Allegro

In the beginning we are shown accelerated nighttime footage of Europe's most sumptuous city.  The actors are introduced with their characters' names, and our first scene has a very blond little boy playing Bach to the tutelage of a worried instructor.  Our wunderkind may be talented, but he swears violently at his minute mistakes.  We also see him as a cartoon stick figure eating his first soft ice, riding the merry-go-round, and making other normal childhood discoveries.  Yet even in these first few minutes we have the impression that our pianist became an adult without ever having been a child.  His only name is Zetterstrøm (Ulrich Thomsen), the reluctant epicenter of this film.

A voice-over from a much older man than Zetterstrøm cryptically informs us that, "the secret to his success is also the reason for his failure."  The voice then with great relish provides some facts about the virtuoso with a few nudges as to his own role in the matter.  Although this initially comes off as unwarranted contrivance there is, we will learn, system behind such a narrative.  Zetterstrøm plays his concerts with the necessary technique and posture, not missing a note and not really contemplating any other part of reality.  He is alone, almost wordless, grim-faced, and dapper in that way particular to very lonely people.  Our narrator observes that Zetterstrøm yearns for love; it would be more correct to say he yearns for understanding, which lasting love encompasses.  At length he meets Andrea (Helena Christensen), also in her mid- to late thirties, on a walk-up one starry evening.  Green-eyed and angelically curious, she is very attentive to the strange man marching around Copenhagen in a tuxedo and bow tie.  This last appurtenance becomes a conversation piece and like most conversation pieces serves as an icebreaker when much more has already been said by telepathy.  The enigmatic voice-over about Zetterstrøm's "success" and "failure" is based, therefore, on this scene in which he misplaces his keys but finds the one and only love of his life.   But alas, there are many more failures to come.

The two become a couple, sharing soft, fully-dressed moments on some chic Scandinavian furniture and we sense Zetterstrøm melting ever so slightly.  While Andrea is oozing with love, the pianist can manage: "You're very beautiful.  You make me very happy.  If you didn't exist, God, I'd have to build you."  When they revisit their selection of sweet nothings he adds that she "makes [him] play better," to which she rejoins like any self-respecting woman, "Is that all?"  He strengthens his claim by saying that she almost makes him human as well.  "Almost?" she whispers.  "Yes, almost," he replies.  "No need to exaggerate."  We never learn how long their relationship lasts but this does not affect our sense of its importance.  Its presentation has the quality of many long-lost loves, a passel of tender moments that transcend the daily vicissitudes, and Zetterstrøm expresses himself so haltingly but at his maximum emotional capacity.  If he had gushed like a love-struck schoolboy, writing poetry and hanging on his beloved's every word, the whole architecture of the film would have collapsed.  Which is, as it were, what happens anyway.  As the lovers stand on a bridge one quiet night, Andrea asks him one very important question that he not only answers wrongly, but also unhesitatingly.  The next thing we know events have advanced ten years into the future: Zetterstrøm left Denmark after that fateful night vowing never to return and his style has receded into robotic perfection (he so shuns the human element that his concerts are held with the audience blindfolded).  Then our unseen narrator surfaces to announce his hardly-concealed intention: he will make Zetterstrøm regain his humanity by regaining his memory. 

His memory?  The narrator's Helper (Niels Skousen), who comports himself somewhere between a priest and a chef, is dispatched to interview the pianist and tell him of something very strange.  After the lovers parted and Zetterstrøm abandoned his native land, a Zone arose in the middle of Copenhagen near where he had once lived.  "372 x 88 meters, bound by unknown substance, uninhabitable" is the official description provided (a couple of curious young boys bounce a ball off a street entrance as if it were made of plastic).  The Helper asks Zetterstrøm about his life prior to the last decade and finds that he cannot remember a single event.  "Life for you began ten years ago," he tells him, "but before that is an impenetrable mist."  To prove his point to us he shows Zetterstrøm a picture of Andrea, which he does not recognize.  His past remains trapped in the Zone and the only way to retrieve it is, of course, to return to Denmark.  Zetterstrøm returns and finds an invitation from his host and our narrator, Tom (Henning Moritzen), who is nice enough to have his name stenciled on his luxurious apartment's door – and here's where things become much more lucid.  He goes back into his first thirty years of life and relives that moment when he and Andrea parted; when she was upset about their decision "not to have a child"; and he hears recordings of the film's opening scene of teacher and student.  He also sees himself as a child standing next to him, which makes us wonder why Tom, who is never given a surname, is so keen on helping the pianist, who is never given a Christian name – and we should say no more. 

