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Jacques Derrida despairs of finding animals among philosophers. “Thinking concerning the animal, if there is such a thing, derives from poetry. There you have a thesis” (2008, 7; cf. 40). The poetic imagination, in contrast to the philosopher’s, has from time to time had the courage to stand in the gaze of the animal and to write as one who is seen. Guided by Derrida’s intuition about poetic discourse, this essay takes its beginning in an ancient piece of erotic poetry in which animal metaphor features prominently—Solomon’s Song of Songs. This book’s place in the canon was a puzzle and …

The Gospel of John begins with a Logos, a Word sounding out the earliest origins of creation and measuring up even to God. After asserting that everything in existence resonates with echoes of the Logos, having come into being through it, John narrows his view and writes that this Logos is life (zōē), and that this life is the light of human beings (anthrōpōn). Human life (zōē) radiates as light from the Logos of God. But John’s text is not all light and life. John quickly modulates into a minor key and writes of a darkness that refuses the light. …