Roland Boer, Monash University
Abstract
Debates on the relation between culture and the Bible are locked into two
restrictive models: either the Bible is a source for subsequent appropriations,
or it is the goal that one must attain through the thicket of those appropriations.
In order to trouble this two-way street, I explore the words and music
of Nick Cave, focusing on the way he controls interpretation of his work
and where that control breaks down. At this moment Cave provides an unwitting
insight into another way to view the relation of the Bible and culture,
one that operates in terms of “strategies of containment.”
Introduction
[1] How might we understand the relationship between the Bible and culture?
The question is of course not new, but I want to come at it from a particular
angle–the tension between seeing the Bible as the source from
which its interpretations and appropriations follow, or taking it as the destination that
must be attained through those subsequent appropriations. On the one hand,
the Bible is the original text that influences a host of subsequent cultural
products. Our task is then to interpret how it does influence those products.
On the other hand, we cannot read the Bible without two or three millennia
of interpretation and appropriation. It is always already read, and we
can only access the text by wading through those interpretations first.
If we look at the problem from the perspective of culture, cultural interpretations
thereby become either the result of the Bible’s influence
or the gateway through which we approach the Bible. I should point
out here that by “culture” I mean in this paper the various
appropriations–turned over, twisted and spat out again–of common
readers, artists, poets, novelists and, of course, song writers like Nick
Cave.
[2] This, then, is the problem this essay considers for a while. And it
will do so in three stages: first the essay situates this problem within
the context of method. At this level I explore a certain hunch concerning
biblical interpretation. Secondly the essay considers the problem in light
of some recent key positions on the Bible and culture, and finally it engages
with the music of Nick Cave in order to explore the methodological question
of the influence of the Bible on culture.
Hunch
[3] Firstly, then, let me lay out a tentative proposal concerning biblical
interpretation within which we might reconsider the question of the Bible
and culture. It seems to me that biblical interpretation involves three
moments or levels: text, afterlives and metacommentary. The level of text
involves all of the textual, literary, historical, social scientific, archaeological,
theoretical and whatever other questions we have become accustomed to throw
at this ancient text. These questions are of course myriad, but the underlying
drive has been and remains the need to understand an ancient text in its
various contexts. There is nothing particularly outrageous by suggesting
that this remains the dominant understanding of biblical studies. While
I would defend the need for this focus on the text–after all, I have
spent a good deal of time acquiring and exercising the linguistic and methodological
skills required to work with the text in such a way–I also find it
a peculiarly truncated understanding of biblical studies. Questions such
as whether King David actually lived, whether Paul was gay, the literary
structure of the book of Ruth or locating the subversive voice of the books
of Samuel are all vitally important, but remain somewhat limited. You may
have noted that I have in fact lumped together what is often taken to be
the major divide in biblical studies, between what very roughly may be
called historical critical and literary approaches. It seems to me that
this is a false distinction and that many efforts to understand, say, the
text of Genesis 1-3 from historical, archaeological, social-scientific
or literary perspectives are largely involved in the same task.
[4] But let us now shift gear and move to another level entirely–what
we might call, following Walter Benjamin, the “afterlives” of
the biblical texts.[1] Here it is useful to divide the
level of afterlives and then divide again. The first division: culture
as the result of the Bible or as gateway to it. And the second: Wirkungsgeschichte,
impact or effect history, and Rezeptionsgeschichte, or reception
history. The second is in fact a refinement of the notion of result, in
which cultural appropriations derive from the Bible as a source. However,
the German distinction–one that derives from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Wahrheit
und Method of 1960[2]–between Wirkungsgeschichte and Rezeptionsgeschichte adds
some welcome sophistication to the idea of source. Rezeptionsgeschichte,
then, marks the active task of interpreting, appropriating and applying
a biblical text, whether in scholarly work, religious observance and sermons,
conscious cultural re-readings in literature or film or art and so on.
By contrast, Wirkungsgeschichte designates a more passive and unwitting
effect of the text on society and culture, especially in the way the Bible
shapes the law, art, politics, social values, prejudices and preconceptions.[3] Often
the two are blended in discussions of the Bible’s influence,[4] but
it is a useful working distinction. Yet, both Rezeptionsgeschichte and Wirkungsgeschichte still
assume that the text is in some way original, the pad from which both trajectories
launch themselves forth.
[5] Let me now return to the first division–culture as result of
or gateway to the Bible. These two base terms actually name a problem,
one that is of course the central problem of this paper. But now we see
that it is part of a larger one concerning the nature of biblical studies.
