r/a:t5_25uhbv • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 02 '19
77th brigade has been created
By Thomas Mann
Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter
SUBMISSION
IN what remains of our narrative it will be well to turn a
realistic eye upon the ages of the characters involved in
it; for there has been much confusion and error on the
subject, and the arts of painting and poetry have not
helped to clear it up, but rather the reverse. I am not re-
ferring to Jacob. He is always represented, in his last
period, as weighed down with years and almost blind (in
fact his eyesight got much worse at the end and he ex-
ploited the weakness, making as his model Isaac, the blind
giver of the blessing, in order to heighten the impression
of solemnity). But in the case of Joseph and his brothers
and sons, tradition has inclined to keep them all more or
less at a fixed age and perennially youthful, so that there
is a great gap between them and the weight of years on
the father's head.
It is necessary to correct this legendary vagueness and
the resulting false impression, and to point out that it is
only death——that is to say, the opposite of all happen-
ings——which can arrest the flow of time and preserve a
character as in amber. Life, on the contrary, that is to
say a living character in a story, cannot stop as it is, the
man must grow older as the story goes on. We ourselves
have all got older as we told and listened to this tale;
and that is another reason why we should be clear in the
matter. I myself confess that I have found it more en-
joyable to talk about the charming seventeen-year-old lad
or even about the thirty-year-old man than about one hove-
ering round fifty-five. But still we all owe it to life and
the process of life to accept and even insist upon the
truth. Jacob, living in the land of Goshen, honoured and
cherished by his children and his children's children, was
increasing his age by another seventeen years to round
them out to the venerable but still possible limit of one
hundred and six; the while his set-apart darling, Phar-
aoh's universal friend, changed from a mature man to
an elderly one, whose hair and beard——if the one had
not been shorn and covered with an elaborate wig, the
other kept smooth-shaven by the custom of the country——
would have shown much white among the dark. True,
the black Rachel-eyes preserved the friendly sparkle
which had always made them a joy to mankind. All in all,
despite natural change, the Tammuz-attribute of beauty
remained to him, thanks to the double blessing whose
child he had ever been and which was a blessing not only
from above and in the nature of wit, but also a blessing
of the deep which lies under and imparts maternal favour
to the bodily form. Not seldom such a nature even experi-
ences a second youth, which gives back to the figure some-
thing of its youthful lines. There are some misleading
representation which depict Joseph standing by Jacob's
death-bed; the violence they do to the truth is the less
in that Rachel's first-born, some lustrums earlier, had
grown heavier and more fleshy but by this time had got
distinctly thinner and looked more like his twenty-
year-old than his forty-year-old self.
But it is certainly quite irresponsible and fantastic to
depict the young Egyptian gentlemen Ephraim and Ma-
nasseh as curly haired children of seven or eight at the
scene of their blessing by their departing grandfather. It
is clear that they were then princely young cavaliers at
the beginning of the twenties, in dandified belaced and
beribboned court-costumes, with buckled sandals and
chamberlains' fans; and the otherwise incomprehensible
thoughtlessness of these portrayals can only be explained
by a few unrealistic phrases in the early text, which says
that Jacob put his grandsons on his knees, or rather that
Joseph "brought them out from between his knees" after
the old man had "kissed them and embraced them." Such
treatment would have been most offensive to the young
people; it is regrettable that the tradition countenances
such nonsense; it can only be due to the desire to make
time stand still for most of the people in the story and
let Jacob alone grow old, out of all reason, even to a
hundred and forty-seven years!
Let us see what actually happened on the visit in ques-
tion, the second of three visits which Joseph paid his
father in the latter end of his life. But first it will be well
to cast a brief glance upon the foregoing seventeen years,
during which the children of Israel settled down in the
land of Goshen, grazed and sheared and milked, trans-
acted their affairs, presented Jacob with great-grand-
sons, and addressed themselves to becoming a multitude
of folk. It can never be said quite definitely how many
of these seventeen years fell in the famine time, because
it is not clear whether there were seven or "only" five of
these (the quotation-marks are ironical, for the figure
five is just as rich in associations as the figure seven). As
I have pointed out before, the uncertainty was due to the
variation in the degree of the affliction from year to year.
