|
In the twelfth-century Mystère d’Adam, God appears as the lawgiver, the "judge who punishes transgression"; but he is also, already, as figura, the redeeming Saviour. In God, says Auerbach, "there is no distinction of times, since for him eveything is a simultaneous present, so that--as Augustine once put it--he does not possess foreknowledge but simply knowledge" (158). |
Through your advice
I have been brought to evil, (Auerbach 157) |
Generically, the mystère mixes high and low, the gravity of the Fall and Redemption with the mundanity of everyday life, "scenes in inns, and farcical jokes and dirty stories in plenty" (160). But, insists Auerbach, it would be wrong to think of this as a secularization. Everywhere, the figural illuminates everything, and a real secularization
does not take place until the frame [of the figural] is broken, until the secular action becomes independent; that is, when human actions outside of Christian world history, as determined by the Fall, Passion and Last Judgement, are represented in a serious vein.... (160)
To secularize is to take this intellectus spiritualis, this Messianic leap from one moment to another, to many others, not as the moment of knowledge a God has (even if it is not foreknowledge but simply knowledge), but as the very machinery of mundanity: the calendar’s commemoration, the pleasure of reading, the "I" which remains when everything is taken.
