Thread by @AshRobertson20

Gilman reads ‘See How Little’ as tinged with homoeroticism, and says that the Yiddish speaking reader would have instantly thought of ‘male limb’ with the ‘אבר’ used for limb here. And while yes, it can be a euphemism, I think there is something working on a few levels. #Yiddish

There is likely a bit of a physical union, shades of the existence of the shechinah, or dwelling of God between a man and wife — but also perhaps a fraternal spiritual/intellectual union of minds.

Gilman seems to reach a little, though, when he suggests there is a kind of ‘impregnation’ going on on that front.

On the other hand, we’ve got ploughed fields for planting, birth images...

The addition of Spinoza into the mix, along with the fact previous — and following — poems, suggest being free of the body, clouds the matter. Especially if we draw the parallel between Spinoza here and Abelard earlier, then why not?

Monastics of philosophy, wedded to something or someone unreachable, earthly love either leading to divine love and perfection or being sublimated for its attainment…The world may never know.

What the close of ‘See How Little’ does recall in Leivick’s work is his talking about the process of being given life by a creator: being born in the woods in ‘Clouds Behind Woods’. God — there dual-aspected, a tate-mame — creates him, engaging in a similar bodily contact.

In writing about his Golem in an article in 1925, Leivick, the ‘god’ of his golem, does the same — though closer textually here to the resurrections performed by Elijah and Elisha.

All slightly inverted in ‘Spinoza,’ as they are not creating, restoring to life, or awakening, but falling asleep.

Interestingly, Gilman *doesn’t* seem to leap to that conclusion when the same word for limb is used in ‘Ballad of Denver Sanatorium’ where it might perhaps be more strongly implied, with the sister/mother/lover nurse (and echo of the sister/mother/lover Heloise).

Furthermore, Leivick uses both אבר and גליד seemingly interchangeably throughout his work (in my experience) with no apparent extra or sub-textual meaning on his part.

In other words, if it is homoerotic (and why not?)…a double-entendre is probably not why. If the text itself is there, why dig for subtext?

Whatever further implications it may have — and I don’t necessarily think Leivick is going for the innuendo in ‘limb’, as he says at two junctures, at some length, that he’s prudish about language and doesn’t enjoy profanity, slang or innuendo—

it is Leivick’s language and imagery for direct physical interaction with something or someone divine.

From Tsarist Katorga and With the Surviving Remnant regarding his linguistic prudishness:

A further aside: KZ slang, at least with respect to some camps and ghettos, was recorded as Leivick mentions, and an interesting resource on it is a book by Y. Kaplan, whom he met with in Germany.

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