Re: Red Shoes: a few questions

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

Greg Sandell <barks@garnet.berkeley.edu> asked

> A few questions about The Red Shoes:
> 
> SONG OF SOLOMON:  I checked my New Oxford Annotated Bible, and its version
> the passage Kate uses has a significantly different wording, with a
> different interpretation possible.  It says "I am sick *with* love", not
> "I am sick *of* love."  Also:  the Oxford says "Oh that his left hand were
> under my head", also quite different.  Does there exist some Bible
> that has the words as Kate used them, or did she massage the text to
> have a new meaning?

nicholsn@UTKVX.UTCC.UTK.EDU commented

> there could be widely diverse glosses in English.  I would say that it is
> possible that there are some versions that have Kate's wording, but it is
> perhaps quite a bit more likely that Kate did 'massage' the text.

To which Alex Gibbs <arg@kilimanjaro.opt-sci.Arizona.EDU> replied

> This has been discussed and I think it was Peter Manchester (?) who
> indicated that the New King James version (?) contained the same
> wording as Kate's song.  I also pointed out that my version had "with"
> instead of "of" and that I thought the meaning was love-sick.  Some
> agree some disagree (as you would expect).  Her wording doesn't
> exclude this meaning.  As one can be sick of the flu, meaning you are
> overcome by the flu, one can be sick of love; overcome by love.

       Yup.  I took a snow day two weeks ago, and with nothing better to do 
posted a long commentary on the original text of SongSol 2:1-6 (the passage 
Kate uses) referring to the Greek, Latin, five English translations, and 
consulting a scholarly commentary.  (I'll be happy to send it to anyone 
interested.)  The bottom line was that Kate is citing the unmassaged King 
James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV), the 
poetically great but now somewhat outdated 16th century translation.  In this 
passage in particular, however, I found it better than the current RSV, NRSV, 
NEB, or Jerusalem Bible versions.  Here's the passage again:

2:1  I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
  2  As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
  3  As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among 
the sons.  I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was 
sweet to my taste.
  4  He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
  5  Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.
  6  His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.

Regarding line 5b, I've now checked with Hebrew scholars and the phrase "sick 
of love" does have the sense 'sick with love', 'overcome with love', i.e. 
love-sick.  The word for 'sick' is used of illness, not of being tired of 
something.  And the phrase 'of love' is a simple genitive--syntactically a 
subjective genitive, to use the technical grammatical term.  I'd have to say 
that the context pretty well forces this interpretation also.

       My earlier post was basically pedantic riffing about the text of 
SongSol, not about Kate's song, but it actually led me to a possible insight 
into it.  I had all that scholarly gear out because the following Tuesday I 
had to lecture on SongSol in my course "Intro. to the Bible," and among the 
discoveries I made in preparing was the increasing agreement among scholars 
of the Hebrew Bible that SongSol *is* what it appears to be:  a compilation 
of erotic love poetry, loosely organized into a dialogue between a lover and 
*her* beloved.  Many current English Bibles print headings (not in the 
original) in order to identify the speakers; most common is "Bride" and 
"Bridegroom."  But nothing in the material suggests a marriage context except 
the transparently bogus insertion in 3:6-11 of a description of King Solomon 
arriving for his wedding, which is related to the ascription of the poem to 
Solomon in 1:1--equally bogus.  Indeed, the lovers are so completely involved 
with one another only, without reference to marriage or indeed any other 
aspects of social convention, that their poetry is actively counter-cultural. 
They basically want to get out in the countryside together and ball.  Or, in 
the hottest scene, she wants him to come to her bedroom at night so she can 
open to him (5:2-6; it is not clear whether this is a dream).  The key lines 
(RSV):

  4           My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost 
       being yearned for him.
  5           I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, 
       my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt.

       The process by which SongSol became part of the Hebrew Bible is 
largely a matter of surmise, but certainly associating it with Solomon and 
inserting a passage that identifies him with the male lover was part of it.  
Making the occasion for the love poems be a marriage also lays the blanket of 
social convention over their wild sensuality.  But by far the most important 
development was the application of allegorical interpretation to the poetry, 
which had become standard as early as the second century BC.  In this way of 
reading it, the 'bridegroom' is identified as God, the Lord, and the 'bride' 
as his people Israel (Jewish), or as the church (early Christian), or as the 
soul of the seeker (various mystical traditions).

       While mystical writing very regularly resorts to erotic imagery in 
order to convey the power of interior spiritual experience (e.g. the Sufi 
poets or the Spanish mystics), the poetry assembled into SongSol is plainly 
*sensual* in intention, and spiritual only in the sense that sensuality 
itself is spiritual--not in reference to the divine, but as a uniquely human 
joy and intensity of life.  Feminist scholars in particular are championing 
the recovery of the sensual context of SongSol.  They point out that the 
intellectualism of allegory, and the conventionalism of confining the erotic 
to the official and contractual context of marriage, are both typical of the 
ways in which patriarchy maneuvers to deny, suppress, and control female 
experience.

       If feminist scholars were to speak with one voice, and express in one 
sentence their critical judgment *and* their ear for what they want heard in 
the poetry, it would be something very much like "Don't want your bullshit, 
just want your sexuality!"  I don't suppose for a minute that Kate Bush has 
been reading biblical scholars.  But she plainly has read the Song of Solomon 
in the King James version, and as a lyricist herself, her view of it has 
poetic authority.

............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
    "Hear a woman singing"                     pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu
                                                    72020.366@compuserve.com