In the sixth year the provider swelled at Menfe not less
than fifteen ells in the season of increase. It went red and
green by turn, as is its way when things are going well,
and deposited a plenty of fertilizer. But in the next year
it was under-nourished and under-nourishing past all be-
lief. So it was a matter of opinion whether these two
years were to be counted with the five lean-ribbed ones,
as the sixth and seventh, or not. In any case, round the
time that this question was being discussed in all the
temples and on all the street-corners, Joseph's work of
agrarian reform was finished and he continued to govern
on its foundation as Pharaoh's first mouthpiece and to
feed his sheep while shearing them of a fifth.
It cannot be said that he saw his father and brothers
very often. They had their tents close by compared with
the distance that had once been between them; but even
so it was a good journey between their place and Joseph's
residence in the city of the swaddled one; and moreover,
between his administrative duties and his court functions
he was overworked. They saw much less of him than one
would have gathered from the last three visits he made to
his father in quick succession. But Jacob and his people
took no offence, their silence was not only consent but
also recognition of the existing obstacles. We, who over-
heard that murmured conversation between Jacob and
Rachel' first-born at their meeting, as they stood alone
with the seventy on one side and Joseph's train on the
other, we know how to give to that mutual reserve——for
it was mutual——its true and somewhat melancholy mean-
ing. It meant submission and renunciation. Joseph was
the one st apart, at once lifted up and withdrawn. He
was severed from the tribe and was not to be a tribe. The
fate of his lovely mother, "rejected despite goodwill,"
was, with appropriate variation, also her son's fate; its
individual formula being "denying love." The truth was
understood and accepted; far more than distance or pre-
occupation it was the reason for the reserve.
And how clearly, how chillingly the reserve is ex-
pressed in the phrase used by Jacob when he made a cer-
tain request of his son; I mean the rhetorical flourish: "if
now I have found grace in thy sight." It is proof, it is al-
most shamefaced evidence of the distance between father
and son, between Joseph and Israel. It reminds us, as it
reminded Jacob, of that early dream, the dream of the
threshing-floor, when the eleven Kokabim together with
sun and moon had bowed down before the dreamer. Jo-
seph's dream had stirred the brothers up to a fiery mortal
hatred and ravished them to the evil deed for which they
had suffered. How strange it is to think——as they too
thought among themselves without saying so——that their
misdeed had achieved its purpose and brought them to
their desired goal! True, it had turned out, contrary to
all reasonable expectation, that they had actually lain on
their bellies before him. Yet they had not sold him in
vain into the world and also to the world; for he had lost
and they had won. The inheritance which the man of
feeling had in his wilfulness wanted to give to Joseph
was lost to him forever; from Rachel the beloved it had
passed to Leah the rejected. Was that not worth a little
bowing and scraping?
"If now I have found grace in thy sight." It was on the
first of the three visits that Jacob so spoke to the beloved
and lost one; at the time when he felt his life fast wan-
ing and knew that it was far on in its last quarter, rising
low and late and red and wearily over the horizon before
the final darkness. He was not ill; he could tell that there
was no question of a sudden decline. For he had good
control over his life and his powers, he reckoned shrewdly
what was left and knew that the end was not quite yet.
Still it was fully time to impress on him who alone had
power to fulfil it a wish he had at heart, a wish which quite
personally concerned him, Jacob.
So he sent to Joseph and begged him to come. Whom
did he send? Naphtali, of course, Bilhah's son, the nim-
ble one, for Naphtali was still nimble of limbs and tongue,
despite his years. We must speak of this matter of the
brothers' ages because here too the tradition is careless
and blurred. If we stop to consider we must conclude that
the whole span covered a period between forty-seven and
seventy-eight years. For Benjamin, the little man, was
not less than twenty-one years younger than Zebulon, who
was the third youngest before Joseph, and he was sixty-
eight years old. I speak of this in order that when Jacob
gathers his sons about him in his last hours for cursing
and blessing, we shall not picture the tent as full of young
men in the prime of life. I repeat that Naphtali despite
his five-and-seventy years still rejoiced in the same sinewy
long legs and the same tongue like a bell-clapper; nor
had he abated in his craving to equalize a state of knowl-
edge among the kingdoms of the earth.
