Page 113 - The Irony Board
P. 113
Into the Cosmos
Adam said God
I want you should
Name everything
Okay said Adam
You’re God.
The sequence of presentation has moved from the purely
metaphysical to the specifically religious; monotheism, mainly in its
Western guises, is now under consideration. In this scene from the
Old Testament, humans are given permission to use symbols.
Slightly Yiddish syntax lends an air of homely authenticity to the
dialogue; the absence of punctuation forces the reader to parse the
narration slowly, perhaps suspiciously. In fact, two interpretations of
these words are evidently intended by Gluckman. The first is
superficial: man receives order, man acknowledges its issuing
authority. The second is trickier: man receives order, and complies
with it on the spot in two words. The invalid (or merely tautological)
equation of everything (boundless continuum) with a being of
specific properties is an error of dualistic metaphysics as old,
perhaps, as Adam.
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