Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

Accept my greetings, ancient scrolls, and favor my kiss in your dusty slumber. From sailing to foreign isles my soul has returned, and like a wandering dove, trembling and with weary wings, once more it knocks at the entrance to its childhood nest. Do you recognize me? I am he! Your bosom-child from way back, the abstinent one. Of all the divine delights in the wide world my early years knew only yours, you were my garden on a hot summer’s day and on winter nights my pillow. I learned to bundle my soul into your scrolls for safekeeping, and to fold into your columns my holy dreams. Do you still remember? — I have not forgotten — In an alcove in a desolate house of study I was the last of the last, on my lips the fathers’ prayers fluttered and died, and in a hidden corner there, by your shelves, the eternal flame flickered before my eyes and was gone. In those days I was still young, no bud had yet blossomed on my cheeks, and wintry nights, tumultuous nights, found me over an old book, its pages torn, alone with the fears and the fantasies of my soul. A darkening wick still heaved as the oil in the lamp on the table was consumed; in the bowels of the bookcase a mouse was scratching; a coal in the fireplace released a final whisper — and the fear of God made my flesh crawl and my teeth chatter in terror. It was a ghastly night, the most cursed of nights. Outside, behind the clouded window, a raging storm howled wildly, the shutters broke, iron bolts and all, the demons of destruction tore down the walls. I saw my fortress exploded, and I watched God’s presence leave its place as it stole out from under the curtain of the ark, and the image of my grandfather’s countenance, my shelter and my support, the mute witness and judge of my heart’s nature — it too disappeared from my sight and slipped away. Only the flame in my lamp was still gasping for air, twisting this way and that, leaping to its death, when suddenly the window shattered and everything was extinguished, leaving me, a tender fledgling banished from its nest, in the custody of the night and its dark spaces…..   And now, after times have passed, the wheel of my life has returned me here with my wrinkled brow and my wrinkled soul and stationed me again before you, occulted ones, scions of Lvov, Slavita, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. Once more my hand turns your pages and my tired eyes grope between your lines, quietly scouring the ornamented letters to wrest from them the traces of my soul and find the trails of its first stirrings in the place of its birth and the house of its life. You brought contentment to my youth — but behold, my heart says nothing, and no teardrop quivers on my eyelid. I look at you, I see you, elders, but I do not recognize you. No penetrating eyes — the doleful eyes of the venerable ancients — any longer peer from your letters into the depths of my soul, and no more do I hear their voices whispering from a forgotten and unvisited grave. Your columns of print are to me like a broken strand of black pearls; your pages have been widowed and your every letter has been orphaned — have my eyes dimmed and my ears grown heavy, or is it you who have decayed, the eternal dead, so that nothing remains of you in the land of the living? And I, in vain, like a thief with a spade tunneling underground without a lantern or a torch, scraping through earthen caverns and tenebrous places, digging day and night into your graves, deeper and deeper, to seek hidden signs of life beyond the roots and below them — while at that very moment they are above me, in cities of men, they sound from hills and mountains, their fruits clamor beneath the sun, the moon, and the stars, they dance and seven times repeat their dance, their roar crosses to the far ends of the sea — and not even an echo reaches my ears.   Who knows, if when I emerge back into the domain of the night after hacking through tombs and ruins of the spirit with nothing to show for it, nothing recovered, except this spade that clings to my hand and the dust of the ancestors on my fingers, poorer and emptier than I was — I will prostrate myself before the splendor of the night and seek out a path to the mysteries that it holds and a soft shelter in the folds of its black mantle, and tired unto death I will summon it, and call out: come, night, gather me up, magnificent night, cover me, do not deny me, the fugitive from the graves — my soul asks for rest, and infinite serenity. And you, divine stars, allies of my spirit and interpreters of my heart, why are you silent, wherefore are you silent? Does your shimmer and gleam have nothing to tell me, not even a clue to reveal to my heart? Or perhaps you do, you do — but I have forgotten your language and no longer hear your speech, the secret tongue? Answer me, divine stars, for I am saddened. Translated by Leon Wieseltier