Levi Peterson's “Road to Damascus" and the Language of Grace Steven P. Sondrup As a result of recent publications, Levi S. Peterson is emerging ever more clearly as one of the most significant authors writing within the Mormon ethos. His stories often involve Characteristically Mormon situations and values which he uses as far more than colorful backdrops or quaint local settings. For Peterson, the penetrating exploration of different aspects of Mormon life and culture and the exploration of ethical, philosophical, and theological questions within the interpreta~ tive matrix of provided by Mormon thinking are central to his narrative strategy. Peterson, however, belongs to that group of Mormon writers not content to speak with a voice heard only within Mormon ciré cles. His audience is much larger and more diversified. The publication of his stories in periodicals that are by no means aimed at the Mormon market and the appearance of his book, The Canyons of Grace, in the short fiction series of the University Se -tttinots (1983) are ample evidence of the breadth of his intended audience. Inherent in Peterson's desire to address both the Mormon community as well as the literate world at large, however, are a number of formidable problems. On the one hand, the Language, images, allusions, references, and metaphors used to describe particularly religious phenomena and beliefs must ring true to Mormons: they must have the depth of meaning and all the resonances that have developed during the course of Mormon history. To be not only believable but also moving and engaging, they must necessarily be based on a correct naming of the things of God. But to speak correctly of sacred mysteries and at once be comprehensible to a world that for many years has tended to become ever more secular is difficult. iris Murdoch has made a very perceptive observation in this regard: "A religious and moral vocabulary is the possession now of a few; and most people lack the word with which to say just what is felt to be wrong is wrong" (1959, 28). ‘The fundamental question is, thus, one of having the necessary linguistic and conceptual categories with which to think in a basically religious way. Fully aware of the many and varied implications of this situation, Peter S. Hawkins provides a particularly succinct formulation of the difficulties facing a writer with religious concerns in addressing an increasingly secularized world that has lost access to its patrimony of religious terms and constructs of mind: 87The problem, then, is twofold. Firstly, how can you Speak about the experience of grace without assuming a knowledge (let alone an acceptance) of any religious tradition, and, secondly, how can you speak engagingly about such an experience so as to open the reader to the sense of mystery and transcendence which the spirit 7 Ofgthe Present age has seemingly inoculated us against Although these are difficult problems, they are not beyond resolu- tion. Each contemporary writer who desires to write on such fl religious issues must necessarily find his or her own solution, and the solutions that have been advanced have been extremely varied. i i i i The problem facing Levi Peterson, however, is more complex. It is true that he has often relied on the shared system of values | and expectations of Mormonism as a framework within which to discuss generally religious questions and simultaneously endeavored to find ways of making them understandable to others not part of the community; but at the same time, the theological orientation Of the Mormonism creates certain difficulties. One of the religious experiences that most fascinates Peterson and to which he has | returned many times is that of grace, the sudden and seemingly unwarranted entry of the divine into the life of an individual. The title of the collection, The Canyons of Grace, and of several individual stories--"The Confessions of Augustine," "Road to Damascus," and "The Canyons of Grace," for example--all suggest various aspects of the concept of divine grace. Although an essential and absolutely central concept in most Christian thinking, grace as it is generally understood is a difficult precept to articulate and, perhaps, fully accommodate within Mormon theology. ‘The firm adherence to and centrality of James's teaching that “faith without works is dead" (James 2:26) often leaves comparatively little room in popular Mormon theology for grace. In comparison with other contemporary writers concerns with finding the language with which to communicate something of the essence of divine grace--Fran ois Mauriac, Claudel, Flannery O'Connor, Bernard Malamud, or Walker Percy to mention only a few --Peterson's challenges are compounded. Whereas they can draw on the language and imagery of a tradition, weakened though it may be, as their point of departure, Peterson must find not only ways Of ‘addressing a secular audience concerning sacred matters but also must forge terms and metaphors that will speak convincingly to . the religious tradition out of which he writes. Nowhere is this problem more acute than in the short story "Road to Damascus" in his The Canyons of Grace. Its title obviously refers to the paradigmatic example of grace in the New Testa7 nent: Paul's unsolicited vision and subsequent conversion while on his way to Damascus to persecute the early believers in Christ. The narrative line of Peterson's story is relatively simple. The 88hero--a term that is used advisedly--is also named Paul and has heard that Christopher, the partner of his friend Sam, had fallen to his death in a mine. Paul and Sam had been partners before Paul's marriage to Regina and had traveled throughout much of the west, mining and cementing their close friendship by sharing the Pleasures, excitement, and adventures of bachelor life in the wilderness (Cronin 1984; England 1984; Peterson 1966, 1979). Regina, a devout and faithful Mormon, has not been able to interest Paul in her religious beliefs and her efforts to do so have not always been appreciated. There are, however, other tensions in their marriage: Paul, not having entirely resolved an immature longing for the freedom of bachelor life in the wilderness, has not fully and graciously accepted the responsibilities that domestic life requires, and his sexual relationship with Regina is selfish and exploitative. Although Regina would rather that Paul not visit Sam, she prepares him a lunch to eat on the road and accompanies him part of the way. While away from home, Paul has three remarkable experi- ences. After eating the lunch Regina has prepared, he remembers an incident from his youth and sees Regina dressed in a long robe, as if prepared for burial. When he finally arrives at Sam'S mining camp, he finds it deserted, so goes into Brunhild, a nearby town, where he finds Sam enjoying the refreshments and companionship--both male and female--that the local saloon, Katie's Clippership, has to offer. When told by the madam that a young lady is ready for him, Paul to his own surprise announces that he cannot. On returning with Sam to his camp, Paul's resentment of the limitations and responsibilities of marriage grows. Sam is not the least bit sympathetic: he belittles Paul's marital fidelity and sense of domestic responsibility and suggests that he escape by joining him in a mining venture in Alaska. The next day the search for Christopher's body begins. Paul is lowered into the mine to begin looking; but once at the bottom, he knocks over his lamp and is left alone in the utter darkness. Once again he remembers his past. Upon regaining his composure, Paul is pulled up out of the mine, where, shaken, he rests on the bank of a small mountain lake. One of Sam's men had discovered the copy of the Book of Mormon that Regina had surreptitiously tucked into Paul's saddlebag. Angered at the sight of the book and all that it has Come to represent for him, Paul throws it into the air. It flutters down and disappears into the lake. Paul, fully dressed, lives into the lake, retrieves the book, and, while swimming to the surface, vividly remembers his mother and sees Regina appearing in heavenly glory or, as her name might suggest, the queen of heaven, regina coelestis. Paul is a changed man. When talk turns to moving on, presumably to Alaska, Paul announces that he is going home. The golden brilliance of the summer sun seems to offer its benediction on 89Paul's decision. After riding for a time, he reaches a ridge from which he can look down into the valley where he sees his fields and pastures and among them his own farm. The story then moves quickly to its conclusion: "On a ridge across the canyon from where he stood were two trees. One was tall and conical, the other bent and bushy. Paul looked for a moment and > then, leaning his head against the neck of his horse, he wept bitterly. At last he shook his head, mounted his horse, and rode into the canyon. The three pivotal experiences--the visions and recollections just after lunch, in the darkness of the mine, and in the freezing water of the laké--require closer examination in order to see how they suggest the influence of divine, transforming power in a fictive world and to a reading audience that cannot easily acconmodat: such phenomena. The first of these, Paul's experience when he stopped for lunch, is in many respects preparatory. It