Customer Reviews

The Sibyl

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
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On the surface, "The Sibyl" seems to be a decent enough myth about a man who was cursed by Christ for a show of inhospitality, and his approaching an ex-prophetess of Apollo on a mountainside overlooking Delphi.

This book, however, delves into the mythological implications of the human being searching for meaning in a world where gods, or God, allows pain and evil to exist. The characters have no names, a feature often found in cosmological and mystical myths to help the reader "step into" the roles found therein. A truly moving account of the pains of being not just called, but Chosen, and of ultimately finding a place for onesself in an often harsh world.

Written in 1956, "The Sibyl" is full of the sense of confusion and loss of the post war era, and Lagerkvist's own, often pessimistic, philosophical debates on the nature of man's significance.

There are some truly rewarding passages in this book, though one of the easy pitfalls is to assume any mention of "god" refers to the Judeau-Christian God, when often the reference is to Apollo, a contextual reference point for the use of one of the more famous Sibyls of history. The myth is ancient, but Par Lagerkvist's retelling is contemporarily bound - and the questions asked are both very old and still presently unanswered.

The Sibyl is most certainly a wonderful piece of literature of profound imagery and mythical content. It was the first book I read from the Nobel Prize of Literature recipient for Barrabus - Par Lagerkvist, which ignited my interest in his other novels, short stories and essays.
The Sibyl is a remarkable short parable about the struggles of the good and bad occurrences between the diving and human beings.
A wondering Jew whose only experience with God being a negative one, was cursed by the son of God for his impatient words on his way to crucifixion. Demonstrating how one instance could change a person's life forever. He begins to believe in the curse and seeks insight form a legendary Pathia, who lives in a cave in the mountains over looking Delphi. The Pathia like himself experienced the wrath of God. She then tells a story of the blissful love to the merciless unsympathetic side which exists in the same God. Unlike the Jew however the Sibyl accepts God. The divine is not just a man on the clouds dictating people's lives but it's the impulses of nature, in animals, in lust, in every emotion humans are faced with.
This book leaves us with one prophecy which is that God is both love and hate and both exist to form a connection with him. The Sibyl dives into the quest for meaning, dealing with terrors and the wonders of existence. Wonderfully written and a truly captivating read.

"The Sibyl" introduces us to an old woman who, in her younger days, served as a pythia or high priestess in the temple of the oracle at Delphi. One day she is visited at her remote mountainside dwelling by a wandering Jew, who was turned away at the temple because the oracle could not give him the answers he seeks concerning his destiny. He relates his story to the woman, how he was cursed by the son of God when, not knowing his identity, the man refused to let him rest for a moment against the wall of his house. The unfortunate man is now doomed to wander the earth forever, immortal, without possibility of rest or happiness. His wife and child have left him, and he is unable to find joy or fulfilment in anything. His eyes are described as empty, dried-up wells.

The woman then tells her own story, about how she was chosen to be god's bride in the temple. Her relationship with her god is a disturbing one, passionate and violent, as she serves as a vessel through which Apollo speaks to the priests. She loves her god with a consuming fervor, but constantly feels more like an abandoned lover than a beloved bride. And when she explores the realms of human love with a man of the village, she must face the consequences of her betrayal of god. Driven from the temple by an angry mob, she seeks refuge in the mountains above the city, where she bears god's son, a witless boy who does nothing but sit all day in their hut, smiling vacantly at nothing.

As the man and woman share their stories, they contemplate the nature of god, and the nature of the relationship between the human and the divine. We see clearly that god is not always a benevolent force, but brings both joy and sorrow, both pleasure and pain into the world. We also see that, though every person experiences god in his or her own way, no one escapes experience of the divine, and we are all bound to god, for better or for worse.

I do not capitalize "god" here because the book is not concerned solely with the Christian God, though he does play a role in the story, but with a much broader, more universal human experience of the divine. The bulk of the book centers on the pythia's relationship with the sun god, Apollo, but we also encounter numerous other deities and spiritual forces, including more intangible river gods, tree gods, etc. Many of the deities are interconnected and cannot be fully distinguished from one another. Apollo himself is infused with references to Pan, the goat-god of the mountains above Delphi. "The Sibyl" is a captivating and deeply thought-provoking spiritual journey. It does not offer concrete answers, but inspires readers to search within themselves to discover the nature of their own, personal relationship with the divine.

This review refers to the 1958 Vintage Books printing, translated my Naomi Walford.

A troubled man tries to visit the Oracle at Delphi but is turned away by the priests. Undaunted, he learns that a sibyl, or female prophet, is living in exile with her son somewhere in the mountains along the sacred path to the temple. He finds her and begs that she listens to his tale and guide him along his path. The stranger relates his story about a being cursed by the Christ to wander endlessly. In response, she tells her own story of becoming a pythia, or priestess of the Oracle at Delphi.

The novel is a look into the meanings of love and faith and how humans try to reconcile themselves with the divine. When the stranger is cursed because of his inhospitality, he's outraged and cannot understand why a god would do such a thing. The sibyl sees both sides of her god, realizing that he is both good and evil, and accepts what happens. And it's not preachy, trying to tell the reader that religion is the ultimate answer or that one religion is better than the other. (I didn't feel as though someone was trying to convert me.)

"The Sibyl" is an interesting and enjoyable novel.

