Coleridge says that human beings are divided into Platonists and Aristotelians. Thinking again about the patience of Job and his later, magnificent rage, I found myself searching for an image. When they search for images, human beings are divided into high Platonists and low Platonists.
One day I read, in a book by an Italian gentleman-farmer, that there is a striking difference between the way lambs and pigs let themselves be slaughtered. The pig, he said, aware and terrified, puts up such a fierce resistance that sometimes five strong men are needed to hold it down. The lamb, though, looks up and meekly allows its throat to be cut, perhaps uttering a soft baa as it goes gentle into that good night.
Ah.
Later, in the interest of accuracy, I spoke with a man who worked in a slaughterhouse. He informed me that, in fact, lambs sense the approaching danger and do struggle to escape. I hung up the phone with a mixture of admiration and regret.
So I couldn’t use the image. Not because it wasn’t appropriate, but because it wasn’t true.
O Pig of God, that takest away the sins of the world!