One for the Book(s)

Today's episode opens with a photograph, a legendary one. My Earthly Emanation plucked it off a postcard rack on Granville Island in Vancouver while on holiday in October 1987. He was smitten by it because it put him in mind of a girl he knew, another Earthly Emanation (of whom? – three guesses). Well, okay, he didn't really know her, but he had introduced himself to her a month earlier.  But he had first laid eyes on her a year before that, sitting next to him in a classroom. Yea, and verily, this first sight of her had also smited him, and she had looked an aw(e)ful lot like this:

The girl who smote my Earthly Emanation that long-ago day in 1986 was, of course, none other than the legendary Bodhisattva. Who shall remain herein nameless. Since we're striving to relate a finite, discrete event here, the less said about her today the better. Let's just say that by the time my Emanation had stumbled on her sublime twin on the postcard rack, this girl had already ignited and activated his hitherto inert and sedentary imagination.

The girl in the photo was identified by the caption on the back: "Peggy Ashcroft as Naemi in Jew Süss, 1929." Eventually, my Emanation's torpid curiosity was stirred to investigate further. He found Ashcroft to have been the most famous stage actress of her era, especially in Shakespearean roles. And this photo memorialized the very moment of her London stage debut. She was 21 years old at the time, the same age as the Bodhisattva when the postcard appeared in October 1987.

Naemi appears in the play for the first time just like this, silent and in serene profile for several minutes before she speaks. The first words she utters are from the Song of Songs, which she is reading aloud to her rabbi:

"My beloved spake, and said unto me, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past...the time of the singing of birds is come, and voice of the turtle is heard in our land...."

Turtle, of course, meaning turtledove, as it does in Shakespeare's "The Phoenix and the Turtle."

And so this photo became bound up forever in the imagination of my Emanation – and, let's be fair, in my imagination, too – with the marvelous Song of Songs. Two themes in particular bound it thusly. Here I lay them out by simply quoting from the Wikipedia entry for the Song:

It has been suggested that the book is a messianic text, in that the lover can be interpreted as the Messiah. It could refer to the Messiah because it often speaks of the Davidic king, Solomon. Nathan’s prophecy in 2 Samuel 7 showed that the promised Messiah would issue from the progeny of David. Each Davidic king was viewed as a potential Messiah, so the Song’s speaking of the Temple-builder Solomon would bring to readers’ minds their Messianic hopes....

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The king's garden (for example 5:1) can be viewed in the light of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:8-25), bringing to mind the Messiah who was expected to restore Israel to an Edenic state. The lovers are portrayed as having overcome the alienation produced by the Fall. The state of woman whose “desire shall be for your husband” (Genesis 3:16) has even been reversed: “his desire is for me” (7:10).

And regarding the latter, Edenic theme, it's worth quoting a livelier wit, the intrepid Carey Ellen Walsh, from her Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs:

The Song is a pastiche of the story of the Garden of Eden, only with jazz-like theological improvisation. Our attention is not merely brought to the animals, hills, flowers, and fruit; it lands right in them, face first. The poet wants us to feel the teeming gardens, the vineyard, the chased little foxes, and to be drunk with love for it all.... In many ways, the Song is an ancient gratitude list. It is a theology of absence, but it is certainly making do....

And so, not surprisingly, the Song and the above photo from Jew Suss have attained vital, iconic status in our Story. So much so that when Cosmo spied a licence plate the other day that read SUS, he could think of nothing else. But wait, I said, I'm never going to find a plate that says JEW. Such a combination of letters would be among those specifically excluded by regulation, since it might be misinterpreted publicly (as in the recent [2020] case of a Nova Scotia man trying to retain the right to display his surname – GRABHER – on his licence plate).

Well, that was the last plate I saw that day. The first one I saw the next day was, amazingly, JUZ, so, phonetically, it worked anyway! JUZ SUS!! Cosmo was, for the first time in weeks, genuinely astounded and impressed. And his sensitive, ethereal little heart was all a-flutter, because he allowed himself to hope this meant that Stanza was in the neighbourhood. Especially since a few moments later he saw HUG and GAL almost beside each other in a parking lot.

Cosmo was almost beside himself the next day when, on campus, he found, for a mere dollar, a pristine hardcover with dust jacket, fetchingly entitled AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN. The subject matter of the book, interfaith dialogue in the Holy Land, was not as important as the title – and the fact that the text was introduced with a quote from the Zohar, the foundational text of Kabbalah. Oh, yes, Stanza was around somewhere alright.  

That evening, Jana asked me for help with her crossword. The gimmick, the long keywords, were movie titles based on famous quotes, some of them biblical. In fact, no fewer than three of them were from the Song of Songs. One of the films, Little Foxes, I had actually seen.  The other two pretty much blew Cosmo's mind – and Cosmo is pretty well-seasoned in the mind-blowing department.

Okay, get ready. The other two were ARISE, MY LOVE and THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE  – both of them quotes from Naemi's very first words in Jew Süss!!!

That wasn't quite the end; Stanza couldn't resist one more punch line. When I looked up THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE in our movie guide, it said: "Also released under alternate title ONE FOR THE BOOK."

Hmm, I thought, isn't it usually "One for the Books"? Well, I suspected the title was a play on that expression, since it was a comedy set in the world of 1940s Broadway, where "book" means the story script of a musical comedy. But, as the song says (no, not that one, another one), "you know sometimes words have two meanings." So "book" can also refer to a book of the Bible. Like, say, the Song of Songs.

Or – on a more PUNdamental level – it could refer simply to the ONE dollar I had spent on the Garden of Eden book earlier that day.

In that case, it could well be that our gal Stanza is not merely a-MUSE-ing herself as usual, but is trying to impart to us a vital message. Do we indeed now find ourselves at the entrance to the Garden of Eden? And if so, what might that mean? Stanza, I believe, is not merely a dazzlingly clever gal; she's a puzzle in which every answer poses a new question.