And at this level, we seem to be locked into a forward-backward schema. Either the
text influences all that follows it, interpreted by a host of subsequent
readers who bring the text to life once again, or the Bible can
be approached only through those interpretations. The text is always already
read, and we must read it through the thicket of appropriations. We are
still caught on a two-way street; either we move forward from the text
to all the secondary interpretations, or we move backwards to the text
through those and many other re-readings. Either the Bible or culture is
prior. Part of my agenda will be to question this two-way street of result
or gateway. I want to ask whether we can break out of the straightjacket
of this either-or situation, whether there is some other way of accounting
for the many cultural, political, legal and social resonances of the Bible.
[6] By now we have two levels of interpretation, what I have called text
and afterlives. But before we move to the last and in many respects widest
level, let me stress that both text and afterlives together constitute
the task of biblical interpretation. We ignore one or the other at our
peril, leaving ourselves with a poor shadow of what biblical criticism
might be. The same point applies even more insistently to the third level
of my proposed method–metacommentary, a term that comes from Fredric
Jameson.[5] It is, if you like, commentary on commentary,
or more specifically commentary on the methods of biblical criticism. Let
me come at this level by means of a story with which we are no doubt familiar:
I happen upon a method, say deconstruction or Marxism, or some archaeological
or anthropological discovery, that gives me an insight into a particular
text. And so I come to that text, perhaps even a central one like Genesis
1-3, and feel that I have the methodological key that unlocks the secret
of that text. “Eureka!” I cry and leap out of the bath and
run down the street, excited by my discovery. Implicitly or explicitly,
I assume that my method is better than all the others that have been used
in the millennia of interpreting this text. So I can quietly dispose of
them in some dark alley, occasionally firing off a polemical sentence or
two at those now discredited methods. And I can get on with my task of
exploiting my new method in order to interpret the text, for my method
is, after all, far better than all the other methods that have gone before.
[7] In many respects this is how biblical studies currently appears to
many of us, a methodological battlefield in which much energy is devoted
to defending one method and attacking others. This is where metacommentary
comes into its own, as Fredric Jameson reminds us, for it enables us to
take a step back and survey the methodological market-place. And if we
do this, we may begin to see what is at stake with all these methods. Each
of them will turn out to be local and limited strategies, arising from
particular social and economic situations and answering distinct cultural
questions. They will have clear benefits that we would do well to consider,
but they will also be marked by the limits of their situations. Such recognition
is a crucial step to incorporating such methods within our own task of
interpretation.
[8] As well as widening biblical criticism to include both text and afterlives,
I would suggest that any biblical interpretation worth its salt requires
the occasional moment of metacommentary, a way of accounting for the other
methods that have been used in the history of interpretation. But each
act of interpretation does not necessarily have to incorporate all three
levels at once. One may come at these distinct moments from a variety of
angles: one may be more concerned with the text (as, for instance, a study
of the political economy of Ancient Israel that is slowly rising to the
surface of my mind); or with one or another aspect of “afterlives” (this
essay is an example); or, and this is one of my favourites, via a methodological
tension concerning a text that then brings me to a dual reflection on method
and text.
Result, Gateway and Sundry Variations
[9] In light of this broader context of method, let me focus now on the
second level–where result and gateway battle it out for supremacy.
What I want to do here quite simply is consider three important recent
efforts to deal with the problem of the Bible and culture. The first is
Richard Walsh’s recent book, Reading the Gospels in the Dark:
Portrayals of Jesus in Film.[6] Walsh takes a series of Jesus
films, from The Greatest Story Ever Told to The Passion of the
Christ, and interprets them as crucial tools in the construction of
a distinctly American religious culture. He calls this a “Protestant
metanarrative,” a narrative that begins with God’s election
of the chosen people from the beginning of the world to their salvific
role at its end. Walsh traces the permutations in this narrative from the
depiction of America as the righteous empire of the early Jesus films,
through the failed efforts to present a human Jesus, to a current tension
between two positions. One is apocalyptic: Jesus will appear out of nowhere
and fix everything up. And the other is gnostic: what Jesus was really
concerned with was a private, otherworldly faith that is beyond this world.
What is attractive about Walsh’s work is that he emphasises how so
often in the West, “film” actually means Hollywood, as though
it were the only film industry on the globe. These films, he argues, are
more about American self-identity than anything else. Recently, he has
written an article on Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ and
one of his main arguments is that such a film was so popular so recently
because it actually reflects, prepares and desensitises audiences in the
United States for a renewed bout of imperial expansion and violence.[7]
[10] Walsh’s book is one of the most eloquent examples of “result.” More
specifically, the Bible is reinscribed through film: not only does
the Bible influence the films by being interpreted and appropriated, but
it also continues to influence societies through being reinscribed in those
films. If Walsh is concerned with the influence of the Bible as re-inscription
in film, then Yvonne Sherwood persuasively espouses a position of gateway.[8] Focusing
on the book of Jonah, she follows the myriad ways the story has been reread,
appropriated, overturned and alluded to since the story was first told
and written down. Not interested in the history “behind” the
text (the linguistic, cultural, or economic factors that may have led to
its production), nor in traditional commentary, Sherwood traces how this “mongrel
text”[9] continually
reproduces itself, within and outside of the Bible, in a wide variety of
written, graphic and even televised texts.
