Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Some last thoughts on Sampson
One comment that Hugh made late struck me: that the secret of Samson's power is a riddle for Delilah. Yes. Except that I might again insist that it's not really a riddle--that riddles deal with universals. The secret of Samson's power (like the secret of the lion and the honey) is what we usually call a mystery: a singular circumstance or set of circumstances that like a riddle, defies us to find an explanation.
The main so-called riddle in the Samson story is the part that attracted me most in our reading and the part I found most wanting. I was comparing the Samson legend with the Oedipus legend, and I thought all of the advantages were with Oedipus. Better characters. Better events. Way better riddle. And of course with Sophocles, a master storyteller with skills far beyond those of whoever shaped the Samson materials.
But the more I think about it, the more I see these two stories as having something in common, and the more I think that if the Samson story had found its Sophocles, it may have ended as something much more powerful than the three loosely connected anecdotes that have come down to us. I think this because both stories really are mystery stories, stories in which the driving engine is the main character's search for the answer to the mystery of who he is. Sophocles has polished his materials so well that we see this acutely: Oedipus, the master riddle-solver, has everything he needs to solve his mystery right at the start of the play, but fails to do so until almost all is lost.
The Samson chronicler hasn't done as well with the shaping of his materials, but we can still see the outlines of the same kind of mystery story here. God has posed this question to Samson: Who are you? And here's the kicker: God has even given Samson the answer in a message transmitted to his parents before his birth. Only Samson never really believes it. Or believes that the power that has been granted to him is for his use alone, for the settling of his private slights and affronts. The arc of the story is one of forgetting and failing to learn, and when Samson trifles in his last answer to Delilah, he has at last relinquished his knowledge of everything of who he is. His later recovery is not a crowning success as much as it is a narrow return to his initial condition. At the end, Samson knows only what he knew at the beginning, which is still not nearly enough. At the end Samson is seeking vengence for his eyes rather than freedom for his people.
In Samson's blindness, there is a powerful echo with the condition of the Israelites. Because Yahweh has set the same question for them as he has set for Samson: Who are you? The answer for the Israelites is: the chosen people of the true god. If the Israelites knew that answer, they'd see that in Sampson, the release from all of their earthly troubles was already among them, waiting to be used. They have yet to learn that answer, and so their deliverance is only just beginning.
The main so-called riddle in the Samson story is the part that attracted me most in our reading and the part I found most wanting. I was comparing the Samson legend with the Oedipus legend, and I thought all of the advantages were with Oedipus. Better characters. Better events. Way better riddle. And of course with Sophocles, a master storyteller with skills far beyond those of whoever shaped the Samson materials.
But the more I think about it, the more I see these two stories as having something in common, and the more I think that if the Samson story had found its Sophocles, it may have ended as something much more powerful than the three loosely connected anecdotes that have come down to us. I think this because both stories really are mystery stories, stories in which the driving engine is the main character's search for the answer to the mystery of who he is. Sophocles has polished his materials so well that we see this acutely: Oedipus, the master riddle-solver, has everything he needs to solve his mystery right at the start of the play, but fails to do so until almost all is lost.
The Samson chronicler hasn't done as well with the shaping of his materials, but we can still see the outlines of the same kind of mystery story here. God has posed this question to Samson: Who are you? And here's the kicker: God has even given Samson the answer in a message transmitted to his parents before his birth. Only Samson never really believes it. Or believes that the power that has been granted to him is for his use alone, for the settling of his private slights and affronts. The arc of the story is one of forgetting and failing to learn, and when Samson trifles in his last answer to Delilah, he has at last relinquished his knowledge of everything of who he is. His later recovery is not a crowning success as much as it is a narrow return to his initial condition. At the end, Samson knows only what he knew at the beginning, which is still not nearly enough. At the end Samson is seeking vengence for his eyes rather than freedom for his people.
In Samson's blindness, there is a powerful echo with the condition of the Israelites. Because Yahweh has set the same question for them as he has set for Samson: Who are you? The answer for the Israelites is: the chosen people of the true god. If the Israelites knew that answer, they'd see that in Sampson, the release from all of their earthly troubles was already among them, waiting to be used. They have yet to learn that answer, and so their deliverance is only just beginning.
