Jansenisms and Literature in Central Europe / Jansenismen und Literatur in Mitteleuropa / Jansénismes et littérature en Europe centrale

←8 | 9→Gábor Tüskés/Christoph Schmitt-Maaß (Budapest/Oxford)

Introduction: Jansenisms and Literature in Central Europe – A Research Task

This volume contains the revised version of the papers given at the international conference and Humboldt-Kolleg entitled Jansenisms and Literature in Central Europe, organized by the Institute for Literary Studies of the Research Centre for the Humanities in collaboration with the Institute for German Philology of the University of Munich from 11 to 15 May 2022 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and at the Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities in Budapest.^*

When we began the discussion about the concept of this conference with Friedrich Vollhardt more than two years ago, our starting point was that, over the past two decades, the academic investigation of the social, political, legal, cultural, literary and other aspects of the reform efforts initiated by Port-Royal and its followers have become a particularly productive and dynamic area of historical studies. Indeed, we see unprecedented activity in this field in France, which is marked by, among others, the more then seventy volumes of the annual journal Chroniques de Port-Royal since 1950, the more then thirty-five volumes of the monograph series Univers Port-Royal, and the Dictionnaire de Port-Royal edited by Jean Lesaulnier and Anthony McKenna in 2004. In 2020 the Société des Amis de Port-Royal launched two new series: its newsletter running under the name Feuille de Port-Royal, which informs us about the latest research results, current projects and diverse academic events. It also started the ←9 | 10→YouTube series Les Minutes de Port-Royal with up to now about ninety videos revealing a lot of facts of French history and cultural history which were suppressed or misinterpreted for a long time including the history of the French Revolution and the events preceding to it.

In France, the past two decades of intensive research in the field have shown that Port-Royal can be considered as the root of an incredibly complex, diverse and dynamic movement. The later director of the Centre International Blaise Pascal and the current president of the Société des Amis de Port-Royal, Laurence Plazenet, stated in the preface of her over 1,300 page 2012 anthology that Port-Royal was one of the intellectual, spiritual, cultural and moral headquarters of France.¹ ←10 | 11→It was a safe haven for allying spirituality with culture, a place that challenged the dominance of vanitas and of an increasingly worldly Church. Port-Royal stood up to the primacy of state interest and undermined the prestige of absolute monarchy. For decades it was regarded as a relevant political actor, the home of freedom of conscience and dogma-free philosophy. It played a role in the process of French society becoming a political nation, and its approach to education contributed to the emergence of the modern individual. The eighteenth century created the myth of Port-Royal, a myth to which we are still indebted to a certain degree.²

The Jansenist movement did not evolve into an organization nor was it hierarchical, and this is exactly what made it such a powerful phenomenon. It carried the potential of catholic renewal while being an indirect yet significant catalyst for the emergence of French classicism and Enlightenment as well as for revolutionary ideas and modernism. The first views challenging various points of post-tridentine theology, spirituality, church interpretations, and the overall legal and moral mindset of such movements were all inspired by Port-Royalist ambitions to bring change to the religious and political scenario. Naturally, these initiatives led to heated social debates. Crossing geographical borders, the movement takes shape in different forms in Europe, notably in the Netherlands, Italy, the Habsburg Empire, Spain and Portugal. It follows from all this that it would be erroneous to assume the homogeneity of Jansenism; instead of Jansenism in the singular, then, we should talk about Jansenisms and the history of Jansenisms in the plural.³

The links between Port-Royal and literature have long been a subject of French literary history. Philippe Sellier, one of the leading authorities on the field, has pointed out that virtually all important literary figures of the second part of the seventeenth century were in close contact with the monastery⁴ and, according to Monique Cottret, they celebrated its virtues.⁵ Authors of this circle include Blaise Pascal ←11 | 12→(1623–1662), Jean Racine (1639–1699), François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette (1634–1693), Marie de Sévigné (1626–1696) and Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695). Research on the relationship of Pascal to Port-Royal, with special focus on his writings Lettres à un provincial, Écrits sur la grâce and Abrégé de la vie de Jésus-Christ, has received strong impetus and has considerably diversified over the past couple of years.⁶ The online critical edition of Pensées was a major motivation for this line of inquiry, making it clear that Port-Royal played a substantial role in the assimilation of Cartesian thought.⁷

