of black humor that may not be understood outside of regions decimated by death. “Like the outcasts [of the play], Sarajevo has waited for relief from afar, the Western military intervention that many here believe is the only thing that can stop the Serbian nationalist forces besieging the city from destroying what is left here,” a New York Times articles quotes, and to Sontag, the statement is a call to arms for artists in the rest of the world (their weaponry of artists being, of course, brushes, cameras, guitars, and the mightiest weapon: the pen) because she, “who is virtually alone among the well-known writers and artists and performers of Europe and the United States in coming to Sarajevo during the siege” called the Siege of Sarajevo:

The Spanish Civil War of our time … In 1937, people like Ernest Hemingway and Andre Malraux and George Orwell and Simone Weil rushed to Spain, although it was incredibly dangerous... They went as an act of solidarity, and from that act grew some of the finest literature of their time. But I don't think the fact that Sarajevo is dangerous is really the reason. I think there is an underlying reason that is deeper and more disturbing ... I think there has been a failure of conscience on the part of writers and intellectuals in the Western world.

    Here then, Sontag is stating that atrocity needs to be fought not with bullets and bombs, but with art. An opinion shared by two Balkan artists who were on opposite sides of the war in the ’90s.

    Serbian poet Matija Bećković was a long-standing nationalist and member of the conservative Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was a vocal advocate for Serbian control of the former Yugoslavian states and, during the NATO bombing campaigns of Belgrade in 1999, he was one of the authors of a protest phrase that followed the Serbian downing of a US stealth bomber: “We’re Sorry We Shot Down Your Plane, We Didn’t Know It Was Invisible.” An act some would say was a feeble response to overwhelming military and technological force, but a response befitting an artist, even one whose opinions may not be shared by outsiders to the conflict. This, coming from a man who in later years would make the compassionate statement that, “Bridges are the most important creation in human history. The bridge does not ask who crosses it.” By way of metaphoric exclusion, Bećković was stating that when walls and fences are constructed, bridges are needed more than ever. Poetry becomes a method of building such bridges.

    Across the battle lines, in Bosnia, Sarajevan film director Danis Tanović relates a tale from the war in which he was filming a battle for Western media and took refuge in a small house during mortar fire. A painter was set up in the cottage and was working on a canvas, painting by the light a homemade candles. His canvas depicted a pastoral scene of Sarajevo’s old town square in winter. When asked by Tanović how he could be painting during the bombing, the painter replied, “What else would you have me do?” To him, the only response to warfare was to continue producing his art. After telling of this experience, Tanović offered an insight to the issue of art from atrocity, “If there can be no poetry after the Holocaust, there can be no art of any kind after Sarajevo.” Coming from a director who won an Academy Award for a film about the Bosnian War, this is, pardon the pun, a loaded statement.

    Art can exist following large-scale atrocities. Some would contest that is must. Susan Sontag is one such voice. So is Bosnian poet Melika Salihbeg Bosnawi, who wrote a memorial poem about the Srebrenica Genocide of July 1995 on its fifth anniversary. In it she details the major players involved with orchestrating the massacre and makes word-play of their peaceful names. The military leader General Ratko Mladić’s name means “youth” and the poem tells of how the victims “only wished … that no mother give birth to a youth to call, gun in hand … to hunt human beings!” The name of political leader, Radovan Karadižić, means “rejoice.” Bosnawi’s poem tells of how the victims in Srebrenica “desired … that no Montenegrin she-wolf rejoice to suckle a son...” The poem concludes with some of the most vicious imagery in modern poetry:

I have yet to call for help … / Hieronymus Bosch and Brueghel. / I have yet to ask them / to paint: / the regions turned to Hell, / the torment of the innocent, / iconostasis of horror, / and, then, to thread up a caravan of satanic faces, / the horde of the damned, lost souls, / on their blood-soaked / course / in the twentieth century / to Gehenna, / as they pass through / Bosnia.

