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Satan: A modern composite: A comparative study of the Devil in contemporary fiction

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Satan: A modern composite: A comparative study of the Devil in contemporary fiction

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Content SATAN: A MODERN COMPOSITE;
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE DEVIL IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION
A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of Comparative Literature
University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
toy
Genevieve Kelly
February 1951
UMI Number: EP43070
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This thesis, written by
Genexi®ve.Ruth.XeXly.......
under the guidance of h&T....Faculty Committee,
and approved by a ll its members, has been
presented to and accepted by the Council on
Graduate Study and Research in partial fu lfill
ment of the requirements fo r the degree of
.......
.......ln .. .C. om .pa r.a .t l2:a- -Li.t.er.a.tiir.fi.
_
Faculty Committee
Chairmi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iv
The Devil in the history of thought...... .... .vi
The Devil in literature .............. xxxvi
I. THE DEVIL* S ORIGIN, REBELLION, AND HISTORY.......... 1
II. THE DEVIL*S PERSONALITY AND PRESENT ACTIVITIES. . .18 |
i
Appearance. . . . . . • .... ....................18 ;
! Manner. 32;
Motivation............ 41
The adversary-destroyer ............. 41'
The little helper .....................46;
i
Techniques. • • • •• • • ........................49:
The Devil as bargainer. ............50
Satan as seducer. 57 ;
The Devil as tempter. ............ ..58
Satan as servant. ................. . . . .60
The Devil as warrior. .......... .62
III. SATAN* S MINIONS . .................. .66
Human servants. ............. ....... ...66
Spirit servants . . .82
IV. THE DEVIL’S DOMINIONS .................. 101
V. THE DEVIL’S DESTINY...............................113
CONCLUSION............................................ . 117
iii
BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Background materials. . . . . . . . . . ............. 127
Novels............ 129
Short stories 130
l
i
INTRODUCTION
In one of his essays Stephen Leacock claims:
The Devil is passing out of fashion. After a long
and honorable career he has fallen into an ungrate
ful oblivion. His existence has become shadowy,
his outline attenuated, and his personality dis
pleasing to a compassionate generation. So he
stands now leaning on the handle of his three
pronged oyster fork and looking into the ashes
of his smothered fire. Theology will have none
of him. . . . The fires of his material hell are
replaced by the steam heat of moral torture. This
even the most sensitive of sinners faces with
equanimity. 1
It would seem, however, that as Satan loses objective real
ity for the majority of people, he gains In literary pos
sibility. The status of the Devil in the fiction of the
last two decades, the subject of this study, at least shows
a fluctuation and variety which would seem to indicate that
he has become, if not a vital personality, at least an
interesting vehicle for literary expression.
,At first glance it would appear that the heyday of
the Devils prominence in literature occurred with the pub
lication of such masterpieces as Paradise Lost and Faust,
but the steady growth of literature centering around the
1 S. B. Leacock, ”Devil and the Deep Sea,” Essays
and Literary Studies (London: John Lane the BodleyHead,
1*)25T, p. v><.
fiend during the nineteenth century and again in the past
few decades and especially in recent years indicate that
perhaps he is entering upon a new period of popularity
with the plebeians of literature as well as with the aris
tocrats*
The present study, therefore, will review contempo
rary fiction (as the vehicle of the widest literary influ
ence) as it treats of the Devil*s origin and rebellion; the
Devil*s personality— his appearance, manner, motivation,
and techniques; Satan* s minions— human and superhuman; his
dominions; and the Devil*s eventual destiny.
The limitations of a thesis make necessary a rather
arbitrary choice of bounds; thus the only works of fiction
discussed will be those published in English or translation
between 1930 and 1950* These include, in the order of
their publication, the following works: The Devil*s Spoon
(Theodora DuBois, 1930), MThe Devil and Daniel Webster**
{Stephen Vincent Benet, 1937), The Burning Court (J, D*
Carr, 1937), Our. Lady (Upton Sinclair, 1938), The Devil
Takes a Bill Town (C. 0, Givens, 1939), The Devil and the
Doctor (D. H* Keller, 1940), “After the Ball,’ * "The Devil,
George, and Rosie," "Half-Way to Hell," "The Right Side,"
”Thus I Refute Beelzy" (John Collier, 1941-43), The Screw-
tape Letters (C, S. Lewis, 1943), Canap€-Vert (Pierre
Marcelln and Philippe Thoby-Marcelin, 1944), "The Return
of the Sorcerer1 1 (Clark Ashton Smith, 1944), "Fiddler*s
Fee,1 1 "The Opener of the Way" (Robert Block, 1945), The
Great Divorce, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, Out of
the Silent Planet (C. S. Lewis, 1946-47), The Unfortunate
Fursey (Mervyn Wall, 1947), "Call Him Demon" (Henry Kutt-
ner, 1948), Doctor Faustus (Thomas Mann, 1948), Devil Take
a Whittier (Weldon Stone, 1948), Peace, My Daughters
(Shirley Barker, 1949), Under the Sun of Satan (Georges
Bernanos, 1949), The Devil*s Own Dear Son (J, B. Cabell,
1949), If I Were You (Julian Green, 1949), War in Heaven
Charles Williams, 1949), and The Vintage (Anthony West,
1950).
Since present-day treatments of Satan and his works,
however, grow out of the traditional conceptions of his
life and history and out of past literary treatments of
his personality and work, it will be necessary to preface
the contemporary survey with a review of his history in
philosophy and a summary of previous treatments of the sub
ject in literature.
Maximilian Rudwin remarks that "from the reputed
days of our first ancestors to the present moment, Satan,
or his equivalent, has always taken a deep interest in the
affairs of men on this planet, and the interest has always
vii'
been reciprocated.”2 And it is true that the earliest civ
ilizations known to history paid respect to deities of evil.
Paul Oarus notes that the first of these civiliza
tions, the Accadians, who preceded the Semitic peoples in
Mesopotamia, settling there in the fifth century before
Christ, worshiped the goddess Tiamat. Ti'amat was the chaos
existing before the creation of the world; she and her brood
of dragons had to be destroyed by the sun-god Merodach be
fore light could enter the world and creation could pro
ceed.3
In Egypt with the rise of the worship of Osiris, Set,
the great, all-powerful god of pre-historic times, was con
verted to the position of a god of evil. He, therefore,
with Apopis, the serpent of death, impurity, and darkness,
was pitted against Ra, Ammon, Isis, and Osiris as the rav-
ager, the troubler, the father of deceit and of lies.^ Set
was strong enough to slay Osiris, as night overcomes the
light of the sun; but the sun was born again in the child-
god Hor, who conquered Set and forced him and the serpent of
2 Maximilian Rudwln, The Devil in Legend and Litera
ture (Chicago; The Open Court’ Publishing Company, 1931),
p. vii.
3 Paul Carus, The History of the Devil and the Idea
of Evil (London; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Company.
nklCte^, 1900), pp. 38-39.
4 Arturo Graf, The Story of the Devil (Edward Stone,
translator; Hew York; the MacmllTan Company, 1931), p. 8.
viii
death to surrender their spoils.5
The Phenlcians opposed to the beneficent deities
Baal and Asherah the evil god and goddess Moloch and
Astarte. In India Indra the Begetter and Varunar the Pre
server had as their opposites Vritra and Asuras.5 Hie
Buddhists had a well-developed conception of Mara, who rep
resented temptation, sin, and death. The deity had other
names: Papiyan— the Evil One, the Murderer, the Tempter;
Varsavartl— the fulfilment of the triple thirst, the thirst
for existence, for pleasure, and for power. Adulterated
forms of Buddhism had evil spirits of all kinds as well.
Mara tempted the future Buddha and later did battle with
him, having first routed all the Hindu gods; Buddha reflec
ted on the Ten Perfections and withstood. Ordinarily Mara
held the wheel of life and death in his hands and ruled the
occurrence of evil. In one depiction, however, Buddha was
surrounded by his incarnations, such as sages and teachers;
and in one group were ugly devils, whose appearance was
intended to frighten people away from evil. Thus these
Buddhist devils were Buddha*s co-workers, partaking of his
nature as teacher and sharing in the system of the working
out of salvation. While this religion was spread throughout
5 Carus, op. cit., p. 28.
6 Graf, op. cit., p. 8.
the Par East, some Buddhist mythology in China and Japan
included elements of Taoist and Shinto folklore# Thus there
existed in hell the dark tribunal Meifu, presided over by
the judge Emma attended by Kongo the sheriff and a staff of
torturers and executioners. The defendant was viewed
through a mirror which showed his personality made up of
the deeds of his life# If good deeds prevailed, he was
reincarnated in a higher existence or in paradise# If bad
deeds predominated, he was reincarnated in a lower existence
or sent to hell and tortured until he had expiated all his
sin, when he might then die#T
It Is from Hebrew literature, however, that the West
ern world obtained the concept of the Devil which was,
through Christianity, to have such far-reaching effect on
the thought and life of centuries# According to Garus, the .
Hebrews first believed in evil spirits dwelling in darkness
and waste places. They constantly had to be adjured by God
not to turn away to devils, some of whom were the Seirim
(chimeras or goat-spirits), Shedim (demons), and Azazel, the
god of the desert#
When Azazel began to be neglected, Satan rose Into
existence# The belief in a God of Evil was replaced
by the belief in an evil demon. And Satan, the
tempter and originator of all evil, was naturally
identified with the serpent that "was more subtil
7 Carus, op. cit., pp. 104-113,135.
than any beast of the field*1 1 (Gen* 3:1)®
In the Pentateuch the Devil is not mentioned. Although
Num. 22:22 describes one (WDfef ) who comes forward hos-
tilely or as a hindrance, all acts of punishment, revenge,
and temptation are performed by Yahweh or His angel. In
Job® "the Satan" is mentioned as doing God’s bidding,
though he accuses Job only for the pleasure of torturing
8 Ibid., p. 70.
9 Nothing like agreement has been reached by Old
Testament scholars concerning the date of composition of
Job. It has been assigned to periods ranging from pat
riarchal times to the third century before Christ.
Later dates would reverse the order as given here, but
the general trend seems to be toward a date of composi
tion during or shortly after the reign of Solomon, which
date seems to resolve most of the internal problems and
to have the additional advantage of agreeing with its
place in the canon and with earlier rabbinical opinion.
Pfeiffer suggests an Edomitish source for the Prologue,
but most scholars agree on its original Israelitish
conception. A Babylonian poem dating not later than the
seventh century which describes a "just sufferer" and pre
sents certain superficial parallels with Job has been sug
gested as a source, but it contains striking differences
and no reference to Satan. Cf. F. Delitzsch, Biblical
Commentary on the Book of Job (tr* Francis Bolton; Edin
burgh: T. ancT ¥ Glark,“T8S5)', I, 20-28; S. R. Driver,
An Introduc tion to the Literature of the Old Testament
International TEeoTogioal Library. 2nd edition; Mew
York: Maries Scribner’s Cons, 1092), pp. 405-408; J. H.
Raven, Old Testament Introduction (New York: Fleming H.
Revell Co., 1910), pp. 276-2*78; S. R. Driver and G. B.
Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of
Job (Tile International Critical Commentary;*~Ifew York:
Charles Scribner’s Soiis, 1921), I, 25-34; R* H. Pfeiffer,
Introduction to the Old. Testament (New York: Harper and
Brothers Publishers, 1941), pp. 670-673; and E. J. Young,
An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michi-
gan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1949), pp. 309-314.
~xi
the man. Zechariah speaks of the Satan as an angel, whose
office it is to accuse and demand the punishment of the
wicked.^ And in Zech. 3:1 there is a definite parallel
with the earlier Davidic Psalm 109:6, which would seem to be
a commentary by Zechariah that the prince of evil spirits is
indicated by the earlier reference.
Many scholars believe that the concept of Satan was
greatly enriched by the dualistic teaching of the Persians,
absorbed by the Hebrews during the Captivity. Before the
advent of Zoroaster the Persians had worshiped nature gods,
daevas* He degraded these gods to the rank of demons and
regarded them as representatives of a fiendish power Ahri-
man, ”the evil spirit.” Ahriman, or Anra Mainu, was not
created by Ahura Mazda but possessed an independent exis
tence, creative and original in being uncreated, but lack
ing equality with Ahura in dignity and power. The struggle
between these two principles makes up the world*s history.
Eventually Ahura Mazda will defeat Ahriman, who will dis
appear in a great world catastrophe. Meanwhile it is the
duty of each soul to choose which force he will join himself
to; and at death he passes over an accountant*s bridge,
10 pp. 68-70. Cf. Zeeh. 3:1-2.
11 Delitzsch, however, finds it ”very questionable
whether the religion of Gyrus, as found in the Zend books,
may not have been far more influenced by Israel, than, con
trariwise, have influenced Israel.” Op. cit., p. 28.
xii
broad to the good, but narrow as a razor*s edge to the
wicked, who fall from it into the yawning abyss of hell.
The Scythians, enemies of the Persians, worshiped a ser
pent; so it came to be associated with the devil. To this
Carus traces the source of the Creek myth that Apollo slays
the dragon Python.12 One Persian sect, the Izedis, also
accepted dualism, but their special reverence was given to
the D.evil, chief of the angelic host, and creative agent of
the Supreme God, who now has the means of doing evil to man
kind and in his restoration will have the power of reward
ing them.1®
Under the influence, perhaps, of this Persian dualism
the conception of Satan in the Hebrew Apocrypha grew more
mythological and dualistic. Though he is mentioned in
I Chron. 21:1 as "Satan,” without the definite article, in
the Apocrypha he took shape more fully as an independent
demon of evil and became not only the adversary of man but
the enemy of God Himself. A step in this direction had
been taken in the rabbinical commentaries, which connected
the serpent of Genesis 3 with Satan. In the story of Tobit
the devil Asmodeus (the original form of the name, Aeshma
12 Carus, pp. cit., pp. 52-58.
13 Ibid., pp. 63-64.
xiii
Dawa, Indicates its Persian origin) tries to prevent Sarah*s
marriage to Tobias because he wants her for himself. He is
defeated, however, by Tobias with the help of the angel
Raphael.14 Similarly, in the Book of Enoch the demons are
enamored of the daughters of men; and giants are born of
these unions (Cf. Gen. 6:4) On the whole references are
to demons rather than to Satan, though the Wisdom of Solomon
ascribes death to "the Devil*s envy."16
Rabbinical literature studies the Devil in consider
able detail. Two accounts are here given of the Devil*s
origins according to the first, Satan was created on the
sixth day at the same time as Eve; according to the more
prevalent tradition, Satan is a fallen angel, often identi
fied with Sammael and said to have been the highest throne-
angel, distinguished above the seraphim and living creatures
until the creation of man. He then became jealous of the
first man because Adam was able to name all,the creatures
God had made whereas he himself had failed to do so. Sam
mael therefore led the group of angels subject to him down
to earth; and, taking possession of a serpent, he talked
14 The Book of Tobit, The Apocrypha: an American
Translation (Tr. J. E. Goodspeed; Chicago: University of
Press, 1939), pp. 107-130.
15 Graf, op. cit., pp. 11-12.
16 The Wisdom of Solomon 2:24, op. cit., p. 182.
xiv
Eve into touching the forbidden tree* The rabbinical liter
ature also represents Satan as the Angel of Death, holding
a drawn sword with a drop of gall on its point* He appears
in this guise to the doomed man, who is so terrified at the
sight that he opens his mouth; the drop of gall falls into
it, and the man dies*^
Meanwhile the Teutonic peoples were also developing
a religion which accounted for evil* According to them
Loki, the god of fire, brought sin and evil into the world.
In the Younger Edda Loki takes part in the creation of man
and endows him with the senses, passions, and evil desires.
Loki*s children were the Fenris wolf, the Midgard serpent,
and Hel, the queen of Nifelheim, the world of the dead* In
punishment for killing Baldur, Loki was bound on three-
pointed rocks beneath the venom-dripping mouth of a serpent.
On Doomsday, however, all the forces of evil will again be
set loose* The gods will be killed in internecine combat
while destroying the monsters of wickedness, and the flames
of Muspil will devour the wrecks of the universe* But one
god and goddess will remain hidden to become -the progeni
tors of a new world and a new race* It is noteworthy that
a3 Christianity penetrated the barbaric lands, the Devil
accumulated some of the mis chief-making qualities of Loki;
17 Edward Langton, Satan, a Portrait (London: Skef-
fington and Son, [n.a.J), pp. 11-1*2*
XV
and the name of Satan* s most familiar dominion, Hell, is
derived from Hel, the Teutonic underworld.1®
Plato maintained that evil and disorganization were
traceable to had and disorganized souls since all motion
through the universe is ultimately initiated by souls.
There is no suggestion in his writings of a worst soul or
devil. Greek mythology, however, had created a whole race
of maleficent beings who rose against the gods of Olympus
— Typhon, Medusa, Geryon, Python, and evil demons, as well
as Lemures and larvae.19 The Greeks also feared death and
especially punishment after death. The most ancient des
cription of the underworld is that of Homer; Hades is dark
and gloomy for both the good and the bad, but the wicked
are subjected to tortures. The only exceptions to the rule
of Hades are certain valiant ones who are made immortal said
transported to Olympus or Elysium.20 It is noteworthy that,
like the Izedis, the Greeks had a tendency to glorify what
traditionalists would call the forces of evil. Thus one
of the most vivid of Greek myths is that of Prometheus, the
creator of man, who brought fire to his proteges against
the command of Zeus and was chained to the rocks of the
18 Carus, op. cit., pp. 243-46.
19 Graf, op. cit., p. 8.
20 Carus, op. cit., pp. 195-99.
P I
Caucasus and tortured by a vulture. And though by sub
mission to Zeus he could have been freed at any time, he
preferred to endure eternal suffering rather than to bow to
22
oppression.
The word Devil is derived from the Greek 2>id/3oAos ,
and in the Hew Testament it is always used with the definite
article, corresponding to o , ’ ’the god.1 1 The classic
Greeks had before the Christian era reached a non-polythe- :
istic conception of one god| the conception of one being
fundamentally hostile to mankind, however, was a Christian
innovation. While the Greeks had names for evil spirits
and demons, none of them were thought to be essentially
hostile to men, nor were they organized under one supreme
evil authority.^® The Hew Testament adds a number of des
criptive terms to the denomination Devil and to the Old
Testament names Satan and Beelzebub. The Devil is called
’ ’the prince of this world,” ’ ’the great dragon,” ’ ’the old
serpent,” ’ ’ .the prince of devils,” ”the prince of the power
21 H, J. Wechsler, Gods and Goddesses in Art and
Legend (Hew York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1950), p p . 11-12.
22 Thomas Bulf inch, Bulfinch* s Mythology (The
Modem Library. Hew York: Random House, Inc. , tn'.U.j ),
p. 2 6.
23 Calvin Thomas, ’ ’The Devil,” Scholarship and
Other Essays (Hew York: Henry Holt & Company, 1924),
ppTTs^rr-"
x v i l
of the air,'1 and. nthe spirit that now worketh in the child- .
ren of disbelief*0 He is represented as the founder of an
empire that struggles with the kingdom of God upon earth.
He is powerful hut less powerful than Christ and will fin
ally he conquered and eternally doomed though left unfet
tered until the final coming of Christ;24
The apocryphal and pseudepigraphlc writings as well •
I
as those of the early Church Fathers enlarged on the New
Testament conceptions and often added their own contribu
tions. Ignatius conjectured that the ancient kingdom of
Satan was pulled down when God appeared in the likeness of
man. The Epistle of Barnabas refers to Satan as the Black
One. Justin Martyr suggested that demons were the offspring
of the union of fallen angels and women. It was demons who
developed heathen mythology, and It is demons who raise up
heretics. The prince of these evil spirits is Satan.
Tatian adds that while they are spiritual, they are able to
take on material .form at will.v They enter the body and pro
duce sickness and moral decay. They can be combated, how
ever, by faith and asceticism. The growing dichotomy of
spirit and matter resulted in Tatian*s describing Satan as
the “prince of matter.*1 Clement, however, maintained that
demons could not enter a human against his will. Concerning
24 Carus, op. cit., p. 166.
xviii
Satan*s duties, Clement suggested that the Devil may per
form a service in testing man*s will, hut his testing power
is limited. Magicians and sorcerers, however, are sent hy
Satan to hring dishonor on the Church* Clement held the
rather original idea that the Devil will ultimately be
saved.
Tertullian traced the origin of demons to fallen
angels. Satan, the chief of these spirits, was created good
by God and by his own choice became corrupt and was there
fore cast down from heaven. His spirits are endowed with
wings and are so swift that they know what is happening in
every part of the world. Thus they have a semblance of
divinity. Since an evil spirit clings to every individual
of the human race from birth, the spirits have power to cor
rupt the world both materially and physically. Persecution
is due to the Devil, although it is appointed by God, who
limits Satan1s power as its agent. Christians have power
to exorcise demons; those who cannot do so are not truly
Christians.
Clement of Alexandria expanded Justin Martyr1s sug
gestion concerning the demon-inspiration of mythology, stat
ing that the deities worshiped by the heathen were really
demons.
Origen developed the most elaborate demonology of the
early writers. He held that the fall of Lucifer alluded to
in Isaiali 14:12ff. refers to Satan (Gf. Luke 10:18). This
fall was caused by the Devil*s vanity: he attributed to him
self the priority he enjoyed in his sinless state without
giving glory to God* The serpent which tempted Eve was
inspired by the Devil. Origen also maintained that the
Devil may be saved under the discipline of a future world.
It is possible, according to this Church Father, for a man
to sin through his physical appetites without the Devil*s
'influence, although the Devil can make use of them. Another
of Satan* s methods is the introduction of false knowledge
into the mind. There is a hierarchy in Hell determined by
the progress of a spirit in evil. Demons have bodies,
though these are thin and unsubstantial; demons may operate
in two ways: (1) by making suggestions, or (2) by taking
complete possession of a body. In the process of exorcism
Origen attached a mystical power to the pronunciation of the
name of Jesus and other phrases in their original language.2^
Two heresies of the early Christian period have in
terest for this study. The Gnostics of Syria held a theory
concerning the serpent which was to gain considerable prom
inence In a later day. According to them Yahweh, as the
creator of the material world, is an evil deity. The ser
pent, however, with his promise of giving knowledge to man,
25 Langton, op. cit., pp. 45-55.
XX
appeared to the Gnostics as a messenger of the true and good
God. They were therefore known as serpent-worshipers. The
Manieheans were another heretical sect of this period, in
teresting for their retention of the Zoroastrian dualism.2®
Prom the third to the eighth centuries an increasing
materialism and literalness of detail becomes apparent in
the Satanic conception. Jerome illustrates the material
istic conception in his dogma that Satan and his demons are
able to take grotesque forms and manifest themselves to the
eyes and ears of men. Athanasius in his Life of the Hermit
Anthony describes the appearance of the Devil to Anthony in
the form of a slender Indian boy, the first of those ' ’black
men” who are later to be so popular in the works on witch
craft.^ Augustine broadly follows the previous writers and
agrees with Jerome in saying that the devils occupy tangible
bodies. He distinguishes a type called incubi in the forms
of sylvans and fauns. Isidore of Seville asserted that
demons possess more knowledge than humans because of the
keenness of a more subtle sense, the experiences of a super-
humanly long life, and the remnants of the angelic revela
tion given to them by God before their fall.28
26 Carus, op. cit., pp. 138-39.
_ 27 Charley'Williams, Witchcraft (Londons Faber and
Fabei* Ltd. , 1941), p. 41. . — — -
28 Langton, op. cit., pp. 60-64.
xxi
At this time, too, the concept of a pact with the
Devil came into being. The originating text is from Isaiah
in a prophecy concerning Ephraim: ”We have made a covenant
with death, and with hell we are in agreement,” translated
in the Vulgate, ”Percurrimus foedus cum morte et cum infer
no fecimus pactum.”*^ gjie earliest development of the idea.
j
of a formal contract is in the story of Theofjhllus of Adana,
whose story dates from the sixth century with manuscripts
from the seventh. Theophilus, a dispossessed cleric,
through the instrumentality of a Jew, sells his so ul to the
Devil in return for regaining his pos ition. Upon achieving
his end, however, he repents and after long fasting and
praying to the Virgin is redeemed and forgiven. The story
became one of the famous tales of the Middle Ages, and in
the thirteenth century the detail was added that the bond
was written in Theophilus*s own blood.
Even more detailed contributions were made to demon-
ology by the Scholastics. Peter Lombard pictured the souls
of the damned as being tormented in Hell by drifts of
demons j and Albertus Magnus suggested that Satan* s activi
ties of temptation are motivated by envy, lest anyone
should attain to the happiness he himself has lost. 31
29 Isa. 28:15.
30 Williams, op. cit., p. 57.
31 Carus, op. cit., pp. 253-60.
xxii
.Meanwhile popular superstitions were surrounding Satan*s
activities. If anyone achieved sudden wealth or power or
fell suddenly ill, the Devil was generally presumed to have
had a hand in the "business. It also came to be believed
.that people of unusual ability were in league with the
Devil since presumably Satan would offer special induce
ments to prospects In the way of wealth and ability.32
By the eleventh and twelfth centuries the teachings
of the previous centuries had all taken root. The world
was regarded as belonging to the Devil and only regained by
God through a process closely resembling a lawsuit whereby
Christ paid the world*s ransom. Even after an individual
was redeemed, he was still subject to Satan*s formidable
attacks. These were very material, sometimes rough* and
often extremely deceptive. The holler the man, the harder
the temptations, varied with limitless ingenuity.33 These
conditions provided the average people with an excellent
technique of rationalization: they could blame all their
shortcomings and deficiencies on Satan* s irresistible
power over them. As a result, prominent people who were
successful and apparently untroubled by Satanic opposition
were all the more suspect. Clement VI, for example in 1342s
32 0. V. Wertheimer, ’ ’ History of the Devil,” Living
Age, 325:325-28, May 9, 1925. #
33 Langton, op. cit., pp. 72-74.
xxiii
on© year before his death received an alleged autograph from
the Devil.
At first the Church dealt leniently with practicers
of the black arts. Accustomed to the necromancies and idol
atries of the Roman world, it was not surprised to find sor
cery in other domains into which it expanded. In the North
it found witches who raised and subdued storms, in the South
vendors of philters. But in the beginning it was believed
that the Devil’s powers were bounded. Thus under Charle
magne, while it was wrong to be a witch or falsely to accuse
another of being a witch, it was also, somewhat inconsist
ently, wrong to believe in witches. Nevertheless the Canon
Episcopi of the thirteenth century read in part:
Bishops and their officials must labor with all
their strength to uproot thoroughly from their
parishes the pernicious art of sorcery and male-
fice invented by the Devil, and if they find a
man or woman follower of this wickedness to eject
them foully disgraced from their parishes. For
the Apostle says, MA man that is a heretic after
the first and second admonition avoid.1 1 Those
are held captive by the Devil who, leaving their
creator, seek the aid of the Devil.34
By the fifteenth century, however, the fear of
Satan’s power had grown to such an extent that on December
5, 1485, Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull directing that
all witches should be rooted out. The clerics had found
that underlying the Christian religion was a widespread cult
34 Cited in Williams, op. cit., p. 73.
xxlv
practiced chiefly by the lower classes and evolved from the
old pagan practices with a veneer of Christian demonology,
possessing well-defined rites and a highly developed ritual.
A sorcerer was one who had sold himself to the Devil and did
his bidding in exchange for Satan1s powers. Women— witches
— were more frequently found entering into this relationship
than men. Admission to the cult was voluntary but involved
the renunciation of any religion and painful initiations. :
The witches signed a compact, usually written in their own
blood, privately or at a Sabbath. Each new recruit was re
portedly Imprinted with ”the Devil's mark, , --a tattoo or
excrescence supposed to be a supernumary nipple for the
nourishment of the familiar— on some portion of her body.