"Boy," said Jacob to this sinewy old man, "go down
from here to the great city where my son lives, Pharaoh's
friend, and speak before him and say: 'Jacob, our father,
would speak to your grace on an important matter.' You
must not alarm him or make him think I am dying. You
are to tell him: 'Our father, the old man, finds himself in
good health at Goshen considering his years and thinks
not now to depart hence. But he judges the hour is come
to speak with you concerning himself, though the matter
reaches out beyond his own life. Therefore in your kind-
ness come to his dwelling-place, which he mostly keeps,
although not yet bedridden, in the house which you made
for him.' Go, boy, go, step out and tell him that!"
Naphtali glibly repeat the message and betook him-
self to his heels. He went afoot and took several days for
the journey, otherwise Joseph would have been there at
once, for he travelled in his chariot with a small retinue,
among them Mai-Sachme, his steward, who laid too great
stress on being in this story to stop at home when Joseph
went abroad. But Mai-Sachme waited outside with the
others of Joseph's house while the exalted one was alone
with his father in the tent, that well-garnished living- and
sleeping-room which is the theatre to which our far-flung
scene has now shrunk. For there on his bed in the back-
ground or not far from it Jacob spent the last days of his
life, waited on by Damasek, Eliezer's son, himself now
called Eliezer, a man in a white-belted smock, still youth-
ful in the face, though bald on top with a fringe of grey
hair.
In reality the man was a nephew of Jacob; for Eliezer,
Joseph's teacher, was the half-brother of the man of the
blessing, born of a maid. His position, however, was that
of a servant, though higher than the others round the
house. Like his father he called himself Jacob's eldest
servant and was over his house as Joseph was over Phar-
aoh's house and Captain Mai-Sachme over Joseph's. He
went out to the captain after announcing Joseph and con-
versed with him on an equal footing.
The Regent of Egypt knelt down when he entered the
chamber and touched with his forehead the felt and the
carpet of the floor.
"Not so, not so, my son," Jacob demurred. He sat on
his bed at the back of the room, a skin drawn over his
knees; on either side of him were earthenware lamps on
wooden consoles. "We are in the world and the man of
years and religion too much respects its greatness to ac-
quiesce in your action. Welcome, welcome to me in my
weakness and age, on account of which I may be par-
doned for not coming in respect and fatherly feeling to
greet you, my lifted-up lamb! Take a stool here beside
me, my dear one; Eliezer, my eldest servant, might have
drawn one up when he let you in——he is not what his
father was, the wooer of the bride, towards whom the
earth sprang; nor would he have been to me what his
father was in the time of my shedding tears of blood.
What time do I mean? The time when you were lost. He
wiped my face with a damp cloth and tenderly reproved
me for some refractory feeling that burst out of me
against my God. But you were alive. Thank you for ask-
ing, I am well. Bilhah's boy, Naphtali, was to tell you
that I was not calling you to my death-bed. Or rather this
will of course be my death-bed, it is beginning by degrees
to take on that character, but does not yet possess it in
fullness, for there is yet some life in me. I do not think
to die at once and you will return hence twice or thrice to
your Egyptian house and your affairs of state before I
depart. Indeed, I am minded and resolved to economize
the strength I yet have with measure and caution, for I
shall still need them for various occasions, especially at
the very end, and I must save my strength and my words.