Although short, the film is a quiet triumph of film-making in the style of this director, a fact Boe gladly admits (the Zone is a direct allusion to this masterpiece).  Small moments are observed with meticulous perfection, such as the arrangement of paintings when Zetterstrøm finds he can only play off-key, or when he glares back at the Helper as they march down an abandoned street.  Thomsen has such a remarkably gentle face for someone whose brow is invariably furrowed and who rarely smiles.  Even when he contradicts someone, his features seem to apologize.  And lovers of soundtracks and diegetic music will revel in what is played to us, since Bach comprises, I believe, the entire score.  The world would be more divine if everything were by Bach; he may be the one composer whom one recognizes as godly without needing to hear anything else.  Depending on your loose-ends policy, you may or may not be pleased with how the film concludes, but you should consider what Tom – which in Danish means "empty" or "blank" – has to say about "sunsets and beautiful flowers."  And then you should wonder about what degree of happiness someone like Zetterstrøm could possibly achieve.

Pushkin, "К..."

My rendition of Pushkin's classic poem ("To ...").   You can read the original here. 

A wondrous moment I recall:
Before me stood your sweet allure,
Ephem’ral vision to enthrall,
O genius mine of beauty pure.

In hopeless woe, grief without choice,
In boist’rous vanity’s alarm,
Resounded long a gentle voice,
And linger’d long your features’ charm.

Years passed.  Storms’ mutinous noise
Dispell’d the dreams of previous sleep,
And I forgot your gentle voice,
Your features’ heaven–forged deep.

Alone, in gloom’s most still stagnation,
So quietly dragg’d my days in strife,
Bereft of creed, of imagination,
Bereft of tears, of love, of life.

My soul woke from behind this wall:
By me again — your sweet allure,
Ephem’ral vision to enthrall,
O genius mine of beauty pure.

To embliss’d heart’s each palpitation,
Now resurrected with joy so rife,
Arose both creed and imagination,
Anew then tears and love and life.

Still Life

Some if not most of us are irksome creatures, bound for whatever reason to our petty habits and beliefs, unwilling to expand our small-mindedess because of fear.  What do we fear exactly?  I suppose we fear failure or dissatisfaction; but on a more profound level we fear success and happiness as they are both so readily whittled away by time.  The old adage about loving and losing does not apply, since we would rather not have anything to lose.  One may deem this world view cowardly or overly practical, it matters little.  You and I know many among us who endorse this behavior in themselves and, ultimately, also in others.  We acknowledge this truth, and nevertheless enjoy this fantastic story in this collection.

Our hero is Leonard Hartz, a perfect name for an almost perfect soul.  As our story opens we are given not his past, simply his future: he has arrived at the Constable school, one of the three British art institutions covered by the G.I. Bill, and we remember the middle of the century yet see Leonard's idealism unshattered.  Perhaps this is just as well; there are probably enough stories about weary and damaged soldiers.  He enrolls to "draw the antiques," recognizes one masterpiece from a similar shape depicted on the pencils he uses, and finds startling beauty in these wordless daily exercises, as if he were meditating with a paintbrush.  Three of the other four Americans at the school are married and happy in their little nests, to which Leonard is initially invited, but there is only so much fun to be had with a bachelor guest.  So he retreats to his easel under the tutelage of a stuffy old aesthete by the name of Seabright.  Seabright appreciates him in his droll way, but does not think as much of Robin, "a tall English girl ... with a pertness that sat somewhat askew on her mature body."  Soon Leonard and Robin begin their relationship in that most common fashion, commiseration, and just as rapidly realize that they do not fit all that well in each other’s worlds:

Their subsequent conversations sustained this discouraging quality, of two creatures thrown together in the same language exchanging, across a distance wider than it seemed, miscalculated signals.  He felt she quite misjudged his earnestness and would have been astonished to learn how deeply and solidly she had been placed in his heart, affording a fulcrum by which he lifted the great dead mass of his spare time, which now seemed almost lighter than air, a haze of quixotic expectations, imagined murmurs, easy undressings, and tourist delights.  He believed he was coming to love England.

