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| Pan Twardowski and the Devil by Michał Elwiro Andriolli |
Thanks, Art! That solves a lot for me. A few things come to mind. One is that the story is much darker than I thought. I've focused on Arthur's torment in the face of a mankind who has eradicated any context for appreciating a mystic from contemporary life, and I've ignored the perils of supernatural evil, other than to think about Stan in hell and several characters slouching toward it through bad choices.
Secondly, in thinking of Farthington as a scientist, I've imagined him more and more as an eccentric figure from Victorian or Edwardian science fiction, but I suppose he should be more like a Frankenstein, Faustus, or Von Doom--someone who couples his scientific pursuits with an interest in the arcane and occult--he's an alchemist as much as a scientist.
Finally, I don't think we've imagined an Arthur whose soul has become more wholly spiritual well enough yet. We know patients and staff at the hospital turn to him. We know he gets up on pillars. If Will's ex-girlfriend Linda is still in the story, we know she is a nun because of Arthur. We know Will will eventually repent the American Dream and become a monk or something because of Arthur. We know the restaged concert for Iceland has something to do with Arthur's transformation. We know Arthur has a vision of an apocalypse that requires Farthington, a submarine, and a hippie maiden throwing a guitar into a volcano in Iceland. And I think on some level, we know the story doesn't end, but it's also important to our quest to make Catholic art that the beauty and glory of God working through Arthur is cohesive enough to evangelize the audience.
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