An interesting article from In Character on the tendency in literature for resolution and salvation at the conclusion of works of fiction. There is a bit of theology in this argument, but it fits within the Western Literary tradition, otherwise known as the Western Canon.Admittedly, if we look at short fiction from the last thirty years (such as Raymond Carver and all who have followed in his example) this is not necessarily true - but time will tell if those authors and works make it into the Western Canon
Why Mephistopheles Had to Work Overtime –
Evil is glamorous. But great works of literature are more likely to end with scenes of reconciliation.
By Michael Dirda
Virtues get no respect. Unlike sin and vice, which are loaded with razzmatazz, such qualities as temperance, chastity, and patience generally seem soberly straitlaced and lackluster. On the surface, they look to be all about self-control, which is useful, rather than self-expression, which is fun. The poet Swinburne told us this a long time ago when he spoke about the dark joy of exchanging “the lilies and languors of virtue/ for the raptures and roses of vice.”
But virtues are complicated matters, as central to civilization as they are to salvation. The child who learns to share a toy with a classmate may as an adult practice the kind of self-sacrifice and charity of a Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa. But, more commonly, she will have at least learned to empathize with others, come to recognize that selfishiness is lonely, and discovered that people matter more than any mere plaything, no matter how shiny and sequined. Virtues, at their most utilitarian, help smooth our way through life — and forgiveness is the one we use and need the most.
Consider any ordinary work day. We are jostled on the crowded subway, and two voices simultaneously murmur, “Pardon me.” At the office, a colleague grows upset over a mistake on the Murchison report and we answer, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll fix it this afternoon.” At lunch someone spills his Diet Coke on your boyfriend’s new jeans, and he automatically says, “No big deal. It’ll dry.” These little acts of courtesy represent just the lowest level of forgiveness, but they keep anarchy and violence — all the road rage of modern life — at bay: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
At the same time, forgiveness, at its highest level, is central to spiritual aspiration. Christ on the cross exclaims, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” To the Christian, God’s forgiveness alone makes it possible for a soul to enter heaven. In our own lives we are asked to imitate such divine generosity and reconcile ourselves with even those who have harmed us grievously. One thinks of the bereaved Amish who reached out to comfort the family of the man who, before committing suicide, had murdered five of the community’s young school children.
A proverb goes “Forgive and forget.” Yet while one may forgive the person who commits an evil act, one shouldn’t forget the evil act itself. It’s still a sin, a crime, an atrocity. To forgive doesn’t make anything less heinous, it simply allows healing to begin. The French have a maxim: “Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” — to understand all is to forgive all. Such seemingly casual acceptance of human error may be criticized as laissez-faire ethics, yet it is nonetheless chastening to be reminded that there are few acts that any of us might not, under the right circumstances, commit or for which we might not require forgiveness.
Literature, in particular, achieves its most sublime moments when suffering mortals are reconciled through their common humanity. At the climax of The Iliad King Priam kisses the hand of the man who has murdered his son, and Achilles finally puts aside his vengeful wrath over the death of Patroclus in recognition of mutual suffering. In the great Njal Saga Kari methodically hunts down the forty men who burned his foster family to death. After all, he was reared in an ethos of blood vengeance, of the lex talionis. Finally only the ring-leader, Flosi, is left. But by now medieval Iceland has converted from paganism to Christianity, and it finally becomes possible for Flosi, in a wonderful scene, to forgive his greatest enemy. Near the climax of King Lear the broken king says to Cordelia that he has given her cause to hate him. And she answers, with a heartbreaking simplicity and the deepest love and forgiveness, “No cause, no cause.”
Perhaps the most striking musical expression of forgiveness occurs in Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro. Caught pursuing a servant girl, Count Almaviva pleads for forgiveness for his duplicity and attempted infidelity. The countess, in a supreme moment of charity, grants him his tearful wish, even as she half-knows that he’s sure to betray her again. Mozart’s music at this point shifts its whole tonal character, and immediately achieves a kind of hushed holiness. It’s just breathtaking when heard. Similarly, Leonard Bernstein’s music to Candide concludes with a general forgiveness of sins and injuries. In a beautiful last chorus all the characters admit that they have been “neither pure, nor wise, nor good.” But from now, “We’ll do the best we know. We’ll build our house and chop our wood. And make our garden grow.”
In truth, many — perhaps most — plays and novels end in a similar atmosphere of forgiveness. Misunderstandings are resolved, broken hearts mended, lovers reconciled. The age-old feud finally ends, a new era begins. Just so, Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot repair the ancient damage to their love in Persuasion; Leopold Bloom falls happily asleep next to his unfaithful wife, Molly. And “Shantih, shantih, shantih,” intones the final line of The Waste Land, the Indian word meaning, says Eliot, “the peace that passeth understanding.” Chekhov, in particular, deserves a special place in the literary annals of forgiveness: His stories and plays repeatedly show us ordinary people at their most foolish and self-deluded, but all of them regarded with humane tolerance and almost supernatural understanding.
Still, the more one thinks seriously about forgiveness, the trickier it gets. Can only the injured party forgive you? Does this mean that if that person is dead that you can never be forgiven? Do the two people involved in any act of forgiveness receive the same benefit? Certainly, at the heart of forgiveness lies a kind of basic Realpolitik: To get on with life one needs to get over the injury, to move on. Otherwise it will fester, blighting the whole of existence. But what if one forgives one’s enemy but that person is unrepentant or simply doesn’t care? And, worse yet, what if one doesn’t believe it possible to be forgiven for one’s crime against God or humanity?
At some point during my Catholic boyhood, I was told that there was one sin that could not be forgiven: the sin against the Holy Ghost. But what precisely was this absolutely unpardonable — and, I must admit, Byronically romantic — fault? So far as I could gather it lay in the failure, or refusal, to believe that one could actually be absolved. If one couldn’t believe in the Holy Ghost’s forgiveness of sins, one would never seek to be forgiven and hence would be damned. It was a kind of paradox. The unpardonable sin was such only because one was convinced that no pardon was available. There might even be salvation for others, but not for oneself. Ultimately, then, the sin against the Holy Ghost was spiritual despair.
Is there any more modern condition than this? It thus seems appropriate that arguably the first modern man — Dr. Faustus — is our great literary example of such despair. In the final scenes of Marlowe’s tragedy, Faustus is convinced by Mephistopheles that God would never forgive him for his transgressions and blasphemy. The devil’s servant, though, knows that were the magician to confess his faults and beg for mercy, God’s mercy would not be denied to him. So, his main purpose in these last moments is to make certain that Faustus continues to believe that he is beyond God’s grace. Only in this way can Mephistopheles be assured that the man’s soul will go to Hell.
Two hundred years later Goethe echoes this scene at the end of the first part of his own Faust, but with a different resolution. Gretchen, in prison awaiting execution for the murder of her child, turns away from her lover Faust and his companion Mephistopheles, and finally gives herself over to God. Mephistopheles dismisses this gesture of penance as coming too late: “Sie ist gerichtet” — She is judged. At which point, completing the half line, sounds a voice from the heavens: “Ist gerettet” — Is saved.
To the believer, forgiveness ultimately comes from God. So it is actually appropriate that the poet Heine remarked on his deathbed: “God will forgive me — that’s his job.” In fact, one could argue that he wasn’t joking but was simply being theologically exact. Nonetheless, even if forgiveness may be God’s job, it’s also yours and mine.
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Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic for the Washington Post and the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Book by Book, Bound to Please, and Classics for Pleasure.
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