The following is an essay about fragments composed of quotations. These quotations are drawn from the Bible, rabbinic sources, the works of Origen, Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius, and from the works of Friedrich Schlegel, the foremost modern thinker on this subject. Other than selecting and ordering the sources, I intervened only by adding connectors on occasion and reproducing the words from one source in the middle of another. These interventions are marked in bold; I underlined words that I also copied elsewhere.
The essay explores three ideas relating to fragments. First, in contrast and tension with a consistent emphasis on the perfection of Scripture, ancient sources imagined Biblical meaning as scattered, in a way similar to how some other ancient sources understood misplaced items; in both cases, the idea of scatter allowed appropriation by the item’s founders or the text’s interpreters. The second section considers fragments as something which resists context and interpretation, but also therefore informs an image of interpretation as a hunt for pray, the words fighting back against those who hunt them. The third section looks at the question of fragments’ temporality: are they the vestige of the past or the beginning of something new? The conclusion returns to the relinquishing of totalizing agency and a submission to the fragmentary as a redemptive act for scholars, ancients and modern.
1. Scattered Inelegantly
Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments, 77
A dialogue is a chain or garland of fragments. An exchange of letters is a dialogue on a larger scale, and memoirs constitute a system of fragments. But as yet no genre exists that is fragmentary both in form and content.
Origen, Homilies on Leviticus, 8:3
Come now, to Jesus, the heavenly physician. Enter into this medical clinic, his church…. Because this Jesus, who is a doctor, is himself the Word of God, he prepares medications for his sick ones, not from potions of herbs but from the sacraments of words.
If anyone sees these verbal medicines scattered inelegantly through books as through fields, not knowing the strengths of individual words, he will overlook them as cheap things, as not having any elegance of word.
Mishnah, Bava Meẓi‘a, 2:1
“If anyone found scattered produce, scattered coins, sheaves in the public domain, round cakes of pressed figs, baker’s loaves, strings of fish, pieces of meat, fleeces of wool taken out of their regions, bundles of flax, and purple tongues – they are his,” – the words of Rabbi Meir.
Origen, Philocalia 2:3
A very pleasing tradition, then, respecting all Divine Scripture in general has been handed down to us by the Jew. That great scholar also used to say that inspired Scripture taken as a whole was on account of its obscurity like many locked-up rooms in one house. Before each room he supposed a key to be placed, but not the one belonging to it; and that the keys were so dispersed all around the rooms, not fitting the locks of the several rooms before which they were placed. It would be a troublesome piece of work to discover the keys to suit the rooms they were meant for. It was, he said, just so with the understanding of the Scriptures, because they are so obscure; the only way to begin to understand them was, he said, by means of other passages containing the explanation dispersed throughout them.
P. Talmud, Rosh ha-Shanah, 3:5 58d
“She is like trade ships, bringing her bread from afar” (Proverbs 31:14): the words of the Torah are poor in one place but rich in another.
Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry, 82
Join one to the other, till from ever-increasing masses and members the whole is formed. Everything interpenetrates everything else… and thus it is truly no empty image to say: ancient poetry is a single, indivisible and perfect poem. Why should what has once been not come alive again?
B. Talmud, Bava Meẓi‘a, 21a
What about a kav of dates [scattered] over four cubits or a kav of pomegranates [scattered] over four cubits? [Let’s see.] What is the reason [that we postulate a person would give up on] a kav [of grains scattered over] four cubits [and therefore it belongs to the finder]? Is it because it is cheap? He will overlook them as cheap things, as not having any elegance. [If so,] likewise, a kav of dates over four cubits or a kav of pomegranates over four cubits, since they are cheap, the owner would give up on them [and therefore they belong to the finder].
But perhaps [we postulate that the owner relinquishes the grain] because it is too troublesome [to collect it] –– it would be a troublesome piece of work to discover the keys –– and a kav of dates over four cubits or a kav of pomegranates over four cubits, since it is not too troublesome, he would not give up on them? Let it stand.
2. At those who hunt it
Schlegel, AF, 206
A fragment, like a miniature work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a porcupine.
Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 3.13
When I consider the difficulties of finding out the meaning of the words of Scripture that we have here adduced, it seems to me that I am in like case with a man who pursues his quarry by means of the power of scent, such as a wise dog has. For sometimes it happens that when the hunter, following a hot trail, thinks that he has come close to the hidden lairs, he is all of a sudden forsaken by the track-marks. And, having urged his hound to pursue the scent more carefully, he goes back along the same trails that he had traced before, until he finds the place where his quarry, now thoroughly aroused, has secretly betaken itself onto another trail. When the hunter finds this, he follows it up with more alacrity, more sure now of his prey and more certain that he is on the right tracks. So when the track of the explanation that we thought to find have in some way failed us, we likewise hope that after a little search and after pursuing a plainer sort of explanation than appeared possible before, the Lord our God may deliver the prey into our hands.