Was Leonard perchance not involved in the European campaign?  Did he come to love England because he had never been anywhere near it before, or has he erased what he knew of Europe in those dark days?  We never get questions much less answers about the subject and all the better so: Leonard is discovering beauty in its most basic manifestations – in woman and in the creative sensation we call art.

Their courtship is deterred by Seabright's decision to promote the duo to still life, a reward merited by Leonard but not by Robin – and both of them know it.  An added complication, and one dealt with so expertly that there does not seem to be another possible resolution, arises in the form of Jack Fredericks.  Jack takes to Robin as gigolos simply must because they always feel it is their hidebound duty to make eyes at a lovely woman.  Leonard only accentuates Jack's attractiveness by being aware of it, and we assume the arc of the story will be an untender one.  We are, wonderful to relate, quite wrong.  And for a few moments we do indeed catch a glimpse of a prior Leonard:

Jack lay down on the shallow ledge designed to set off the exhibits, in a place just behind the table supporting the still life, and smiled up quizzically at the faces of the painters.  He meant to look debonair, but in the lambent atmosphere he looked ponderous, with all that leather and wool.  The impression of mass was so intense Leonard feared he might move and break one of the casts.  Leonard had not noticed on the street how big his fellow West Virginian had grown.  The weight was mostly in flesh: broad beefy hands folded on his vest, corpulent legs uneasily crossed on the cold stone floor.

We can imagine Leonard in high school where Jack was a year younger and not "really in the same social class"; where Jack could be nice enough in snatches so as to reinforce the hope within the idealistic and trusting Leonard that all men are inherently good.  Childhood teaches us that bullies will use kindness as a gift to dissolve momentarily their victims' resentment, but this is all a tactic to coerce the victims, now mocked anew, to blame themselves for their ills.  We see all this flash behind these two characters like a stage illumination, and so we are hardly surprised when Jack decides to "audit" the class and then offer to paint Robin.  In the nude, of course, because anything less would again offend that most inviolable gigolo code.

Updike has so many wondrous stories but Still Life remains one of his very, very best.  The finest scenes describe the awkward courtship of these two fluttering souls, their opinions on other people (but never themselves), their odd discussion towards the end of the story when Leonard comes back from an unannounced trip – unannounced at least to Robin, but whom else could he possibly tell of his travels? – and the vicissitudes of trying to copy works of infinite genius (when Leonard considers buying Jamaican walnuts for their still life class, Robin replies, "All those horrid little wrinkles, we'd be at it forever").  A whimsical attempt at meeting each other halfway through the cinematic medium of a "delicately tinted Japanese love tale, so queerly stained with murders" only results in increased discomfort for both parties, so they give up trying to have a regular romance and instead focus on the world of art, as represented by the redoubtable Seabright:

Lesson by lesson, Leonard was drawn into Seabright's world, a tender, subdued world founded on violet, and where violet – pronounced "vaalet" – at the faintest touch of a shadow, at the slightest hesitation of red or blue, rose to the surface, shyly vibrant. 

Robin does not or cannot endure such a realm, and that is sufficient to convince Leonard of their incompatibility.  Yet he also suspects that this incompatibility may exist between him and almost everyone else in the world, and he and we both know why.  He contemplates their co-existence with more than a wistful sigh: 

After lunch they began to mark with charcoal their newly bought canvases, which smelled of glue and green wood.  To have her, some distance from his side, echoing his task, and to know that her eyes concentrated into the same set of shapes, which after a little concentration took on an unnatural intensity, like fruit in Paradise, curiously enlarged his sense of his physical size; he seemed to tower above the flagstones, and his voice, in responding to her erratic exclamations and complaints, struck into his ears with grave finality, as if his words were being incised into the air.

It is at times insurmountably difficult for those committed to art's grandeur to lead a normal life replete with normal events and normal joys.  Try as he might, Leonard cannot shake his interior shades and sunsets, the whispered glories of memories to come, or the intoxication of creative achievement.  He should never have to do so, even if it costs him a girl or two.  And especially if he and those girls are as different, say, as apples and oranges.

Autumn Sonata

We go away from our parents in youth and then we gradually come back to them; and in that moment, we have grown up.   

