Navigator of the Flood

Why did Noah, the one just man of his generation, become the first inebriate in the Bible? Insisting on what the perceptive Shepley terms ``the unity, as well as the `intuition' of the biblical legend,'' Brelich probes the Scriptures to resolve the apparent indecorum of the venerable patriach. In a genre described by Karl Kerenyi as a ``novelized essay,'' Noah comes in for modern-day analysis, the beneficiary of Freudian thinking and depth psychology as well as the author's wit and well-exercised imagination. Brelich's exegesis includes a theory to explain Noah's 500 years of ``dogged sterility'' but reaches its height in suggesting Noah's torment in being uniquely aware of the imminent destruction planned by God. As he oversees the construction and provisioning of the ark, Noah is relieved that his family and the villagers deem him mad and therefore do not ask unanswerable questions about survival and extinction, the chosen and the damned. After the flood, Noah cannot forget its victims--but he fears that God can. This exceptionally stimulating work was written in 1954 and first published in 1979 in Italy; Brelich, who shuttled between Hungary and Italy from his 1910 birth in Budapest until he settled in Italy in 1946, died in 1982. (Mar.)