takes place on Saturday, | the Jewish Sabbath, which precedes Sunday, just as the Old Testament precedes the New Testament. But far more significantly, it Eontains important elements of the typology of the exodus pattern. | Ancient Israel's escape from Egyptian bondage into the wilderness, Crossing of the Red Sea, eating of the manna provided by heaven, and reception of the tablets law at Mount Sinai are understood withiz | a typological framework as both historical facts and events that — | coint toward the life of Christ. Similarly, Paul's departure | rom what for him was an oppressive home--typologically analogous | to Israel's bondage in Egypt and exodus--his crossing of the creek--a parallel of the crossing of the Red Sea--his eating of his lunch lovingly provided by Regina, the embodiment of religious value and godly love--the manna from heaven--and finally his discov of the Book of Mormon that she had put in his saddlebag-~equivalent of the tablets of the law received at Mount Sinai--all point simultaneously to the exodus pattern of the Old Testament and all that it foreshadows in the New Testament.1 The episode, thus, , moves backwards to sacred scripture and specifically to scriptural accounts of God's entry into history at Mount Sinai and in Christ's {ncarnation and forward to the reader in its invitation to discover re-enactments of sacred history in daily experience. After eating his lunch, Paul briefly dozes off but awakens. Peterson's description here draws particular attention to the cooling wind that, like the Holy Ghost--the hagion pneuma, the : holy spirit or breath and the antitype of ne etoud oF pillar of fire that guided Israel in the wilderness--leads him back into the recesses of his own mind. Regina's earlier observation that the wind was God's breath (p. 38) is not just a whimsical expressio? ag Paul then took it but a subtle and extremely effective anticipatic Of what was to become an important structural element in the narrative. 90Paul also remembers a time from his boyhood when a preacher visited the backwoods of Ohio where is family lived. His mother had apparently wanted her husband and sons to attend services but his father, in spite of the "belligerent" comments of his wife, refused, preferring, rather, to hunt for honey in the forest where he was most at home. The memory ends with a description that suggests an unresolved relationship with his mother. "Paul's mother went out and climbed into the wagon; she clucked and the horses moved forward. Suddenly Paul ran from the cabin. ‘Wait, Ma he shouted." Paul seems to have been cowed into submitting to his mother's religious desires by her belligerence at the possible expense of the healthy and integrated maturation of his masculine ego through identification with his father and the dark forest he loved. This problematic relationship with his mother is not essentially different from one of the difficulties straining his marriage. In a young man the ambivalence is understandable; in an adult it should have long since been resolved. When the vivid memories suddenly vanish, Paul drinks from the stream recalling the water that gushed from the rock in the wilderness for the Israelites; once again the wind blows, infusing Paul with anxiety. He looks into the trees and sees a vision of a woman. She is wearing a long robe and "her mouth was bound by a cerement, like one prepared for burial. . . . The dust of time filled the lines of her face. No rancor showed in her eyes, no hint of malice, harm, or evil, no passion, appetite, or desire, no grief or envy" (p. 43). When Paul finally comes to the an undérstanding of what he sees, when he recognizes that the specter is Regina, “only the wind sounded. It passed through a hundred thousand trees with a billowing roar." The hyperbole involving purely natural and even commonplace phenomena unobtrusively an\ legantly posits the divine presence. Paul is unwilling to accept what he has seen and wonders whether he is going mad; but at that moment it begins to rain, an adumbration of his coming purification and rebirth. The next manifestation of divine grace takes place the following day, Sunday and is the fulfillment in many respects of Saturday's episode that centered on the exodus pattern. Paul is lowered into the mine to find the body of Sam's partner, Christopher. The name, of course, is significant. It seems unlikely, however, that is to be understood as a Christ figure, since he has none of the attributes associated with Christ except that he died. The name, however, means “bearer of Christ," and that is precisely what ‘he is: although he did not die for Paul, or for anyone else for that matter, his death brought Paul to a point where he could receive religious infusions and, thus, in an extended sense brought--or bore--christ to Paul. Alone in the mine, Paul knocks his lantern into a deep fissure and can only watch as it goes cout. He moves from the edge of the precipice back against the wall of the cavern where "he willed vision with a desperate surge of energy. But everywhere was absolute, unyielding darkness" 91 — etl(p. 50). Although the immediate object of Paul's desire is to seé in the darkness of the cave, vision also has, in an extended sense, spiritual dimensions. Spiritual understanding-—insight into the human condition--does not come as an act of will but rather as an unmerited gift of God, as divine grace. Having failed to will vision, Paul s , the presence of something and . tries to refuse to hear, but bears, nonecheless, "a deep labored breathing" (p. 50). On Saturday, it had been the wind that had quickened his inner eye and stirred his memory, but on Sunday, it is specifically and terrifyingly a breath that he cannot refuse. it should be remembered in this context that on the first Sunda) l after the resurrection, when the disciples were assembled and the J doors were shut, Jesus appeared to them and said “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John 20:21-22). A few days earlier at the Last Supper, Jesus had explained part of the mission of the Holy Ghost that had been conferred by His breath: ". . - he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:26). In John, thus; the Holy Ghost was conferred in that Jesus breathed on the disciples, and it is precisely the Holy Ghost who was to bring all things that Jesus spoke to their memories. The breath that Paul hears Seems to be that of an asthmatic or a stricken animal, but it | nonetheless triggers the powerful recollection--as the Holy Ghost was to do--that erupts suddenly into consciousness: "A cloth brushed his face. ‘The thin, dangling strip smelled of the seepage | of a wound and was crusted as if with blood. Paul tore at his face as if it were covered by wasps. His hands found nothing. He saw | flames licking hungrily around a great black pot; boiling soap | foamed over the lip of the kettle, redoubling th fire” (P- Realizing what is to come, Paul tries to reject the vi- sion. "'No,' Paul whimpered. 'No, please, no.' He started up- Then he remembered the fissure. He wrapped his head in his arms and tried to suffocate the memory" (p. 51). But the revelations Of divine grace can no more be refused than they can be will ed: following his mother out of the house--suggestive of his | Gontinuing subjugation to her--Paul sees her stumble and fall into the fire. In spite of the efforts of a doctor, she dies while Paul is asleep. His efforts to escape continue, but he cannot remember where the great fissure in the earth is. Sinking ones R§ain against the wall, Paul is asked by a voice, "Do you know 1 wage at length Paul must confess that he does and that he realizes fo one escapes. ‘The interview concludes when the voice ominously | cesures Paul, "It will not be long and I will come for you." Beath? Christ? ‘The devil? A creation of Paul's unsteady mind? Paul has, in any event, come face to face with his own mortality, E2th fhe most extreme of human afflictions. Soon, though, he hears the clanking of the metal buckets against the stone, and he and Sam leave the mine together. 92Paul was shaken by the experience in the mine and admits that he does not feel well. In spite of this unsettling and unexpected confrontation with human mortality, he remains unchanged. He responds angrily and in frustration to lighthearted jesting about the copy of the Book of Mormon that has been found among S tlio. ard expresses his bitter resentment about his wife's insistent religiosity that culminates in his throwing the book into the air with a violent heave so that it lands in the lake and sinks into the depths. Paul suddenly dives into the icy water, grasps the book, and exerting all his strength swims toward the surface with lungs bursting, taxed beyond his normal capacity. He once again remembers his mother. Perhaps the most famous conversion that came by way of grace and the taking up of a book was that of Augustine. A reference to Augustine in a work such as this may at first seem unlikely, but it must be remembered that the first story in the collection The Canyons of Grace from which “Road to Damascus” is taken is entitled Sané°Confessions of Augustine" and is carefully referenced to its famous antecedent. In the eighth book of the Confessions, Augustine relates how he heard a voice that he could not identify admonishing him to take up the book, the Bible, and read: "tolle lege, tolle lege." He opened the Bible and at random read from the “Epistle tothe Romans" (13:13-14): "Not in rioting and drunkeness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ; and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." The passage is an invitation to convert to Christ from one who was converted by an act of grace on the road to Damascus. Augustine then continues by describing the impact the passage had on him. “Nec ultra volui leger, nec opus erat. statim quippe con fine huiusce sententiae, quasi luce securitatis infusa cordi meo, omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffuge- runt." ("No further would I read; nor needed I. For instantly even with the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of confiden- ce now darted into my heart, all the darkness of doubting vanished away." Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1912] I, 464.) Although Paul certainly does not read as he rises out of the icy water, the possession of scripture seems to occasion a memory and vision that bring light to his soul and banish darkness. He remembers his mother once again, but the antagonism and violence of his earlier recollections have vanished. The scene is one of domestic tranquility in which his mother provides food and expresses er genuine concern about the welfare of her children. “Paul saw himself sitting with a plate of sliced tomatoes and shaker of Salt. The cabin door was open. Specks of dust floated from the darkness of the room into a bright shaft of noonday sun. His mother came from the hearth, her skirt scraping the puncheon floor. She forked a chop onto his plate, then sat by him" (pp- 53-54). No longer in an authoritarian or belligerent position, she sits by him and laments that she has heard that one of Paul's 93 etlbrothers drinks and weeps for fear that he will follow in his father’ path. he substance of the menory is/ obviously, quite different ‘rom the content of Augustine's mystic experience; but in both cases fear and anxiety yield to confidence and peace. Then an even more arresting vision comes to Paul. Through the bubbles above him in the water, he can see Regina clothed in white with her golden hair flowing. Her face shines with reflected light from beyond that Paul, too, can see- It came from that distant kingdom beyond the western mountains where dawn has broken forever and oceans roar a chorus of infinite praise to God, where God Himself sits in blinding robes and utters the word that elevates continents and casts off globules of stellar fire. Paul stroked once more, crying out now to his limbs for a Strength they had never before possessed. He felt nothing but the grind of his tight-shut jaws and the flowing force of his arms and legs. The light beckoned, and he stroked to reach it (p. 54)- The revelation of the glory of God for which the other incidents had been preparatory has taken place, and Paul summons all his power to move toward it. The light of which Augustine spoke is richly apparent, and it has transformed Paul. Once he is on the bank, a bird--a mountain morning dove--flutters by and departs, recalling the baptism of Christ when the Holy Ghost descended in the form or a dove. Taken together, these three episodes portray a rather striking development in each of the three characters involved: Regina, Paul's mother, and Paul himself. Regina was first seen as if recently having died and prepared for burial: the mood was somber and frightening. In the third vision, she appears as an angel of light--perhaps the queen of heaven--in beauty and glory- Paul's mother was initially represented in such a way as to suggest the archetype of the Terrible Mother within the framework of the Jungian model of the Great Mother: there were elements indicative of oppressiveness and possessiveness. In the end, howevery she 2s pletured as the Good Mother in her nurturing concern for her offspring. Paul's development--the focus of the entire story” Ys, of course, far more complex and inextricably connected with the portrayal of the other two. He moves from a sense of mild Snxibty by the side of the creek where he ate his lunch, through panic and terror in the mine, to very nearly drowning in the scy ater of the lake. His ambivalent attitude toward marriage and jomestic life on the one hand and his fascination with the male world of the wilderness on the other are transformed into a seeming acceptance of home and family and a sad but necessary PeSection of the values of a close friend and ultimately of the frien himself, Paul's immature relationship with both his wife and other grows into what promises to be a more mature and fully 94integrated understanding. Finally, his resentment and contempt for religion develop into an openness--albeit ambiguous--toward divine light. These transformations were not the result of experience in the typical and thoroughly secular sense of that word; they did not take place in the course of normal human development. Paul is, thus, not the hero of a Bildungsroman as that term is usually understood: his development and maturation are not the products of gathering experience in the world but come as a result of divine grace. What is particularly engaging about these transformations from the point of view of narrative design is that they are not @ simple, one-dimensional, and complete conversions but rather maintain a degree of doubt, anxiety, and ambivalence. That Paul's experiences in the course of twenty-four hours changed him can scarcely be doubted, but it is equally clear that much remains to be resolved. Just as for his New Testament namesake, Paul's experience of grace is a point of departure rather than a culmin~ ation. The ambiguity of his situation is poignantly represented by the narrative topography and symbolism. Just as Paul was leaving home, he began "to mistrust his warm feelings for the yalley and his farm and Regina" (p. 41). He wonders whether religious faith does not necessarily deform and disfigure a man with all its commandments and strictures. Just then he sees two trees: one was "tall, straight, and conical; the other was curiously warped at midtrunk into a contorted bush. The crippled tree trouble him. It seemed cruelly deflected, thwarted in its movement toward the open sky. The commandments overweighted a man, bent him low, squeezed him into odd shapes like a gnarled, missprouted tree" (p. 41). Upon his return home, Paul once again is confronted with the same sight. He sees two trees, one "tall and conical, the other bent and bushy. Paul looked for a moment and then, teaning his head against the neck of his horse, he wept bitterly" Pe 5 The episode admits of multiple readings. Conceivably what had appeared to be at least the beginning of a genuine conversion, a change of heart and mind, is being bitterly and ironically undermined in literally the last lines of the story. More probably, lowever, the strategically placed reappearance of the two trees is emblematic of Paul's complex, fundamentally human, and, hence, divided desires and loyalties. His plunge into the icy lake to rescue the Book of Mormon, his decision to abandon Sam, and his return home are all acts of will, motivated but not compelled by the power of divine grace. It might even be argued that as a result of his experience in the wilderness he now sees the frees in a reversed role. he tall tree may suggest the soul ‘reed by faith and grace to transcend itself, just as Paul was 95freed from the inhibiting and constraining elements of his past. The stunted and deformed tree could accordingly represent the soul disfigured by its own unwillingness to grow beyond the adolesce::” fascination with the myth of the wilderness. Are Paul's tears for himself because he must return or for Sam--a friend who cannot grow up, a puer aeternus--who will never have a home to , which to return or, ina complex mixture of emotions, for both? In the end, though, Paul “shook his head, mounted his horse, and rode into the canyon" (p. 56). The direction he rides is important and revealing and must not be overlooked. Leaving home, he had ridden east into the Shadows of the mountains cast by the rising sun (p. 40, and, though traveling in the direction traditionally associated with light and rebirth, he finds only the darkness of the shadows that are to be understood both literally and metaphorically. But returning home, he rides toward the west into the brilliant light of the afternoon sun; he sees the western valley glistening below him and his earlier confession gains added poignancy: Regina's love had "roused him to believe, if only for an instant, that somewhere was an everlasting home. It was far away, but surely somewhere, beyond the western mountains and then again beyond those mysterious Purple peaks so far beyond them, was a golden kingdom. Bright with unending sunshine and filled with utter joy, it was the Place where God was" (p. 40). In the course of his journey, he, thus, travels into darkness but returns, perhaps ambivalently an¢ confused, to light. The operation of the transforming and redeeming power that occasioned his return, however, requires further investigation. One of Peterson's clearest strategies in describing divine grace involves the sometimes relatively obvious, sometimes extremely Bubtle allusion to biblical and broadly religious accounts of God's entry