                                                                                                                     Ingmar Bergman

The choice between art and real life conflicts the true artist until his grave. If he only experiences art, he will gradually withdraw into a windowless library or studio where every glance up is reflected in the works and lives that are not his own. If he eschews a knowledge of the history of creative thought, of its development and patterns, he will only wander, to paraphrase this author, into the backyard of primitive art. In an ideal situation both streams would converge into a larger, more bountiful basin, perhaps even a mountain lake wreathed by the cleanest winds. The water drawn would be a perfect blend of what has been lived and what has been created, of our days and dreams. An introduction unfortunately inapplicable to the protagonist in this film.

The arc of our film is simple, because in reality it comprises a straight line. Charlotte Andergast, (Ingrid Bergman), a relatively famous Swedish concert pianist returns after seven years to Norway to visit her two grown daughters, Eva (Liv Ullmann) and Elena (Lena Nyman, known predominantly for this notorious two-part film). I say relatively famous (many reviews claim she is world-renowned, but our only witness to her fame is Charlotte herself) because compared to her relatives, Charlotte might as well be royalty: so is she treated and so does she behave – at least at first. The sisters' residence is simple and plain like its inhabitants, which also includes Eva's soft-spoken husband Viktor (Halvar Björk), the local pastor, but it holds more than three dreary souls. Eva's four-year-old son Erik recently drowned, a tragedy which prompts Eva's letter to her mother asking her to break from her allegedly whirlwind schedule and tend to family grief. The conceit is complete and Charlotte arrives somewhat appalled at the rusticity of the living conditions even though Norwegian villages have rarely seemed so radiant. 

We already perceive the conflict ahead, yet Charlotte begins by discussing the equally recent passing of her longtime companion, an Italian cellist by the name of  Leonardo. It is more than implied that Charlotte has always had admirers and perhaps even married some of them. Her watch was a gift from such a gentleman; a novel she reads to get to sleep was authored by another. We are given scenes in cascading autumn hues, especially a gorgeous bright orange, as Charlotte recollects Leonardo's final tormented hours in hospice care. Are we shown anything of Erik's tragic death? Towards the film's conclusion, when Charlotte has already made a rather unfortunate decision, we see Eva at her son's tombstone as she narrates a few thoughts on her family's future. The excuse for this omission – as well as all other excuses for all other wrongdoings – is provided indirectly by Charlotte, who notes that she had been friends with Leonardo for eighteen years, a nice round adult number. Viktor, who is clearly attracted to his mother-in-law in the way one cannot but admire a fine-looking member of the opposite sex, buttonholes Charlotte in a feckless discussion about what Erik's death meant to his wife. He almost goes so far as to say that it was as significant an event to Eva as Charlotte's career was to Charlotte, but stops and gnaws on his pipe instead. Erik contained what can be loosely understood as the family's hope to escape the prior generation, which we now know may never be possible.

The middle act transitions from Charlotte's boundless vanity to a possible confrontation of mother and daughter. I should rephrase that: we have seen enough of Bergman's chamber plays to know that such a confrontation is inevitable and will probably be, considering the enormous resentment harbored by Eva, a rather nasty affair. Appropriately enough, the "prelude" to such a conflict comes during Eva's attempt to play this masterpiece on the piano. I cannot report that she is successful; but the camera, and by extension the viewer, cares little for what Eva can or cannot play. It focuses on her now-engrossed mother whose face droops so noticeably during the performance that Viktor finds it more comfortable to leave the room (a telling move since Viktor had verbally encouraged his hesitating wife with the words, "You said you wanted to have her hear you play"). At the end of the modest recital, Charlotte is complimentary if salaciously aware that she now has an opportunity to show off. She prods Eva into asking her to play by declaring her daughter's "interpretation" to be befuddled, even with regard to finger placement. "Chopin was not a sentimental old woman," says Charlotte, who is also speaking about herself. She then proceeds to play a magnificent rendition while Charlotte stares at her, both faces held closely together by the camera. In those faces we see a precursor to another wonderful scene, this one re-enacted from Eva's miserable childhood. A large music room is closed off by a series of folding doors. Outside those doors waits a little blonde girl in a pretty dress, waiting, we learn for her mother "to take her coffee." Inside the doors we hear a faint melody, and the moment it stops, the girl rushes in, if only to sit at her mother's feet and gaze upon her as she drinks. But what is she told? "Mama wants to be alone now. It's such a lovely day, why don't you go play in the garden?" From these two scenes we know everything we need to know, which is why the dénouement, correct yet bitter, comes as no surprise. As for Elena's mental illness, a somewhat unnecessary addition to what really could be a two-woman show with Viktor floating about where needed, the less said about it the better.         

