Coetzee and moral principles

Coetzee has attached, without explanation, an extract from a work by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, written in 1902. You may read the whole piece here. It purports to be a letter from Lord Chandos to Lord Bacon and it is an account of how a successful and fertile writer is struck dumb by revelations of nature.

"In those days I, in a state of continuous in­toxication, conceived the whole of existence as one great unit: the spiritual and physical worlds seemed to form no contrast, as little as did courtly and bestial conduct, art and barbarism, solitude and society; in everything I felt the presence of Nature, in the aberrations of insanity as much as in the utmost refinement of the Spanish ceremonial; in the boorishness of young peasants no less than in the most delicate of allegories; and in all expressions of Nature I felt my-self."

This is followed by a Postscript written by Coetzee entitled Letter of Elizabeth, Lady Chandos, to Francis Bacon and dated 11^th Sept, AD 1603 in which she pleads him to save her and her husband from states of apprehension that are ill suited to them. She pleads for a distracted husband and admits that even she has experienced raptures and protests; "we are not made for revelation". She names this time for her and her husband "A time of affliction". No words can account for their state, "not Latin nor English, nor Spanish nor Italian will bear the words of my revelation."

Coetzee is drawing a point here. Lord Chandos experiences the world as does Elizabeth Costello, as revelation, revelation that alienates them from the rational world and it is a torment to them.

The parallels to Christ are obvious. His seeing of the world was so disruptive of our everyday seeing that he had to be eliminated.