St. Paul’s letters, following traditional dating, suggests that as his heroic mission went on, angling toward his death and his crown, his view of his own person became lower. In 1 Corinthians, he is the “least of all apostles.” In Ephesians, “less than the least of all saints.” And in 1 Timothy, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” He lived always in sight of his grievous sin, which had been his intention to execute when he was blinded on the road to Damascus.
Sin consciousness, if you will, lives in its full potency in the Reformed tradition. A Catholic, I find, will be less aware of and far less immediate to admit to their depravity than a Protestant. Both will be more aware of it than a secular individual. Self-esteem, in absolute form the demonic image of Augustinian theology, is the essential modern virtue.
Laurus, then, would make a strange read for such a person. Translated into a straightforward prose of largely simple sentences but for a few breathtaking scenes, it is the account of an eventual saint, whose inner world contains all the drama of sin, but whose outer action is unwaveringly holy. That is to say, the titular character (named Arseny, at the outset), spends the course of his life atoning for a youthful sin with unwavering piety and no self-esteem. His self is corrupt and inglorious, without God. The one decision he made without Him was of necessity bad. Therefore, his life became self-abnegation, kenosis, and he chooses, in every moment, to do only that which God wills of him.
Vodolazkin is successful above all, then, in illustrating the consciousness of the ascetic. This is the novel of the Christian sage, whose own psychology is wholly dedicated to not willing anything but the Lord’s Prayer. Strange and profoundly antithetical to the existential heroes of the 20th century. It is archetypal in structure, none of it “subversive” (as The Name of the Rose is, it’s ill-chosen point of comparison), with joys, horrors, and the supernatural portrayed with realism (Real Realism, if you will).
Up to his death, our Laurus sought to bear the sins of the world to atone for his own, and he thought it just. There is no quantitative dialectic, no “surely, this has been enough for You, Lord.” No enough until his crown. Until he has run the race.
Lovely stuff, Noah. What a beautiful distillation of something at the heart of a truly magnificent book.