pianogonzology: joseph

Showing posts with label joseph. Show all posts

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Demand . . .

. . . a recount?

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . They set out with seventy souls - which is to say: they regarded themselves as seventy in all; this was no numbered count, but more an emotional count by considered agreement-that is, determined by a moonlit accuracy that, as we well know, is no longer suitable for our own era, but was perfectly justifiable and held to be correct in theirs. Seventy was the number of nations of the world listed in God's tables, and therefore as the number of progeny to emerge from patriarchal loins it was subject to no recount by the light of day. But since it is Jacob's loins we are dealing with here, the wives of his sons should not have been included in the count, should they? But they weren't. If there's no counting to begin with, nothing can be included in the count, and given a result based on the lovely bias of sacred foregone conclusions, the question of what is or is not included in the count is moot. It is not even certain whether Jacob himself was counted, whether the others included him as part of their number, that is seventy, or excluded him as the seventy-first. We must simply accept the fact that this era allowed for both possibilities at once. . ."

What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html or at
http://www.ohomusic.com

OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak. Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com

My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Those of Us. . .

. . . who Merely Fiddle & Pipe. . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . it was not very clear-cut, but mysterious instead, and yet as grand as Jacob himself in the telling of it. She heard about brothers as enemies, and the murder out in the field. About the children of Cain and their descendants how they were divided into three types over the earth: those who dwell in tents and raise cattle; those who are artificers of metal and make themselves shine with it; and finally those who merely fiddle and pipe. . ."

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Misspoke . . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . So he took his Egyptian handmaid and sired with her a son and named him Ismael. But what he had sired was a detour, leading not to the road of salvation, but belonging to the desert, and the primal father did not believe God's assurances that he would also still have a son named Isaak by his true wife, but fell upon his face laughing at God's word, for he was already one hundred and Sarah's life was no longer after the manner of women. But nonetheless this laugher was reshaped in her, so that Yitzchak, the averted sacrifice, appeared of whom it was said from on high that he would sire twelve princes - which was not quite correct. God misspoke Himself at times and did not mean precisely what He said. It was not Isaak who sired the twelve, or only indirectly. Actually he had done it, the solemn teller of stories himself, on whose lips the country girl hung-Jacob, brother of the Red Man, had sired them by four women while serving that devil Laban in Shinar. . . "

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Beauty . . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann; translation by John E. Woods)
". . . "Beauty . . . is related to wisdom, through the medium of light. For light is the medium and the midpoint, from which the relationship radiates in three directions: to beauty, to love, and to the knowledge of truth. They are one in it, and light is a triune unity. Strangers brought me the doctrine of an initial god, born of flames, of a beautiful god of light and of love, and his name was Firstborn Radiance. That is a glorious, useful contribution, for it is a verification of the unity of love and light. Light, however, is beauty just as it is truth and knowledge, and if you would know the medium of truth, learn then that it is love. It is said o you that when you hear a dream you know to interpret it, is that so?" he asked Joseph, blushing, for he felt embarrassed and confused by his own words of visionary enthusiasm. . . "

Friday, July 3, 2015

Celebration . . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . the official swelling of the Nile was celebrated in all the land of Egypt, and most especially in Nowet-Amun, Wase of the Hundred Gates, with a gala solemnity that one can imagine only if one keeps in mind our own greatest and most tumultuous national, popular, and patriotic holidays. The entire city was out and about from earliest morning on, and the huge population - far exceeding a hundred thousand, as we know - was vastly increased by swarms of country folk from both upriver and down, who streamed in through the gates to join in the celebration of Amun's great day in the city where the imperial god resided, and who now mixed with the city people to hop on one leg and gaze with mouths agape at glorious and majestic spectacles presented by the state to an overtaxed and overworked peasantry in compensation for a whole year's gray penury and as a means of strengthening them in their patriotism for the drudgery of the year now dawning. As part of a great sweating crowd, their noses filled with the aroma of burning fat and mountains of flowers, they thronged temples provisioned for the holiday with immense quantities of food and drink and filled those radiantly colorful forecourts plastered with alabaster, covered by awnings and tents, an echoing with pious hymns, where they could stuff their bellies for once at the expense of the god - or actually, of those higher powers who oppressed and swindled them all the rest of the year, but today smiled upon with prodigal beneficence - and thus, against their better judgment, be lulled in the belief that it would always be so, that with this turning point of celebration and delight, the golden age of free beer and roasted goose had dawned the they would never again be visited by scribes demanding payment and accompanied by Nubians armed with bundled rods of palm . . . "

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Removed . . .

. . . from view . . .

(from Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann- translation by John E. Woods)
". . . A few years more and there would be almost nothing left of the stuff of the Joseph whom Jacob had held in a farewell embrace, as Rebekah had once held him - as little as if his flesh had dissolved into death. Except that, since it was not death that changed him, but life, his form as Joseph remained more or less intact, but less faithfully and perfectly than sheltering death would have kept it in the mind's eye and as it actually, though deceptively, had done in Jacob's mind. But it should still give us pause that, in regard to the content and form of life, the difference between whether it is death or life that removes a person from view is not nearly so important as people would probably like to think. . . "

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Custom . . .

(from Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by Josesph E. Woods)
". . . That occurred everywhere among men, and everywhere men fretted whether they still had an understanding of both the Lord and the times - even though that also led here and there to the most awkward sort of knowledge and even though Jacob's inherited ideas about the Lord provided him with the most refined and exhausting means for testing the worrisome question about the extent to which man's usages and customs could lag behind the will and development of that same Lord.

All the same, how very close at hand error constantly lurked here as well. One need not even think of Laban, left behind in the land of origins, and of how he put his little son in a jar. He had simply lacked any awareness of the problem - for instance, of how custom could become abomination. . ."