Nina’s Blog

Saturday, January 30, 2010
unripe fruit

I celebrated Tu B’shvat, the festival of the trees that coincided with Shabbat this year, by reading a most charming book. It is a slim volume, all of 117 pages, written originally in Czech, and first published in Prague in 1929. The author is Karel Capek. The book is called The Gardener’s Year. It is a joyous romp through the emotional highs, lows and obsessions of the constant gardener. So endearing was this book that it was translated into English in 1931 by M and R Weatherall, and reprinted as a part of the Modern Library Gardening Series in 2002, with no less a series editor than Michael Pollan.

It was in the midst of this light-hearted diversion that I bumped into a powerful insight. Here is the set-up. Imagine gliding smoothly through Capek’s easy prose, reading along about how a hapless gardener must wrestle with an obstinate garden hose.

  It will soon be clear that until it is tamed a hose is an extraordinarily evasive and dangerous beast, for it contorts itself, it jumps, it wriggles, it makes puddles of water, and dives with delight into the mess it has made; then it goes for the man who is going to use it and coils itself round his legs; you must hold it down with your foot, and then it rears and twists round your waist and neck, and while you are fighting with it as with a mighty cobra, the monster turns up its brass mouth and projects a mighty stream of water through the windows on to the curtains which have been recently hung.

When, not a page later, I am ambushed by this observational gem:

  Odd as it may appear, a gardener does not grow from seed, shoot, bulb, rhizome, or cutting, but from experience, surroundings, and natural conditions. When I was a little boy I had towards my father’s garden a rebellious and even a vindictive attitude, because I was not allowed to tread on the beds and pick the unripe fruit. Just in the same way Adam was not allowed to tread on the beds and pick the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, because it was not yet ripe; but Adam - just like us children - picked the unripe fruit, and therefore was expelled from the Garden of Eden; since then the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge has always been unripe.

Who knew? The first humans were not, according this Capek midrash, forever forbidden access to this most desirable of fruits, this conveyor of the complete corpus of wisdom and knowledge. Nor were we, their unimagined offspring generations hence, damned to a life of naive innocence and solipsistic ignorance. What good news! For I have always been disturbed by the thought that our idyllic vision of paradise was one in which progress and development played no part; one which did not allow the full dignity of humanity to mature and flourish.

Rather, to push Capek’s midrash one step further, the problem was simply, regrettably, and profoundly, that neither the fruit nor the humans were yet ready for their mutual encounter. Both were still very young, in the throes of their own becoming. Both were busy gathering in experiences, nutrients and essences that would build the substance and scaffolding of their bodies. Both were busy filling out, plumping up and putting flesh on these foundations that would become and define their full being. This is delicate and intricate work that does not want to be rushed or interrupted.

But, according to Capek, that is exactly what happened. In the midst of becoming, the fruit was plucked, frozen in an unripe state, and ingested by an unripe body. The act of incorporating knowledge, literally bringing it into our bodies and making it one with us, was forever premature, incomplete.

So it remains to this very day. We are bombarded with raw knowledge, unripened, and indigestible. We are forced to act before we understand what we are doing:

How shall we manage the awesome power of atomic energy?
What are the ethics of cloning animals, body parts, whole persons?
When does genetically modified food mimic the healthy evolutionary traits of nature and when does it slide into the grotesque world of dangerous mutants?
Is it proper for new forms of life to be privately owned and patented?
How does one blend the equitable distribution of goods and services with the functioning of a free market?

Complete, ripened knowledge eludes us at every frontier. We are forced to deliberate, decide and function with ignorance fully in hand. Still, we bound on ahead. Like Adam and Eve, we will not be restrained. We have no choice. Ready or not, we will eat the fruit. And we will again be banished from the sheltering arms of certitude and complete knowing. That is our calling. It makes no sense to rail against such imperfection.

Acknowledging this, though, helps remedy it. We will no doubt be better off if, with each new discovery, we remember that we are again cast a bit further beyond the center of Eden. Success, and survival, demand that we proceed together, with humility, hard work, and eyes wide open.