[11] Sherwood’s greatest debts are to deconstruction, so she argues
that even though the appropriation of a text comes later than the text,
yet it “overwhelms, eclipses, and always precedes the biblical ‘original’.”[10] In the end, she says, we cannot interpret
a text like the Bible without all these interpretations influencing and
determining how we read. While this is not a new point in itself, what
Sherwood does with it is intriguing. “Mainstream” readings,
she argues, have seen Jonah either as a Christ figure or as the stereotypical
Jew, but in either case these anti-Semitic readings seek to appropriate
the Old Testament into the New. The alternative interpretations, the “Backwaters
and Underbellies,” appear on the margins. Mostly Jewish and popular
readings, they are more playful and diverse, outside the control of religious
orthodoxy. I must confess to preferring these readings, as does Sherwood,
although, as she points out, both mainstream and peripheral interpretations
influence one another in a perpetual play. But what Sherwood is really
after with her book is a new form of commentary (the genre that began,
after all, with biblical criticism). She wants a postmodern commentary
that, instead of controlling and domesticating the text as traditional
commentaries do, liberates the text from all canonical and other orthodox
constraints, producing a “mutable canon.”[11]
[12] Result as reinscription or the precedence of the gateway–are
we doomed to play the two off against each other? Before seeing how Nick
Cave might help us here, there is another approach that recognises the
impasse and attempts something of a resolution–juxtaposition.
Although we find it in some postcolonial criticism (Musa Dube) and in the
work of George Aichele on popular culture, let me focus on Erin Runions’ recent
book How Hysterical.[12] Less interested in the films
that actually represent biblical themes, she prefers those with no apparent
biblical content or contact. Biblical texts and cultural products are thrown
together for mutual illumination, revealing aspects of each that only show
up in light of the other. In particular, Runions searches for the means
of resistance to dominant ideologies in both film and biblical texts. By
putting a series of films together with biblical texts, she finds that
they bring out the truth of each other on this double theme–the mechanisms
of domination and violence that are used against people in terms of race,
class, gender and sexuality and the ways both films and biblical
texts show us how “we” might effectively resist such domination.
Runions prefers films out of the “mainstream,” such as Three
Kings, a parody of the American involvement in the First Gulf War (remember
that one?) and Paris is Burning, a docudrama about drag queens in
New York. Since Runions is after the patterns of domination and the possibilities
of resistance, she reads these films over against biblical stories such
as the conflict between Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, or the rebellion of
Korah in Numbers 16. For Runions, we can see in these stories the
modes of domination, particularly in terms of punishment for rebellious
acts, but also resistance: if we focus on alternative moments, side with
the victims and see in their resistance a glimpse of hope then we begin
to see another way of being and living.
[13] Even though I also have worked with such a mode of juxtaposition at
various times, it seems to me less a solution than the recognition of a
problem. Although it steps somewhat outside the tension between result
and gateway, it is more a negation of the problem–neither result nor gateway–than
an effort to account for it and move through it.
Nick Cave
[14] And that is precisely what my fellow Australian may well help us to
do. Cave’s perpetual and troublesome engagement with the Bible is
of course well known. But my concern with Nick Cave enters this whole discussion
at the second level of interpretation where the tension I have been tracing
manifests itself.
Autobiography
[15] Two elements of Cave’s work jump out at us–autobiography
and the dominance of the word. Typically, biographical depictions of Cave’s
life tend not to focus on the influence of the Bible,[13] while on the other hand his autobiographical
output is somewhat Bible-obsessed. Of course, autobiography constitutes
a singularly effective form of control. Whenever Cave writes, sings and
speaks about the Bible, he is very keen to control how that engagement
is interpreted. And the first sign of that control is the autobiographical
narrative, the authorial “I” that appears time and again.
