Read Part 1 - Lyricism
Read Part 2, Virtuosity
Read Part 3, Symbolism

By Doug Talley

In Luke 21, Jesus observed to his disciples that in days to come Herod’s temple would be thrown down, the city of Jerusalem would be trodden down, and the very powers of heaven would be shaken, alluding to other gospel statements that even stars would fall from the sky. And then in a tidy little parallelism, He made a most remarkable claim:

 Heaven and earth shall pass away,
  but my words shall not pass away. 

This parallelism is visible also in the original Greek and passes from one language to the next as the most diminutive of poems:

What is Christ saying? That the organization of material elements, whether earthly or heavenly, will dissolve and melt away, yet His sayings will stand. His words will live forever, beyond any other creation in the universe. Perhaps He has stated here, too, the aspiring wish of every ambitious poet and writer, that somehow their words also will endure and last forever and become universal in scope and span. 

The Essence of Universality

The quality of universality is perhaps the pinnacle achievement of any literary masterpiece. One might argue that universality is the defining characteristic of a masterpiece – that without this quality, good, solid writing otherwise amounts to little more than a period piece of passing interest only. Whatever its other virtues, it does not transcend time and culture. It does not live beyond a generation. 

Universality is manifested in a writer’s ability to see and articulate the grand themes common to our shared humanity. As readers, we recognize this quality in a writer almost immediately, because the universal implicitly by definition is that which is common to our mutual life experience. And so it is more than a little puzzling and ironic that what appears so common in our experience proves so rare in our literature.

In Hamlet, an acknowledged masterwork for four centuries now, Shakespeare offers in part a reason why writers, perhaps, so frequently fall short. In Act III, Scene II, Prince Hamlet is arranging a small theatre production for the royal court.  He instructs the actors to “o’erstep not the modesty of nature,” because, he further explains, “the purpose of playing (i.e., of the theatre) ... was and is ... to hold … the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure….” To capture the essence of our humanity, and thereby create something universal, the writer must be astute enough to see through to that humanity and understand it for what it is, and then not overstate it, but instead, modestly “put the mirror up to it.” 

The key is in the “seeing.” In the gospel of Thomas, one of the manuscripts of the Nag Hammadi discovery, Jesus reportedly said, “Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden will become plain to you.”  Without insight, that which is universal to our humanity remains hidden.

When the Heavens Open

Surely, one of the great, universal themes of our human condition is our relationship to God. To have any insight at all about this relationship necessitates a kind of supernatural sight, to have the invisible, spiritual world revealed. It is a persistently wonderful, and wonderfully persistent, theme of literature and art. The dead seer Teiresias emerges from the underworld to converse with Odysseus in Homer’s great epic. The ghost of Hamlet’s father, the Danish king, appears to the young prince at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, and sets into motion one of the world’s finest tragedies. The spirits of Christmas past, present and future appear to Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Saul sees a light and hears a voice on the road to Damascus and eventually authors what is certainly the world’s most profound collection of epistles. Mary receives the visitation of the angel Gabriel in the Annunciation. Shepherds watching their flocks by night see a host of heaven declaring the birth of Christ. Even from the outset of human mortality, Adam and Eve hear the voice of God as He walks in the Garden to an evening breeze. 

Inherent in our humanity is a desire for communication with the world beyond. We long to see the heavens open, a universal theme of the highest order. The Divine Comedy, perhaps the world’s greatest poem, is nothing but the account of one visitation after another in the world of the dead revealing to Dante the nature of heaven and hell. 

Any discussion of great literature on this theme – of our relationship to God – is incomplete without reference to Alma the Younger. Alma’s genius as a writer could well begin and end on this point. When, as we read in the Book of Mosiah, an angel unexpectedly appears to him and his companions, his life changes forever. This singular experience proves the defining point of his life and thereafter both informs and consumes him in a lifelong work. In the course of his writing, he lays out the compelling articulation of a fallen man transformed, refined, and exalted by revelation. There is nothing else quite like it in all of literature, sacred or secular. 

Hamlet’s obsession with his father’s ghost and the transformation it creates in him perhaps provides the nearest literary analogy to Alma’s experience. The truth revealed to Hamlet of his father’s murder, “most foul, strange and unnatural,” begins for him a descent into a tortured and relentless self-examination that pulls him into his tragedy and leads him finally to learn and declare, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will” and later, as if presaging his death, “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” 

But any comparison between Hamlet and Alma must ultimately be a study in contrasts. Hamlet is a literary figure in a play premised on a fiction. Alma is a real person in a history premised on fact. Hamlet’s visitation comes in the form of an eerie ghost, Alma’s in the form of a resplendent angel. Hamlet voluntarily wanders into a kind of hell, brought on by his meditations. Alma, against his will, is thrust by the thundering words of an angel into the hell of a panged conscience. Ultimately, the visitation of his father’s ghost leads Hamlet to his death. The visitation of the angel to Alma, on the other hand, leads him to eternal life. And yet, notwithstanding the contrasts, the emotional intensity of Hamlet and Alma are alike. Both prove a compelling study of the passion that seizes the human heart when opened by a revelation of truth.

