Louis De WohlRecensioner
Författare till The Quiet Light: A Novel About Saint Thomas Aquinas
Recensioner
Saint Joan The Girl Soldier
C'est une très bonne introduction à Saint Augustin, Ste. Monique, et tout leur entourage.
J'espère lire les Confessions prochainement, et je crois que la lecture de ce livre m'aurait vraiment aidé à m'orienter dans les contexte historique des temps où vivait Augustin.
Desde la movida juventud de Francisco hasta la magnifica escena de su muerte, todo relato esta llevando con el contrapunto de la historia de Roger de Vandria, escéptico y materialista.
Es una historia que hierve de acción y de caracteres finamente dibujados:santa Clara de belleza delicada; el rey de Sicilia y el Emperador de Sacro Imperio, Federico; el sultán Al-Kamail; el papa Inocencia III
Highly recommended. Arguably, the author's masterpiece.
Most characters but Cassius, Claudia, and Abenadar seemed bloodless to me. Cassius was the strongest; I got into his head and thoughts. It seemed to me that Naomi turned too quickly from her secular love [Cassius] to absolute devotion to Christ. I think maybe she should have had some kind of spiritual crisis herself. Although 60 years old, this novel has held up well. There were a few minor factual errors but they didn't interrupt the story and the point the author was trying to make. I can see why it is a classic in its genre.
Highly recommended.
"The freeing of the giant" is a historical novel. Luis De Wohl was a German-Hungarian writer who, in the '30s, left Germany and moved to live in London. His specialty were historical novels, and after WWII he committed to writing about the life of the saints. He was himself a catholic and had a face to face chat with the Pope before writing this book. The Pope asked him to write about St Thomas, and so he did with this book. It should be noted that this is not a novel about religion, but rather about history.
I found this book really enjoyable, well researched and also well balanced between history, philosophy/religion, and romance, to the point that I'm wondering why this auhor is not better known.
Writing a historical novel is no easy feat, even if you know your history well. You need to get the details right, and the spirit of the time you are writing about. Moreover, writing a novel about a Dominican Saint who did little else in his life other than read, pray and write, sounds like a real challenge.
But i think De Wohl nailed it. He uses only one fictional character, Sir Piers, to give the novel the dynamism it needs, a little romance, but most of all as a tool that allows him to weave together in one coherent plot various historical characters like emperor Frederick II, his court, Saint Albert the great, and even some contemporary muslim characters.
The second half of the 13th century was a very interesting time: Frederick II had an immense power over Europe, however the European region was under a lot of pressure from Islam, that was pushing from both the west (Spain) and the East (Turkey). Muslim culture was peaking. On one hand, you had the real conflicts, between the Sacred Roman Empire and Islam, through the Crusades and other battles. On the other, there were cultural battles, no less fierce, among the various intellectuals of that time: on one hand, Averroe and his school of thought were trying to use Aristotle as a way to weaken Christianity, by separating everything religious from what was "rational", and arguing that Aristotle would have never given in to anything but pure rationality and experimentation. On the other, you had the Church, who specifically requested Saint Thomas, one of the finest minds of those times, to find a way to reconcile Aristotle with the Christian faith. And that's what he did, in his "Summa Theologica".
To make things even more complicated, the emperor's relationship with the Church kept worsening, ultimately resulting in a real conflict, that had Frederick II as the end loser, and Italy torn between pro-church and pro-emperor factions.
De Wohl touches on all of these historical and philosophical elements with great simplicity, but never with a heavy hand or in a tacky way, always respecting the known facts in a graceful manner.
In particular, St Thomas's personality comes out of this book as a shining light, as he is depicted as a truly humble, shy, good and highly intelligent man. Yes it is a work of fiction but these personality traits have been well documented.
Sometimes I do think that back in those days, "intelligent" people were much smarter than what we are on average today. Or perhaps, they were intelligent in a very different way. They used to have dialectical, rethorical, and mnemonic skills that today you probably cannot even find (maybe because they are not required anymore?).
