Rejoicing in the Law: The Performance of Authorship in A View from the Bridge

Abstract

With a focus on Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, I argue that authorship is not a matter of creative mastery, which is the working assumption in most modern discussions of the question. I use Miller’s recollection of the Jewish ceremony of “rejoicing in the law” to consider authorship in terms of wonder in the face of the transcendent. The author writes, but at some point the thing written becomes its own thing with its own purposes in ways that disclose the author’s lack of mastery, but not so as to nullify the author. The work of art shares with the law the character of being a made thing that becomes autonomous from its makers. Art and the law achieve this independence and transcendence because they have the attribute of publicity; because they are oriented toward futurity; and because they embody a higher truth about the world than could be compassed by individuals or collectivities writing for themselves or for present concerns. In the face of the possibility, finally, of the work of art becoming completely inhuman, the author becomes the principle of answerability that keeps the work fresh, mobile, and both responsive and accountable to readers over the long term.