When the witch hunts were at their height the possession of
"the Devil's mark” was sufficient evidence for burning. It
was also believed that witches could change themselves into
animals % if they received any wounds, in this state, however,
these wounds also appeared on their human bodies* Closely
associated to this technique was lycanthropy, the-ability of
certain men to turn themselves int9 the form of wolves and
destroy both men and beasts. Witches were further believed
to have supernatural powers of locomotion since the Devil
was able to transport people quickly over vast areas.35
35 Langton, op. clt., pp. 80-82.
XXV
One of the most notable features of these pacts was
the frequency with which Satan was supposed to have personal
relations with his witches in either human or animal form.
Another result of the pact was the familiar, an evil spirit
closely related to the witch who gave her assistance in her
arts. The familiar could assume any form it chose. There
were two types of familiars: divining familiars were pre
sented to witches by the Devil; domestic familiars were in
herited from witch to witch. In each case they were be
lieved to represent Satan and to share in some of his power.
There are also stories extant of monks who had domestic fam
iliars and of Jewish rabbis who were served by attendant
spirits known as Shed (a Babylonian term for demon). The
familiars* habit of suckling their witches is believed by
Langton to have some dim connection in the minds of the
people with the liking of heathen idols for the blood of
sacrifices.36
Witches and sorcerers also had an organization with
regular conventions. The unit consisted of a small body of
elders with a minister to conduct the services, teach, pun
ish, and keep records. The number of such a coven or covey
in Britain was fixed at twelve, with the officer as the
thirteenth* Great Assemblies were held on May Eve, April
36 Ibid., pp. 78-79
xxv i
30 (Walpurgls Night); November Eve, October 31; Candlemas,
February 2; and Lammas, August 1. Each Great Assembly con
sisted of two gatherings. The first was the Sabbath public
meeting of all the witches, who feasted, danced, celebrated
their rites, worshiped their gods, and indulged in pleasur
able orgies (the word Sabbath- as pertaining to witches is
derived from the French s1esbattre--to frolic). The other
meeting, the Esbat, was made up of those who directed the
ceremonies and consisted of a business meeting and more
;esoteric activities. Often the god, or later the Devil,
appeared, clad in red or black, with horns, and masked; he
was worshiped, prayed to, and had infants dedicated to
him by his witch-worshipers. The rites were mainly con
cerned with fertility, including the dance, blood sacri-
| f ices--sometimes animal, sometimes human, sometimes the god
'himself or a proxy. Occasionally in the trial depositions,
from which nearly all the information concerning witchcraft
| i
was taken, mention is made of a queen of witches; the evi
dence here, however, is not detailed.3*^
The rooting-out process, while also prosecuted in the
civil courts, was in most cases given to the Inquisition.
This took a considerable amount of close reasoning, for the
Inquisition was supposed to deal only with heretical evil.
37 R. L. Thompson, History of the Devil (New York:
Hareourt, Brace, and Company, 1929T7 PP. 98-108.
XXV ii
The definition of heresy involved an obstinate per
sistence in a particular opinion against the known
authority of the Church, This was, not annatip*ally,
for long regarded by the authorities as much worse--
being fundamental— than any other sin, and dealings
with the Devil did not involve such a particular
obstinacy, heretics:’deliberately refused an intel
lectual obedience; witches merely disobeyed.38
Gradually, however, sorcery and heresy came to be identified
One cause was the secret gatherings of heretics, ’ ’ heretic
sabbaths,” where those of incorrect doctrine congregated to
practice their own rites and worship. Among these were the
Lueiferans, adherents of a gnosticized variation of the Pro
metheus myth in which Lucifer was the just rebel against an
unjust creator. Another cause was the recognition of a pos
sible heresy in witchcraft. It was orthodox belief every
where that the Devil could only do what God permitted. Any
assumption that he had power in himself was heretical.
Thus, while a witch could repudiate God and still be ortho
dox, if she believed that she repudiated God in favor of
another power— dualistically— then she was heretical. Then,
too, the attitude of disbelief had been swept away. The
University of Paris had ruled that sorcery was actual and
that the pact was actual. Thus while denying that the. Devil
had power, they implied that only the most extreme measures
could protect Christendom from his onslaughts.3®
38 Williams, op. cit., p. 84.
39 Ibid., pp. 86-91.
xxviii
The widespread fear of the practices of witches which
had "been mounting during the Middle Ages reached its peak In
the Renaissance* The emotional strain of the closing Middle
Ages, the Black Death, the Great Schism, the exhaustion of
the long concentration on the supernatural, all contributed
to the growing hysteria* It was further accelerated by
three or four remarkably notorious trials at the beginning j
!
of the fourteenth century, one of which was the trial of j
i
Joan of Arc*^0 By the end of the century a handbook for the'
i . 1
; detection and apprehension of witches had been published,
the Malleus Maleficarum* The most frenzied witch-hunting
dates from this publication and lasts until the end of the
i
Salem trials* The hysteria was not confined to the clergy
! or the more superstitious of the lower orders* Friedrich II
t
himself lit the fire about the stakes of heretics* Such was
: the fury of emotion that the rooting-out process often went
to absurd lengths; in 1474 a court In Basel condemned a
1 i
rooster to be burned to death for dealings with the Devil*^
Exceptions to the general hysteria are England, !
where, though witchcraft, especially malicious witchcraft,
was ruled against, there was not the remotest legal recog
nition of Satanic assemblies or of demon-worship en masse,
40 p* 101*
41 Wertheimer, loc* cit.
; XX iX
and, oddly enough, Spain, where, whatever the inquisitorial
fury with heretics, Jews, and Moriscoes, the treatment of
witchcraft was eminently sane and realistic.42
To Oarus
The Reformation, although in many respects a great
advance, did not introduce a sudden change in the
■belief in the Devil* Nevertheless, the tendency
becomes more and more apparent to interpret Satan in
psychological terms, and instead of expecting him in
the horrors of nature or in the objective reality of !
our surroundings to find him in our own hearts, where |
he appears as temptation in all forms . . . ,45
iLuther himself, however, found the Devil to be very objec
tive and highly troublesome* He believed that everyone had
to wage his own personal war with the Devil, without fear,
but with constant watchfulness* Furthermore, demonic pos
session could not be exorcised merely by Romish rituals;
rather faith and prayer were needed to call in the power of
God* He also believed in the existence of witchcraft, as
did Richard Baxter and John Wesley (for Wesley Satan was
also the cause of minor irritations and bad dreams).44 One
writer even went so far as to take a census of the devils
i
and totaled 7,450,926 of them in existence.45 Galvin
42 Williams, op. cit., pp. 192,248-53*
-43 Op. cit*, p* 338*
44 Langton, op. cit*, p. 88.
45 Wertheimer, loc. cit.
differed from Luther in confining his reasoning concerning
Satan to the Scriptures and thus throwing aside many of the
medieval crudities.
The witchcraft frenzy, however, was still at its
height.
Little distinction seems to have existed between the
Roman and the Reformed churches; on hardly any other
point were they in such hot agreement. . . . Catholic
and Reformed disputed about heaven; they almost made
a pact over he11.46
Nevertheless, the saturation point was being reached and
, .Jaded emotions were beginning to calm. The practice of
.witchcraft was beginning to lose most of its colorful ad
herents. There were only two really spectacular flare-ups
toward the end of the conflict. One was on the Continent
' in 1679 and was first stumbled onto through a series of
poisonings in Paris. One Catherine Deshayes, the wife of a
small jeweler, commonly called La Voisin [sicj , had made
her house a center for the high society of Paris through
her profession of physiognomy, palmistry, clairvoyance, and
occult science. Later she began selling love-charms and
potions and death-charms to those ladies of the court who
' wanted to hurry the future. After the most notorious case
of Mme. de Brinvilliers the investigation was continued by
a royally-appointed court, La Chambre Ardente. The affair,
46 Williams, op. cit., pp. 176-77.
xxxi
which involved the more appalling types of Satanism and
sorcery, was spreading in all directions when the court was
suspended "by the king on his discovery that his favorite,
Mme. de Montespan, was among the chief practitioners.^?
The second, and almost the last, wholesale outbreak
of witchcraft was across the Atlantic in Mew England, The
Salem trials were begun, as many others had been, by the
odd antics and the accusations of children, three girls
ranging from nine to twelve years aid, against two very old,
very poor women and spread from there until at the suppres
sion of the trials twenty-two had been executed. 2foe mov
ing spectre was, according to the girls, a tall, black-
clothed man with white hair. There were also unusual fam
iliars, such as hairy, winged creatures and yellow birds.
The hunt did not begin to lessen until one of the accused
brought suit for defamation of character. The most notable
aspect of the whole outbreak was, years later, the apologies
of one of the girl accusers and the confessions of the judge
and the twelve jurors, almost the only instance of recanta
tion in several centuries of witch-hunting.48
At the beginning of the eighteenth century belief in
the Devil and in witchcraft was still current, but general
ized.
47 Ibid., pp. 264-75.
48 Ibid., pp. 278-93.
xxxii
That admirable example of good taste, Joseph
Addison, put the thing neatly enough* ”1 believe
in general,” he wrote, “that there is such a thing
as witchcraft; but at the same time can give no
credit to any particular instance of it* 49
Men shook themselves free of their fear and examined the
historical and philosophical foundations of the question*
To Kant the principle of evil became the reversal of the
moral world order* Daub found that Satan, the Anti-Christ, ;
is found in a hatred of all that is good* Schenkel decided
that Satan was a manifestation in the totality of things,
that which is collectively bad, and which has not yet suc
ceeded in becoming a concrete personality.^
Thus by the nineteenth century belief in Satan had
become less vivid and personalized* Factors contributing
to this state were the declining belief in the reality of
the alleged phenomena associated with magic and witchcraft
and a growing belief in an ordered universe governed by
natural laws, schleiermacher discerned reasoning difficul
ties in a conception of the Devil, as well as practical,
ethical, and moral difficulties* A belief in Satan, how
ever, had for him poetic usefulness for devotional purposes.
Belief in the Devil as a principle of evil rather than as a
personality was advanced and advocated by Roskoff and ReviXfe.
Reuss attempted an explanation of Satan*s origins* While
49 Ibid*, p. 301.
50 Oarus, op. cit., pp. 394-98.
xxxiii
the traditional viewpoint was upheld "by G. F. Schmid and
Dorner, Satan as an aggressive personality began to be ig
nored or rejected in discussions of evil#5*- By 1910 A. E.
Garvie, writing on Satan for the Encyclopedia Britannica,
could say
The possibility of the existence of evil spirits,
organized under one leader Satan to tempt man and
to oppose God, cannot be denied; the sufficiency'
of the evidence of such evil agency may, however, be
doubted; the necessity of any such belief for Chris
tian thought and life cannot, therefore, be a f f i r m e d .52
At the present moment liberal theology still main
tains that belief in the Devil is not so much Christian and
Jewish as pagan and a survival of polytheistic nature-wor-
ship from a time when the sciences were still in their in
fancy. Such belief is therefore due, not so much to devo
tion, as to ignorance. There seems to be developing, how
ever, a renewed doubt of this dictum. Current events, sug
gests Langton, have given rise to a reawakened consideration
of an evil force rather than the attribution of evil only to
cultural lag. He points out the fundamental character of
Jesus*s teaching concerning Satan and Paul*s endorsement of
that teaching. If evil is merely a relic of man*s animal
istic tendencies, it remains to ask why it should suddenly
51 Langton, op. cit., pp. 96-115.
52 A.E. Gar vie, ’ ’Satan,” Encyclopedia Britannica,
11th edition, VIII, 123.
XXX iv
become dominant. 53
Others share this questioning!
Take the Satanic element out of the human heart, or
soul, or whatever you like to call it, and life would
be as untroubled and as beautiful as the Mediterranean
on a calm sunny morning. There is nothing else that
accounts for the infection of mankind with malice.
Yet, in the present apalling century, the belief in the
existence of Satan has for some strange reason been
fading. I should have thought that, even if no previous
century had heard of his existence, we of the twentieth
century should have had to invent him as the only ra
tional explanation of a large part of the history of
our times,54
Denis de Rougemont suggests that one of the reasons for the
confusion so prevalent in the world is a fear of facing its
real cause, which, he suggests, is the Devil. He further
surmises that
The Devil’s first trick is his incognito. . . . God
says, "I am he who is.” But the Devil, ever jealous
of God and bent on imitating him, even though it be in
reverse (since he sees everything from below) says to
us, like Ulysses to the Cyclops, , ! My name is - Nobody.
There is nobody* Whom should you be afraid of? Are
you going to tremble before the non-existent?”55
Among the theologians the traditionalist Reinhold Nie
buhr maintains the existence of what he calls the Devil*
55 Op. cit., pp. 118-22.
54 Y. Y., f , Exit Satan,” New Statesman and Nation, 17:
773-4, May 20, 1939.
55 The Devil1s Share (Translated by Haakon Chevalier,
Bollingen Series. New York: Pantheon Books, 1945), II, 17.
XXXV
According to Niebuhr, when man misinterprets his situation
as a free will In a finite body, he sins, which sin is sug-'
: gested by a force of evii--the Devil, ‘
who fell because he sought to lift himself above his
measure and who in turn insinuates temptation into
human life. . . . To believe that there Is a Devil
Is to believe that there is a principle or force of
evil antecedent to any evil human action# Before
man fell the Devil fell*56
Vivid and apparently traditional as his presentation is,
Niebuhr’s belief can by no means be called literal# But
literalness is the most striking feature in the traditional
acceptance of the devil on the part of C. S. Lewis. He
believes in a Pall, a Devil who is a personality, and a
Hell. His main works on the subject, which come in novel
form, will be treated later in this study;87 his position
may be summarized by the following quotation from one of his
radio broadcasts:
I know someone will a sk me, “Do you really mean,
at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend
the devil--hoofs and horns and all?” Well, what the
time of day has to do with it I don’t know. And I’m
not particular about the hoofs and horns# But in
other respects my answer is, “Yes, I do.“ I don’t
claim to know anything about his personal appear
ance. If anybody really wants to know him better
I’d say to that person, "Don’t worry. If you really
want to, you will. Ihether you* 11 like It when you
do is another question.1,58
__ 56 Reinhold Niebuhr,.The Nature and Destiny of Man
(New Yorks Charles Scribner’Tr'S'orrsy' 194‘ iT7 T,""! ^b' 47'lBtJ.---
57 See pp. 1,20 ff, below.
58 C. S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 19,47), p. 40.
XXXVI
The centuries, then, have rolled up a rich, varied
tapestry of conflicting beliefs and theories concerning the :
Devil* These beliefs have proved a vast treasure house for
authors and poets seeking background for creative expres
sion, and the Devil has therefore frequently appeared in
literature written as exercise of the imagination rather
than as dissemination of fact*
It is difficult to draw a distinct line of demarcation
in early writings between the Devil appearing as a histori
cal character and the Devil as a literary figure* Perhaps
one of his earliest literary appearances is in the twelfth
century French §pop£e, La Bataille Aliscans.5^ He is given
a literary historic treatment in Piers Plowman, where the
story of his fall is related with the detail that In the
likeness of fiends he and his angels fell nine days until
they teached Hell*^0
The earliest work of importance is Dante*s Divine
.Comedy, with its description of Hell as a vast funnel with
its apex at the center of the earth and divided into nine
concentric circles for progressively iniquitous malefactors,
all arranged around a three-faced Devil fixed in ice* The
59 Graf, op* cit., pp. 25-39.
60 B. Holloway,'"Satan in English Literature,” (unpub
lished Master * s thesis, The University of Southern Califor
nia, Los Angeles, 1917), pp. 38-39*
xxxvli
idea of the icy palace can he traced hack to the Gnostics,
and, the conception of a three-faced Satan may have its roots
in the Northern deity of evil, Hrim-Grimmer, the three-headed
hoar giant who lives at the door of death, or with Triglaf,
the triune deity of the Slavs;61 or perhaps a trinitarian
Devil is a neat, symmetrical concept to set against the
Triune God.
Gower*s Mirour de 1*Omme gives the medieval concep
tion of Satan in an extended, serious-minded allegory. Like
most allegorical characters, however, Satan is not strongly
personalized; his only positive quality is persistence, and
his motivation and goal are left to the reader*s imagination
and background.62
The mystery cycles naturally included the gaudily
decorated Hell-Mouth with the Devil conceived as a dragon*s
head with gleaming eyes and long sharp teeth showing through
a wide-gaping mouth, the whole surrounded in the more elab
orate settings with fire and smoke. There were, of course,
many versions of the Devil in the miracle plays. He was
often portrayed with horns, a tail, and a long snout; some
times he was dressed in black, carrying a staff with hooks
on tfte end; he sometimes wore rough shaggy clothing and
61 Ibid., pp. 29-32.
62 Ibid., pp. 33—35.
xxxviii
sported a bright red beard, while on other occasions he was
a hairy horned Devil in the company of feathered demons. In
the oldest morality play, The Castle of Perseverance, the
Devil plays an Important part, with a somewhat comic treat
ment of his chastisement of the vices. One of John Heywood’s
greatest interludes, The Four P’s again assigns the Devil a
comic part as a merry, hospitable owner of Hell; and the J-hr-
doner visiting there notices that all the devils are very
clean, with well-kept horns and tails, and the inmates of
Hell contented, playing at rackets with firebrands*®® Other
works of the period in which the Devil plays a part are
John Bale’s Temptation of Jesus, the Eger Passion Play,
Grotius’s Adamus Exul, and Vondel* s Lucifer.®^
The Renaissance gave rise to some of the great litera
ture on the Faust theme. In Spain Calder6n founded his El
Mggico Prodigioso on the legend of St. Cyprian, a learned
pagan philosopher who sold his soul to the Devil for the
love of the Christian Justina. The bargain is not completed,
however; for she converts him and they are both martyred and
saved. References in Shakespeare’s plays to Satan are in
terms customarily used by his age. Marlowe, however, makes
good use of the Devil and the Faustus legend. Contained in
63 Ibid., pp. 10-13.
64 Rudwin, op. cit., pp. 6-8, 72-73.
xxx ix
the German Faustbuch, the life of Faust was perhaps that of
a historical personage, a sixteenth-century Swahian from
Kindling near Preten, the home of Melancthon, whose con
temporary he was* In a letter to a professor in Heidelberg
the Abbot of Wurzburg writes indignantly of a certain George
Sabbellleus who calls himself "the younger Faust (why the
younger we do not know), the fountain of all necromancy,
astrologer, the second magus, diviner by palms, diviner by
earth, diviner by fire, second in the art of divination by
water*"®® The few extant records mentioning him give the
impression that he was a sort of wandering prophet or com
mentator on the news and events of his day. After 1540 he
disappears from the documents, but his reputation was high
enough to cause legends to collect around his name. He had
two familiars* He destroyed, another magician at Venice.
He made plugs in a table, from which he produced four kinds
of wine. He once made figures from classical mythology
appear* His death occurred from strangulation by the DevU^
In 1587 the first Faust book appeared, Historia von D* Jo
hann Fausten dem weitbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwartz
Kunstler. The material in a slightly later English trans
lation was seized upon by Marlowe, whose drama became a
65 Gited in Williams, op. cit., p. 235.
66 Ibid., pp. 235-37.
xl
model for all later works on the theme* In it Faust is a
scholar longing for knowledge who exchanges his soul with
the Devil for twenty-four years of absolute knowledge and
i
power. He has a period of felicityj and sometimes Lucifer
appears to him, occasionally with Beelzehuh, a lesser devil,
and occasionally with Mephistopheles, his messenger and
commander of all his spirits, once the most dearly beloved i
of God* At the end of the period Faust repents and con
fesses his wrong, but his soul is nevertheless forfeit.
Ben Jonson, on the other hand, makes use of Satan to satir
ize society In The Devil Is an Ass* Pug, a lesser devil
comes to earth with Iniquity to work evil but finds the
world so much advanced beyond his methods that he pleads
for recall to Hell•6 , 5 , This humorous approach was not new,
for Hans Sachs had treated the Devil in his poems as a be
ing of whom no courageous man need be afraid. And Dion
ysius Klein had been the first to take the humorous view as
a matter of principle, in his Tragico-Comoedia describing
trips to Heaven and Hell, which latter he reports as having
water-power and good machinery*68
Satan1s status in Milton*s epic Paradise Lost varies
with nearly every critic. According to Carus,
67 Holloway, op. cit., pp. 40-50.
68 Carus, op. cit., pp. 432-34.
xli
The Protestant Devil, as a poetical figure, received
his finishing touches from Milton# And Milton's '
Devil acquires a nobility of soul, moral strength,
independence and manliness which none of his ances
tors possessed# • . • It has been frequently remarked'
that Milton's Satan is the hero of Paradise Los t, and,
indeed, he appears as the most sympatiae'ti c" ' figure
.... Milton's Satan represents the honor and inde
pendence of the nation asserted in the face of an In
capable government. . . #6^
To other critics, however, the epic is an absorbing portrggal
of his gradual moral degeneration:
. . . This progressive degradation, of which he
himself is vividly aware, Is carefully marked in the
poem. He begins by fighting for "liberty," however
misconceivedj but almost at once he sinks to fight
ing for "Honour, Dominion, glorie, and, renoune. (VI,
422) Defeated in this, he sinks to that great de
sign which makes the main subject of the poem— the
design of ruining two creatures who had never done
him any harm, no longer in the serious hope of vic
tory, but only to annoy the Enemy whom he cannot
directly attack. . . . This brings him as a spy Into
the universe, and soon not even a political spy, but
a mere peeping Tom leering and writhing in prurience
as he overlooks the privacy of two lovers, and there
described, almost for the first time in the poem,
not as the fallen Archangel or Hell's dread Emperor,
but simply as "the Devil" (IV, 502)— the salacious
grotesque, half bogey and half buffoon, of popular
tradition.^0
And "in portraying an all but omnipotent Satan Milton added
greatly to the ordinary conception of the glory and power of
Gkd.H 71 in Paradise Regained Satan engages in a debate with
69 Ibid., pp. 351-52.
70 0. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London:
Oxford University PressT 1946}, p. 97.
71 Holloway, op. cit., p. 59.
xlii'
the young Christ and is not very similar to his correspond
ing figure in Paradise Lost. nSatan has here . . . .rather
come to terms with God and been accepted as the allowed
leader of the divine Opposition.*72 Bunygn, in keeping with
his purpose, makes more allegorical use of the Devil and his
minions in his Pilgrim1 s Progress. In the Valley of Humili
ation Christian meets Apollyon, the angel of the bottomless ,
pit, who announces he is prince and God of that country and
battles with Christian until he is vanquished by Christian’s
two-handed sword of Scripture. The allegory Is even more
complete in The Holy War, where the Devil attempts first by
force and then by stealth to take the city of Mansoul with
his legions the vices and is always defeated by Emanuel.
Bunyan’s Devil, lacking the majesty of Milton’s and the cun
ning of Mephistopheles, is a Lutheran Devil, hideous and
fearful to behold and to be defied and despised.73 With the
exception of Klopstock’s Miltonic imitation Messias, little
work was otherwise done with a literary Devil during the
eighteenth century.
Then Goethe’s Faust gave a new impetus to Devil-liter<
ature, as well as a new direction to its thought--or, rather,
72 A. G. Baugh, editor, A Literary History of England
(Hew York: Appleton-Century-*Crofts, Inc., 1948), p. 694.
73 Holloway, op. cit., pp. 59-64.
xliii
returned the direction to a classic concept. Previously the
traditional conception had been that of a revolt in Heaven
led by Satan, engaged in open defiance of Jehovah— the Satan
of Milton. Goethe added the philosophical concept of the
Devil, or rather, Mephistopheles^ as the force which ever
wills the evil and ever achieves, through clashing with God,
the good; thus the Devil is the necessary concomitant of
God.174 His appearance changed for the better also. Goethe
drew Mephistopheles as a gay, lean, attractive cavalier with
•only a slight limp. This idea, however, really goes back to
the Faustbuoh, in which the Devil appeared as a monk; and
when the drama was introduced into Catholic Vienna, the
Devil became, as a deceiver and sensual worldling, a man of ,
fashion until in Goethe's time the appearance was accepted
as a convention.76 His personality lacks the grandeur of
Milton's Satan; he is easy-going, relatively unambitious,
impudent, cynical, and worldly. It is noticeable that of
all the Devil-pacts, that of Faust*s is the only one in
which the victim is permitted to make the loop-hole.76
Oriental influence brought about the study and use of
foreign devils which was to be carried on into the twentieth
century. One of the most successful pieces of exotic fic-
I
74 Thomas, op. cit., pp. 88-90.
75 Ibid., p. 99.
76 Holloway, op. cit., p. 80.
xliv
tion of its century, William Beckford’s Vathek is the story
of a young Arabian caliph, who, for knowledge, sells his soul
to the Giaour, a ghoul, finally penetrates to the palace of
Eblis, and has pronounced the Judgment of wandering in that
region of riches with an eternally flaming heart. Other
writers of Romanticism make use of the Devil. Burns men
tions him in passing, using him as a literary and witty de-
i
vice.77 The Devil also appears in satire. An interesting
comparison appears here between the two versions of the
Vision of Judgment by Southey and by Byron. Both use Satan
as a vehicle, the one for fulsome praise of King George, the
other for bitter satire in retaliation. Coleridge and Byron
are also comparable in their treatment of Satan. While both
aim at social satire, the one is general and the other per
sonal. In The Devil* s Thoughts and The Devil* s Drive the
Devil, similar to Jonson’s The Devil Is an Ass, visits earth
and looks at its evil and returns, well pleased with Hell.7®
• ^ Manfred Byron has Manfred defy the evil spirit Arimanes
throughout his life even to the moment of his death and thus
achieve victory. The work is reminiscent of Faust. But in ■
, Cain Byron portrays Lucifer as majestic, justifying his an
tagonism to the Omnipotent by insisting upon his own superi-
77 Ibid., pp. 67-77.
78 Ibid., pp. 87-89.
xlv
ority. Gain, thirsting for knowledge, is carried by him
through the gates of death, the portals of the knowledge
Gain desires.*^ Other authors who were to make the Devil
the proponent of thought and liberty were Shelley in another
treatment of mythology, Prometheus tTnbound, Count Stolberg
in Jamben, Richard Dehmel in Lucifer, Strindberg in Lucifer
or God, Carducci in Inno a Satana, Rapisardi in Luoifero,
and Anatole Prance in La Revolte des Angles.80
The only important literary representatives of the
American presentation of the Devil were Washington Irving
and Edgar Allen Poe* In Irving^ The Devil and Tom Walker
Tom ?/alker sells his soul to Old Scratch for the wealth of
Captain Kidd* At the end of his time the Devil comes, a
black fellow on a black horse, and gallops off with him.
