Melitzah () is a
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
literary device
A narrative technique (also, in fiction, a fictional device) is any of several storytelling methods the creator of a story uses,
thus effectively relaying information to the audience or making the story more complete, complex, or engaging. Some ...
in which a mosaic of fragments and phrases from the Hebrew Bible as well as from
rabbinic literature
Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire corpus of works authored by rabbis throughout Jewish history. The term typically refers to literature from the Talmudic era (70–640 CE), as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic ...
or the
liturgy
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembra ...
is fitted together to form a new statement of what the author intends to express at the moment. It is similar to
cento
Cento (; Bolognese dialect, Northern Bolognese: ; Bolognese dialect, City Bolognese: ; Bolognese dialect, Centese: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy.
History
The name Cento is a reference to the centur ...
.
In Hebrew the word ''melitzah'' means
satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
,
mocking,
taunting
A taunt is a battle cry, sarcastic remark, gesture, or insult intended to demoralize or antagonize the recipient. Taunting can exist as a form of social competition to gain control of the target's cultural capital (i.e., status). In sociological ...
,
enigma or
witticism
Wit is a form of intelligent humour—the ability to say or write things that are clever and typically funny. Someone witty, also known as a wit, is a person skilled at wit, making spontaneous one-line or single-phrase jokes. Forms of wit incl ...
.
In ''Freud's Moses'' (1991), Yosef Yerushalami wrote: "''Melitzah'', in effect, recalls
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
's desire to someday write a work composed entirely of quotations. At any rate, it was a literary device employed widely in medieval Hebrew poetry and prose, then through the movement known as ''
Haskalah
The ''Haskalah'' (; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Wester ...
'', Hebrew for “enlightenment,” and even among nineteenth-century writers both modern and traditional" (p. 71).
Yerushalami argues: "In ''melitzah'' the sentences compounded out of quotations mean what they say; but below and beyond the surface they reverberate with associations to the original texts, and this is what makes them psychologically so interesting and valuable. In the transposition of a quotation from the original (in this case canonical) text to a new one, the meaning of the original context may be retained, altered, or subverted. In any case the original context trails along as an invisible interlinear presence, and the readers, like the writer, must be aware of these associations if they are to savor the new text to the full. A partial analogy may be found in
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
's use of quotations in ''
The Waste Land
''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United ...
''" (ibid., p. 72).
If he is successful in his use of ''melitzah'', the author will arouse in the reader a particular set of images and associations which will add a certain texture and tone to what is being described—the chordal accompaniment, so to speak, to the melodic line.
See also
Cut-up technique
References
{{Reflist
External links
*An example of the modern, secular use of ''melitzah'' is the boo
''Significant Moments'' written by Gary Freedman exclusively from literary and historical texts.
Bibliography
Spence, D.P. ''Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis'' (New York, W.W. Norton: 1982).
Yerushalmi, Y.H. ''Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable'' (New Haven, Yale University Press: 1991).
Jewish medieval literature
Language and mysticism
Hebrew words and phrases
Narrative techniques