Simultaneously to the publishing of the critical editions of memoirs written by authors close to Port-Royal (including the works of Louis de Pontis, 1583–1670, and Nicolas Fontaine, 1625–1709), research done by Agnès Cousson, Andrée Villard and Pascale Thouvenin – to name just a few notable scholars in the field – revealed that Port-Royal was actually a laboratory of memoirs.⁸ Two influential pieces of seventeenth-century religious literature, Louis-Isaac Lemaître de Sacy’s (1613–1684) translation of the Bible and Robert Arnauld d’Andilly’s ←12 | 13→(1589–1674) translation of Augustine’s Confessiones, are illustrious examples of Port-Royal-inspired literary creation.⁹ In her 2018 monograph, Éva Martin discusses the aesthetics of Port-Royal, bringing together music, fine arts and literature in her inquiry.¹⁰ The growing appreciation of contemporary literary historical research on Jansenism is clearly indicated by the fact that Gérard Ferreyrolles, the former president of the Société des Amis de Port-Royal, received the Émile Faguet award of the Académie Française for his monograph titled De Pascal à Bossuet. La littérature entre théologie et anthropologie, published by Honoré Champion in 2020.

Unfortunately, Central European Jansenist literature does not have a literary hall of fame comparable to that of France. Apart from a few notable exceptions, literary historical and comparative literary research in the region has not been able to produce results that are on a par with what French scholarship has achieved in the field. We must mention Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelhausen (1622–1676), whose connections to Augustinism were studied by Dieter Breuer.¹¹ The literary achievements of Ignaz Aurelius Feßler (1756–1839),¹² Francis Rákóczi II (1676–1735)¹³ and his chamberlain Kelemen Mikes (1690–1761)¹⁴ might not be on an equal footing with the French authors previously mentioned. But we must not ignore the fact that behind these remarkable writers we find a long list of all-but-forgotten authors notable for ←13 | 14→their work in moralist, spiritual or autobiographical writing. In his 2001 book Selbstliebe und Geselligkeit, Friedrich Vollhardt puts in evidence that the latter group played an important role in shaping discourse in moral philosophy, natural law, theology and anthropology as well as in transmitting or, quite the contrary, challenging Jansenist ideals.¹⁵

We are well aware that the spreading of intellectual currents is determined by various factors such as culture, geography, political climate or material conditions, not to mention the importance of cultural radiating centres, mediators, and channels for transmission. The process of dissemination may result in the evolution of different varieties and branchings; the original current might transform into something different or amplify its initial scope. We should not ignore the fact that the Netherlands, Alsace, Northern Italy, Switzerland and Vienna all had a substantial role in the emergence of Jansenism in Central European literatures. We also have to acknowledge that the internal evolution of Central European literatures has generally never been as harmonious as that of French literature. As these literary movements had to continuously assimilate into major literary currents, they were, for the most part, pushed into the background, which also meant that reception processes accumulating within them are not always easy to disentangle.

Another factor we had to take into consideration when outlining the topic of the conference is that Jansenism-related research in literary history and in the history of ideas needs to be interpreted in the light of what we know about the history of publishing and reading; nor can it be separated from library sciences, from the processes of book distribution and collection, or from network research. Here we would like to refer to relevant results of Marie-Hélène Froschle-Chopard,¹⁶ ←14 | 15→Alice Perrin-Marsol,¹⁷ Damien Blanchard,¹⁸ and Juliette Guilbaud,¹⁹ as well as to the proceedings of the 2010 Luxembourg conference titled Le jansénisme et l’Europe, edited by Raymond Baustert.²⁰ By studying the history, theology, moral philosophy and political relevance of the movement, our goal is to better understand the literary tendencies of the era. It is of crucial importance to uncover the extent to which Port-Royal ideology was subjugated to political interests and to see the role of Jansenism in the transmission of Enlightenment ideas into Central European literary traditions.

