FROM CAIRO TO CORDOBA

8/4/2019 FROM CAIRO TO CORDOBA

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interest angiblelSince he earlynineteenthcentury heartist's tudiohasbeena space fexcited isitation-EuEBneDelacroix's arisdigsareanearlyexamp'ie. ut thesolitarysit-ter n thehistorian'srudyattracts ovoyeurs.What thrill is o be ound n hoursof stillness,the occasionalusdeof paper, he all too in-terminentclickins of comouter evs?Some ormsoFspelunkingn the pastaremoreeasily oldasexciting.Archaeology,orexample, loaked n the romanticismof dis-coverycanwield he whip oflndianaJones.But the historian is a fisure of boredomand undmelin.rr, .-.-b.r. historv s the

SacrediashThe LostandFound,Worldof theCairo Geniza.By AdinaHoffrnanandPeterCole.Schocken.86pp.526.95.vocationof the only ghost on the faculryofHogwarts, a prof so absent-minded e failsto notice hat he hasdied,droning specuallyon. If the making and he makersof historyaresouninteresting,hen what of themade?What claim doeshistory especially hat ofthe distantpast,haveon our attention?Few universiw professorswrite on such

S0l0monchechterxamininganuscriptsn he'Cair0apartment"t heCambridgeniversityibraryFrom airooC6rdobaby DAVID IRENBERG

pril 28 is "Thke Our Daughters oWork Day": not a maior holiday,butone that makes me anxious.Whatbothersme s not the principleor thetask-I donthavea dauEhter-but themoregeneralquestion t poses o an earnestmedievalhistorian ike myself.What is mywork?How can make hat work visible, tsDauid Nirenberg on the Cmnmittee n SocialThought t theUniztersityf Chicago trJudaismandChristianArt: AestheticAnxieties rom theCatacombso Colonialism witbHerbertKessler)is outfi'rn the Uniaerityof Pennsyh.taninress.


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28questions,perhapsbecause hey have theprivilege of working in institutions that donot demand he daily justificationof theirexistence. dina Hoffrnan and Peter Coleare not university professors; ut they arescholarsdeeply earned n the past; ntel-lecrual activistspassionately ngagedwiththe present;and at the same ime writerswho live by their pen. They are, o coin aphrase, public scholars," hich is also osay hat they are among he last specimensof a speciesirtually extinguished y a mod-ern world. The book they have ust given:us,Sacred iash, s equally rare: a preciousmeditation on the ways n which the dis-covery flong-hidden oards fhistory cantransform our worlds, and a literary jewelwhosepages urn like thoseof a well-pacedthrilleq but with all the chiseledeleganceand lashes f linguistic surprise hatwe as-sociatewith poetry.Buried reasureswhat he book s about,albeit treasureof a peculiarkind. Hoftnanand Cole tell the storyof a closegone thatwas 18 feet deep, 8 feet long and 6Vz eetwide. The existence f this thousand-year-old closet n the Ben Ezra Synagogue fCairo wasalwaysn someway known by thesynagogue'songregants. ut it wasnt untilthe late nineteenthcentury hat Europeanssrumbled upon its contents-hundreds ofthousandsof piecesof paper, parchmentand papynrswritten in Hebrew, Aramaic,Judeo-Arabic, reelqPersian, atin, Ladino,Yiddish, Syriac, fuabic, Cbptic and evenChinese.(Still more textual material wasfound buried n the communiry's ourtyardand cemetery with competing Europeanagentsacting ike rival guilds of grave ob-bers.)The discoverynecessitated remap-ping of history hat continues o this day.Of course, urial doesnot treasuremake.But in the caseof our Cairo closeteven ieetyrnology f its Hebrew name points tosomething are and strange. Geniza" firstenters Hebrew under Persiandomination,and is perhapsborrowed from the Persianganj kanj):hoard,or hidden reasure.n thebiblical bools of Esther and Ezra, t meansboth the king's treasuries nd his archives,and both senses ass nto the Hebrew ofthe Thlmud,where t designatesomethingstored up, or concealed way.But the He-brew oot s alsoused or theburialof humanbodies,aswhen nignaz-"here lies hiddenthis man"-is written on gravestones;tsfuabic cognate anazah means"funeral."Within the semantic ield of gqniza' textsandbodies ie in suchcloseproximitvas obe ndistinzuishable.

