Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [245]
“Then there is the Roman book about Aeneas. He leads a group of refugees in search of a peaceful home and spreads agony and warfare along both coasts of the Mediterranean. He also visits Hell but gets out again. The writer of this story is tender toward peaceful homes, he wants Roman success in warfare and government to make the world a peaceful home for everyone, but his last words describe Aeneas, in the heat of battle, killing a helpless enemy for revenge.
“There is the Jewish book about Moses. It’s very like the Roman one about Aeneas, so I’ll go on to the Jewish book about Jesus. He is a poor man without home or wife. He says he is God’s son and calls all men his brothers. He teaches that love is the one great good, and is spoiled by fighting for things. He is crucified, goes to Hell, then to Heaven which (like Aeneas’s peaceful world) is outside the scope of the book. Jesus taught that love is the greatest good, and that love is damaged by fighting for things; but if (as the song says) “he died to make us good” he too was a failure. The nations who worshipped him became the greediest conquerors in the world.
“Only the Italian book shows a living man in Heaven. He gets there by following Aeneas and Jesus through Hell, but first loses the woman and the home he loves and sees the ruin of all his political hopes.
“There is the French book about the giant babies. Pleasing themselves is their only law so they drink and excrete in a jolly male family which laughs at everything adults call civilization. Women exist for them, but only as rubbers and ticklers.
“There is the Spanish book about the Knight of the Dolorous Countenance. A poor old bachelor is driven mad by reading the sort of books you want to be in, with heroes who triumph here and now. He leaves home and fights peasants and innkeepers for the beauty which is never here and now, and is mocked and wounded. On his deathbed he grows sane and warns his friends against intoxicating literature.
“There is the English book about Adam and Eve. This describes a heroic empire-building Satan, an amoral, ironical, boundlessly creative God, a lot of warfare (but no killing) and all centered on a married couple and the state of their house and garden. They disobey the landlord and are evicted, but he promises them accommodation in his own house if they live and die penitently. Once again success is left outside the scope of the book. We are last shown them setting out into a world to raise children they know will murder each other.
“There is the German book about Faust, an old doctor who grows young by witchcraft. He loves, then neglects, a girl who goes mad and kills his baby
son. He becomes banker to the emperor, abducts Helen of Troy and has another, symbolic son who explodes. He steals land from peasants to create an empire of his own and finances it by piracy. He abandons everything he tires of, grabs everything he wants and dies believing himself a public benefactor. He is received into a Heaven like the Italian one because ‘man must strive and striving he must err’ and because ‘he who continually strives can be saved.’ Yah! The only person in the book who strives is the poor devil, who does all the work and is tricked out of his wages by the angelic choir showing him their bums.5 The writer of this book was depraved by too much luck. He shows the sort of successful man who captains the modern world, but doesn’t show how vilely incompetent these people are. You don’t need that sort of success.
“It is a relief to turn to the honest American book about the whale. A captain wants to kill it because the last time he tried to do that it bit off his leg while escaping. He embarks with a cosmopolitan crew who don’t like home life and prefer this way of earning money. They are brave, skilful and obedient, they chase the whale round the world and get themselves all drowned together: all but the storyteller. He describes the world flowing on as if they had never existed. There are no women or children in this book, apart from a little