Central European literary scholarship has a long history of research in the field, and it has encountered difficulties on several instances. To give an example, we would like to mention Béla Zolnai, a remarkable Hungarian philologist of Romanistics between the two world wars. From the late 1920s on, Zolnai was a regular speaker at international conferences in literature, and he kept contact with several of the leading figures in comparative literature, linguistics and historical science in France, Germany and Italy, including Fernand Baldensperger, Henri Tronchon, Paul Van Tieghem, Aurélien Sauvageot, Eduard von Jan, Wilhelm Deinhardt, Fritz Valjavec, Vittorio Santoli and Italo Siciliano. He also corresponded with Emil Pillias, a French historian who specialized in Francis Rákóczi II, who met an untimely death on the Belgian battlefield in 1940 at the age of 35.²¹

←15 | 16→Béla Zolnai’s achievements in the field of Hungarian-French literary connections in the 17th and 18th centuries are clearly beyond remarkable. In addition to uncovering the literary careers of Francis Rákóczi II and Kelemen Mikes, he created a philological methodology enabling insightful research in the history of ideas and contributed to the renewal of Hungarian comparative literature.²² Between 1924 and 1959 he published several studies on Jansenism in Central Europe and on the relationship of Jansenism to literature in French, German, and Hungarian.²³ He was the first to present Rákóczi as a spiritual writer and thinker to the French public.²⁴ Zolnai published the handwritten notes of an unknown Camaldulian monk from Grosbois, titled Notes sur la vie du Prince Ragotzi. This piece of writing proves that, during his retreat at the Camaldule monastery, Rákóczi was reading Pierre Nicole’s works. We also learn from the notes that the prior referred to the Prince as a Jansenist during a visit of Hercule-André Fleury, bishop of Fréjus and later a cardinal.²⁵

By reconstructing Rákóczi’s library in Tekirdağ, Zolnai brought to light the Jansenist and other sources of the Prince’s writings.²⁶ He published a study on the Hungarian repercussions of Gallicanism in 1935.²⁷ At the 1938 Zurich conference of historical sciences Zolnai gave a lecture on Central European Jansenism and its international connections, titled L’état actuel des recherches sur le jansénisme en Europe Centrale.²⁸ At the University of Szeged, he was academic advisor ←16 | 17→for several PhD dissertations discussing the impact of Jansenism in Hungary.²⁹ His nearly 200-page monograph A janzenizmus kutatása Középeurópában [Research on Jansenism in Central Europe] was published in 1944. Sadly, most of the copies were destroyed at the end of the Second World War.³⁰

His commitment to researching Jansenism was well-known to his French friends and colleagues, as attested in his correspondence.³¹ In the closing lines of a letter dealing with a delicate matter, historian and journalist Aldo Dami, who worked as an assistant at the University of Szeged and the University of Leipzig, and later became a private tutor at the University of Geneva, made reference to Zolnai’s attachment to Jansenism by saying, “Soyons jésuites en dépit du grand Arnault.”³² It was also Dami who discusses the Jansenist aspects of François Mauriac’s novels in one of his articles published in a review edited by Zolnai.³³ Henri Grenet, who worked as a lector at the University of Szeged between 1929 and 1944, and was Zolnai’s close colleague until 1940, alluded to Jansenism and Augustinism on several occasions: “Vive Saint-Cyran et mort à l’infame!” “Déterrez moult disciple de Jansen et que votre saint Mère l’Église vous protège! Votre frère en Christ et dans son meilleur fils, le grand Augustin Grenet.” In some of his letters we find a double reference to Jansenism: “Vous voyez, mon cher Frère en Dieu et Jansen. […] C’est ce qu’avec l’aide de notre bienheureux Frère ←17 | 18→Jansen, je prie Dieu qu’il vous fasse la GRACE de vous accorder, et je demeure votre Frère en Jésus-Christ Grenet”.³⁴

