Joseph in Egypt
172 pages
English

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172 pages
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Description

Thomas Mann regarded his monumental re-telling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus, telling of Joseph's fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt.
As Joseph is saved from the well and sold to Egypt, he adopts a new name, Osarseph, replacing the Jo- element with a reference to Osiris to indicate that he is now in the underworld. This change of name to account for changing circumstances encourages Amenhotep to change his own name to Akhenaten. How Mann manages to pull suspense out of this famous Biblical story that everyone knows is just amazing. It's a page turner from start to finish!

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Publié par
Date de parution 09 novembre 2021
Nombre de lectures 2
EAN13 9781774644089
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Joseph in Egypt
by Thomas Mann, tr. H. T. Lowe-Porter

First published in 1938
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
Trava2909@gmail.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

JOSEPH IN EGYPT

by THOMAS MANN

1. THE JOURNEY DOWNWARDS
OF THE SILENCE OF THE DEAD
“Where are you taking me?” Joseph asked Kedema,one of the old man’s sons, as they were setting up thesleeping-huts, in the rolling, moonlit lowland at the footof the mountains called Fruitlands.
Kedema looked him up and down.
“Thou’rt a good one!” said he, and shook his headin token that he did not mean good at all but various otherthings such as pert or queer or simple. “Where are wetaking thee? But are we taking thee anywhither? No,not at all. Thou art by chance with us, because ourfather hath purchased thee from harsh masters, and thougoest with us whither-ever we go. But taking thee thatcannot be called.”
“No? Then not,” responded Joseph. “I only meant:whither doth God lead me, in that I go with you?”
“Thou art and remainest a funny fellow,” counteredthe Ma’onite, “and thou hast a way of putting thyself inthe centre of things till one knoweth not whether to wonderor be put out. Thinkest thou, thou ‘Come-hither,’ thatwe are a-journeying in order that thou mayest arrivesomewhither where thy God will have thee to come?”
“Not that do I think,” Joseph replied. “For I knowthat you, my masters, journey whither you will and onyour own affairs and of a certainty no question of minemeaneth any wrong to your dignity or power. But lo,the world hath many centres, one for each created being,and about each one it lieth in its own circle. Thou standestbut half an ell from me, yet about thee lieth a universewhose centre I am not but thou art. Therefore both aretrue, according as one speaketh from thy centre or frommine. And I, on the other hand, stand in the centre ofmine. For our universes are not far from each other sothat they do not touch; rather hath God pushed them andinterwoven them deep into each other, so that you Ishmaelitesdo indeed journey quite independently and accordingto your own ends, whither you will, but besidesthat you are the means and tool, in our interwovenness,that I arrive at my goal. Therefore I ask whither you areleading me.”
“Well, well!” said Kedema, and kept looking him upand down, his face turned away from the peg he was driving.“All that thou thinkest out and thy tongue runs onlike a lizard’s tongue. I will tell the old man my fatherhow thou—son of a dog as thou art—takest leave toriddle and stick thy nose into such high wisdom as thatthou hast a universe to thyself and we are destined for thyguardians. Take care, I’ll tell him!”
“Do so,” responded Joseph, “it will do no harm. Itwill make thy father careful not to sell me too cheap tothe first comer, if he thinketh of making trade with me.”
“Are we chattering here,” asked Kedema, “or are wesetting up a hut?” And he motioned him to lend a hand.But as they worked he said:
“Thou askest too much, when thou wilt know from mewhither we journey. I would have naught against tellingthee, if I knew. But it is the old man my father’s business,he keepeth all in his own head how it will go andafterwards we see how it cometh to pass. So much isclear, that we keep on, as the shepherds thy harsh masterscounselled us, and go not into the interior but arebound toward the level shore; there shall we travel dayby day and come into the land of the Philistines, the citiesof the seafaring traders and the pirate strongholds. Perhapsthou wilt be sold there somewhere to the galleys.”
“That would I not have,” said Joseph.
“No use to wish. All will be as the old man haththought, and whither we journey at the end, that he himselfperhaps knoweth not. But he would like us to thinkthat he knoweth all quite precisely, beforehand, and sowe all act as though we thought so—Epher, Mibsam,Kedar, and I. . . . I tell thee this because we happen tobe setting up the huts here together; otherwise I have noreason to say it to thee. I could wish the old man wouldnot exchange thee too soon for purple and cedar oil butthat thou wouldst remain here with us for a spell thatone might hear more from thee about the universes of menand their interwovenness.”
