Holy catholic literary confluence Batman! I love the Declare/Mariette in Ecstasy mashup, very appropriate. I first read both more than a decade ago. Declare, too, keeps the angelic hidden, and the good a matter of faith. Declare, too, portrays complex relationships that have developed over decades, which are ultimately where the real drama is. And both authors leave important details in unobtrusive and unexpected places for the keen reader or rereader to note and unlock unobvious meaning.
"how even God’s flashiest displays leave Him in some way hidden"
1. love this idea
2. it reminds me of how God in the OT is often arguably described as speaking "through" angels – like the angel we're told appears as fire in the burning bush, which then proceeds to speak in the first person as if it were God directly, but in fact God is communicating "through" his messenger; so prior to the Incarnation, even God's "direct" communication seems to be mediated through messengers (and of course even the Incarnation itself is a sort of revelation mediated "through" created nature, with the divine nature relatively hidden)
3. this element of being hidden could almost suggest a sort of "modesty" on the part of God... like we are being shielded from the unfathomable reality we cannot handle beholding directly? and yet, I suspect it's a whole lot less "modest" than that: perhaps not at all (or at least, not only) a root choice of "modesty", but just a brute logical consequence of God's infinity – like, no matter how much is revealed, no matter how direct or flashy it may be, there will (must!) always be something "more" that remains hidden, because this sort of infinite can never be fully apprehended by a finite being
I read MIE about 8 months ago, admired and was moved by it. Here’s what I jotted afterward on goodreads:
The novel as mirror; wildly divisive. Exquisite in passion, remote in observance. Like the interrogation of one’s conscience, any certain conclusion is not to be trusted.
(Five stars for effect, but the prose style rankled this reader at times; not conceptually, but in its frequent resort to adverbs — its lone element of condescension.)
Nick Ripatrazone's 25th-anniversary reflection -- https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/11/22/mariette-in-ecstasy/
Holy catholic literary confluence Batman! I love the Declare/Mariette in Ecstasy mashup, very appropriate. I first read both more than a decade ago. Declare, too, keeps the angelic hidden, and the good a matter of faith. Declare, too, portrays complex relationships that have developed over decades, which are ultimately where the real drama is. And both authors leave important details in unobtrusive and unexpected places for the keen reader or rereader to note and unlock unobvious meaning.
"how even God’s flashiest displays leave Him in some way hidden"
1. love this idea
2. it reminds me of how God in the OT is often arguably described as speaking "through" angels – like the angel we're told appears as fire in the burning bush, which then proceeds to speak in the first person as if it were God directly, but in fact God is communicating "through" his messenger; so prior to the Incarnation, even God's "direct" communication seems to be mediated through messengers (and of course even the Incarnation itself is a sort of revelation mediated "through" created nature, with the divine nature relatively hidden)
3. this element of being hidden could almost suggest a sort of "modesty" on the part of God... like we are being shielded from the unfathomable reality we cannot handle beholding directly? and yet, I suspect it's a whole lot less "modest" than that: perhaps not at all (or at least, not only) a root choice of "modesty", but just a brute logical consequence of God's infinity – like, no matter how much is revealed, no matter how direct or flashy it may be, there will (must!) always be something "more" that remains hidden, because this sort of infinite can never be fully apprehended by a finite being
I read MIE about 8 months ago, admired and was moved by it. Here’s what I jotted afterward on goodreads:
The novel as mirror; wildly divisive. Exquisite in passion, remote in observance. Like the interrogation of one’s conscience, any certain conclusion is not to be trusted.
(Five stars for effect, but the prose style rankled this reader at times; not conceptually, but in its frequent resort to adverbs — its lone element of condescension.)