February 5, 2008
A good review of Spinoza-inspired literature
Baruch Spinoza, pictured right, believed in the oneness of everything. (‘God or nature’ he called it.)
But, as Allan Nadler recounts in this Forward review of David Ives’s play, “New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch Spinoza,” no singular version of his life or legacy has emerged from the multitude of historians, novelists and playwrights who have written about the Dutch philosopher famously excommunicated by the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656:
The many novels and plays inspired by Spinoza are bizarrely diverse, ranging from the great German Jewish novelist Berthold Auerbach’s “Spinoza: Ein Historischer Roman” (1837) and the biological racist Erwin Kolbenheyer’s “Amor Dei: Ein Spinoza Roman” (published in 1913, exactly two decades before its author became a major Nazi propagandist), to Goce Smilevski’s highly erotic “Conversation With Spinoza: A Cobweb Novel,” which won the 2002 Macedonian National Novel of the Year Award. The many short stories inspired by Spinoza range from Israel Zangwill’s “The Lens Grinder” to Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Spinoza of Market Street.” And, as I have already written in these pages, Spinoza’s life, with a particular focus on his excommunication, has been the inspiration for no less than four Yiddish and three Hebrew plays and, most recently, an Israeli play and film.
To Nadler’s pleasant surprise, the play turned out to be a fresh, illuminating and entertaining take on Spinoza:
It is testimony to Ives’s unusual literary and imaginative gifts that he has created a genuinely humorous and engaging play that sheds much light on the principles of Spinoza’s forbidding metaphysics without either compromising on intellectual substance or descending into pedantry.
From what I could tell, the play closes on Feb. 10. But, I’d suggest reading Nadler’s review anyway because he gives a great overview of all the Spinoza-inspired literature. Nadler, a professor of religion and director of the program in Jewish studies at Drew University, especially laments the overdramatizing of Spinoza’s excommunication (it was a “minor and hardly noticed affair,” he says).
I wish I had something new to add to the legacy of Spinoza. But, to be honest, I’m still having trouble juggling all of those propositions in Ethics. Maybe Ives’ play will come to Atlanta one day and then I’ll understand.
Until that happens, I guess I’ll just have to stick with Maimonides’ proofs for the existence of God.