he relationship etween ext and bodyholds n anothersense swell.Justasthe burial of corpses ervesboth todemonstratepiety for the deceasedand o protect he iving rom the dead,so the burial of textsserveda dual purpose.Some extsentered he Geniza or a well-earned est,worn out by long service o thepious.Otherswere mprisonedherebecausethey were eared o be hereticalor corrupt-ing. Still others,perhapshe vastmajority atleast t he BenEzraSpragogue),ere ossedin by forceof habit,simplybecauseheywerepenned, f not in the Holy Tongue, thenin the Hebrew script with which the Jewsof Egypt wrote so much of their Arabic (amixtureknown n the tradeasJudeo-Arabic).But as n the cemeteryno forceof habit canexorcisehe ambivalenceor doublevalence)of the Geniza'sask: preserving ood hingsfrom harm," as onescholarput it, "and badthings from harming." It is a placeof bothpiety anddanger. his ambivalences nicelyreflected n two venerable umors (docu-mentedasearlyas 1488)about he BenEzraGeniza: hat it containeda .magicalTorahscroll copiedby none other tha-nEzra the- Scribe, nd hat t wasprotected rom pryingeyesby a plethoraofscorpionsand a poisonsnake.Hoards require their dragons,evenwhen he treasures text.In the event, he rumois turnedout to beexaggerated,he second ar more than thefirst. The Geniza's irst known Europeanvisitor,Heinrich Heine'sgreat-uncleSimonvan Geldern, survivedhis visit in 1752,ashis diary entry on that occasionmakes lear:"I was n the Elijah srr/nagoguend searchedthe Geniza."Van Geldem mentionsneitherscrolls or snakesnor, or that matter,muchofanything elsebesides iving baksheesh).litde more than a century ater, n 1859, heTalmudistand ravelerJacob afirwasable osee he scrolloi Ezra whichhe did not deemgenuine), ut he "did not find any fiery ser-pentsor scorpions, ndno harmcame o me,thankGod."As for SolomonSchechter, ho"discovered"he Geniza n 1896andclaimedit for CambridgeUniversityand scholarship,we havehis own description f what he sawwhen he climbedup a ladder o peer downinto this textual charnel house rom its onlyopening,high up in awallof the s1'nagogue'swomen's allery:

It is a battlefield of boola, and theliteraryproduction f manycenrurieshad heir sharen the batde,and heirdisjectamem.bra re now strewn overits area.Someof the belliserens haveperishedoutright, and -areliterally

The Nation. June 0.201\ 7ground to du$in the terrible strugglefor space, hilstotheis,as fovenakenby a generalcrush;dresqueezedntobig unshapelyumpL... T\gse lrmpssometimesafford crripg;ly sugges.nvecombinations; s, or instance,whenyou find a pieceof some ationaliqticwork, n which heveryexistence f ei-ther angels r dwils isdenied, lingingfor its very ife to an amulet n whichthesesamebeings mosdy he latter)

are bound over to be on their eoodbehaviour ndnot nterferewith MissJair's ove for somebody. he devel-opment of the romance s obscuredby the fact that the last lines of theamuletaremountedon some .O.U.,or lease, nd this in turn is squeezedbetween he shees of an old moral-ist,who treats ll attention o moneyaffairs with scorn and indimation.Again,all these ontradi.toryhrn.r,cleave ighdy to some sheets rom avery old Bible. This, indeed, oughtto be the last umpire between hem,but it is hardly legible without peel-ing off from its surface he fragmentsof someprintedwork which clings oold nobility with all the obstinacy ndobtrusivenessf rheparuenu.

Endless cribbling, ut nary a snaken sight.This doesnot mean hat therewerenodragons o be slain.One of the beauties fSacred iashs the way t showsushow eachgenerationof Geniza scholars iscoveredits olvn monsters o tilt after in this trove.Solomon Schechter's rason was biblicalcriticism,and houghhe did not find aTorahscrollcopiedbyEzra the Scriben his rea-sure, n the very first Geniza fragment heheld in his handshe descried omethingalmostasmarvelous:he Hebrew ext of abiblical book hitherto known only from itsGreek ranslation,he Wisdomof BenSira,ala Ecclesiasticus.From BenSira,Hoftnan and Cole haveselected n apt epigraph or their volume-"Hidden wisdom and concealed reasure,what is the use of either?"-but Schechterextracted omething ven more importantfrom the ancient ext:an arg"umentgainstwhat he perceived o be the anti-Judaismof biblical scholarshipn his day.Schechterwasespecially orried abouta cutting-edgeschool of German scholarship,known as"source criticism" or "Higher Criticism,"that sought o reconstruct he historyof howandwhen Scripturewasproduced, edactedand transmitted. It was not tle tools ofsource riticism hat worried him-he often


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30used he same ools himself-but someofthe uses o which they were put. Accord-ing to Schechter, he "Higher Criticism"(whichhesometimesalled he"higheranti-Semitism")became n attackonJudaism.