into human affairs. These do not represent an attempt at a chronological retelling of sacred history but rather a confluence of seminal accounts. The selection of “Paul” as the name of the hero, the allusions to the typology of the exodus pattern, the references to the wind and breath suggestive the \ Presence of the Holy Ghost, the imagery recalling the baptism of Christ, and striking parallels to the conversion of Augustine ink the substance of this narrative to the long history of God's | dealings with humankind so that the story both enriches and is enriched by the tradition. The specific terminology, moreover, with which Paul's vision from the depth of the lake is described--coe Sitting in blinding robes in a kingdom of light beyond the western mountains uttering words that raise continents and casts off globules of stellar fire while being praised by infinite choruses |. forever--though not distinctly Mormon, bridges the gap between purels Sacred and rigidly secular discourse in its evocation of divine power References to sacred history, however, do not fully account for Peterson's presentation of the power of grace. Beyond these 96 oeallusions to other conversions, broadly mythical elements lend even greater depth and psychological plausibility. Erich Neumann's description of the myth of the hero based on Jungian constructs is particularly enlightening in this context. He points out that the development of the hero involves overcoming the mother, not in terms of the Freudian Oedipal model, but rather in a trans~ personal and regenerative way: By conquering his terror of the female, by entering into the womb, the abyss, the peril of the unconscious, he weds himself triumphantly with the Great Mother who castrates the young men... . His heroism transforms him into a fully grown male, independent enough to overcome the power of the female and--what is more important--to reproduce a new being inher. Here, where the youth becomes the man. . . the hero is not only conqueror of the mother; he also kills the terrible female aspect so as to liberate the fruitful and bountiful aspects (1954, 162-63; see also Campbell 1968). It must be stressed that this successful masculinization of the ego does not take place in a personal but rather a transpersonal sénse and, thus, is often represented in art and literature as the entry of the would-be hero into a cave or the descent to the underworld. The goal of such heroes may be action or the changing of the world in someway, but it also may be a matter of self-trans~ formation. This “type of hero does not seek to change the world through his struggle with inside or outside, but to transform the personality (Neumann 1954, 154). "Self-transformation is his true aim, and the liberating effect this has upon the world is only secondary" (Neumann 1954, 220). Much that Paul does would seem to suggest that he is a full-grown man in a physical, emotional, and spiritual sense. He has lived through various adventures while mining with Sam and has married and is the father of children. Yet there is also much to suggest his fundamental immaturity, perhaps even a puer aeternus (von Franz 1970). His first two recollections of his mother present her in a dominating role that in at least the first is a threat to his masculine ego: he feels himself obliged to follow his mother to a church service rather than joining his father in the forest. His relationship with Regina is tenuous-~ he does not even know what impulse motivated him to leave Sam and marry her--and the sexual dimensions of their marriage are described as selfish, exploitative, cruel, and immature.3 Paul's descent into the blackness of the mine, however, has the psychological impact of the transpersonal entry into the mother--a ritual and regenerative incest--and there he overcomes the aspects of the terrible mother that still seem to haunt him by being forced to witness her death and confront the repressed content of his unconscious. With the terrible female aspect 97having been killed, the fruitful, beneficent, nutritive, and bountiful dimensions are liberated. It is, thus, not simply coincidental that the next and final vision--the vision from ' within the lake in which Paul sees the glory of God--presents his mother offering him sustenance and expressing concern for his brother and Regina appearing as what her name suggests, regina s coelestis, a queen of heaven: the negative and repressive aspects emalé nature have been overcome, and Paul can now enter into a mature relationship as a hero who a survived the challenge. The earth itself--the archetypal symbol of the mother--is also transformed: the dark recesses of the mine and the icy depths of : the lake have given way to shining peaks and a warm valley. Paul's heroic confrontation with the Terrible Mother, though, has taken place on more than the symbolic level. Each time he encountered her it was by means of a memory image that offered him the occasion to reorder his past in such a way that the present emerged with new meaning and significance. It has long een recognized that in a large measure psychic health and maturity involve the ability to integrate the many and disparate shreds of memory into an intelligible whole. The formidable power of memory was clearly recognized and forcefully described by Augustine in his well-known meditation on memory in The Confessions (X, 17). Both time and self were in very substantial measure @ function of memory. "Magna vis est memoriae, nescio quid horrenden, deus meus, profunda et infinita multiplicitas; et hoc animus est, et hoc ego ipse sum." ("Great is this power of memory; a thing, © my God, to be amazed at, a very profound and infinite multiplicity and this thing is the mind, and this thing I am." Il, 120.) In large measure, The Confessions chronicle the history of Augustine's coming to himself and growing understanding of his own identity as a result of the reordering and regenerative power of memory: He, however, is by no means alone in his assessment of the impor of memory: in more recent years, many have illustrated how memory leads not only to self-understanding but also understanding of the world at large.4 For example, Wordsworth describes in The Prelude how "spots in time"--i.e. flashes of memory--led him \ from frustration and anxiety to understanding and maturity, and Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu is certainly, among many other things, a staggering monument to the ordering and heuristic power of memory. In portraying memory as one of the most important ghemepts, 32 Paul's experience of grace, Peterson is associating jimself with a long and venerable tradition dating back at least as far as Augustine, who has played such an important role in this story in several other respects. By remembering his past, 1 and more specifically his mother, when prompted by the spirit of Goa in the form of wind or breathing, Paul is able to come to terms with unresolved issues, to overcome problems that had Ympeded his maturation, to come to himself, and to emerge as a more mature and fully integrated human being. Understood in this context, God's grace entered human life by prompting memories 98 eee eeethat opened the door to self-discovery and individual develop- ment. Once Paul had come to terms with himself and with the women in life as a result of the power of memory, he was able to seer accept, and pursue the light emanating from the throne of God. Peterson's wording at this point is most revealing. “It seemed to Paul that he, too, could see the light" (p. 54). Peterson, thus, provides a many-faceted solution to the problem of spéaking about grace within a religious community that does not frequently speak of grace and to a secular world that has lost touch with the vocabulary of sacred discourse. Allusions to biblical events and structures as well as aspects of religious history define the context and mode and provide resonances that extend back through millennia. Such references define the experience as fundamentally religious and richly resonate for those familiar with traditions that are evoked. Archetypal images of the Great Mother and the emergence of the hero add mythical dimensions and depth while addressing contemporary audiences well acquainted with psychological constructs. The recourse to the regenerative power of memory is an important intertextual link to a long iterary tradition concerned with the power of memory to provide self-understanding and lead toward human wholeness. Although the ultimate nature of divine grace may, in the final analysis, be ineffable, Peterson's fictional presentation of grace in terms of broadly religious allusions, psychological and mythical constructs of maturation and heroic development, and pyscho-literary, inter— textual links to the formative power of memory is most effective. The success of the narrative is surely a function of Peterson's wide-ranging and innovative solution to the problem of fictional presentations of the grace in the modern and largely secular world. Notes 1. See Gloria Cronin, "The Ambiguous Myth of the Wilderness: A Comparative Study of Two Published Versions of 'Road to Damascus' by Levi Peterson," in Mormon Letters Annual 1983 (Salt Lake City: The Association for Mormon Letters, 1984), pp. 32-41; Eugene England, “Wilderness as Salvation in Peterson's The Canyons of Grace," Western American Literature 19 (1984): 17-20; and Levi S. Peterson, “The Primitive and the Civilized in Wester Fiction," Western American Literature 1 (1966): 197-207 and "A Mormon and Wilderness: The Saga of the Savages," Sunstone 5 (Nov.