The more I think about it, though, the stranger it seems to refer to an unforgiven Pharazon as "dry." I mean, his punishment was that he and his whole kingdom were sunk to the bottom of the sea. That's about as wet -- and, etymologically, as "baptized," as it's possible to get. If he were still unforgiven, he would still be full fathom five and thus thoroughly wet. A more likely reading of the message, I think, is as a demand to know how and why Jack is now dry, instead of being in Davy Jones' locker where he belongs. Among the meanings of the verb steal is "to move silently or secretly; to convey (something or oneself) clandestinely." Has Jack somehow escaped?
And this brings us to Yes and No, my puppet show in verse. No manuscript has survived, so all I have are the bits of verse I still remember. In one scene, No (Noah) is holding forth about the perfect righteousness that entitled him to be spared in the Great Flood, at a time when even angels were punished. At this point, one of these rebel angels, Shem (Shemyaza) shows up and says:
Ironic words from one who has ason named after me, Shemyaza!
In some of the apocryphal Enoch literature, Shemyaza is the ringleader of those whose crimes prompted the Great Flood. He is therefore a Pharazonic figure. No can't understand how Shem can be appearing on earth at all, since he's supposed to be imprisoned in hell. Did he somehow escape? Shem responds that he was released by Yes (Jesus).
No:But how is it you are unjailed?Can hell's security have failed?Shem:Have you not heard? Ere Yes was risen,he came to visit us in prison.We asked for freedom. Can you guesshow our request was answered?No:Yes!
At the time I composed this, I was quite proud of having made No's three-letter line mean four things simultaneously: (1) Yes, I can guess. (2) Your request was answered "yes." (3) Jesus! (So he's the one who freed you.) (4) Jesus! (an exclamation of shock and dismay).
Shem (whose name means "name") has begun by claiming that Noah's son Shem was named after him. He goes on to claim that lots of other things were named after him, too, including the Tower of Babel (on the grounds that its builders said "let us make us a shem"). When challenged by No, Shem goes so far as to claim that God himself (called ha-Shem by the Jews) is named after him.
Shem:My name and fame cannot be slain.No:You take them for your own in vain.Not every Shem-named thing pertainsto you, Shemyaza. Use your brains!You claim the Tower and my son.Well, what about the Holy One?He, too, is called the Shem. Pray tell,dare you take that in vain as well?Shem:Why not? Like us, the Holy Onecame down to earth to get a son.I was the first. It well may be,he named himself to honor me.No:No, Shem! I no you to your face.To listen further were disgrace.I no you, Shem, I curse your name!Shem:Be careful!No:Back to whence you came!Shem:I came from Heaven, foolish No,and back up there I cannot go.This earth has now become my sphere,and I intend to stay right here.
No eventually pulls out his trump card, but it doesn't work.
No:In Yes's holy name I banishyou. Begone, Shemyaza! Vanish!Shem:In Yes's name? Now that's a laugh.You'd banish me on his behalf?In Yes's name? But Yes is hewho came to hell to set us free!
That Yes who came and turned the key
to liberate the likes of me
is who you would invoke this day?
In Yes's holy name, I stay.
The fact that Shem is on earth at all, and that he cannot be banished in Yes's name, suggests that he is telling the truth here: It really is with Yes's permission and approval that he has left hell and returned to earth.
Incidentally, the Buddhist "soul transcendence ceremony" mentioned in "Blue-green 'and'" involves releasing souls from hell and allowing them a chance to reincarnate.
6 comments:
I rather enjoyed this post, particularly the multiple meanings of that one "Yes", and the "Not every Shem-named thing pertains
to you" line.
I think I agree w your interpretation of the blocks. It's a question I have certainly had since, in Tolkien's lore, AP is stuck in those caves of forgotten "until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom” so how could you be AP? In Daymon's writings, that is also the case. When I wrote, much of it dealt with AP and his zombie buddies down in those caves in these present days and their attempts to break free. Those tales would be of course mutually exclusive with the idea of you as Pharazon unless I somehow reinterpreted them as tales from the long ago past, before Yes freed him.
And I will say, back then I always felt there was a story of Jesus visiting those caves as referenced in 1 Peter 3:19-20 but that it had to do with the "fathers" trapped with him rather than AP himself. I could see it involving AP as well, however. I never did extract that story from whoever was speaking to me. I tend to think that if AP did get out, it could only be Jesus himself who accomplished it. And I think visiting those caves would be the literal fulfillment of him condescending "below all things" as the saying goes.