The Angel’s Visitation to Alma

Alma’s encounter with the angel was an experience he never forgot. All of his later thinking and language were shaped by, and returned to, that experience. The initial encounter is worth noting in order to examine how it informed Alma’s writing throughout his life. In Mosiah 27:11-16, (page 200 of the Book of Mormon),we read:

[a] as they were going about rebelling against God ...
[b] the angel of the Lord appeared to them ...
[c] and he spake as it were with a voice of thunder,
[d] which caused the earth to shake upon which they stood.
[e] And so great was their astonishment, that they fell to the earth ...
[f] And again the angel said ... “I come to convince thee of the power ... of God”
[g] “Go and remember the captivity of thy fathers”
[h] “seek to destroy the church no more”

From this point forward, recurring themes consumed Alma’s thinking – the appearance of the angel, the thunderous power of God, the captivity of his fathers and their release from bondage, and the relationship that such captivity and release bear to salvation. The elements of this experience, and the very language of the account, are repeated in Alma’s later writing, beginning first with the poetic parallelisms of a lyrical outburst in Alma 29:1-2 and 11-12 (79 pages later in the Book of Mormon):

O that I were an angel . . .

[a] that I might go forth and speak ...
[b] with a voice to shake the earth
[c] and cry repentance ...

[a] Yea, I would declare ...
[b] as with the voice of thunder
[c] repentance and the plan of redemption ...
[d] I also remember the captivity of my fathers
[d] Yea, I have always remembered the captivity of my fathers

In later chapters of the Book of Mormon, Alma recounts the experience to his sons. The consummate articulation of this experience is found in Alma 36. In that chapter, which occurs on page 298 in the Book of Mormon, over 98 pages after the first account of his experience in Mosiah 27, Alma again relates his encounter in the same language. He was seeking to destroy the Church when an angel appeared and spoke with a voice of thunder causing the earth to tremble and causing him to fall to the earth. The point is not simply that the account remains consistent throughout Alma’s writing, but rather that he keeps referring to it as the defining moment of his life.

Professor John W. Welch was the first to identify Alma 36 as an elaborate chiasm, a kind of poetic parallelism in which words or phrases sequenced in a specific order are then repeated in reverse order. Alma’s use of chiasm to articulate his conversion experience is absolutely masterful.  The outline of Alma 36 made here follows the pattern identified by Professor Welch. (See, John W. Welch, Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, Provo Utah: FARMS, 1994). 

[a] Give ear to my words
[b] keep the commandments ... prosper in the land
[c] do as I have done remembering
[d] the captivity of our fathers
[e] none could deliver them except ... God
[f] whosoever shall ... trust in God
[g] shall be supported in ... trials ... troubles ... afflictions
[h] I know of myself
[i] born of God
[j] I went about ... seeking to destroy the church
[k] I fell to the earth ... neither had I the use of my limbs
[l] that I might not ... stand in the presence of my God
[m] racked ... with the pains of a damned soul
[n] while I was harrowed up by ... my many sins
[o] I remembered ... Jesus Christ, a Son of God
[o] I cried ... Jesus, thou Son of God
[n] I was harrowed up by ... my sins no more
[m] filled with joy ... as exceeding as was my pain
[l] I saw ... God sitting upon his throne
[k] my limbs did receive their strength again
[j] I ... did manifest unto the people
[i] I had been born of God
[h] they ... do know ... as I do know
[g] supported under trials ... troubles ... afflictions
[f] I do put my trust in him
[e] he did deliver them
[d] out of bondage and captivity
[c] retain in remembrance, as I have done
[b] keep the commandments ... prosper in the land
[a] according to his word

The precise intricacy of this chiasm is dazzling. Not only are fifteen separate statements reversed in exact order, but also many of the statements are placed in striking antithesis. Before his spiritual experience with Christ, Alma persecuted the church. After he labored to repair it.  Before his limbs became limp, but after, they regained their strength. Before he desired to shrink from the presence of God. After he thought himself ushered to God’s throne. Before he was racked with exquisite pain. After he was filled with exquisite joy. The use of chiasm to portray these opposite effects is remarkably ingenious and unlike anything else found in the canon of great literature. 

A Masterpiece in Miniature

I agree with Professor Welch’s view that this chapter is one of the world’s great literary masterpieces. It displays a superb and dramatic use of chiastic technique – a perfect marriage of form and substance – to center the turning point of the chiasm on Jesus Christ, just as Jesus Christ was the turning point of Alma’s life. The effect is quite lyrical. Alma made Christ the heart of this brief song, just as he had in life made Christ the song of his heart.

