Seraphita (Please login or register to view links) A novel by Please login or register to view links Written by a Rosicrucian adept, this fantastic tale is a masterful work of occult teachings. Not written for the masses, Seraphita was for those few lofty spirits who could discern Jacobs mystical stair. Trích: [TABLE="width: 100%"] [TD="class: alt2, bgcolor: #F4F2ED"]1835. Written by a Rosicrucian adept, this fantastic tale is a masterful work of occult teachings. Not written for the masses, Seraphita was for those few lofty spirits who could discern Jacobs mystical stair.[/TD] [/TABLE] Trích: [TABLE="width: 100%"] [TD="class: alt2, bgcolor: #F4F2ED"]Séraphita is a story about an androgynous youth (first called Séraphitus, later Séraphita) who possesses great spiritual and physical beauty, and dies, by ordinary interpretation, an untimely and unwarranted death voluntarily, quietly and fully self-aware. This individual has cultivated personal will so completely that he supersedes the intellect and the ordinary limitations of harsh life, represented by the novel's setting in a Norwegian winter. His actions depict Balzac's "specialist," who is intent on moving beyond the material world of negativity and pain and deterministic law to a totally "other" plane above earth's unreasonable regulations. Séraphitus's purity and innocence are innate; he lacks the need for "experience" in his present circumstances in order to practice unhesitating benevolence. He is loved by both a man and a woman and is opposed by a jealous paster named Becker, who is intent on exposing Séraphitus as a fraud, but who himself is deftly out-argued by the truthful adolescent. At the core of this novel is what Balzac learned from Swedenborg concerning "angelic spirits," which he has Parson Becker explain from his Protestant point of view (as Wormeley translates it): Swedenborg applies the term `Spiritual Angel' to beings who in this world are prepared for heaven, where they become angels. According to him, God has not created angels; none exist that have not been men upon earth. Please login or register to view links For Balzac, "heaven" meant the state of being in perfected human qualities and no longer having to struggle with imperfection on earth Please login or register to view links. The action of the novel follows the central character in the final process and struggle that lead to physical annihilation to effect a permanent transformation, despite the vehement protests of Wilfrid, Séraphitus's male suitor, and Minna, his girlfriend. The androgyne counsels against active resistance to death, even to an "unjust" death, for the principal success of this conscious evolution is dependent on "resignation." . . . at the zenith of all virtue is Resignation . . . Resignation is the fruit that ripens at the gates of Heaven. How powerful, how glorious the calm smile, the pure brow of the resigned human creature. . . This earth on which we live is but a single sheaf of the great harvest; humanity is but a species in the vast garden where flowers of heaven are cultivated. . . . (S, 183-184) Séraphitus's "suicide" is a form of euthanasia, -- a peaceful dying -- as the spirit cultivated by will exerts itself in total separation from life without any expectation of its continuance. Séraphita/ Séraphitus, as he is seen in another dimension to be a winged angel, leaves the lovers together with a new and secure understanding of the true outcome of life. Accompanying the text in the Roberts edition is a long and detailed Introduction by George Frederic Parsons, who attempts to clarify the philosophy about will and metempsychosis dramatized by Balzac. This part of the volume is significant to an examination of Melville's technique, because in it lie many suggestive passages that have responses in Billy Budd, Sailor. First, Parsons clarifies the position of Séraphitus/ Séraphita as a creature representing innate Altruism, "the highest and noblest works the human race possesses" (S, xii). The charismatic will that lures both Minna and Wilfrid represents the androgyne's power to make all "normal" humans love him and his enemies, like Becker, to wish to destroy him. The proper home of this perfection Parsons identifies as "the Shechinah [sic] -- the Sanctuary of exiled Unselfish Love" (S, xiii). In [Séraphitus] we see the consummation of the long process of transformation and evolution through and by which the mortal puts on immortality, the merely Human blossoms into the celestial. (S, lvi) Parsons explains that for Balzac in Séraphita humans in gestation passes through three distinct phases. There are then three kinds of persons in his scheme, distinguished by their levels of strength of will: the Instinctive, who function on the level of the animal needs and desires; the Abstractive, who depend on regulation and logic; and the Divine, who exist in purity, love, and the wisdom of the human heart Please login or register to view links. Human destiny, according to this theory, is a painful course of elevation and emancipation; a working out of what we call Matter into what we call Spirit, -- but which really is merely different conditions of one primal substance. (S, xii)[/TD] [/TABLE] File đính kèm: View attachment Séraphita.rar Nguồn TVE: Nick Please login or register to view links Please login or register to view links