JuliusWellhausen,or example,s famousas the father of the "documentaryhypoth-esis"(identifring several trandsof author-ship-the Jahwist,Elohist, DeuteronomistandPriesdy-and periods f compositionorthe Pentateuch), hichdominatedhe scien-tific studyof the Hebrew Bible until the atetwentieth century.But one of the animatinggoalsof his titanic scholarshipwas o provethat "therehaveneverbeenmore audaciousinventorsof history han he rabbins.. Thisevil propensity oes ack o avery early ime,its root the dominating influence of theLaw, being heroot ofJudaismtself."Fromthis evil root (accordingo Wellhausen)hepropensiry nly becamemorepoisonous,othat after the destructionof the first templein 587BC "thewarmpulse f ife" hadgonefrom Judaism. The soulwas led; the shellremained."There was no continuiry hewrote,betweenhe religion of the Old Tes-tament and he dead egalismof the SecondTempleand s rabbinicdescendants.In the Wisdom of Ben Sira, Schech-ter thought he had found an antidote toWellhausen'soison:a ate SecondGmpletext beloved by the early Thlmud's rabbis,yet spiritual n its moral engagements-farfrom the desiccatedegalism with whichJudaismwas axedby ts Higher Critics,andevenpoetic n its praise f God:

All wisdom comes rom the Lordand s with Him forever.Who cannumber he sands f the sea,and he dropsofrain, and he daysof eternity?...Who can6nd out the height of heaven,and he breadthof the earth, andthe deep, ndwisdom?chechter'sacquisition of the CairoGeniza or Cambridge,and his orga-nizationof its massacref manuscriptsinto an archive,mademany other fu-ture branches f research ossible.nthe yearsbeforehe assumedhe presidencyof theJewishTheologicalSeminaryn NewYork City and leadership f the Conserva-tive movement of AmericanJudaism,hecultivatedan astonishing umber of them.But his most oassionateministrationswere, iaimed, hrough the reconstructionof textslike heHebrewBenSira,at he revivificationof aJewish criptural radition whose brutalvivisection,"as he saw t, was being carried

Tlre Nation.out by the ChristianHigher Criticsof hisday."What inspiredBen Sira,"wrote Schechter,thinking perhapsalso of the inspiration orhis own herculean ffors in the Geniza, wasthe presentand uture of his people."The archiveSchechter rousht to Cam-bridgewould continue o proJu.. biblicalrevelation, but the attention of the nextgeneration f explorers-according,at east,to Hoftnan and Cole'saccountof that nextseneration-wasoriented oward adifferenticriptural marvel discovered n the Geni-zai poefty.Whole worlds of Hebrew versewouldbealmost ntirelyost o uswere t notfor the poemsburied n this one graveyard,and he scholars ho exhumed hem elt em-poweredwith the kissof ife."Eachphotostatis a prayercongealed, achpagea poem ro-zen n place,"wrote MenahemZulay."Thedustofthe generations as o beshakenromthem; heyhave o bewokenand evived; ndthe workersare busy;and a day doesnt passwitlrout resurrecdon." Ztiay was writingof his monumental econstructionof some800 poems written by the sixth- or earlyseventh-century bet Yannai,whosehymnsstudded he synagogue ervices fPalestin-ianJewry or centuries efore hoseserviceswere eshaped y he adoptionofBabylonianrites, and the poems deformed, orgottenand inallyburied n early hirteenttr-centuryCairo. That reconstruction, ublished n1938,was he irst o displayo moderneyesa medievalrycle of Jewish iturgical poetryin is full glory and he ast Hebrew book oemerge rom a press n Nazi Germany.Peter Cole is himself an inspiredwriter,ffanslatorand resuscitator f verse.His ore-viousbook, TheDreamof thePoem, penedEnglishJanguageeaders o an entire worldof Hebrew poetry that emergedunder thetutelage of Arabic verse among the Jewsof Spain.So t should not surprise hat thechapters he and Hoffrnan devote to tiepoetryof the Genizaareespeciallyich. Butneither liturgical poetry nor the poetry ofYannai, or all his gifts (hissystematicseofend hyme, or example,s heearliestn He-brew iterature,andprecociousn thepoeticsof both Near EastandWest), s hesubject ftheir finestpages. hose are eservednsteadfor the poeric treasuresranslatedor us inTheDreamof tbePoem,reasureshat were,like the Judeo-fuabic n which so many ofthe Geniza's exts were written, themselvesthe product ofJewish ife in Muslim lands:mean,of course, he Hebrew poetry of whatthe Muslims called Al-Andalus, the JewsSefarad ndwe(somewhat nachronistically)"medievalSpain."For althoughCairo is farfrom C6rdoba, s closets ell us more about