Lastly, No's demand to Shem to go "back to whence you came!" echoes an experience I had at Costco last week. Costco checks the receipt of every shopper and there is usually a decent line to get out at the one in my town. Everyone was lined up taking their turn but some guy tried skipping the line. I saw him approaching in my periphery and, feeling cheeky, I stepped in front of his cart to block his path. Most people would get the point and wait their turn. After a few more seconds, he decided to go around me on the other side so I turned to him and said "are you trying to cut the line, buddy?" He was embarrassed and made some lame excuse about trying to make a second line. As it turned out, we both got out of the store at the same time so his cutting and my whining didn't affect much. By then he had apparently thought of a come back. As we walked to the parking lot he said:
"why don't you go back to where you came from?"
"what?"
"I said go back to where you came from."
"where did I come from?"
"i don't know but you're clearly not from around here."
This was a 50s white male speaking to a 40s white male so the only thing I could think of is that I didn't have a southern accent like he did. It was such a strange thing to say that all I could think of was I must have really upset him if that was the best he could come up with as a come back. Granted, I was not born in TN so maybe he had me dead to rights on a technicality, but I moved here when I was 5 so for all intents and purposes, I am, like poem-Shem, from here.
That was a fun script. Nicely done.
Just one thing - I think Pharazon's fate sat apart from the rest of the Numenoreans. When the wave and floods came on the fleets and the island, in whatever form that took, Pharazon was himself standing on Valinor, at least according to the stories, and as such would have been untouched by the flood. In Tolkien's accounts, Pharazon was buried in a cave, and not in the water. Those stories don't have to be right, though, but I am just saying that I have never, and others probably haven't either, envisioned Pharazon buried in the flood and thus "wet" like so many others.
I agree Shem is probably telling the truth.
Somehow I’d forgotten that Pharazon was buried in a cave and not drowned. Checking my epub of The Silmarillion, I see that I’d even highlighted that passage, but somehow it still slipped my mind.
Bill, I think the only way to understand Pharazon reincarnating at all is if he was released from prison by Jesus, which implies at least some degree of repentance and forgiveness. I think that renders problematic your idea that he had several subsequent "bad guy" incarnations such as King Noah. Also, Noah lived long before Jesus, so Pharazon would still have been imprisoned at that time. (Peter was also born before Jesus' visit to the spirits in prison, but I'm sure you're more comfortable tinkering with biblical chronology than with that of the BoM.)
Yes, if your assumptions are correct here, my idea of Pharazon as multiple iterations of subsequent characters would be impossible. But I differ on these assumptions, I think, including the main one that Pharazon was stuck in a prison that whole time. In my own dreams, he escaped the pumpkin field (while the other Dir/ Deer did not), and I was unable to stop him from doing so, even in his wounded state, hobbling on his one leg on his crutches. His fate was singled out and set apart from the rest of the pack.
I am not sure Pharazon's fate is sufficiently known or clear enough to make definitive statements that he was in a prison between Numenor and Jesus. Or, even if so, that he wouldn't have been able to escape, perhaps multiple times. As the stories go, the man Beren escaped prison long before Eru was born as Jesus, and there is the implication in Daymon's writings that this paved the way for others who were then able to access the same 'cut' that Beren did and could not be held back from returning. This was referred to as a "Breaking of Mandos' reign" with Mandos being Tolkien's figure for the keeper of the dead (Spirits went to the Halls of Mandos). It was something lamented by Pengolodh or whoever was channeled as somewhat complicating things a bit, from their perspective.
Basically, were Pharazon to be in prison, I am not sure we can confidently say he couldn't be contained within it, based on other events. In fact, one of the play on words for being a "Jay Bird", which is associated with Pharazon, is to be a Jail Bird, being a person who is constantly in and out of jail. A habitual criminal.
As for being Peter, I don't currently believe Pharazon is Peter. That was a story I explored with significant time and effort last year, but then abandoned in terms of being my prevailing theory. I change my mind all of the time, though, as I think about new things, so I am definitely open to returning to it, but right now I am thinking about other things. I do call out those Peter references in my comments here, though, to keep my mind open to all possibilities and I know you are thinking about it. So, again maybe so, but other possibilities, too, some that seem more likely currently.
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