Abstract
For her collection Poems 1960–1967, Denise Levertov added a Hasidic tale to the reprinted text of her 1961 volume, The Jacob’s Ladder. The tale, printed under the title “The Ladder,” was drawn from Martin Buber’s collection of Hasidic sayings and stories, Tales of the Hasidim: Later Masters, and it recalls Jacob’s vision, in Genesis 28:12, of a ladder between heaven and earth on which angels were rising and descending:
Rabbi Moshe (of Kobryn) taught: It is written: “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth.” That he is every man. Every man must know: I am clay, I am one of countless shards of clay, but “the top of it reached to heaven”—my soul reaches to heaven; “and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it”—even the ascent and descent of the angels depend on my deeds. (2)
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© 2014 Temple Cone
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Cone, T. (2014). Hasidim in Poetry: Dialogic Poetics of Encounter in Denise Levertov’s The Jacob’s Ladder . In: Scanlon, M., Engbers, C. (eds) Poetry and Dialogism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401281_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401281_7
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