Update

[rymenhild]

I have email access from my computer again, but it still goes into repetitive hard drive clicks, followed by freezes, followed by blue screens, at random intervals. Until I figure out what's going on with this machine, I won't be spending extended periods of time online. Also, I am about eighteen midterms behind on my grading, need to clean the apartment for Passover, and have to write my conference paper before the next conference I go to. Therefore, I almost certainly won't be seeing any of you online in the next week or two. Sorry!

While I'm here, I should say that every single one of the Had Gadya interpretations was gorgeous. daegaer, navelofwine and elfsdh stroked their nonexistent beards and payos to provide (respectively, pro-vegetarian, pro-carnivorous and purely literalist) explanations in flawless Yeshivish. shiduri_sour, in the name of moreinu haRav* Alan Dundes of blessed memory, spoke about the oral fixation apparent in the constant biting. continuoboy gave us the immoral** of the song, "Things happen, and if the butcher is on top now, it isn't going to be so in the next verse," supplying extra Gothic Archies lyrics for further text study. It's all about Stephen Merrit. carasfriendmatt explained what I shall call the Big Bang theory of Had Gadya. mistressrenet suggested a divine resurrection of the dead in the last stanza. mogget_cat shared a feline perspective on the song. taylweaver pointed out that Had Gadya is a traditional form appearing in a wide variety of folk sources over the world -- I'd be interested to hear what the Dundes disciples on my friendslist think about that. (By the bye, welcome to LJ, taylweaver!) fleurdelis28 and shirei_shibolim debated the market value of goats. fox1013 announced her intention to act out the poem with stuffed animals.

Top honors go to elettaria, for a thoughtful close reading of the Hebrew version I linked, for deep thoughts, and for some gorgeous flow charts. Thank you, elettaria, for reminding us just how disturbing the little goat's narrative is.

*Our teacher, the rabbi. Professor Dundes was not actually ordained, but he acquired more disciples than any of the rabbis I know. May he rest in peace.
**Wouldn't that be an amoral?

Comments

[ashen_key]

Therefore, I almost certainly won't be seeing any of you online in the next week or two. Sorry!

*hugs* I wouldn't have seen you until the second friday of May, anyway, due my internet download. Still, hope your computer fixes itself up.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Oy! Not even May Day? Woe.

I hope so too.

Second Friday in May... I'll either be done the major work or tearing my last follicles out of my head finishing final papers.

[ashen_key]

*winces* I know. I'm going to TRY and get all my homework done and plead with Dad. But, no promises.

*hugs* hopefully the former.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Actually I was rather disappointed that not a soul commented on my interpretation, either in your journal or in the cross-post in mine (where I just got a couple of people mentioning similar songs they'd heard). I wanted to discuss the thing, damn it!

Flow charts are always fun, I use software called Inspiration and it's dead useful for studying. I do relationship diagrams for the texts I cover and it's turned into quite an art, especially for the fiendishly complicated ones like Great Expectations. It's one of the most helpful things you can do when you're getting to know a text, I find.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

....Would you possibly mind sharing your Great Expectations flowchart with me and/or my nineteenth-century survey students?

I think your reading of Had Gadya is completely defensible, and also frightening. I'd argue with it but I can't disagree with any specific point, so I find myself, much to my perplexity, agreeing with your conclusion.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

See what I mean? Big Victorian novels are an absolute nightmare, and this was undeniable the worst, it even beat New Grub Street, and for some reason it kept fucking up while printing. Apparently my version of Inspiration has a flaw that shows up when you do certain things; when I get the next batch of Disabled Student's Allowance with the OU, I'll get an upgrade. Even if they didn't provide it for me, I'd probably buy it. Having done these charts for two courses (drama 1600-1750, the 19th C industrial novel) and a defunct dissertation (gothic), I wouldn't dream of working on a text without them. They remind you of the plot in a quickly accessible way (I was the only one who knew who was who in Oliver Twist, huzzah!), and particularly once you have a nice pile of them, you start noticing all sorts of patterns, such as how damn incestuous The Way of the World is, or the different webs of power or desire and who is at the centre of them (it's not always who you'd expect), or the fact that the links are largely familial in one text, sexual in another, economic in a third. I don't know what other software there is out there which does this job, I'm not using it in that sophisticated a way so possibly simpler stuff will do, but Inspiration does at least allow you a month's free trial.

Glad to hear you liked my analysis, I was wondering if anyone had read it or if they'd taken one look at me getting over-enthusiastic and fled!

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

P.S. And I left out Wopsle's great-aunt, though at least I got in Trabb's boy. If you can't get the image to print properly, we could try e-mail. I've currently got it saved as an Inspiration file, jpeg and on a Word file.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

That's gorgeous. I screencapped the image and saved it as a JPEG. The Great Expectations lecture I'm writing tonight is grateful.

[carasfriendmatt.livejournal.com]

That RULES!

That is all.

[elfsdh.livejournal.com]

About the computer: hard drive clicks and truly random freezes may be a signs of a hardware problem. So, get yourself a backup of essential data, while you still can... :-O