    Bosnawi’s poem drives home the point of barbaric poetry. When asked about such writing, an elderly survivor of Srebrenica who lost her husband and sons to the ethnic cleansing program of Mladić and Karadižić, replied, “Of course [this] poetry is barbaric! It has to be! How else will someone understand what [genocide] is like?”

    Even if—or perhaps, especially if—culture is relegated to the midden heaps of barbarity, visceral poetry, art, and literature must never turn away from the most vile acts humans perpetuate. As a recent scholarly work cited, arts and literature “become tools to present contrasting viewpoints in a form where ideologies may be considered without condoning nor condemning them. This is done not to exonerate the participants but to complicate our judgment of such situations.” To cause a moral reflection in the self. And, if the bridge does not ask who crosses it, then poetry—that is, literature, music, art—does not ask who reads it. but to be read, such things must first be written.

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor. Prisms. tr. Samuel and Shierry Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1983. Print.

Anonymous Srebrenica Woman. Personal interview. 3 July 2010.

Barrett, Kírk. “The Atrocity Exhibit: A Travelogue...” Streamlines: An Undergraduate Conference Celebrating Language, Literature, and Writing. Dubuque, IA. 12 Nov. 2010. Presentation.

Barz, Jonathan. “Literary Studies: The Radical Art of Learning How to Be.” Streamlines: An Undergraduate Conference Celebrating Language, Literature, and Writing. Dubuque, IA. 12 Nov. 2010. Keynote Address.

Bećković, Matija. Personal interview. 3 June 2010.

Bosnawi, Melika Salihbeg. Srebrenica Je Zvijezda Padalica [Srebrenica Is A Falling Star]. 2nd ed. Sarajevo: Melika Salihbeg Bosnawi, 2000. Print.

“Bosnia Suspends Permission for Jolie Film.” Balkans Insight. 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

Harding, James Martin. Adorno and “A Writing of the Ruins”: Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture. Albany: State University of New York, 1997. Print.

“Iran Launches New Crackdown On Universities.” Radio Free Europe. 26 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 December 2010.

Sulzberger, C. L. A Long Row of Candles; Memoirs and Diaries, 1934-1954. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Print.

Tanović, Danis. Personal interview. 25 June 2010.



~•~

A Holy Work of Grace

ENG 233
30 November 2010

A Holy Work of Grace:
The Glossolalia Narrative in “Slota Prow–Full Armour” by David Eugene Edwards

    When the bleak, unsettling strain of a viol begins on the song “Slota Prow–Full Armour” by David Eugene Edwards, it would be difficult to imagine the music of another David, playing his harp in the court of Saul to ease the king’s suffering and please the Lord. But there are more than musical chords which link David strumming his harp in Saul’s narrative from the Tanakah to the modern David channeling the power of spirit like an electrical charge through the tightened and tunes coiled metal strings of his more contemporary harp, a Gretsch guitar. Like David before Saul, Edwards has taken up the task of being armor-bearer for his king to defend against the forces of darkness.

    The structure of the song—for purposes of narrative comparison—is broken in five movements: the viol intro; a description of how the Word is lame when written or spoken; the glossolalia; a bridge; and a concluding declaration from Ephesians. These movements will correspond to selections from the Tanakah and the Pauline epistles to form a sort of Biblical narrative in song and (pun not intended) verse.

    The narrative of such a story begins with Saul’s affliction:

Now the spirit of Yahweh had withdrawn from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh afflicted him with terrors. Saul's servants said to him, ‘An evil spirit from God is undoubtedly the cause of your terrors. Let our lord give the order, and your servants who wait on you will look for a skilled harpist; when the evil spirit from God comes over you, he will play and it will do you good.’ Saul said to his attendants, ‘Find me, please, a man who plays well, and bring him to me.’ (NJB, 1 Samuel 16:14-17)

    When David was sent to Saul’s court, it is said that Saul was very fond of him and David “became [Saul’s] armor-bearer.” A verse later the famous musical association is revealed: “[W]henever the spirit from God came over Saul, David would take a harp and play; Saul would then be soothed; it would do him good, and the evil spirit would leave him” (1 Sam. 16:21, 23).

