24.04.2013 Views

WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

has withdrawn from me: unless you indicate to me the dream, and its interpretation, you will<br />

perish, and your homes will be confiscated [My emphasis]. 163<br />

The soothsayers fear that by telling the king his dream, they are effectively acting in his stead,<br />

and so they hail the king by humbly saying “King live in eternity”—live throughout time and tell<br />

your dream to your servants. The situation warrants no less; after all, the king remembers his<br />

dream in some form and so retains a shadow of the “time” that passed him. However, he only<br />

knows what he saw as a pure “somnium,” as a pure vision untranslatable to oral speech which<br />

has withdrawn from him irreparably, “sermo recessit a me.” This makes him not know his dream<br />

unless he sees it, “ignoro quid viderim” ‘I do not know what I saw’ but yet demand an exact<br />

replica of what he witnessed in the passing of time.<br />

If the Chaldean prophets only make things happen by means of words, then it is obvious<br />

that they cannot in-say Nebuchadnezzar’s dream because his dream, being outside the realm of<br />

“sermo” ‘speech’ yet still being part of perception—namely sight—cannot be said at all. This<br />

forces the Chaldeans to hail Nebuchadnezzar individually, forcing him to accept his vision as his<br />

own. Accordingly, they change their language of address, speaking to him in his own tongue<br />

“Syriace” ‘Syrian’ or as Jerome implies, Babylonian, to try to individualize language to his being<br />

and by-pass the pure visuality of the dream by letting the king speak in his own words.<br />

Even in speaking to the king in Syrian (or as Jerome calls it “Chaldean”), the soothsayers<br />

fail to coax the dream from the king, and in this, the events in Daniel once again eerily erase the<br />

line between interpretative and poetic narratives. As Jerome comments, “Up to this point what<br />

we have read has been recounted in Hebrew. From this point on until the vision of the third year<br />

of King Balthasar which Daniel saw in Susa, the account is written in Hebrew characters, to be<br />

163 Dan. 2:3-4.<br />

94

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!