His possessions burn and disappear. Edgar Allen Poe did a
humorous short story concerning the Devil in the belfry of
a time-bound Dutch village*®^
A notable feature of nineteenth-century romanticism
was the resurgence of diabolism in the writings of Baude
laire, Villiers de l'lsle-Adam, Huysmans, and Barbey dfAure-
villy* Among the lesser works are Le Diable vert by Gerard
79 Ibid., pp* 90-91.
80 Rudwin, op. cit., p. 56.
81 Holloway, op. cit., pp. 95-99.
xlvi
de Nerval, Le Combe de 11 homme mort by Charles Nodier, Bon-
Bon by Foe, le Diable boiteux by Le Sage, Per kleine
Johannes by Frederik van Eeden, El Diablo predicator by
Belmonte y Bermfidez, le Plable amoureux by Jacques Cazotte,
la Descente aux Enfera by Beranger, Albertus by Gautier,
The Sorrows of Satan by Corelli, I1 Homme qui vend it son dme
au diable by Pierre Veber, Hell up to Date by Art Young, and
The Devil and the Old Man by John Masefield.82
The critical literature on the subject of the Devils
exploits in letters is incomplete at best. While there are
numerous works on the history of Satan in thought and exper
ience and also treatments of individual authors’ conceptions
of the Devil in cases such as Milton’s®^ Goethe’s®4
where scholars have considered him at some length, a com
plete survey of the Devil in world literature is yet to be
82 Rudwin, op. cit., pp. 69-74.
83 See the followings S. H. V. Gurteen, The Epic of
the Fall of Man (New Yorks G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896); G» R*
Hamilton,"Tfero or Fool? A Study of Milton’s Satan (Londons
Allen £1944] ); TT S. Diekhoff, MTTton* s Paradise Lost (New
Yorks Columbia University Press, 1946), pp. 28-48;' C. S.
Lewis, op. cit., pp. 92-100; M. Woodhull', The Epic of Para- .
dise Lost (New Yorks G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907*1.
84 See the followings C. R. Buxton, Prophets of Hea
ven and Hell (Cambridge CEngJ s The University Press, 1945J;
M. Stawell and G. L. Dickinson, Goethe and Faust (Londons
G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1928), pp. S'4-96'; Karl"TilTor,
’ ’ Faust,1 ' Goethe the Poet (Cambridge, Mass. s Harvard Univer- .
sity Press, 1949), pp. 290-328; Roy Pascal, "Faust," Essays
on Goethe (e<|. William Rose; Londons -Cassell, 1949) ,_pp. 97£f.
r ~ xlvli
mad©. Attempts have been made by Rudwin®® and Carus;®®
since they allot only sections of more comprehensive works
to Devil-literature, however, those sections can only be
superficial#
Satan is surveyed in this study of his efforts dur
ing the past two decades in literature under five headings
discussing the Devil*s origins and rebellion, his person- ,
ality (appearance, manner, motivation, and techniques), his j
'minions, his dominions, and his destiny, with a chapter al- !
I - - :
; lowed to each heading# There is no attempted division be-
, tween novel and short story and no attempt at keeping the
» >
. works in the same order throughout the chapters; rather ;
they are examined as they fit into the progress of each
; chapter. Not every work will appear under all the headings '
i
» j
| since many authors treat only aspects of Satan*s life and j
| times# For the sake of coherence each major discussion of '
I . t
J a work will be preceded by a summary of its plot and a briefj
i
critical evaluation# Similarities of opinion or treatment !
will be indicated by the grouping of the works, and an at- I
tempt will be made at indicating tendencies in opinion or
imagination and any appearances of influence# It is hoped
that this study will be a contribution to the existing lit
erature and to a future complete survey of Satan* s literary
adventures#
85 Rudwin, op. cit..
86 Carus, op, cit# -- - — - ----
CHAPTER I
THE DEVIL'S ORIGIN AND REBELLION
For the most part present-day writers in their depic
tion of the Devil do not discuss his origin or his history.
They are concerned only with the immediate effects of his
present activity. Exceptions to this rule are C. S. Lewis
and David H. Keller and, to a lesser extent, a few others,
who theorize on the Devil's origin and rebellion from anti
thetical approaches,
Lewis's theories and presentation of the Devil's ori
gin are embodied in The Great Divorce and Out of the Silent
Planet. Like an increasing number of modern works, The
Great Divorce (1946) revives the medieval literary device of
the dream with, in Lewis's case, unusual ease and facility1
although the dream often crosses over into allegory. The
dreamer finds himself in a twilight town, which, for lack of
a better name, may be called Purgatory. Excursion buses are
regularly scheduled for Heaven, and whoever wishes can take
the trip to Heaven and even stay under certain conditions.
With a group of grumpy, dreary people from the drizzly twi
light town the dreamer boards one of these buses. Heaven
1 W. H. Auden, "Red Lizards and White Stallions,"
The Saturday Review of Literature, 29:22, April 13, 1946.
bursts upon them with a reality so forceful that all the in
habitants of the bus, including the dreamer become mere
transparent ghosts# They are met, however, by numerous
bright, solid people who offer to show the ghosts how to
live in Heaven after a thickening process. The dreamer ob
serves the encounters and thus offers vignettes of the vari
ous types of people approached--the plain man who only
wanted his rights without snivelling along on charity, the '
apostate cleric who could not imagine anyone*s being penal
ized for his honest opinions, the theorizing ghost who had
come to take something real back to a Hell where every ar
ticle was only imagined and thus create a bit of supply and
demand and a consequent community, the hard-bitten ghost
, who knew everything was a hoax, the vain ghost who could not
go out in the open because everyone would stare through her
transparency, the shadowy monologing grumbler, the female
ghost trying to seduce the solid people even though they
could hardly see her, the artistic ghost interested only in
painting Heaven, the possessive ghost who had come to Mim-
prov4* her husband further, the matriarchal ghost willing to
d:o anything to see her son, the oily black ghost with a liz
ard-shaped vice on his shoulder, the dwarf ghost attached to
a tragedian. The guide who has come to meet the dreamer, ,
i
playing Virgil to the dreamer’s Dante, interpreting the :
events,, and answering _the. .dreamer.* s_.questions, _is George J
3
Macdonald.^ It is noteworthy that only the oily ghost ac
cepts the angel1s invitation to kill his lizard-vice and
stay in Heaven, Once that is accomplished, the ghost turns
solid immediately and rides off into the mountains of Deep
Heaven on the silver stallion into which the lizard had been
transformed. The vain ghost receives a fear treatment, but
her case, along with that of the grumbler, is left in doubt.
The rest of the ghosts return to the bus and to Hell, decid
ing that Heaven would be too uncomfortable. Just as morning
finally and irrevocably breaks, sealing the decisions of the
ghosts forever, the dreamer wakes.
The Great Divorce is concerned largely with a discus
sion of the nature of Hell, which will be treated in a later
chapter?5 but Lewis permits himself, through the lips of
George Macdonald, one observation on the Devils origins
‘ ‘There is but one good; that is God, Everything
2 George Macdonald (1824-1905), Scottish novelist and
poet, studied for and was ordained to the Congregational
ministry. He achieved popularity, however, with his novels
of Scottish life. He wrote several volumes of sermons, fer
vid religious verse, and fairy tales. These latter are
delightful fantasies (The Princess and the Goblin, The Prin-,
cess and Curdie) whichstill make their child-readers shud- ,
der pleasurably, As a portrayer of Scottish peasant-life
he was the precursor of a large school, C, s. Lewis recent
ly published an anthology of his sermons and essays and re- '
gards Macdonald in influencing his own life as his spiritual
Virgil.
3 See Chapter IV, pp. 101-12 below
4
else is good when it looks to Him and had when it
turns from Him. And'the higher and mightier it is
in the natural order, the more demonic it will he
if it rebels. It's not out of had mice or had
fleas you make demons, hut out of had archangels.
Lewis suggests this traditional theory5 more imagina
tively and with a greater wealth of detail in the first
novel of a trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. For his hero
Lewis huilds a character similar to himself. Elwin aansQBi,
like Lewis a middle-aged philologist and university don, is
on a walking tour when he is kidnapped by an old childhood
enemy and a single-minded scientist intent only on planetary
imperialism. By these he is bundled into a space-ship hound
for Mars. In a previous journey the two planetary explorers
had met some Martian inhabitants who had commanded them to
bring hack another human, presumably for sacrifice. Upon
their arrival on Mars, however, Ransom escapes from his cap
tors. His first Martian turns out to be a hross, a species
4 C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Hew Yorks The Mac
millan Company, 1946), pp. 98-99.
5 The traditional viewpoint, as deduced by theologi
ans and painted by Milton is that Satan was once, before
the creation of the worlds, one of God's supreme creatures; .
that incomprehensibly he proposed to become like the Most
High; and that he was cast from his high position and left
to work what evil he could with his followers on earth
under God's sufferance until the final days, when he and
his follbwers will forever be committed to a place prepared
for them. L. S. Chafer, Major Bible Themes (Chicago:
Moody Press, 1945), pp. 118-27.
of reasoning animal, and not a bit blood-thirsty. He gradu
ally learns the language and spends some time with the
agrarian, poetic hrossa. Out hunting with Ransom one day,
the hrossa are met by an eldil, a spirit, who commands them
to send Ransom to Oyarsa. Ransom refuses, is discovered by
his fellow-men, and in the ensuing fight his best hross-
friend is killed. The hrossa thereupon send him to Oyarsa,
the manager of the planet, sending him for directions to. the
seronl, the intellectual hermits of the planet. A sorn
takes him to Oyarsa, who, it turns out, had all the time
only wanted to question a human being about the silent plan
et he had come from. At Meldilorn, the habitation of Oyarsa,
Ransom meets the pfiffltriggi, the third type of creature
and the artificers of the planet. Then his fellow-travelers
are captured and brought before Oyarsa, who decrees that
they shall return to their silent planet. Ransom elects to
, go with them. After a hazardous journey (so much time has
elapsed that the earth is no longer in opposition to Mars)
they reach their own planet once again.
This comparatively simple plot is the frame within
which Lewis gives free rein to his expansive imagination
with delightful results. The mixture of scientifiction and
theology is characterized by ease of narrative, frbshness of
vocabulary and metaphor, and imaginative piling-up of real
istic detail with unusual incident. . An .apt .example of this - ■
6
unusualness in choice of incident is Ransome* s meeting with
his first hross, described from the point of view of a
linguist.
Then something happened which completely altered his
state of mind. The creature, which was still steam
ing and shaking itself on the bank and had obviously
not seen him, opened its mouth and began to make
noises. This in itself was not remarkable; but a
lifetime of linguistic study assured Ransom almost
at once that these were articulate noises. The crea
ture was talking. It had language. If you are not
yourself a philologist, I am afraid you must take on
trust the prodigious emotional consequences of this
realization in Ransom* s mind. A new world he had
already seen— but a new, an extra-terrestrial, a non
human language was a different matter. . . . The love
of knowledge is a kind of madness. In the fraction
of a second which it took Ransom to decide that the
creature was really talking, and while he still knew
that he might be facing instant death, his imagina
tion leaped over every fear and hope and probability
of his situation to follow the dazzling project of
making a Malacandrian grammar. An Introduction to
the Malacandrian Language— The Lunar Verb— A Concise
Martian-EnglisH Dictionary . • • the titles flitted
through, his mind” I I . Tne creature struck itself
on the chest and made a noise. Ransom did not at
first realize what it meant. Then he saw that it
was trying to teach him its name— presumably the
name of the species.
MHross,* * it said, whrosa,w and flapped itself.
"Hross,n repeated Ransom, and pointed at it;
then Hman,” and struck his own chest.
MHm£— hmA— hmAn,* * imitated the hross. It picked
up a handful of earth, where earth appeared between
weed and water at the bank of the lake.
l ! Handra, ” it said. Ransom repeated the word.
Then an idea occurred to him.
"Malaoandra?1 1 he said in an inquiring voice.
The hross rolled its eyes and waved Its arms, obvi
ous ly^tiT’an effort to indicate the whole landscape.
7
Ransom was getting on well. Handra was earth, the
element; Malac-andra the "earth*1 or planet as a whole.
Soon he would find out what Malac meant. In the mean
time "H disappears after C" tie noted and made his
first step in Malacandrian phonetics.®
The exotic atmosphere and novel language lends also
an aura of freshness to the traditional theory of Satan*s
rebellion and descent--not to Hell, however, but to Earth.
Oyarsa explains to Ransom that Thuleandra— Earth, the silent,
planet--is the one planet that does not have intercourse with
the rest of the universe. This is due to the circumstance
that the ruling Oyarsa of Earth, the greatest of all the
Oyeresu, became "bent." During these Bent Years before he
was bound to Thuleandra he attempted to spoil other worlds
beside his own. The Malacandrian Oyarsa relates the story
with an almost epic flavors
"He smote your moon with his left hand and with his
right he brought the cold death on my harandra before
its time; if by my arm Maleldil had not opened the
handramits and let out the hot springs, my world
would have been unpeopled. We did not leave him so
for long. There was great war, and we drove him
back out of the heavens and bound him in the air of
his own world as Maleldil taught us. There doubt
less he lies to this hour, and we know no more of
that planet! it is silent. We think that Maleldil
would not give it up utterly to the Bent One, and
there are stories among us that He has taken strange
counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with
the Bent One in Thuleandra. But of this we know
less than you; it is a thing we desire to look into."?
6 0. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (New York:
The Macmillan Company, "IWTT» pp. 56-56.
_ .7 Ibid. , p p . 130-51.____ _______________________
8
Satan, the Bent One, Lewis here implies, is not so
much responsible for the evil in the world as for neglecting
his true, managerial duties. While Ransom is visiting the
seroni, he is interviewed by a scientist sorn and his school,
who question Ransom in detail as to the workings of Thul-
candra. They are astonished at what he has to tell them of
human history— of war, slavery, and prostitution.
”It is because they have no Oyarsa,” said one of
the pupils.
aIt is because everyone of them wants to be a
little Oyarsa himself,” said Augray.
"They cannot help it,” said the old sorn. "There
must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves?
Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and
eldila by Maleldil. These creatures have no eldila.
They are like one trying to lift himself by his own
hair. . . .”8
Lewis again gives the traditional point of view in
The Screwtape Letters (1943), but this time Hell speaks for
itself. The letters are the correspondence of Screwtape,
a retired veteran tempter well down in the Lowerarchy, ad
dressed to his young nephew, a junior tempter on earth in
charge of his first patient, who has recently become a
Christian. The epistolary form conceals penetrating ser-
monettes on the vices and virtues, covered by Screwtapefs
comments on life and Hell in general from the refreshing
8 Ibid., p. 110.
9
viewpoint of the initiated, While a tempter may he an angel
of light, Screwtape’s attitude toward his nephew usually
contains more acidity than sweetness; hut he manages remarks
on nearly every phase of Satan’s history, purpose, and tech
nique , and carefully explains the motive behind Satan* s "wittt-
drawal” from Heaven:
So you ’ ’ have great hopes that the patient's relig
ious phase is dying away,” have you? I always thought
the Training College had gone to pieces since they put
old Sluhgloh at the head of it, and now I am sure.
Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians— half spirit and half .animal,
(The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolt
ing hybrid.was one of the things that determined Our
Father to withdraw his support from Him.)9
According to this inhabitant of Hell, Satan’s depar
ture from Heaven was the result of puzzlement and disgust
at the creation of man and the Enemy’s refusal to provide a
rational explanation for the step:
All His talk about Love must be a disguise for some
thing else— 'He must have some real motive for creat
ing them and taking so much trouble about them. The
reason one comes to talk as if He really had this
impossible Love is our utter failure to find out
that real motive. What does He stand to make out of
them? That is the insoluble question, I do not see
that it can do any harm to tell you that this very
problem was a chief cause of Our Father’s quarrel
with the enemy. When the creation of Man was first
mooted and when, even at that stage, the Enemy
freely confessed that he foresaw a certain episode
about a cross, Our Father very naturally sought an
9 C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1943), p. 44*
10
interview and asked for an explanation. The Enemy
gave no reply except to produce the cock-and-bull
story about disinterested love which he has been
circulating ever sihce. This Our Father naturally
could not accept. He implored the Enemy to lay
His cards on the table, and gave Him every oppor
tunity. He admitted that he felt a real anxiety
to know the secretj the Enemy replied WI wish with
all my heart that you did.” It was, I imagine, at
this stage in the interview what Otar Father* s dis
gust at such an unprovoked lack of confidence caused
him to remove himself an infinite distance from the
Presence with a suddenness which has given rise to
the ridiculous enemy story that he was forcibly
thrown out of Heaven.10
The young novelist Anthony West suggests a similar
reason for Satan* s falling-out with God in his The Vintage
(1950). Ransome, the Devil, explains to Wallis, the chief
sbul of the story, that he was only thinking of man's good
when he objected to Creations
I am merciful you know . . . much more merciful than
the other. It*s about that, the question of mercy,
that we parted company. I said, You’re putting it
much too high, you’re making an impossible demand
on these people. They aren’t up to it— they haven*t
the capacity. I told him, Your mercy is something
blighting, absolutely terrifying, to such limited
creatures. The best you can offer them is their
worst fear— annihilation, loss of personality, noth
ingness. . . . They want to last, they want security,
they want permanence. I said, I can’t go on being
your minister if you insist on this appalling cruelty,
I can’t bear to be a party to it. . • • Why not just
let them have happiness— but no, they had to have the
chance of being more than animals— I said it was sim
ply an opportunity of beginning an eternity of tormentiP-
10 Ibid., p. 9*7.
11 Anthony West, The Vintage (Boston: Houghton Miff
lin Company, 1950), p. 256-97•
11
Wallis, however, finds Ransome*s brand of mercy— permission
to have all one's desires forever— more unendurable than any
other conceivable "mercy."
An American version in the traditional mold of the
rebellion is presented with variations and sympathetically
from the Devil's viewpoint in The Devil Takes a Hill Town
(1939), a vehicle for Charles Givens's study of Southern
labor conditions. The realistically treated fantasy takes
place in the depression period in East Tennessee on the site
of the TVA project. Both God (Mr. Peebles) and the Devil
(Mr. Hooker), acting very much like two old-timers of the
hill country, come to the valley to watch the progress of
the organization of labor, Communism, and the Hew Deal in
the hill town of Lees* With the feeble help of Brother
Wally, Mr. Peebles sets out to bring the town back to God,
assisted half-heartedly by Mr. Hooker, who had only wanted
to have people "pleasure" themselves, not go all out for
meanness and hate. Completely discouraged by the lack of
attention from the townspeople, Mr. Peebles starts to bring
on a second Flood; but the people forestall him, making
their own catastrophe by blowing up all the factories in
the town and creating sufficient misery for themselves. So
Mr. Peebles, giving up, sets out with Brother Wally up the
Glory Road to Heaven, followed at a little distance by a
. slightly, wistful. Mr. Hooker.__________ _ . . . j
12
The above sketch of the plot will reveal that Mr,
Hooker is a pleasant, rather weak individual; and his own
story of his exile bears out the characterization:
Mr. Hooker took a long drink out of the bottle.
Then he got up off the log and started walking up
and down, staggering a little, Finally he stopped
pacing, stared out over the Valley, his back to
Brother Wally, "A man can't he'p what he was borned
to be, Brother Wally,” he said in a quavering voice.
”1 was borned the World*s Number One Rebel and I led
me a revolution that failed.” He staggered back and
sat down on the log. ”If Gen*ral Washin*ton's revo
lution had failed, then Gen'ral Washin* ton* s cause
woulda gone down in the history books as a wrong
cause. And yet fail or succeed, it woulda been a
good, right cause. My revolution went down in the
history books as a wrong cause, because God wrote
all the books. Somebody wrote that some'eres. I
hain't,” said Mr. Hooker piously “trying to steal
nobody's idears. . . . He banished me and took most
of my power away and then He started puttin' out
His propergander . . . .” He was silent for a
while. Then he got a blue bandana handkerchief from
under his horse blanket and dabbed his eyes. ”You*d
think,” Mr. Hooker said quaver ingly, ”to hear Him
tell hit that I was the wu*st feller He ever created.
When that hain't true a-tall. I've spent my whole
life-time bringin* pl*asure to people. . • • I've
been tryin* to figger God out ever since that day so
long ago when He give me the boot. Now, workin* to
gether, me and Him coulda fixed up a Glory Land that
woulda had people blowin* their brains out to get to
hit. But, no. No, He hain't a man to divide His
authority. He's got a single-track brain. • . • I've
been whuppin* Him ragged ever since He'kicked me out
.... But He's one of thesehere egomaniacs, Brother
Wally . . . .”12
So far, then, according to these three authors, the Devil
12 0. G. Givens, The Devil Takes a Hill Town (New
York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1939), pp. T2T T-33.
13
by his very nature cannot understand anything of God.
Strongly at variance with the above reports is the story of
Robin Goodfellow, who helps a doctor in The Devil and the
Doctor (1940) by D. H. Keller. Jacob Hubler, a retired gen
eral practitioner, returns home one evening to find a dark
stranger comfortably ensconced in his sitting-room. Over
tea the stranger tells the doctor his life-story. The doc
tor, though interested in demonology', is a man of science
and therefore suspects the stranger of insanity. But the two
have several talks. Things begin to work out mysteriously
to achieve the doctor*s deepest desire of finding an old
farm meeting his numerous and exact specifications for the
building of a stone fence. Robin Goodfellow, the stranger,
not only assists in finding a suitable farm in the middle of
the Hex country of Pennsylvania but also provides the doctor
with a wife. One of the elders of the church there, however,
perhaps jealous of the doctor*s excellent reputation and
good favor, creates suspicion of the stranger*s actions
among the rest of the church people--suspicion which mounts
to something like hysteria and results in threats of vio
lence. The stranger then provides himself with witnesses
and a story of insanity and disappears, leaving the doctor
with his farm and fence and wife and a number of hard-to-
explain incidents.
Keller*s provocative idea,.which bears a.strong re-
14
semblance to a heretical doctrine of the Bogomils, ^ suffers
from an inferior presentation. The characters are too black-
and-white. She delineation of the country characters and
church people, despite the whimsy of Robin Goodfellow, is
done with so much venom and lack of subtlety as to make sus
pect the writer’s own disinterestedness as an observer of
life.
As for his origin, Goodfellow explains to the doctor
that there never was a war in heaven. A pair of twins, one
blonde, one brunette, play around the universe until called :
one day to their father’s library. He tells them that it is'
time for them to continue the family tradition of creating,
even though the material of creation is almost gone. In
fact, there is only enough for one animal for each boy.
After creating they are to return for their gifts and to re
cord their work in the Book of Creation before it is finally
closed.
They decide to make the new animals on earth so that
these can be with the others. The older brother makes an
animal just like himself, a fairly good Imitation of a god.
Then he goes to sleep. The younger brother, not knowing
13 The Bogomils, a heretical sect originating in Bul
garia, believe that God had two sons; the elder, Satanall,
rebelled and created the heavens but had to appeal to God to,
create man, who sold himself to Satanail. The younger, '
Michael, was„sent_to. teach.and redeem_them. ____________ I
15
what to create and annoyed by the animal* s lonesome howling,
makes an appropriate female animal (somewhat smaller because
of the scantiness of the material), since it is the custom
to create in pairs. When the older brother awakes, he is
greatly incensed and complains to his father that his bro
ther should have made something different instead of copy
ing his own work. His father thinks it only fair to make a
female but is rather disturbed at the idea of having droves
of animals running around on the earth looking like gods.
He therefore decides to give them souls; thus, though for
millions of years they won*t know what to do with their
souls, in time they will advance and be like the gods them
selves. And the father assigns the brothers the responsi
bility of watching over the growth of the new animals.
He then grants the gifts the brothers ask for. The
older brother asks that he be the chief ruler and god of
the soul-animals. The father, though thinking the concep
tion rather queer, grants the request. The younger brother,
not really desiring anything, but feeling sorry for the new,
bewildered animals, asks that he may be allowed to teach then
and prepare them for being gods. The older*s second wish is
that his brother be banished and made to live by himself
that there my be no strife in his realm and that he alone
may live in heaven, adding that his brother should live in
hell,.a.cheerless place-created Jby_.their remote ancestors.— i
16
Even though this request is granted, the older brother still
fears the younger because though he himself will be wor
shiped, his brother will be loved as the teacher and bene
factor; he therefore requests that the animals be made to
blame his brother for all the evils that overtake them. The
father grants this too with the reservation that in every
generation there will be one or at most two seekers after
truth to be permitted to learn all the Devil will teach
them. Then he turns sadly to the younger brother:
"You'll be a wanderer, a thing hated and cursed by
all who are born of the female you created in kindly
pity, Youfve been a dreamer of dreams and a follower
of idle fancies* Since the Creation, you've spent
more time in watering the flowers of Heaven than in
planning your political future.
To his father's delight, however, the younger brother asks
that he may be allowed to give the humans their dreams,***®
The foregoing contrasting accounts of Satan* s origin
and rebellion are characteristic of the varied approaches of
modern writers, Satan may have been either the ruling
Oyarsa of Earth who became bent and destructive, as Lewis
suggests, or he may have been the naive son of a god who was
duped by his tyrannical older brother, as Keller conceives
14 D. H. Keller, The Devil and the Doctor (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1940), p, 46.
15 Ibid,, pp. 10-47.
17
it. Lewis develops his idea of the Devil* s fall in The
Great Divorce by pointing out, its magnitude and in The
Screwtape Letters by suggesting its motivation. Givens,
while sympathizing with the rebel, does not try to justify
him but nevertheless intimates that he has had something of
an underdog*s treatment. West, while appearing to sympa
thize, undermines Hans cane *s points by show tog their horror.
The various positions are irreconcilable. The same disa
greement is the most outstanding feature in descriptions of
the Devil*s character and present activities, which will be
studied next.
CHAPTER II
THE DEVIL*S PERSONALITY AND PRESENT ACTIVITIES
Satan*s present activities are conditioned by His
manner and motivation* Different authors vary his person
ality according to their needs, variation resulting in the
most colorful, diversified personality the Devil has ever
had* The present chapter in this study of the contemporary
Devil ,a3 he appears in fiction will consider his personality
as revealed by his appearance, his manner, his motivation,
and his methods and techniques in his dealings with men*
In the ebullience of his activities Satan has pene
trated Into almost every type of fiction. In a fairly well-
written historical novel, Peace, My Daughters (1949), Shir
ley Barker makes a study of the Salem witch-hunts and sug
gests that, despite the neurotic condition of the girls
morbidly interested in witchcraft and despite the self-seek-
, ing of the New England ministers and the receptivity of the
people, natural means are not enough to account for the sud
den wave of panic and terrorism that swept the region. She
therefore recounts the history of the witch hunts in fic
tionalized form and introduces into the story the figure of '
John Horne, shoemaker and Satan* John Horne comes to Salem
with his evil and finds the group of bored servant girls
practicing witchcraft under the aegis of the Vodun-worship-
19
±ng Tituba in the ambitious, dissatisfied minister* s kitchen.
He takes these strands and weaves them carefully into the
evil that became the Salem witchcraft trials* Only one per
son, a housewife named Remember Wins ter, knows him for what
he is and has the courage to reject the bargain he offers
her. And though through trickery he finally has his will
with her body, she can still reject him with her soul.
Frustrated, he leaves Salem, though the evil and persecution
he began there take a long time to run themselves out.
While Miss Barker* s dialogue is stiff and there is a
certain confusion of purpose in achieving her effects, she
has a way of combining fantasy with realistic detail and
touches of historical fact that makes the entity wholly be
lievable. She adds to this a sensitive description of the
country; rounded, believable characterizations; and flashes
of real poetry.
One of her best characterizations is that of John
Horne, who has put himself into as handsome a human figure
as he could devise for himself. Miss Barker portrays him
for the most part with sympathy, which she discloses in de
tails such as following his stream of consciousness as he
feels himself growing too much like a man or as he forgets
a detail of human living like leaving fingerprints. He is
sometimes gay, sometimes sombre, and only occasionally do
age and evil show out of his eye.s. Like, the .traditional . .
20
Devil, lie has the ability to change his shape at will, as
when he becomes Tom Purchas for Remember* s benefit.
