Poetry Of The People Poem by gershon hepner

Not opium of the people, poetry,
so Freud discovered. Once you know a tree
can make you sexy, and you taste its fruit,
you may have fun when in birthday suit,
but soon after are compelled to find out why,
since God commanded you to multiply,
He banned the sweet fruit of the tree of wisdom.
Although religion can’t explain His system,
great poetry provides solutions Freud,
when reading Greek and Hebrew myths, enjoyed.

Mark Edmundson writes of Freud as a possible defender of the faith in the NYT, September 9,2007:
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud were all at times able to recognize religion as being what Harold Bloom has wisely called it: not the opium of the people but the poetry of the people. They read Scripture as though it were poetry, and they learned from it accordingly. They saw that even if someone does not believe in a transcendent God, religion can still be a source of inspiration and of practical wisdom about how to live in the world. To be sure, it often takes hard intellectual work to find that wisdom. (As the proverb has it, “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”) Yet Freud’s late-life turn shows us that there is too much of enduring value in religion — even for nonbelievers — ever to think of abandoning it cold.

6/27/08