    This sets the scene for the intro to “Slota Prow–Full Armour.” The tone of this viol beginning the song is not merely unsettling—indeed, it quickly becomes bleak, disturbed—its modulations paint an Apocalyptic landscape more befitting a painting by Brueghel or Boshe than church psalms and hymnals, or even the overwhelming majority of modern “Christian” popular music. But this tone reflects the struggle of the human soul, torn by conflict and afflicted, like Saul, with temptation and human depravity. Its timbered strains seem to say that without darkness light can never be experienced. Without falling into, as Edwards points out in another musical piece, that without falling into their own “corners of Sodom,” a human soul cannot experience the redemption of the Word of Yahweh. And the Word brings about the first lyrics of the song.

    With a musical percussive that sounds like a fallen body, Edwards begins the self-referential spoken word word movement by proclaiming, “It reads lame now written down / It is frail now that it makes its sound.” This shows the difference between the Word of God—“the Word that was with God and the Word that was God,” as the Gospel of John states from its very beginning—and the words that are used to describe the divine. The Word is the sound uttered at the moment of creation while words are used by humans to describe the world created around them. As I Samuel points out, “The Glory of Israel, however, does not lie or go back on his word, not being human and liable to go back on his word” (15:29), which indicates the word of God is vastly different than the word of humans. Jeremiah asks people to “listen … to Yahweh's word, let your ears take in the word his own mouth speaks” (9:19). But, as Edwards indicates in his lyric, that word becomes cripple and weak when confined by human usage.

    It is from this inability to handle the Word of God that leads to the question of what use then is human language if it is unable to withstand such power? Edwards answers this question with the next movement when—in a rush of “sound as of a violent wind”—he is beset by what is described in Acts of the Apostles as having tongues of flame come upon him and, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” Edwards begins to speak a different language, “as the Spirit gave ... power to express” (2:1). This “violent wind” is a translation of a word that in both Hebrew and Greek means both “Spirit” and “Breath” (NJB, fn. c. 1801), and certainly what follows comes out in what is understood to be a violent rush of wind, breath, and Holy Spirit. Edwards glossolalia is rendered as “Prashnom moldich svetoven … Vashene osh miashte / Endevik saferen seduc / Bullvenya oshkye … Moldich fudjok eveshek prashene / Tovet dotchen oshkye / Vana ratache oshvende / Dok bledsin dok slota prow...”*

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*. When written, this resembles Old Slavonic, while audibly, it sounds akin to Romany. However, other than a few scattered syllables, these phrases do not belong to any known language.
----

    There are five places in the Gospels and Epistles where speaking in tongues is explicitly mentioned, and at least two other instances which refer to the phenomena. The Old Prophet Isaiah says, “with stammering lips and in a foreign language, he will talk to this nation (28:11), while Paul’s Letter to the Romans describes how “the Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness, for, when ... the Spirit makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words” (8:26). The Gospel of Mark famously mentions snake-handling after his glossolalia reference of “signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues” (16:17), while the second chapter of Acts mentions the wind of Breath and Spirit, later in that book believers are astonished when the Holy Spirit pours on people who “strange languages and proclaim the greatness of God” (10:45). In 1 Corinthians 12-14, Paul discusses speaking in “various kinds of tongues” as part of a wider discussion concerning the gifts of the Spirit; his remarks shed light on his own speaking in tongues as well as how the gift of speaking in tongues was to be used in the church: “I shall sing praises with the spirit and I shall sing praises with the mind as well” (14:15). In a final reference, which links directly back to the musical odyssey, Acts relates the instance of Paul’s journey to Ephesus, when he “laid hands” upon a dozen men and “the Holy Spirit came down on them, and they began to speak with tongues and to prophesy” (19:6). It is to Ephesus the song’s narrative journeys following the Spirit’s descent upon the singer.

