Word: luciferian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...This mix of jealousy and wounded pride proves a dangerous intoxicant; Bartelby later rebukes God, drunk with self-importance. It is this egotism that is God's foe, growing stronger with every ill-conceived rationalization Bartelby spews, until it is of Luciferian proportions. Not until the theophany of the last scene does the sight of the kind, matriarchal God reminds us that Bartelby's self-deification is something other than prideit is frustration with the fact that God loves him differently than She loves man. And we feel for Bartelby,, who is at last a soulful child, vying...
...helps explain why this show is such a poignant experience. Its humility masks a bizarre pride. What other artist could recoil from nature because its order exceeds that of his own art? How could he expect to rival nature? Did Mondrian envy God? Or perhaps he meant something less Luciferian: that nature, to the artist, is like carnal desire to the saint. It is a trap, a lower substitute for higher ecstasy, an occasion of sin. He knows it is beautiful, but he must still banish it from his art (as Plato urged the banishment of the poet from...