Book Review - The Secret Chord
By Brother Marc
This summer I read The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks, a 2015 New York Times bestseller. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction for her novel March, the
story of a family man (the father in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women) caught up in the terrors
and mass destruction of the Civil War.
The
Secret Chord paints a fresh portrait of the Biblical
figure David as a gifted artist, dedicated visionary, charismatic outlaw, and warrior
king. He was a vainglorious alpha male—ruthless when necessary—with great passions and deadly flaws. He struggled with
conflicting emotions as husband and father yet was able to deeply repent of his
moral transgressions.
The novel takes place around 1000 BCE. It dramatizes
the conflict of right and wrong amid the unending
brutality of war and political survival. It tackles the tensions between
reason and romance, religion and politics, and creativity and survival. We can
feel and understand the excitement, beauty, tenderness, and devotion in David’s
life. We cringe at the conflicts and horrors Brooks describes so vividly.
She used as the narrator David’s life-long
advisor Natan (Nathan), whose benevolent and well-grounded opinions were often
enhanced by whirlwind prophetic trances. He strove
to chronicle the king’s entire life along with the profound loyalties and deadly
betrayals David evoked in those around him. He treated with respect the love between
David and Jonathan that strained all other bonds. He listened especially
to the voices of the voiceless women in David’s circle.
King David is the first character in
Western literature whose story is told in detail from early childhood to
extreme old age. Surviving historical sources include Second Chronicles, which
gives the genealogy of David and his descendants along with his biography. These
were written at the end of the fifth century BCE in order to defend the
legitimacy of the Davidic monarchy at that time. This in turn underscored the
centrality of Jerusalem and its Temple for the Jewish nation. (Jesus’ ancestry
is listed in a similar style in Matthew’s Gospel and includes David.)
Today David is known by many only as the youthful
slayer of the enemy giant Goliath and for the rotten way he made Bathsheba his
wife. Michelangelo’s magnificent and stunning statue of David, seventeen feet
tall, stands in Florence. Yet, his greatest legacy is his Psalms.
At least 73 of the 150 psalms in the
Biblical Psalter are David’s, written in Hebrew. They overflow with history,
myth, poetry, wisdom, and prayer. When I reflect on all the grief, sorrow,
loneliness, exultation, praise, and thanksgiving found in them, I still wonder
at how the David described in history and in The Secret Chord produced such masterpieces. Through them the
secret chord of his relationship with God has sounded for three thousand years.
He describes his trust in God with such
emotional intensity and sensitivity that it still resonates with us today. “Wake
up, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn!” “Let the groans of
prisoners reach you…,” and the whole 23rd Psalm “The Lord is my Shepherd…”
often recited at funerals and in dark times.
Even individual verses from a psalm can
evoke deeper religious feeling and devotion: for example, “I have kept my soul
peaceful, like an infant in its mother’s arms.”
Psalms have always been and continue to be
used in the Jewish and Christian worlds as song, prayer, meditation, blessing,
or simply reminders to be attentive to the moment. Christian monastics have
long recited the full Psalter continually year-round. At New Skete we have also
expanded the traditional selections used for the daily liturgical services.
Begin to study a psalm and you begin to
probe into a vast world of manuscripts, archeological discoveries like the Dead
Sea Scrolls, ancient languages, and translations like the Greek Septuagint. Very
quickly, a vast tradition of commentaries will come to your rescue.
I am glad I picked up The Secret Chord at a local bookstore. I enjoyed its magical, vivid,
and stark retelling of an ancient story. But I am still ever more drawn to the living
joys and sorrows, mysteries, and insights I find in David’s Psalms themselves.