The Chariot of Fire: Terrorism, Liberalism, and the Mystic Attitude

Abstract

The Chariot of Fire: Terrorism, Liberalism, and the Mystic Attitude Zusammenfassung Patrick White's novel, Riders in the Chariot, develops a critique of Weimar German liberalism from a mystical standpoint, explaining the intellectual weakness of liberalism and depicting the response of the mysticism of fire, in part historically based, to the systemic terror of Nazism.The scenes from the novel that are discussed end with an image of mystical holocaust turned against the Nazi holocaust.It was begun during the last of our eighteen years at Castle Hill.The painter Lawrence Daws had given me Jung's Psychology and Alchemy, which had a great influence on me.It projected me into my Solid Mandala.Jung's teaching also bolstered me up during a wavering of faith on realising I could not accept the sterility, the vulgarity, in many cases the bigotry of the Christian churches in Australia.Manoly [Lascaris] seemed secure inside the structure of Eastern Orthodoxy.I had nothing from my upbringing in a kind of social C. of E. (a visiting card on the pew, clothes outgrown or no longer fashionable sent off to the jumble sale, a grateful rector and his wife calling to express gratitude for patronage.)So I evolved what I think Manoly has always seen as my non-religious or mystic circus.Patrick White, Flaws in the Glass 1 Mordecai Himmelfarb is walking home though the streets of Holunderthal, the North German town he grew up in. 2 He spent time at Oxford University and in the provincial German university city of Bienenstadt but eventually returned, as a celebrated professor of literature, to the place of his childhood.In the waning grey-green light of day's end, he is heading where he has gone a thousand times before.Turning into the city's Friedrichstrasse, he stops abruptly.Trams are shunting through the dusk.Pedestrians are negotiating the semi-darkness on their way home.Pubs are filling up for the evening.Despite the air of ordinary routine around him, Himmelfarb is gripped by an ungovernable fear.He bolts for his life, down the Friedrichstrasse, across the Königin 1 White's autobiography (1981), 146. 2 This and subsequent scenes are from Part Two of Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot ( 1964 [1961]), 91-195.