JuneZU,ZUI Ithe "Golden$.gp?.pf Hebrew'poetry thandoe's ny archivo3in'thg,magnifigentslamiccity in which that poet4u;1yasorR,i.The authors'descrip{qpof thesE}olarlyprojectgivesus a good_se_nse-^ofm impor-tance,not only for thE'fribidftof F{ebrewpoetry but for the living literarure'bf thepresent swell: q ) r

a concatenation f discoveriestretch-ing into the twenw-first century hasonly enhancedhe auraofwonder sur-rounding he poetry'sorigins.Agairlststaggeringdds, atient nd enaciousscholars ave eunited orn pagesorseparatedeavesor. even ust straylinesof manuscriptragments.... otonly new poemsand new collectionsof poems, ut new poets,new kindsof poemsand poets,and the oftenextraordinaryife stories of some ofHebrew iterature's inestwriters have!'een introduced nto the modernliterary mix.

Thesescholars, rite Hoftnan andCole, in-jected Andalusianpoetry into the blood-stream f modernHebrewcultural ife."Onceagain,he pastasdiscoveredn the Geniza sput to work animatingheJewish resent.The poetsand their poems are indeedthrilling. The Moroccan-bornDunash benLabrat (circa 920-990) studied under thegreatsageSaadiaGaon n Babylon,wherehedeveloped system fadapdngArabic poet-ry's ulesof quantitativemeter o the Hebrewlanguage.'rNothingike t haseverbeen eenin Israel,"his llustrious eachers reputed ohavesaid,without stipulatingwhether hesewordSwere praiseor blame.)Dunash ookhis systemwith him whenhe migrated o theCaliphate f C6rdoba,wherehis qrnthesis-forwhich hisownwordsmightserve smotto:"Let Scripturebeyour Eden,and he Arabs'books your paradisegrove"-immediatelysoawned school.But therewerealso hosewho accused im of "destroying he holytongue...by casting t into foreign meters,"and bringing"calamityuponhis people." nthe end, or reasons edonot know,Dunash" wasexiled rom Al-Andalus, ndhispoems, llbut for a few strav ines.were ost.

ost. hat s. until the Genizawas ound.From the oatient rearticulationof itsseveredimbs there emerged ot onlypoemsby Dunashbut deails of his ife,his poetic community,even his wife.At times Hoftnan and Cole work a litdetoo hard to manufacture xcitementor thisDrocessf.textual econstnrction:fu ifin amade-for-TV National Geographicpecial,"


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theywrite of thedirfdiver! ihattwd fr agmentsof a poemfit together.Brti'thdliesult arexcit-ing and hereconstioted prierii s beautifirl,a. miniatili fultlof thotpathosofpaning::t 9air3? LWill her g[{Slinemlerhisgracetul

