The Image of the Ladder in Literature

1
The Image of the Ladder in Literature

• By
• Kimberly Berlinghoff

The angels climb Jacob's Ladder on the west front
of Bath Abbey.
2
Oxford English Dictionary SECOND EDITION 1989

•     ladder, n.
• 1. a. An appliance made of wood, metal, or rope,
  usually portable, consisting of a series of bars
  (rungs) or steps fixed between two supports, by
  means of which one may ascend to or descend from
  a height.
•  3. a. Applied to things more or less resembling
  a ladder. Often with qualifying words, as cheese,
  cooper's, paring ladder fish ladder
•    Additions series 1997    1. d. fig. A route
  leading to benefit or advantage, as in the
  children's board-game snakes and ladders.

3
Historical Origins

• Bible "Jacob's ladder
• Jacob experienced a vision of a
• ladder or staircase reaching into
• heaven with angels going up
• and down it. From the top of the
• ladder he heard the voice of God,
• Who
  Landscape with Jacob's Dream, c. 1690,
  by Michael
• 
  
  
  Williams
• repeated many blessings and proclaimed
• Jacobs people to be the chosen ones. Jacob woke
  and
• said "This is none other than the house of God,
  
• and this is the gate of heaven. Book of
• Genesis (2817)

4
Interpretations

• Jewish
• Christian
• Muslim
• 
  Jacob's Ladder William Blake

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Jewish Interpretations

• The Jewish philosopher Philo (d. ca. 50 CE)
  allegorical interpretation of the ladder in the
  first book of his De somniis.
• The angels represent souls descending to and
  ascending from bodies .
• The ladder is the human soul and the angels are
  God's logoi, pulling the soul up in distress and
  descending in compassion.
• Dream depicts the ups and downs of the virtuous
  believer
• Continually changing affairs of men.

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• The location where Jacobs dream occurred was
  Mount Moriah, eventually to be the site of the
  Temple in Jerusalem. The ladder is a connection
  between Heaven and earth, the Temple provided a
  sacred location for prayers and sacrifices to be
  offered between God and the Jewish people.

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Christian Interpretations

• "And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you,
  you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God
  ascending and descending on the Son of
  Man.Gospel of John 151
• Jesus is referencing Jacob's dream (Genesis
  2812), and implicates himself as being in the
  dream.

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• In the 3rd century Origen explains that two are
  the ladders in the Christian life
• Ascetic ladder that the soul climbs on the earth
  increasing the virtues
• Travel that the soul does after the death,
  climbing the heavens up to the light of God.
• In the 4th century Saint Gregory of Nanzianzus
  speaks of ascending Jacob's Ladder by successive
  steps towards excellence, interpreting the ladder
  as an ascetic path

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• Saint John Chrystostom also believes in an
  ascetic interpretation
• "And so mounting as it were by steps, let us get
  to heaven by a Jacobs ladder. For the ladder
  seems to me to signify in a riddle by that vision
  the gradual ascent by means of virtue, by which
  it is possible for us to ascend from earth to
  heaven, not using material steps, but improvement
  and correction of manners."

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Muslim Interpretation

• The journey that Muhammad took to the heaven, the
  Isra and Mi'raj, can be connected to Jacob's
  Ladder because mi'raj literally means ladder.
  This theme was developed in 11th century Muslim
  text Kitab al-Miraj , that was translated in
  Latin in the 13th century with the title "Liber
  Scale Mahometi (the Book of the Ladder of
  Muhammad)".

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Metaphysical Representations

• Plato
• Platos Cave (Republic VII.)
• Allegory used to explain the relationship between
  our perception of reality and perceptions. This
  can be seen as climbing out of the dark into the
  light of intellectual understanding
• The Sympsosium --Diotima's ladder of love
• True love is a desire for self-immortalization
  and for perpetual possession of the Good and
  Beautiful
• spiritual higher than physical
• universal ranks above the particular
• truth and inner beauty are ultimately far
  superior to superficial attractiveness.  
• "

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• According to David L. Simpson 1998, the Symposium
  is a dialectic process of statement and
  counter-statement that resembles "the Socratic
  method"--, that progresses through incremental
  stages to the essence of Beauty and Goodness
  love as a set of steps, successive rungs in a
  quest for personal immortality love as a
  universal creative principle or sacred force

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• Dante
• The Divine Comedy
• Part Three Paradiso is a rising from sphere to
  sphere of a concentric, ten-sphered universe,
  with the earth at it center. It is a metaphysical
  path of intellectual light, teaching the relation
  of human life to eternal being, and of human
  judgment to absolute truth leading finally to a
  momentary glimpse of the ordering and limiting
  principle of all existence.

