One of the most iconic works of art I have ever seen is Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai’s c. 1831-1834 Cresting Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa. The woodcut—which has held up remarkably well even as it has become an object of kitsch, plastered all over t-shirts, mugs, and posters—depicts an enormous wave (a tsunami perhaps) about to engulf a boat. The wave and foam are rendered in such a stylized manner that they resemble snow and icicles. And in the background, one can just make out the mountain.
A short essay on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (under the banner, “Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History”), which refers to the print’s “sheer graphic beauty,” notes the unusual perspective, where the wave dwarfs the mountain. “Hokusai characteristically cast a traditional theme in a novel interpretation,” the timeline states. “In the traditional meisho-e (scene of a famous place), Mount Fuji was always the focus of the composition. Hokusai inventively inverted this formula and positioned a small Mount Fuji within the midst of a thundering seascape.”
Hokusai’s print often pops up in my mind around the holiday of Sukkot, when the prayer over rain (Tefilat Geshem) is recited at the end of the holiday. The prayer, which addresses the angel Af-Bri, who is appointed over the rainclouds, comes to a crescendo in the statements: “For a blessing and not for a curse! For life and not death! For plenty and not dearth!” Therein lies the dual nature of water. It is simultaneously the bearer of all life, and a force that can—and recently has—destroyed in unprecedented ways.
Perhaps the greatest biblical example of the destructive power of water is from the original Flood. English painter John Martin’s Noah Giving Thanks After the Flood shows Noah’s sacrifice in front of a rainbow – the symbol that divine retribution would never again take the form of a flood – that emanates from the ark and calm waters. A waterfall, the symbol of the receding floodwaters, dominates the foreground, while in the background, receding storm clouds dissipate. Martin’s decision to juxtapose the stormy and calm waters underscores how quickly peaceful water can become a nightmare, and how, with Divine help, it can again become harmless.
The Schoken Bible, published in Germany in the 14th century, also juxtaposes good and bad waters. On the bottom of the frontpiece for the book of Genesis, depictions of the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning Egyptians appear on the end of a row of illustrations and the beginning of the next row respectively. As Moshe waves his staff at the Red Sea, two other men—stand-ins for the rest of the Israelites—follow behind him with their hands on his shoulders, hora style. In the next circular frame, the Jews have safely passed through the dry path in the ocean, and the waters have come crashing in on the Egyptians. The Egyptian soldiers drown in the ocean with their feet up in the air. The same waters which proved saviors to some were the undoing of others.
