Form and Heidegger in Vipers' Tangle

Works Cited

Part II: The Journal

In Vipers' Tangle

Heidegger (question of being)

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Form (process of reflection of experience)

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Mauriac (real humanity+authentic reflection+question of being+recognition of Being as God)

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Form and Heidegger in Vipers' Tangle

Louis attains heightened self-awareness and self-conception through the writing process which leads him to question and acknowledge the source of his being, which is God.

Part I: The Letter

The inquiry peaks:

the question of being

"What force is drawing me? A blind force? Love? Perhaps love. . . . (106).

Heidegerrian terms: Man (being) searches for the meaning of being (Being) when faced with death--his finitude--necessarily drawing him outside of himself.

Mauriac's terms:

• “the secret of his peace” (Mauriac, "Acceptance Speech" 10).
• Louis "belongs to that class of sinners, who, on the threshold of death, recognize the Divine Love, and, accepting it, are redeemed by its Grace" (Pell 18).

Part III: The Letters

Argument: is conversion present?

• (Pell 18)

Janine as an advocate says the last word and is convicted of Louis's conversion based on her experience of his change.

by: Liv Martin

"The world must be touched at its heart. I seek Him Who alone can achieve that victory; and He must Himself be the Heart of hearts, the burning centre of all love. I felt a desire which perhaps was in itself a prayer" (Mauriac, "Vipers' Tangle" 177).

Letters exchanged, read, as well as Louis's diary.

He is finally known, at least by one.

Part I: The Letter

Moment of graced clarity

• Louis wakes to a choking feeling (Mauriac, "Vipers' Tangle" 103).

Part I: The Letter

Fears death is near: "I thought my heart had stopped beating" (103).

Heidegger

• Death prompts the question of being which for Mauriac is the possibility of God

Future Scholarship

• Human being: "reflective structure"
• "self-conception"; "some particular way in which she understands who she is (Okrent 47)
• self-conception must be "practical" (47)

". . . I can no longer deny that a route exists in me which might lead me to your God" (104).

• Glimpsed reality of self

• Inquiry concerning the formal and philosophical implications in relation to content of Mauriac's corpus beyond Vipers' Tangle
• Connection between Mauriac and Kierkegaard (Christian version of Heidegger)

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Form

"this heart; this tangle of vipers" (104).

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Mauriac

Mt 10:34: "'I am not come to bring peace, but a sword'" (104)

Darkness of humanity, deepest questions, and definitive glimpse of the answer to them

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Mauriac builds upon and exceeds Heidegger's philosophy, daring to intimate a name for Being

Heightened self-conception for Louis which leads him to the source of his being, which is God

Part II: The Journal

Form: increased level of intimacy

Conclusion

Importance of experience

• Heidegger:
• being "always understands itself in terms of its existence—in terms of a possibility of itself” (Heidegger, "Being and Time" 33)
• goal of being is "Being-a-whole" (279)
• access the totality of its being and does through through reflecting on experience
• Mauriac via Luigi Giussani:
• "Experience" (Giussani 105)
• "The awareness of the correspondence. . . between Reality and one's own person. . . verifies that self-development that is essential to the phenomenon of experience" (105-106)
• "accept our fundamental dependence, the essential fact of our 'being made' (106)

Part I: The Letter

Mauriac builds upon and completes Heidegger's philosophy in Louis, the protagonist of Vipers' Tangle, through the writing process which is exemplified by the necessary introspection of the epistle and journal forms.

Part I: The Letter

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

• German existentialist philosopher (Kluback & Wilde 9)
• The way one inquires defines one's nature (Heidegger, "Poetry..." 8).
• Western society has forgotten being and thus truth (9)
• absorbed in the "they" and the "world" (Heidegger, "The Question of Being" 23)
• Purpose in life: Dasein's (being's) quest for Being
• The question of being: why is there something rather than nothing?; what is the meaning of being?
• Influenced by St. Augustine (de Paulo)

• Epistle as intimate form of communication and reflection

• Louis begins to recognize being as Being

- "being-towards-death" (Leithart 41)

• Louis cannot explain himself without revisiting his past

- the "experience of writing prepare[s] Louis for the state of grace" (Booker 107)

• Difficulty of saying what one means to say

- “Where was I?”; “I have had to interrupt myself. . . . They did not bring me a lamp”; “Am I boring you?”; “Forgive me for going back on this” (Mauriac, "Vipers' Tangle" 13, 15, 20, 23)

www.mediad.publicbroadcasting.net

Epistolary form prompts re-reading and reflection, initiating the question of being.

The Epigraph

". . . Lord, consider that we do not understand ourselves and that we do not know what we would, and that we go infinitely far astray from that which we desire"

--Theresa of Avila (Mauriac 7)

Why?

www.oracionesalossantos.com

• Heidegger and Louis mirror epigraph
• Heidegger
• ‘Being-guilty’ (Heidegger, "Being and Time" 328)
• Louis's journey
• "We cannot know why we are so made" (Pell 32)

Contribution of epistolary form to gravity of Vipers' Tangle's content

Exposes reality by way of the correlation between Heidegger, the novel's form, and Mauriac's Catholicism

Reading Vipers' Tangle in light of Heidegger may appeal to an increasingly secular audience

Heideggerian philosophy presents methodical understanding of Louis's inner journey

www.johntrott.com