    During this glossolalia movement of the song, it could easily be imagined that such singing comes from a turn-of-the century tent revival. In a presentation paper, theological scholar Richard M. Riss quotes Ruth Carter in describing one such singing in tongues episode which dates from 1918. “An agnostic musician” is passing a Mission Room in Los Angeles when “[t]he sound of music attracted him into the church building. He … heard singing” and “stopped to listen—such harmony, such blending of chords he had never heard.” He went in and question a member of the church:

“What is this?”
“This is a gospel meeting.”
“But who taught the people to sing like that?”
“No one taught them. It is God.”
“But how did they learn such harmony?”
“They did not learn it; it was given by the Holy Spirit.”

    Riss goes on to say that music is “one of the most important sources for praise and worship choruses … ‘singing in the Spirit’ … can be the most concentrated and supernatural setting in which this form of worship has taken place” (“Singing in the Spirit”). Despite the menacing overtones of the music, this “singing in the Spirit” is exactly what Edwards is doing in “Slota Prow–Full Armour.”

    Following a brief musical bridge which links the two titled sections of the song—like an interlude between the Hebrew Prophets of the Tanakah and the Gospels which form the foundation of the New Testament—a piano begins with a slow but determined scale which results in a lifting of the musical doom, only to be replaced with an atmosphere of concerted imploring. Like one of the Old Prophets, David Eugene Edwards takes on the sound of a oracle as he extolls the listener to understand what is needed to battle such forces as Paul’s letter to the Ephesians details: “Put on the full armour of God … [f]or it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle, but against the principalities and the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in this world” (6:11-12).

    Edwards navigates this dark path where those without sight and who speak only with the power of the Holy Spirit lead the way. Those who tread this path face not adversaries of flesh and blood but the very “spirits of evil in the heavens” (Eph. 6:12). “In the helmet of his salvation,” the lyrics tells us, quoting almost verbatim from scripture, “With his belt of truth / The chestplate of his righteousness / And his gospel boots / In full armour...” In the guise of a modern musical song, albeit one built upon strange nodes and chords played and sung by what might seem to be preternatural hands and voice, listeners learn what it is like on the front lines of a spiritual battle between light and darkness, and what is needed to defend one’s own soul against malign domination. “By the sword of the spirit / And the shield of faith,” Edwards instructs before reminding again the would-be combatants that it is not a battle for this world, but of another—“Not of hands / Not of man / A holy work of grace / In full armour / He turns my cheek / In full armour / Contrite and meek / In full armour...” His voice rises, over the din of musical battle to call unto the heavens from out the darkness encroaching upon his soul. The warning is clear: no one will be spared this final judgment; we arm ourselves against the foul spirits, or we are overtaken. Here are the weapons, this song says, it is your choice to take up arms against evil principalities.

    Although it is not told in the Bible, there is a theological saying from the counter-reformer, St. Teresa of Ávila, which tells of how “Christ has no body now but yours / No hands, no feet on earth but yours / Yours are the eyes through which He looks / compassion on this world / Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” David, playing his harp in the court of Saul, would be one of the first to agree. His fingers seemed guided by the breath and spirit of Yahweh to ease the afflicted soul of his earthly king. David Eugene Edwards performing his own brand of hellfire lyrics and brimstone rock is certainly an example of using his hands to forge a holy work of grace. In hearing “Slota Prow–Full Armour” it seems, that like Saul beset by spirits; like David playing to keep the darkness at bay; like Martin Luther concerned with evil’s grip upon this world; Edwards can do no other.

Works Cited

Edwards, David Eugene. “Slota Prow–Full Armour.” Mosaic. Glitterhouse Records, 2006. CD.

———. “Dirty Blue.” Mosaic. Glitterhouse Records, 2006. CD.

The New Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985. Print.

