Worked Over

I work on X., I work on Y., that's what every scholar likes to say, says W. I work on Rosenzweig. I work on Cohen. But this only means, in his case, that he is worked over by Rosenzweig, and worked over by Cohen. That their thought only strikes him down and ploughs him into the earth. It only strikes down above with the greatest indifference, with complete blindness, until he is ploughed utterly into the dirt of his ignorance.

He's pulverised by their thought, W. says. Broken by it. Rosenzweig sits closer to him than he himself. He looks up and there he is, Rosenzweig – not the real Rosenzweig, who was a saint, but the impossible one, the unreadable one, Rosenzweig insofar as W. will never understand him, Rosenzweig whose presence leaves nothing else for W. to do but to weep.

You will never understand me, says this fantasy Rosenzweig as he strokes W.'s hair. You haven't understood a line, he whispers, leaning over W.'s shoulder. And then he laughs and turns away; the book snaps shut; The Star of Redemption is closed to W.