Apart from the brilliance of the overall structure, technically there is more to this poem than simply the chiasm. Alma adds small lyrical touches here and there to the overall poetic design of the chapter. Note in verse 21, for example, how Alma combines the poetic devise of antimetabole, a kind of parallelism that contrasts two ideas, with the devise of “extended alternate,” a kind of parallelism that repeats alternating lines from stanza to stanza: 

[a] Yea, I say unto you my son,
[b] there could be nothing
[c] so exquisite and so bitter
[d] as were my pains

[a] Yea, and again I say unto you, my son,
[b] there could be nothing
[c] so exquisite and sweet
[d] as was my joy

This virtuosity is a hallmark of Alma’s style, distinct from other Book of Mormon writers, to place antimetabole inside an extended alternate parallelism inside a chiasm – technique within technique within technique – as though his talent could not be contained, but simply had to pour forth.

Additionally, Alma manifests his poetic instinct for symbolic association – for “types” or “shadows” in Book of Mormon language – by relating the physical captivity and bondage of his forefathers in Egypt and of his own father in the land of Helam to the spiritual bondage of sin and transgression. He was initially instructed by the angel to remember the captivity of his fathers, and clearly he never forgot, because he mentions it time and again in his writing. In the course of his reflections he apparently came to recognize the symbolic nature of his fathers’ captivity and subsequent deliverance by the hand of God. With consummate economy he explains in Chapter 36 how the physical captivity of his fathers relates to his own spiritual bondage in sin and the deliverance made available through the Atonement of Christ. 

The lyricism, virtuosity and symbolism of Chapter 36 are masterful, but what truly distinguishes the chapter as a masterpiece of literature is its universality. The chiastic device proves a remarkable structure for framing the dualism of human existence and the paradox of our mortal experience vacillating between weakness and strength, bitter and sweet, pain and joy, darkness and light, captivity and freedom, death and life, and ultimately damnation and salvation. The first segment of the chiasm reflects Alma’s pain, bondage and death before any recognition of Christ. The second segment, after Alma’s acceptance of Christ, reflects joy, freedom and life. This is a remarkably concise and powerful statement of the redemption of a fallen man lifted and exalted by communion with God. 

Alma also implies a profound truth that ultimately death is not an end to existence, but rather something worse, an isolation from all good. Lucifer was cast out from heaven and suffers the “chains of death,” which is an ever-increasing captivity, an ever-increasing separation and isolation from truth, happiness and light. Alma understood this implicitly and it bears out particularly in this chapter where he discusses the captivity of his ancestors and compares it with the captivity of sin. He makes the correlation that freedom is life in the same manner that captivity is death and uses the technique of chiasm magnificently to link the concepts.

An Answer to the Tragic

In some wonderful, peculiar way, Chapter 36 seems to me in thirty brief verses both an articulation of, and an answer to, all the downward, spiraling torment depicted in five acts of Hamlet.  In that play, one might conclude life is continually tragic, that even final recognition of truth does not save us from grief.  Hamlet’s growing awareness and acceptance of truth at the end of the play seems to make his death all the more bitter and poignant. Similar arguments, perhaps, could be made about the sacrifice of Christ. Yes, the Savior atoned for primal fault and atoned specifically for each one of us, but life is still replete with unhappiness. A baby starves, a woman is murdered, or as occurred recently, a nineteen-year-old family friend is killed in Baghdad by a car bomb. Even in the eternal worlds the tragedy continues, as when a third of the host of heaven rebelled against God and the heavens wept at the fall of a morning star. Even in the eternal worlds we do not escape tragedy. One might argue there can be no greater sadness. 

Yet Alma gives the lie to this viewpoint. It is equally valid to insist life is glorious, that tragedy is overcome on every occasion unequivocally.  The creation of this world was in the beginning deemed glorious and beautiful. And in the eternal worlds, each of the kingdoms – telestial, terrestrial, and celestial – is deemed a kingdom of glory. Only in the realm of outer darkness where Lucifer and his host are cast, where only isolation and captivity reign, is there no glory. Otherwise, all creations flow to the glory of God. Alma tasted something of that glory and testified that we can center our lives in that glory, overcoming even tragedy. Our continual challenge is to acknowledge Christ, as Alma did. 

Lyricism, virtuosity, symbolic association, and universality are the hallmarks of Alma’s genius as a writer. In Chapter 36 these characteristics of his style combine in absolute perfection. If there are any words, besides those of Christ, that survive the passing of earth and heaven, surely these words of Alma should. Already they have passed from language to language and generation to generation with remarkable poetic effects intact. At the very least, Alma persuades us if any literature deserves to endure and abide forever, it is the radiant testimony of a soul transformed by Christ.