Page 240 [240]
OCR
ANDRÁS VISKY cally acceptable? Many depictions of the Garden of Eden show the first couple next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one on each side or beside each other, and there are some that show the serpent tempting them, the fruit in its mouth. I like these finely considered details that are so characteristic of Purcarete. “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die,”*’ says the Creator to the first human couple. Might God Himself be the lead actor in the biblical Creation, who doesn’t keep His own word? Adam and Eve do not die following their consumption of the forbidden fruit. Or had God created mercy and forgiveness for Man before the creation of all things? And with this loving divine breaking of His word, did He release these two chief virtues on the human world: mercy and forgiveness? Why isn’t it precisely this that strikes us in the biblical depiction: the very fact that it isn’t worth creating Man without both mercy and forgiveness? And might the Fall not mean precisely that the presumed knowledge of good and evil consigns Man to extreme mercilessness and absurdity that requires forgiveness? Or perhaps: that the merciless knowledge of good and evil is, finally, the work of Satan who, as a matter of fact, resides within us? In any case, Madach, in his emphasis of the feminine principle — often, of course, ina misogynist manner — calls our attention to this, maybe more unconsciously than intentionally. Well, yes, misogyny is woven all through our cultural inheritance. Goethe’s Mephistopheles follows the framing story of Job, that mysterious biblical screenplay, in stepping onto the stage of (salvation) history; but Lucifer, on the other hand, stands from the start as a fallen angel whom a weak and extortable god keeps beside himself. It is perhaps Madach’s misunderstanding — or rather that of an overdone modernity? — that God curses two trees in the garden (the tree of knowledge and the tree of life), then hands them over to Lucifer to do with as he pleases: Look down to earth: In the heart of Eden stand two slender trees. I curse the pair of them: now they are yours.”* It’s a revealing misunderstanding, in any event. Adam even refers to it, fairly clumsily: once he’d eaten of the fruit of knowledge but before he picked one from the tree of life, the divine curse struck both of them and they were expelled from the garden, so, to the extent that he’d become mortal, Adam reasons, he wants to see whether it’s worth struggling through the span of life measured out for him. According to Madach, the two pillars of modernity are 27 Gen. 2:16-17. 2° Madäch: Ibid., Scene 1, 28. e 238 ¢
