As it happens, Your Humble Blogger was recently reminded of the DeSilva, Brown and Henderson song "Button Up Your Overcoat", with its famous chorus Button up your overcoat/when the wind is free/take good care of yourself/you belong to me. And, as it also happens, Your Humble Blogger was looking ahead to the Song of Songs, Chapter Five, verse one, which begins "I am come into my garden, my sister, [my] spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk". In Hebrew, the possessives are even more pronounced, I think, because instead of a separate word (my) there is an ending (yud or tav-yud) indicating possession/agency, so that ten of the thirteen hebrew words end in that suffix. I don't know, maybe having eight mys and four Is in thirty-four words gets something of the I! Me! Mine! insistence I get from the original.
Anyway, when I began to whistle "Button Up Your Overcoat", I was struck by how old the sentiment seems to me. I mean, I would like my Best Reader to take good care of herself, but the idea of her belonging to me-or to anyone-doesn't seem romantic, it seems gross. The idea of somebody saying that somebody else belongs to them seems creepy, and brings to mind abuse of various kinds. I know Mssrs Brown and DeSilva did not intend to evoke that kind of relationship (and interestingly wrote the song from a female to a male lover, which changes the dynamic by me), and I imagine that they did not, in fact, evoke that kind of relationship in the minds of the audiences of Follow Thru.
Possessiveness is no longer considered sweet or noble. That's clearly a Good Thing. Is it bad, though, that we've lost that metaphor? In the Song of Songs, we're leading up to one of the most-quoted lines in Hebrew Scripture: ani l'dodi v'dodi li, I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine. That still sounds sweet to me, a reciprocal possession. Still, there's the sense that the lovers have snuffed out their individual lives in each other (for those Gentle Readers not present on the occasion of YHB's wedding with my Best Reader, we actually snuffed out the candles that symbolized our individual lives--it may not have been intended that way, but that's how it read to everybody there). As I read the Song more carefully, I find that yud of possession crying out to me from line after line. Does it evoke the kind of broken relationship that creeps me out about the overcoat song? Well, it doesn't, but I find I have to work at not letting it. And I can't quite enjoy ani l'dodi v'dodi li the way I used to.
I don't really have a point, Gentle Reader, but I would like to know whether this is mostly in YHB's head, or whether you think it's the zeitgeist. How does the overcoat song strike you?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus:,
-Vardibidian.
Well, the song strikes me as creepy now, thank you very much!
I love the line ani l’dodi v’dodi li. I don’t see it as economic possession, but as a simple grammatical possessive indicating a close relationship. We overload grammatical operators all the time. My turn, my mistake, my car, my moral compass, my beloved — these are all radically different meanings of my, having in common only a claim of a relationship of some sort between the head noun and me. The line celebrates reciprocated love in a compact way that doesn’t assume reciprocated love. And it sounds good.
Well, and there’s a difference between my as an identifier and as an indicator of possession. When I refer to my Best Reader as my Best Reader, it’s not that I think she is mine, but that she is not, presumably, Johnny Depp’s Best Reader, or if she is, that aspect of her identity is not relevant in the context. In ani l’dodi, the meaning is not so much identification (as in, the Beloved calls from the other room who’s that? and she responds ani l’dodi, which, come to think of it, probably happens to the couple from Song of Songs all the time in the first few years after they get married) as, well, whatever it does mean. Certainly not economic possession, as when Igor sees the Super-limited Heroclix Figure and says It Must Be Mine!! But possession nonetheless.
But it sure does sound good.
Thanks,
-V.