Metalepsis, Tolstoy, and Proverbs 21:1

 Metalepsis, or transumption, is the word that came to mind upon reading Heroes & History by David Brooks in the New York Times today.

Metalepsis designates a trope of allusion in which a passage or thought in one text is evoked rather than quoted outright in a subsequent text. Brooks makes good use of allusion in his op-ed. First he describes President Bush’s adherence to the notion of history as the arena of Great Men and Women, leaders like himself, Putin, Sarkozy, Merkel, and Brown. Then he debunks the notion that Bush, who got better grades at Yale than John Kerry, is as clueless as the MSM makes him out to be. He wraps up his argument with the following sentence:

Many will doubt this, but Bush is a smart and compelling presence in person, and only the whispering voice of Leo Tolstoy holds one back.

Tolstoy, Brooks points out, did not subscribe to the notion that history is the story of Great Men:

Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays. They think their public decisions shape history, but really it is the everyday experiences of millions of people which organically and chaotically shape the destiny of nations — from the bottom up.

Anyone who has read War and Peace will know that what Brooks says is true. Anyone watching what is happening in Iraq knows that history is what Tolstoy said it is. 

Tolstoy’s philosophy of history has a theological dimension we do well to remember. It is that dimension which allows Tolstoy to see history as something different than the result of decisions made by powerful men:

‘The hearts of kings are in the hands of God.’
     Kings are the slaves of history.
    History, that is, the unconscious swarmlike life of mankind,
uses every minute of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes.

War and Peace, in Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation, p. 605.

Tolstoy quotes the Bible, Prov 21:1. When I hear reference to “the whispering voice of Leo Tolstoy,” I am taken back, by metalepsis, to the passage above. and from there to Prov 21:1.

It says something that one verse in the book of Proverbs has a more penetrating philosophy of history than all of today’s pundits and politicians put together:

פלגי-מים לב-מלך ביד-יהוה

על-כל-אשר יחפוץ יטנו

    Channeled water is the mind of the king in the hand of Yhwh;
         he directs it wherever he will. (Proverbs 21:1)

  So much for the idea of free will. A man of power is the last person to have free will.

I reproduced the biblical text without vowels, because it is better to read Hebrew without vowels and then check one’s work. As time goes on, you will be surprised at how much Hebrew you actually know.

פַּלְגֵי־מַיִם לֶב־מֶלֶךְ בְּיַד־יְהוָה

עַֽל־כָּל־אֲשֶׁר יַחְפֹּץ יַטֶּֽנּוּ׃

Bibliography

John Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; New York: Knopf, 2007 [1865-69]). 

Comments

[Shawshank 2]

Proverbs 21:1 is not the only verse in the Bible that will support Tolstoy’s belief god is in control of all things. Job 42:2 states that "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.” God’ plan may not be as we expected but what we can be assured is that he is in complete control. There are many verses in Bible that supports this idea, some of them comforting and maybe some leaving us with questions. Tolstoy’s theory is also a foundational basis in which Christians strongly refer to. Many times you speak to someone who is a Christian they often will say God is complete control of my life and the world around me.