As a person who lives in a reactive way and who justifies this wait-and-see-and-then-respond lifestyle by renaming it “an openness to the Spirit,” I’m sitting here absolutely convinced that there is a reason I was moved to read Mauriac one day and Vonnegut the next.
There must be a reason, some Wisdom to be drawn from it, not only for myself, but for anyone who drops by this space.
Wracking my brain here. Something’s bound to turn up.
One per day: Flesh and Blood by Mauriac on Friday and Slaughterhouse-Five on Saturday.
The first because I’d never read it and picked it up at an estate sale a couple of weeks ago. The second because the first chapter is in the anthology we’re using for literature, and I thought …well, I’ve never read it. It’s short. Might as well.
The Mauriac is typical Mauriac: dense, heady, centered on manipulative characters, misunderstood desires, spiritual combat and lots and lots of frustration.
I probably should have clarified its provenance before I read it. As I was going through, I wondered, when was this written? I couldn’t place it. The copyright in my edition said 1955, which was obviously that of that particular edition, but for some reason I decided that was it – it must have been written then. Then when I finished it, I finally checked it out and saw, well no – Mauriac began it before the Great War, paused, and then finished it afterwards…which made me say..
Aaaaah. That makes sense now.
It’s a strange read, not helped, I believe, by the translation, which was serviceable, but probably not as smooth or clarifying as it could have been – I did detect one obvious error, which gave me pause – the use of “access” when “excess” was clearly the word called for.
Anyway. We begin with Claude, who is leaving seminary, returning home to where his father manages some aspect of a great estate and vineyard. A new owner is coming in, a Protestant with his two adult Protestant children, May and Edward. Also involved is Madame Gonzales, who functions as the new owner’s house manager, although she had, years ago, been his mistress – and her adult daughter, Edith, whom she hopes to install with the estate master as his wife.
Well.
I suppose what is going on is that Claude, despite his flaws (his vision is rather narrow and he’s just confused about things), functions as representation, of sorts, of what is good and true and fundamentally connected to nature and the transcendent in a holistic way. As such, he holds an attraction for both May and Edward – a curiosity at first, a contrast to May’s anxious Protestantism and Edward’s frank agnostic hedonism (and there’s clearly a homosexual undertone to the latter. I mean…clearly.). Not, as I said, that he’s an idealized figures – he’s confused and unsure of what he wants, as well.
When I say Claude is confused, this is an example of what I mean: After a very brief, understated moment of clearly mutual attraction, May ends up marrying the local landowner’s scion for whom she was destined (so her father could continue to control her share of the estate). It’s awkward because the wedding banquet and the first few post-wedding nights will be spent at the May’s home estate, where Claude also lives with his family.
This, not surprisingly, puts Claude in a state. He’s absolutely convinced that the experience of sex with her new, not super-attractive husband, will shock, repulse and distress May – she’ll hate it and be wrecked by it and regret turning from the purer moments she could have with Claude. This goes on for pages.
Well, Claude, it’s not to be. Sorry, guy. As he sees them in the days after, he doesn’t see misery on May’s face – he doesn’t see anything of the sort. He doesn’t know what to think.
So that’s what I mean by confused- and I suppose I should add that in the typical complicated Mauriac algorithm of grace, May, by the time of her marriage, has become Catholic, in a convoluted process of being opened to its reasonableness by conversations with Claude and then a conviction that her spiritual openness to converting is for the good because it makes possible this marriage, which she really didn’t want, but…is for her family’s good? For her own good? I’m not sure about that, but perhaps you get the idea. Or not.
I suppose the takeaway is that human life is quite complicated and human motivations are conflicting and confused – and for that reason, the more solid the rock of our reference point is, the better off we are, even if our understanding is murky and our perceptions are skewed.
And while Mauriac’s scenarios are often exhaustingly humid and over-dramatic, I think that’s the truth in his writing that’s worth returning to and reflecting on – there is objective truth, there is a Real from which we emerged and to which we are called. Our path in between is twisted and tragically confused, but we have a better chance of reaching the Love that calls us when we at least admit His existence than if we attempt to completely go our own way –
…as what happens to Edward, and, as Mauriac implies by the ending of this novel, which knocked me flat, happens to a people who go their own way as well:
Of the two of them, only Claude tried to pray. The looking-glass of the wardrobe door, and its smaller fellow over the washstand, multiplied the rigid figure on the bed. It was as though the room were filled with a hecatomb of young men. The heat was becoming unbearable. 1914 promised to be a wonderful year for wine, better even than 1911 . Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Outside the door men could be heard breathing heavily under the weight of the leaden box they were carrying on their shoulders.
Essentially: As these characters were going on their ways guided by the most cramped, self-serving visions, even when they thought they were being “good,” as they were discussing the vineyards and vintages, here was death, waiting. If they could only see.
So….okay, Slaughterhouse-Five absolutely fits.
It’s the aftermath. The fractured, traumatized aftermath, the landscape in which the vineyard’s been blown up, the seekers and lovers turned to ash, leaving nothing to hold onto, not even time.
So it goes.