“As thou wilt,” answered Joseph. “You are my mastersand have bought me for twenty silver pieces, includingmy tongue and my wits. They are at your service;and to that about the universe of the individual I can addsomething about God’s not quite flawless wonder-workingwith numbers, so that man must improve His calculations;and further about the pendulum, the year of thedog star, and the renewal of life—”
“But not now,” Kedema said. “The huts must absolutelybe set up now for the old man my father is tired,and so am I. I fear that I could not follow thy tongue anymore for today. Art thou still ailing from thy fast and arethy limbs still sore where thou wast bound with cords?”
“Scarcely at all,” responded Joseph. “After all itwas only three days that I spent in the pit, and your oilwith which I might anoint myself has done my limbs greatgood. I am now whole, and nothing detracteth from thevalue and usefulness of thy slave.”
He had, in fact, had opportunity to cleanse and anointhimself, had received from his masters a loincloth andfor cooler hours a rumpled white hooded cape such as thethick-lipped camel-boy wore. Probably the expression“to feel as one new-born” may have fitted him more preciselythan it has any human being since the creation ofthe world—for had he not actually been born again?It was a deep cleavage and abyss that divided his presentfrom his past, it was the grave. Since he had diedyoung his vital forces reassembled themselves quicklyand easily beyond it; but that did not prevent himfrom distinguishing sharply between his present existenceand that earlier one which had ended in the grave,nor from considering himself not the old Joseph but anew one. If to be dead and perished means to be quiteinseparably bound to a state which permits no lookingback, no gesture, no smallest resumption of relations withhis previous life; if it means to be vanished speechlessfrom that former life without leave or thinkable possibilityof breaking the silence with any whatsoever sign—thenJoseph was dead; and the oil with which he mightanoint himself after cleansing from the dust of the gravehad been no other than that which one gives the dead intothe grave for his anointing in another life.
I stress this point, for it seems to me urgent to defendJoseph, now and later, from a reproach which has oftenhistorically been levelled against him. For certainly areproach lies in the query: why, after escaping from thepit, had he not bent all his strength to get in touch withJacob in his pitiable state, to let him know that he stilllived? The opportunity must early have presented itself;yes, as time passed it would surely have been more andmore possible for the son to send to that father in hiserror some word of the truth. Proportionally strange,even offensive must it seem that he did nothing of thekind.
But the reproach confuses the outwardly with the inwardlypossible, and leaves out of consideration the threeblack days which preceded the rising of Joseph. They haddriven him, amid severest anguish, to an insight into thedeadly error of his former life and to a renunciation of it;they had taught him to accept his brothers’ conviction ofhis death. His resolve and purpose not to betray their beliefwas the firmer because it was not voluntary but as involuntaryand logically necessary as the silence of thedead. A dead man is silent about his love, not out of lovelessnessbut necessity; and not in cruel wise was Josephsilent to his father. Indeed it became very hard to him,and the longer it lasted the harder it grew, that we may believe;not easier than on the dead lies the earth whichcovers him. Pity for the old man who he well knew hadloved him more than himself, whom he too loved withgrateful, natural love, and together with whom he hadbrought himself down to the grave tempted him sore andwould have made him glad to act contrary to his bettersense. But there is something strange about a pain felt byothers for our own fate. Our sympathy with it is of a peculiarkind, distinctly harder and colder than that we feelwith a stranger sorrow. Joseph had passed through frightfulness,he had received cruel instruction; and it eased forhim his compassion for Jacob, yes, the consciousness oftheir common burden made his father’s woe seem somehowin the nature of things. His bond to death preventedhim from cancelling the bloody sign which the other musthave received. Jacob, he knew, could not fail to take theblood of the kid for his son’s blood; and that this must beso worked upon Joseph until it practically obliteratedthe distinction between “This is my blood” and “Thisrepresents my blood.” Jacob held him for dead; andsince he did so irrevocably, unalterably—then wasJoseph dead or was he not?
He was. The proof lay in the compulsion to keep silenceto the father. The kingdom of the dead receivedhim—or rather would receive him; for he soon learnedthat he was still on the way thither, being led in that directionby the Midianites who had bought him.
TO THE MASTER
“Thou’rt to come to the master,” a boy named Ba’almaharsaid one evening to Joseph as the latter was busybaking pancakes on hot stones. They were now somedays distant from Mount Kirmil, having come along thesandy shore close to the open

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