CHAPTER 15: INSTRUCTED IN THE SONGS OF THE LORD Dies irae, dies illa, Dinosaurus fit aquila, Teste Darwin cum gorillâ. Rex Hunnorum est Attila! Circumflex et nunc cedilla, Potentilla tormentilla, Mexicali Rose tortilla, Solis ortus in Tequilâ: Haec est via Amarillo? Horatius Jacobus Carbonator, ‘Baseborn Palinode’ Last night the bland Archdeacon Blennerhassett Blane and I were playing Inon Zur’s Prince of Persia with an ensemble called the Boone Silver Band who needed two extra tubas. By the time you’ve studied chapter 15, you’ll be able to find the fourth, sixteenth, and twenty-second words of the foregoing sentence encrypted gematrically in the epigraphic poem. What a reward! Now let us begin. Numbers are important in the Bible. Two she-bears tear forty and two children in II Kings 2. 24. In John 21. 11 a net contains an hundred and fifty-three fish. Revelation 13. 18 tells us to count the number . And Psalm 87. 6 says, The LORD shall count . So you don’t feel uneasy about having found a whole garden of numbers in two verses of Psalm 49. A Canadian scholar called Lexis Picot dislikes the idea of a numerical message in poetry of any kind, but then he has been brought up to believe that poetry is created only by Forlorn Bosoms ’Neath Th’ Afflicted Welkin, and that the job of its creators is to address Eternal Problems, or Sublime Intimations, or Metaphysical Yearnings. When Picot reads Into the valley of death Rode the six hundred he savours the tragedy and ignores the numerical specificity. He doesn’t know the dictum of Alexander Pope: Most by NUMBERS judge a Poet’s song. Lexis Picot has never read the words of John Milton: Feed on thoughts that voluntarie move Harmonious NUMBERS, Now the word numbers in each of the last two citations actually denotes units of metrical verse, but there is nothing unpoetic about numbers in the mathematical sense. You can think of examples for yourselves. ‘Four and twenty blackbirds in the nursery rhyme,’ says Rosie. ‘Sixty thousand bugles in The Song of Roland ,’ you say. ‘Jamshyd’s Sev’n-ring’d Cup in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ,’ says Delia. 294 Hereby hangs a tale, for Omar Khayyam was rather good at numbers. He was a major figure in the history of mathematics and chronology. We still have his treatise on algebra and his commentary on Euclid. Once in Samarkand I heard a man saying with some pride that Omar Khayyam the astronomer had lived in the Golden City for several years. Throughout the English-speaking world Omar Khayyam is best known as a poet, thanks largely to the translator Edward Fitzgerald, who published his first free rendering of the Rubaiyat in 1859 and his second in 1868. You recall the opening stanza of the 1859 version. Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. You notice how much better it is than the second edition of 1868. Wake! For the Sun behind yon Eastern height Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night; And to the field of Heav'n ascending, strikes The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light. You’re reminded that many compositions survive in more than one version. Think of Mucha’s Été . In the course of your travels, you’ve seen the pastel design (still wonderfully alive), the preliminary drawing, and the final panneau . In the same connection you remember the Bruckner symphonies: two versions of no 1, two versions of no 2, three versions of no 3, and three versions of no 4. Then you think of Psalm 18 and its alternative version, II Samuel 22. That brings you back to the 1868 Omar Khayyam. Why did Fitzgerald turn his graceful bird of paradise (the 1859 version) into such a clumsy old crow? Yon makes a bad weak syllable; Session is an ugly piece of padding; the next word of makes a bad strong syllable; from night is illogical – stars belong to night, and once they go night is over; line 3 is unfluent; and strikes…..with a Shaft is a good bit less exciting than has caught…..in a Noose . What was Fitzgerald doing? Suddenly you are struck by an utterly frivolous idea, which you think