In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

cjO Freud The Curse ofthe Literally Figurative One of the hallmarks of a "primitive" as opposed to modern (or postmodern) approach to language is that deity speaks through the poet or priest: the metacognitive assumption is that there is a "transcendental signifier " (note our era's paralinguistic phrasing) out there and that the speaker is not the source but rather the occasion for the message.66 The undeniable exteriority of the god-term is everything. Even if the message is itself (e.g., YHWH's answer to Moses in Exodus 3:14-15 that "I am that I am" and that "I am" has sent Moses to lead his people out of Egypt), even ifwhat we are speaking about is the very circularity ofthe poetic function, that message still carries a divine revelation. The burning-bush metaphor and the play with language surrounding the voice of YHWH do not, to put it mildly, solve the mystery or decode the poetry. "I am that I am" is, in J. P. Fokkelman's formulation, a being whose self-chosen role is to stand-in-relation-to: "God is the only one who can entirelydevelop the fullness ofhis being. But he cannot be happy ifhis creation and his creatures ... do not get the chance to do so as well, within their appointed limits." 67 At the same time, these words are both a statement offact ("I am") and a statement of intentionality/implied futurity ("that I am"), which 66. Discussing Plato's well-known suspicions about poets in The Republic as well as the dangers of poetry (e.g., its "unthought charm") as expressed in various formulations by Socrates in Ion and Theaetetus, Susan Stewart sums up the case for and against "lyric possession" as follows: "Socrates is interested in critiquing the claims to knowledge of rhapsodists such as Ion, but he relegates the poet to a similar position by viewing the poet as a conduit to the power of the muse or God. The meaning ofpossession here does not reside simply in the idea that the poet's utterances are not original or reasoned. Rather, such utterances pass through the speaker by means of an external force. One is 'beside oneself,' and the distinction Socrates draws in the Theaetetus between having and possessing knowledge has thereby complex implications for both the situation of the muse who possesses the poet and the situation of the poet who merely has what the muse endows to him" (Susan Stewart, "Lyric Possession," Critical Inquiry 22.1 [Autumn 1995J: 34-63; this passage is cited from p. 35). 67. "Exodus," in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 56-65; this passage is taken from p. 63. 45 Copyrighted Material 46 PART I. Realizing Metaphors, Situating Pushkin is to say they are the expression of riddling simultaneity and ofmeaning more than one thing at once that lies at the heart of poetry.6S To call the self-naming ofthis originary Other merely linguistic (verbal play without fear or awe) or to locate the need to speak in Moses (or his narrator) rather than in God is to tear both the meaning and the poetry out of this confrontation, which is the same thing. In fact, the curse of the modern-day reader is, one might opine, the same curse facing the initially doubting Moses, only in reverse, from hyperliteralism (the rod metamorphosing into the serpent) to hyperfiguralism (the serpent always meaning/being something other than itself): "But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'" (Exodus 4:1). The stand-in-relation-to becomes a thing in itself, an occasion for idolatry. To a modern sensibility, rods don't literally turn into serpents, and so the text can't mean what it says. Instead, what we must be talking about is language's ability to transform itself, to make metaphors. It is later in Exodus, after the successful liberation of Israel from the yoke of Egypt, that we come upon a scene that is crucial for our story- both Freud's and, as it turns out, Pushkin's and Derzhavin's. This is, significantly, the first instance in the Bible of a community's attempt at literal interpretation. First, let us look at it in the words ofthe Revised Standard Version: And Aaron said to them, "Take offthe rings ofgold which are in...

Share