Oblique Diasporist Poem by gershon hepner

The reason Hebrews are unique,
says Derrida, is that they slant
the truth, so it becomes oblique,
an explanation that, I grant,
have some validity. Kitaj
concurs with Derrida and me;
we all agree a Jew should never lie,
but flourish with obliquity.

Inspired by R. B. Kitaj, a Diasporist, that is, a Jew who believes that the job of a Jew is to wander - obviously the opposite of a Zionist. Germaine Greer explains The Guardian, January 14,2008) :

The Jew's contribution to the art of the Gentiles is valuable precisely because he is an outsider. Kitaj claims kinship with not only Pissarro, Chagall, Soutine, Newman, Auerbach, Kossoff and Freud, but also with Balthus, who denied his Jewish descent, and Kandinsky, Manet, Cézanne and Matisse, who didn't have any. Jewish painters like Gertler, Rothenstein, Bomberg, Topolski, Modigliani, Schnabel and Dine are denied access to Kitaj's artistic ghetto. Not a single woman is admitted.

In his Second Diasporist Manifesto (A New Kind of Long Poem in 615 Free Verses) , Kitaj searched for traits characteristic of Jews. He was impressed by Derrida, who found oblique thinking to be almost pathognomonic of them. Kitaj left England because critics wrote things like “littered with ideas” and “imprisoned by his library” about his work, . He wrote, in response to Jacques Derrida’s: “I regularly express the concepts of Judaism in an oblique way./ I am the last Jew./ Jesus was the last Jew.”

Who knows what JD means here? And my favorite poet, the Hermit of Amherst, wrote “Tell it Slant”. So, OK! Diasporism is quite Slant too (and often oblique) .


1/15/08