The Wandering Jew

THE WANDERER HAS been a persistent artistic and literary motif across many centuries and cultures. Condemned to travel peripatetically across the landscape, or deprived of the shelter of a lasting home, he (or more rarely she) has tended to provoke, in the imaginations of more settled or sedentary populations, an ambivalent if not wholly negative response. On the one hand, wanderers arouse a sense of dread: fear of difference and the unknown, or anxiety about unstable borders. On the other hand, they afford a glimpse of alternative worlds and customs, giving rise to feelings of wonder or fascination. Occasionally those who have been displaced, whether forcibly or voluntarily, may also awaken in beholders a sense of pity or demands for charity. Cultural responses to, for instance, the refugee crises that have periodically erupted in recent history run the gamut from sympathy to horror. In projects such as The Last of England, which confront this imagery directly, Derek Jarman consequently found himself intervening in a tradition with a long and complex history.

Perhaps the most enduring vagrant of all, in the European imagination, is the figure of the Wandering Jew. In its most basic form, this story hinges on an encounter between Christ and a man in Jerusalem. Bearing the cross to Calvary, Christ pauses momentarily to rest on the man's doorstep, but he is driven back with the cry “Walk faster!” “I am going,” Christ responds, “but you shall walk until I come again.” Affirming his return at some unspecified future date, Christ thus makes it known that his interlocutor, condemned until that time to incessant rambling, will pay a heavy price for his cruel gibe.

Biblical precursors to the story include the account of Cain's punishment in Genesis 4:10–15. After murdering his brother Abel, Cain is told that he will henceforth be “cursed,” rendered unable to cultivate the earth, and condemned to a lifetime of wandering; at the same time, God sets a mark upon Cain, which prevents him from being killed with impunity. The Cain narrative was subsequently taken up by medieval Christians to justify the treatment of Jews living within their midst. Stereotyped as Christ-killers and forced, in some regions, to wear distinguishing garb, Jews were banished from their home territories with increasing frequency from the late twelfth century onwards, culminating in a series of high-profile expulsions.