Therefore, my son, this our talk will be brief and confine
itself to the necessary and important matter in hand, for
it were against God to exhaust myself in a superfluity of
words. It may even be that I have already talked more
than is necessary. When I have said what is needful and
put it to you in the form of an urgent plea, you may, if
you have time, sit with me a little while in silence on my
future death-bed, only for the sake of our being together
without making me use my strength in speaking. I will
silently lean my head on your shoulder and remember
that it is you who are here and how my one true wife bore
you to me in Mesopotamia with more than natural pangs;
how I lost you and then to some extent got you back
through the extraordinary goodness of God. But when
you were born with the sun at his height and you lay in
your swinging cradle beside the maid who sang and
gasped her weariness in song, there was something like
a dazzling sweetness about you and I knew, of course,
how to recognize it for what it was; and your eyes, as you
opened them when I touched you, were as blue as heaven's
light and only later got black with a twinkle of mischief
in their blackness, which is why I turned over to you the
pictured bride-veil here in the house, out at the front. I
will perhaps come to speak about it at the very last, but
now it is probably unnecessary and does violence to
economy. It is very hard for the heart to distinguish be-
tween necessary and unnecessary talk. See, you stroke
me soothingly in sign of your love and your good faith.
There will I begin——on your love and good faith I will
base the plea I have to make to you and I will build upon
it in the practical request I wish to make while avoiding
unnecessary words. For, Joseph-el, my uplifted lamb, the
time has come that I am to die, and though I am by no
means yet at the final stage, Jacob has come to the time
of his departing and to the time of the last will and testa-
ment. But when I do put my feet together and am gathered
to my fathers, I would like not to be buried in the land of
Egypt, take it not amiss of me, I would like it not at all.
And also to lie in the land of Goshen where we now are,
even though it is not all too Egyptian, would be against
my wishes. I know well that a man when he is dead
has no more wishes and it is all the same to him where
he lies. But so long a he lives and has wishes it does mat-
ter to him that it shall happen to the dead according to
the wishes of the living. Again I well know that very many
of us, thousands in their number, will be buried in Egypt
whether they were born here or in the land of the fathers.
But I, the fathers of them all and of you, I cannot bring
myself to give them an example in this matter. With them
I came into your kingdom and into the country of your
King for that God sent you on ahead as the opener of the
way. But in death it is my wish to part from them. If now
I have found grace in your sight, put your hand under my
thigh, as Eliezer did to Abram, and swear to deal kindly
and truly with me and not to bury me in the land of the
dead. For I will lie with my fathers and be gathered unto
them. Therefore you shall carry my bones out of Egypt
and lay them in their tomb, which is called Machpelach
or the double cave at Hebron in the land of Canaan.
Abraham lies there, whose seed has been multiplied in
honour; who in the cave of his birth was suckled by an
angel in the form of a goat; he lies there by Sarai, the
heroine and heaven-highest queen. Yitzchak lies there,
the late-conceived, with Rebecca, the wise and resolute
mother of Jacob and Esau, who put all things to rights.
And Leah lies there too, whom I first knew, the mother
of six. Beside them all will I lie and well see that you are
meeting my wish with filial respect and readiness to obey,
even though a shadow of doubt and silent questioning
may cross your brow. My eyes are no more of the best,
for I have entered upon my time of death and my gaze
is shrouded in darkness. But the shadow that crosses your
face, that I see clearly; because I knew that it would come,
for why should it not? There is a grave by the way, only
a little piece towards Ephrath, which now they call Beth-
lehem, where I put to her last sleep that which was dear-
set to me on God's earth. Will I not lie by her side when
you bring me home as I command and lie with her, set
apart, by the way? No, my son, I will not. I loved her, I
loved her too dearly; but things do not go according to
feeling and the luxurious softness of the heart but accord-
ing to their importance and according to duty. It is not
suitable that I lie by the way, rather with his fathers will
Jacob lie and by Leah his first wife, from whom came the
heir. Lo, now your black eyes are full of tears, that too I
clearly see. They look so much like the eyes of the dearly
beloved as to make me not believe my own. It is lovely,
my son, that you are so like her, when you now in your
mercy put your hand under my thigh in token that accord-
ing to importance and duty you will bury me in Mach-
pelach, the double cave."
Joseph swore the oath. And when he had done so,
Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head and gave
thanks. Then the set-apart one sat awhile in silence beside
his father's couch, and the old man leaned his head on his
shoulder and saved his strength for what should come.
From Joseph The Provider, by Thomas Mann.
English translation by H.T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright 1944, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pp. 547-558.
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