Zolnai was member of the French Légion d’honneur in 1937. In 1940 he became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and he was elected member of the Academy in 1948. He was, however, stripped of this title for ideological reasons in 1949, and he decided to take retirement.³⁵ His correspondence with his French colleagues dwindled afterwards. Though with lesser intensity, he still managed to continue his research on Jansenism in spite of the new political atmosphere. He synthetized his results in a fifty-page study titled Ungarn und die Erforschung des Jansenismus [Hungary and the study of Jansenism], which was published in a volume compiled in honour of Eduard Winter’s 60th birthday in Berlin in 1956.³⁶ Three years later he published a study on the history of European Jansenism, reflecting on the reception of Port-Royal ideas in twentieth century French and Hungarian literature.³⁷ His bequest includes the manuscripts of an unfinished book and of three studies written in French and Hungarian which are all related to the history, cultural and literary history of Hungarian and Central European Jansenisms. These writings remain unpublished to this day.³⁸ After Zolnai’s death, research on the reception of Jansenism in Hungary discontinued, it was sporadic at best. When, in the early 2000s, an encyclopaedia of Medieval and Early Modern Hungarian cultural heritage was being compiled, the editors simply forgot to write an entry for Jansenism. The entry was finally published by ←18 | 19→special request in the supplement of the last volume, and it was written by Ágnes Berecz, one of the authors of this volume.³⁹

Our work preceding the conference includes the publishing of some basic sources of Jansenism-inspired Hungarian literature. Bernard Adams translated two of Francis Rákóczi II’s autobiographical writings into English.⁴⁰ They were published with Robert Evans’s preface.⁴¹ The critical edition of the eighteenth-century French translation of the Prince’s chef-d’oeuvre, Confessio peccatoris is the joint work of a research team, four of which members, namely Csenge Aradi, Anna Tüskés, Michel Marty and Ferenc Tóth, are also contributing to this volume.⁴² This substantial edition was published at Honoré Champion and it was the doyen of French memoir research, Jean Garapon, who wrote a preface to it. Without his support, Confession d’un pécheur might never have been published. In his 2020 study, one of the members of the organizing committee, Christoph Schmitt-Maaß, put forward valuable suggestions concerning the systematic investigation of Jansenist books and book networks published in German-speaking countries and regions.⁴³ Gábor Tüskés has published many studies in French, English, German, and Hungarian about the most recent French- and German-language research on Jansenism, on the relationship between Port-Royal, Enlightenment and memoirs, on a translation by Kelemen Mikes, inspired by Jansenism, and on Rákóczi’s Confessio and Meditationes.⁴⁴ ←19 | 20→In a joint effort with Éva Knapp, another author of this volume, we have made a new reconstruction of Rákóczi’s library at Tekirdağ.⁴⁵

When going through the content of this volume, it immediately caught our attention that none of the papers touch upon the impact of Port-Royal on modern literature or do so at most only marginally, despite the fact that the reception of Jansenist ideas in twentieth-century French literature constitutes a separate research topic, particularly with regard to the authors of the renouveau catholique and Henry de Montherlant.⁴⁶ In order to at least partially compensate for this lack, we’d like to mention three examples of twentieth-century Hungarian literature referring to Jansenism.

