Vision and Voice in Isaiah

Abstract

This essay consists of four sections, interwoven with a dilatory commentary on the first few verses of Isaiah. They are concerned with the metaphors of vision and voice in Isaiah, as they relate to the problem of metaphoricity in general, and the ever-presence of death in the book. Vision and voice are metaphors for each other, and opposed terms. If vision suggests clarity and exteriority, voice evokes the interiority of the person, and an intimation beyond the horizon. Both terms are contradicted, and paradoxically enriched, by the injunction not to see or hear in Isaiah, and its transmutations through the book. What is seen and heard is a language, which perhaps is not understood or realized, and which is in any case impossibly difficult. The third section turns to the problem of metaphor in the book; it adduces the theories of Jakobson and Kristeva, and proposes that metaphor may be an instrument of disintegration in the book, of the dissolution and disillusion of the poetic world. The last section treats the encompassing schema of death, as announced in the superscription, in the context of the initial metaphor of filiation. It concludes with the ethical problem of the prophet, and critic, in producing and encountering this text.

The Book of Isaiah in Contemporary Research

“…Other recent studies have found literary cohesiveness in Isaiah by reading it as a liturgy in eight acts (Goulder 2004b), or by tracing themes through large swaths of the book, such as sickness and health (Kustár 2002), light and darkness (Vlková 2004), speech and vision (Landy 2000b), the city (van Wieringen and van der Woude 2011), etc. Everson and Kim (2009) is a collection of literary studies on the book including a number by prominent scholars.…”

Aspirant Sage or Dysfunctional Seer? Cognitive Dissonance and Pastoral Vulnerability in the Profile of Daniel

“…In a discussion of interpretive interests, Mark G. Brett (1990) has 2 I refer to places where the character speaks in the first person singular voice. In the "Abstract" of F. Landy's (2000) article on Isaiah, the author states that "if vision suggests clarity and exteriority, voice evokes the interiority of the person, and an intimation beyond the horizon" (p. 36). The same contradicted and paradoxical elements are found in Daniel 7-12, where both visions and the "I" voice of Daniel are present.…”

“…In a study devoted to vision and voice in Isaiah, Francis Landy (2000) has come to the conclusion that, "if vision suggests clarity and exteriority, voice evokes the interiority of the person and an intimation beyond the horizon" (p. 36). The same could be said of my "port of entry" here.…”