Article
It takes more than a table and chairs to furnish the heart
A great woman: on Esther Ettinger’s ‘Elisha’
January 01, 2012
From the biblical rendition, it is clear that the Shunamite woman admired the prophet Elisha very much. He was grateful to her, and asked his servant Gihazi what he could do in return. Gihazi told him that the woman was childless and “her husband . . . old,” implying that she could not have a child with him. Elisha instructed Gihazi to call her. The woman stood hesitantly in the doorway, and Elisha decreed: “At this season, when the time cometh around, thou shalt embrace a son!” She responded sceptically: “Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thy handmaid.” The story goes on to say that one year later the expected son was indeed born.
Years later, when the child was with his father in the fields at harvest time, he suddenly cried out in pain: “My head! My head!” He was taken home to his mother and died. His mother [placed the child in the prophet’s bed] and hurried to find Elisha on Mount Carmel where he happened to be at the time. She complained to him bitterly: “Did I desire a son of my lord? Did I not say: Do not deceive me?” Elisha sent Gihazi ahead, giving him his staff with which to revive the boy, but Gihazi did not succeed. Elisha himself arrived later at the boy’s house, shut himself up in his room and prayed to God.
“And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and he stretched himself upon him; and the flesh of the child waxed warm.” And “Then he returned, and walked in the house once to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him; and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.”
In her poem, Esther Ettinger uses this mysterious episode and superimposes it onto a completely different sort of mystery, that of the love relationship [between men and women]. She does not retell the Bible story with these characters from the past, merely uses the materials in the poem as background for the picture she wants to paint of present-day life.
This is without doubt explicitly a love poem. The woman speaker, the Shunamite of the poem, is in love with [a man named] Elisha. Unlike his biblical namesake, this Elisha addresses her directly and asks for “a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp”. The Shunamite’s reply –“And I said Elisha” – is to whisper his name: that name becomes a prayer that God will come to her rescue and open Elisha’s heart to her.
The poem hinges on Elisha’s dry list of four necessities, while omitting to mention the loving woman’s name. She whispers his name over and over with love. He is wrapped up in himself. She is in love with him.
This Elisha is blind. He does not see her. And in his blindness he asks her once again for just “a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp”. That is all he can say. But the power of the Shunemite’s love for Elisha blinds her too.
His blindness results from his inability to see her, or from a deliberate disregard for her love, whereas her blindness derives from the greatness of her love, which leads her to interpret his silence as that of spiritual greatness. His dry, technical speech, which sounds like an alienated command, “A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp”, becomes for her something sublime:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp you said
So essential and precise I said
And how superfluous all the rest.
We hear the last sentence on two completely different levels. First, this Shunamite expresses her admiration for the great asceticism of the prophet’s interest in these basic items, besides which he needs nothing at all (“So essential and precise”); that is to say he has no need for the Shunamite’s love, as he is preoccupied with greater things. But on another level, this is not an expression of admiration but rather of great pain, because he has no need of her [ . . . ] From his point of view, she is indistinguishable from those items created to serve him: a bed, a table, a chair and a lamp (the Shunamite is “all the rest”, that is, superfluous!) The depictions of love in the second stanza may each be read in this light as a double entendre:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp
How suddenly my blood ran dry
And I was white as the room,
As the tears.
Perhaps the Shunamite’s blood runs dry from the power of her love for him, but at the same time we see here the loving woman running out of action, unable to do anything to make “Elisha” requite her love.
The description of her as “white as the room” may be read in the same fashion. On the one hand, she so wants to be with him despite the fact that he is oblivious of her, that she is even willing to be as white as the walls of the room as long as she can be near him. On the other hand, ironically, she becomes as white as the room because the only thing he sees in her is her ability to supply the room and the things in it, while she herself disappears into the background. Thus the place of the tears as tears of sadness and disappointment becomes clear. Her blood has run dry and she is as white as the room as a result of her disappointment and pain.
The close reader of the poem will also notice that it clearly rebukes Elisha. The fact that he is cast in the poem – in opposition to the biblical text – as demanding of the Shunamite that she provide him with material things transforms him from Elisha the prophet, the man of wonders with restricted contact with the world, to a demanding, “other” Elisha whose entire world is material.
We are presented with an ironic picture. Instead of Elisha the prophet, dedicated to God’s mission and therefore unable to descend to the human level and love a woman, here we have Elisha the man, who is unable to love a flesh-and-blood woman because he is constantly preoccupied with material demands, and his entire conversation comes down to “a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp.”
The biblical Elisha and the man Elisha, the addressee of the poem, have in common the fact that they do not develop romantic relations with the speaker. But the great difference between them is that Elisha the prophet is cut off from her because he is a holy man, who nevertheless feels and sees the woman from afar, while the Elisha of the poem is cut off from the speaker because of his emotional incapacity [to connect]. His entire world is shrunk to the demanding speech of a child: a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp (this bed, incidentally, hints at sex, but in this context the speaker sees it as a technical masculine need, alienated from the emotion she seeks).