The first one is Ádám Raffy’s novel A léleklátó. Mesmer doktor életregénye [The clairvoyant. The life story of Doctor Mesmer], which was first published in 1937, and then was re-published posthumously in 1967.⁴⁷ A practising doctor and well-versed in cultural history, Raffy had profound insight into the topic. Stefan Zweig’s 1931 Die Heilung durch den Geist. Mesmer, Mary Baker-Eddy, Freud, published in both German and Hungarian, was definitely an inspiration to Raffy.⁴⁸ Like Zweig’s biographical writings, Raffy’s work speaks of a strong humanist ←20 | 21→mentality. His primary interest was to study those historical figures whose ideas of justice and liberty challenged the dominant ideology of their age: Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), Erasmus (c 1469–1536) and Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815). His 1955 work titled Wenn Erasmus ein Tagebuch geführt hätte… [If Erasmus had kept a diary…] reached the German public as well.⁴⁹

In the second chapter of the Clairvoyant, the author invites us to participate at the dialectics class of the Ingolstadt Jesuit college, where the novice Mesmer is debating with another novice the questions of free will, benevolence, predestination, grace, salvation and the possibility of miracles.⁵⁰ Mesmer represents the Port-Royal mindset whereas his partner in debate makes a case for Molinism, both of them in a highly simplified form. As a final argument for the co-action of free will and grace, Mesmer’s partner brings up the alleged miraculous recovery of the blind Marguerite Périer (1646–1733) in the monastery of Port-Royal de Paris in 1656. It’s the teacher who puts an end to the debate by drawing his students’ attention to the mistakes they have made: Mesmer failed to refer to Augustinus, and his partner forgot to mention Roberto Bellarmino (1542–1621) and address the questions of gratia efficax and gratia sufficiens.

The issues raised in the debate are recurrent themes in the book, and the Jansenists are mentioned on several occasions. These thoughts accompany Mesmer’s experiments, struggles, medical practice and failures. In the chapter “Chasing the Big Secret”, the protagonist recalls his former teacher’s choleric words that man is capable of fulfilling sublime goals with the help of free will, “no matter what those Jansenists say. They misinterpret the concept of original sin, and would prefer to throw humanity back to the jungle, seeing their negativity and reading that madman Pascal”.⁵¹ The final test of the healing power of hypnosis is the experiment performed on an eleven-year-old blind girl in Vienna, patronized by Empress Maria Theresa (1717–1780) herself. Mesmer believes that he is the chosen one and does not need divine grace, but he fails to heal the girl despite his initial success. His medical activities in ←21 | 22→Paris are also doomed to failure. The story ends with the picture of an abandoned Mesmer feeding some birds with fig.

As a second example, we would like to mention Gábor Thurzó’s 1966 novel A szent [The Saint], the German version of which was published twice under the title Die Ermittlungen des Prälaten, first in 1973.⁵² The novel was inspired by, among others, Ida Friderike Görres’s book Das verborgene Antlitz. Eine Studie über Therese von Lisieux (1944, enlarged ed. Das Senfkorn von Lisieux) and it was Peter Weiss who encouraged Thurzó to re-write the novel into a play, titled Az ördög ügyvédje (Egy nyomozás története négy részben) [The Devil’s Advocate (The Story of an Investigation in Four Parts)].⁵³ The story takes place in Hungary in 1943, and the author incorporated some real events into the plot. It provides a critical account of the flaws that surfaced from the past of the Catholic Church. It revolves around the topic of faith and the abuse of faith. It sheds light on the hypocrisy and cynicism of ecclesiastic and governmental power, and expresses harsh judgement regarding political Catholicism, the subjugation of religion to political interest and the mass hysteria of religious extremism. The starting point of the plot is a canonical investigation conducted with the aim of examining the life and death of a former Saint Joseph Congregation novice and of verifying the credibility of the miracles attributed to him with a view to possible canonization.