Riss, Richard M. “Singing in the Spirit in the Holiness, Pentecostal, Latter Rain, and Charismatic Movements.” North American Renewal Service Committee. Orlando. 28 July 1995. Paper presentation.

Saint Teresa of Ávila. The Interior Castle. New York: Image /Doubleday, 2004. Print.


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A Showcase of Arguments

[cheesy, but true!]

ENG 201
29 November 2010

A Showcase of Arguments

    On Saturday, November 12, the University of Dubuque hosted its fourth annual undergraduate conference for English Literature. UNCW sent three representatives to the conference and, with all objective perspective, fielded 3 of the 5 best presentations out of 68 student panels (which is a testament to the UNCW English Department as much as anything else). In academic terms what was most significant about the day was the collective of ideas—the showcase of arguments—provided by such a gathering. Agree or disagree, reinforce ideas or discover a new expansion of thought, these presentations were all remarkable in their own way.

    My two companions were in the opening panel of the day—ostensibly titled U.S. Lit–20th Century—along with a young lady presenting a paper on the Holocaust imagery in Sylvia Plath’s work and a young man discussing Nietzschean philosophy as applied to Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men. Lisa Graham offered her convincing interpretation of suicide as inevitable and necessary in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and, the only non-senior on this panel, Sarah Holder offered theories about femininity as adaptation in avian symbolism in a trio of texts: The Time-Traveler’s Wife, Mother Love, and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (this last title was the source of continual harassment from Lisa and me towards Sarah; we referred to it as Romancing the Stone, and wondered why Tennessee Williams wrote a movie for Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner). The presentation on Sylvia Plath’s work linked to similar critical theories as my own, and led to some insightful and intense debate which ended only because time for the panel ran out. The Nietzsche-McCarthy argument was solid in writing, but extremely lax in presentation. As far as literary polemics go, the evidence was ample, but the public offering of that evidence was not convincing.

    There was a presentation of questionable evidence that completely fell apart under the weight of its own fundamental premise which was notable to the North Carolina contingent. A woman who began her talk by declaring herself a Yankee who journeyed to Tennessee in order to examine the mythic history of Southerners in regards to the Civil War (which, of course, is better known in the more humid climes as the War Between the States). The presenter talked about the post-Civil War South creating a mythological history yet her basic premise as stated was that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery (which, as a declarative statement, is historically unsound). This was an example of an academic argument gone awry by issuing inaccurate evidence as the thesis. It also gave us our first look at what not to do with a presentation and how not to formulate a critical argument.

    In contrast to that, the keynote address at the banquet lunch was nothing short of astounding. Dr. Jonathan Barz, who was the organizer of the event, delivered a speech about the importance of literature and critical thinking. It touched upon totalitarian governments jailing dissident thinkers (who are almost always the writers and literature professors of a given state), other schools in universities who scorn literary departments yet voice envy at the ability of those students to dissect and analyze arguments, and how it is only literature and the arts by which we as a culture are forced to examine our own ideology and rectitude. Following the speech, I approached Dr. Barz and expressed my admiration for it. I had been taking notes as rapidly as I could but did not manage to scribble all the references I wanted to catch; I asked him if it would be inappropriate to ask if he might email me a copy of the speech. He smiled and told me he didn’t think he could do that but, he said while opening his leather notebook and folder, he would be glad to hand over his reading copy for me to keep. It was a remarkable request on my part followed with an equally amazing response; his marked-up copy closely resembled our trio’s own presentation copies of our work. It was a small validation that the younger scholars were treading a similar road of those who came before us. But upon learning how to walk, we were encouraged to find our own path through the jungle of critical thought and academic argument.