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Ordering of Universe According to Dante
Beatrice tells Dante that the natural urge of
men's souls is to rise to Heaven, but they can
kill this urge by sin and false joys - it is
their not rising which is un-natural.
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Muslim Influences?

• In 1919 Professor Miguel Asín Palacios, a Spanish
  scholar and a Catholic priest, published La
  Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia
  ("Islamic Eschatology in the Divine Comedy"), an
  account of parallels between early Islamic
  philosophy and the Divine Comedy. Palacios argued
  that Dante derived many features of and episodes
  about the hereafter indirectly from the spiritual
  writings of Ibn Arabi and has some slight
  similarities to the Paradiso, such as a sevenfold
  division of Paradise.

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Texts Speaking to Each Other

• Anthony Price
• Here be Monsters 1985 i. 22 Here was a snake or
  a ladder, and she could choose whether to go up
  or down.
• This is a strong reference to sin and heaven
  Satan is depicted as a snake in the Garden of
  Eden causing Mankinds fall, Perhaps an allusion
  to Miltons Paradise Lost the ladder could
  allude to Jacobs ladder in the Bible or Dantes
  Divine Comedy

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• Paul Bunyan
• The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That
  Which Is to Come
• A Christian allegory
• Similar in form to Dante Pilgrim on a journey
  to find eternal life and escape hell, has guides
  (Statius) along the way though the Evangelist
  (Beatrice) is the main guiding character
  eventually he comes to the cross and his burdens
  are lifted.

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• William Spencer
• Fowre Hymnes
• Such is the powre of that sweet
  passion,   That it all sordid basenesse
  doth expell,   And the refyned mynd doth
  newly fashion    Unto a fairer forme,
  which now doth dwell     In his high
  thought, that would it selfe excell   
  Which he beholding still with constant sight,   
  Admires the mirrour of so heavenly light.
• (An Hymne in Honour of Love 190 96)
• William Oram suggests these lines formulate the
  neoplatonic ideal that the lover has recreated a
  purified image of the beloved in his mindan
  image closer to the absolute Beauty that has
  shaped the beloved in the first place.

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Concrete Representations

• Literature
• Frost
• After Apple Picking
• My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a
  tree/
• Toward heaven still (1-2)
• The image of the ladder is a representation of
  his life and his continuation of his journey not
  quite finished. Dantes journey

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• W. S. Merwin
• In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year
• It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young
• Though I have long wondered what it would be like
• To be me now
• No older at all it seems from here
• As far from myself as ever
•  
• Walking in fog and rain and seeing nothing
• I imagine all the clocks have died in the night
• Now no one is looking I could choose my age
• It would be younger I suppose so I am older
• It is there at hand I could take it
• Except for the things I think I would do
  differently
• They keep coming between they are what I am
• They have taught me little I did not know when I
  was young
•  

21

• There is nothing wrong with my age now probably
• It is how I have come to it
• Like a thing I kept putting off as I did my youth
•  There is nothing the matter with speech
• Just because it lent itself
• To my uses
•  Of course there is nothing the matter with the
  stars
• It is my emptiness among them
• While they drift farther away in the invisible
  morning
• Platos Cave walking in fog and rain then coming
  out to see the stars.

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Other Influenced Works

• Art
• Blake
• Michael Williams
  
  
  
• Music
• Huey Lewis
• Rush
• Modern ideas
• Working your way up the corporate ladder
• Moving from a lesser position to something
  better/ an improvement in your life.

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Huey Lewis and the News Jacobs Ladder

• Coming over the airwaves The man says I'm
  overdue Sing along, send some money Join the
  chosen few Well mister I'm not in a hurry And I
  don't want to be like you And all I want from
  tomorrow Is to get it better than todayStep by
  step, one by one, higher and higher Step by
  step, rung by rung climbing Jacob's ladder

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Conclusion

• The image of the ladder in literature,
  composition, art, or the everyday, whether
  denoting the metaphysical or the concrete, is a
  vehicle used by the author to deliver a message.
  The implication is one of movement, either in the
  spiritual realm or the physical, and the movement
  itself could be down or up. Regardless the
  contexts in which the image of the ladder is
  used, authors reference other works and in
  effect communicate with each other.

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References
Brandeis, Irma. "The Ladder of Vision." The
Ladder of Vision A Study of Dante's Comedy.
Garden City, N.J. Doubleday, 1962.
http//dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.umw.edu204
8/cgi/entry/50128844/50128844se28?single1query_t
ypewordquerywordladder-travellingfirst1max_
to_show10hilite50128844se28
Oram, William "Edmund Spenser. Twayne's English
Authors Series Online. New York G. K. Hall
Co., 1999.
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy
http//condor.depaul.edu/dsimpson/tlove/symposium
.html
http//www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?
id182776
The map of Heaven and the Universe used in this
presentation does not belong to me but was
instead found on the Web unsited.