-Dec. 1979): 61-64. ae 2. The bibliography on the literary ramifications of typolog- jggl thinking is understandably very large. Of special interest, jowever, are Earl R. Miner, ed., Literary Uses of Typology: From the Late Middle Ages to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I977); Sacvan Bercovitch, ed, Typology and Early American 99 a errrLiterature (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972); and Ursula Brumm, American Thought and Religious Typology, trans. Jo: Hoaglund (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970). + With particular reference to typology in Mormon thinking see Richard Dilworth Rust,"'All Things Which Have Been Given of God . .. Are the Typifying of Him': Typology in the Book of Mormon," | in’Proceedings of the Symposia of the Association for Mormon Letters, 1978-79, pp. 113-29 and Bruce Jorgensen, “The Dark way | tothe Tree: The Typological Unity of the Book of Mormon," neyclia 54, pt. 2 (1977), 16-24. Both of these essays were Yeprinted in Literature of Belief: Sacred Scripture and Religious Experience, ed. Neal E. Lambert, The Religious Studies Monograph Series, vol. 5 (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Bri: ham Young University, 1981). Of particular interest with regar to the typology of the exodus pattern in Mormon scripture is the seminal essay by George S. Tate, "The Typology of the Exodus Pattern in the Book of Mormon," also published in Literature of Belief 3. See, for example, the description of the wedding night. “paul had refused the church, had said no to her faith. It was not easy on a man to find his bride sobbing behind the buggy an hour after the wedding ceremony, yet Patl had hardened his heart. That night, as he made love to her for the first time, her grief roused him to a rushing, willful pleasure" (p. 38). Later Peterson provides an even more telling description. "She had become frightened of getting pregnant again. She did not trust Paul to withdraw from her at the moment of his climax. Despite herself, she tightened her legs and forced her pelvis against him; ironically her resistance sometimes roused Paul to a cruel energy and he heedlessly took his full desire. Afterward, while Regina wept quietly by his side in the dark bedroom, he loathed himself" (p.- 48)- |. Among those of particular import are several of the eighteenth-century philosophes, Wordsworth (The Prelude}, Stendhal (Le Rouge et le noir), Keller (Der gr ne Heinrich), Rilke (Die AUrzeichnungen des Nalte Laurids Brigge), and above all Proust (A ta-recherche du-temps perdu). Bibliography Campbell, Joseph. The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Bollingen Serees 37, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968- | Hawkins, Peter S. The Language of Grace: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy,-and Iris Murdoch. Nj Sp. 1 Cowley 1983. Murdoch, Iris. "A House of Theory." Partisan Review 26 (Winter 1959). usness. Neumann, Erich. The Origin and History of Cons 100Trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series 42. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954. Von Franz, M. L. The Problem of the Puer Aeternus. New York: New York Spring Publications/Analytical Psychology Club of New York, 1970. lolThe Willing Captive: A Study of Freedom in Recent Mormon Fiction Vernon Jensen ‘ The Russian writer Dostoevsky placed a high premium on \ freedom. Without reservation he put the highest freedom in ) Christ. ‘That meant freedom was, it seems, out of reach for the mass of humanity, but remained in fact right where it belonged. Granted, whatever his reasoning, whether he was against the Roman church, or he sought a position above political necessity, Dostoevsky's stance was somewhat astonishing--except perhaps for Mormons. Mormons are a curious lot, professing to accept truth wherever they find it. But some Mormon writers may find Dostoev- sky's intrusive theological concerns in his fiction a hard pill to swallow. Still, whatever the circumstances of his life, or whatever the nature of his fiction, Mormons find attractive Dostoevsky's position that the highest freedom resides in Christ. Indeed, he provided an insightful model of freedom we can apply to a reading of serious Mormon fiction. But one might ask, why Dostoevsky? Why suggest his view of freedom to inform a reading of serious Mormon fiction? His is a literary voice at once radical yet strangely familiar. He possessed a sympathetic view, and he had the courage to speak a truth. He passionately held his ground and created out of the milieu of his time and place a memorable fiction. The Russian theologian, Nicholas Berdyaev, asserted that Dostoevsky opened a new religious consciousness for this century, as much a landmark for us as Dante and Shakespeare before him. It is hard not to take this troubled Russian writer seriously, especially when he squares with scripture, for he insisted with the Savior that "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). Above all, Dostoevsky worked out freedom in human terms and showed that being free was a worthwhile struggle. Like Dostoevsky Mormons find the ultimate value of freedom in Christ. Such a quest may result in either fulfillment or pain. Quite naturally fiction by Mormons adheres to this truth about freedom. What happens to characters in Mormon fiction comes out of this absolute view of freedom, not through an arbitrary theological assumption, but through the characters themselves acting out of their Mormon background. What else is a Mormon story? Certainly it is not a treatment of theology. It is, one might say, the color of experience, in this case charac- ters revealing as part of their thematic life their Mormon trappings. By virtue of their being in Mormon stories, these characters act in an awful freedom that comes, quite frankly, with the territory. These characters represent more than themselves and may, like all good characters in fiction, achieve or fail this ultimate freedom. The attraction of Dostoevsky's model of freedom lies in his radical stance. Although freedom is a divine attribute, he kept | 102it in the human arena. Mormons also hold a radical position. But no one wants to suggest Mormons write like Dostoevsky or make freedom their only theme in fiction. Mormon writers and readers can, however, learn from Dostoevsky the value of a strong singular vision in fiction. His views are both bold and daring. Still, critics find him distasteful and negative, saying he was an unchristian, gloomy writer who "opened the pits of hell" (Berdyaev, p. 217). But instead, by holding freedom up to its source of light, he offered mankind a refreshing hope. The theologian Berdyaev produced illuminating interpreta- tions of Dostoevsky's ideas on freedom. He searched the Russian writer's novels, diaries, and letters for their insights. To Dostoevsky, freedom was a deeply personal concern. He saw two freedoms, the beginning and the final. Human beings are caught between these two freedoms, plagued by suffering as they conquer the divided self. The first freedom was to choose good or evil, something like free agency in Mormon thought. The second or ultimate freedom was to reside in the good, to be in the bosom of Christ, to overcome all degradation and dishonor. But Dostoevsky called this final freedom a "cursed ques- tion." Through love Christ draws man into this freedom, yet to fail of it carries grave consequence. To enjoy this final freedom one becomes a willing captive to Christ, a course paradoxical and possibly tragic, yet kept offering a profound joy. Unavoidably freedom, like love in Lou Buscaglia's terms, is an independent force, offered freely, accepted freely. Says Berdyaev: "Freedom cannot be identified with goodness or truth or perfection; it is by nature autonomous, it is freedom not goodness. Any identification of freedom with goodness and perfection involves a negation of freedom and a strengthening of the methods of compulsion" (Berdyaev 1934, 69). Such an uncompromising view squares with the principles of eternality in Mormon thought. Still, an autonomous freedom, revealed in both the fiction of Dostoevsky and some Mormon writers, opens the pits of hell when abused or lost. In Douglas Thayer's story "Testimony," the main character, Glen Miller, abuses his freedom, confusing it with goodness. He has surrendered himself to the institutional church as a measure of his self-worth. For Glen, the Church "gave a man a framework for his life, something to believe in, something to hope for, gave him values that made a difference, created emotions” (1977, 149). Instead of seeking freedom within himself, Glen watches other men for indications of growth and vitality: "He tried to sense what other men believed, what kept them active, what they really felt, whether or not they did it because of family, social ressure, heritage, business, habit, or because they believed’ P. 143). He is not free to believe, for he has reduced belief to a nameless "it," a commodity for outward measurement. In reality, he has abused the first freedom, the personal choice between good and evil, because he