In the last book by Vonne van der Meer, personal injury, a girl jokes out of courtesy that she sometimes reads the Bible, whereupon the woman opposite her happily asks what she thinks is the best story. The girl has no idea and the woman tries differently: “The most beautiful words then?” In desperation she says, “The fish is paid dearly.” Of course, the woman does not immediately know that Biblical statement.
When asked, she calls out the desperate words: “God, my God, why…” Not what you hope someone will say.
As it happens when you are reading, and certainly if it is a book by Vonne van der Meer, lower your book for a while and start thinking. Which story would I like best? Oof. No idea either. Not because I don’t know any of them, but maybe because I don’t live with those stories that way, only when it comes out, with a painting, a poem, sometimes in a conversation. Best sentences then?
Now we’re getting somewhere. ‘Man, his days are like the grass’; ‘Teach us to number our days so that we may obtain a heart of wisdom’; “Do what your hand finds to do” – Psalm verses and some Ecclesiastes, that’s the main thing I think. Poetry or something similar.
When I think for a moment, other texts come to mind, excerpts from Job, the Priestly Victory, and of course: “But not as I will, but as You will.” Or what exactly is it like.
Inevitables
I look it up in the NIV, the New Bible Translation from 2004. Much more detailed than I think: “But let it not be as I will, but as you will.” hmm. Bit of a lot of words. So what did the previous Bible translation say? The same, it turns out. How do I get that short version? The State Translation? No, he has it more solemn: “But not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” That short makes it much more succinct and easier to remember those words as a kind of spell, a spell that says something like: resign yourself to the inevitable.
Rather, you would rather not just resign yourself to inevitability, if you must, but also have a little fun, as Ecclesiastes recommends: “So eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart. […] Enjoy life with the woman you love. Enjoy all the days of your life that God has given you.” Ecclesiastes offers that as a counterbalance to the ‘air and void’ that would make up existence, since we are going to die.
Thus I drifted slowly away from beautiful phrases and passages, and so I sought out that one psalm which I would have preferred to have mentioned at once if anyone had asked me a question, 131: “No, I have become silent, / I have my soul to rested. / Like a child on its mother’s arm, like a child my soul is within me.” Beautiful.
Why is that so beautiful? It somehow contributes to the fact that those lines come from the Bible, I think, although I’m not sure how. What if that expensive fish had come from the Bible? What if Kniertje hadn’t been called Kniertje but Ruth? But you immediately see a picture of an actress with a basket of fish in front of you, and then it feels dated.
The fact that that quiet soul is so beautiful has something to do with the age of the Bible text in a favorable sense. The truth must be old. As old as people’s desire to find peace with existence and ephemerality.