“Something Insipid Brought Forth Taste”: Ephrem the Syrian’s Grafted Tree

Abstract: For the ongoing reappraisal of late antiquity’s relationship to the nonhuman world, the tree stands alone in both its potentials and its significance. This is on display in Ephrem the Syrian’s intricate poems and treatises, which provide a perspective into the ways that many in antiquity encountered arboreal life. Rather than grouping Ephrem’s trees with other so-called natural subjects, and further making recourse to abstract symbolism or biblical hermeneutics, this article attends to ways that trees paradoxically appear in Ephrem’s works. It is the world of arboriculture, and especially the technique of grafting, that helped Ephrem conceive of the life and value of trees. A critical attention to the graft’s long-standing articulation elucidates why Ephrem’s trees are immersed in paradox, simultaneously praised and derided. Across his Madrāšē on Virginity , Madrāšē on Faith , Madrāšē on the Nativity , among others, the tree is a wondrous producer, both materially and metaphorically, while nonetheless a failed and lacking thing. Relying upon Ephrem’s poetic rendering of the graft, and the graft’s elaboration from classical to late antiquity, I show how an arboricultural practice can effectively mediate a perception and appropriation of arboreal life. Recent calls to reconsider vegetal life in the study of culture further help illuminate late antique literature, which has been increasingly mined for ecological insight. Ephrem’s texts are not only sources for symbolism, theology, or history; they are also archives of the effects that trees have had on people.