Gogol's Wife & Other Stories by Tommaso Landolfi

Author:Tommaso Landolfi [Landolfi, Tommaso]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Short Stories
ISBN: 9780811226493
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2015-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

“What do you mean—and yet,” Nena had asked coldly.

“What are you saying? Do you realize that you are blaspheming?” Lilla had timidly ventured. And Bellonia grumbled something to show her indignation. While Tostini, completely at sea, still thought it might help to regard the young man with an ironic air. Pressed from all sides, the young priest burst out with nearly childish vexation and obstinacy.

“I’m blaspheming? So much the worse if I am! But I’m not blaspheming, you needn’t worry. Instead, you, all of you, are blaspheming. What God are you talking about? God is not what you think He is. God is, Monsignor, just like myself, just like that monkey, alien to your complicated accounts of give and take! God has nothing to do with your or, let’s say, our moral institutions, our altars, our consecrated hosts. I’m not saying that He is above or below these things. I say, however, that they do not belong to Him, that they are not pertinent to Him or at least no more so than any other thing, any other quality of man, beast or star. God is not a god of justice. He is not merciful either. He is not bad and He is not good . . .”

All exclaimed at once: “God is not good!”

“No, He is not good just as He is not bad. Your moral standards, Monsignor, do not apply to Him. God is not so degraded as to know good and evil. I said that it was man who invented sin, and then, out of cowardice, I remained silent when you objected. Well, what you chose to understand is not what I intended to say. I say that man has invented the very concept of sin, and this is his greatest, indeed, his only sin. You talk of free will! But do you realize that this, this is the real blasphemy, your belief in free will? Don’t you know that free will negates God, as none of your so-called sins ever could, that is if they existed . . .”

“Not at all, free will affirms God, because . . .”

“No, let me say what I’ve got to say—your canonical arguments have no place here. Free will negates God not because of the reasons which you have been taught to refute. It negates Him by the very fact that it limits Him—limits Him, I might say, in space. Let us suppose that God said to man: these are the two paths, follow one or the other—and here we won’t mention the respective rewards and punishments which you have so foolishly played at inventing—and let us suppose that man decides to follow the path of evil. Very well: in what terms, with what means, I ask you, within what bounds could he follow it? Must he not, in order to do it, make use of that which God Himself has given him? Don’t all the impulses of his heart come from God, as do all the instruments of his

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