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A review by rbcp82
Vipers' Tangle by François Mauriac, Robert Coles, Warre B. Wells
5.0
It's a deep novel, the kind that can be written only an author with keen sensibility into human nature and human relationship with one another and with the world.
The novel is framed as a vengeful letter an old man is writing to his wife, who apparently is responsible for "that lost cause, my life." He enlists the reasons (his petty jealousy --which he doesn't think is petty--, his wife's indifference toward him, his wife's devotion to their children). The story moves back and forth in time seamlessly, recounting the narrator's youth in the past along with the visit from his children and grandchildren in the now. The letter, in turn, turns into a confession, somewhat in a sense similar to Augustine's confession in that he revisits his sins to objectively reevaluate his past judgments and convictions.
Complex as it is, with a distasteful narrator, the novel is compelling as we readers get invested into his fate. Will he be passing on his letter to his wife finally? What would happen to his inheritance, which he tries so hard to keep away from his children?
It is deemed a "catholic" novel, but it is more so a "family" novel, as the main conflicts tangle around members of his family. There is a void in every one of us, that can't be filled with earthly matters, and the disillusionment in the end comes very subtlety that unless one is a careful reader, one would miss it. There is a kind of transformation, but human mind is so limited, that despite the transformation and new mindset, there's only so much we can do solely with our intellect and determination.
What he truly sought was the genuine attention and love from his family members. Love that doesn't get compromised by pitiful and earthly human interests.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The drama of our two lives, yours and mine, was conditioned by things which happened to me as a young man, things you never knew or, having known, promptly forgot.
The more conscious I was of their dislike, the more intolerable did I become. My youth was a prolonged condition of suicide. I was deliberately uncouth simply because I was afraid of being unconsciously so.
I resented the simple-minded way in which they exhibited their petty motives, because it forced me to realize that my own motives were precisely similar.
There was about it all a sense of quiet happiness from which I felt myself excluded. It was a zone of dreamlike innocence which I was forbidden to enter. It was a quiet sea of love which died into nothingness a few feet from the rock of my presence.
I took her hand, as I might have taken the hand of an unhappy child, and, like a child she leaned her head upon my shoulder. I received the gift of it merely because I happened to be there. The earth receives the fallen peach. Most human beings come together not as the result of any deliberate choice, but like trees which have grown side by side, their branches interlacing in the simple process of their growth.
The Abbe Ardouin raised you up, and spoke of how we must make ourselves like little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of the Father. "She lives, she sees you, she is waiting for you." But you shook your head. The words did not even penetrate to your brain. Your faith was useless to you. You had thoughts for nothing but that flesh of your flesh, which was going to be laid in the earth and would soon know corruption. It was I, the unbeliever, who realized, as I looked at what was left of Marie, the full meaning of the word "remains." I was overwhelmed by a sense of departure, of absence. She was no longer there.
It is then that I feel it impossible to deny that a way does exist in me which might lead me to your God. If I could reach the point of feeling satisfied with myself, I could fight this sense of pressure with more hope of success. If I could despise myself unreservedly, then the issue would be settled once and for all. But when a man is as hard as I am, when his heart, as in my case, has become dead wood, when he can inspire only hatred, and create about himself nothing but a waste land, ten he has no defense against the onrush of hope.
What better proof could there be that hope springs eternal in the human breast? We are none of us without it.
I wonder whether you will understand what I mean when I say that where his treasure was, there his heart was not?
The novel is framed as a vengeful letter an old man is writing to his wife, who apparently is responsible for "that lost cause, my life." He enlists the reasons (his petty jealousy --which he doesn't think is petty--, his wife's indifference toward him, his wife's devotion to their children). The story moves back and forth in time seamlessly, recounting the narrator's youth in the past along with the visit from his children and grandchildren in the now. The letter, in turn, turns into a confession, somewhat in a sense similar to Augustine's confession in that he revisits his sins to objectively reevaluate his past judgments and convictions.
Complex as it is, with a distasteful narrator, the novel is compelling as we readers get invested into his fate. Will he be passing on his letter to his wife finally? What would happen to his inheritance, which he tries so hard to keep away from his children?
It is deemed a "catholic" novel, but it is more so a "family" novel, as the main conflicts tangle around members of his family. There is a void in every one of us, that can't be filled with earthly matters, and the disillusionment in the end comes very subtlety that unless one is a careful reader, one would miss it. There is a kind of transformation, but human mind is so limited, that despite the transformation and new mindset, there's only so much we can do solely with our intellect and determination.
What he truly sought was the genuine attention and love from his family members. Love that doesn't get compromised by pitiful and earthly human interests.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The drama of our two lives, yours and mine, was conditioned by things which happened to me as a young man, things you never knew or, having known, promptly forgot.
The more conscious I was of their dislike, the more intolerable did I become. My youth was a prolonged condition of suicide. I was deliberately uncouth simply because I was afraid of being unconsciously so.
I resented the simple-minded way in which they exhibited their petty motives, because it forced me to realize that my own motives were precisely similar.
There was about it all a sense of quiet happiness from which I felt myself excluded. It was a zone of dreamlike innocence which I was forbidden to enter. It was a quiet sea of love which died into nothingness a few feet from the rock of my presence.
I took her hand, as I might have taken the hand of an unhappy child, and, like a child she leaned her head upon my shoulder. I received the gift of it merely because I happened to be there. The earth receives the fallen peach. Most human beings come together not as the result of any deliberate choice, but like trees which have grown side by side, their branches interlacing in the simple process of their growth.
The Abbe Ardouin raised you up, and spoke of how we must make ourselves like little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of the Father. "She lives, she sees you, she is waiting for you." But you shook your head. The words did not even penetrate to your brain. Your faith was useless to you. You had thoughts for nothing but that flesh of your flesh, which was going to be laid in the earth and would soon know corruption. It was I, the unbeliever, who realized, as I looked at what was left of Marie, the full meaning of the word "remains." I was overwhelmed by a sense of departure, of absence. She was no longer there.
It is then that I feel it impossible to deny that a way does exist in me which might lead me to your God. If I could reach the point of feeling satisfied with myself, I could fight this sense of pressure with more hope of success. If I could despise myself unreservedly, then the issue would be settled once and for all. But when a man is as hard as I am, when his heart, as in my case, has become dead wood, when he can inspire only hatred, and create about himself nothing but a waste land, ten he has no defense against the onrush of hope.
What better proof could there be that hope springs eternal in the human breast? We are none of us without it.
I wonder whether you will understand what I mean when I say that where his treasure was, there his heart was not?