LETTERS FROM PARIS
457
All this stuff is pretty deadly, and one wonders what's coming
next when a book like Raymond AbelIio's
La Bible, document chiffre
succeeds in getting seriously reviewed. The ineffable Abellio--believe it or
not!-had a revelation on Good Friday in 1946; this disclosed to him
that every Hebrew letter in the Pentateuch has a numerical value and
that the secrets of the universe will be revealed by working out the
relationships of these numbers (predestination was certainly at work here,
since Abellio is a former student of the Ecole Polytechnique ). Abellio
ha~
been going at it hammer and tongs ever since. I think a non-occultist
reader will understand why, after wading through enough of this junk,
I felt like writing a note of thanks to Marcel Jouhandeau, who began
his contribution to
La table ronde
in this way: "In 1927-28 I
wa~
very much taken up with magic and occultism. I'm infinitely grateful
that my marriage turned my attention away from these subjects."
To the credit of
La table ronde,
let it be noted that they printed
a delicious little parody of Abellio in a later issue, complete with
phony references to Dionysius the Areopagite, Paracelsus and the Sepher
Yetzirah. Jacques Laurent, the author of this piece, sets out to prove
that Hector Malot-a French Ben Ames Williams of the nineteenth
century-was really
un grand initie,
and that by the proper mathematical
mystifications his novel
Sans famille
can be seen as a revelation of the
Law. After having calculated that the first phrase of the first sentence
of this novel works out to the number: 69, Laurent proceeds to give the
following occult interpretation. "Nobody," he says, "is ignorant of
the importance of this number-symbol in the Orphic tradition. Whether
one is satisfied with the tendency of the disciples of Eliphas Levi, who
relate it to Chaos, or whether one refers to the commentator of the
Book of the Dead,
the fact remains that the operation it represents
im–
plies, above all, Silence."
And while I am on this occult level, I should not neglect to in–
form PR readers of the latest appearance in print of a world-famous
writer--considered by some the greatest writer who ever committed
his sentiments to language; though
in
recent times, it grieves me to
note, his very existence has been seriously questioned. No, I'm not
talking about Shakespeare, whose works, in any event, can hardly boast
of having been the source of so much controversy, not to say confusion
and turmoil. The writer I am alluding to is, plainly and simply, God
Almighty, who contributed a touching little piece recently to
Le canard
enchaine.
It seems that another weekly,
Opera,
ran a symposium
called: Why I Believe in God, and
Fran~ois
Mauriac and Paul Claudel
answered at some length. In a true spirit of Christian humility, the
