Collected Fictions

Paradiso, XXXI, 108

Diodorus Siculus tells the story of a god that is cut into pieces and scattered over the earth. Which of us, walking through the twilight or retracing some day in our past, has never felt that we have lost some infinite thing?

Mankind has lost a face, an irrecoverable face, and all men wish they could be that pilgrim (dreamed in the empyrean, under the Rose) who goes to Rome and looks upon the veil of St. Veronica and murmurs in belief: My Lord Jesus Christ, very God, is this, indeed, Thy likeness in such fashion wrought?*

There is a face in stone beside a path, and an inscription that reads The True Portrait of the Holy Face of the Christ of Jaén. If we really knew what that face looked like, we would possess the key to the parables, and know whether the son of the carpenter was also the Son of God.

Paul saw the face as a light that struck him to the ground; John, as the sun when it shines forth in all its strength; Teresade Jesús, many times, bathed in serene light, although she could never say with certainty what the color of its eyes was.

Those features are lost to us, as a magical number created from our customary digits can be lost, as the image in a kaleidoscope is lost forever. We can see them and yet not grasp them. A Jew's profile in the subway might be the profile of Christ; the hands that give us back change at a ticket booth may mirror those that soldiers nailed one day to the cross.

Some feature of the crucified face may lurk in every mirror; perhaps the face died, faded away, so that God might be all faces.

Who knows but that tonight we may see it in the labyrinths of dream, and not know tomorrow that we saw it.