Sabbath Peace

Yesterday I woke up at nine on a cold day, and felt blessedly free of obligations. I could sit down and write, and do work that I wanted to do, rather than work I hire myself out to do that is totally alien to my nature.

Even though writing is forbidden on the Sabbath, it occurred to me today, when I woke up at nine-thirty on a cold day and could think of nothing to do with myself, feeling an oppressive sense of boredom, that the sense I felt yesterday was of a Sabbath from work. It is truly rare that I feel I have nothing to do, no obligations harrying me, and this was such a day.

I do question this reading of my sense of freedom on that Sabbath day, though, as there are other times when, traveling out to Long Island from Manhattan to visit my parents on a Friday night – traveling is also forbidden on the Sabbath – I read a Jewish newspaper and feel an infinite quietude descend upon me, feel as though I would be more myself if I wore a beard and yarmulke, and reckon that one need not observe strictures in order to experience a feeling of being Sabbath-worthy. This feeling of quietude is different than a feeling of freedom, because one feels obligated to the past, rather than free of obligation. Sabbath quietude involves a sense of feeling buoyed by the past, resting upon it (the Sabbath is, after all, a day of rest), and being content, rather than feeling ambitious to express one’s powers, as I did yesterday. That feeling of ambitiousness, I think, has invaded my Sunday and made me discontented with the prospect of doing little but sitting in my recliner and passing the time. I feel devilishly certain that time must be of use!

There is a Roman writer who says that the lust for fame is the last virtue to be given up by the wise – “which for him,” writes Nietzsche, “means never.” It is amazing that the way to salvation from my violent drive is shown to me by a violently driven writer. My enduring personal prayer is for peace, by which I mean first of all peace of mind, and from there radiating outwards; yet my default mode of writing is the polemic, coming from the Greek polemos, for war. Typically, then, for a Marxist, I am at war with my own nature, though atypically, the criterion for success is disconnection from the drive by quenching the fiery spear-tip in the water of religion, rather than driving it through the heart of the bourgeois – for I recognize that I am he.