This morning hour

Mika Waltari was an internationally popular author in his day, but has been undeservedly forgotten since then. Best known for his historical novels, he often explored the theme of man's search for spiritual meaning.

In The Dark Angel (1953), he tells the story of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 through the diary of his hero, John Angelos. One scene in this book struck me as particularly memorable. It occurs after a hard night spent repelling the Turkish host besieging the city walls.

This morning hour was engraved unforgettably in my heart. Heaven and earth and all their colors, the soot and the blood -- all was unutterably beautiful in my sight just then, while the blank eyes of the dead around me stared into vacancy.

Equally unreal, equally incredible and of just such unearthly beauty had the world about me appeared once before. It was in Ferrara when I was sickening for the plague, though still unaware of it. The light of the cloudy November day pressed in through the painted windows of the chapel, censers exhaled their bitter scent of purifying herbs and the quill pens rasped as always; yet as I sat there everything slid far away and only a rushing sound filled my ears. I saw everything more clearly, more truly than before. I saw Emperor John's grudging face in shifting hues of sulphur-yellow and green as he sat with a black and white dog at his feet, on a throne which had been made exactly the same height as the throne of Pope Eugenius. I saw the Bessarion's big, beaming face alter and become insensitive and cold. And the Latin and Greek words ringing through the greenish light of the chapel receded and sounded as meaningless as the baying of distant hounds.

In that hour I experienced God for the first time -- as I was sickening for the plague.

In a lightning flash of truth I now sensed that that moment had contained this moment within itself, as bark contains the wood. Had I been more percipient I might even then have experienced and seen what I saw today. Both occurred within me and within eternity at one and the same instant. Thus are moments of clear vision contained in one another, and the sequence of time between them is but illusion. Weeks, months, years, are measures invented by man; they have nothing to do with true time, God's time.

In this hour I knew also that I should be born into the world again in accordance with God's inscrutable purpose. And when this happens I shall bear this hour in my heart still, contained in the visions of my new life. Again I shall behold the headless corpses on the ruined walls that tremble in the firing of the great gun. The little yellow flowers will gleam out amid soot and blood, and the Guacchardi brothers in bloody armor will play merrily at ball with the heads of the enemy.

But this experience awoke neither ecstasy nor even joy within me, only unspeakable woe that I am and shall be only a man -- a spark blown by the winds of God from one darkness into another. More keenly than my bodily pain and weariness I was aware of my heart's longing for the ineffable repose of oblivion. But there is no oblivion.

Comments

[Bob Wallace]

What a strange coincidence. I just picked up a copy of his best-known novel, The Egyptian, and it's sitting on my desk. I had just looked at it before I visited this site.

I had never heard of the author until I bought his book.

As he was a Finn, he is well remembered here in Finland...