In this way the poem turns things upside down. Elisha is the one whose whole world is material, while the love of the Shunamite is associated with religious and spiritual images:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp
Touched me like the very clarity of the heavens
Touched the bluest chord.
Only in the inner world of the woman speaker do we find the vibrating chord (of feelings of love), the heavenly blue color and “the very clarity of the heavens”.
This last expression is taken from the biblical story of Moses, Aharon, Nadav and Avihu and the seventy elders of Israel who went up to Mount Sinai (by tradition two days before the giving of the Torah at Pentecost). It is told of them that “they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet the like of a paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness.” (Exodus 24:10). Rashi explains that they “looked [at God himself, they] peeked and were condemned to death, except the Holy One Blessed Be He did not want to mix the joy of Torah [with mourning]” so he did not put them to death immediately. A “paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness” is a poetic description of what they saw: at the feet of God was laid a kind of pure sapphire floor like a vision of heaven.
This, no less, is the description of what the Shunamite sees in Elisha from within the turmoil of her loving feelings. In contrast to her, “Elisha” merely demands: a bed, a table, a chair and a lamp.
Elisha the prophet is cut off from humanity because he is a holy man, who nevertheless is able to see and sense a woman from afar, while the Elisha of Esther Ettinger’s poem is cut off from the speaker because of his emotional incapacity to connect.
This wonderful poem ‘Elisha’ by Esther Ettinger cites the biblical tale of Elisha and the Shunamite in order to tell an utterly new story. The second book of Kings (4: 8–37) tells of a “great” woman [i.e. well-to-do, and hinting at greatness of spirit – tr.] from the city of Shunem, who wanted to do something for the prophet Elisha. She suggested to her husband that he build a small room on the roof of their house and furnish it with “a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp” for the prophet’s use when he passed through the city. From the biblical rendition, it is clear that the Shunamite woman admired the prophet Elisha very much. He was grateful to her, and asked his servant Gihazi what he could do in return. Gihazi told him that the woman was childless and “her husband . . . old,” implying that she could not have a child with him. Elisha instructed Gihazi to call her. The woman stood hesitantly in the doorway, and Elisha decreed: “At this season, when the time cometh around, thou shalt embrace a son!” She responded sceptically: “Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thy handmaid.” The story goes on to say that one year later the expected son was indeed born.
Years later, when the child was with his father in the fields at harvest time, he suddenly cried out in pain: “My head! My head!” He was taken home to his mother and died. His mother [placed the child in the prophet’s bed] and hurried to find Elisha on Mount Carmel where he happened to be at the time. She complained to him bitterly: “Did I desire a son of my lord? Did I not say: Do not deceive me?” Elisha sent Gihazi ahead, giving him his staff with which to revive the boy, but Gihazi did not succeed. Elisha himself arrived later at the boy’s house, shut himself up in his room and prayed to God.
“And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and he stretched himself upon him; and the flesh of the child waxed warm.” And “Then he returned, and walked in the house once to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him; and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.”
In her poem, Esther Ettinger uses this mysterious episode and superimposes it onto a completely different sort of mystery, that of the love relationship [between men and women]. She does not retell the Bible story with these characters from the past, merely uses the materials in the poem as background for the picture she wants to paint of present-day life.
This is without doubt explicitly a love poem. The woman speaker, the Shunamite of the poem, is in love with [a man named] Elisha. Unlike his biblical namesake, this Elisha addresses her directly and asks for “a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp”. The Shunamite’s reply –“And I said Elisha” – is to whisper his name: that name becomes a prayer that God will come to her rescue and open Elisha’s heart to her.
The poem hinges on Elisha’s dry list of four necessities, while omitting to mention the loving woman’s name. She whispers his name over and over with love. He is wrapped up in himself. She is in love with him.
This Elisha is blind. He does not see her. And in his blindness he asks her once again for just “a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp”. That is all he can say. But the power of the Shunemite’s love for Elisha blinds her too.
His blindness results from his inability to see her, or from a deliberate disregard for her love, whereas her blindness derives from the greatness of her love, which leads her to interpret his silence as that of spiritual greatness. His dry, technical speech, which sounds like an alienated command, “A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp”, becomes for her something sublime:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp you said
So essential and precise I said
And how superfluous all the rest.
We hear the last sentence on two completely different levels. First, this Shunamite expresses her admiration for the great asceticism of the prophet’s interest in these basic items, besides which he needs nothing at all (“So essential and precise”); that is to say he has no need for the Shunamite’s love, as he is preoccupied with greater things. But on another level, this is not an expression of admiration but rather of great pain, because he has no need of her [ . . . ] From his point of view, she is indistinguishable from those items created to serve him: a bed, a table, a chair and a lamp (the Shunamite is “all the rest”, that is, superfluous!) The depictions of love in the second stanza may each be read in this light as a double entendre:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp
How suddenly my blood ran dry
And I was white as the room,
As the tears.
