Book Review: Four Novellas by Gertrud von le Fort

I purchased this book at Eighth Day Books a couple of weeks ago (and there's still copy on the shelf as I post this review!). According to the publisher, Ignatius Press:

Newly translated into English for the first time, these four novellas from the acclaimed German writer Gertrud von le Fort are from her later works of historical fiction. Ominous and mysterious, these page-turning stories bring to life momentous chapters in from the past.

The Innocents, set in Germany after the Second World War, is a poignant family drama about the horrors of war, the suffering of the innocent, and the demands of justice.

The Ostracized Woman traces the fate of a Prussian family at the end of World War II to the heroic deed of an ancestor done centuries before.

The Last Meeting imagines the last encounter between Madame de La Valliére and Madame de Montespan, rival mistresses of King Louis XIV of France.

The Tower of Constance leads the reader into the heart of the infamous French prison of the same name while exploring the role of conscience in the religious and philosophical conflicts of the eighteenth-century.

Reading them in the translation by Michael J. Miller, what I noticed most was the tension and suspense that von le Fort created in each of these tales. Some great mystery, some great injustice, must be brought to reconciliation--through sacrifice, understanding, or mercy. Each story or novella is a moral mystery and each is effectively paced and plotted.

For the last two stories, I was happy, however, that I had read Antonia Fraser's Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King several years ago. It helped me understand the background of the moral issues of the Most Christian King and his defense of orthodoxy in France in the context of his adultery, conflict between his mistresses, their own desires to confess their sin and be absolved, and of course, his control of the Church.

I recommend this volume of Gertrud von le Fort's later works: they are thought-provoking and moving.

Pilate's Wife on the Son Rise Morning Show

UPDATE: I did not post this in time for the email distribution, so I've linked the Soundcloud version here, thanks to Anna Mitchell. It may or may not be included in the EWTN national hour on Thursday, April 13. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show today a little after 6:45 a.m. Central/7:45 a.m. Eastern to talk with Anna Mitchell about my latest blog post for the National Catholic Register: from the Gospel of St. Matthew, we know that Pilate's wife asked him not to get involved in the trial of Jesus. She had a terrible dream and she believes that Jesus is righteous. What did she dream?

Two authors make suggestions in their dramatic and literary works (Dorothy L. Sayers and Gertrude von le Fort), and both of their ideas involve the Creed.

Read more here and listen live here.

In case you missed it, the Register also posted this last week: I wrote it after my husband and I attended Mass in Mountain Home and we saw the statues and crucifixes all veiled.

Blessed Holy Week! God bless you all!

Pilate's Wife and Her Dream

The Gospel according to St. Matthew contains a small detail not in the other Passion accounts. The wife of Pontius Pilate sends a message to him asking him not to have anything to do with Jesus, because she has had a terrible dream and suffered much because of him.

As it was recommended in The Catholic Herald, I decided to read Gertrud von le Fort's "The Wife of Pilate", a short story translated and published by Ignatius Press. The wife of Pilate, usually named Claudia, is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Like Dorothy L. Sayers in The Man Born to Be King, von le Fort, author of The Song at the Scaffold, depicts Claudia's dream to be her hearing the words from the Creed: "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried . . ."; "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et supultus es . . .".

Sayer's wife of Pilate hears different languages and voices; von le Fort's version of the dream has his wife traveling through time from the catacombs, to a Roman basilica church, to Gothic cathedrals ("the massive halls began to stand upright, as though they hovered weightlessly in the sky, freed from all the laws of stone") in which the choirs sang the words, and then to even stranger--to her--buildings with "strange draperies".

The short story takes the form of a letter from Claudia's freed Greek servant, recounting the effects of Pilate's condemnation of Jesus on Good Friday on Claudia and on her relationship with her husband. I won't spoil the end, but it is wondrous, as those words continue to echo: "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et supultus es . . ."