, ,oor . rq r i l rher bnlv on'in her armsashe, partediOn her left hand he placeda ringfrom his right,on his wrist sheplacedher bracelet.fu a keepsake he ook his mandefrom him,and he n turn took hers rom her.Beautiful, and also probably unique: theunion of fragments eveals he poem to benot by Dunashbut by his wife on the occa-sion of his exile,mfing it the only knownpoem by a woman surviving rom the 500-year history of medievalHebrewverse.The lastchaoter f SacredTiwhsdedicat-ed not to scholars ipoetry but to a historian:specifically, o Shlomo Dov Goitein, whomwe might call the re-founderof Geniza stud-ies.Goiteinwas he fust to re ahze, irca 9 55the significanceof the trash within the trash:not the sacred ragmentsof etemal Scriptureor the ost poetic inla of an mmoral Iiterarytradition but the tattered emnans of quotid-ian ife. There were OUs, canceled ontracs,letters about prices of linen and rumors ofdrought, amulits and shopping ists: n shorgthe tensof thousands f documents rammedinto two trunts for half a century andstowedin an attic only because n early ibrarian hadopposed n principle the burning of anything,no matterhow useless,f suchantiquity.Outofthe contents fthese trunks and other ar-chives,Goitein v/rote what would eventuallybecome the five volumes of his I Mediter-ranean Society, pluralistic history of medi-evalMuslim,Jewishand Christian socialandeconomic ife that gavehistorians heir firstsense f just how interconnected-we mightsayhow globalized-this medievalworld was,and how fluid the relationsbetrreenmembersof itsvariousaiths.Goitein'shistory hasproven resonangnotonly because t aught a new generation of' historians how to explore a vast world ofdocumenation from the disant pastbut alsobecauseGoitein worked hard to make hatpast relevant to our present. FIis was not alac\rmose medievalworld overflowingwithpersecution ut a"brimming hi storyof ffi," alife Goitein characterized sa"symbiosis"be-tweenArabsandJews.Goitein compared hesymbiosishe discovered n the Geniza withthat of the world in which he found himself ashe wrote hismasterwork-the United States

of the 1960s,70sand 8Os-andfound hemsimilar. The Geniza world was a "religiousdemocrary,tttavigorous, ree-enterpriseo-ciety'' of "relative toleranceand liberalism.""We do not wear urbanshere [in t}le UnitedStates]," ewrote; bu! vlhile eadingmanyaGenizadocument ne eelsquite at home."Goitein gave us the history of a medi-eval Jewish community, one thriving inMuslim lands, and tied by coundessbondsof exchange----cultural nd social as well aseconomic-to the vast world in which itfound itself, a world stretching from theIndian Ocean o the Adantic, but cradled nthe tolerant and cosmopolian waters of theMediterranean.This vision is shared o someextentby all the heroesof.Sared Tiash, romSchechter o Goitein, and t's a commonalityat least pardy becauset is alsosharedby theauthors, themselvesactive in Jerusalemasimpresariosof literary integration. HoftnanandCole'spolyglot press,bis Editions,pub-lishes writers in Arabic, Hebrew and otherlanguages f the Levant.The vision is certainly an appealingone,and all the more so today. Its resonancesevident not only in boola both popular andscholarly but also in political projects likethe "Union for the Mediterranean,"whosejoint declaration, ignedn 2008,proclaims,"EuroDeand the Mediterraneancountriesare bound by history geographyand culture.More imporandy, they are united by a com-mon ambition: to build together a future ofpeace,democracy,prosperity and human,socialandculffal undersanding.... n a re-newed partrership for progress."This sameambition, I do not doubg helps motivateHoftnan and Cole's reatrnentof theDast. oharness istory to the needsof the present:this has alwa1reeen one of the duties of thehistorian,a duty Hoffrnan and Cole firlfill asadmirably and responsiblyasdid the scholarsthey are *iti"g about.@hich is not to saythat the resulting histories are the only onespossible,or that citizensof the Genizawouldfeel at home were they to wake up in theirpages. doubt hat he elderlyMaimonides-who wrote ofJudaismunder slamas dead"and "ailing," and saw n the communitiesof ,Christian Europe"our only hope or help"-would have describedhis world in Goitein'sterms of liberal s.,'mbiosis.)

ut political worriesarenot the only(oreven the principle) ones tJrat surhcein Hoffinan and Cole's exploration ofpreviousexplorations f thispast.An-other seems o be what we might callthe status arxiety of the historian: granted