The Sibyl is most certainly a wonderful piece of literature of profound imagery and mythical content. It was the first book I read from the Nobel Prize of Literature recipient for Barrabus - Par Lagerkvist, which ignited my interest in his other novels, short stories and essays.
The Sibyl is a remarkable short parable about the struggles of the good and bad occurrences between the divine and human beings.
A wondering Jew whose only experience with God being a negative one, was cursed by the son of God for his impatient words on his way to crucifixion, demonstrating how one instance could change a person's life forever. He begins to believe in the curse and seeks insight from a legendary Pathia, who lives in a cave in the mountains over looking Delphi. The Pathia like himself experienced the wrath of God. She then tells a story of the blissful love to the merciless unsympathetic side which exists in the same God. Unlike the Jew however the Sibyl accepts God. The divine is not just a man on the clouds dictating people's lives but it's the impulses of nature, in animals, in lust, in every emotion humans are faced with.
This book leaves us with one prophecy which is that God is both love and hate and both exist to form a connection with him. The Sibyl dives into the quest for meaning, dealing with terrors and the wonders of existence. Wonderfully written and a truly captivating read.

This is an amazing historical novel. Not only does it evoke a sense of mystery in life and the sacred in late antiquity, but it turns an utterly bizarre plot into something totally believable. The result is a profound and inspiring meditation on life. I felt wonder, repulsion, and a desire to learn more - there is nothing more that a reader could hope for in an historical novel.

The plot revolves around a banished sybil, who has lived in seclusion for so many years with her retarded son that she has become a legend in the towns nearby. An ordinary man condemned to immortality seeks her out, and they recount to eachother their life stories. The reader feels what it was like to live then, how religious beliefs shaped their lives and world view, and how in that seminal era the gods may indeed have erred. I was totally awestruck at the way that it made me feel.

Highest recommendation.

The Wandering Jew meets the pythia of Delphi in an imaginative, moving philosophical fantasy from the late Swedish Nobel Prize winner. Both protagonists have been touched by the half mortal son of a god, and neither know quite what to make of it. The pythia, now old and exiled to a mountain goat hut overlooking Delphi, tells her story to the Jew. This recitation takes up most of the book. And what a story it is!

This is a complex work addressing both the intersection and the clash of human and divine love. The story traces the life of an sibyl, or priestess, exposing her exploitation by the temple priests and examining her struggle to reconcile human love with divine jealousy. The line between the spiritual, the emotional, and the erotic becomes blurred, in this tale that is part legend and part confession.

Or, if you prefer, the Gods are not human, and certainly not humane, and Humanity's most appalling blunder has been to 'create' God in Man's image. That's the wisdom of the Sibyl, once the 'pythia' priestess of the shrine of Delphi but now an ancient hermit crone shunned by all. Here are her wrds: "" The divine is not human. It's something utterly different. It is not noble or sublime or spiritual, as people like to believe. It is alien and horrifying and sometimes it amounts to madness. It is malignant and dangerous and fatal. Or so I've found it."" The Sibyl should know; she was chosen by the priest of Delphi as a young girl because of her devout intensity. With training and under the influence of the fumes in the cave of the oracle, she became the most inspired of prophetesses. She surely felt herself possessed by the God and she craved that ecstasy of possession above all things. Then she experienced the "love' of a human male, a sacrilege for which she was violently expelled from her temple and ostensibly cursed by God.

A stranger comes to Delphi to consult the famous oracle, a man also cursed. He was a prosperous merchant, a satisfied man, but one day a scruffy criminal staggering under a cross on the Via Crucis tried to lean against his wall to rest. The man pushed him away, fearing bad luck from such contact. The criminal stared at him and cursed him strangely, telling him that he would be condemned to eternal life without any hope of comfort. Later the man hears rumors that the criminal was the Son of God and a prophet of Divine Love. The man tells his story to the Sibyl in the first minutes after their meeting. About the prophet he says: ""... is he himself so loving really? To those who love him, they say he gives peace, and he takes them up into his heaven. But they also say that he hurls those who don't believe in him into hell. If this is true, then he seems to be exactly like ourselves, just as good but just as bad. Those we love we too treat well, and we wish the others all the evil possible. If we had the power he has, we too would hurl them to damnation for all eternity. though we can't be sure. Only the malignity of a god, perhaps, could be great enough for that.""

The Sibyl listens enigmatically to the stranger's grief. Then, to the stranger's confusion, she asks about the mother of the criminal. If that man were truly the son of god, that mother would be the mother of god or at least of god's son. The Sybil then tells the stranger her own story; the bulk of this novella is the Sibyl's narration. The stimulus for her question about the criminal's mother eventually gets revealed; the Sibyl also has a son, a mute idiot who must also be the son of god, since she was raped by the god of the oracle in the shape of a goat during her last and most exalted ecstasy as pythia.

Critics have sometimes suggested that the Swedes over-value their own writers in awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature, which Pär Lagerkvist received in 1951. In his case, that calumny is false. Lagerkvist was one of the greatest philosophical/metaphysical novelists of the 20th C, and if anything his work has been under-valued by anglophone readers. This short parable of godhead is fully worthy of its sources in Hellenic and Judeo-Christian mythology.

to be honest, it's hard to explain why...but there is a mystical feeling to it all that lingers after reading.

one reviewer said that he/she didn't like the book and will remember the author for barrabas instead, because it was meaningful and refreshing...but barrabas ends negatively. this one...only ends with a question mark.