The sun rises and the sun sets, and to its place it yearns and rises there.
It goes to the south and goes around to the north; the will goes around and around, and the will returns to its circuits.
All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place where the rivers flow, there they repeatedly go...
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun."
"And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game"
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game"
What is the circle game? Is it what the first few pesukim of Kohelet talks about? This week when we started to dive into the text of Kohelet all I could think of was the song "The Circle Game." Pesukim 4-9 of the first chapter in Kohelet talk about all of the natural cycles of life and how they all come and go but they always return back to their original place. They all go in a circle. "And the seasons they go 'round and 'round." This also talks about the natural cycles chasing each other and themselves in circles. Both of these metaphor show that there is nothing new under the sun which is what Kohelet is talking about in these verses.
The song goes on to say "and the painted ponies go up and down" which refers to a carousel. Imagine a carousel in your head and what do the ponies on there do, they only move up and down. They don't move side to side, they don't move in circles, they move up and they move down. Not only is this line a metaphor for there is nothing new under the sun, but I also think that it is a metaphor for childhood. A carousel is one of a child's favorite rides and this shows that even in childhood nothing is ever really new either.
The fourth and fifth lines of the song resemble pasuk 9 in Kohelet. Pasuk 9 talks about what has been is done, people don't learn from it and that leads to nothing new under the sun. The song also talks about the same thing. It says that we can't return to the past but we can look behind at it meaning that we can't go back and change it or learn from it but we can look at it which, again leads to nothing new under the sun.
The first part of the first chapter in Kohelet is indeed describing the circle game. Our world chases itself in circles and we can never do anything new from chasing ourselves and our own mistakes. I encourage you all to listen to the song (link below).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbIuC9hTY9Y
Sophie,
ReplyDeleteNice poetry! I really like the connection you made between the first "perek" of Kohelet and this song. Both of these works give an interesting insight into the nature of life. They both claim that life is a cycle, or a circle game. As of right now, I do not have the evidence or even the ideas to contest this; I hope that learning the rest of Kohelet will lead to an acceptable positive approach to this issue. I do have one issue with your post: I do not agree that there is nothing new in childhood. For the individual, childhood is the time in which the most valuable life lessons are learned. Saying that there is nothing new in childhood is the same as saying that people are born with a complete knowledge of the world; there are no new experiences in life. I do see where you are coming from in that every human life takes the same pattern of birth, childhood, adulthood, aging, and finally, death. Although the cycle is the same, the essence of what is learned and experienced is always slightly different. This simply cannot be taken for granted.
Sarah- I agree with what you said about childhood being a time full of new experiences and thoughts and ideas for the individual, but if you think about it, each individual has new thoughts, ideas, and experiences throughout his/her whole life. Isn't that where phrases like "learn from your mistakes" come from? I think the idea of nothing new ever happening is more about the idea that no one can ever be the first to do something because it's been done at some point before, whether we know about/remember it as a society or not.
DeleteAs a side note, as John Keats (a poet) once said, "Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced." We might hear about things that have been said or done before, or we might not know about it at all, but either way, we will not know what it feels like or be able to understand it at all unless we do experience it.
I want to end with one more quote that seems to present a slightly different idea: "Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again." -Andre Gide
Take that as you will.