You don't really learn history by reading these type of books. It will help enjoying the book more if you already know the main historical facts (Wikipedia helped me a lot!). However, this kind of book is able to bring history to life in such a vivid way, that in a sense you DO learn about history. It's history for right-brainers!
Overall, a truly great read for lovers of quality historical novels.
He wrote many historical novels, most of them about the lives of saints. He was catholic and his faith transpires from his books, however always in an elegant and open-minded way. He includes beautiful pages of philosophical and theological dialogue between charachters.
"The living wood" is considered one of his best works. It tells the story of Helen, mother of Emperor Constantin, who is said to have influenced her son into first protecting Christians within the Roman Empire and then later make Christianity an officially tolerated religion with the Milan Edict in 313 ad. We know he used and promoted Christianity as a tool to better rule his Empire, and thanks to Constantin, the Catholic Church became as huge as it did. What we don't know is whether he ended up actually sharing the Christian faith or not.
I read the Italian version of it and the Italian title translates to "The tree of life". Luckily, this book has nothing to do with the dreadful Terence Malick movie.
No one knows a lot about Saint Helen. We dont even know for sure where she was from. De Wohl makes her a princess, daughter of one of the last Celtic kings. Although this is just one possibility, De Wohl is great at mixing his own inventions and assumptions with the facts that we actually do know about the history of those times. The technique he uses is to show his charachters in brief glimpses through a long chronological evolution, so that by the end of the book we have a good sense of their entire lifetime and the defining moments of their llives.
The "living wood" in the novel is, at least, two things: the sacred wood In the old Celtic tradition, and the wood of the holy cross, from which the branches of Christianity grew. According to a legend, Saint Helen went to Jerusalem in search of the "true" cross where Christ was crucified, and she found it. De Wohl happily buys into the legend and includes that into his story.
I loved the historical detail, but readers who are after deep, accurate history are not going to enjoy this book. The main strength of the novel is actually to be found in the emotional currents that link its charachters. Perhaps this is ultimately the reason why De Wohl is not that renowned, after all, because it would be so easy to dismiss his work as historic soap opera. Or, even worse, label it as "Christian fiction". And many probably did.
But I feel there is much more to De Wohl. To me, this is historical fiction at its best.
"The freeing of the giant" is a historical novel. Luis De Wohl was a German-Hungarian writer who, in the '30s, left Germany and moved to live in London. His specialty were historical novels, and after WWII he committed to writing about the life of the saints. He was himself a catholic and had a face to face chat with the Pope before writing this book. The Pope asked him to write about St Thomas, and so he did with this book. It should be noted that this is not a novel about religion, but rather about history.
I found this book really enjoyable, well researched and also well balanced between history, philosophy/religion, and romance, to the point that I'm wondering why this auhor is not better known.
Writing a historical novel is no easy feat, even if you know your history well. You need to get the details right, and the spirit of the time you are writing about. Moreover, writing a novel about a Dominican Saint who did little else in his life other than read, pray and write, sounds like a real challenge.
But i think De Wohl nailed it. He uses only one fictional character, Sir Piers, to give the novel the dynamism it needs, a little romance, but most of all as a tool that allows him to weave together in one coherent plot various historical characters like emperor Frederick II, his court, Saint Albert the great, and even some contemporary muslim characters.
The second half of the 13th century was a very interesting time: Frederick II had an immense power over Europe, however the European region was under a lot of pressure from Islam, that was pushing from both the west (Spain) and the East (Turkey). Muslim culture was peaking. On one hand, you had the real conflicts, between the Sacred Roman Empire and Islam, through the Crusades and other battles. On the other, there were cultural battles, no less fierce, among the various intellectuals of that time: on one hand, Averroe and his school of thought were trying to use Aristotle as a way to weaken Christianity, by separating everything religious from what was "rational", and arguing that Aristotle would have never given in to anything but pure rationality and experimentation. On the other, you had the Church, who specifically requested Saint Thomas, one of the finest minds of those times, to find a way to reconcile Aristotle with the Christian faith. And that's what he did, in his "Summa Theologica".