The Devil has even found his way into pulp fiction,
not to proselytize, merely to thrill. The thrill is
achieved by a man who in his dreams establishes contact with
the Dark One in Robert Block's short story "The Dark Demon . ! $ ■
The Dark One desires to come to earth and incarnate himself
in the dreamer. Since this is only a short story, however,
one of the dreamer's intrusive friends kills the incarnation
before anything exciting can happen. The appearance of the
Dark One is nevertheless significant because of his simi
larity to the medieval concept of Asmodeus. He is "black
all over, and furry, with a snout like a hog, green eyes,
and the claws and fangs of a wild beast.
The incarnation idea is carried out with more effect
iveness and better results by C. S. Lewis in Perelandra
(1946), the second novel of his trilogy and a sequel to Out
of the Silent Planet. Elwin Ransom, the philologist, is
again the hero. This time he is summoned by the eldila to
the planet Venus, known in Old Solar as Perelandra. Here a
replica of the earthly creation has just taken place, and the
Bent Oyarsa of Earth is planning an attack of temptation on
1 Robert Block, "The Dark Demon," The Opener of the
Way (Sauk City, Wisconsin? Arkham House, 1945), pp. Tl2~22.
- - 2 Ibid., p. 118.---- - --------------
21
it* Formerly, as lias been mentioned, he was imprisoned on
Earth; but the penetration of humans to other planets has
opened the way for an invasion* Ransom is sent to defend
Perelandra* On this ravishing planet he finds a green lady,
the Queen and Mother of the new race; there is a King too,
but he is away at the moment* It is here that Weston, the
single-minded physicist of Out of the Silent Planet, arrives,
in his space-sphere* He has allowed himself to be possessed
by the Devil and gradually becomes the Un-Man as he tries to
tempt the green-tinted Eve* RansamJjs resistance first takes
the form of unsuccessful argument; then he resorts to bare
handed mortal combat and finally kills the possessed Weston
after a gory battle* After the fight and a long journey
through the inner realms of the planet, he comes out, meets
the King-Adam, about to set up a perfect world, and before
his return to earth is sbown a glimpse of that eternal exist
ence* Lewis*s Imagination again brings forth novel crea
tions on Perelandra and some lyrically beautiful descrip
tion* His predilection for classic forms has led him into a
novel closely approaching a prose epic in many of its con-
i
ventions, and the whole is permeated with an atmosphere of
convincing fantasy-realism* As one critic remarks, "Not
for nothing has Mr. Lewis been around in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries* He knows how to make the fantastic
22
explicit.fl3
The appearance and actions of the Un-Man are con
ceived by Lewis in a fashion consistent with his concept of
evil as complete self-absorption. The Un-Man is described
as he appeared to Ransom just after mutilating some Fere-
landrean frogs:
He did not look like a sick man: but he looked like
a very dead one. The face which he raised from tor
turing the frog had that terrible power which the
face of a corpse sometimes has of simply rebuffing
every conceivable human attitude one can adopt to
wards it. The expressionless mouth, the unwinking
stare of the eyes, something heavy and inorganic in
the very folds of the cheek said clearly: "I have
features as you have, but there is nothing in com
mon between you and me.” . . • And now forcing its
way up into consciousness, thrusting aside every
mental habit and eve|*y longing not to believe, came
the conviction that this, in fact, was not a man:
that Weston*s body was kept, walking and undecaying,
in Perelandra by some wholly different kind of life,
and that Weston himself was gone.
It looked at Ransom in silence and at last began
to smile. . . . It seemed to summon Ransom, with a
horrible naivete of welcome, into the world of its
own pleasures. . . . It did not defy goodness, it
ignored it to the point of annihilation. Ransom
perceived that he had never before seen anything but
half-hearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This crea
ture was whole-hearted. The extremity of its evil
had passed beyond all struggle into some state which
bore a horrible similarity to innocence.4
The Devil in the Un-Man has, like John Horne, studied the
manners of men and has done his best to imitate them; the
3 Leonard Bacon, “The Imaginative Power of C. S. '
Lewis,” The Saturday Review of Literature, 27:9, April 8 ,
1944 ......“ . . _______________________________ _______________________
23
Un-Man’s Devil, however, does not succeed quite so well as
John Horne. Hansom is able to distinguish a difference:
Its eyes moved like the eyes of a living man hut it
was hard to he sure what it was looking at, or whe
ther it really used the eyes as organs of vision at
all. One got the impression of a force that clever
ly kept the pupils of those eyes fixed in a suitable
direction while the mouth talked hut which, for its
own purpose, used wholly different modes of percep
tion. The thing sat down close to the Lady’s head
on the far side of her from Ransom. If you could
call It sitting down. The body did not reach its
squatting position by the normal movements of a man:
it was more as if some external force maneuvered it
into the right position and let it drop. It was im
possible to point to any particular motion which was
definitely non-human. Ransom had the sense of watch
ing an imitation of living motions which had been
very well studied and was technically correct: but
somehow it lacked the master touch. 5
Lewis’s Un-Man is the most chilling of all the mod
ern descriptions of the Devil. Thomas Mann’s Satan is per
haps the most interesting. Doctor Faustus (1948) purports
to be the biography of a brilliant German composer who
sells his soul to the Devil In return for creative genius;
it is also the biography of the modern German spirit as seen
by Mann. The story is related by the composer’s faithful
but incredulous humanistic friend, Serenus Zeitblom, and
takes place before, during, and after World War I. Adrian
4 G. S. Lewis, Perelandra (Hew York: The Macmillan
Company, 1946), pp. 112-13.
5 Ibid., pp. 125-26.
Leverkuhn, a mah of genius and pride, is reared in medieval
ism-drenched Kaiserasehem, studies theology in Leipzig, and
then turns to composing. He is haunted, however, by the fear
that music has nothing more to say and no new means of ex
pression, The opening incident of his Devil-bargain is his
introduction by a procurer into a brothel, where he meets
and repulses Esmeralda, the little sea-maid. .He later
traces her down, though she warns him of her disease. Of
the two doctors he consults when the first skin infection
manifests itself, the one dies and the other is arrestedj so
he does nothing more about his health. Later during a so
journ in Italy the Devil appears and offers him, since he
has already given himself up, twenty-four years of mingled
creativeness, suffering, and coldness of life before his end.
Adrian accepts and pays with recurring migraines for his
startlingly new music. Only one man succeeds in piercing
through his cold aloofness and winning his friendship; ob
scurely offended by this friendship, Adrian in his coldness
arranges for the friend to court a lady for him and betray
him. The friend is then shot by his former mistress. Lev
erkuhn1 s only other show of affection is with Hepomuk, his '
charming four-year-old nephew, who shortly dies of spinal
meningitis. At the end of the twenty-four-year period
Adrian writes his greatest work, ’ ’The Lamentation of Doctor
Faustus,1 ’ calls his friends together, confesses in the best -
Faustian tradition, and is about to play when he Taints*
From that time he spends the rest of his life in hopeless
Insanity.
This very effective work of Thomas Mann is charac
terized by his usual tortured prose, leitmotif symbolism,
discursive analysis, and intertwining and foreshadowing of
events to rob than of all their impact when they happen— a
style which places all its emphasis on the intellectual con
tent of the story. The whole story line is paralleled by
the writer* s account of events in Germany at the time he is
writing, during the allied offensive on Germany in World War
II. He draws a comparison between Adrian’s story and that
of Germany, explaining that the war was brought on by the
same desire for "extravagant living" on the part of the Ger
mans as that which prompted Adrian Leverkuhn to sell his
soul. The compact, incidentally, while decked out in the
full regalia of the standard Devil-pact, has none of the
traditions of the Faust compacts.
The transaction between Adrian and the Devil is Sat
an* s only appearance in the whole book. It is described
half-hopefully as an hallucination by Zeitblom, who copies
Adrian’s own account of it which he wrote on manuscript
almost immediately after the interview. Adrian seems more
positive— "But seen Him I have, at last, at last! He was
with me, here in this hall, He sought me out; unexpected,
26
yet long expected.”6 Satan appears to him after an attack
of migraine when, stricken by a cutting cold, he looks up
and sees someone sitting on the horsehair sofa. The intru
der is an ugly losel with a small sports cap over one ear,
reddish hair sticking out over the other, reddish lashes,
pink eyes, a drooping nose, and loud check clothes. He has,
however, a pleasant, quiet, slow, slightly nasal voice,
which avers that German is his favorite language and Adrian
; one of his chosen people. He regrets that he cannot do away
with the cold that accompanies him. ”But the fact is, I am
cold. How otherwise could I hold out and find it possible
: to dwell where I dwell?When Adrian complains of his
appearance, he gives the following thought-provoking answer:
”How do I look? Ho, it is really good that you ask
me if I wot how I look, for by my troth I wot not.
Or wist not, you called it to my attention. Be sure,
I reck nothing at all to my outward appearance, I
leave it so to say to itself. It is sheer chance how
| I look, or rather it comes out like that, it happeth
like that according to the circumstances, without my
taking heed. Adaptation, mimicry, you know it, of
course. Mummery and jugglery of mother Nature, who
always has her tongue in her cheek.”8
; As, however, he discusses music criticism with Adrian, his
6 Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (H. T. Lowe-Porter,
translatorj New York: iQf red A. Knopf, 1948), p. 222.
7 Ibid., p. 226.
8 Ibid., p. 228.
appearance changes* He acquires a white collar, a bow-tie,
and horn-rimmed spectacles; dimples and thinning, fuzzy
black hair over a lofty brow; and soft thin hands accompany
ing himself with awkward, refined gestures* When he dis
cusses theology his appearance changes once more, this time
to that of Professor Schleppfuss of Adrian’s Leipzig theol
ogical- student days. Just before he leaves, the Devil goes
back to his first form* Altogether, he seems to change like
a cloud, without control over his form.
Satan is not always unconscious of his appearance,
however; in some circumstances he lavishes considerable care
upon his looks. Keller’s Robin Goodfellow is of course a
handsome fellow to match his benevolent personality. One of
,the doctor’s daughters describes him with considerable
p seudo-poetry s
”He has the most wonderful hands, ^et-black eyes,
long black hair* When he runs his fingers through
that hair, they look like white gulls flying through
the storm-clouds of the night*"9
He partakes, despite his original nature, of many of the
characteristics of the medieval Devil. He has no shadow;
he attracts all sorts of animals and birds and teaches them;
his presence makes a fire glow with ethereal flames; and he
gives out luminous gold pieces which have the convenient
9 Keller, op. cit., p. 68.
28
power of disappearing upon occasion.
Mr. Hooker, the Tennessee Satan, makes his appearance
through the prosaic method of dropping off a train. Wrapped
in a black horse blanket and shivering, he buys an old,
abandoned lumberyard and builds a little sheet-iron shack to
live in. He installs a pot-bellied stove and keeps two lit
tle Negro boys supplying sawdust to keep the stove going,
1 even when the thermometer passes the ninety-degree mark.^ 1
; As for appearance, he is a tall man with black eyes; a long,
, straight nose; and a full sensuous mouth. He has. coal black
hair and eyebrows and small ears even though he is an old
man. His smile reveals three front teeth missing. ^
Another mountain Devil is introduced in Weldon
. Stone1s light-hearted modem folk tale about the Ozarks,
Devil Take a Whittier (1948). Lem Scaggs, with the help of
| Old Nick, is the best whittler in the world. Even after he,'
a hillman, marries a girl from the level country, he keeps
on whittling under Old Nick*s influence and tutelage* Old ■
'
Nick finally makes a bargain with Lem. He and his son Lew
can have an amazing book filled with pictures of animals
from A to Z if Lem will whittle out an elephant for the 1
Devil, who would then breathe the breath of life into it
and show it to the Creator, pointing out that he too could
10 Givens, op. oit., p. 49.
11 Ibid., pp. 84-85.
29
create. Lem drops everything for the project of whittling
out a gigantic elephant; and he spends weeks putting on the
finishing touches until when Old Nick finally comes for the
animal, only a tiny statuette is left. In disgust, Old Nick
leaves Lem forever and allows him to start ploughing his land
and making a living.
This Ozark-Devil is largely traditional in his appear
ance, though in a mild and inoffensive way. He has pretty
horns and large cloven feet, nicely polished, and wears a
brilliant turkey-red cape. He is perfectly at home in the
hills, adept with the dialect and fond of chewing tobacco.
And he is accomplished, able to tootle enchantingly on a
pretty silvery flute tunes he composes himself, which in
spire Lem* s whittling or bewitch even the parson into danc- :
ing. Of course he is able to ignore cold and snow, even
In
when it melts on his cape. *
Ransome, too, melts into his self-fabricated, resort-
i
concentration camp of a Hell. He is cheerful and bluff,
casually dressed in soft flannels and sport shirt; and he '
preaches a casual acceptance: MItfs all a matter of accept-!
ance, once you*ve got used to the idea of taking things as
i
they are, everything jills along marvellously.”13 Despite
12 Weldon Stone, Devil Take a Whittier (New York:
Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1948), pp. 3,84.
_ 13 West, op. cit., . p_. 52.
30
his friendly interest and intimate manner, however, Wallis
can only think of him as an alien personalitys
His healthy face was not in any sense cruel • . .
it had simply the appearance of something closed,
like a seaside house with its windows hoarded over
for the winter, a locked, bankrupt theater, the
face, almost, that goes with deafness.-1 - 4
And it is this feeling of lack of kinship that repulses
Wallis*
Perhaps the most anachronistic of Satan*s appearances
is that of the Devil in Wall*s The Unfortunate Fursey.
The story takes place in tenth-century Ireland. The Devil
and his myrmidons, in their first attack on the abbey of
Clonmacnoise, are all exorcised and repair to the cell of
the simple-minded, tongue-tied (he therefore cannot exorcise
them) brother Fursey, considered by his brethren too simple
to do anything except pare edible roots in the abbey kitchen.
There the Devil explains the intrusion to the wisp of hair
and the two button-like eyes peering agonizedly over the
quilt, nI intend keeping a foothold in Clonmacnoise until I
clear it of its pale inhabitants. You, my dear Fursey, are
our bridgehead.1 1 He tempts Fursey with the usual attrac
tions; and though Fursey remains firm, the monks decide that
to get rid of the Devil they must expel the unfortunate bro
ther. He is taken in by an old witch, who is subsequently
14 Ibid., p. 273.
31
killed, by a rival sorcerer and who bequeathes her familiar,
Albert, to Fursey. He is apprehended by the Bishop, however,
for trafficking in sorcery. The Devil, disguised as the
Oriental Prince Apollyon, visiting the Bishop at the time,
suggests that Fursey is merely demon-possessed. He is tor
tured in the process of exorcism but escapes with the help
of the Devil and an elemental named Gertie the Sylph whom
the Devil has borrowed as being outside the jurisdiction of ;
regular Christian exorcisms in order to bedevil the Bishop. ;
Fursey takes refuge with an old man and his becoming daugh- .
ter, Maeve, but determines to give himself up to be burned
when he learns that she is engaged to a soldier. The pre
lates are about to have Fursey lure die Devil and his minions
onto an island in the middle of a lake which can be blessed
when the Devil himself turns up and offers a compromise.
The Archfiend will grant the country immunity from such
temptations as can be summed up by the word sex if in return!
i
; the clergy will promise not to lay undue stress on the
; ' I
wickedness of simony, nepotism, drunkenness, perjury, and
I
murder. Then upon their acceptance he stamps the foreheads 1
of the clergy with his own seal, pride. That done and the
Devil gone, the ecclesiastics are about to burn Fursey, when
in a sudden access of courage and rebellion, he anoints a
nearby broom, flies off on it to the church where Maeve is
marrying the soldier, abducts her on his broom--sidesaddle— _ •
and migrates to England to set tip a grocery store in magic
and safety.
The story gains its humor from the combination of
medieval archaisms and anachronistic modern English, its
humor of situation, and satirical understatement. Wall,
however, lacks the cool detachment of a true satirist.
The Devil here appears as a calm, suave, Mephisto-
phelian gentleman, completely at variance with the medieval
Devil-tradition of horrific ugliness. He cannot change his
appearance except by the usual human method of disguise, as
when he appears with a heavily veiled retinue, dressed as an
Oriental prince, though still the same in feature and color-
ing. Like Robin Goodfellow, Wall*s Devil passes out gold
and gifts, all of which dis|*ppear,;after he leaves.
Thus the Devil’s appearance may shift according to
the author’s whimj unbound by considerations of form or tra
dition, the Devil may take on local accretions or differ
startlingly from the traditional concept. The same varia
tion will be apparent in Satan’s manner.
Lewis, making his Un-Man consistently evil, has ho
patience with the concept of the Devil as a gentleman:
He [Ransom] did not dare to let the enemy out of his
sight for a moment, and every day its society became
more unendurable. He had full opportunity to learn
the falsity of the maxim that the Prince of Darkness
is a gentleman. Again and again he felt that a suave
and subtle Mephistopheles with red cloak and rapier
33
and a feather In his cap, or even a sombre tragic
Satan out of Paradise Lost, would have been a wel
come release from the tiling he was actually doomed
to watch. . . . It showed plenty of subtlety and
intelligence when talking with the Lady; but Ran
som soon perceived that it regarded intelligence
simply and solely as a weapon, which It no more
wished to employ in its off-duty hours than a sol
dier has to do bayonet practice when he Is on
leave. Thought was for it a device necessary to
certain ends, but thought in itself did not inter
est it. ®
Robin Goodfellow is, however, always the perfect
guest and an intelligent conversationalist besides. Of
course he has a few traditional peculiarities! he delights
i
in a fire; he disappears when the doctor1s small daughter
winds a ball of yarn around him three times; he disappears
again when she brings him a bouquet of wlldflowers mixed
with garlic; and he disappears yet again when Angelica
enters wearing a coral necklace. His reasons for these
antipathies, however, are just as unconventional as the
rest of his history* He delights in a fire, not because of
: its hellish warmth, but because of its utility and its pur
ifying qualitiesAs for the other eccentricities:
"I.lm somewhat of a neurotic personality. I have the
most interesting phobias and antipathies. Among
them Is the fear of being bound: of course, the
little girl meant no harm, but when I suddenly real
ized that she had the yarn three times around my
chair, I suddenly felt the necessity of leaving at
once. It seemed that if I didn!t do so, I might be
15 Lewis, Perelandra, pp. 132-33.
16 . Keller, op. cit., p.__41.
34
"bound with chains— a most disagreeable experience, I
assure you; and since it has happened to many of my
friends, any suggestion of it alarms me. In regard
to the garlic, that’s an odor I've always detested;
they use it so much in Italy and the south of Prance.
I always associate it with suffering. Have you ever
been in a battle where every breath yop take is im
pregnated with all kinds of frames and chemicals from
exploding shells and poison gases? That’s what gar
lic reminds me of. Naturally I had to get away from
the flowers as soon as I smelled the garlic. Now,
finally, in regard to the coral: every bead a drop
of blood of some brave man; every coral bead means
suffering, the anguish of the conquered, who had
done no wrong except to be the weaker. When I see
coral, I cannot stand it— I have to get away.1 1
The Doctor nodded sympathetically.
”1 can understand that, but if, as you told me
once, you’re the Devil, literature doesn’t credit
you with such a sensitive nervous system."
"Right— but as you’ve previously said, all the
literature was written by one side. My side has
never been given a chance to explain or defend its
position.
Mr. Hooker is likewise a pleasant, well-intentioned
Devil. Like Mr. Peebles he enjoys playing the harmonica,
although he prefers blues to spirituals. He has a penchant 1
toward playing practical jokes, such as sending a bucket of
milk to his house when Mr. Peebles is there to watch Mr.
Peebles drink it and find out that it is whitewash. He has 1
even less ability to watch evil than God: he turns his head
away and plays his harmonica loudly to distract himself from
the scene of the mob lynching the union agitators. And he
1*7 Ibid., pp. 233-34.
is even kindly disposed to Mr. Peebles, despite his ban
ishment; for when Brother Wally is about to hide Mr. Peeb
les's gpld cape (which he wears to work miracles), Mr. Hook
er admonishes him, "Don't try to put nothin* over on the Old
Squire. You wouldn* t get away with hit, and, besides, I
don't want to see nothin' put over on the Old Squire. He's
got Him enough troubles as hit is.'1-^® He is most concerned,
though, about his own self-defensive moodss "Nobody seems
to understand me and my work. I go around doin' a lot of
temptin' but that's because I'm brangin' pl'asure to the
fo'ks I tempt.
Stone's Ozarks Devil is even something of a coward.
When Lem. threatens him with a knife, he stops taunting and
withdraws all his difficulties. He has to have Lem's help
in catching a rainbow trout; and when he drops his flute
whistle in the pool, he cries quite childishly, much to
Lem's embarrassment.
The Devil that plagues Fursey is certainly no coward;
neither is he soft-hearted. But he is always polite and
tries to deprecate his little business deals as much as
possible. He is usually amiable and very man-of-the-world, :
frequently even helpful. His help, however, through lack
18 Givens, op. cit., p. 279.
19 P* 228•
36
of practice, is likely to be inefficient and uncertain.
Fursey senses this when the Devil comes to him after the
uncomfortable session of exorcism and says that he has a
pl&n. Fursey is skeptical:
"No, thank you,” rejoined Fursey* "I’d rather be
disembowelled. I don’t think you’re a man whose judg
ment can be trusted.”
“Don’t be silly,” replied Satan. I can effect
your escape.”
“That’s all very well,” replied Fursey, “but will
I survive the project?”20
Iblees, the Mohammedan Satan, is completely cold and
c
evil; but he too is always suave and gentlemanly. He appears
as the villain in Theodora DuBois’s frothy romance, The
Devil’s Spoon (1930). "He who sups with the Devil must have
a long spoon"j Haroot, a lesser fallen angel with some abil
ity in magic, finds this out when he is released from his
cave in Babel and sent on a mission to earth by Iblees* He
I |
iis to possess a human and prepare the way for a new god of |
I
Iblees’s choice by providing him lodging and working mir- !
i ,
acles for him. Haroot, however, enchanted with his body’s
wife, rebels a second time, makes the hazardous journey to j
Heaven riding double with a valkyr, gives warning of Ibises’s
i j
plot, and is permitted to return to earth and live the re
mainder of his body’s life happily with his wife.
2Q Mervyn Wall, The Unfortunate Fursey (New York:
Crown Publishers, 1947), pp*-'148-49. --
The story is frivolous and extremely superficial, but
it is handled gracefully and possesses a certain charm of
fantasy, even though the mixture of deities hinders main
tenance of the suspension of disbelief# Iblees is easily
impressed by appearances, Haroot knows. He is also some
thing of a monomaniac, obsessed with his idea of setting up
a god subordinate to himself on earth. Whether he is rul-
»
ing in state from his cavern in Gehenna, seated on Solomon*s,
old throne with his tall, dark figure swathed in a purple
robe, or whether, dressed as a businessman except for his
tail and one misshapen shoe, he is seated behind a desk in
his Manhattan office, Iblees is always bad-tempered, impa
tient of interruptions, sensual, and malevolent.
In striking contrast to the satirical or fantastic
presentation of the Devil is the conception of Satan in the
novel IJnder the Sun of Satan (1949) by Georges Bernanos,
.whose style is comparable to that of Dostoievsky in the
power and intensity of its expression. In the dual plot of
the novel both sides of Satan*s warfare are depicted. On
the one hand a peasant girl descends to him with hardly any !
resistance and even seme eagerness; on the other a humble
priest, despite his certainty that he is damned, ascends and
21 Theodora DuBois, The Devil* s Spoon (Hew York:
Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1930), pp. 17-18•
escapes the Tempter. The story is divided into a prologue
and two parts. In the prologue, the peasant girl is pre
sented thinking, in her desire for something different in
her life, that giving herself over completely to vice will
gain her a certain pre-eminence in wickedness. Part I is
the story of the young priesty apparently completely un
fitted for his duties by his slowness and awkwardness. He
is humble, though; and in an encounter with Satan he comes
to believe that though he himself Is damned, he will be the
ransom for others; and in this same encounter he receives
the power to see into souls. He meets and "sees1 ' the pea
sant girl and in turn makes her see herself in all her pet
tiness. She defiantly attempts a last great act of wicked
ness in committing suicide but repents at the last moment.
The young priest, defying her unbelieving father, carries
Iher to the doors of the church. For this act of rashness he
i3 censured and demoted by his superiors. In Part II as an
'old man, having spent his life In a poverty-stricken dio
cese constantly burdened with the sins of the multitudes
that flock to him, he dies in the confessional just as he .Is
visited by a complacent, rationalistic writer who is prepared
to praise and envy his peaceful life.
The peasant girl Is symbolic of the world of un
bridled appetites, the world of Satan, while the Abb# Don-
issan is patterned_ on a nineteenth-century jsaint, Jean-Marie
39
Viannay, the Cur6 d*Ars, and represents the battleground of
the forces of evil and redemption living "under the sun of
Satan." Bernanos writes with detailed, apparently cool, al
most naturalistic precision; yet he selects details in such
a way that the narrative seems to overflow in its intensity.
In his attitude toward his characters he wavers between sym
pathy and disgust.
The Abb6 Donlssan*s experience with Satan occurs one !
night while he is walking to a neighboring town to hear con
fession. He loses his road repeatedly and mysteriously in
the dark and becomes excited. He is about to retrace his
way when he realizes that a small, lively man is walking
with him, scampering along silently, now in front, now in
back of him. The man finally speaks to the priest with a
'reassuring voice in a tone of hidden gaiety, describing him
self as a horse-trader; and when the priest*s legs give way
from weariness, the little man helps the abb§ to lie down on.
this cloak, supported by his body. It is only when the priest
begins to be lulled and relaxed that the little man dis
closes his true identity and motive.
The disclosure begins as the priest leans back upon
his new-found friend:
One arm circled his back in a slow, gentle, irresis
tible embrace. He let his head slump forward alto
gether, pressing It close Into the hollow of shoul
der and neck. So close that he felt upon his fore
head and his cheeks the warmth of breath.
40
"Sleep upon me, nursling or my heart," continued,
the voice without change of tone. "Hold me hard,
stupid fool, little priest, my comrade. Rest. Ifve
Mought you hard, hounded you hard. Here you are.
How you love me I But how you will love me better
yet, for I am not ready to quit you, my cherubim,
my tonsured beggar, my good old companion foreverI "22
He feels a kiss on his forehead, and the voice murmurs again:
"You have received the kiss of a friend," quietly
said the horse-dealer, wiping his lips on the back
of his hand. "I in my turn have filled you with my
self, you tabernacle of Christ, dear simpleton! I
Don’t be frightened at so small a thing: I have
kissed others besides you, many others. Do you want
me to tell you? I kiss you all, waking or sleeping,
dead or alive. There’s the truth. It’s my delight
to be with you, little men-gods, odd, odd, such odd
creaturesl Frankly, I don’t often leave you alone.
You bear me in your dark flesh, I, of whom light is
the essence— in the triple fastness of your guts,—
1, Lucifer, Light-Bearer . . . I have you all num
bered. Hot One of you escapes me. By its smell I
recognize, every beast in my little flock. . • . But
enough of that, tool Think of me only as the friend,
the companion of this moonlight night, a good fellow.
. . . I want only to help you and have you forget me
immediately, I won’t forget you. Ho, indeed. • . •
I’m going to leave you. . . . Hever again will you
see me. A man sees me but once. Swell in your stu
pid obstinacy. Ohl If only you knew the wages your ,
master has set aside for you--we alone are not his
dupes, and as between his love and his hatred, we !
have chosen— through a sovereign sagacity, beyond the
reach of your muddy brains--his hatred . . • but why
enlighten you on »this topic, prostrate dog, enslaved ]
brute, chattel who daily creates his masterl . . .
