Pilgrim Reindeer in Pisa, 1348
a free multimedia novel by
Thomas A. DuBois, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Pilgrim Reindeer in Pisa, 1348 a free multimedia novel by Thomas A. DuBois, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
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Part III. Italy. 58. The Dark Night [July 26, 1349]
This chapter may have surprised you; it certainly surprised me. When I was writing the novel, and reading it chapter by chapter to my wife and kids, they kept commenting that Bávlos was just too perfect, too saintly, too calm, too forgiving. I toyed with the idea of going back through the whole novel and making Bávlos more faulted as a person. But that would have spoiled the medieval, hagiographic character of the narrative. This is not a realist narrative but a retrospective hagiography on how a particular painting came to be. As I started to write the scene of Bávlos in prison, the dialogue simply grew and I began to see how Bávlos did indeed have faults, although a modern audience might not think so. And that led me to the notion of the dark night of the soul and to giving Bávlos this experience on top of all the others he has had. Throughout writing it, I kept thinking of the famous words of St. Theresa of Avila. Addressing God in the midst of a long spiritual crisis, she is said to have said something like the following: "Lord, if this is the way you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few."