To make things even more complicated, the emperor's relationship with the Church kept worsening, ultimately resulting in a real conflict, that had Frederick II as the end loser, and Italy torn between pro-church and pro-emperor factions.
De Wohl touches on all of these historical and philosophical elements with great simplicity, but never with a heavy hand or in a tacky way, always respecting the known facts in a graceful manner.
In particular, St Thomas's personality comes out of this book as a shining light, as he is depicted as a truly humble, shy, good and highly intelligent man. Yes it is a work of fiction but these personality traits have been well documented.
Sometimes I do think that back in those days, "intelligent" people were much smarter than what we are on average today. Or perhaps, they were intelligent in a very different way. They used to have dialectical, rethorical, and mnemonic skills that today you probably cannot even find (maybe because they are not required anymore?).
You don't really learn history by reading these type of books. It will help enjoying the book more if you already know the main historical facts (Wikipedia helped me a lot!). However, this kind of book is able to bring history to life in such a vivid way, that in a sense you DO learn about history. It's history for right-brainers!
Overall, a truly great read for lovers of quality historical novels.
He wrote many historical novels, most of them about the lives of saints. He was catholic and his faith transpires from his books, however always in an elegant and open-minded way. He includes beautiful pages of philosophical and theological dialogue between charachters.
"The living wood" is considered one of his best works. It tells the story of Helen, mother of Emperor Constantin, who is said to have influenced her son into first protecting Christians within the Roman Empire and then later make Christianity an officially tolerated religion with the Milan Edict in 313 ad. We know he used and promoted Christianity as a tool to better rule his Empire, and thanks to Constantin, the Catholic Church became as huge as it did. What we don't know is whether he ended up actually sharing the Christian faith or not.
I read the Italian version of it and the Italian title translates to "The tree of life". Luckily, this book has nothing to do with the dreadful Terence Malick movie.
No one knows a lot about Saint Helen. We dont even know for sure where she was from. De Wohl makes her a princess, daughter of one of the last Celtic kings. Although this is just one possibility, De Wohl is great at mixing his own inventions and assumptions with the facts that we actually do know about the history of those times. The technique he uses is to show his charachters in brief glimpses through a long chronological evolution, so that by the end of the book we have a good sense of their entire lifetime and the defining moments of their llives.
The "living wood" in the novel is, at least, two things: the sacred wood In the old Celtic tradition, and the wood of the holy cross, from which the branches of Christianity grew. According to a legend, Saint Helen went to Jerusalem in search of the "true" cross where Christ was crucified, and she found it. De Wohl happily buys into the legend and includes that into his story.
I loved the historical detail, but readers who are after deep, accurate history are not going to enjoy this book. The main strength of the novel is actually to be found in the emotional currents that link its charachters. Perhaps this is ultimately the reason why De Wohl is not that renowned, after all, because it would be so easy to dismiss his work as historic soap opera. Or, even worse, label it as "Christian fiction". And many probably did.
But I feel there is much more to De Wohl. To me, this is historical fiction at its best.
Il materiale dei dialoghi è tratto a piene mani dalle Lettere della Benincasa e si inserisce con equilibrio nell’invenzione romanzesca. I personaggi sono ben tratteggiati e l’atmosfera dell’epoca è riproposta in maniera vivace.
Un bel libro, trascinante. Peccato solo che sul finire all’autore sembrino mancare un poco i tempi giusti e la conclusione, pur attesa, venga narrata in modo a mio parere troppo precipitoso, dal momento che nella Storia questa accelerazione in realtà non ci fu.
“I suoi occhi spalancati stavano guardando attraverso di lui nello spazio, fissati su qualcosa di così smisurato che lui non era niente, neanche un ostacolo.”
Länkar
Wikipedia (English)
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