A personal aside: As a child, I remember my mother's copy of Ullmann's autobiography sitting around the house, progressively more dog-eared, and then finally retired to a happy place on one of our shelves. Her first name was odd, although Scandinavian names were bandied about quite a bit in my youth (I also made the common error of assuming that Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman were blood relatives). Ullmann, internet sources now assure me, has always been known for "her intelligence and beauty," although I must respectfully disagree. In her late thirties during the filming of Autumn Sonata, Ullmann had by this time appeared in several Bergman films starting with this much-acclaimed work and was never very physically appealing. Her lips were always too heavy, her eyes always too meek – but I digress. That Ingrid Bergman at sixty-four was arguably more attractive than as a young woman only adds to the widening gap between the two actresses, as well as underscores the realization by Eva that she will never approach her mother in two things: good looks and musical ability. The rest and best of life – her soul, her passion, her sympathy, her kindness, her curiosity – all that she has covered. Even if her mother's return means that Eva is now the only adult in the family.       

Pascal, "Contre l'Indifférence des Athées"

An essay ("Against the atheist's indifference") by this French thinker.  You can read the original here.

May those who combat religion learn at least what it is before they do battle.  If religion boasted of having a clear view of God and of possessing that view uncovered and unveiled, it could be combated by saying that there is nothing visible in our world that could demonstrate its existence.  But religion states quite on the contrary that man lives in darkness and far from God, and even bestows such a name upon Him in the Scriptures: Deus absconditus.  Religion may then try to establish these two things: that God has left palpable marks in the Church to be recognized by those who sincerely seek Him out and that, nevertheless, He has cloaked these marks in such a way that they will be not perceived except by those who search with their wholeness of their hearts.  What advantage could they possibly derive from professing to seek the truth amidst their negligence if they believe that nothing will be revealed?  This darkness which they inhabit and which the Church contests only establishes one of the tenets that the Church endorses without touching upon any other, and, far from ruining its doctrine, actually confirms it.

To combat the Church, they would have to believe that they have exerted all efforts to look everywhere, even in those things that the Church offers to teach them, but without any satisfaction.  Were they really to talk thus they would indeed combat one of the Church's pretensions.  But what I hope to show here is that this manner of speech could be produced by no reasonable person.  I would even say that no one has ever spoken in this way.  We know all too well how persons of this mindset act.  They think they have spared no effort to instruct themselves; in actuality, they spent a few hours perusing the Scriptures, then questioned some clergyman on the truths of faith.  We know all too well that afterwards they boast of having searched unsuccessfully in books and among men.  But in reality I cannot prevent myself from informing them that this negligence is not acceptable.  This is not about the superficial interest of an unknown person; this is about us and about our whole existence.   

The immortality of the soul is something that matters so dearly to us and that touches us so profoundly that one would have to have lost all feeling for being if one were indifferent to what this immortality might be.  All our actions and all our thoughts may take very different routes depending on whether or not one may in this process hope for eternal goods, and whether or not, in pursuing these goods from the point of view that should be our ultimate aim, it is impossible to approach the matter with sense and judgment.

Therefore our primary interest and primary task is to clarify the subject on which our entire conduct depends.  And this is why, among those who are not persuaded, I detect a large difference between those who work with all their might to instruct themselves and those who live without bothering or thinking about the subject.

I can only have compassion for those who wail in sincere doubt, who look upon the matter as the greatest of evils, and who, sparing nothing to escape this predicament, research their principal and most serious occupation.  But I have a very different opinion of those who live their life without thinking about the very end of life, who only do so because they cannot find within themselves the light to persuade them, and who, neglecting to look elsewhere, then do not examine in depth whether this attitude is one that people accept out of simple credulity or one of which a few obscure persons among them have, as it were, a solid base.  This negligence in an affair that deals with themselves, with their eternity, with their entirety, irritates me more than one would expect – it surprises and repulses me; to me it is a monster.  I do not say this out of the pious zeal of spiritual devotion.  On the contrary, I surmise that self-esteem, human interest, and the simplest rays of our reason would usher in such sentiments.  One should not see for that reason what is seen by the least enlightened among us.  