[16] Two examples: in the plural, multiple autobiographies that run over
one another we find roughly the same narrative. Thus, in the widely copied
introduction to the Gospel of Mark that was published by Canongate (the
Authorized King James version no less), the online interview with Jim Pascoe
(originally in Kulture Deluxe Magazine), and the BBC talk “The
Flesh Made Word” for BBC radio on 3 July 1996, Cave quickly links
his reading of the Bible to stages in his life.[14] Here
we find the childhood choir in Wangaratta in country Australia, the insipid
Christ peddled by the Church, the Church itself as a manipulator of the
Bible for its own ends, reading the vengeful Old Testament in his twenties,
the softer New Testament later, and the identification of Christ as a human
being who struggles over questions of faith and life. What strikes me above
all is the way he moves from the Old Testament’s appeal to an angry
drug-crazed young man to Christ’s call in the New. If the Old Testament
empowered him to “walk out on stage and open my mouth and let the
curse of God roar through me,”[15] the
New Testament brings out the dim, sad light of Christ knocking on the door
of his heart as in the Holman Hunt painting. This Christ speaks to him
with a “softer, sadder, more introspective”[16] voice, calling to him outside the damaging
control of a church for which he has no time. This situation stands out
even more sharply when we realize that Cave does not restrict his engagement
with religion to the Bible. He writes and sings about faith, God, the church,
the history of saints and so on. But in these cases there is minimal autobiography,
for only when he turns to the Bible does autobiography come to the fore.
[17] The second example comes from the music. Let us follow Cave’s
own lead for a moment and take his autobiographical word as it stands:
he states that The Boatman’s Call (1997) is an unmediated–as
far as that is possible–narrative of crucial events in his life when
he was in a very important relationship that he knew would not last. It
is the album in which Cave wears his heart on his sleeve. And here in the
music we find the intersection of autobiography and bible. The album is
replete with biblical allusions (the boatman calling from the lake, the
hand that protects me, turning the other cheek), hymn-like songs such as “There
is a Kingdom” or the more sardonic “Idiot Prayer,” and
theological paradoxes, such as that of faith, or the Pauline tension between
sin and the desire to do good, or Cave calling on the interventionist God
in whom he does not believe in to do precisely that, intervene. Like John
Donne, the Bible evokes Cave’s inner, especially his sexual, life
like no other.
[18] Thus in “Brompton Oratory” we find the lines, “The
reading is from Luke 24 /Where Christ returns to his loved ones.” Cave
apparently is attending a Pentecost communion, sips the communion wine
while smelling the woman on his hands, and it is not clear whether the
invocation of the beauty impossible to define, believe or endure refers
to the woman in question or God. Indeed, neither God nor the devil can
have the effect that she has had on him–to bring him to his knees.
Yet what makes me sit up and notice is a little slip, an elision between
Cave himself and Christ: exhausted by his lover’s absence, he would
like to return to her, just like Jesus.
[19] Other biblical passages follow the same line. Thus, “He who
seeks finds and who knocks will be let in,” spoken by the “man
who spoke wonders though I've never met him,” becomes the intense
bodily expectation of a lover in the song “Are You The One That I've
been Waiting For.” Finally, in the song “Far From Me” biblical
words become Cave’s words to his lover:
For you dear, I was born
For you I was raised up
For you I’ve lived and for you I will die
For you I am dying now…
Did you ever
Care for me?
Were you ever
There for me?
[20] The first four lines come directly from the words directed at the
child at baptism– “for you, little child, he was born,” etc.;
the second four are a gloss on the parable of the sheep and the goats in
Matthew 25:44. By now you may be alert to what is going on. Not only does
Cave’s life become one with the biblical texts, but there is also
a far more interesting substitution taking place: in the first four lines
I quoted Cave simply substitutes “I” for “He” (Christ),
and in the second lot of four lines the “me” becomes Cave himself
in place of Christ.
[21] Two angles come together here–one from Cave’s other texts
and one from his songs. The first is the clear connection that Cave makes
between the Bible and his autobiography. The second, however, is more intriguing:
when his songs do invoke the Bible, they do so not merely in an autobiographical
fashion, but also with a christological focus. Bible, autobiography and
christology come together in a potent mix.
[22] Now, we might attribute this to the well-known line from the song “Nobody’s
Baby Now”–“I’ve searched the holy books, I tried
to unravel the mystery of Jesus Christ, the saviour”–but this
is a rather soft option. The BBC talk from 1996 is far more revealing.
In this talk the underlying theme is no less a comparison between Cave’s
own relationship with his father and that between Christ and his Father,
the God of the Hebrew Bible. And in the same way that Jesus came “to
set right the misguided notions of his Father,”[17] so also Cave sees himself realising
the thwarted literary and creative energies of his own father. Just as
God evolved in Jesus the son, so also Cave’s father evolves in him,
for “like Jesus, there is the blood of my father in me … Like
Christ, I too come in the name of my father, to keep God alive.”[18] With
statements like these, as well as the claim that God speaks through him,
music critics began to worry about Cave’s mental and spiritual health–perhaps
all that heroin and speed was finally catching up with him.