is caught up in a "surge of fear" that his son Eric will not establish "that it had somehow 103all be worthwhile" (p. 142). Trapped in the outward church, without the power of the first freedom, Glen cannot face the final freedom, the bosom of Christ. He senses "the need for some kind of redemption" (p. 135), but he cannot focus on the Savior: But a Christ was necessary too if you believed in justice, right and wrong, because Somebody had to pay. But he didn't feel anything for Christ. He tried every Sunday when he took the sacrament to imagine Him, yet all he saw was the picture of Jesus that used to hang in the old Sixth Ward Junior Sunday School room (pp. 141-42). Although he recognizes the "necessity" of a Savior, he cannot achieve the power of freedom. His succumbing to the formless mechanism of the institutional church has robbed him of a freedon in Christ. Throughout the story, necessity and compulsion invade Glen's thinking. He wants things: he wanted Eric to bear his testimony, he wanted the Church's idea of family to be true, above all, he wanted to bear testimony himself of Christ. This wanting--characteristic of many of Thayer's "heroes"--smacks of necessity, which drives Glen away from any affinity with Christ. At the end, his son Eric may make it (he's singing); but Glen, like one of the distracted hornets roving the congregation, will not. Driven by necessity and compulsion, Glen has confused a bland goodness with genuine freedom. Free goodness, without constraint, acknowledged within, this alone is true, and such an interior act encompasses "the liberty of evil" (Berdyaev 1934, 70). But Glen is neither good nor evil. To enjoy the final freedom one must be free to choose either good or evil, to be "tempted of both" as the scriptures say. But Glen is emotionally impotent, unable even to experience the terror of his lost freedom. The problem of belief haunts many of the characters in xecent Mormon fiction. Belief is a mystery. It is free, truly realized in the higher freedom, freely given and freely receiv- ed. A gift from Christ, belief epitomizes the willing captive, one who has overcome complacency or rebellion enough to place himself in the way of being truly free. When one surrenders to the outward church his right of personal freedom, as Glen did, he weakens or negates his freedom in Christ. When one indulges in abuse of his first freedom--to choose good or evil--he allows self-will to predominate, and self-will leads to compulsion and ultimate loss of freedom. A host of recent Mormon stories bears out the trials and woes of unbelief that leads to a loss of freedom. In another Thayer story, “The Clinic," the acrid dryness of an ironic tone magnifies the unbelief that plagues the central character Steve. Back from Vietnam with a serious rash that symbolizes his unbelief, Steve cannot find sympathy. He knows he is not well 104spiritually, but like Glen he has fallen to a flat, sinister surface of life. He has somehow abused his freedom; we sense this clearly through his reaction to the rash. Like a Hemingway hero, Steve violated an essential code that brings upon him the wrath of consequence. With deft craft, Thayer depicts in the silences of the story the horror of lost freedom: “He had always believed there were things he could never do. But now everything seemed the same; he had lost his sense of opposites" (1977, 62). Caught in the nameless impotency without knowing its source, he cannot become a willing captive; he is simply a slave to his unbelief. In other stories we find a similar dilemma. Cherry, in Karen Rosenbaum's "Low Tide," remains baffled by her persis~ tent unbelief, characterized by the hermit crab that got away. The dog Shasta, it turns out, has greater capacity for belief than Cherry does (Peterson 1983). R. A. Christmas, in "Another Angel," portrays a professor shorn of his belief through a harrowing encounter with a Mormon girl and her mother. Having left the Church, he becomes bewildered at the hint of interest his new wife shows in the Book of Mormon. The remembered darkness of his own conversion momentarily haunts him (Peterson 1983). In a well-written, unflinching story called "The Snow- drift, the Swan" (1984), Helen Walker Jones unfolds the plight of Maggie. Not particularly strong in the faith and struggling with childlessness, Maggie is paralyzed by the terrifying abortion a college roommate had experienced. Her fear, and the surrogate husband, a man who tries to pick her up, wound her beyond the possibility of freedom. In actuality these revelations of unbelief and torment underscore the power of the final freedom. Dostoevsky's charac- ters--Roskolnikov, Ivan Karamozov, Kirilov, Stravoguin--all fail of this final freedom and are left wretched as a consequence. But such a loss serves to tell the reader what a heavenly gift freedom is. The intellectual Ivan Karamozov had freedom within his grasp. He didn't have to seek self-will and self-affirma~ tion. But he did. The other characters--Glen, Steve, Cherry, Marsha, and Maggie--all suffer. Speaking of Dostoevsky's main characters, Berdyaev cautions: "Their loss is an enlightening lesson for us, and their tragedy a hymn to freedom* (1934, 77). Through exploring the ironies and paradoxes of Mormon theology writers such as Linda Sillitoe, Michael Fillerup, and Dian Saderup reveal the price of lost freedom for those caught in deception, sin, and unbelief. In "Borderland" by Linda Sillitoe, the intrusion of an outer reality in the form of a mysterious arrow disturbs the narrator. Caught in confusion between Dan, her boyfriend, and Debby, her roommate, Carlie, the narrator is weakening. She doesn't know which way to turn. She feels that her stock of spiritual experiences is not strong enough to resist Dan. She tells Debby about "casting out an evil spirit” when she was thirteen, in this case a cranky grandmother. But this is the paradox: by doing something good she has brought into question in her own mind the value of her spirituality. In Carlie's story, the grandmother, long since dead, apparently 105 EE eeeplaced a pair of boots in the middle of the floor. Her father never left his boots out; and after stumbling over them, twice Carlie rebukes the grandmother's spirit. At the end, Carlie is weakening with Dan whispering in her ear but insisting she make her own decision about following him. Debby is urging her toward the Church. Then they discover the arrow, straight up, in the back ya... Carlie's self-deception is made visual. Debby is ’ terrified, Dan dismisses the arrow as the act of a thoughtless archer, and Carlie, faint in a moment of recognition, looks for “which way to run" (1982, 39). This is a carefully crafted story about the inner turmoil Carlie goes through to make choices. She faces a “testing point," and one can sense her distraught mind as a loss of freedom. In a story by Michael Fillerup called "The Renovation of Marsha Fletcher," the reader encounters a forty-seven year old woman whose sole occupation appears to be recuperating from various medical disasters such as her "“tummy-tuck." Languishing in her suburban living room, she writes newsy but disjointed letters to her five children. These children show a variety of responses to their Mormon upbringing, ranging from ultra-conser- vative to just plain lost. But Marsha's central conflict is accepting a loss of womanhood. She broods, "If the body was indeed a temple, the women--Mormon women especially--had permit- ted desecration" (1983, 62). Fillerup's narrator apparently sides with Marsha as she thinks of motherhood, far from being a blessing, as indeed a curse. Does the narrator imply that Mormon women should stand around looking beautiful and not desecrate their bodies by having children? In this narrative tour de force, Marsha regrets what she has "sacrificed" to "the man-gods": "Too much time to remember, to relive. To fantasize: being not such a good old broad; being not wife, not mother, but physician or attorney or professor. Being woman. Beautiful intelligent unapologizing uncompromising woman (p. 91). } Marsha, the hapless protagonist, writes to Adelle, her man-hating daughter: "Woman is the nigger of the world" (p. 83). In an uneven, bitter, sometimes strident, tone, Marsha, a California liberal, Marsha rages in her letters to her children | about Zero Population, the Women's Movement, and especially about = | her husband, Robert, whose favorite pastime is infidelity. The issue here, of course, is her freedom. Utterly bereft of an aspiring liberty, Marsha has violated her first freedom, to | choose between good and evil, and she has instead fallen into the | trap: WOMAN = BODY (p. 98). Even when she is seduced by a { community college professor, whose class she takes, she remains unfree to pursue a course contrary to her upbringing in Salt Lake City. Ironically her refusal to give in--she flees from the i professor's apartment--is not motivated by courage, a testing of virtue, but rather, pathetically, by a humiliating and pervading sense of inadequacy. In his fiction Dostoevsky shows that freedom which is arbitrary kills itself. Says Berdyaev, “If all things are 106allowable to man, then freedom becomes its own slave, and man who is his own slave is lost" (1934, 76). Marsha has become a Slave to her own false conception of womanhood. She claims she gave up the better part