One need not have a sublimated soul to understand that no true or solid satisfaction is to be found, that all our pleasures are mere vanities, that our evils are infinite, and that eventually death, who threatens us at every instant, will need in a matter of years or perhaps even a matter of days to place us in an eternal state of happiness, unhappiness, or annihilation.  Between us and Heaven, Hell or Nothingness there is only life – which is the most fragile thing in the world.  And with Heaven being uncertain for those who doubt that their souls are immortal, they can await then only Hell or Nothingness.   

There is nothing more real or more terrible than this.  We may be as brave as you'd like – this is the end that awaits the most beautiful life in the world.

It is in vain that they steer their thoughts from the eternity that awaits them as if they could annihilate it and no longer think about it.  Yet it subsists despite them, it advances; and the death that must reveal this eternity will infallibly place them in little time in the horrible necessity of being eternally annihilated or unhappy.

And here is the doubt of a terrible consequence; and it is assuredly a woeful condition to be entrapped within that doubt; but nevertheless it is an indispensable task to search when one is there.  Thus he who doubts and does not search is at once both very unjust and very unhappy.  Whether it is with this condition, calm and satisfied, that one makes one's profession and finally one's vanity, and however this same condition may be the subject of one's joy and one's vanity, I have no term with which to name such an extravagant creature.

Where can one find such sentiments?  What subject of joy awaiting misery without recourse?  What subject of vanity that sees into the impenetrable darkness?  What consolation in never waiting to be consoled?

The relaxation through this ignorance is monstrous and one should make these persons feel the extravagance and stupidity of living their life in this fashion, and of representing what happens within themselves, to confuse them with a view of their own madness.  Because here is how men reason when they choose to live in ignorance of what they are and not to seek enlightenment.

I know not who placed me in this world, nor what the world is, nor what I am.  I am in terrible ignorance of all things.  I do not know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is; and this part of myself which thinks what I say and which reflects upon everything and itself, knows itself no more than the rest.  I see these horrific spaces in the Universe which confine me, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am located in this place rather than in another, nor why this little time I have been given to live has been assigned at this point rather than at another point during the course of eternity that preceded me and that which shall come in my wake.  I see only infirmities everywhere that devour me like an atom, like a shadow that lasts only a second without returning.  All I know is that I will soon have to die; but what I know least about is this death that I do not know how to avoid.

In the same way that I do not know where I come from, I also do not know where I am going.  I only know that, departing this world, I will fall forever into Nothingness or into the hands of an irritated God, not knowing in which of these two conditions I will have to spend eternity.

Here is my condition full of misery, of weakness, of obscurity.  And from all this I therefore conclude that I must spend all the days of my life without dreaming of what will come to pass, and that I have nothing to do but to follow my inclinations without reflection or inquietude in doing everything needed so as to tumble into eternal unhappiness in the event that what is said is true.  Perhaps I could find some enlightenment amidst my doubts; but not wanting to make the effort, not taking a step in this search, and treating with contempt those who will labor with this care in mind, I would like without foresight or fear to tempt such a great event, and let myself gently be led to death uncertain of the eternity of my future condition.

In reality it is to the glory of Religion to have as enemies such unreasonable men.  Their opposition is so minutely dangerous in their contradiction of the establishment of basic truths which Religion teaches us.  Because the Christian faith seeks in principle to establish these two things: the corruption of nature and the redemption of Jesus Christ.  For if they do not demonstrate the truth of redemption in the saintliness of their mores, they at least admirably show the corruption of nature by sentiments so denatured.

Nothing is as important to man as his condition; nothing is as redoubtable to him as eternity. And in this way, if he finds men indifferent to the loss of their being and in peril of an eternity of misery, this is not natural.  They are completely other with regard to all other things: they fear even the smallest things, they see them in advance, they feel them.  And this same man who passes his days and nights in rage and despair owing to the loss of a fee or for some imaginary offense to his honor, is the same man who knows he will lose everything in death and who remains nevertheless without inquietude, without trouble, and without emotion.  This strange insensibility to the most terrible things in a heart so sensitive to the most frivolous – this is an incomprehensible enchantment and a supernatural slumber.

A man in a prison cell not knowing whether his judgment has been pronounced and not having more than an hour to learn of it, and this hour being sufficient, if he knows that he has been judged, to have it revoked, it is then against nature for him to use this hour not to inform himself as to whether his judgment has been pronounced, but to play and amuse himself.  This is the condition in which these people find themselves, with the difference being that the evils which threaten them are others than the simple loss of life and brief torture of which the prisoner will learn.  Nevertheless they run without care towards the precipice after having placed something before their eyes to impede their view of it, and they mock those who might warn them. 

