Johannes has an unusual interpretation of the story of Tobias and Sarah in the Book of Tobit. In this story, a young woman named Sarah has been married seven times but each one of her husbands has been killed on the wedding night by a jealous demon who loves her. Sarah is therefore very frustrated because she is excluded from the possibility of ever being in love. Tobias, though he knows how many failed marriages she has had, decides that he loves her too much to not marry her. So he marries her and prays to God to be saved from the demon, though he knows that he is risking his life by attempting to have intercourse with her.
Johannes says that in any retelling by a poet, the hero would be Tobias. He’d be praised for risking his life to gain the hand of the woman he loves. However, Johannes says that Tobias actually was not such a hero. He says that, though it was brave and gallant, any man who truly loves a woman should have behaved the exact same way. Tobias’ sacrifice was noble but expected and fairly conventional. The far bigger heroism belonged to Sarah for being able to accept Tobias’ love, for allowing Tobias to do it for her and for later not hating him for having done such a thing for her. Johannes says that anyone else would have hated to be in that kind of lifelong debt and Sarah showed the highest humility towards another human being by being able to accept Tobias’ risk and open herself to the possibility of love. To be willing to accept responsibility and guilt for his fate if he died and to not resent him forever if he lived showed much greater courage and renunciation of pride. She chose the divine over the demonic, when it would have been easier to accept the demonic.
Johannes asks us to imagine that Sarah was a man and that he knew a demon would kill his new wife. He says that it would be the easy thing to do to accept the demonic, refuse true love and get married to enjoy the sensation of killing girls on their wedding night. This would be choosing the demonic by assenting to the demon’s rules, taking the selfish route and banishing your sense of personal guilt. Sarah had the much harder task by having to openly take someone’s pity to have herself saved, an experience which must always be humiliating. Johannes invokes Gloucester from Richard the Third, the evilest character in Shakespeare, to show how unbearable pity is. He says that Gloucester is a monster because he is at the mercy of pity and is unable to accept it.
Do you agree with Johannes that it is far harder to receive than to give? Do you agree that a major source of the demonic is the inability to accept sympathy?
Also: do you agree that Sarah is the hero of the story and made the far bigger act of humility and courage by putting herself at Tobias' mercy and in his debt? I'm inclined to think that perhaps she should have loved Tobias enough to have refused to marry him. General decency towards any human being would have dictated it. The bigger sacrifice would have been to sacrifice the possibility of ever being loved to save another person's life.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting to consider this story in light of Kierkegaard's own situation and failed engagement. I guess that he would be Sarah, as was the one to back out of it? It seems kind of self deprecatory, then, that he was unable to live up to Sarah's heroism.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your question: “Do you agree with Johannes that it is far harder to receive than to give?”
ReplyDeleteMe myself being present day human being of the 21st century, as opposed to a person during Kierkegaard’s time, naturally I would say it is far easier to receive than give. However, when trying to put myself in Air Kierkegaard’s Nike shoes, I can accede to claim that it is harder to receive that to give. Kierkegaard says that to understand that it is” harder to receive than give,” it is like uncovering a mystery, and one must have courage. Just as Tobias, did, in marrying Sarah. In contemplating ways I could conceptualize the question above started. I came up with a scenario, where one could ascertain to the answer yes.
One way one could say that it is harder to receive, and the same time involves courage in the equation, is thinking about severely impoverished single mother with kids in a third world country. Can one really say that a mother would do anything for her kids?
Say one of her babies is dying, and the baby’s death is inevitable, it is just a matter of time. At the same time the mother has not ate in days, and is aching by starvation. By chance, a piece of bread comes into the picture, yet, the piece does not suffice for all the kids. Would you as a mother receive and eat? Knowing that your baby is going to die anyway, or would you continue to starve risking your own life, and give the baby nourishment on its final moments?
I think most people will instinctively say yes, but to give an honest answer, one would actually have to experience such a harsh situation. Until then, I agree with Kierkegaard when he proposes that this question is a mystery that only a person with true “courage” can discover.