PARTISAN REVIEW
such a belief is concordant with divine justice, since the animals die
without hope of salvation. Marchenoir's reply echoes Kant on the
Ding an sich,
though it is improbable that Bloy read Kant.
". . . You would like to know how they are rewarded or paid
off.
If
I knew and could tell you, I .should be God,
mademoiselle,
for then I should know what the animals are
in themselves
and no
longer, merely, in relation
to
man. Haven't you noticed we can only
perceive beings and things in their relations with other beings and
other things, never
in
their ground and in their essence? There is not
a man on earth who can rightly affirm, with full assurance, that any
perceptible form is indelible and bears within itself the character of
eternity. We are 'sleepers' ... and the outside world figures
in
our
dreams as 'a riddle in a glass.' We shall not understand this 'world
of lamentation' until all hidden things are revealed to us. . . . Till
then, we have to accept, with the ignorance of sheep, the sight of
universal immolation, telling ourselves that if grief were not shrouded
in mystery, it would have neither power nor beauty to enroll martyrs
and wouldn't even deserve that the animals should endure it."
At the center of Bloy's "reversible" universe stands the figure of
Christ the Poor Man, Christ the scandal of the bourgeoisie. This
Christ is a suffering Christ and a Christ who has need of humanity.
Such a figure verges on heresy in the West. Angelus Silesius said,
"I know that without me God cannot live an instant," and his isolated
cry finds numerous echoes in the East, if we are to believe M. Ber–
dyaev. Jehovah was frequently said to be angry. In the West, inquiries
into the emotional life of God are discouraged.
The intellectual content of Marchenoir-Bloy's conversion in
Le
Desespere
is uncommon. Two thousand years of the silence of God
could not be endlessly protracted.
un
conclut au conditionnel desespoir
des millenaires.
...
He kneaded a handful of time to make himself
an eternity and manufactured his hope from the bitterest pessimism.
He persuaded himself that we are dealing with a Lord God emas–
culate by His own Will, infertile by decree, bound, nailed, perish–
ing in the incrustable reality of His Essence, as He had been,
symbolically and visibly, in the bloody adventure of His Hyposta–
sis. He had the intuition of a kind of Divine Impotence, contracted
provisionally
between Mercy and Justice. towards some ineffable
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