Thus true Religion is proven not only by the zeal of those who seek God, but also by the blindness of those who do not seek Him and who live in this horrible negligence.  There needs to be a strange reversal in the nature of man to live in such a condition, and still more to make a vanity of it.  Because once they have entire certainty that they have nothing to fear after death apart from falling into Nothingness, would this not be more a subject of despair rather than of vanity?  Is this not, therefore, inconceivable madness, not having been assured of anything, to glorify being in such doubt?

And nevertheless it is certain that man is so denatured that his heart retains in this endeavor some seeds of joy.  This brutal respite between the fear of Hell and of Nothingness seems so grand that not only those who truly wallow in these doubts glorify the matter, but also even those who do not wallow therein believe that it is glorious for them to pretend to be – since experience makes us see that the majority of those involved belong to this second category and that these people are disguised and are not what they want to appear to be.  They are people who have heard said that the fine manners of the world consist of getting carried away in this vein.  This is what they call "having shed the yoke," and most of them only do it to imitate others.

But however small the amount of common sense they may possess, it is not difficult to get them to understand to what degree they abuse themselves in searching for esteem in this way.  This is not how to obtain it; and I would say the same thing to those persons of the world who employ a healthy judgment of things and who know that the only path to success is to be honest, faithful, judicious and capable of making use of one's friends, because men naturally do not like what can be useful to them.  For what advantage is there for us to hear said by a man that has "shed the yoke," a man who does not believe that there is a God who watches over his actions, that he considers himself the only master of his conduct, that he does not think of being aware in this regard of anyone but himself?  Does he think in so doing he has henceforth instilled our confidence in him, and from this can expect consolations, advice and help in all of life's needs?  Does he believe he has elated us by saying that he doubts that our soul is anything more than a bit of wind and smoke, even telling us this in a proud and happy voice?  Is this something to be said gaily?  Isn't this, on the contrary, a sad statement, perhaps the saddest statement in all the world?

If they thought seriously about the matter they would see that this is so badly formulated, so contrary to good sense, so opposed to honesty, and so distant in every way from the good manner that they seek, that nothing is more capable of bestowing upon them the contempt and aversion of mankind and have them seem to be persons without spirit or judgment.  And, indeed, if one were to make them aware of their sentiments and the reasons they have to doubt Religion, they would say things so feeble and base that they would persuade us rather of the contrary.   This was what one person said one day on the subject: if you continue such debates, he told them, you will convert me for real.  And he was right; for who would not hate to be viewed with such sentiments as would make them companions to people so contemptible?    

Thus those who only feign these sentiments are quite unhappy to constrain their natural being to render themselves the most impertinent of men.  If they are angry in their heart of hearts for not having more light, they cannot hide it.  Such a declaration would not be honest; there is no shame apart from not doing so.  Nothing reveals more of a strange weakness of mind than not to know what is man's unhappiness without God.  Nothing indicates a greater baseness of heart than not to want the truth regarding eternal promises. Nothing is more cowardly than to brave God.  May they then leave these impieties to those who were already badly born to be capable of them: may they be the least honest of persons if they cannot yet be Christians; and may they recognize finally that there are only two types of people: those who serve God with all their hearts because they know Him and those who seek Him with all their hearts because they do not know Him yet.   

It is therefore for those who seek God sincerely and who recognize their misery in desiring truly to escape this conundrum that it is just to work, with the aim of helping them to find the light that they do not possess. 

But for those who live without knowing Him and without seeking Him, they deem themselves so unworthy of their own care, may they not be worthy of care by others.  One would have to show all the charity of the Religion they despise not to despise them until one abandons them to their folly.  Yet because this Religion obliges us to regard them always as being capable of Grace in this life, Grace that might enlighten them, and to believe that, in short order, they might be more filled with faith than we are, and that, conversely, we too might fall into the blindness which they inhabit, we have to do for them what we would want done for us if we were in their place and beseech them to take pity on themselves, and at least to take a few steps to see whether they might not find this light.  May they devote to the reading of this work a few hours of which they would otherwise make little use.  Perhaps they will find something here, or at least they would not lose too much.  But for those imbued with perfect sincerity and veritable desire to know the truth, I hope that they will be satisfied and convinced of the proofs amassed here of a Religion so divine.