If, as Borges writes in his poem El Golem, the name is the archetype of the thing,
then composed of consonants and vowels, ⁄ there must exist one awe-inspiring word, ⁄
that God inheres in--that, when spoken, holds ⁄ Almightiness in syllables unslurred
(Translated from the Spanish by Alan S. Trueblood).
Something raw, uncultivated, embryonic, or otherwise incomplete--all those connotations stem from the ancient Hebrew word golem. Throughout millenia of Judaic lore, the unspeaking golem is activated by the written word. The famous golem of Prague (16th century) is but one of the recent entries in the golem lore.
The agency of the golem is mute. Jorge Luis Borges based his poem El Golem on the Prague myth. by Jorge Luis Borges
The golem is a mute agent who, on command, navigates the complex network of digital mechanisms that link these pages with you. The golem generally does as it has been instructed, but it tends to take its instructions quite literally, and that can sometimes lead to surprise outcomes, some desired, others not.
While a literalist, the golem is always activated by enchantment. That enchantment is the word that Borges refers to. The German-language poet Paul Celan defined the poem as an Atemwende, a turning of breath. The word breath
is etymologically related to the word soul
in many languages so it’s not at all inaccurate to think of the poem
as having an action, a turning force, on the soul.
The golem is the silent reagent for that operation on the soul that is the poem. It helps build new homes for the poem here inside the new media.
And the golem welcomes you.