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, 3.45
“There are,” replied Apollonius, “tall stories current which I cannot believe; for they say that the creature has four feet, and that his head resembles that of a man, but that in size it is comparable to a lion; while the tail of this animal puts out hairs a cubit long and sharp as thorns, which it shoots like arrows at those who hunt it.”
Origen, Homilies on Psalms, 37
The word of God is like arrows. And they are not hurled in vain, nor do they speed past their mark. The hearers of these words are stung in their hearts by such arrows, which it shoots at those who hunt it. Like a porcupine.
3. Only by its direction
Schlegel, AF, 259
You say that fragments are the real form of universal philosophy. The form is irrelevant. But what can such fragments do and be for the greatest and most serious concern of humanity, for the perfection of knowledge?
1 Corinthians 13:9-10
For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
Amos 8:11-2
The time is coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land… they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
Tosefta, ‘Eduyyot, 1:1
When the sages entered the vineyard at Yavneh they said: The time is coming at which a person will go seeking a word from the words of torah and will not find it, from the words of the scribes and will not find it. As it is said: “The time is coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land… they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it” (Amos 8:11-2). They said: Let us begin – what are [the words] of the School of Shammai and what are [the words] of the School of Hillel? The School of Shammai says…; the School of Hillel says...
Schlegel, AF, 22
The feeling for projects —which one might call fragments of the future—is distinguishable from the feeling for fragments of the past only by its direction: progressive in the former, regressive in the latter.
P. Talmud, Pesaḥim 10:1 37c
R. Abbahu came to Tiberias. The students of R. Yohanan saw him with his face lit up. They said before R. Yohanan: “R. Abbahu found a treasure.” He said to them, “Why?” They said to him, “His face is lit up.” He said to them, “Perhaps he heard a new piece of torah.” He came to him and asked, “What new piece of torah have you heard?” He said to him, “an ancient additional tradition.”
Schlegel, AF, 24
Many of the works of the ancients have become fragments. Many modern works are fragments as soon as they are written.
4. Conclusion
B. Talmud Bava Meẓi‘a, 21a
But if [the objects were found] in a manner indicating [accidental] falling, even more than a kav should also [belongs to the finder]. And if [they were found] in a manner that indicated [deliberate] placement, then even less than a kav should not [belong to the finder]?
Schlegel, AF, 121
Speculation en detail is as rare as abstraction en gros, and yet it is these that beget the whole substance of scientific wit, these that are the principles of higher criticism, the highest rungs of spiritual cultivation. The great practical abstraction is what makes the ancients —among whom this was an instinct—actually ancients… But to transport oneself arbitrarily now into this, now into that sphere, as if into another world, not merely with one's reason and imagination, but with one's whole soul; to freely relinquish first one and then another part of one's being, and confine oneself entirely to a third; to seek and find now in this, now in that individual the be-all and end-all of existence, and intentionally forget everyone else...
B. Talmud, Bava Meẓi‘a, 21b
Abandonment without awareness: Abaye said it is not abandonment and Rava said it is abandonment. Concerning an object that has an identifying mark, everyone agrees that [abandonment without awareness] is not abandonment.
Schlegel, Ideas, 25
The life and power of poetry consist in its ability to step out of itself, tear off a fragment of religion, and then return into itself and absorb it.
Schlegel, Lucinde, 105
Sweetly reposing the childlike spirit slumbers and the kiss of the loving goddess stirs only happy dreams.
B. Talmud, Sanhedrin 71a
R. Zeira said: If someone falls asleep in the study house, his torah becomes tatters upon tatters, for it was said: “Sleep clothes with tatters (Proverbs 23:21).”
Translations used
Rabbinic sources appear here in my translation and cited according to standard editions; I used the New Revised Standard Version for the Bible, and other translations as follows:
Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. R. P. Lawson (Westminister, Md., 1957)
Origen, Homilies on Leviticus, trans. G. W. Barkley (Washington, D.C., 1990)
Origen, Homily on Ps. 37, translation from K. J. Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis (Berlin, 1986)
Origen, Philocalia, trans. G. Lewis (Edinburgh, 1911)
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, trans. F. C. Conybeare (Cambridge, 1912)
Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments, Ideas and Lucinde from: Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. P. Firchow (Minneapolis, 1971)
Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, trans. E. Behler and R. Struc (University Park, PA., 1968)