It Is permitted to us to test you, from this day'for
ward and until the hour of your death. Then too,
what have I done myself except to obey One more pow
erful? . . . He is not far. . . . For the last few j
moments I’ve noticed His scent. . . . Ohl Ohl How
22 Georges Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan (Harry L.
Binsse, translator; Hew York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1949),
pp. 116-17. :
hard a master He isi * • • You know nothing ahout us,
you godlets full of self-sufficiency. Our rage is so
patient! Our firmness so clear-headed. It is true
that He has made us serve His purposes, for His word
cannoT"“ be withstood. "23
Satan here, then, is the adversary, delighting in working
all the evil possible and creating as much misery as he
dares5 hut he is subject always to the will, even the com
mand of God and must he a submissive servant. John Horne,
too, though he is a mischief maker, is not a rebellious ad
versary, but merely a cog in the world wheel, predestined to
do evil.
Other writers find Satan a more determined, less sub
missive adversary, openly rebellious* Charles Williams pre
sents this point of view in his mystic thriller, War in
Heaven. . In the plot the Archdeacon of Fardles learns that
the Holy Grail, the chalice from which Christ drank at the
Last Supper, is now after all its adventures in his own par
ish church and remembers a battered cup lying unused in the
comer of a closet. He rushes home and hides it. But al
most immediately he is sandbagged and the Grail stolen by a
sadistic publisher who dabbles in witchcraft for a sinister
Greek apothecary intent only on as much destruction as pos
sible. Assisted by one of the publisher's employees and a
poetry-writing duke, the Archdeacon steals it back and prays
23 Ibid., pp. 117-26, passim.
42
it safely through an occult attempt at its destruction by
the evil forces* The publisher then uses his sorcerer's
ointment on Barbara, the wife of another of his enployees;
and the ointment drives her mad. In return for restoring
her sanity the publisher gets the Grail once more. The duke
and his friend attempt to regain it by force, and.the friend
is. killed through sorcery. Then Prester John, the Grail1 s
i
legendary keeper, appears and takes it back, forcing the
publisher to give himself up to the police for an incidental
murder committed at the beginning of the book.
This startling mixture of mysticism and detective
fiction presents problems in maintaining a stable basis for
action. Anyone but Williams would have difficulty in making
plausible transitions from a standard mystery opening— "The
telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since
there was no one in the room but the corpse1124— to his mys
tical interpretation of the Black Mass. He knows how to
lighten his mysticism, however, with fast action, startling *
contrasts, suspense, and suitable atmosphere, gleaned from ,
his own scholarly study of witchcraft. j
According to Williams the purpose of the forces of
evil and Satan's purpose as their head, as epitomized by
24- Charles Williams, War in Heaven (New York; Pelle
grini and Cudahy, 1949), p. 3.
43
Manasseh the Jew, Is purely destruction:
"They build and we destroy. That* s what levels us;
that’s what stops them. One day we shall destroy
the world. What can you do with it [the Graill that
is so good as that? Are we babies to look to see
what will happen tomorrow or where a lost treasure
is or whether a man has a gluttonous heart? To des-
‘ troy this LGraill is to ruin another of their houses,
and ano-ther step towards the hour when we shall
breathe"against the heavens and they shall fall. The
only use in anything for us is that it may be des
troyed. ”25
Whether the conception of Hellish purpose expressed
by Screwtape is more benevolent that that of Manasseh in
War in Heaven is a moot point. To the workers in the Lower-
archy a human is primarily food:
Our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the
increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense.
But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is
quite a different thing. ' One must face the, fact that
all the talk about His love for men, and His service
being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly |
believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He '
really does want to fill the universe with a lot of
loathsome little replicas of Himself— creatures whose
life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively
like His own, not because He has absorbed them but ;
because their wills freely conform to His* We want
cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants
who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He
wants to give out* We are empty and would be filled;
He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world
in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings
into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings
united to Him but still distinct.26
Satan would not always appear to be so purposeful, however,
25 Ibid., p. 162.
26 Lewis, Screwtape Letters, pp. 45-46.
44
for the Un-Man when left to himself seems almost entirely
lacking in purpose:
Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the
sense which grew within .him [RansonO as the slow
hours passed, that this creature was, by all human
standards, inside out— its heart on the surface and
its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great
designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved
the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil
had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but
a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness
content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties,
as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?27
The answer, Lewis clearly implies, is yes, that is all that :
the great designs of Satan come to. So the Un-Man and Mil
ton* s Satan have in common their grandiose plans that dwin- '
die in their execution.
Iblees, too, has great plans. True to the Mohammedan
spirit he is a warrior, though when he is seated behind his
office desk, he allows his warlike character to adapt it
self to a businessman* s sales policy:
H. • • We are anxious to go in for a policy of
expansion, to extend our influence. We always have
had our own following— clients, as it were. Some
have been rather lukewarm about their adherence,
and then there have been many devoted followers.
. . . I want to sell myself to, well, to humanity.
I*m tired of working on a small scale and want to
expand. . . . I want to work in big figures, not in
individuals but in races, in countries. I won*t
rest until every man, woman, and child has come un
der the scope of our influence. • . . t f 28
27 Lewis, Perelandra, pp. 126-27.
28 DuBois, op. cit., pp. 152-53.
45
And like the Un-Man Iblees plans much and executes little.
For the other authors who go into the Devil1s motiva
tion, he is not so purposeful a character. Old Nick of the
Ozarks does his duty of tempting the hill-people rather
languidly and interprets temptation in its broadest sense to
provide good times for himself. Whenever he does do any
serious tempting, it is usually to further his envious pur- *
i
pose of being able to show the Creator his own superior, ;
though unrecognized,ability.2®
Fursey1s accomplished Devil is, on the other hand,
sufficiently bad-intentioned but lacking in perseverance.
He explains:
H. . . I’m a person cursed with a sense of freakish
humor. I’m well aware that it interferes seriously
with my effectiveness as a demon. You may assert
that my humor is depraved. I freely admit that it
is. For centuries it has spoiled my best-laid plans.
I cannot conquer this boyish desire of mine to see
monks, anchorites, and other holy men suddenly star
tled out of their wits .by an apparition, preferably
a female one. It affords me the keenest amusement,
but It’s a vice which is rendering me more and more
ineffective as a demon. While I’m splitting my
sides laughing, the gentleman whom I’m tempting has
immediate recourse to prayer and other spiritual
weapons, the very last thing which I wish him to do.
The net result Is that he always wins, and when I’ve
recovered from my paroxysm of merriment, I find that
there is nothing left for me to do but retire cha
grined and baffled."3°
29 Stone, op. cit., p. 12.
30 Wall, op. cit., p. 245.
46
Robin Goodfellow, of course, does not even have a
desire to tempt* His only wish is to teach the humans to
be successful gods and see them happy, a wish which is more
often than not entirely frustrated. The doctor, however, is
one of his most adept pupils.
"You, Dr. Jacob Hubler, have become one of my favor
ite pupils. It*s so easy to make you dream, and
you're so receptive to my suggestions; and yet the ;
thing that I love you for most is your constant de- I
termination to find the truth. . . . I think that
the god you have dreamed of all these years is really
my father as well as yours; and I hope that someday
I'll be able to take you into the library and have
you meet him face to face."3l
The doctor is a worthy man, but his influence is small, and
it cannot be said that Goodfellow achieves any lasting bet
terment of the human race through his favorite pupil.
And Mr. Hooker is interested only in tempting people
to enjoy themselves, though he approves of decision:
"And I like a feller to take sides, be on one side
of the fence or the other. If you hate God, why
hate Him. . . . If you like Him, why go whole hog
for Him. Do you believe in God, young preacher?"
"Do you believe in God, Mr. Hooker?" Brother Wally
countered.
Mr. Hooker seemed startled. "Why, hell yes, I
believe in Him," he almost shouted. "I believe in
Him, stronger'n vinegar." He drew the old horse
blanket closer around him and was silent a minute.
Then! "I got to admit, though," he chuckled, "my
path and His'n don't wind th'ough the same patch of
woods."32
31 Keller, op. cit., p. 99.
32 Givens,, op. cit., pp. 110-11.
47
And like Satan in the Book of Job, Mr. Hooker is on speaking
terms with Mr. Peebles, though not precisely cordial. On
Mr. Hooker’s arrival Mr. Peebles pays him a patrol call
which reads somewhat like a Tennessee version of Job 1:
”Hi-ya, Old Squire,” he [Mr. Hooker] yelled. • . •
"What're you doin’ here?” Mr. Peebles asked
coldly.
"Gittin* around,” said Mr. Hooker. ”We git around
— me and the measles.
Mr. Peebles frowned heavily and stomped off down
the track. ”Well, you keep out f’um under my feet,”
he yelled over his shoulder. ’ ’I’m gettin* awful
tar’d of seein’ you clutterin' up the landscape.”
Mr. Hooker cackled shrilly. ”If I wasn’t around
to get under Yore feet and trip up Yore legs,” he
called, ”You'd die of senile decay and dogdays*
bore-edness.”
Mr. Peebles turned his head fleetingly and grinned
a little.
I
"You see,” Mr. Hooker told Brother Wally, ”the
Old Squire Upstairs rilly likes me, down deep in
His true heart. If He didn't . . . He'da blasted
me a long, long time ago. And,” he said admiringly,
”1 got to admit He's a good loser. Here with the
cards all ag* in Him, you never hear one squawk out
of Him. "33
Toward the end of the TVA project, as Mr. Peebles and Mr.
, Hooker both see the extravagant actions of all the designing
■ humans, Mr. Hooker begins to change his mind:
"I'll tell you, Old Squire," Mr. Hooker said fin
ally: ."I've about come to the conclusion that me
33 Ibid., pp. 181-82.
48
and you both, is failures. We been workin1 at cross
purposes and for no good end for the world or for
each other. Sinnin’ can be downright pl!asure. And
bein’ good can be downright pleasure, too. I’m
broad-minded, and I’ll admit that. But since time
begin I’ve whupped you . . . but what’s hit got
me? Why, hit* s got me a world full of sinners who
don’t know how to sin pl'asur’bly. Mean sinners.
And nobody likes mean sinners.”3^
As for West’s Ransome, Hell has long since gotten
too far out of hand for him to have any great purposd.
Kenelm, Wallis’s companion, adequately analyzes the situa
tion, telling Wallis,
“You’re wonderfully tenacious of your ideas of plan
and purpose. . . .You don’t realize what it’s like
to slip into the grip of necessity, meeting each
obvious demand until another takes its place. Who
ever it is who may have started by planning this
thing he’s certainly been overwhelmed by its size
--there’s no longer a plan— I’m stire of it.”®®
Ransome still maintains, however, that he only wants every-
; body to be happy;
• • I’ve been simply trying to give them back
what they lost. All this about torment is all
wrong, I’m not a torturer— I don’t like pain. I
; like happiness, and I want people to be happy.1,33
; But Ransome*s forthright destructive methods with those who
cannot agree with him and his closed face convince Wallis
that he has no Idea of what human happiness Is.
34 Ibid., pp. 260-61.
35 West, op. cit., p. 36.
36 Ibid., p. 297.
Satan* s motivation, then, is influenced by his
authors* purposes* C. S. Lewis, moralizing with the Devil
as a blind, finds Satan*s main purpose to be the increase
of his own area of self-hood at the expense of his world
and even, according to Williams, at the expense of his own
final destruction* The Iblees of Mra DuBois is in agree
ment with these two Christian Devils In his desire for ex
pansion* It Is wisdom, Bernanos has his horse-dealer main
tain, which has made him choose destructive opposition to
God as less demanding than cooperation* A similar lassitude
in purposefulness is displayed by a number of Devils whose
authors* purposes are entertainment: Mr. Hooker acknow
ledges Mr. Peebles*s power and does not so much oppose him
self to it as ignore it; Stone's Old Nick is interested more
in having fun than in doing battle; the humanistic John
Horne is merely a cog in the wheel of things; and even Wall's
medieval Devil cannot overcome his self-indulgence suffici
ently to be really purposeful. To take all the Devils at
their word, however, one would believe that they all had
great purposes, though they cannot agree on what those pur
poses are.
Despite the diversity of motives behind Satan’s ac
tions, his methods are for the most part stereotyped.
Satan's modes of activity and propaganda fall into six well-
defined categories. He can bargain with his prospective
v\
victims; he can seduce them; he can beguile and entertain
them; he can serve them; he can tempt them; or he can be
crude enough to go into battle with them*
Down through the centuries one of the Devil* s favor
ite techniques has been that of bargaining, granting abil
ities or pleasures in exchange for souls* Despite the many
times he has been cheated by his bargaining souls, this form
!
of trafficking with humans is still popular with him, and
with them. Its spectacular form also appeals to every type
of author* In the pulps one author makes use of the rumor
that Paganini sold his soul to the Devil. He weaves around ■
it the story of a young student violinist whom Paganini
tricks into selling his soul to the Devil for fame and vir
tuosity* This bit of salesmanship gains for Paganini him
self a few more years of charmed life* The student.tri- ;
umphs over his enemy by his ability, but the enemy gets the
girl. In attempting revenge, he kills the girl and drives :
the enemy mad; but the enemy manages to avenge himself on
the young violinist by another compact with the Devil. The
story, done in a lurid pulp fiction style, is all plot, com
pletely lacking in rounded characterization and credible
motivation.3,7 ,
I
A much more successful effort In the short story '
37 Robert Block, "Fiddler*s Pee,” op. cit., pp. 31-
51. _____________________________
field is Stephen Vincent Benet* a "The Devil and Daniel
Webster. Jabez Stone sells his soul in the usual way to
Mr. Scratch, a softspoken, darkly dressed man, in return
for a little of the prosperity which had hitherto missed
him. When the time comes and the stranger calls for him,
he is terrified at the thought of being a moth-like soul
kept in Mr. Scratch*s box and goes for help to Daniel Web-
i
ster. Since they are both from New Hampshire, Mr. Webster
agrees to help Jabez and to discuss with Mr. Scratch the
legality of his transaction. Unfortunately Mr. Scratch,,
through long experience, is also able in legal argument; so:
Daniel Webster demands trial by jury for his client. And
though the judge and jury are from the lowest deeps of Hell,
the rich, emotional flow of Webster*s oratory makes them
feel men again; and they return a favorable verdict. Benetfs
style is slow, selective, humorous, and entirely successful
as a folksy, legend-like method.38
Either through Homan Catholic influence or because ’
i
the idea of bartering with spirits is universal, the same ;
technique and custom obtain between the loas, or Haitian
spirits, and the people of the Vodun in Haiti. Canapg-Vert^
38 S. V. Benet, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Thir
teen o*Clock (New York; Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 193771
pp. 162-183.
52
the prize-winning novel of the Second. Latin American Con
test,^ is the story of a broken bargain with these loas.
The group of gods with which the characters have dealings
originated in the Oongo and are known as the Petro. They
work evil, and so prayers for vengeance are addressed to
them. Since they exact terrible payment for their favors,
they are much feared. The chief loa is Baron Samedi, Lord
I
of the cemetery; and it is his malign influence that per
meates the entire story and causes the misfortunes that make
this novel a sort of black Greek tragedy. Gede, Baron Sam-
edi*s general factotum, is a Bacchic sort of god, the only
one of any stature with origins in Haiti. The bad luck af
fecting all the people of Canap6-Vert is the result of Ton-
ton Bossa1s broken pact with Baron Samedi. Tonton Bossa is
comfortable with his wife and child and priestly duties
i
until Sor Cicie moves into the town. To have her for his
wife, he puts away his first wife and child; and when she
still will not yield because of his poverty, he makes a bar
gain with Baron Samedi to sacrifice to him each year a goat-
without-horns— a child— until the day of his death. In re- i
)
turn the master of the devil spirits who guard the grave- '
39 The Latin American Prize Hovel Contests were spon
sored by Farrar and Rinehart, the Division of Intellectual
Cooperation of the Pan American Union, and Redbook Magazine
and offered prizes in 1940 and 1943. The jury consisted of
Ernesto Montenegro,_Blair Hiles, and John Dos Passos.
53
yards gives him all the wealth he needs to win Sor Cicie*
For ten years Tonton Bossa keeps his promise and, thinking
he has done enought, he stops his sacrifices. Baron Samedi
in revenge takes the three sons Sor Cicie has had hy Tonton
Bossa and makes zombies of them. His wife thereupon turns
against him, and in despair he takes poison. Damballa
Oueddo, however, incensed at this traffic with devils,
allows misfortunes to overtake every family in Canap^-Vert.
E. L. Tinker, the translator of the novel, describes
its merit as a detailed exposition of Haitian life, thought,
and beliefs
Haiti has suffered at the hands of some travel-
writers, who have overemphasized certain of her more
sensational aspects with an eye to box-office results.
Others have painted her in fair and objective manner;
but all have shown us Haiti as she appeared to foreign
eyes. In Canapg-Vert we have, for the first time in
English, a vivid and accurate picture of life on the
island seen from the inside. The authors, both Hai
tian-born, have captured the true subtlety of the
Negro peasant mentality, with all its strange, naive
reasoning, its deep-rooted superstition, and the tang
and savor of its humor.^0
The whole story is so authentically detailed as to serve for
a sociological record of rural Haitian life. The vtiole,
however, is bathed in an aura of superstition and spirit-
worship, with all the initiative on the part of the worship
ers. It is significant that Baron Samedi makes no over-
40 Philippe Thoby-Marcelin and Pierre Marcelin,
Canap€-Vert (Edward Larocque Tinker, translator; New York:
Farrar andRinehart, Inc•, 1944), p. xxvii•
54
tures to Tonton Bossa* It is lie who "bargains with the loa.
When a loa wishes dealings with a human, he "mounts” (pos
sesses) the human, as does General Anglessou, also known as
"Bucket of Blood," with the small farmer Aladin upon his in
vocation of the loa* Under this influence Aladin is able to
kill his two enemies, though he then has to flee the country.
For the most part Satan is more active in his deal
ings, though the only incentive John Home offers the girls
of the Circle for serving him is a change from the deadly
i
boredom of their circumscribed existence and promises of
the sensation they will make. With the minister of the
village church, however, the Devil takes the initiative and.
offers him a straight pact, complete with the traditional
details of blood signature in the iron-cornered book, in
exchange for the power the minister will wield among the
other pastors when the witch-hunt begins.
Fursey* s tormentor is even more off-hand in his offer
of a bargain as he lends the ex-monk an occasional helping
hand:
"You may wonder,” continued Satan, "why I concern
myself on your behalf at all. Well, firstly, I
feel myself in your debt for the hospitality, un
willing though it was, which you extended to my
self and the boys in your cell at Clonmacnoise*
Secondly, I have a strong personal affection for
yourself. Thirdly, I have every hope that now you
have become a wizard, you will view in a more fav
orable light that little business proposition of
mine relative to the sale of your soul. Fourthly
and lastly,.,I*m determined to _g©t the better of_
55
these clerical jugglers."41
John Collier in a short story (1945), "The Right Side,”
describes an equally off-hand offer of a bargain, A young
man crossed in love is about to jump off Westminster Bridge
when his ankle is grabbed by a swarthy, nattily-dressed
gentleman whom he recognizes as the Devil. The gentleman
conducts the young man by elevator to the section of Hell,
designed for no apparent reason as a night club, where the
drowned department of ghosts lead their listless ghost-
lives. After dancing with Ophelia, the young man decides 1
not to commit suicide after all. The Devil then offers him
the “standard contract" of fifty years (although the best
sources agree on twenty-four years as the usual length) of
unlimited pleasure, with the customary soul-possession
clause. The young man politely refuses and finds himself
back on Westminster Bridge, where he keeps his weight on his
heels and jumps off, on the right side.
The most reasonable and tempting of bargainers is
'Mann’s "Divel.” (A noticeable feature of Leverkuhn’s atti- !
tude toward the Evil One is his constant, defiantly face- i
;tious references to him only by his nicknames.) Satan
points out to Leverkuhn the generosity of the gift:
"There is time for it, plenteous, boundless time;
41 Wall, cit., p. 150.
56
time is the actual thing, the "best we give, and our
gift the houre-glasse— it is so fine, the little
neck, through which the red sand runs, a threadlike
trickle, does not minish at all to the eye in the
upper cavitie, save at the very end; then it does
seem to speed and to have gone fast, . . .t t
the necessity for the gift— especially in the light of the
barrenness of modern musical inspiration?
MA genuine inspiration, immediate, absolute, unques
tioned, 'ravishing,. where there is no choice, no tink
ering, no possible improvement; where all is a sacred
mandate, a visitation received by the possessed one
with faltering and stumbling step, with shudders of
awe from head to foot, with tears of joy blinding
his eyes: no, that is not possible with God, who
leaves the understanding too much to do. It comes
but from the divel, the true master and giver of
such rapture, . •
and the excellent excuse for even diseased inspiration and
its benefits as perhaps being more authentic than the con
ventional association processes:
"And I mean too that creative, genius-giving dis
ease that rides on high horse over all hindrances,
and springs with drunken daring from peak to peak,
is a thousand times dearer to life than plodding
healthiness. . . . A whole host and generation of
youth, receptive, sound to the core, flings it
self on the work of morbid genius, made genius by
disease: admires it, praises it, exalts it, car
ries it away, assimilates it unto Itself and makes
it over to culture, which lives not on home-made
bread alone, but as well on provender and poison
from the apothecary’s shop. . . . Thus saith to you
the unbowderlized Sammael. He guarantees not only
that toward the end of your houre-glasse years your
sense of your power and splendour will more and more
outweigh the pangs of the little sea-maid and fin
ally mount to most triumphant well-being, to a
sense of bursting health, to the walk and way of a
god. That is only the subjective side of the thing,
I know; it would not suffice, it would seem to you
unsubstantial. Know, then, we pledge you the sue-
57
cess of that which with our help you will accom
plish. You will lead the way, you will strike up
the march of the future, the lads will swear "by your
name, who thanks to your madness will no longer need
to he mad. . . . Hot only will you break through the
paralysing difficulties of the time— you will break
through time itself-. . . . ”42
Mann* s Devil arranges the conditions of the bargain with
more care than the others have shown, though with less cere
mony:
HTo be short, between us there needs no crosse way
in the Spesser’s Wood and no cercles. We are in
league and business— with your blood you have af
firmed it and promise yourself to us, and are bap
tized ours. This my visit concerns only the con
firmation thereof. Time you have taken from us,
a genius’s time, high-flying time, full XXIV years
ab dato recessi, which we set to you as the limit.
fEeri they are finished and fully expired, which
is not to be foreseen, and sudh a time is also an
eternity— then you shall be fetched. Against this
meanwhile shall we be in all things subject and
obedient, and hell shall profit you, if you renay
all living creature, all the Heavenly Host and all
men, for that must be • . . what otherwise? Do you
think that jealousy dwells in the height and not
also in the depths? To us you are, fine, well-
create creature, promised and espoused. Thou
maist not love. • • • Love is forbidden you, in so
i far as it warms. Thy life shall be cold, there
fore thou shalt love no human being. . . . Gold we
; want you to be, that the fires of creation shall be
hot enough to warm yourself in. Into them you will
flee out of the cold of your life. . . . It is that
extravagant living, the only one that suffices a
proud soul."43
Extravagant living is traditionally characteristic of what
the Devi1-compact offers. Another traditional technique of
42 Mann, op. cit., pp. 222-45, passim.
43 Ibid. ,_ pp.. _ 248-49. _ . _____
58
Satan is seduction.
Ordinarily Satan himself is above seduction, leaving
this minor method to underlings. The only contemporary
exception is John Horne, and even he does not show too much
eagerness for the technique; but
. . . there seemed to be only one way to destroy a
woman* s immortal soul, he thought. . . . With a man
there are many ways. You can trick him into curs- ,
ing his God or killing his brother; you can tempt ;
him'with the jangle of coins or the scarlet trap
pings of pride. Put a weapon in his hand, and he
will use it— on himself. But with a woman it is
always a matter of body upon body. . . .44
His opinion is not shared by other devils, who use, more
subtle means*
The tanpter* s handbook of His Excellency Screwtape
runs the gamut of these means, pointing out the uses of the
senses, of sexual temptation, of disguise as/ an angel of
light, of the unpleasant emotions, of thought-control—
The trouble about argument is that it moves the :
whole struggle onto the Enemy* s own ground. He ’
can argue too; whereas in really practical pro- •
paganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been
shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior
of Our Father Below. By the very act of argu
ment, you awake the patient’s reason; and once
it is awake, who can foresee the results?^
--of misdirection-
44 Shirley Barker, Peace, My Daughters (New York:
Crown Publishers, 1949), pp. 152-T53.
45 Lewis, Screwtape Letters, p. 12.
Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will
have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself in pro
ducing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which
Hell affords.
--of concealment--
I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential
to keep the patient in ignorance of your own exis
tence. .That question^ at least for the present
phase of the struggle, has been answered for us hy
the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is
to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always
been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma.
When the humans disbelieve in our existence we
lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism
and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when
they believe in us, we cannot make them material
ists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have
great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to
' emotionalise and mythologise their science to such
an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us,
(though not under that name) will creep in while
the human mind remains closed to the Enemy. . . .
If once we can produce our perfect work--the Mat
erialist Magician, the man, not using, but veri
tably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces"
while denying the existence of "spirits“--then the
time we must obey om wuoxo.
--and of denial—
Never forget that when we are dealing with any
pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying
form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground.
I know we have won many a soul through pie a stare*
All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He :
made the pleasures: all our research so far has
not enabled us to produce one. All we can do Is
to encourage the humans to take the pleasure which
our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or
in degrees, which he has forbidden. Hence we
end of the war will But in the mean-
46 Ibid., p. 17.
47 Ibid., pp. 39-40.
60
always try to work away from the natural condition
of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural,
least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.
An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing
pleasure is the formula. To get the man1 s soul and
give him nothing in return— is what really
gladdens our Father * s heart.48
Thus the elements of temptation.
In Ferelandra Lewis watches these tricks of tempta
tion put to work on the Lady by the possessed Un-Man. He
introduces the Lady to the Story, showing her how to see
herself as the heroine of grand, tragic tale&; He questions
the reason why Maleldil has forbidden her to live bn the
Fixed Land (comparable to the earthly commandment concern
ing the fruit); he paints Death as a novel, glorious exper
ience to be desired with courage; he reasons disobedience
into a kind of greater obedience; he introduces the Lady to
the mirror and the concept of possessions; he begins to
build up an emotional attitude rather than an intellectual
one, using as his main weapon the call of martyrdom— pre
senting to her the great deed, the great risk of disobedi
ence, and the consequent great achievement of freedom.4^
As a servant the Devil is most helpful and efficient.