of working into a humorous article. Fitzgerald was using the 1868 version to send a secret message. You remember three words of stanza 51. Yes; and a single Alif were the clue -- Could you but find it -- to the Treasure-house, And peradventure to THE MASTER too….. A single Aleph! At once you realize. Fitzgerald wants you to look at the individual letters of his poem. Well, take the last three words of stanza 1. Shaft of Light must involve an acrostic, for the three initials spell sol , the Latin word for ‘sun’. Then you recall stanza 12 – the bit about singing in the Wilderness . Sol must have a musical meaning as well: it’s sol as in solfa , the fifth degree of a scale that runs ut , re , mi , fa , sol . What-ho! That’s enough frivolity, you tell yourself sternly, but there’s still something in your head about alternative versions. What is it? Oh, yes -- David’s song in II Samuel 22, and the ‘revised version’ in Psalm 18. You decide to look up both passages in English and Hebrew. 295 The first three verses of II Samuel 22 read as follows in Hebrew. (Verse 1 = the first two lines, verse 2 = the middle line, and verse 3 = the last two lines.) וידבר דוד ליהוה את דברי השירה הזאת ביום הציל יהוה אתו מכף כל איביו ומכף שאול ויאמר יהוה סלעי ומצדתי ומפלטי לי אלהי צורי אחסה בו מגני וקרן ישעי משגבי ומנוסי משעי מחמס תשעני II Samuel 22 may represent the original form of David’s song. Verses 1, 2, and 3 of the chapter read as follows in the AV: And David spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day that the LORD had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul: And he said, The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence. The first three verses of Psalm 18 read as follows in Hebrew. (Verse 1 = the first three lines, verse 2 = the fourth line, and verse 3 = the last two lines.) למנצח לעבד יהוה לדוד אשר דבר ליהוה -את דברי השירה הזאת ביום הציל- יהוה אותו מכף כל- איביו ומיד שאול ויאמר ארחמך יהוה חזקי יהוה סלעי ומצודתי ומפלטי אלי צורי אחסה- בו מגני וקרן- יש עי משגבי The first three verses of Psalm 18 (in the AV, title plus verses 1 and 2), read as follows. To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, the servant of the LORD, who spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day that the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul: And he said, I will love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. Four differences between the versions leap to your eye at once. First, the Hebrew word for ‘him’ is spelled aleph-tau-wau in II Samuel 22. 1 (below, left), but aleph- wau-tau-wau in Psalm 18. 1 (below, right). אותו אתו 296 (The case of judgment and judgement in British English is similar: both forms are correct.) Secondly, the introductory verse in II Samuel uses the LORD’s name twice….. וידבר דוד ל יהוה את דברי השירה הזאת ביום הציל יהוה אתו מכף כל איביו ומכף שאול …..but verse 1 of Psalm 18 makes a point of using the LORD’s name three times in the course of its first fourteen words. למנצח לעבד יהוה לדוד אשר דבר ל יהוה -את דברי השירה הזאת ביום הציל- יהוה Thirdly, while in II Samuel the word kaph-pe is used for ‘hand’ each time….. מ כף כל איביו ומ כף שאול …..two different words are used in Psalm 18: first kaph-pe, and then yodh-daleth. מ כף כל- איביו ומ יד שאול Fourthly, the two Hebrew words which begin the actual song in II Samuel ( = The LORD is my rock, and my fortress)….. יהוה סלעי …..are preceded in Psalm 18 by a declaration ( = I will love thee, O LORD, my strength): ארחמך יהוה חזקי יהוה סלעי Why in Psalm 18 does David describe himself as ‘the servant of the LORD’, you wonder, when he’s going to use the LORD’s name twice more in the next nine Hebrew words? Has he some didactic purpose? Does he want us to focus on the LORD’s name in the actual song? You look at the Hebrew text. The first mention of the LORD’s name begins on the tenth character of the psalm’s heading, and the character involved, yodh, has a numerical value of ten in 400 Hebrew gematria. That doesn’t strike you as helpful, but it prompts you to look at the tenth sung word of the actual song.