Even Karl Marx, according to Marshall Berman's puzzlingly
rhapsodic celebration of life in modernism's «maelstrom,» confessed that modern experiences are characterized by «everlasting uncertainty»: «All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned» (All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity).
Within this frame, these nameless Hebrew poets succeeded in giving supreme expression to the basic rhythms
of inner
life: bleak despair in the face
of accumulated disaster, stubborn hope, gratitude, exultation,
rhapsodic celebration of the splendors
of creation, contentment in the quiet joys
of the good
life.