    My own presentation was at the end of the day, and I was the first among four people reading excerpts of fiction. A major difference in my own work when compared to those on the same panel is that I was presenting a partial story with only a tenuous grasp as to being called “fiction.” I presented part of a story about a woman sniper in Sarajevo during the siege from ’92-’96, followed by a peek behind the story to the “scaffolding” which lead to its composition: my own meeting of the women in the Dinaric mountains north of Višegrad and the personal conflict which resulted in feeling sympathy for a woman whose actions I found reprehensible. This presentation harkened back to the question raised in the first panel of the day concerning Plath and her use of the Holocaust to represent her own fears and uncertainties. Theodor Adorno’s quote about poetry being barbaric after Auschwitz was cited that morning, and it is one I have examined and contested in my own work with the Balkans. My response to such a claim comes in the use of a metaphoric quote I picked up in Serbia on my travels—and what I concluded my own presentation at Streamlines with: “The bridge is the most important creation in human history,” Serbian poet Matija Bećković told me while we shared coffee and conversation in Belgrade, “The bridge does not ask who crosses it.” I quoted that in relating the origin of my story of the sniper in Sarajevo. “Stories are like that,” I offered, “A story doesn’t ask who reads it.”

    Our journey to Dubuque for this conference is indelibly etched in my mind as a pinnacle of academic and literary achievement. The three of us represented the school, Sigma Tau Delta, and ourselves as (publicly) serious scholars whose work is accomplished and worthy of deep consideration. Privately, we were anything but serious, which formed a bond I hope with last for the duration of our lifetimes. The Streamlines Conference was in many ways a first step. A first step that is now behind us. I look back and smile at what we attained in that journey. Then I turn around and look ahead.

     The next step of our journey awaits.


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In Addition to a Yes and a No, the Answer Contains a Maybe

ENG 201
12 November 2010

In Addition to a Yes and a No, the Answer Contains a Maybe

    After a great human tragedy there is often a mourning period which lasts for an indefinite amount of time before the daily reminders of the tragedy are set aside and, as a modern lyrical proverb says, life goes on. At some point following the tragedy and the mourning period, what temporary memorials that were constructed come down and, depending upon the circumstances of the tragedy, a permanent memorial is sometimes erected. Amidst all of this is an underlying factor that is often overlooked or forgotten, at least until someone takes offense at the words or actions of another. This factor concerns the creation of art based on the tragedy. From some perspectives, such artistic creation raises a dilemma: is it ethical to create art from tragedy?

    The association between art and tragedy dates back to at least the 2100 BCE with the Sumerian text of Sha naqba īmuru (The Epic of Gilgamesh). Perhaps more famously, there is a direct connection between mass death and art with the oral storytelling of The Iliad from around 1190 BCE and several centuries later when most of the Psalms were written. With The Iliad, the mass slaughter incurred between the Trojans and Achaeans inspired the epic poem (and later, another: The Odyssey). With the Psalms, several were written as victory songs following great battles the Hebrews won, as well as several that lamented their exile into Babylon—an event that could be likened to the ethnic cleansing episodes seen in several parts of the world in the last years of the 20th century. For as long as there have been humans, there have been tragedies of mass death. And for as long as there have been records of human endeavors, there has been art made to memorialize, honor, and sometimes to vindictively remind others of such tragedies (this last point calls to mind an epigram etched in stone at Thermopylae, Greece, that translates to read: “O stranger, tell Lacedaemonians that here / We lie to their sayings in obedience”).

    To pay honor to the dead, especially those who have perished in a great and terrible event is a principle reason art is created from tragedy. There is a desire to have an external, tangible thing to go to or to experience in order to remember the deceased or affected. Contrary to this is the idea that victims of a great tragedy become victims a second time when works about their suffering are portrayed as feature films or subject matter of voyeuristic news articles. In a question about making art in the aftermath of tragic events, specific replies were varied. A comment held that art is fine up “to a certain point, then it’s uncalled for,” while another opined that “very little art is from happiness.” One reply stated that such art “can help a person heal,” yet a second considered that art should only be created after “the right amount of time has passed.” A notable pair of comments involved the indefinite borderline between “good” and “bad” art: “there’s a line between tastefully done or going overboard” and “ There is a line but … we wait to set [it] after we are offended” (“Issue Essay Peer Edit”).