[23] I suspect that Cave’s mental and spiritual health is a good
deal better than many of ours, so there are no worries on that score. However,
I do have some misgivings about such a christological focus. Not only does
it provide Cave with an authorial screen, granting him significant authority,
but it also lets the full logic of christology come forth. In short, only
through the logic of the God-human, that is Christ, does it become possible
to raise another human being to divine status. In other words, precisely
because God becomes a human being in Christ (if we push the divinity far
enough we end up with the very human Christ and vice versa), can a human
being become God. Statements like “In Christ the spiritual blue-print
was set so that we ourselves could become God-like”[19] take on a rather different
sense in this Christological light.
The “Word” of Cave
[24] Thus far we have a complex and comprehensive effort to control interpretation–a
songwriter who invokes the Bible only in an autobiographical, even christological
mode. I did, however, signal a second dimension to such control, namely
the word itself. That there is now a trail of Christological associations
following behind any reference to the “word” should hardly
come as a surprise.
[25] It is not just that so many of us trained to interpret written texts
gravitate to lyrics–and I include myself in that “us”–but
that Cave himself plays up the role of his words. Not content with writing
lyrics for songs, he tries his hand regularly at poetry, has written a
novel, and one doesn’t need to look far to find all of this available
in a variety of media. The lyrics were sent to me via the internet, but
you can also find them, along with poetry, some short plays, the text of
radio talks, facsimiles of Cave’s own scribblings from his notebooks,
and so on in the double volume King Ink.[20]
[26] Yet Cave is above all a songwriter, and–to state the obvious–these
songs are performed and sung with his band, The Bad Seeds. But what happens
when we listen to what is now a substantial opus? Most of the time we can
understand the lyrics rather clearly. In other words, when it comes to
the mixing room, the lyrics are mixed way up. The concerts are of the same
ilk: Cave’s microphone is always placed and mixed so that the lyrics
are as clear as possible. And Cave tends to sing them relatively slowly
and clearly, just in case we may be a little slow or hard of hearing. But
what we find if we listen closely is that most of the biblical references
in the songs are often no more than allusions, passing references before
Cave moves onto another image. The songs I considered above from The
Boatman’s Call are in this category: there is no sustained contact
with the Bible there. But what happens when we look for that contact, for
songs that engage more extensively with the Bible, perhaps even exegete
the odd text or two? There are a couple of songs that tie themselves in
more closely to biblical texts, such as “The Good Son” that
draws on and plays with both Cain and Abel (Genesis 4) and the Prodigal
Son (Matthew 21 and Luke 15), and the flood from Genesis 6-9 in “Tupelo.” Here
the lyrics are relatively clear, but even in “Tupelo” the lyrics
take on the eerie feel of the novel Cave was writing at the time, And
The Ass Saw The Angel.[21]
[27] By far the greatest concentration of songs that work closely with
the Bible comes from the album Tender Prey (1988). But there is
something very curious about this album: most of the lyrics are mixed
down, so much so that it is often difficult to decipher what Cave is
in fact singing. Let me focus on two songs–“Mercy Seat” and “City
of Refuge.”
[28] “The Mercy Seat” still shows all the signs of a Christological
autobiography, while in “City of Refuge” all of this slips
away with the lyrics into the background. But even “The Mercy Seat” shows
up the tension within itself, between the dominance of the “word” and
its disappearance. The chorus on the one hand is quite clear, largely due
to a repetition in which music and words mesh to drive the same message
through time and again, but on the other the two verses are not at all
clear for they are muttered sotto voce. But let us see what we can understand:
And the mercy seat is waiting
And I think my head is burning
And in a way I’m yearning
To be done with all this measuring of truth.
An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
And anyway I told the truth
And I’m not afraid to die.
[29] There are fifteen repetitions of this chorus over a track that lasts
seven and a quarter minutes, albeit with variations as the electric chair
heats up and cooks its victim–his head and then the seat burns, glows,
smokes, melts, while his blood boils in successive versions of the chorus
until we return to the version I have quoted above. And of course the biblical
references are there before us, the one from the high point of the Yom
Kippur ritual when the blood of the bull is sprinkled over the mercy seat
while incense wafts over it in Leviticus 16:11-19 (overlaid with the holocaust
in Leviticus 1), and the other from the law of blood guilt, an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
[30] But if we want a closer engagement with the Bible, then it comes in
the only other
words of the song that are legible:
I hear stories from the chamber
How Christ was born into a manger
And like some ragged stranger
Died upon the cross
And might I say it seems so fitting in its way
He was a carpenter by
trade
Or at least that’s what I’m told…
In Heaven His throne
is made of gold
The ark of his Testament is stowed
A throne from which I’m told
All history does unfold.