in what way do they participate in the im-moftality they create?Of those who (likehimself) estored he Hebrew poetry of theGeniza, Ezra Fleischer rather graphicallywrote, "All theseactsare he achievementofa dedicated ost of scholars-early and at-er-great and essgreat,who devoted heirlives o the studyof the Genizaand weariedin their labor, sweatingblood in their effortsto sort its treasures, ometimes ucceedingandsometimesailing, heir eyesweakeningtheir hairlines eceding,and heir bacla andlimbs giving out as hey grew old and frail-each n hiswayandat his own pace."Hoftnan ind Cole's commentary plac-es more emphasison question's f etemity:"Risking desiccation or an ultimate viulity,andanonymityfor hesake fanother's ame,the work of the Geniza'sedeemers..bringpus back in uncanny fashion to the glory of'the famous'whom...BenSirasingles ut forthe highest praise-'those who composedmusical psalms,and set forth parables nverse.'"But they are oo honest q leave oil-ingscholars mongthe amous. heir effors,they continue,"alsorecall the fate of [those]a fewversesater, who haveno memorial...and perished s hough hey had not been."'What hope hen, do historianshave or eter-nity? Hoffinan and Cole cite Ben Sira oncemore, speakingof those who "maintain thefabricof theworld, and he practiceof theircraft is their prayer." Through toil in theGeniza,scholars become inks in the chainof transmission...baclo the Wsdom of BenSira,and rom that spirit o is source. ndso,in their way, hey too partakeofeternity.".I have arrived at my only perylexity withthis delighdul book: I cant quite under-standwhat the authorsmeanby "eternity,""frmer" "vitality," "memoryt'or any of theother terms with which thev trv to evoke(rather than explain)what ii is'they thinkhistoryshouldstrive owald.Worse or me,I can't shake he feeling that, for Hoffinanand Cole, historical scholarships desiccat-ing unlessaimedat some ultimatevitality,"some higher end that infuses t with thevivit'ing forcenecessaryo achieve desiredimmortality. It seemshat for them this endcan n partbepolitical.They oftenpoint, forexample, o the progressive olitics of theirGeniza heroeson questionsof Palestine.But it alsoseemshat at ts highestand mostsublime, his "ultimate vitality," this immor-tality,canonlybepoetic.Historyis demotedto ahand)'man hose alling s to restoreostlinls in the Hebrew iterary canon.Clio, toshiftmetaphors,s reduced rom a musewithher own rites o a priestessf Euterpe.Being a historian and not a poet, Ihat historians are "resurrectingt' the pasg


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ne. a on,may perceivea hierarchy evenwhere it isnot intended, as in the comparisonwithwhich the authorsdescribe he great histo-rian Goitein's first encounterwith Genizamanuscripts:

This litde handful of,nine-hundred-year-olddocumentshat had traveledthe ong distance rom the Nile basinto behind he ron Curtain would urnout to be or Goitein what he ArchaicTorso of Apollo was or Rilke,an p-animate'yet omehowiving presenceinsisting:Yoamustchangeur W.

The simile is stunning, andI would not loseaword. But it does einforcemy melancholyfeeling hat for the authors t is poetryandnot history that animates he past. Or per-hapsbetter put that it is easier or them tofantasize he immortality of the poet thanthat of the historian. But why, I want to asbdo we need o fantasize ither to celebratethe wondersof Genizahistory?"Let us now praise amousmen/and ourfathers n their generation,"wrote the poet

BenSira,exhortingus o a orm ofpiety thathas often gone by the nameof history. Hewent on to sharpen he ambivalence:There are some hat have eft a name.so hat men declare heir praise.And there are somewho haveno. name.who haveperishedas hough theyhad not lived.

Hoffrnan and Cole have aised he "fathers"of Geniza scholarship rom the dust heap,and brought them to life as never before.So it seemsslighdy paradoxical hat evenas hey do so they reinforce he notion thathistorians,unlike poets,perish as thoughthey had not lived. Does the contradic-tion stem from their commitrnent to thecontinuity ofa poetic radition,or from theimplausibility of any professionalpreten-sions to eternity in our modernity? I donot know. What I cansaywith certainty srhatSacred iashhasmadehistorybeautifuland exciting.And yet I will still feelanxiouseveryApril 28.