    To illustrate these two perspectives, the focus can be made on one specific event and one particular attempt at making art from that event. That focus will be the Bosnian Genocide of the 1990s and the current endeavor by a feature film production company headed by one of the biggest names in modern media to make a movie about that event.

    In August, 2010, actress Angelina Jolie announced he intent to film a movie in Bosnia which was set during the wars of the 1990s. Jolie, who is also a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), filed for a permit to film in the country. The script, written by Jolie, involves “a romance between a Bosniak woman and a Serb soldier set during the 1992-95 Bosnian war” (“Jolie ‘Plans Film’”), was met with skepticism by some authorities in Bosnia, and was denied a permit to film her movie there. The culture minister of Bosnia’s Croat-Bosniak partition suspended the permit after meeting with representatives of “an association of women who had been raped” during the Bosnia War. The Women Victims of War told the cultural minister that the film’s subject was a Bosnian Muslim woman who falls in love with the Serbian commander of a prison camp who repeatedly rapes her. The Women Victims of War spokesperson stated that such a story was “outrageous and humiliating misrepresentation of our ordeal” (“Bosnia Suspends Permission”). An editor of a Serbian-owned television network had reported she had read the script and “had seen the script and “was ‘disgusted’ by it. ‘It is about a Serbian soldier who rapes a Muslim woman, cuts off one of her breasts and then they fall in love’ (“Serbian Media”). This then is a primary example of an attempt to create art from tragedy which is met with resistance from people who were victims of the tragedy being depicted. The main complaint against the attempted art is a lack of compassion and misrepresentation of the situations involved.

    The other side of this stems from the filmmaker herself, Angelina Jolie, as well as the Bosnian actress cast in the lead role of the film. Jolie’s commentary about the content of the film is that it is “an apolitical love story between a Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] woman and a Serb who meet on the eve of the Bosnian war.” The actress involved in the film stated that she was “fascinated” by the manner “ in which Angelina managed to write our story in such a simple and authentic way” (“Bosnia Suspends Permission”). Several months after the request to film in the country—after the permit had been revoked—Jolie held a press conference where she said, “The choice to make a film about this area and set in this time in history was also to remind people of what happened not so long ago and to give attention to the survivors of the war” (Jolie Responds”), which is a direct authorial statement of intent meant to clear away what she perceived as misunderstandings of the project. An attempt to show that the artistic endeavor was meant to be disrespectful in any manner, but to educate others about the atrocity which befell Bosnia 15 years ago.

    This example is specifically narrow, but could be applied to any number of events in recent or distant past. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, several documentaries were made that crossed the line from information to political (and thus, by some measures, a matter of artistic license) commentary. The national and international sympathy for the victims and animosity towards the American government hierarchy placed the majority of opinions on the side of the documentarians in this case. On the other extreme, following the events of September 11, 2001, the majority of the nation not only didn’t want to see their tragedy depicted in art, but many media industries took steps to retroactively protect the feelings of the victims of the tragedy by cutting scenes from television shows and films that showed the World Trade Center Towers.

    Between these extremes is the art created after tragedy which does not directly comment upon the tragic event itself, thus doesn’t fall into the same category as the previous examples. When a viewer looks at Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, which its seemingly unnaturally vivid sunset colors behind the anguished titular character, few of them ever even know they are looking at the product of a tragedy which directly claimed the lives of almost 37,000 people, and indirectly tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of others worldwide. The colors in the skyline of this painting is a result of the massive explosion of the volcanic island Krakatoa, the ash of which colored the sky around the world for almost a decade afterward (“Astronomical Sleuths”).

