The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

Strange is a salvation that can’t be seen. It takes place not here, in the visible world, but somewhere—this Hershel can’t quite understand—in some other world, right nearby or maybe underneath the visible world.

Hershel wonders what attracts women to this man. There is something women can always discern, a thing they always recognize a man by, even Hershel understands this. Jacob is beautiful, and wherever he shows up, everything takes on a meaning, comes together like it has been tidied up.

The first time Jacob invites Hershel to his bed, Hershel does not protest. He gives himself to Jacob completely, blazing like a torch; were it possible, Hershel would give him more—his life, even.

Hana has clearly had enough of her parents, must want to show off her wedded status, wants Jacob to herself, wants travel, wants a change. Hershel sees she’s still a child, just like him, that she’s pretending to be a grown woman.

Hershel falls in love with Hana. Now he loves both of them, Jacob and Hana, with a single feeling. It is a strange state to be in. He obsessively desires to be near Hana. He still remembers her buttocks, big and soft and innocent—he wants to storm them.

he sees a white stone city outstretched past the horizon, and—how strange—it is a city that looks at people, and not the other way around. He doesn’t know how to explain it, the fact that the rocks are watching.

pressing into her backside, a half-naked Jacob, moving slowly, rhythmically. Jacob suddenly turns to look at Hershel where he sits behind the horses, and although he looks at him from far away, his look, so hot and powerful, gives Hershel an erection.

Here Destiny is still in effect, the Greek version of Fatum that sets people in motion, marking out their paths like little strings of sand that flow along a dune from top to bottom, creating arabesques and other figures of which the finest artist would hardly be ashamed, twisting, chimerical, exquisite.

Here every action can be corrected, you can have a chat with the gods, make them a sacrifice. That is why people are able to look at their reflections in the water with respect. And look upon others with love.

the Church, and its ubiquitous functionaries, that all evil is in man yet can’t be fixed by man. It can only be forgiven. But can it be forgiven? Hence comes that tiring, destructive feeling that one is always guilty, from birth, that one is stuck in sin and that everything is sin—doing something, not doing it, love, hate, words, and even thoughts. Knowledge is a sin, and ignorance is a sin.

On these walks Kossakowski imagines the Greek gods living here once,

He exerts his imagination; through it he wants to see them, he needs them. The gods. God. Their presence in this resiny fragrance, and especially the secret presence of some force that is sticky and slightly sweet, pulsing in every creature, makes it so that the world seems full, filled to the brim.

Antoni Kossakowski realizes that the plaintive rumble of the sea is a lament, and that all of nature is taking part in this process of mourning those gods of whom the world has been in such desperate need. There is no one here. God created the world, and the effort of doing so killed him.

so every evening he adds some new detail to his story, until it has become a never-ending array of adventures.

if it might be that the air, the light, the water—nature—just sort of settle into a person, so that those raised in the same country must bear similarities to one another, even when everything divides them.

The lowest part—the hungering part, the desiring part, the part that gets cold—that is nefesh. That part animals have, too. “Soma,” says Moliwda. “The higher part, that’s the spirit, ruah. That part animates our thoughts, makes us become good people.” “Psyche,” throws in Moliwda. “While the third part, the very highest part—that’s neshama.” “Pneuma!” Moliwda exclaims.

Thanks to that we can view the hidden nature of the world and of God, for it is a spark that chipped off Binah, the divine intellect. Only nefesh is capable of sin. Ruah and neshama are impeccable.” “Since neshama is God’s spark in man, how can God punish us for our sins with hell?

Moliwda, possessed by some incomprehensible passion, tempted by her white, abundant body, once more throws all caution to the wind and agrees to the insane escape plan she proposes instead.

where for two weeks they give themselves over to every form of delight.

lie out on ottomans, catching the eyes of the young men who strain and flex before them.

Thoughts and images come together in long ribbons; he could look at them closely and see what comes out.

the roughness that took days to surrender to the warmth of the body and its sweat.

had a second wife, dangerously young—she created around herself an atmosphere completely incomprehensible to young Antoni, an atmosphere of theater, of pretense. She came from very poor, disreputable nobility, and so had to strive for some better version of herself. She was ridiculous in her efforts.

give him some respite from the torment of having a self broken in two (what a strange ailment—no one seems to suffer from it anymore, and there is no way to speak of it, and no one to tell).

this is the language of all these people around him, this mix of people who are always on the road, instead of some language carefully assembled in a single place for the benefit of a few.

some of them have caught an accent somewhere, like a disease, so that they must repeat everything twice.

