re MDDM 35 Christ and History

[jbor]

Thomas wrote:

snip
> Yes, I am rooting for Ethelmer, too. As for the coach journey: I have
> only just reread it, but doesn't the Reverend here give voice to the
> fear
> that the universe might be inanimate after all, that at the end of the
> journey one may find out that there's no destination, that there's
> "naught behind the mask", just a prairie or an ocean of "desperate
> Immensity"? I agree with Terrance that the prarie here has the same
> metaphorical and symbolical significance as the ocean in MD. It is a
> place of doubt, a spiritual wilderness.

Note, though, that this is explicitly the "young Cherrycoke" (361.5) who is
lulling himself to sleep with such an ominous vision. Perhaps this
illustration of a crisis of faith, if that's what it is, is provided as a
moral lesson for the listeners.

There are other clues in Wicks's tale: his hope that "Miracles might yet
occur" at 353.2; the "miserable" failure of his previous Ministry amongst
"wilder sorts of Presbyterians" (353.6); a planned or actual change of
religious denomination at 356.15; mention of the "dead Vacuum ever at the
bottom of [his] soul." (356.17) He's certainly emphasising his own doubt and
despair throughout this recount - revelling in it even - and then the story
that Frau Redzinger tells of Peter's "Illumination" does seem to go some way
towards restoring his faith in the possibility of "Miracles", even despite
the insidious spread of "Deism" (358.20) and the prevailing
unfashionableness of Roman Catholicism. (358-9) Perhaps this encounter is
meant to represent a spiritual turning point for Wicks?

Even if the final image does equate to some soulless wasteland (I actually
think it evokes a sense of vastness and undirectedness, and perhaps
*potential* à la Manifest Destiny, rather than an inanimate universe), there
is an intact "Destination" (361.12 - which here would equate to Judgement
Day, would it?) at the other end of Wicks's metaphorical coach journey and
sojourn in the wilderness. It is only that time between physical death and
final salvation - Purgatory or Limbo perhaps - which is a "Prairie of
desperate Immensity".

I also think that the opening words of the next chapter ironically undercut
that panoramic desperation which Wicks narrates his younger self as
experiencing at the end of Ch. 35.

best