Sight and speech

In her commentary on the Song of Songs (Old Testament Library) , Cheryl Exum notes the finely rendered sexual differences between the way the man and woman of the Song, evident in the different ways they express their desires for one another.  The woman tells stories: “They are the only parts of the Song that display narrative development or what one might call a plot.”  But the man doesn’t tell stories; rather, he “look[s] at her and tell[s] what he sees and how it affects him.”  In short, the man majors on sight, the woman on speech; the man gazes and records, but “the woman constructs the man primarily through the voice.”  Strikingly, she quotes him more than once; he never quotes her.

Exum characterizes the difference as between lovesickness and awe.  The woman describes herself as lovesick when her lover is present, and then again when he is absent: “The woman tells others, the women of Jerusalem, what love does to her.”  Both parts of that sentence are important: The woman confides in others in a way the man never does, and she is referring not to the affect that her lover has so much as the effect that love has.  The man however tells the woman directly “what she does to him.”  He describes her effect not as lovesickness but as conquest: “Turn your eyes away,” he pleads, “for they overwhelm me.”  Exum comments: “As a man, he is used to feeling in control.  But love makes him feel as though he is losing control.  He is powerless to resist; his autonomy is challenged.”  In short, “He is awestruck; she is lovesick.”

And then we allegorize?