It is only through Old HickVs tootling that Lem Scaggs is
able to whittle so well, and even when the hillman sends
48 Ihid., p. 49.
49 Lewis, Perelandra, pp. 115-20.
61
him off, he promises!to come running if ever Lem should need
him. 50
Robin Goodfellow, like his classic prototype, Prome
theus, has always been the teacher and helper of the human
god-aminals. As such he resolves a number of difficulties
for the doctor:
”As far as the Gardeii story is concerned, it started
this way. . . . My brother tried to tell the new
animals they could do anything they wanted to, have
all the fun they wanted to have; but they were not to
learn anything. I was enthusiastic in those days,
rather young and callow, and I thought it would be
fine to start right in and teach-them. Thought
lessly I went too far, and there was trouble. It
really wasn’t my fault— just an unfortunate combina
tion of circumstances--but the female had a baby,
and right away I was blamed for it,. . . > Well, after
the baby was born, Brother came down and explained to
them by signs--they didn’t know much language at that
time--that I had caused the baby to come and that I
had done so in the form of a snake. That story has
never been contradicted. How could it be when all
the versions were dictated by the same mind?H51
Goodfellow* s teaching mission was further blocked by the
suspicion and stupidity of his classes. Just when he would
be getting along nicely, his brother’s clerics would break
up the class, or the stupid ones would kill the intelligent
ones. He managed to teach a few simple things, however,
such as the uses of sharpened sticks. Finally he gave up
' all attempts at teaching directly and sent dreams to his
50 Stone, op. cit., pp. 51-52.
51 Keller, op. cit., pp. 84-85.
chosen pupils (e.g., Tubal Gain received a dream of iron
weapons? Jubal received a series of dreams concerning mus
ical instruments), who would be highly successful so long
as they would not mention the source of their inspirations*
Robin Goodfellow finally succeeded in teaching reading,
writing, and printing, thus preserving the teachings even
though the men who perpetrated them were killed. Goodfellow
therefore takes to himself the credit for all scientific,
industrial, political, and poetical discoveries* He does
not feel that he is as effective a teacher as he would like,
however:
". . » sometimes it fears me I have never grown up
or that it will take a million more years for me
to reach my mature manhood. For the little things
in life would distract me from the larger work, and
I would spend a lifetime teaching the beggars of
Italy, for instance, to carry their rags gracefully,
when I could have been instilling the lessons of
sociology and economics so they could become rich
and have no rags to wear artistically."52
In his off-hours Goodfellow even does occasional good turns j
for the doctor, things like sending him a hazel rod which
ilocates a treasure of gold for them.
i Or the Devil may advance and do battle with the world;
for its soul. That is the method of Iblees, who in setting :
•up his new god subordinate to himself, detects only one
obstacle, a "certain moral fiber," which he first determines
52 Ibid., pp. 95-96.
63
to tear down and undermine.^3
To Bernanos the "battle has already "been joined:
[Donissan is speaking] T I Mind you remember, Sabiroux,
that the world is not a cleverly built machine. Be
tween Satan and Himself, God hurls,:us, as His last
rampart. It is through us that for centuries and
centuries, the same hatred seeks to reach Him: it
is in the same poor human flesh that the ineffable
murder is brought to completion, Ahl AhI However
high, however far prayer and love may bear us, we
carry him along with us, affixed to our flanks, the
frightful companion, bursting with boundless laugh
ter I . . • For centuries the human race has been
placed in the press, our blood squeezed out in tor
rents in order that the tiniest particle of divine
flesh might afford satiation and hilarious laugh
ter to the dreadful torturer.”54
Thus the war for Bernanos, Lewis, however, intimates that
the battle may eventually become physical as well as spiri
tual. Ransom points out that
11, . . when the Bible used that very expression
about fighting with principalities and powers and
depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights (our
translation is very misleading at that point, by
the way), it meant that quite ordinary people were
to do the fighting.*'
"Oh, I dare say," said I, "but that's rather
different. That refers to a moral conflict."
Ransom threw back his head and laughed. . . .
"But really the thing is changing under your hands
all the time, and neither your assets nor your
dangers this year are the same as the year before.
How your idea that ordinary people will have to
meet the Dark Eldila in any form except a psy
chological or moral form— as temptations or the
like— is simply an idea that held good for a cer-
53 DuBois, op. cit., p. 155.
54 Bernanos , - op-.- cit. , -pp. 200-201. -
64
tain phase of the cosmic wars the phase of the
great siege, the phase which gave to our planet its
name of Thulcandra, the silent planet. But suppos
ing that phase is passing? In the next'phase it may
he anyone* s job to meet them . . . well, in some
quite different mode*”55
So, freed from any necessity for belief in an objec
tive reality, modern writers can— and do— give rein to their
wildest fancies. The Devil consequently appears in every
type of fiction, from meaty symbolic novels to pulp maga
zine thrillers; and as many writers there are, just so many
impressions of Satan*s appearance, manner, and motivation
are there* As a bargainer Satan is the subject of many
stories of varying value, from lurid pulp magazine fiction,
where the bargain is only the means for a thrill of horror,
to involved, subtle studies, where the bargain may be a
symbol of Involved emotional conflicts. Thus Block makes a
pulp story of a Satanic bargain; Benet makes.; it a vehicle
for a portrait of Daniel Webster; Thoby-Marce1in uses it as
an explanation of evil; Barker, Wall, and Green bow to it
as a convention; and Mann uses a figuratively detailed bar
gain to explain the disaster of the German spirit. As a
seducer Satan is personally unwilling and prefers to leave
sexual temptation to his underlings. But as a servant the
Devil is obliging; and with Keller and Stone he asks little ,
55 Lewis, Perelandra, pp. 17-18.
65
or nothing in return for his favors. When it comes to
tempting, however, Barker, Lewis, and Wall depict him as
retaining all his traditional power and ingenuity. And for
Bernanos, DuBois, and Lewis, the adversary retains his early
accomplishment as a warrior, \vhether spiritual or ultimately
physical. It is noteworthy, however, that, judging "by the
evidence presented in this chapter, no one has added any
new ideas to the Devil* s stock of techniques. His weapons
are the same today as they were during his prime in the
Middle Ages. The change is in the humanity he works with.
Formerly the Devil was .accounted nearly irresistible; today
he is unable to overwhelm. Where he rules, it is at his
subjects* invitations.
CHAPTER III
SATAN*S MINIONS
In some cases Satan1s followers are even more varied
and interesting than the Arch-Fiend himself. They parade
through their respective stories in all the clarity and
detail that their authors, set off hy any number of obscure
or obvious historical references, can imagine for them. For
purposes of analysis and classification, they may be broadly
divided into human and inhuman ranks and their motivation,
characteristics, and activities studied from these two view
points.
The activities of the human servants of Satan are
bounded and conditioned by the degree and kind of their
interest in him. This concern ranges from terrified self-
interest to the purest devotion to evil. The natives of
Canap§-Vert exemplify most realistically their self-interest
— their only desire is to be left unmolested by the evil
spirits. To this end they are polite to the spirits and
indulge in ceremonies such as Tonton Bossa’s wakel in which
they do homage to the spirits accompanied by fulsome praise.
The characters of The Great Divorce are also moti
vated by self-interest. Newcomers to the Gray Town are
1 Marcelin, op. cit., pp. 84-85.
67
excited by the way they can imagine themselves houses and
commodities, though of course the houses do not keep out any
real rain and the commodities cannot be used. Newcomers are
also disappointed at not meeting the interesting historical
figures they expected would be there since the people keep
moving away from each other; the nearest historical person
age is Napoleon, who resides only several light miles away j
from the heart of the city, The majority of the inhabitants
of the twilight town fear the advent of the dark that seems .
to hover over them and the unnamed fate that will overtake
them then,2 One of the minority who see hope in their situ
ation is the Apostate Cleric, a cheerful example of Lewis’s
ability in parody:
M. . • It is astonishing how these primitive super
stitions linger on, I beg your pardon? Oh, God
bless my soul, that*s all it is. There is not a shred
of evidence that this twilight is ever going to turn
into a night. There has been a revolution of opin->
Ion on that in educated circles. I am surprised
that you haven^t heard of It. All the nightmare
fantasies of our ancestors are being swept away.
What we now see in this subdued and delicate half-
light Is the promise of the dawn: the slow turning
of a whole nation towards the light. Slow and im
perceptible, of course. . . . A sublime thought.”3
Lewis, however, places the emphasis on the self-concentrated
inhabitants of the Gray Town, waiting for the dark.
Wall takes a slde-glance at a few characters outside
2 Lewis, The Great Divorce, pp. 10-13.
-5.Ibid.,.pp. 15-16.
the strict domains of Satan who have dealings with him all
the same. There are medieval characters such as poltergeists,
mythological figures of sylphs, and the pagan, pre-Christian
wizard Cuthbert. For the most part Cuthbert practices his
trade independently, and Satan takes little interest in him
even when he duels with the witch, whom Wall seems to regard
as more closely under Satan's domination and assistance.
!
Vdien the Devil and the wizard conflict, however, they do so ■
warily, as during Fursey1s trial when the Babylonian Prince
(Satan) acted for the defenses
Cuthbert had manifested a slight uneasiness and
the appearance of being puzzled. The two had
glanced at one another frequently during the pro
ceedings, but had not once met one another's'eyes.
It was as if two armed, but mutually neutral, powers
had for the first time discovered that'there was a
point at which their interests clashed, and each
seemed to feel embarassment.4
It Is to be noted that Cuthbert is much relieved when the
Babylonian Prince adroitly manages to save Fursey without
further conflict with the wizard.
Clark Ashton Smith introduces two modern sorcerers
into his short horror story (1944), nThe Return of the Sor
cerer.” The one is jealous of his older brother's skill in
necromancyj so, taking what precautions he can, he kills and
dismembers his brother. Even in death, however, the elder
4 Wall, op. cit., p. 140.
69
brother is still the more powerful and can avenge himself.
The story is a typical example of the horror type, with the
usual lack of subtlety and straining after effect.
. A popular writer of mystery stories, John Dickson
Carr, makes use of another aspect of devil-worship in intro
ducing a seventeenth-century trial as the basis of a plot.
Uncle Miles dies surrounded by peculiar evidence pointing
to Marie Stevens (nee D*Aubray) as the murderess. Her hus
band is shocked to discover also that she looks exactly like
an ancestress of the same name who was guillotined for mur
der in 1861. To his relief, however, a friend, a writer of
crime studies, shows some simple everyday explanations for
the whole course of events and proves the guilt of a nurse
and her lover. Then the helpful friend unsuspectingly drinks
poison. For the reader* s benefit Carr attaches a final
chapter in which he shows Marie thinking to herself and re
vealing herself as a member of the Non-Bead as had been the
writer whom she had poisoned after he had cleared her.
The story ties in with Satan and his minions in that
the seventeenth-century ladies of the court of Louis XXV are
said to have embraced the cult of Satanism, this activity
resulting in the Non-Dead* They were directed by the witch
La Voisin Esicl and under her tutelage learned the art of
poisoning, indulging in mass poisonings without apparent
motivation and apparently with the .complete acquiescence of
their victims* The Burning Court’s most famous case was
that of a Marquise de Brinvilliers, revealed through the
accidental death of her lover, Gapt. Sainte-Groix.5 After
her sentence she was put to the water-torture to make her
divulge her accomplices and then beheaded and burned. This
lady is the Marie of Carr’s story; she, like her victims,
has not died but has kept returning as one of the Non-Dead
and adding to their company by poisoning all her acquaint
ance until she is detected. While the trial is perhaps one
of the best-documented of its century, the detail of the
Non-Dead would seem to be Carr’s own embellishment, which
he treats with commendable mystery-story finesse complete
with orderly clue revelation and suspense up to the last
chapter, itself a good example of revelation by indirect
ness.
Another self-seeking Satan worshiper is the peasant
girl Mouchette in Bernanos's Under the Sun of Satan. Mou-
chette follows the way of evil for the sake of the satis
faction it gives her pride; and when the Abb# Donissan
shows her how puny and idle her little sins are and pities
'her, she reaches despair and attempts a final, great crime
— the giving of herself to Satan. Bernanos uses no sensa
tional incidents to portray her sacrifice; the whole trans-
5 See above, p. xxx•
71
action is completed in her thoughts as she lies on her "bed
and then goes to her father*s room to slit her throat. Ber-
nanos1s narrative is all the more effective for the piling
up of intense feeling and description on lack of incident:
That pale star, even when entreated, rises infre
quently from the abyss. What is more, she could
not have said, in her half-consciousness, what
offering she was making of herself and to whom. It
had come unexpectedly, rose less from her mind than
from her poor sullied flesh. . . . The roads others !
travel step by step she had already traversed; how
ever trifling her career by comparison with so many
fabulous sinners, her hidden spite had drained all
the evil of which she was capable--except for one
offense: the last. Since childhood her quest had
been directed toward him, every disillusionment
having been only an excuse for a new challenge. For
she loved him. Where hell finds its best windfalls
is not,among the crowd of turbulent spirits who
amaze the world with resounding crimes. The great
est of saints are not always wonder-workers, for
the contemplative most often lives and dies unknown.
Now hell likewise has her cloisters. So here we be
hold her, this wide-eyed mystic, little servant of
Satan. St. Brigit of the void. . . .6 i
Her union with Satan is one of icy, joyless peace; and she
understands that the time has come to kill herself.
More interesting are those who serve the Devil devot-;
: edly and selflessly. One of these is the scientist Weston i
in Lewis's Perelandra. In the first novel, Out of the
Silent Planet, Weston had been merely a brilliant physicist,
interested only In finding and opening up new planets for
the use of man when Earth has given out; in Perelandra,
6 Bernanos, op. cit., pp. 155-56.
however, Weston is a part-time, progressively full-time,
vehicle for Satan, a case of Devil-possession. He explains
to Ransom that he is allowing himself to he used by a Force
for the benefit of mankind:
"The thing we are reaching forward to is what you
would call God. The reaching forward, the dynamism,
is what people like you always call the Devil. The
people like me, who do the reaching forward, are
always martyrs. You revile us, and by us come to
your goal."
"Does that mean in plainer language that the
things the Force wants you to do are what ordinary
people call diabolical?"
"My dear Ransom, I wish you would not keep relaps
ing on to the popular' level. The two things are only
moments in the single, unique reality. The world
leaps forward through great men and greatness always
transcends mere moralism. When the leap has been
made our diabolism* as you would call it becomes
the morality of the next stage5 but while we are mak
ing it, we are called criminals, heretics, blas
phemers. • .
When actually acting as the vehicle, however, Weston loses
all his own personality and goals; he becomes the Un-Man.
Usually, as the Un-man, he indulges in petty cruelities
Q
and spitefulnesses although when he is tempting the Lady,
he can speak with a grandeur of emotion evoking the tradi
tional picture of Lucifer;
The voice of Weston*s face spoke suddenly, and it
was louder and deeper than before and less like
7 Lewis, Perelandra, p. 96.
8 See above, p. 22.
73
We ston* s vo ice *
“I am older than he,1 1 it said, ”and he dare not
deny it. Before the mothers of the mothers of his
mother were conceived, I was already older than he
could reckon. I have been with Maleldil in Deep
Heaven where he never came and heard the eternal
councils. And in the order of creation I am
greater than he, and Before me he is of no account.”^
And sometimes Lewis describes Weston*s state as a sort of
composite of all the New Testament pictures of demon-posses-
sion:
,Then horrible things began happening. A spasm like
that preceding a deadly vomit twisted Weston* s face
out of recognition. As it passed— the bid Weston,
staring with eyes of horror and howling, ' ‘ Ransom,
Ransom! for Christ*s sake don't let them--” and
instantly his whole body spun round as if he had
been hit by a revolver-bullet and he fell to earth,
and was there rolling at Ransom’s feet, slavering
and chattering and tearing up the moss by handfuls;
Gradually the convulsions decreased. He lay still,
breathing heavily, his eyes open but without ex
pression. . . . The face suggested that either he
was in no pain or a pain beyond all human compre
hension. 10
Lewis concludes that
There was, no doubt, a confusion of persons in dam
nations what Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad
men really received in Hell. They were melted down
into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and
loses his shape in the ladle held over a gas ring.
The question whether Satan or one whom Satan has
digested, is acting on any given occasion, has in
the long run no clear significance.H
9 Lewis, Perelandra, p. 122
10 Ibid., pp. 97-98.
11 Ibid., p. 183.
74
This conclusion is further developed in the sequel to Pere
landra, That Hideous Strength.
The third novel of Lewis’s trilogy is told from the
viewpoint of Jane Studdoek who is on one side of a prelim
inary skirmish to the Battle of Armageddon while her husband,
Mark, is on'the other side, that of the NICE (National Insti
tute of Co-ordinated Experiments), which has established it
self in the public approbation and proceeded to carry out
experiments and projects under the direction of the macrobes,
the real directors of the InstituteThe NICE is combated'
by Ransom, who has now succeeded to the Pendragonship of
Celtic tradition, and a small group of people he has gath
ered around himself, the company of Logres, among whom Jane ■
Is the seer.l-3 When Jane foresees Merlin rising from his
age-old enchantment, the company enlists him as a Christian
of sorts in the service of the Pendragon; and in a climactic
uproar at the NICE Merlin, aided by the eldila from other
planets, destroys all the instruments of the macrobes, thus ,
saving the world until the next onslaught. To add romantic
Interest to the happy ending, Jane and Mark are reconciled.
12 For fuller description of the "macrobes,” see
below, p. 91.
13 In the introduction to the novel Lewis states that
he drew the material concerning Numinor and Logres from the
as yet unpublished manuscript of J. R. R. Tolkien, That Hid
eous Strength (New YorksThe Macmillan Company,: 1946), p. viii.
75
The members of the NICE range from the more unpleasant
Varieties of cynics, materialists, sadists, and politicians
to the officials of the organization, the conscious servants
of the macrobes. Among them is Pilostrato, the operator of
the Head. Even he does not know the exact nature of the mac
robes j he is more interested in their efforts at purifying
the world where they have nearly full control. His attitude,
is illustrated by his speech one night as he shows Mark the
full moon;
"There is a world for you, no?” said Pilostrato. !
"There is cleanness, purity, Thousands of square
miles of polished rock with not one blade of grass,
not one fibre of lichen, not one grain of dust. Not
even air. Have you thought what it would be like,
my friend, if you could walk on that land? No crumb
ling, no erosion. The peaks of those mountains are
real peaks; sharp as needles, they would go through
your hand. Cliffs as high as Everest and as straight
as the wall of a house. And cast by those cliffs,
acres of shadow black as ebony, and in the shadow
hundreds of degrees of frost. And then, one step
beyond the shadow, light that would pierce your
eyeballs like steel and rock that would burn your ;
feet. The temperature is at boiling point. You j
would die, no? But even then you would not become
filth. In'a few moments you are a little heap of
ash; clean, white powder. And mark, no wind to blow
that powder about. Every grain in the little heap
would remain in its place, lust where you died, till
the end of the world. . . ."14
Pilostrato goes on to explain with satisfaction that on the
moon there exist beings more advanced than humans who have
cleaned their world from the organic, having dispensed with
14 Ibid. , p. __200 •
76
organic bodies of their own,
Pilostrato has only learned of the macrobes from the
Head, a de-bodied skull of an executed criminal with a
bearded face, colored glasses, the top of its skull removed,
and enlarged brains puffing out over the top. The Head is
fixed on a pedestal by its neck with artificial tubes hang
ing from it which are connected with a panel of instruments
in another room which supply it with breath, saliva, and a
voice, Pilostrato is under the impression that the Head is
the product of his own science; only the superintendent of
the Institute, Wither, along with his associate, Prost, knows
that the Head is actually the oracle of the macrobes. As
their representative he is responsible for recruiting more
devotees for the amalgamation process. Lewis in the person
of Wither elaborates his conception of the identification
of Satan with his servants:
M0f course,” said Wither, ’ ’ nothing is so much to be
desired as the greatest possible unity. You will
not suspect me of underrating that aspect of our
orders. Any fresh individual brought into that
unity would be a source of the most intense satis
faction to--ah— all concerned. I desire the closest
possible bond. I would welcome an Interpenetration
of personalities so close, so irrevocable, that it
almost transcends individuality. You need not doubt
that I would open my arms to receive— to absorb— to
assimilate this young man,”.l5
It is noticeable that the doom of the servants of the mac-
15 Ibid., p. 283
77
robes at the climax of the novel is the complete loss of
\
their free wills and individualities*
Mann’s Faustus, Adrian Leverkuhn, who, though he fol
lows all the procedures of the Devil-compact, resembles the
classical Faust in name only, makes his compact with Satan
for the purpose of achieving a break-through in the impasse
where he found his musical art. He is not looking for lux
ury or power, only for inspiration* His nature had been
conditioned by his childhood--by his father’s interest in
chemical change; by the medieval, churchly town of Kaisers-,
aschern; by his own pride and feeling of aloofness as illus
trated in his laughter—
His love of laughter was more like an escape, a
resolution, slightly orgiastic in its nature, of
life’s manifold sternness; a product of extraordin
ary gifts, but to me never quite likeable or heal
thy* * . • I was always compelled to think of a
story which I knew only from him* It was from St*
Augustine’s De ciyltate Dei and was to the effect
that Ham, son o?~WoaE~anH~Tather of Zoroaster the
magian, had been the only man who laughed when he
was born--which could only have happened by the
help of the Devil***’ ®
— and by his theological training under Schleppfuss:
For he received, if I may so express myself,
dialectically speaking, the blasphemous and offen
sive into the divine and hell into the empyrean;
declared the vicious to be a necessary and insep
arable concomitant of the holy, and the holy con
stant satanic temptation, an almost irresistible
challenge to violation.17
16 Mann,.op* cit., pp. 84-85.
17 Ibid., ,p. 100. ......
78
Thus he is compelled to his union with Esmeralda:
And, gracious heaven, was it not also love, or what
was it, what madness, what deliberate, reckless
tempting of God, what compulsion to comprise the
punishment in the sin, finally what deep-deeply
mysterious longing for daemonic conception, for a
deathly unchaining of chemical change in his nature
was at work, that having been warned he despised the
warning and insisted upon possession of this flesh?18
And thus he is amenable to the Devil* s suggestion that
• • • whoever has, by nature dealings with the
tempter is always at variance with the feelings
of people, always tempted to laugh when they weep,
and weep when they laugh, . .. What has come about
by way of death, of sickness, at that life has many
a time clutched with joy and let itself be led by it
higher and further. . . • Morbid and healthyl With
out the morbid would life all its whole life have
survived?19
And after this bargain his friend notices that he grows more
and more aloof from intercourse with normal people and from
: sharing in their feelings, keeping to himself, accompanied
i
only by his familiar, Mr. Akercocke, who gives him experi-
! ences in ‘ ’extravagant living” and musical inspirations.20
Only once does he experience a sincere affection; he becomes
i
almost companionable with his small nephew Nepomuk; and when
the child contracts spinal meningitis, he for once rebels
and rages against his satanie master:
Take him, monster i . . . Take him, hell-hound, but
18 Ibid., p. 155.
19 Ibld»» PP* 235-36.
20 Ibid., p. 458.
79
make haste you can, if you won*t tolerate any of
this either, out, swine, viperi I"thought • . .he
would concede this much, after all, maybe just.this;
but no, where should he learn mercy, who is without
any bowels of compassion? Probably it was just
exactly this he had to crush in his beastly fury.
Take him, scum, filth, excrement! Take his body,
you have power over that. But you*11 have to put
up with leaving me his soul, his sweet and precious
soul, that is where you lose out and make yourself
a laughing-stock--and for that I will laugh you to
scorn, aeons on end. Let there be eternities rolled
between my place and his, yet I shall know that he
is there whence you were thrown out, orts and draff !
that you are! The thought will be moisture on my
tongue and a hosannah to mock you in my foulest
cursings!
The one character who always serves his master un
questioning!y is Gregory Persimmons, the publisher in
Williams*s War in Heaven. He is a mystic and a sort of
twentieth century sprcerer., attending a Sabbath, performing
a Black Mass, looking into the future with the help of the
Grail and a medium, and working the destruction of souls.
! He attends the Sabbath, however, only in spirit, with the
aid of the prescribed ointment; ”but scattered far over the
faee of the earth . . . those abandoned spirits answered one
: another that night; and That beyond them . . . felt them and
shook and replied, sustained and nourished and controlled, j
, . . . .r | 22 And in some ways his experience is more intense
; than that of a physical Sabbath; he offers a sacrifice of a
21 ^id., p. 477.
22 Williams, War in Heaven, p. 79.
80
child*s soul to his master and penetrates heyond the black
drunkenness to heat as from an immense pyre and sound from
an acclamation of shrieking voices and finally to a cold
pang of ecstasy.
He was divorced now from the universe! he was one
with a rejection of all courteous and lovely things;
by the oblation of the child he was made one with
that which is beyond childhood and age and time--the
reflection and negation of the eternity of God. He
existed supernaturally, and in Hell. . . .23 i
For Gregory is a naturally religious spirits
. . . to him • . • the unknown beyond man* s lif e pre
sented itself as alive with hierarchical presences
arranged in rising orders to the central throne* To
him . . . sacraments were living realities; the oint
ment and the Black Mass, the ritual and order of wor
ship. He . . . demanded a response from the darkness;
and a rush of ardent faith believed that it came; and
in full dependence on that faith acted and influenced
his circumstances. Prayer was natural to him . . .
and to the mind of the devotee the god graciously as
sented. 24
Gregory is motivated by the delight in the sensation of
power he receives from the destruction of other souls; and
Manasseh, one of his accomplices and fellow worshipers, is
impelled by an ever-hungry, never-sated greed; but the Greek,
the master sorcerer of them all, has only a great weariness;'
But in the end there is nothing at all but you and
that which goes by. You will be sick at heart be
cause there is nothing, nothing but a passing, and
in the midst of the passing a weariness that is you.
23 Ibid., p. 83.
24 Ibid., pp. 196-97.
All things shall grow fainter, all desire cease in
that sickness and void which is about it . . . • Let
him that desires to possess seek to possess .
and him that desires to destroy seek to destroy.
Let each of you work in his own way, until the end
comes; and I who will help the one to possess will
help the other to destroy, for possession and des
truction are both evil and are one. But alas for
the day when none shall possess your souls and they
only of all things that you have known cannot be
destroyed forever.25
This weariness shakes Gregory; and when he finds that he too
i
has developed to a point where there is no longer delight in
his destruction, he gives himself up to the police as a mur
derer.
Contemporary writers, then, see little difference be
tween sinners and saints. While there are few avowed self-
seekers like the Haitian villagers, there are a number of
hypocrites— the inhabitants of the Gray Town, the physicist
Weston, the members of the MICE, the Non-Dead— who conceal
their absorbed self-interest with a veneer of altruism. The
one exception is Adrian Leverkuhn, who, despite his heredit
ary tendency to the perverse, probably would not have given
I
himself to the Devil if he had not been promised in return i
the ability to break through the impasse of modern art.
Then there are the saints of the depths, the devotees im
pelled only by their loyalty to evil--the little Mouchette
and the evil triumvirate of War in Heaven.
25 Ibid., pp. 162-63.
82
Satan1 s servants, however, are not limited to human
devotees. According to modern authors, Satan is attended
and served by a wide variety of spirits, for the most part
widely different from those attending Milton’s Satan. Human
shape, or any shape for that matter, is no longer necessary
for a successful devil’s minion; but many authors prefer it*
Among the devils in human form is Bernanos' horse-dealer.
t
Like Mann? s Devil he is rough in appearance and coarse in
manner, oddly at variance with his evilly beautiful lan
guage. His rank is somewhat equivocal; at times he speaks
as though he were Satan himself and at other times as though
he were just a lesser servant. He says once, for example,
”1 am Gold itself. The essence of my light is an unbearable
cold.At another time during the interview Father Donis-
san tells the horse-trader, "I see you crushed by your sor
row, even to the bounds of annihilation--which will not be
granted to you, 0 tormented creatureI”
At this last word, the monster rolled from top to bot- '
tom of the bank and onto the road, where he squirmed
in the mud, racked by horrible spasms. Then he grew ;
still, his back tremendously arched, resting on his
head and his heels, like one in the-throes of teta
nus. And at last his voice rose up, piercing, sharp,
lamentable.
"Enough, enough, consecrated dog, torturerl You
anointed animal, who taught you that of everything
in the world, pity is what we fear the mostl"27
26 Bernanos, op. oit., p. 119.
27, Ibid. , . p. .122..