Down here it’s made of wood and wire
And my body is on fire
And God is never far away.
[31] Here the mercy seat, or ark of the covenant (Lev. 16:13), Christ’s
manger and cross, his throne in heaven, and the electric chair all merge
into one. But two items stand out: these verses are sung with exactly the
same melody and musical sequence of the chorus quoted earlier. Are
they verses or chorus? They are sung with the melody of the chorus but
their content is not at all that of the chorus. Above all, they can be
clearly understood. Secondly, it is precisely when the lyrics are clear–here
assisted by the music–that the references remain distinctly christological.
Word and “Word,” if I may put it that way, remain tightly bound
together.
[32] Everything comes apart, however, with “City of Refuge.” If “The
Mercy Seat” holds its own against the tension that interests me,
then “City of Refuge” brings it to the fore with a vengeance.
On the first hearing or two, my impression was that the song was merely
one long repetition of the refrain “You better run, You better run,
You better run to the City of Refuge” (I have lost count of how many
times it recurs). On repeated listening, I did detect a few verses, but
the only way to make sense of them is … yes, to look at the lyrics.
Like “The Mercy Seat,” “City of Refuge” is a close
engagement with the Bible that warms the heart of a biblical critic like
me. The key text is Numbers 35 where the legislation for the cities of
refuge is laid out at some length: “When you cross the Jordan into
the land of Canaan, then you shall select cities to be cities of refuge
for you, that the manslayer who kills any person without intent may flee
there” (Num. 35:10-11). Various situations in which one might involuntarily
cause death follow. The cities’ role is to short-circuit the bloodguilt–the
need to avenge a death with another death. But echoes of the cities of
refuge run through Exodus 21:12-13, Joshua 20 and 1 Kings 1:50-53; 2:28-31.
[33] As far as the song itself is concerned, the incessant repetition of “You
better run” evokes the urgency of flight. A mournful mouth organ
begins the song, and is then joined by an acoustic guitar when the first “You
better run” comes through in a slow and soft voice. A crescendo of
flight builds with bass, drums and chunky rhythm guitar joined by multiple
desperate voices as the flight gains momentum. One can feel the massing
chase behind the refugee, and at this point he or she may as well be a
slave, an ancient Israelite fleeing blood guilt or indeed a refugee seeking
safe harbour from a war-ravaged Middle East that suffers under the weight
of Western imperialist forces out to secure dwindling oil supplies. Apart
from the incessant chorus, the illegible verses evoke apocalyptic scenes
of standing “before your maker” stained with the blood of crime
and darkness, or facing the final “days of madness” when even
graves will no longer be places of rest. But I have slipped into working
with the “words” and neglected the question as to why these
words are mixed down to illegibility. The overwhelming effect is the absence
of lyrics: they are negated both by unceasing repetition and by sliding
into the background of the music mix.
[34] But note what happens: when the words disappear, so do the christological
references and autobiography. While we might attribute one or the other
absence to the particular instance of the song, the loss of all three at
once is rather spectacular, especially in light of the way they mesh so
closely in much of Cave’s material.
Conclusion
[35] So what are we to make of this chink in Nick Cave's formidable armour?
And what does this have to say about the whole tension between culture
as the result of or gateway to the Bible? Cave overwhelms us with a potent
mix of word, autobiography and christology, and it takes some time to find
the break, the gradual unravelling that I have traced in Tender Prey.
I have made it quite clear that I am less than comfortable with the authorial
Cave, the Cave for whom the “Word” is central, who directs
our interpretation via his christological autobiography.
[36] But rather than letting that discomfort determine my response, let
me sit down with Nick Cave and discuss with him the implications of my
analysis of his work for my tentative comments on method with which I began
this essay. What might the results of that discussion be? To begin with,
I would like to bring back the initial problem, namely that between culture
as the result of or gateway to the Bible. How best might we describe Cave’s
engagement with the Bible? I am not saying anything risky by pointing out
that the overwhelming tendency is to see Cave’s work as in some way
reliant on the Bible. That book is the source, the assumption goes, of
much of his work. Do not the biographies emphasise his constant reading
of the Bible, and does he not position it as one of his inspirations in
his autobiographical narratives? All we need to do is sort out what he
is doing with the text, how he interprets it – in other words, his
work is an example of Rezeptionsgeschichte.