The investigation is led by an erudite and enlightened prelate. It is revealed that the novice had been a victim of mental harassment by his spiritual leader, who nurtured his bad conscience because of a sexual ←22 | 23→crime that he had earlier committed, and who sent him away from the congregation when he fell sick. However, some years after the novice’s death, the spiritual leader published the biography of the young man. The book abounds in hagiographic elements and miracles, and the author went as far as to falsify the novice’s life story in order to prove his saintliness. The investigation focuses on revealing the truth behind these alleged miracles, while also unfolding the political aspects of the case. The prelate learns that the novice was only an instrument in the spiritual leader’s hands, and became a victim of his vice. He does not therefore support the idea of canonization. The prelate’s dilemma is one of the main themes of the novel: after initially playing the “devil’s advocate”, he gradually becomes the prosecutor of unprincipled priests, politicians, and petty crooks. In the end, the unfavourable conditions and the pressure exerted by his superior forced him to compromise, in consequence of which he comes into conflict with himself.⁵⁴

The novel conveys the message that the most fundamental moral law is conscience. Any ideology that tries to justify decisions made against one’s conscience will inevitably lead to a loss of integrity. Thurzó raises a number of theological and moral questions while also confronting the reader with the dilemma of perceiving reality and experiencing the spiritual dimension of existence. He discusses the nature of faith, trying to grasp it in its very contradictions. Among the most important themes we find scepticism, the possibility of receiving divine grace, the questions of sin and salvation, and the contrasting of unconditional obedience with self-surrender.

The prelate and the former spiritual leader represent opposing views on faith, sin and free will. In their long dialogue at the end of the investigation we see echoing the major questions that constituted the basis of the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits.⁵⁵ The prelate tries to protect the ideal of “inner freedom” and the right to be sceptical and different. He thinks that preserving one’s moral and psychological integrity is more important than adhering to an ideology or following the pre-set rules and expectations that are said to help one achieve happiness. The individual is entitled to free will; it is a fundamental element ←23 | 24→of his dignity. One of his major arguments against the canonization of the novice is that he did not radiate life optimism and hope, that he did not appear to have the ability to make other people happy. He quotes a passage from the novice’s journal that was left out of the biography. In that passage the novice warned himself against inflicting upon himself more suffering than imposed by the divine grace. If he does not feel guilty, he should accept that feeling of innocence as a gift from God.⁵⁶

In contrast, the spiritual leader represents a zealous dictator, whose pedagogy is based on sin, on constantly reminding his disciples of it and on the precept of directio intentionum. He claims that suffering for our sins is a necessity. In his pedagogical philosophy, the end justifies the means. He thinks that sin is independent of personality, and of the real gravity and circumstances of the deed. A person who wants to have a better life has to atone for the sins of the whole world. By eliminating the concept of free will, the spiritual leader has basically taken moral decisions out of the hands of the individual; he gave pre-fabricated answers to the novice, and made other people involved in the case to say things that were contrary to their convictions. It is fair to say that the novice was the victim of the leader’s manipulation, because he was constantly reminded of the sin that he had earlier confessed and atoned for.

Even though the expression “having the strict morals of a Jansenist” appears only once with relation to the prelate,⁵⁷ there are obvious parallels between the theological and moral arguments of the novel and the considerations of the Jansenists and the Jesuits in what concerns the concepts of sin, free will and grace. We cannot categorically state that the prelate is a Jansenist and that the spiritual leader is a Jesuit, but it becomes clear that the author supports the prelate. It appears that the core concept and the dramatic structure of the novel made the theological and moral divide between the two characters necessary. The contemporary reception of both the novel and the play was controversial.⁵⁸ None of the debates surrounding Thurzó’s work addressed the idea that ←24 | 25→the social criticism embedded in this religious-ecclesiastic story taking place between the two world wars could be an allegorical representation of the harsh reality of socialist Hungary.