It is interesting to note that Father Donissan’s opposition
is most effective when he is concentrating on Christ, and
the horse-dealer says, after touching the priest,
"Your hands have greatly hurt me. . . . Hever again
will I warm them; they have literally chilled my
marrow, frozen my hones; that*s probably those
anointings, your damned daubing with hallowed oils
— pure witchcraft. . . . He is not far. . .'.For
the last few moments I’ve noticed His scent. . • •
Ohl ohl how hard a master He islu28
The horse-trader, however, has his own brand of witchcraft;
Stopping over with peculiar agility, he picked up
a random pebble from the roadway, between his fin
gers lifted it heavenward, and pronounced the words
of consecration, which he ended with a gay chuckle.
. . . Moreover, all this was done at lightning speed.
The echo of his laughter seemed to reverberate to the
utmost horizon. The stone reddened, whitened,'abrupt
ly burst, glowing wildly. And, still laughing, he
tossed it back into the muck, where it quenched it
self with a frightful hissing sound.^9
But he is most terrifying when he is at his quietest;
He thrust forward his bullet head, aflame with
eagerness. 1 1 1 have held you against my bosom; I
have cradled you in my arms. How many more times
will you fondle me, thinking that you press the
other against your heart! For such is your mark.
Such is the seal of my hatred upon you.30
The Devil1s Own Dear Son (1949) is James Branch
Cabell*s own fiftieth novel, and some critics may wish he
had stopped long since. It is an attempt at fun and satire
28 > Pr 119.
29 Ibid., p. 121.
30 Ibid.'; p. 127.
84
at the expense of middle-aged, middle-class complacency.
Diego de Arredondo Dodd is a prosaic middle-class individual
in everything except his parentage. Diego*s family owned
the Bide-A-While tourist home in St. Augustine, Florida*
Diego lived through a run-of-the-mill boyhood, found himself
a girl, and later left her behind to go out and see the
world. His wild oats satisfactorily sown, he returned home :
to join fraternal organizations, become a vestryman, and
lead a generally dull life. The discovery of a little green
stone, however, and a visit to his aunt Isabel (known in
certain esoteric circles as Pickle-Hearest-the-Wind) brings
to light the fact that his father is Red Samael, the Seducer,
youngest and most virile of the seventy-two top-level
princes of Hell, a red-headed rogue who had made his reputa
tion sane centuries before with both Lilith and Eve and had
not allowed it to become tarnished in the intervening years.
Is.abel advises Diego to visit his father because
11. . • he will then give you whatever you may de
sire. They always do, the affectionate poor dears,
without talking any cruel celestial nonsense about
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.Il3^ -
And Red Samuel does offer Diego, upon his arrival in the
newly-redecorated abodes of Hell, anything he may desire—
'31 J* B. Cabell, The Devil* s Own Dear Son (Hew York:
Farrar, Straus, and Company, 1949), p. 65.
85
be it a costly seraglio or eternal youth— even though he is
disappointed in Biego’s middle-age appearance and, for a son
of his, staid youth. He is even more disapproving when
Diego asks merely for an oil circulator and a new coat of
paint for the tourist home. His wishes granted all the same,
Diego returns home and asserts his claim to middle-age and
mediocrity by throwing away his little green stone-ticket
to Hell.
Here Satan’s minions are rather nondescript individ
uals. Asmodeus, one of Diego* s brothers through Lilith, in
spite of a cloven hoof (neatly groomed) is merely a polite
propagandist. Punished with eternal youth for his early
seductions,3^ Red Samael is a beautiful, long-legged youth
with red curling hair and ruddy cheeks, living in luxury.33
As an individual, however, he lacks distinction and merely -
goes along with the general policies of Hell, attempting to
cultivate friendly relations between mankind and Jehovah. ;
"Hell’s foreign policy, you conceive, now calls
for romanticism and for high-thinking and for un- '
flagging superiority to mere logic among all human
beings.” :
HAnd for what reason, sir?” ‘
"Why, but without being hoodwinked by these par- j
ticular virtues," young Samael asked, in surprise,
32 Ibid., pp. 101-2.
33 Ibid., p. 142.
”how could mankind forgive their Creator for having
created them what they are? and then holding them
to any sort of account for being futile and perni
cious by nature?”34
The main objection, perhaps, to Cabell's style and the per
sonalities of his devils is that it and they lack subtlety.
A more intricate, original treatment is that of
Julian Green in If 1 Were You. Young Fabian finds exist
ence weighing heavy. In despair at the endless dull round :
of days to come, he wishes to become other than himself.
Very soon after the expression of this wish a mysteriously
obliging M. Brittomart enables Fabian to become anyone he
chooses for as long as he likes. Armed with Brittomart*s
formula, he transforms himself into all the people he had
previously envied, finds that their advantages are offset
by equal disadvantages, and finds that the farther away he
gets from himself the more he is in danger of remaining the
person he has entered. He finally returns to himself, but ;
his body has not been able to stand the long absence from
his personality, and he dies. ^
The novel is well conceived and thoughtfully written,
with changes in the viewpoint and a carefully-chosen variety
of metamorphoses making for efficient contrast; but Green is
most interesting in his treatment of Satan* s servants and in
34 Ibid., p. 178.
87
his polite version of a Sabhath*
M. Brittomart is the character first introduced and
apparently least in importance. His appearance is differ
ent on each of the occasions when Fabian meets him, but his
duties are always the same. At their first meeting, appar
ently by chance on a doorstep during a rain, M. Brittomart
is first particularized by his footsteps, which carry him
up to Fabian very suddenly although their sound never seems
to come closer. At this time he is unnaturally pale, with a
thin-lipped mouth, large yellow teeth, a prominent chin cov
ered with bristles, and large hands with dirty fingernails.
He is shabbily dressed; but it is noticeable that though he
has been in the pouring rain, his coat is quite dry, and he
gives Fabian the sensation of an icy draft.35 At their next
meeting
. . • something about the old man’s appearance
caused Fabian to give a start for what with his
black coat and white tie he gave the impression
of a corpse dressed up for burial. Only the eyes
in the wasted and leaden-hued face gave any indi- j
cation of life.36
(Hotice should be given to the prevalence of the quality of.
iciness, with John Horne, Old Nick, the “Divel,” and now
35 Julian Green, J[f I Were You (J. H. F. McEwen,
translator; New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1949),
pp. 25-28.
36 Ibid., p. 50.
with. M. Brittomart. Along with many pulp fiction writers,
also, both Lewis with Weston and Green with Brittomart sug
gest something corpse-like in those given over to Satan's
service.) He is characterized by old age and speedy move
ments oddly at variance with itj for when Fabian runs away
from him, without seeming to hurry, he is nevertheless right
at the boy's side constantly. Despite this, however, his
mundane appearance and shifty eyes combine to make Fabian
wonder how he could ever have attributed anything of the
supernatural to the man. But then, in his silky voice, M.
Brittomart says,
Your avidity interests me. . . * I'm not asking you
for any confidences. . . . Ihese adventures which
concern the senses particularly attract my attention
and interest only so far as the soul, however tenu
ously, is engaged. Yes, I said the soul. For, as
a certain pious author has it, in the end it is only
souls that one really cares about. . . . I too am a
lover of souls. Just as the devotee of the lusts of
the flesh finds the center of all interest in the
body so do I find the center of mine in the soul.
Do you know, my son, what it means to covet a soul?^'
Brittomart*s interest, however, is merely that of a subor
dinate: he sees that Fabian receives an invitation (unctu- 1
ously phrased and written on crepey paper in pale and yel
lowed ink) to a meeting which takes place two or three
times a year and meets Fabian with a funereal, old-fashioned
carriage. After a Journey in complete darkness they arrive
37 Ibid., pp. 39-40.
89
at a richly furnished mansion. As they enter the salon,
filled with the low tones of many conversing people and a
string orchestra background, the eyes of all the guests,
having in common a great weariness, turn upon Fabian; and
the people look at him with some eagerness* Then Brittomart
turns Fabian over to his anonymous host.3®
The host is a young man, short, with bushy eyebrows, ;
i
fine-textured skin, and the air of a dancer. He smiles con-
.tinually to show off his perfect teeth, and he is most inti
mate with Fabian, explaining himself:
‘ 'Between us two a tenuous bond of understanding
was established when one day you spoke certain words
.... I learned then that you thought that human
destiny was too circumscribed and uniform a thing, .
. . The distinguishing mark which places the imagin
ative in a different class to all others is their
discontent, their continual rebellion against cus
tom. They are always on the lookout for what is
new. Those men and women whom you saw just now are
all martyrs to boredom and ask only to be released
from their martyrdom. . . . Youth is what they long
for; they talk of nothing else. And in exchange for
that longed-for prize they offer me their miserable
souls for which Heaven has no further use.”
"Are you the Devil himself then?” Fabian demanded.
With all the appearance of beguiling modesty the
stranger replied:
"Hardly. A mere underling. ”
And he laughed softly.3®
38 Ibid., pp. 417-48.
3® Ibid., pp. 52-53.
90
Nevertheless he has the power to seal a bargain with Fabian,
and he proceeds to offer him the opportunity of changing from
person to person before he becomes bored;
This very night, as an outstanding favor, you are to
have conferred upon you the gift of being able to
exchange personalities with whomever you may choose;
you will be able in fact to become whatever person
you like. The whole vast experience of the human
race is at your disposal. From one human being to
the next as curiosity may direct you will journey
like a traveler stopping in this city and in that
for as long as it may take him to exhaust its de
lights or satisfy his own thirst for knowledge. Suf
fering will be yours only for as long as you may wish
to experience it, and pleasure equally will be yours
for the taking. . . . Fabian, to you I give the world.
. . . Your acceptance by word of mouth which you have
just uttered will serve in place of all the tradi
tional bonds signed in blood, if you are agreeable?
Such tomfoolery is a bit out of date in these days,
as is also the word Devil which I heard you use not
long ago. It is a word that you would do well to
banish from your vocabulary altogether.40
And at the end of his experience with the world Fabian pays
with his soul*
G. S. Lewis too has modernized his conception of the
Devil’s minions. Instead of being minor devils they are, to
the scientists who study them, a species called macrobes.
: One of the directors of the NICE explains to Mark that while
the scientists and technicians in charge of the mechanized i
; head believ.e that they themselves have created a biochemical
miracle, the orders actually come from a different mind:
40 Ibid., p. 56.
91
You have probably not heard of macrobes. . . . The
formation of the word explains Itself. Below the
level of animal life, we have long known that there
are microscopic organisms. . . . I have now to in
form you that there are similar organisms'above the
level of animal life. When X say, Mabove,f l I am not
speaking biologically. The structure of the macrobe,
so far as we know it, is of extreme simplicity. When
I say that it is above the animal level, I mean that
it; is: more permanent, disposes of more energy, and
has greater intelligence. .. .42-
Director Frost further explains that while macrobes may have
communicated with humans before, the intellectual develop
ment of man had not reached a stage where it could hold at
tractions for a macrobe.
But though there has been little intercourse, there
has been profound influence. Their effect on human
history has been far greater than that of the mic
robes, though, of course, equally unrecognized.
. . . The vocal organs and brain taken from Alcasan
have become the conductors of a regular intercourse
between the macrobes and our own species. I do not
say that we have discovered this technique; the dis
covery was theirs, not ours. The circle to which
you may be admitted is the organ of that co-operation
between the two species which has already created a
new situation for humanity. . . . The day for a large
population has passed. It has served its function by
acting as a kind of cocoon for Technocratic and Objec
tive Man. Now, the macrobes, and the selected humans
who can co-operate with them, have no further use for i
it.42 |
Whatever the scientists explanation of the macrobe, the
side opposing the NICE, led by Ransom, looks at the phenom
enon more theologically and just as fantastically. 3h ex-
41 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, pp. 299-300.
42 Ibid., pp. 202-3.
92
plaining to Mark*s'wife the workings of the order, the
skeptic of the group somewhat disbelievingly defines eldila.
Supposing them to exist, you are to conceive them
floating about the depth of space, though they may
alight oh a planet here and there, like a bird
alighting on a tree, you understand. There’s some
of them • • • more or less permanently attached to
particular planets, but they’re not native there.
They're just a clean different kind of thing.43
He claims that the eldila are friendly to human beings ex-
' !
.cept for the eldils on Earth, who have formed a conspiracy
against the human race.
You are to imagine us, Mrs. Studdock, living on a
world where the criminal classes of the eldils have
established their headquarters. And what’s happen
ing now, if the Director's views are correct, is
that their own respectable kith and kin are visit
ing this planet to red the place up,44
The evil eldil-macrobes are no match for their respectable
kith and kin and are consequently defeated.
But the Screwtape Letters of Lewis take a more tradi
tional view of devils, though his framework again is unusual.
This series of letters pictures Hell as a carefully organ
ized combination of police state and bureaucracy, with vari-
our complicated levels in the Lowerarchy. Thus Screwtape, !
as under-secretary of a department, is very lowly-placed
indeed. Among the departments are a college for young temp
43 Ibid., p. 220.
44 Ibid., p. 221.
93
ters, a Secret Police of course, a research division, and a
Philological Arm (whose function it is to change the mean-
A fz
ings of words, as substituting unselfishness for charity).
In- addition, each human being, Screwtape implies, is given
into the charge of a junior or senior tempter, whose res
ponsibility he is. Success is rewarded with promotion and
failure with punishment or devourment. (”I enclose a little
booklet just issued, on the new House of Correction for In
competent Tempters. It Is profusely illustrated and you
will not find a dull page in it.”46) In order to insure
success, the tempters are trained to work closely with each
other and versed In all the useful exercises such as trans
formation into an angel of light as well as other varieties
of change. And sometimes the transformations seem to be
involuntary (rather like Mann’s description of the Devil's
changing forms):
Here the MS. breaks off and is resumed in a dif
ferent Hand. '
In the heat of composition I find that I have
Inadvertently allowed myself to assume the form of
a large centipede. I am accordingly dictating the
rest to my secretary. How that the transformation
is complete I recognise it as a periodical phenom
enon. Some rumour of it has reached the humans and
a distorted account of it appears in the poet Mil
ton, with the ridiculous addition that such changes
45 Lewis, Screwtape Letters, p. 131»
46 Ibid., p.. 111.. ___ ______
94
of shape are “punishment" imposed on us by the
Enemy. . . . Transformation proceeds from within
and is a glorious manifestation of that Life Force
which Our Father would worship if he worshipped any
thing hut himself. In my present form I feel even
more anxious to see you, to unite you to myself in
an indissoluble embrace,
(Signed) Toadpipe
For his Abysmal Sublimity Under'
Secretary Screwtape, T.E., B.S., etc.47
The junior tempters often tend to indulge themselves at
their patients1 expense, and Screwtape sometimes finds it
necessary to caution his protege, Wormwood:
It is a little bit disappointing to expect a de
tailed report on your work and to receive instead
such a vague rhapsody as your last letter. . . .
For the first time in your career you have tasted
that wine which is the reward of all our labours--
the anguish and bewilderment of a human soul— and
it has gone to your head. . . . But do remember,
Wormwood, that duty comes before pleasure. If any
present self-indulgence on your part leads to the
ultimate loss of the prey, you will be left eter
nally thirsting for that draught of which you are '
now enjoying the first sip. If, on the other hand,
by steady and cool-headed application here and now
you can finally secure his soul, he will then be
yours forever— a brim-full living chalice of despair
and horror and astonishment which you can raise to
your lips as often as you please.4®
Despite the friendly advice, however, it is apparent that
both Screwtape and Wormwood are eager to get ahead at the
expense of the other. In one letter Screwtape suddenly be
comes fawningly polite (BI hope, my dear boy, you have not
shown my letters to anyone. Not that it matters of course.
47 113 id»» PP* H 4-15.
48 Ibid., pp. 29-30.
95
Anyone would see that the appearance of heresy into which I
have fallen is purely accidental”4®), hut usually he is
menacing:
What is the use of whining to me about your diffi
culties? If you are proceeding on the Enemy*s idea
of “justice” and suggesting that your opportunities
and intentions should be taken into account, then I
am not sure that a charge of heresy does not lie
against you. At any rate, you will soon find that
the justice of Hell is purely realistic, and con
cerned only with results. Bring us back food, or
be food yourself.
About the only way in which they are one is in the backgromd
of pain in their lives furnished by the ”ghastly luminosity,
that stabbing and searing glare” occasioned by their con-
C1
stant direct perception of the Enemy.
Mrs. DuBois took her inspiration for The Devil* s
Spoon from a Moslem legend, which supposes that Haroot was
once an angel who, as a consequence of his want of compas
sion for the frailties of mankind, was sent down to earth to
be tempted. He sinned and was given his choice of being
.punished in the present or the hereafter; he chose the for
mer and to this day hangs suspended by his feet in a rocky
pit of Babel, where he is a great teacher of magic.52 Since
49 Ibid., p. 96.
50 Ibid., p. 151.
51 Ibid., p. 26.
52 DuBois, op. cit., prefatory note.
96
Haroot is the hero of her story, Mrs* DuBois has to tread
carefully in describing him* Thus he has an illusion of a
body like quartz in appearance, although, as he hangs in
chains by his heels, he no longer has his wings to match his
hair and halo*
Arid While Haroot might technically now be classed
as a devil, being sent direct from Hell, still he
had once been one of the Heavenly beings and re
tained those celestial qualities within him, un
impaired *5^
To further curry favor with his reading public, Haroot, while
serving Iblees, does not worship him*
Besides Haroot, Mrs. DuBois pictures shadowily a
throng of servants to Iblees and his five sens, sheytans,
djinns, and ghouls. They are not further described, with
the exception of a small furry fiend and another minor fiend
with a large head like a cat*s on a frog*s body,5® who seem
to have been lifted from the medieval morality plays.56
On the fringes of Satan* s kingdom are two devil-
deities resurrected for literary purposes. Robert Block, i
the pulp-fictionist, plots a story around Anubis, Opener of :
the Way, the jackal-headed god of Karneter, a devil-god wor-
53 Ibid., pp. 14-15.
54 Ibid., p. 29.
55 Ibid., p. 15.
56 See above, p. xxxviii.
shiped in secret rites above tlie traditional worship of the
Egyptian gods. In Mr. Block’s story the jackal god works
the destruction of two profaning explorers.5^
Another of the fringe devils used in contemporary lit
erature is Zar, a Nabataean devil, and a minor character in
Upton Sinclair’s satire, Our Lady. Mary, the mother of
Jesus, becomes anxious about her son’s future and goes to a
sorceress. The sorceress can show her only her own future
through the aid of the devil Zar. He transports her into
the future, 1933, where she witnesses a gladiatorial combat
between a school called the University of Southern Califor
nia and another called Notre Dame. She comes in contact
with a peculiar Gentile religion given to the worship of a
strange goddess and has to undergo a painful process called
exorcism. When she wakens, she reproaches the sorceress
for not showing her anything that concerned herself.
Another fringe devil is the nebulous, indescribable
organism of Henry Kuttner’s short story, “Call Him Demon"
(1948), which four children find in the hidden depths of
the attic and which has some vital consanguinity with "the
wrong uncle" who is visiting the grown-ups. The children
realize that the thing has to be fed daily with raw meat,
or disaster will overtake the household. They manage for a'
57 R.'Block,'Opener of the Way (Sauk City, Wisconsin:
Arkham Hous e , - 1945) ~ pp. 15b-7 0 .
98
week until the youngest child grows tired of the "game” and
shows the wrong uncle where his invalid grandmother is. The
children, of course, are never told the details of their
grandmother* s death nor of the disappearance of the wrong
uncle* Kuttner*s effect is achieved without waste and with
telling and chilling impact.
The strange and sometimes evil knowledge of children
is also drawn upon by John Collier in his short story,
’ ’Thus I Refute Beelzy, ” published in collection in 1941.
Here a little boy is the servant and playmate of Mr. Beelzy,
. who has promised to eat up anyone who tries to hurt him.
When his dentist father questions him too closely and deter
mines to punish him for story-telling, Mr. Beelzy keeps his
word. Collier sheds all his little mannerisms in this brief,
spine-prickling anecdote and achieves a small masterpiece
of horror.
He returns to his usual light-hearted, brittle man- ,
ner, however, in another short story (1943) ’ ’ Half-Way to j
; Hell.” A young man who has committed suicide by way of
veronal tablets is met by a fiend, who, except for his glow
ing eyes, remains undescribed, and goes along quietly. The
young man is much surprised to find that the way to Hell is
an escalator leading off a London subway. He stalls, how
ever, manages to trick the fiend into taking a rival onto
the escalator, returns home, slips into his body, and wakes
99
up. In Collier’s “The Devil, George, and Rosien the vener
able mythological figure of Charon appears as captain of the
steamboat travelling between Hell and earth. He is a man of
few and salty words. The other servants of the Devil in
this story are the convivial fellows who carry out George’s
orders and the legions of imps trained to impersonate child
ren, salesmen, and relations-in-law.
In another conception (1943) of Collier's, ’ ’ After the
Ball,” Hell is a vast expanse of gridirons where teams of
fiends play English football, using damned souls as balls.
Tazreel, a fiend, wants to join one of the teams; but he is
so clumsy that not even the worst team in Hell will have him
unless he can provide a ball. Tazreel thereupon comes to
earth and offers himself as slave to the most virtuous man
in the world in hope of tempting him into mortal sin. The
man accepts Tazreel's service but so steadfastly resists
temptation that the fiend almost despairs. But then Tazreel
■manages to get his charge married (a device Screwtape had
not thought of) and shortly has both a ball and a team. It
will be seen that Collier makes no attempt at consistency or
at systematizing his conceptions; rather he uses the infer
nal merely as a realm for imaginative exercise which in
cludes occasional touches of satire or light-hearted moral
izing.
So Satan is usually not alone in his efforts but is
attended by numerous and varied cohorts and allies. His
human servants may worship him from fear or from sincere
devotion. His spiritual allies— at least those with a
Christian background— are lesser replicas of himself, whe
ther as constantly bickering bureaucrats serving a twenti
eth-century High Command, dark eldila-macrobes attendant on
a bent Gyarsa, or co-workers in a refurbished Hell. The
lower regions are also peopled by alien spirits like Haroot,
the fallen angel. And on the fringe of Satan* s activities
are pre-Christian and foreign figures like Cuthbert, Anubis,
and Zar, largely featureless but nevertheless vaguely men
acing.
CHAPTER IV
THE DEVIL*S DOMINIONS
Of the writers who consider the Devil and his works,
comparatively few authors think about Hell. Those who do
present varied and often unexpected pictures, ranging from
no Hell at all to luxurious, refurbished infernal regions
catering to an exclusive clientele.,,. This- chapter will run
the gamut from Robin Goodfellow*s bachelor apartment, through
Mr. Hooker* s Tennessee shack, Iblees* s divided::headquarters, <
West*s concentration camp, and Cabell*s luxurious Hell, to
the various attempts at detailing the traditional concept of
Hell, made by Wall, Lewis, and Mann.
The Devil who denies Hell is Robin Goodfellow. When
the doctor asks him about his dwelling, he deprecates,
HThat* s all part of the propaganda* There was no
casting out of Heaven: it was simply a banishment.
There was no Hell, at least not the kind you think
of. I had to have a home, of course, but it was
the simplest kind of bachelor apartment! nothing
ornate like Milton describes— in fact, the only
large room Is the library. M3. J
i
Mr. Hooker,also denies the existence of Hell; his denial Is
■ suspect, however in view of his susceptibility to cold and
the warmth of his earthly quarters. Otherwise, these are
characteristic of his personality and surroundings:
1 Keller, op. cit., p. 84.
102
Besides the stove, the shack was furnished with an
army cot, piled high with heavy woolen "blankets, a
canebacked rocker, a tiny uncovered table. The
walls were plastered with “art" pictures of half-
naked chorus girls and models cut from magazines.
In one corner was a squat, fat-bellied white com
mode and beside it a tattered Sears-Roebuck cata
logue on a cracker box. Between the pot and the
box a crude Gross, turned upside down, leaned against
the wall.^
Old Nick Is also consistent with his character in his choice
of lodgings. He favors the hill-people; so outside of Hell;
he spends most of his time in Hot Springs, Eureka, Little
Rock, and the Ozarks, hinting to Lem of the grandeur and
comfort of his home in Little Rock.3
While Ibises*s office on earth is a stolid, unimagin
ative one with lots of mahogany furniture and a green rug,4
he displays more imagination in the construction of Hell.
His personal halls are in a cavern in the green chrysolite
mountains of Kaf, and they are decorated along the walls
with tapestries showing Solomon*s sins. The hall is lit
here and there by luminous green moons and perfumed by.tri- ,
pods of incense, replenished now and then by a small furry, j
horned fiend.3 Other regions of Hell bear a strong resem
. 2 Givens, op. cit., pp. 187-188.
, 3 Stone, op. cit., p. 197.
4 DuBois, op. cit., p. 96.
5 Ibid., pp. 17-19.
blance to Dante* a inferno. The fact that they are divided
into layers is only touched upon for the purpose of describ
ing the sixth hell beneath earth, where recalcitrant fiends
and d^inns are punished--a particularly unattractive spot,
dark, dank, arid craggy, infested with black scorpions the
site of mules with tails like 3pears. Haroot worries some
what about such a fate, since even the djinns are afraid of
it; **and to have a djinn think so, when the djlnns were, to
use the expression, exceedingly hard-boiled, was more than
disquie t ing•"6
Other hells have difficulty matching the exotic
grandeur and terror of this sketchily described Mohammedan
one, but Cabell* s Satan makes the attempt. When the housing
shortage finally reaches Hell, Satan holds a council.
Originally seven and one-half million angels had rebelled
and left Heaven to seek freedom of religion. They estab
lished their new home among the untamed, virgin conflagra
tions of Hell and successfully tempted mankind into disre
garding the primitive notions of their illustrious Adver
sary. So Hell thrived and was enriched until therfallen
. . . ... f
angels received so many lost souls that they could not
attend to all of them without giving up their own leisure
time. And even when the demons no longer had the time to
6 Xb id. , p. DO .
104
tempt men, the humans kept sinning and coming to overflow
HeU, whose confines, while extensive, were inelastic. At
an assembly, therefore, of the seventy-two princes of Hell
the matter is taken up. Bimmon the ambassador to Russia,,
and therefore subject to modern ideas, suggests that it is
not the obligation of Hell to torment sinners merely because
they, like themselves, have broken the laws of Jehovah. And
, - • • - . |
why, just because they do not want souls to go to Heaven,
should they allow these souls to clutter up Hell? At his
suggestion, therefore, the princes adopt the ingenious pol
icy of displacing the damned from their homes in Hell, thus
solving at once both their housing problem and their exces- .
sive working hours. The damned are consequently evicted
. daily, with the exception of architects and moving picture
directors, until Hell is empty. Theh the fires are exting
uished, and Hell is remodeled gaily and luxuriously in tech
nicolor. The displaced damned are left adrift among the
various planetary systems; and to prevent further foreign
entries, billboards are erected along the Highway of the
Dead to advertise the paradises of each religion.? A sample
billboard:
Faith*s most distinguished paradise lies just ahead.
Take'the eternity ybu have dreamed of in picturesque
Zion, high in interplanetary space, away from humming
7 Cabell, op. cit., pp. 106-31.
105
highways, in your own celestial mansion, steam-heated.
Informal atmosphere, with every recreational facility.