[37] This is precisely where the limits of such an approach begin to show
up. Assuming he is making some active, conscious effort to interpret the
Bible, then what kind of interpretation is it? It by no means falls in
with any of the known canons of biblical interpretation, ranging from scholarly
work in all its myriad ways through sermons to popular re-readings. He
constantly alludes to biblical texts, but the way they enter his lyrics
is much more of the nature of Wirkungsgeschichte: biblical language
enters his musical creativity, almost unconsciously, in a mix with many
other things. It is, if you like, part of the vast reservoir on which he
draws when he writes. Even when he engages with a text more directly and
draws back again to Rezeptionsgeschichte, as in “Mercy Seat” or “City
of Refuge,” the connections run across other biblical texts, outside
the Bible and back again. In the end, all we can come up with is that Cave
is entirely idiosyncratic in his use of the Bible–in other words,
an admission that we can’t quite place him.
[38] So let us shift the question and ask whether Cave’s work is
in fact a gateway to the Bible. While this option might at first seem counter-intuitive,
it is worth pointing out that many of those who listen to Cave’s
music are not biblically literate. They encounter the Bible through
the music and, above all, the lyrics. And I would hazard a guess that there
are not too many of these fans who would dive for the Bible–if they
had one–in order to track down his allusions and more extended engagements.
In other words, the engagement with culture comes first and the Bible appears
only in this context. But Cave too came to the Bible only after he became
a musician–albeit back in the Birthday Party days. The Bible is by
no means a source here, nor is his task as a musician the result of the
Bible: rather, his experience as a musician, as an artist, is the gateway
through which he approaches the Bible.
[39] And yet, this option comes up short too. For one thing, there is no
need to go back to the Bible after encountering Cave’s music. I doubt
many would, apart from the odd wayward biblical critic. Those who do recognise
the biblical allusions or the more extended engagements tend to do so on
the basis of some prior knowledge of the Bible. Such knowledge adds a resonance
to the music, but it is by no means necessary. And it is far too simplistic
to suggest that Cave’s own experience as a musician drove him into
the arms of the Bible–there are more factors at work than this.
[40] The model, then, has come up short on both counts: understanding the
Bible as the source of Cave’s music runs into problems, especially
on the question of what he actually does with the Bible. Taking the Bible
as the destination to which one might set out from that music is equally
problematic, since it is hardly a necessary path to follow. It looks as
though I may be stuck in a trap of my own making. This is where I would
to invoke Hegel’s genius: rather than worry away at an unsolvable
question, it is much better to move to another level and ask to what
problem that question may be an answer. In other words, the problem
is not solvable as such. It is actually the result (or answer) of a whole
set of other problems. All we need is a little bit of lateral thinking.
And in this case the real problem is not how to fit Cave’s music
into the model of result-gateway, nor is it even the obvious limits of
such an effort. Rather, the fact that there are limits, that there are
whole realms of Cave’s engagement with the Bible excluded by that
model, is the real problem.
[41] In order to make some sense of that problem, I would like to
make use of an idea from Fredric Jameson, namely “strategy of containment.” Such
a strategy is basically a comprehensive ideological effort at cohesiveness
and control–hence containment. The catch is that such control relies
on a bunch of items that must be excluded in order to maintain the impression
of control and cohesion. For example, in the continual effort of capitalist
societies to maintain the impression of social cohesion, any challenge
to the dominant order must be labelled variously as criminal, mentally
disturbed, eccentric and so on. To admit that it was actually organised
opposition to social cohesion would be tantamount to admitting that there
is no cohesion in the first place. As far as the interpretation of Nick
Cave’s music is concerned, a strategy of containment gives a limited
range of viable options for interpretation within which we can work, but
it does so by blocking out other possibilities. Such a strategy sets parameters,
opens up certain possibilities and closes down others.
[42] So let me see first how a strategy of containment works with Cave’s
music and then how it operates in the impasse between result and gateway.
As I argued above, Cave attempts to control interpretation of his engagement
with the Bible by means of a potent mix of autobiography, the dominance
of the (sung and written) word and christology. However, a chink shows
up in this comprehensive control in those songs on Tender Prey where
the lyrics by and large disappear behind the music. This break signals
the limits of Cave’s own effort at control or containment. He gives
the impression that everything that needs to be said about his work may
be said within the confines of word, autobiography and christology. But
at some point it will and does break down.
[43] Here comes the connection: in the same way that Cave’s effort
at authorial control is a strategy of containment, so also is the methodological
tension between result and gateway to the Bible. That is, these two options
have their own limits, and these limits indicate the presence of a strategy
of containment. Like Cave’s authorial voice, these two options attempt
to control interpretation by giving the impression that they contain all
possible options for interpretation. By indicating that we may either move
from the text forwards, or from subsequent interpretations backwards, they
give the impression that this is all we can do with the Bible. We can go
one way or the other. All we have is a two-way street. But–to stay
with the metaphor–this closes out the possibility of crossing the
street, jay-walking, or moving in an unpredictable fashion.