The third example of twentieth-century Hungarian literature of Jansenist influence is József Czímer’s Hungarian translation of Henry de Montherlant’s stage play Port-Royal. Czímer wrote several theoretical works on drama and theatre, and he liked to discuss the questions of drama translation. He translated authors like Hugo, Tennessee Williams, Camus, Joyce or O’Neill. The only surviving copy of the Montherlant translation we know of is a photocopy of the typescript that can be found in the Theatre History Collection of the National Széchényi Library.⁵⁹ Czímer provided a close translation, but he did specify some of the locations, costumes, notions, ecclesiastic rites, characters and historical references based on Montherlant’s comments. He even includes the lines that Montherlant himself cut before the premiere of the play. Czímer wrote an afterword to the 1965 edition of selected modern French drama translations, in which he mentions Montherlant, briefly summarizes his work and enumerates the parts of his catholic trilogy, including Port-Royal.⁶⁰

The translation was not published and the play was never produced in Hungary. At the same, a manuscript note found in the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute tells us that the play was presented at the Pushkin Theatre in Saint Petersburg,⁶¹ then Leningrad, in 1955, just one year after the Paris premier. In 1958 it was played at the Teatr Stary in Cracow, in 1959 at the Teatr Polski in Warsaw, and in 1969 it was presented in Gdańsk.⁶² The Polish translation was made by Jan Kott.

←25 | 26→A last example is the Austrian writer Peter Handke, the Nobel Prize Laureate of 2019. In his novel Das zweite Schwert [The Second Sword],⁶³ written before the decision was announced, and published in 2021, Handke settles accounts with his critics, not least because of his advocacy of Serbia in the Yugoslav War and his adherence to his maternal Slovenian-Carinthian identity – a profoundly Central European identity with strong Jansenist roots.⁶⁴ However, it is not a “revenge story” (9) such as Martin Walser wrote in 2002 with Tod eines Kritikers [Death of a Critic], but a repeated moral-philosophical reflection of the literary self. The plot begins with the description of a deep psychological injury by a female journalist who had discredited the narrator’s mother, his “holy mother” (45, 89), as a Carinthian Slovene and a supporter of National Socialism (68). At the beginning of the novel, the narrator wants to leave his “home suburb southwest of Paris” to “wage a vendetta” (8) against the journalist, who also lives at the Île-de-France (91). As is so often the case with Handke, however, there are numerous digressions, detours and byways. For example, the mother’s brothers who died in the Second World War have to be commemorated, or a reading selection for the revenge trip has to be made and rejected (in the very end, the narrator deselects Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Gospel of Luke, from which Handke took the idea of the ‘Second Sword’, and a novel by Simenon, 55, but chooses an edition of Pascal’s selected Pensées, 111). But instead of going directly to the journalist and taking his revenge on her, referring to a quotation from the Gospel of Luke, which acts as a motto (and a justification) to Handke’s book, the narrator gets stuck in Port-Royal des Champs: “This time I hungered for Port-Royal-de-Pascal [!]‌” (105) he says (after a previous reference to ←26 | 27→Pascal, 101, 104),⁶⁵ and so the protagonist recounts his walk through the remains of the former monastery complex, just as travelling appears to him in general as a form of “act of grace” (35). He tells of his stay at the Au Chant des Oiseaux inn, of the boredom he felt there, which Pascal described as “equated with death, the most shameful of deaths”: “a ‘withering’” (106). The narrator describes the tour through the almost deserted former monastery grounds as a meditative act that is supposed to bring answers, which, however, are not to be obtained in a Jansenist context, but are encountered in the form of an incised message on the occasion of the victory of the Allies in 1945. One’s own present and the “presence of Blaise Pascal” (116) merges in a dialogue with Pascal and prove the illusory nature of all historical events, or, with Pascal: “Nous sommes embarqués” (118). In a final epiphany, the avenging mother appears to the narrator in a dream (114) and all fantasies of revenge dissolve: “Is this how someone looks who has succeeded in the long-awaited revenge?” (149), the narrator sums up in order to reflect – with Pascal – on nothingness and the appearance of everything beautiful and to feel a “nameless joy […] in continuing to let and do nothing, continuing to do and let nothing” (33).