On Saturday, October 7, 2023, the terrorist group of Palestinian origin, Hamas, announced the launch of five thousand rockets at Israeli targets. Brigades of Hamas terrorists rampaged through southern Israel to torture and kill more than a thousand people, of various nationalities and of all ages, and kidnapped around a hundred people. There were no military but civilian objectives. This, as expected, provoked the reaction of the Israeli government by pursuing Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip and causing the death of hundreds of people in an equally terrifying escalation. But I just repeated it three times and a fourth time so that it is not forgotten: Hamas is a terrorist group, and whoever denies it or keeps silent is an accomplice. The news continues to report on this conflict and the world reactions in favor of each position, which highlights the defense of the Palestinian situation with the anti-Semitic attitude behind the anti-Zionism of the global left. Roberto Aguilar pointed this out lucidly: “The left’s anti-Semitism is a symptom of its authoritarianism and its deep anti-democratic vocation.”

On Friday, October 13, very far from the Middle East, on the east coast of North America, the poet Louise Glück, winner of the Nobel Prize for 2020, died. She died of cancer, which she had been diagnosed with not long before. Amidst the bombardment of news about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I returned to one of his collections of poems, Wild iris, translated by Eduardo Chirinos, and there I found, in that seeming distance and lightness of his poems, images that answered the irritating rush to stand against this criminal barbarism of the Middle East. One of his poems is entitled “Heaven and Earth”. As with Glück’s poetry, which is credited with a “quiet strangeness,” the poem is simply about contemplating the midsummer horizon. John is mentioned, in reference to her husband John Dranow, as holding a rake with which he prunes the garden. He believes he is reading his mind as he watches the blue streak of sky and the other streak of earth, imbued with green, gold and deep pink. He assumes that John “wants both (takes off) at the same time; – He wants everything at the same time. And then he adds lines that electrify me every time I read them again: “Extremes are easy. Only the medium is an enigma.”

As I somewhat desperately follow the news about the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and Israel and the testimonies that rush to be put on one side or the other, discussing the current and past deaths, I cannot get Glück’s poem out of my head. Maybe that’s why it shines a light on literature, especially poetry: to resist the verbal abuse of hatred and lack of understanding. Glück was born into a Jewish family and is part of that vast tradition of Jewish thinkers and artists who have illuminated our time. The list is huge and each name represents a certain universe, from the most famous Marx, Freud, Kafka, Wittgenstein, to emblematic figures such as Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Joseph Roth, Elias Canetti, Aby Warburg, Erich Auerbach, Leo Spitzer, Edmond Jabés and many others.

On Wednesday, October 4, he was awarded a doctorate at the University of Buenos Aires honoris causa historian and essayist Carl Ginzburg. In his welcome speech entitled “Reading between the lines”, he pointed out that he comes from a secularized Jewish family and that his way of reading and research is nourished by the tradition of reading the Bible and the Talmud, reading slowly, with attention. to the interspace. And again I thought of the verse: “Only the middle is an enigma.” Reading between the lines is betting on the enigma that lies in the middle and that must be discovered beyond the obvious.

But I also want to think about the heterodox Arab tradition, just as the Jews mentioned above were also heterodox, in which the great poet Adonis, alias Ali Ahmad Said Esber, stands out, to whom I do not forget what he emphasizes in his thoughts on poetry – he has several books of parallel essays with with his poetic creativity – in order to be creative and free in the Arab tradition, we must return to pre-Qur’anic poetry. That is, before the Koran. Which is to say, before imposing one reading that leads to an extreme that brings death.

I think we deserve to be able to have both tracks that Glück talks about. While the world rushes to position itself in black and white, we must overcome the enigma of an environment that does not want war or crimes. This does not mean relativism. What Hamas did on Saturday, October 7, 2023 was irrational, absurd, perverse and a crime against humanity. It is not tolerable for anti-Semitic positions to emerge and for Jews to once again live in terror, but even a few anti-war Palestinians should not suffer the despotism of Hamas, which drives Israel to desperate and uncontrolled measures of force.

Another poem by Glück says: “How can I help you if everyone / wants something else: sun and shade; /wet darkness, dry burning. / Hear how you compete / with each other. / And you wonder / why I despair (…) a tangle of thousands of voices / each one demands / a need, absolute, / and in his name you strangle / each other / in an open field. / Because? Through air and space? / For the privilege of being unique in the eyes of heaven?”

Perhaps it would be enough just to quote the poet to take a breather, to resort to an undermining equidistant, unpopular with those who rush to the truth, and necessary for thinking while others run for guns. The North American poet finally said in the second verse something of the light of doubt in the face of so much affirmative and intolerant blinding: “I live essentially in darkness.” (OR)