[44] What those possibilities might be is the topic of another essay, but
here I limit myself to a final comment concerning the second level of interpretation
that I earlier named “afterlives.” Rather than limiting ourselves
to taking the Bible as the source of cultural interpretations or as the
destination we must attain through culture, it is much better to think
of the category of afterlives itself in terms of strategies of containment.
In other words, each appropriation of the Bible by culture, in whatever
way it happens, is a strategy of containment in and of itself. Thus, each
interpretation will provide some insights but it will do so only by excluding
others. And this applies to whether we see culture as the result of the
Bible, in terms of either Wirkungsgeschicte or Rezeptionsgeschichte,
or as the gateway to the Bible.
Notes
[1] See Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Selected
Writings. Volume 1: 1912-1926 (edited by M. Bullock and M.W. Jennings.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1996).
[2] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode,
vol. 1 of Gesammelte Werke (Tübingen: Mohr, 1990; original
1960).
[3] Many thanks to Christina Petterson for pointing
this distinction out to me.
[4] And often confused, as with the new Blackwell
Bible Commentaries series.
[5] Fredric Jameson, “Metacommentary,” in The
Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986, vol 1. Minneapolis, Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
[6] Richard Walsh, Reading the Gospels in the Dark:
Portrayals of Jesus in Film (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International,
2003).
[7] Richard Walsh, "Wrestling with the Passion
of the Christ: At the Movies with Roland Barthes and Mel Gibson," The
Bible and Critical Theory 1,2 (2005).
[8] Yvonne Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives:
The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000).
[9] Sherwood, Jonah, 236.
[10] Sherwood, Jonah, 2.
[11] Sherwood, Jonah, 287.
[12] Erin Runions, How Hysterical: Identification
and Resistance in the Bible and Film, Religion/Culture/Critique (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
[13] Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday
Party and Other Epic Adventures (London: Omnibus, 1996), Maximilian
Dax and Johannes Beck, The Life and Music of Nick Cave: An Illustrated
Biography, trans. Ian Minock (Berlin: Die-Gestalten-Verlag, 1999);
Ian Johnston, Bad Seed: The Biography of Nick Cave (London: Abacus,
1996).
[14] Nick Cave, "The Flesh Made Word," in King
Ink II (London: Black Spring, 1997), Nick Cave, "An Introduction
to the Gospel According to Mark," in The Gospel According to
Mark, The Canon Pocket Bible Series (Canongate Books, 1998),
Jim Pascoe and Nick Cave, Awash in a Bleak and Fishless Sea (1997
[cited 3 August 2005]); available from http://www.jimpascoe.com/writing/nickcave.html.
[15] Cave, "The Flesh Made Word," 138.
[16] Cave, “Flesh,” 139.
[17] Cave, “Flesh,” 140.
[18] Cave, “Flesh,” 141-42.
[19] Cave, “Flesh,” 139.
[20] Nick Cave, King Ink (London: Black Spring,
1988); Nick Cave, King Ink II (London: Black Spring, 1997).
[21] Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel (London:
Black Spring, 1989).
References
Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings. Volume 1: 1912-1926. Edited
by M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1996.
Brokenmouth, Robert. Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures.
London: Omnibus, 1996.
Cave, Nick. And the Ass Saw the Angel. London: Black Spring, 1989.
———. "The Flesh Made Word." In King Ink
II, 138-42. London: Black Spring, 1997.
———. "An Introduction to the Gospel According to
Mark." In The Gospel According to Mark. Edinburgh: Canongate
Books, 1998.
———. King Ink. London: Black Spring, 1988.
———. King Ink II. London: Black Spring, 1997.
Dax, Maximilian, and Johannes Beck. The Life and Music of Nick Cave:
An Illustrated Biography. Translated by Ian Minock. Berlin: Die-Gestalten-Verlag,
1999.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Wahrheit und Methode. Volume 1 of Gesammelte
Werke. Tübingen: Mohr, 1990 (original 1960).
Jameson, Fredric. The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986. Volume
1. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Johnston, Ian. Bad Seed: The Biography of Nick Cave. London: Abacus,
1996.
Pascoe, Jim, and Nick Cave. Awash in a Bleak and Fishless Sea, 1997
(cited 3 August 2005). Available from http://www.jimpascoe.com/writing/nickcave.html.
Runions, Erin. How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the
Bible and Film, Religion/Culture/Critique. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003.
Sherwood, Yvonne. A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives: The Survival of
Jonah in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000.
Walsh, Richard. Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus
in Film. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003.
———. "Wrestling with the Passion of the Christ:
At the Movies with Roland Barthes and Mel Gibson." The Bible and
Critical Theory 1,2 (2005)