    With so many degrees of differing opinions, what is the answer? How do we determine what is “tasteful” honorable expression and what is disrespectful? Who makes that determination? When does the moment go from “too soon” to “right time”? Even the infamous quote by critic Theodor Adorno (“to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”) was recanted by its author less than two decades after it was written (Harding, 147). Perhaps there is no single answer. The conundrum is further complicated with a recent quote from Sarajevan film director Danis Tanović which plays off of Adorno’s quote: “If there can be no poetry after the Holocaust,” Tanović stated, “then there can be no art of any kind after [the Siege of] Sarajevo” (Tanović). Coming from a filmmaker whose most lauded work is one which focuses specifically upon the Bosnian War, this sort of comment turns the conundrum into a paradox and brings the answer no nearer.

Works Cited

“Angelina Jolie ‘Plans Bosnia Film.’” Balkans Insight. 24 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

“Astronomical Sleuths Link Krakatoa to Edvard Munch’s Painting The Scream.” Sky & Telescope. 9 Dec. 2003. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

“Bosnia Suspends Permission for Jolie Film.” Balkans Insight. 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

Harding, James Martin. Adorno and “A Writing of the Ruins”: Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture. Albany: State University of New York, 1997. Print.

“Issue Essay Peer Edit.” English 201-013. UNCW. 5 Nov 2010.

“Jolie Responds to Critics of Bosnia Film.” Balkans Insight. 15 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

“Serbian Media Accused of Distorting Jolie Film.” Balkans Insight. 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

Tanović, Danis. Personal interview. 25 June 2010.



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“Hello, Satan. I believe it’s time to go.”

ENG 233
Response 4
2 November 2010

“Hello, Satan. I believe it’s time to go.”*

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*. “Me and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson
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    One of the most confounding characters in the literary narratives of the Bible is that of Satan in the Book of Job, and perhaps the most common—and incorrect—assumption about the character is that this character is synonymous with that of the devil as depicted in the New Testament. When working with only English translations of the text, the two characters could easily be confused. But the texts involved were not written in English, and, indeed, most often English version of the Bible are translations of translations and not chronicled from source materials.

    In Hebrew, the character who appears in the Book of Job is ha-satan, “the Adversary,” from the verb satan, meaning “obstruct” or “oppose.” This titular character is named as such 10 times in the first two chapters of Job. It is only one of three books in the Hebrew Bible where the character is so named (the other two being 1 Chronicles and Zechariah).

    In the New Testament, the name is repeatedly used in connection with “the devil”—“The great dragon, the primeval serpent, known as the devil or Satan, who had led all the world astray” (Rev. 12:9)—and most frequently appears (9 times) in the Book of Revelation. But in the texts written in Greek, the word used to describe the character is diabolos, meaning “slanderer.” A fascinating connection between word and scene appears in Revelation: diabolos stems from the verb diaballein, which means “to hurl across/through,” and these words connect to the scene where “the devil, who led them astray, was hurled into the lake of fire and sulphur” (Rev. 20:10).

    The Adversary’s appearance in Job takes on a more complex and deeper level of potential when disassociated from the diabolical connections the title has in the New Testament. For instance, in his first appearance, it is stated that “one day when the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh, among them came Satan” (Job 1:6). This puts him as one of several characters attending to God, but given prominence by being described by titled name. When, in Job 1:7, God asks Satan where he has been, Satan replies “prowling about on earth … roaming around there,” a phrasing used again in 2:2. Satan then could be seen as an agent of God, prowling around the earth looking for those who might be tempted towards maliciousness and reporting his findings to God. Rather than acting in a contrary manner, this is a being who works in conjunction with God’s will and purposes. The two characters argue over Satan’s reporting about Job, and God is annoyed that Satan keeps mentioning that Job is a candidate for temptation even though, as God asserts, “‘[Job] persists in his integrity still; you achieved nothing by provoking me to ruin him’” (2:3).

    But God allows the ruining of Job, even as Job maintains his faith in the Lord, weathering all temptations Satan lays in toils and snares, and Job praises God throughout his days. But all actions from Satan are given authority and allowance by God. Satan works n agency to god, not a diabolical evil being. He is not, as is repeatedly stated in the New Testament, the Devil; at best, merely the Devil’s Advocate.




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