of her life waiting for Robert to mature. But she has estranged herself to a loss of freedom, Despite its flaws, the story achieves a poignancy in Marsha's dilemma. In the ultimate irony of her "renovation," she is last seen in the climax of the story standing naked before a mirror, brutally fingering her left breast which holds a malignant tumor, recently diagnosed by her physician. He told her plastic surgery would provide her an even better breast; repulsed by this thought she has been unable to tell her husband or her children. She hurriedly dresses and heads off, like Edna Pontiler in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, toward the sea. Edna is driven to her desperate act by social and personal forces greater than her- self. Marsha is driven by a compulsion to validate her tortured freedom. She has become not a willing captive but instead a violated and lonely woman. In "Out There" by Dian Saderup, Evelyn, the main character, faces a devastating loss of the higher freedom. Evelyn ends a perilous journey from the babylon of southern California with a bittersweet moment with her mother. Evelyn has come back to Salt Lake after her father died. In essence, her return is a search for her father, for a sense of love and belonging, an archetypal journey that ironically parallels the return to Heavenly Father in Mormon doctrine. In his essay on paradox and tragedy Marden Clark reviews this theology: What is God? An exalted man-like being. ('As man is God once was.') What is man? The literal offspring of God, his beloved creatures. Where did we come from? A pre-existent life with him. Where are we going? Back to him, and possibly to an eternal destiny like his (‘As God is, man may become.') (1983, 45). Against the backdrop of this theology Evelyn moves like a doomed creature, unable to get beyond her unbelief, her abused freedom. She finds very little of her father. An invalid for years, he lived in the den. One time Evelyn struck him because in his babbling illness he spoke words against her mother. Now, as she drives back home after his death, she cries in Sister Aldis's car: "That's the way. . . cry it out, Evie" (1983, 21). Evelyn, however, remains empty, baffled, unable to face her freedom. Her father, mentally and physically disabled, symboliz- es an orthodoxy she can't find within herself. Strangely, her boyfriend Kirk, an "excommunicated, rebaptised homosexual who is living straight, which meant alone" (p. 20), is an analogue of her father. But Kirk is "inert with women" (p. 20); Evelyn apparently finds him "safe," though she is cynical about their relationship. Back home her friend Andrea, whose life is going somewhere, asks Evelyn if she has quit believing. Evelyn gives 107the stock reply: “But-how can you quit? The Angel Moroni and all that stuff, it's too bizarre for anybody to have made up" (p. 25). She speculates that if "it gets written in you before age two, it's impossible to get rid of" (p. 25). Her burden of ‘ unbelief comes from a loss of free will; naturally an abuse of freedom gets her little in return. Berdyaev shows that self-will quickly derails freedom. Evelyn has become, in Kirk's term, "a , Mormon un-Mormon" (p. 22). Her confusion has become endemic. Relying on a “chocolate Holy Ghost" (p. 20), she has come to sense that “out there" does not refer to a benevolent universe but to a state of mind in which she had become "a cog in some bigger motor than herself" (p. 22). As she reflects on her "daddy" she realizes with each stroke he became deader and deader, “lost out there some~ where--actually in there--deep, deep inside himself in a place where blood stopped and the intricate lacework of capillaries broke apart" (p. 23). To Evelyn the dissolution of her father is physical, not spiritual. In her confusion she cannot understand her inner experience. Caught up in an unproductive necessity she cannot negotiate an inner spiritual reality. The soul needs the endorsement of a higher nature, the fulfillment of what Berdyaev calls "God-made-man, by whom alone human freedom can be joined with divine freedom and the form of man with the form of god" (Berdyaev 1934, 76). Bvelyn resides in the formless freedom of a chocolate Holy Ghost. Berdyaev goes on to point out "the light of this truth [about God-made~man] is born of an interior experience, interiorly lived; no return is possible to the exclusive tyranny of an external law and a life of necessity and compulsion" (pp. 76-77). Evelyn, like Glen Miller, Carlie, and Marsha Fletcher, becomes confounded, immersed in despair, an ashen, formless state, without the balm of freedom. At the end, in a mock-heroic gesture, Evelyn's mother washes her feet with Alphi Keri, an ironic remembrance of Christ washing the Apostles' feet. Evelyn's response is hollow laughter. As i she lies on her father's plastic bedsheet, tempered by tears, the | realization of a deeper freedom haunts her. Home for her--what | she really wants--is to realize the form of Christ within | her, the final freedom, to be a "beloved creature" in “here" and not “out there." This is an openly Mormon story, although not more so than Thayer's "Testimony." Evelyn's fate is tempered by { her Mormon background. This final freedom is ever out of reach of those who are unable to fathom the irrationality of faith and love. The rational mind--what Dostoevsky called in his Writer's Diary the “euclidian mind"--cannot embrace the mystery of belief. Human beings are afraid of the burden of responsibility and freedom; they therefore allows their life to be guided by compulsory means. The doctrine of the Grand Inquisitor--self-will and godlessness--rules humankind, and, as Berdyaev says, "once man has set foot upon the road to self-will and self-affirmation he must sacrifice the primacy of spirit and his original freedom and 108become the plaything of necessity and compulsion" (1934, 82). The characters in these stories bear out this stern admonition. They thereby establish the value of the Dostoevskean model of freedom. They have lost their "original freedom" and no longer enjoy "the primacy of spirit." They, by suffering defeat, provide a vicarious consequence in the loss of freedom. These Stories, then, like most stories in our culture, are cautionary tales. The appeal of Dostoevsky lies in the fact he didn't “sugar coat" freedom; it is, for all, a "cursed question," difficult, exasperating, but possible to attain. Unfortunately some will fail of freedom, as did Carlie and Evelyn and Glen. Indeed, Marsha's loss, measured against the fullness of a final freedom, arouses compassion. As a teacher of mine at BYU, Robert Thomas, taught, one does not need to taste the poison that killed Madame Bovary to comprehend the consequences of unfaithfulness. We can read about her death and experience it vicariously. Marsha Fletcher's loss, like Bovary's, becomes a way of gaining knowl- edge of experience without paying a heavy penalty. Such exper~ ience for the reader becomes a great lesson on the value of the final freedom. Dostoevsky implied that a loss of liberty in his major characters was, in fact, a hymn to freedom. Possibly he meant what Thomas taught, that readers can read, gain vicarious knowledge and experience, and still remain themselves, with their own particular identity. But as a result of reading these stories the Mormon reader can obtain, within his or her own culture, the sometimes painful knowledge that the final freedom is priceless. Such a freedom, thus learned, is hopeful and promising. What is exciting, attractive, compelling about Dostoevsky's model of freedom, however one takes it, is that he held his views passionately and honestly, allowed them to shine forth uncompro- misingly in his fiction. Whatever the form and vision of their fiction, can Mormon writers do anything less? 109Bibliography Berdyaev, Nicholas. Dostoevsky. 1934; reprt. ed., New York: New American Library 137%. . Clark, Marden. “Paradox and Tragedy in Mormonism." Proceedings, ‘the Association for Mormon Letters, 1979-62. Sale Lave City: AML, 1983. Fillerup, Michael. "The Renovation of Marsha Fletcher." Dialogue, Summer 1983. Jones, Helen Walker. "The Snowdrift, the Swan." Dialogue, Fall 1983. Peterson, Levi S., ed. Greening Wheat: Fifteen Mormon Short Stories. Midvale, Utah: Orion Books, 1983. This collection contains R. A. Christmas, “Another Angel" and Karen Rosen- baum, "Low Tide." Saderup, Dian. “Out There." Sunstone, January-April 1983. Sillitoe, Linda. “Borderland.” Sunstone, November-December 1982. Thayer, Douglas. “The Clinic," pp. 55-76, and "Testimony," pp. 129-54. Under the Cottonwoods and Other Mormon Stories~ Midvale, Utah: Orion Books, 1977. 