Auto Da Fé by Elias Canetti

Author:Elias Canetti [Canetti, Elias]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Nobel Prize, Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9781446475492
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1935-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER V

REVELATIONS

WHEN Fischerle, violently winking, appeared of a sudden through the glass door, he was greeted by Kien with a benign smile. The compassionate office which he had recently taken upon himself had mellowed his soul and called forth noble metaphors. His soul inquired what might be the meaning of those flashing melancholy beacon-lights; in the torrential flood of his love he had forgotten all previously arranged signals. Kien’s faith, unshaken as his distrust of book-blaspheming humanity, was browsing in beloved pastures. He was regretting the weakness of Christ, that mysterious prodigal. Gifts of food and wine, healing of the halt and the blind, parable after parable went through his head; how many books, he thought, might have been saved by these miracles: he felt that his present state of mind resembled that of Christ. He too would have acted in the same fashion; only in its objects did Christ’s love seem to him an aberration, like that of the Japanese. Since the philologist in him still lived, he decided to devote himself, when peaceful times should again bless the land, to a fundamentally new textual examination of the gospels. It was possible that Christ had in fact not referred to men at all, and the barbarian hierarchy had falsified the original words of their founder. The unexpected appearance of Logos in the Gospel of St. John gave abundant grounds for doubt, all the more since the usual explanations refer it back to a Greek influence. He felt himself equipped with enough knowledge to guide Christianity back to its true sources, and though he was not to be the first to pour the true words of the Saviour out to humanity, whose ears were always ready to receive them, he might hope, nevertheless, on a sufficient inner conviction, that the indications he set down would be final.

Fischerle’s indications of a threatening danger, on the other hand, went unrecognized. For a time he continued his warning winks, alternatively closing his right and his left eye. At last he threw himself on Kien, clutched his arm and whispered ‘Police!’ the most awesome word he knew. ‘Run! I’ll go first!’ he said, and placed himself, contrary to his promise, once more at the door to see the effect of his words. Kien cast a dolorous glance upwards, not to Heaven, to Hell rather, on the sixth floor. He vowed to return to this sanctified antechamber, if possible, even to-day. With all his heart he scorned the vile pharisees who persecuted him. As a true saint he did not forget, before setting his long legs in motion, to thank the dwarf with a stiff but profound inclination. If he should forget his duty out of cowardice, he vowed his own library to a fiery death. He ascertained that his enemies had not in fact shown themselves. What did they fear? The moral force of his pleadings? He pleaded for no sinners, he pleaded for guiltless books. Meanwhile let them injure but one hair of one of these, and they would learn to know a very different side of him.

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