No marriage or giving in marriage. Lots doing.8
Prom henceforward the demons, whenever they have time, will
tempt mankind to live virtuously and thus go to Heaven,
though Asmodeus, speaking with Diego, finds it hard to do so
with any sincerity; but he triesJ
"You must not think," the fiend resumed hastily, with
a notable air of contrition, "that I would criticize
the Holy City with disfavor. Very many of its pat
rons get pleasure out of its Quaint Old-World Atmos
phere; and for people who like that sort of thing,
or who care for bathing and all other water sports
in its justly famous crystal sea, the Holy City af
fords an agreeable eternity#9
Ransome, too, has housing problems, but he has not
been able to solve them so easily. When John Wallis, there
fore, commits suicide and he and the war criminal, he helped
condemn are removed to an embarkation point, they wait for
days before they can be sent farther. They are finally
transported by train to a forest outpost camp, a crude,
makeshift affair guarded in the best concentration camp man
ner. There they are put to work in gangs building further
' ' ' 1
tracks into the forest since, with the arrival of a crowded ;
train each night, in a few days there is what Kenelm can only
call "quite an interesting situation,He is willing to
8 Ibid., p. 131.
9 Ibid., p. 100.
106
help organize the labor more efficiently, but Wallis balks
at accepting things as they are and is sent to Cape Sable
for indoctrination under Ransome*s tutelage. Here again he
cannot accept the easy way of life but is driven on by feel
ings of guilt and longing desire to escape. He and Kenelm
find an underground route across the mountains to, a quiet,
religious, medieval town where he meets his earthly loves,
who beg him to go back to things as they were. He finds
, i
Ransarae there as well, but he insists instead on going, back
over all his past life and succeeds finally, when he .has
passed from all human memory, in sinking into oblivion,
existing only in the eternal awareness of the mind of God.
The novel is confused in its conception, and there
' are a number of loose ends in its execution (e.g., the sig-!
nificance of the mountains and Wallis's unresolved feeling ;
that everything will become clear if he can learn why he
was coupled with Kenelm for eternity). West does, not solve;
i
the problem of sin and guilt; in fact he does not state it
clearly. He seems to get lost in his imagination, which is;
certainly vivid and arresting enough, and in his interest
in painting his speculations.
Those speculations, however, are provocative. He
suggests that Satan— Ransome— is a master of propaganda.
The sign at the point of embarkation reads ‘ 'Welcome to Par- 1
. adise" in freshly painted letters that allow the inscrip-
107
tion ''Purgatory'* to appear underneath and under that, still
more faintly "Tartarus.” Kenelm, the war criminal, on see
ing the concentration camp, comments,
"Hell is always contemporary— this experience proves
it to me. Medieval hell was constructed in contem
porary terms, the terrors were the torturer1s reper
tory— fire, drowning in filth, tongs, racks, and
wheels. But it was always intimates torturer work
ing on lost soul, the flend* s personality imposed on
the personality of the damned. Here we are in a con
temporary hells first terror realized, not to be
treated as a person at all— second terror, deprived
of all personality we are driven like cattle in ful
fillment of some utterly impersonal plan or design.
This damned train is a typical feature of our modern
period of Volkerwanderungen— I have arranged such
things myself. Mow natural to find that I have been
an architect of the hell of my time. "10
Each part of this "Paradise" is evidently fabricated accord
ing to what Ransome thinks humans might like. He apparently
thinks in averages and makes no allowance for individuality.
And he is very pleased with his work. Thus Wallis finds
Cape Sable a garish, obvious resort.
His impulse on finding himself in what appeared to
be a malicious parody of an error of his adolescence
was to clap the car into reverse and to clear out,
but on turning to Ransome . . . he saw that his
guide was looking about him with the radiant expres
sion of a parent watching his favorite child or one
of those pseudo-artists devoid of the faculty of
self-criticism looking at his latest work. In the
face of this fatuous delight it seemed unkind, and
reason,added that it might also be unwise, to be
frank.11
10 West, op. cit., pp. 27-28.
11 *bld.» P* 63*
108
Certainly Ransomed ' ’Paradise’ * has its disadvantages, for
whoever tries to upset Ransome*s idea of the settled order
of things is summarily dispatched by being made to drink the
waters of Lethe, thus forgetting everything and becoming
animals•
A modern Hell, fitted out with a detail that can only
be called medieval is the women* s division of Hell as con
ceived by John Collier in his short story (1943), "The Devil,
George, and Rosie*" George, a young but confirmed misogyn
ist, accepts with alacrity the Devil*s proposal that he
should be the overseer of the women torture division of
Hell.**-2 He succeeds admirably until Charon makes a mistake
and delivers into Hell a beautiful young woman who is not
only still alive but also so surpassingly Innocent that she .
does not even have a prospect of qualifying for Hell. George
is so greatly attracted that he disobeys the Devil* s demand
that she be seduced and arranges an escape for both of them !
to earth, where they marry and live happily, it is to be
presumed, ever after* The women*s division of Hell, which
Collier describes in detail, is not made up so much of tor- ;
tures as of irritants designed to point out feminine foibles.
12 The Devil is discussed only to the extent of say
ing that he is dark and cynical and subject to attacks of
gout. John Collier, "The Devil, George, and Rosie," Clifton
Fadiman, editor, The Touch of Hutmeg and More Unlikely Sto
ries (New York: Pres_s_qf the Readers Club,. 1943), ppw.96,TT3.
109
Rows of cells are designed as modern villas fitted out with
imitation husbands who doze eternally and children who cry
continually. The wardrobes are full of unfashionable cloth
ing; the walls have the peculiar property of translating
noise into the sound of a party going on next door; and the
windows are designed to make the dowdiest passer-by appear
dressed in the latest mode. This particular department is
situated on a planet in outer space. Presumably Hell also
has other departments, which, however, are not mentioned.
Clifton Fadiman, commenting on Collier’s style and. spirit,
remarks that he has **the genuine souff 14 touch.1,13 This
light and frothy touch conceals a certain amount of shrewd
observation but precludes penetrating speculation.
All the above Devils seem to be proud of their handi
work; this pleasure is not shared by the other Devils. The
medieval Satan takes considerable precaution in allowing
only selected damned people, but he does so only for utili
tarian motives:
£ Concerning the Bishop] ”I*m going to harry that man
exceedingly before I leave this city. Mark my words,*1
added the Devil darkly, "when that man finishes his
career in this world and gets to Hell, the first thing
he*11 do is found_a Vigilance Society. He’ll have us
all properly pestered with complaints about the nud
ity of the damned and the like, as if anyone- could
expect clothing to survive in that temperature. . . •"
13 Ibid., p. vi.
The Devil brooded darkly for a few moments*
"As if Hell wasn't bad enough already," he muttered.
"As it is^H'm bored stiff most of the time."14
Lewis does not emphasize the fire and brimstone qual
ity of Hell but through Screwtape he points out the grand
eur of its noise:
Music and silence--how I detest them both! How
thankful we should be that ever since our Father
entered Hell— though longer ago than humans, reck
oning in light years, could express— no square
inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal
time has been surrendered to either of those abom
inable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise
— Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expres
sion of all that is exultant, ruthless, and vir
ile— Hoise which alone defends us from silly
qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible des
ires* We will make the whole universe a noise in
the end. . • • The melodies and silences of Hea
ven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit
, or anything like it.
That Hell is not nearly loud enough to drown out Heaven is
not surprising considering its minute size. In his dream-
vision Lewis is amazed when his Teacher, upon being asked
where Hell is, goes down on his knees and picks a blade of
Using its thin end as a pointer, he made me see,
after I had looked very closely, a crack in the
soil so mnall that I could not have identified
it without his aid.
"I cannot be certain," he said, "that this is
14 Wall, op. cit. , p. 136.
15 Lewis, Screwtape Letters, pp. 113-14.
Research is in progress.
grass.
Ill
the crack ye came up through. But through a
crack no bigger than that ye certainly came.”
"Do you mean then that Hell--all that infin
ite empty town--is down in some little crack like
this?**
. "Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of
your earthly world: but it is smaller than one
atom of this world, the Real World. ...”
MIt seems big enough when you*re in it. Sir.”
"And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies,
and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one
single experience and put into the scale against the
least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in
Heaven, would have no weight that could be regis
tered at all."16
Despite its minuteness, however, Hell is real enough to
those in itj and though Thomas Mann is the only writer who
considers the torments of the damned, he paints an adequate
— and to Adrian Leverkubn an inviting— picture, considering
that
• • one can really not speak of it at all,, because
the actual is beyond what by word can be declared.
• .'.'“That is the secret delight and security of hell,
that it is not to be informed on. . . . This is indeed
the chiefest characteristic and what in most general
terms is to be uttered about it: • . that 'Here
everything leaves off.'1 Every compassion, every grace,
every sparing, every last trace of consideration for
the incredulous, imploring objection ‘that you verily
cannot do so unto a soul*: it is done, it happens, and
indeed without being called to any reckoning in words;
in soundless cellar, far down beneath God*s hearing,
and happens to all eternity. • • . Nothing forgetting
the dismal groans of lust mixted therewith; since
endless torment, with no possible collapse, no swoon
16 Lewis, The Great Divorce, pp. 125-27.
112
to put a period thereto, degenerates into shameful
pleasure, wherefore such as have some intuitive know
ledge speak indeed of the* 1lusts of hell.* . . . It
is at bottom only a continuation of the extravagant '
existence. To knit up in two words Its quintessence,
or if you like its chief matter, is that it leaves
Its denizens only the choice between extreme cold
and an extreme heat which can melt granite# Between
these two states they flee roaring to and fro, for
in the one the other always seems heavenly refresh
ment but is at once and in the most hellish meaning
of the word intolerable. **17
Hell also, therefore, depends on the character of |
i
!Satan as to whether it provides delights for evermore to
the initiated or eternal ' ’extravagant living.” Its exist
ence is denied by the helpful Devils, Robin G-oodfellow, Mr#
‘ _ !
■ Hooker, and--most unconvincingly— West*s Ransome# Hell is
on earth for Old Nick, Iblees, and the company of M. Britto-1
mart# And what Hells do exist In the Infernal regions are
i
jail different from each other# Lewis*s Is grandly noisy;
i ' - . . . - ^
!BuBois* s is richly fairy-like though rather uncomfortable;
!Wallis is traditionally hot; and Mann*s seems to sum up all
Iattempts at saying that Hell consists of spiritual ultimates.
Throughout all of them, however, runs the note of unexpec-
l
1 tedness or even astonishment as a universal link.
, V —
17 Mann, op# cit., pp. 244-46.
CHAPTER V
THE DEVIL'S DSSTIHY
As present-day writers apparently do not concern
themselves greatly with Satan1s origins and history, so
they do not consider his destiny in great detail. Those who
, do mention it, however, vary his end according to their own
' (
purposes and personalities, treating with sincerity or irony
'endings ranging from reunion with God and happiness ever ;
J after to apocalyptic destruction.
1 Robin Goodfellow is, not surprisingly, the most- i
optimistic of the group. And In this mood of optimism he I
prophesies to the doctor in a mixture of pseudo-Hebraic
|verse and cliches
1 1*11 tell you this for your encouragement, Doctor--
1 mankind is on the way to winning the freedom of
1 his soul. . . . Someday man will be a god • •
I and he* 11 make the crooked roAd^ straight and the
< rough places smooth; and that road will stretch
between this world and Father*s library. Father
[ will come out of the library andj peer down the
! hew road, and when he sees the new gods . • • cre-
: ated by Brother and me, and to which he gave souls
. . • he*11 be glad with an exceeding joy and will ;
send for Brother and me. He*11 kiss us and say, j
HMy sons, the days of preparation are past and the
new gods have come; with their arrival breaks the
dawn of a new day and Of a new life for us. They
will do all the work because they are new gods and
are'cleansed, through millions of years of strug
gle, of all their dross. Since they will do all
the needful work, you two brothers can cease from
your labors and come Into the library with me.
How you boys can forget your troubles of the past
and be loving brothers again, as you were before
you had your differences, and I will welcome you
114
into the library and let you read any and all of my
books, because now you are old enough and have suf
ficient wisdom to understand them. Prom now on,
you will just sleep and read, as all the old gods
do when the time of their labor is past and the
days Of their toil are accomplished. These hew
gods will look after the universe till they in their
turn are replaced by newer gods, concerning which I
cannot imagine* 1
Mr. Hooker looks at the process of reunion from the point of
view of a practical businessman:
"Some of these days," Mr. Hooker said thought
fully, "me and Him may git. together. When I
git around to doin' some real high-prassure pros-
elytin* and some real high-power tempt in* and take
all His worshipers away f*um Him, why then 1*11 go
to Him with a compromise plan. Hit *ud be a good
thing for all concerned."2
As a practical businessman, however, he can*t help thinking
that both he and God are engaged in a thankless project
since he overplayed his hand by introducing hate into the
world:
Fo*ks has forgot all about pi*asure sinnin*, like
drinkin* and whorin* and lyin* and covet in* • Them
things they take jis* as a matter of course. All
they're concentratin* on now is hatin'. And hit
hain*t no fun . . . even to be top dog in a world
full .'of hate. A man could get a lot of pi* asure,
rulin* over a world full of drinkin* and shout in*
and laughin* fo*ks. But fo'ks full of hate and
bitterness hain*t no fun nor good comp'ny. Even
to the devil.®
1 Keller, op. cit., pp. 97-98
2 Givens, op. cit*, p. 182*
3 Ibid., p. 280.
But while Mr, Hooker may despair of man, he doe3 not antici
pate his own sudden demise nor even a cessation of his pre
sent mode of living,
Robin Goodfellow and Mr, Hooker are the only present-
day Devils who are complacent about their future' if they
think of it at all, The other Devils who consider their
destinies do so gloomily. Thus John Home sees for himself
only a life of wandering— ”My death is often rumored but
never proven. It is my doom to wander and work ruin, I am
not privileged like the dust1 *^— and defeat at the hands of
Man in all his attempts on Man's individual integrity. This
is illustrated by John Horne's thoughts after he possesses
t
Remember: >
He saw the truth in her, the truth that all his <
forces could not corrupt. He had had his way,
destroyed her soul, possessed her body, and left
his demon-seed therein. But what had It got him?
She could still lift up her head and tell him, to
be gone. For she came of Man, the race that can :
defeat itself but can never be taken from without.
He was the baffled serpent, doomed to writhe for- I
ever through the grass,5
For Barker the spirit of evil suffers defeat by the good- 1
ness in the spirit of man? for C, S. Lewis, however, the
forces of evil will suffer an ultimate rather than a contin
ued defeat, Lewis's demons recognize their state of total
4 Barker, op. cit», p. 192,
5 Ibid., p, 232.
war and write of victory with such desperation that the rea
der is assured of their failure:
Members of His faction have frequently admitted that
if ever we came to understand what He means by Love,
the war would be over and we should re-enter Heaven.
And there lies the great task* We know that He can- '
not really loves nobody cans it doesn*t make sense*
If we could only find out what He is really up to I
Hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried, and still
we can11 find out. Yet we must never lose hope; more
and more complicated theories, fuller and fuller col
lections of data, richer rewards for researchers who
make progress, more and more terrible punishments for
those who fail--all this, pursued and accelerated to
the very end of time, cannot, surely, fail to. succeed.®
Charles Williams takes the certainty of Satan* s destruction
out of the realm of irony and states it with even, more pre
cision:
“Praise to our lord," Gregory said* But Manasseh
smiled and shook his head* "He is the last mys
tery,** he murmured, "and all destruction is his
own destroying of himself."7
It may be concluded, then, that Satan* s destiny is
also relative, or at least his conception of it is, depend
ing on his personality* If he is Robin Goodfellow or Mr.
Hooker, he may occasionally be wry, but he is nearly always
optimistic* If he is a humanistic ©evil like John Horne,
he is doomed to defeat by Man; and if he is the utterly self
centered Devil of Lewis and Williams, his destruction is
inevitable by virtue of his own personality.
6 Lewis, Screwtape Letters, pp. 97-98*
7 Williams, War in Heaven, p. 212.
CONCLUSION
A summary of the findings in each chapter reveals the
unprecedented variety in the treatment of the Devil that was
suggested in the introduction to this study* Satan is now
/dependent on his authors for all his activities and even
his personality* An indication of the general trend of j
opinion is the scarcity of opinion concerning Satan* s his- |
< ' ’ * ■ ' t
! tory: his origin depends on the needs of the author, as ;
does, his destiny* His; present personality is so varied
; that it may he concluded that the author* s convenience
enters into that as well*
In appearance the Devil may he handsome, as is Rohin ;
, Goodfellow and Wall* s Satan; he may even make his own hand- I
some hody as does John Horne* He may match his background,
t
t
i as do the regional Devils of Givens and Stone, In Mann* s
: conception the Devil has no control over his shifting appeer-p
ance; and in two widely differing treatments, that of Lewis!
and of Block, the Devil must incarnate himself in an inter- ;
. ested human.
\ Similarly, his manner may follow two basic, differ
ences. In one ease, that of Rohin Goodfellow, the Devil is
an entirely pleasant person, polite, suave, and pleasantly
beneficent. For the majority of writers, however, Satan is
118 ,
evil in varying degrees* His evil may be recognized only
tacitly, as it is by Stone, who presents a rather childish, :
self-centered Old Hick; it may be only hinted at and justi
fied, as it is by Givens in his depiction of a pleasure-
loving Mr. Hooker; or the evil may be passed ever lightly as
in the suave but irritable background presentation of Iblees
i
nr in the polite, airy, deprecating Devil of Wall. Two
authors, however, paint, in their individual treatments, the|
! : ' ' i
I traditional self-centered Evil One, using the trappings of
goodness only for the purpose of disguise; such are the
Satans of C. S. Lewis and Bernanos; and Mann’s t , Divel,1 * as
well, in his inordinate jealousy partakes to some, extent of ,
these natures. 1
It is the same with the conception of Satan* s atti-
jtude toward God and man. The majority of writers— Williams,!
t 1
Lewis, DuBois, Stone, and Wall-present the Devil as the
j ■ - .
adversary of God and the enemy of man, lusting for his pos- i
1 ' 1
:session. Two present him, though evil, as God’s servant and;
: under ling; they are Bernanos, who also finds Satan avid for
!souls, and Barker* Bernanos and West also describe the ,
Devil as preferring God’s hate to His infinitely more trying'
love. And two authors describe Satan a3 the servant and
well-wisher of mans Keller and Givens.
While there is little or no variation of the tradi
tional techniques Satan has always used for these writers,
119 '
all ills methods are represented. He may seduce and enter
tain, as does John Horne; he may serve the humans he "be
friends as do Old Nick and Robin Goodf ellow; he may follow
the standard methods of temptation, as do the Devils of
Screwtape* s ilk and the Uh-Man; or he may battle God and man,
outright, as do the Defiril of Charles Williams, the Ibleea ;
of DuBois, the Lucifer of Bernanos, and the ruler of the j
macrobes in C. S. Lewis's presentation. She bargain, how-
ever, remains by far the most popular method of procedure.
It is used by a host of short-story writers, by Thoby-Mar-
celin, Barker, Wall, Green, and Mann with varying degrees
of literary success.
Perhaps the greatest originality displayed by modern
.writers on the subject is in the treatments of the Devil's (
human and superhuman servants. Nearly all of them are - pre- ;
!sented in such a way as to distinguish them from traditional;
^conceptions of the Devil* s minions. Thus those who_ serve j
I j
Satan for what they can get out of it are presented inunu- ;
sual settings, such as the exotic background of the Haitian ;
i • >
natives of Thoby-Marcelin, the carefully delineated person- :
ality of Mouchette by Bernanos, the duped scientists of
Lewis, the old-time wizard of Wall, or the pseudo-historieal
Non-Dead of Carr. Two authors— Mann in the character of
Adrian Leverkuhn and 0. S. Lewis in the character of the
physicist Weston— give the servants the motive of serving
humanity; and two authors--C, S. Lewis again in the charac
ters of Wither and Frost and Charles Williams in the charac
ters of his evil triumvirate— motivate their characters
solely with the selfless love of evil. Most of these char
acters, however, are characterized by inability to recog
nize reality and an extreme degree of self-centeredness.
While some traditional superhuman servants of Satan !
are presented, such as a fallen Mohammedan angel (DuBois), \
Sammael and Asmodeus (Cabell), and various poltergeists,
incubi, and sylphs (Wall), they are all given a twist of
humor or human interest that takes them out of the tradi
tional categories. And there are some presentations that ;
are wholly fantastic and original, for example, M« Brittb-
mart and Fabian*s host (Green), the macrobes, and the eldila
(Lewis), These all have in common a recognition that the
final pleasures and realities are the avid collection of
souls. And some authors ranged into the dominions of aloof J
foreign devils such as Karneter (Block) .and Zar (Sinclair), !
Again, the dominions of the Devil range from non-ex?. '
istent ones for Robin Goodfellow and--ostensibly--Mr. Hooker
I
to comfortable earthly abodes for Old Hick and Xblees, from
the traditional, uncomfortable Hells of Wall* s medieval
Devil, C. S* Lewis* s Satan, and Mann* s Kaiseraschern Devil
(who agree on the astonishment of its inmates), to the
renovated, luxurious Hell of Cabell, _And the writers vary
their.prophecies of Satan*s destiny: Keller foresees a
time of reunion with Goodfellow*s Elder Brother; Mr. Hooker,
Old Nick, and John Home expect to continue their present
modes of'living for some time; C. S. Lewis and Charles Wil
liams, true to their concepts of the Devil*s evil, foresee
his inevitable destruction and the Triumph of God.
While there is some originality in the presentation
of the Devil’s side or point of view by Barker, Cabell, and
;Lewis, most contemporary writers are dependent on either
past history of the Devil or previous literary treatments
!
for their concepts. They go to other religions beside the
Christian for characters (e.g., Sinclair’s Zar and DuBois*s
Iblees and Haroot) or to mythology--Keller* s beneficent
Robin Goodfellow bears considerable resemblance to the
Titan Prometheus; figures from Greek mythology appear in a
!short story of Collier’s and in West’s novel; and Keller’s
| concept of the ultimate union of the Devil with his Big Bro-
I
| ther is reminiscent of Clement* s theory that the Devil will
i
eventually be saved.
Dependence on previous literary concepts range from
details of appearance such as Block’s Dark One resembling
Asmodeus, and characteristics such as Satan’s affinity for
cold, comparable with Dante's conception of Satan buried in
ice, to the use of previous plots (compare Cabell with John
Heywood’s interlude of the Four P’s and Givens with Jonson.’s
' . , 122
i
The Devil Xs an Ass)* Again, the widespread witchcraft
lore of the Middle Ages finds its way into the works of
Wall, Carr, and Barker; and even Arthurian legend is made
to serve the Devil* s purpose by Lewis and Williams# Another
aspect of former literary inflaence is Lewis*s answer to cri
tics of Paradise Lost who maintain that Satan is its rather
magnificent hero, which he embodies in Perelandra, though |
even in doing so he makes use of such a conception as sug- |
gested in the Prometheus myth or in Byron* s Cain when he has
'the TJn-Man describe to the Lady the glory of disobedience.
Probably the most effective use of allusions to the Devil ,
tradition is that of Thomas Manns the reader’s entire concept
of the pact which Adrian makes with the Devil is dependent |
( upon the conventions of the medieval compact and is apparent
;only upon comparison with these previous pacts* * '
* Considering that an orthodox belief in Satan is no
!longer considered essential by most theologians.; it may be ;
j asked why the Devil should be considered such a fruitful j
subject* The answer probably lies in the very lack of agree
ment and urgency, a laek which allows for untrammeled fic- 1
tional speculation* For some authors the speculation is !
nothing more than a cloak for the entertainment of a reader '
with imagination and fantasy* Thus Stone, Wall, and DuBois
mix their entertainment with only touches of satire, a fav
orite use for the Devil in every literary century* Other
123
authors merely exploit him for thrills; Block and Carr and
other horrorists consequently emphasize his emotion-arousing
angles. For still other authors Satan seems to be the inci
dental interest-getter for other purposes: for Givens he
is a vehicle for a study of social difficulties; for Keller
and Sinclair the Devil is useful in subjecting hypocrisy and
fanaticism to scrutiny; in Canape-Vert the loas appear ;
i
, largely as background props in the whole pageant of Haitian ;
life; Green uses the Devil-compact as the starting point for
i
!a study of the essences of personality; and Mann uses a
Devil-pact symbolism for a study of German psychology and to
expand his philosophy of the contribution of the morbid to
the healthy. For Barker as well a study of the Devil is the
I starting point for a philosophy of man. For Lewis, Williams,
and Cabell the Devil is a propaganda medium for Christianity
or the lack of it, Lewis, however, is also using, his pano- 1
ply of oyer6su and eldila as a mythologising instrument to !
look for or point out the truth. This wide use of the .Devil
as a vehicle is perhaps a dim way of return to an. explanation
;approaching the traditional one for the existence of evil
and the recognition cf the impossibility of its explanation
in any other way.
Down through the centuries it has been possible to
take opposing views concerning Satan, to despise him or to
adore him. In the present century it is also possible,to
124
ignore him* It is certain, however, that while most of the
present-day writers on the subject do not regard Satan as a
reality, they do not separate him entirely from the complex
to which he traditionally belongs. Thus the devils still
believe: the existence of God is postulated by Lewis's
hellish cohorts, by Mr. Hooker* by Old Nick, by Wall's
Satan, by Iblees, by Bernanos's horse dealer-Devil, by j
f
Williams's god of destruction, by Cabell's inhabitants-of t
jHell, and by West's Ransome. It should be noticed also :
i that Mann is not alone in his dualistic view of the neces- :
sity of health and morbidity, of good and evil; both Givens
and DuBois in their contrasting methods emphasize the nec
essity for opposites and struggle In achieving a balanced
existence. Bernanos and West, on the other hand,, have their
: Devils seek enmity with God as the less strenuous of life's
j alternatives. Some authors are reminiscent of nineteenth-
, century diabolism in their sympathy with the Devil, their
\
feeling that perhaps he has been misunderstood and not suf-1
ficiently popularized. Keller, Givens, and Cabell, there- 1
fore^ try to set the situation right, embattled by West and '
Lewis, who feel that Satan Is fully able to take care of
his own propaganda. But while Lewis, Bernanos, and Williams
give the appearance of believing in the existence of a pow
erful Prince of Darkness, thus gaining for their work in
sincerity and urgency what they lose In fashionableness,
125
the majority of writers consider the Devil as a shadowy
impotence and plaee the responsibility for evil squarely
on man’s shoulders.
, Prom this summary it may be concluded that though
the Devil has been increasingly examined in the fiction of
# - ............. ^
recent years, in his effects on the minds of men he has
; indeed fallen from the position of supremacy and power he j
f i
held in the medieval imagination. He is now often nothing ;
! ■ ........ ■ - ' I
■more than a sugar-coating for a piece of religious or social
; - - • • ■ :
^satire, an exercise in fantasy, and a gentleman with housing
' . . . (
problems. It would seem that the descent is complete. It j
must also be borne in mind, however, that the masterpieces !
of Devil-literature of the past were the products of men who
believed in his evil existence and power and that in this I
|tradition there are still such sincere and believing writers'
'as Williams, Bernanos, and Lewis. And it is from such,a j
* _
melange of conflicting viewpoints and opinions that an
1 occasional great work can proceed. !
BIBLIOGRAPHY
127
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i
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4 '
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i
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I
Woodhull, Marianna, The Epic of Paradise Lost* New York:
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Novels
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130
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_______ , Out of the Silent Planet. New York: The Macmillan
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i
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i
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Rinehart, Inc., 1944. Pp. 71-90.

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kelly, Genevieve (author)

Core Title Satan: A modern composite: A comparative study of the Devil in contemporary fiction

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Comparative Literature

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag comparative literature,Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Hadley, Paul E. (committee chair), Holwerda, Gerhardus J. (committee member), Lecky, Eleazer (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c20-103950

Unique identifier UC11261633

Identifier EP43070.pdf (filename),usctheses-c20-103950 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier EP43070.pdf

Dmrecord 103950

Document Type Thesis

Rights Kelly, Genevieve

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA