Cult Of The Ineffable Poem by gershon hepner

The cult of the ineffable,
the mystic, cryptically hermetic,
implausible and laughable,
translated into the demotic,
obscured by mumbo-jumbo of
vague archaistic texts and lore,
makes have-nots think perhaps they have
discovered there where no there’s there.

Kabbalah, poetry and art
can’t help us find–since God has banished
his presence from the human heart–
the place for which the soul is famished.
Although we may attempt with reason
to rise like angels climbing ladders
to spaces infinite and awesome,
we cannot see beyond the shadows.

From intellectual suicide
protect us all, dear Lord, lest we
attempt to find the light you hide
from charlatans who claim to see,
and show as they confabulate,
the hidden light of which they teach
in metaphors that simulate
the similes that over-reach.

Victor Brombert reviews 'Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist, ' by Myriam Anissimov (The Overlook Press) in NYT Book Review, January 24,1999. Brombert says of Levi:

Throughout his life, he retained his faith in the clarity of thinking, his reverence for language and communication. His love of philology went along with a durable distaste for obscure writing. In 'Other People's Trades' he denounced the cult of the ineffable and of hermetic literature as a form of suicide......And we might do well to ponder the warning given in his last book, 'The Drowned and the Saved, ' of how stripped we are when we allow the ideology of death to take over: 'Reason, art and poetry are no help in deciphering a place from which they have been banished.'


1/24/99,5/7/07