flâneur

Our Homeland The Text

salmagundi.skidmore.edu · 8,645 words · saved by 1 readers

Successive, often polemic interpretations, citations in a context of sacred doctrine or of political-historical opportunity, construe, around the archaic, cardinal words in the Hebrew canon, a resonant field. An aura of vital paraphrase and definition extends around the word-core; or of dubious definition and misunderstanding, no less dynamic (misunderstanding can yield the more urgent reading, the more compelling attention). Meaning vibrates as does a crystal, out of whose hidden clarity pulsate fragmentation and interference. To the word mikra scholars of Biblical and Talmudic Hebrew attach a network of meanings. They question its literal roots - kof, resh, alef, and the consonantal mi. The definitions put forward are polysémie, they delineate a semantic field (again, literally, à la lettre). The mikra may, at the outset, have been the place of summoning, of vocation and con-vocation. To experience the Torah and Talmud as mikra, to apprehend these texts in cognitive and emotional ple

Our Homeland The Text - Salmagundi Magazine Our Homeland, the Text By George Steiner Successive, often polemic interpretations, citations in a context of sacred doctrine or of political-historical opportunity, construe, around the archaic, cardinal words in the Hebrew canon, a resonant field. An aura of vital paraphrase and definition extends around the word-core; or of dubious definition and misunderstanding, no less dynamic (misunderstanding can yield the more urgent reading, the more compelling attention). Meaning vibrates as does a crystal, out of whose hidden clarity pulsate fragmentation

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