Perhaps the Shunamite’s blood runs dry from the power of her love for him, but at the same time we see here the loving woman running out of action, unable to do anything to make “Elisha” requite her love.
The description of her as “white as the room” may be read in the same fashion. On the one hand, she so wants to be with him despite the fact that he is oblivious of her, that she is even willing to be as white as the walls of the room as long as she can be near him. On the other hand, ironically, she becomes as white as the room because the only thing he sees in her is her ability to supply the room and the things in it, while she herself disappears into the background. Thus the place of the tears as tears of sadness and disappointment becomes clear. Her blood has run dry and she is as white as the room as a result of her disappointment and pain.
The close reader of the poem will also notice that it clearly rebukes Elisha. The fact that he is cast in the poem – in opposition to the biblical text – as demanding of the Shunamite that she provide him with material things transforms him from Elisha the prophet, the man of wonders with restricted contact with the world, to a demanding, “other” Elisha whose entire world is material.
We are presented with an ironic picture. Instead of Elisha the prophet, dedicated to God’s mission and therefore unable to descend to the human level and love a woman, here we have Elisha the man, who is unable to love a flesh-and-blood woman because he is constantly preoccupied with material demands, and his entire conversation comes down to “a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp.”
The biblical Elisha and the man Elisha, the addressee of the poem, have in common the fact that they do not develop romantic relations with the speaker. But the great difference between them is that Elisha the prophet is cut off from her because he is a holy man, who nevertheless feels and sees the woman from afar, while the Elisha of the poem is cut off from the speaker because of his emotional incapacity [to connect]. His entire world is shrunk to the demanding speech of a child: a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp (this bed, incidentally, hints at sex, but in this context the speaker sees it as a technical masculine need, alienated from the emotion she seeks).
In this way the poem turns things upside down. Elisha is the one whose whole world is material, while the love of the Shunamite is associated with religious and spiritual images:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp
Touched me like the very clarity of the heavens
Touched the bluest chord.
Only in the inner world of the woman speaker do we find the vibrating chord (of feelings of love), the heavenly blue color and “the very clarity of the heavens”.
This last expression is taken from the biblical story of Moses, Aharon, Nadav and Avihu and the seventy elders of Israel who went up to Mount Sinai (by tradition two days before the giving of the Torah at Pentecost). It is told of them that “they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet the like of a paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness.” (Exodus 24:10). Rashi explains that they “looked [at God himself, they] peeked and were condemned to death, except the Holy One Blessed Be He did not want to mix the joy of Torah [with mourning]” so he did not put them to death immediately. A “paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness” is a poetic description of what they saw: at the feet of God was laid a kind of pure sapphire floor like a vision of heaven.
This, no less, is the description of what the Shunamite sees in Elisha from within the turmoil of her loving feelings. In contrast to her, “Elisha” merely demands: a bed, a table, a chair and a lamp.
*
If we follow the dialogues from a structural point of view, we discover that the first verse is a dialogue: “I said”, “you said”. Although the man repeats his request in a demanding way, there is a sort of dialogue. But even this disappears in the second verse. The descriptions of the Shunamite’s feelings appear there as a kind of monologue. And in the third verse the divide is made all the greater by her pleading/complaint:
You said nothing Elisha
Nor did you lean over me.
Here too the poem creates a sort of distorted perspective on the biblical story. In the original, it is said that Elisha prostrated himself on the Shunamite’s dead child in order to bring him back to life, and here this Elisha should have prostrated himself on the Shunamite herself in order to bring her back to life, to revive her love, but he ignores her; her love is doomed. The meaning of the repetitious final statement now becomes clearer:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp
And how superfluous all the rest.
This Elisha cannot requite the Shunamite’s love, and now for her too, all her feelings for him, the feelings which she expressed in response to his demand for a bed etc., suddenly become so “superfluous.”
from Admiel Kosman, Women’s Tractate [in Hebrew], Jerusalem, Keter Press, 2007
If we follow the dialogues from a structural point of view, we discover that the first verse is a dialogue: “I said”, “you said”. Although the man repeats his request in a demanding way, there is a sort of dialogue. But even this disappears in the second verse. The descriptions of the Shunamite’s feelings appear there as a kind of monologue. And in the third verse the divide is made all the greater by her pleading/complaint:
You said nothing Elisha
Nor did you lean over me.
Here too the poem creates a sort of distorted perspective on the biblical story. In the original, it is said that Elisha prostrated himself on the Shunamite’s dead child in order to bring him back to life, and here this Elisha should have prostrated himself on the Shunamite herself in order to bring her back to life, to revive her love, but he ignores her; her love is doomed. The meaning of the repetitious final statement now becomes clearer:
A bed and a table and a chair and a lamp
And how superfluous all the rest.
This Elisha cannot requite the Shunamite’s love, and now for her too, all her feelings for him, the feelings which she expressed in response to his demand for a bed etc., suddenly become so “superfluous.”
© Admiel Kosman
Translator: Rebecca Gillis
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