Ethelmer

[Terrance]

Otto wrote:
> 
> Sam wrote:
> >> If only I had an electronic version of this book...
> >> Of course we could go all the way back to V.
> >> and find references to History... TRP obviously very interested....
> >>
> 
> "Now memory is a traitor: gilding, altering. The word is, in sad fact,
> meaningless, based as it is on the false assumption that identity is single,
> soul continuous."
> 
> Fausto in V. (307.20-22)

How postmodern of him! No single identity, no continuity of the soul?
And responsibility for the acts of one's fragments? This is not quite a
Wasteland alienation anymore. 

 And what of Ethelmer? How does his education influence his view of
Christ and History? If Christ...than all the crusades, death,
genocide...in HIS name....He makes a certain leap, not of faith, but of
reason (reason being  one of the charlatan arts in this novel,
mesmerizing really). 






Faustus was a bishop among the Manichees, a sect which claimed to base
everything on reason.  Its members were in fact skilled in astronomical
calculations and predictions. But Faustus made greatest pretensions to
understanding good and evil.  Characteristic of Manichaeism was its
incisive dualism, which saw the world as divided between powers of light
and darkness.  This was tantamount to recognizing two dieties. 
Augustine's trenchant defeat of Faustus also offered Lutherans support
in their insistence that the Grace of God, which surpasses human
understanding, is all inclusive, yet everywhere and always present in
the world.  Lutherans easily understood Faustus' faith in his own
intellect as the influence of the devil, and of course Luther liked
to draw a parallel between the Manichees and the Roman Catholics, whom
he charged with also dispensing and manipulating God's Grace. 

       This Augustinian / Lutheran notion of an all-encompassing Grace
of God seems to be the central problem in the Faust Book. Faustus simply
cannot believe it.  The novel tells us over and over again that Faustus'
sin is that fundamental one, mentioned throughout the Old and the New
Testaments, of pride in imagining that his wicked deeds surpass God's
forgiveness.  We see Faustus availing himself of every means he can
devise to make himself believe in the Grace of God.  His devil tells him
flatly that by these very efforts he damns himself to hell.  


http://www.lettersfromthedustbowl.com/faustus.html