At some point, Nahman’s voice takes over. He speaks in a learned, elegant manner. He invokes Isaiah. It would be hard to outtalk him. He has evidence for everything.

by some miracle, he still thinks in Polish. And yet for many things he lacks the Polish words. He has had so many experiences in life that he lacks the Polish words to describe them all. He does this with the aid of a mixture of Greek and Turkish. Now, working for the Jews, Hebrew words enter the mix.

No one noticed the love affair. Maybe it was all those clouds of flour in the air, or maybe it was because the romance was a rather odd one. Two children who had fallen in love.

At its heart it was that they represented two types of people, which at first glance no one could see, two human beings similar to one another but diametrically opposed: for she would not be saved, while he would live eternally.

“The great, enormous hulk of the monster, delicious and soft as quail meat, or like the flesh of the most delicate fishes. Folks will be feasting on Leviathan for so long they’ll satisfy their centuries-old hunger.”

“It’s all very ordinary. There’s light, and there’s dark. Dark attacks the light, and God creates men to try and defend it.”

In a quiet voice, Nahman tells of the four great paradoxes that must be contemplated by anyone who considers himself a thinking person.

“First, in order to create a finite world, God had to limit himself, but there still remains an infinite part of God completely unengaged in creation.

“If one accepts that the idea of the created world is one of an infinite number of ideas in the infinite mind of God, then it is, without any doubt, marginal and insignificant. It is possible that God didn’t even notice he had created something.”

“Second,” Nahman continues, “creation as an infinitesimal part of God’s mind strikes Him as insignificant, and He is only barely involved in this creation; from the human perspective, this indifference may be perceived as cruelty.”

“Third,” Nahman continues in a quiet voice, “the Absolute, as infinitely perfect, had no reason to create the world. So that part of the Absolute that did lead to creation must have outsmarted the rest, and must go on outsmarting it now, and we take part in those machinations. Do you get me? We are taking part in a war. And fourth—since the Absolute had to limit Himself, in order for the finite world to arise, our world is for Him a kind of exile. Do you understand? In order to create the world, the all-powerful God had to make himself as weak

What is life, after all, if not dancing on graves?

suddenly realizes why this strange man so easily attracts people to him. In everything he does, Jacob is absolutely authentic. He is like that well from the folktale. No matter what a person shouts into it, it will always answer the same.

‘Apparently, this treasure has the property of making its wearer good to God and to man. As this does not seem to apply to any of you, it may be that the real ring has been lost. Live, then, as if your ring were the real one, and your life will show whether or not you were right.’ “And just like those three rings, there are three religions.

O Father, help me wield my tongue So that I voice my pain

the human soul is part of the great cosmic stream that flows through all creatures.

We need to be able to keep our balance. If the soul is too voracious or too porous, then too many different forms will get inside it and thereby distance it from the stream of the divine. After all it is said: “He who is full of himself has no space left for God.”

what young ones there were did not remain with their mothers, but were also communal, with several older women taking care of them, since the younger women worked in the fields or the home.

The children were never told who their father was, and the fathers didn’t learn it, either; that could have given rise to injustices, partiality to their descendants. Because the women did know, they played an important role here, equal to that of the men, and it was apparent that for this reason these women were different from women elsewhere—calmer and more reasonable, sensible.

They believed in the transmigration of souls, as we did, and in addition Moliwda said he considered that this belief was once universal, until Christianity came along and buried it. The Bogomils valued the planets and considered them their rulers.

It was holy because it was the opposite: it was shameless. Everyone who passed through initiation had to hear out a story offensive to common decency, and this came from a very old tradition in their faith, from a time when it was pagan mystery plays in honor of the ancient goddess Baubo or the unbridled Greek god Dionysus.

They told us marriage was sinful, too. That was the real sin of Adam and Eve, since it should be as it is in nature—people should connect with one another through their souls, not through some dead convention. Those who join together in spirit, spiritual brothers and sisters, can physically commingle, and the children of such unions are gifts. Those born of married couples are “children of dead law.”

He is a restless and agitated man, not a sage but a rebel.

though they had just time enough to offend any number of people, and to borrow money from those whom they hadn’t yet offended.