In the Proverbs this manner is less tolerable. The
book is essentially secular in character; but Rashi could not
take it in this way. To him it was an allegory; and he
transformed this manual of practical wisdom into a prolonged
conversation between the Torah and Israel. Again, though Rashi
discriminated among the Midrashim, and adopted only those that
seemed reconcilable with the natural meaning, his commentaries
none the less resemble Haggadic compilations. This is true,
above all, of the Pentateuch. And if the Haggadah "so far as
religion is concerned was based upon the oral law, and from an
esthetic point of view upon the apparent improprieties of the
Divine word," it nevertheless "serves as a pretext rather than a
text for the flights, sometimes the caprice or digressions, of
religious thought."[84] Now, Rashi was so faithful to the spirit
of the Midrash that he accepted without wincing the most curious
and shocking explanations, or, if he rejected them, it was not
because he found fault with the explanations themselves.
Sometimes, when we see him balance the simple construction
against the Midrashic interpretation of the text, we are annoyed
to feel how he is drawn in opposite directions by two tendencies.
We realize that in consequence his works suffer from a certain
incoherence, or lack of equilibrium, that they are uneven and
mixed in character. To recognize that he paid tribute to the
taste of the age, or yielded to the attraction the Midrash
exercised upon a soul of naive faith, is not sufficient, for in
point of fact he pursued the two methods at the same time, the
method of literal and the method of free interpretation, seeming
to have considered them equally legitimate and fruitful of
results.
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