llAnUnlinishedraditionbyBARRYGHWABSIff

ou mustlive ike a bourgeois ndsave all your violence for youraft." Has anyone ever firlfilledmorecompletelyGusave Flau-bert'sdirective than his youngercontemporaryEdouard Maneq?And has anyartist ever been, as a result, more of anenigma?Manet's contemporaries aw himas a realist, the heir of Gusave Courbet. Ifany of them had been sufficiendy realistic toretain Emile Zola as an investrnent adviser,they could have retired in style. "So suream I that Manet will be one of the mastersof tomorlow," the critic and novelistwrotein 1866, that I shouldbelieve had madeagood bargain,had I the money, n buying allhis canvasesoday. n fifty years heywill sellfor fifteen or twenty times more." fu the arthistorian GeorgeHeardHamilton remarked,7,ola'swagern the pricesManetwould dtchwas accurate; amaztngly, his was five yearsbefore Manet had managed o sell, as ar aswe know, asinglepicture. (I-uckily there wasfamilymonby to fall back on.) Although Zolagraspedmany of the subtletiesof his friend'sart, he still thought him to be a realist.Hecouldyet imagine hat Manet "came o un-dersand, quite naturally, one fine day, thatit only remained to him to seeNature as t

really s," and hus"madean effort to forgeteverything he had learned.n museums" norder to transcribewhat he sawwith unex-ampled reshness.We don't seeManet like that an'rmore. ttnot that he neglectedo picture he ife aroundhim,but heoftendid so n skewed, onfound-ing andcontradictoryways. e made isstylemodern by quoting the art of the past-notto lean on as a model n the approved ca-demic manner but to poach n an alienatedway,at timesseeming o anticipatea practicethat would later be dubbed appropriation."Manet usesa painting by Veldzquez r Ra-phael n much the sameoblique and riddlingway that Jeff Wall, for instance,would useManet's Bar at theFolie*Bergire1882)asasource or his own Piaarefor Womm 1979).For Manet as or Wall, tradition is unfinishedand herefore pen o reinvention.Zola evenrually ealized trat Manet wasnot a realistafter his own heart. n 1879hewrote about he artist again, his time regret-ting that"he s satisfi dwith unfinishedwork;he doesnot studynaturewith the passion fthe truly creative."Just as he ordinary runof criticswere inally gettingused o Manet,Zola wasstarting to sciund ike them. ThatManet's paintings looked unfinished had

JAne zu, aul I

alwaysbeen heir complaint. Manet seemedto violateia son ofartistic ethic, as fh couldnot be bothered 5 bring his work to a con-clusion. Thesubjecs of his many portraits,at least,knew otherwise.They sat throughincessant essionsn which Malretwouldat-tetnpt againand again, paringneither heirtime nor his, to satisf' the artisgc scrupleshecouldnever quite put into wordsbut thatare so evidenton his canvases,ut a "lackof finish" wasnot the only objectionManetfaced. Ofinnpincanbe understood rom nopoint of view,even f you take t for what tis, a puny model stretchedout on a sheet,"insistedTh6ophile Gautier. Similarly, oneLouis Etienneconfessed,I searchn vain orthe meaning of this unbecoming ebus"-meaning e Ddjeuner r l'herbe.What wasmissing, n the eyes f Manet'scontemporaries, as a coherentstory hold-ing together he peopleand hings depictedin the paintings. ts absencemadehis workseemncomprehensible.ecadesater,mod-ernist critics stationed themselvesat theoppositepole, saying hat Manet'spaintingsdo cohere,dndwhat unifies hem s not nar-rativebut form.Yet he youngManet's iola-tion ofsexualproprieties,and his recurrentresort to politically provocative topics-TbeExem.tion f Maximilian in the late 1860s,The bcape of Rochefortn 1880-81-shouldundermine the notion that subiect matterwas nconsequentialo him. Instead f seeingManet aseitheran exponent f realismor animplicit abstractionisg e might bebetteroffthinking of him asaprecursor f Surrealism,whose nspirationwasLautr6amont'smageof a boy "asbeautifulas he chancemeetingon a dissectine-ableof a sewins-machineand an ombre'ila." t's not surpising thatthe writer who finally understoodManetbestwas not ZoIa the realist but St6phaneMallarm6, the Symbolistwho was ater ac-knowledged ythe Surrealists sone of theirgreat precursors. he deeperempathywasmutual,as ou canseeby comparingManet'spotraits of the t"vo.If Le Dejeuner s beautifirl, it's beautifullike that-in the spark t generates y shon-circuiting meining. fu entwined as he threeforeground figures seem o be, they are alsostrangely disconnected from one another.Yes, he man on the righg the onewith thefez-like headgear, ould be gesturing owardthe man on the left-but the latter seemsto be in someother spaceentirely, phlni-cally and psychologically.So does he nudewoman, who, looking out in the direction ofthe viewer,seemsquite unawareof the malecompanionswho lounge with her amongtrees that are too small in comparison with

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