110The Literary Image of the Mormon Colonies in Mexico Edward A. Geary At the conclusion of Vardis Fisher's Children of God, the third-generation protagonist, Nephi McBride, embittered by the LDS Church's capitulation to the U. S. government on the issue of polygamy, is seen leading a small party of colonists out of the. Salt Lake Valley on their way to Mexico, where they can continue to practice what they regard as the fulness of the gospel: Sitting alone now, and watching sweat darken the flanks of his beasts, Nephi gave his thoughts to the days ahead. How far it was to the Mexican colonies, he did not know--but hardly more than nine hundred miles. If they averaged twenty miles a day, they would arrive long before Christ- mas. Ruth had written that there was plenty of fertile land on the Bavispe River; an abundance of water and timber; and the kind of climate that made houses unnecessary (1977, 767). Fisher commits an anachronism in having his characters set out for the colonies on the Bavispe River in 1890. The first Mormon settlement on the Bavispe, Colonia Oaxaca, was not estab- lished until 1892. In 1890, the Mormon colonies in Mexico were confined to the state of Chihuahua. Despite this error, however, Fisher is true to the historical spirit in imaging the Mexican colonies both as a land of opportunity and as the last refuge of a persecuted people. The image of refuge is central in what may be called the founding document of the Mormon colonies in Mexico, a letter dated 16 December 1884 from the LDS First Presidency to an Arizona stake president: A general attack is being made upon our liberties throughout all the territories where our people reside. It is said that prosecuting officers in making this raid are acting under instructions from the department at Washington. Whether this be true or not, there can be no question that there is apparently a concert of action on their part to push our people to the wall and to destroy our religious liberty and with it our religion itself. Even the Utah Commissioners in making their report to the government recommend measures not to punish polygamy alone but to destroy our religion. . . . Our counsel has been and is to obtain a place of refuge under a foreign government to which our people can flee when menaced in this land. Better for parts of families to remove and go where they can live in peace than to be hauled to jail and either incarcerated in the territory with thieves and murderers and other vile characters, or sent to the American Siberia in Detroit to 1. ceserve out a long term of imprisonment (Romney 1938, 51-52). The image of refuge is not unique to the Mexican colonies. Mormon history in the formative period may be seen as a series of i quests for a final refuge, "the place that God for us prepared. There is a common notion today that the 1847 trek across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley was the culmination of this \ quest, but this episode was a reenactment of earlier attempts to establish permanent Mormon communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, and it became a prototype for a process repeated again and again during the following decades as more than four hundred towns and villages were established in western North America. Charles S. Peterson has suggested that the distinctive qualities which characterized early Mormonism were best preserved in these later settlements. "Salt Lake City and its surrounding valley," Peterson argues, “quickly became a ‘gathered place,'" and "the Mormon capital may well have become the least Mormon of all Mormon places. Conversely, the hinterland, where the process of the call, the trek, and the establishment of the village repeated itself, became the bulwark of Mormonism in its most distinctive form" (1977, 40-41). The Mormon colonies in Mexico, together with those in Alberta, Canada, which were established during the same period and for similar reasons, represent the last reenactments of this pioneer drama, the Mormon hinterland par excellence. The population of the Mexican colonies wae never large, no more than 4,000 at any time and only a few hundred after the revolu~ tion. ‘However, they hold a place in the Mormon regional con- sciousness out of proportion to their size. Mainly because they provided a refuge for those who practiced plural marriage, they attracted a disproportionate share of prominent or to-be promi~ nent Mormon families, including, among others, Bentleys, Eyrings, Pratts, Romneys, and Skousens. In addition, Church interest in the colonies is attested by that fact that Apostles Brigham Young, Jr., John W. Taylor, Moses Thatcher, Erastus Snow, and George Teasdale resided there for varying periods of time, and Anthony W. Ivins was called to the apostleship from his position as president of the Juarez Stake. Because of their romoteness from other Mormon regions and their cultural separation from the native Mexican population, the Mormon colonies became exception- ally tightly-knit communities that left a deep imprint on their residents which was only intensified by the trauma of the revolution. As a result, the Mormon colonies in Mexico have produced an abundance of memoirs, legends, and folklore. Most of this material remains unpublished, much of it unwritten; and as the last participants in the 1912 exodus die out, the unwritten will inevitably be lost. A good deal of material has been recorded, however, and I hope to present a representative sampling of it here. The Mormon colonization in Mexico began and continued \ 112 esthrough its most successful years during the long dictatorship of President Porfirio Diaz. Diaz evidently viewed the Mormon settlements as a positive development in an underdeveloped region of the country; but from the outset, there were local and state officials who looked on the influx of gringos with disfavor. The settlement plan had been announced before negotiations for the purchase of lands were completed, and several properties which had seemed promising turned out to have questionable titles or to be otherwise unavailable. As a result, the dozens of families who crossed the border in the early months of 1885 were compelled to remain in temporary camps throughout the year while Moses Thatcher and Alexander F. McDonald negotiated for one possible tract of land after another. The presence of a sizeable and growing number of Mormons triggered fears among local officials that another Texas might be in the making, with the result that, on 9 April 1885, an order of expulsion was issued by the acting governor of the state of Chihuahua. The Mormon colonies in Mexico came very close to ending before they began, but marathon negotiations in Mexico City by Apostles Moses @hatcher, Brigham Young, Jr., and John W. Taylor (Hatch 10) led to the revocation of the expulsion order at the last moment. The first colony to be settled was Colonia Diaz, growing out of one of the temporary camps near La Ascencion in the valley of the Casas Grandes River, about sixty miles south of the border (Romney 1938, 74-75). Colonia Juarez was established in December 1885, on the Piedras Verdes River, a tributary of the Casas Grandes, five miles upstream from the town of Casas Grandes (Romney 1938, 85). Colonia Dublan, which was to become the largest of the Mormon colonies in Mexico and the only one on a rail line, was settled in 1888 in the Casas Grandes Valley about ten miles from Colonia Juarez. In addition to these settlements east of the Sierra Madre Occidental, several tracts of timber and grazing lands were acquired in the mountains, and on these the villages of Cave Valley, Colonia Pacheco, Colonia Garcia, and Chuichupa were settled in the late 1880s and 1890s (Romney 102-14). Every Mormon community has its founding legends of pioneer hardship and providential blessings, and the Mexican colonies of course have theirs. At Colonia Juarez, for example, the settlers laid out a townsite, dug a canal, and were building their homes when they discovered that the land survey had been in error. The town they were building on the easily tillable flatlands was actually a part of the vast Rancho San Diego, one of the numerous holdings of Don Luis Terrazas, the cattle baron of Chihuahua, while the Mormon property lay two miles away in the narrow canyon of the Piedras Verdes, where the arable land was very limited, and where a townsite could be laid out only by spreading it across both banks of the river and thus having a town that would repeatedly be divided by floods. 113 we OOOOThis development was understandably discouraging, but the settlers doggedly began their development work again at the new site. Then in January 1887, when the new townsite was ready for occupation, came a powerful earthquake which came to be viewed as | a providential manifestation. This sign at the foundation of the community sets the tone for Nelle Hatch's Colonia Juarez: An Intimate Account of a Mormon Village: Sudden tremors followed by violent shakings startled the people from the apathy of despair. Dishes rattled in the cupboards and crashed to the floor. The inhabitants rushed from their houses lest they be buried. Terrified they rushed over the heaving ground to the school to care for frightened and bewildered children. There they watched the convulsions of nature as shock after shock rocked houses and tumbled chimneys. A fire like a volcanic eruption spurted from the impact of jostled rocks against hurtling boulders and set the mountainside aflame, as trees were touched off by fiery darts. There appeared to be a general holocaust of destruction with panic and terror among the animals as they fled to escape a burning death. At night when convulsions had ceased and fears had quieted, they watched the magnificence of the event as it brightened the heavens and lit up the countryside-- marvelous display of nature's fireworks. When they discovered that nature's gigantic spasms had opened new fissures and springs of water all along the river's course, they could only exclaim, "God moves in a mysterious way" (1954, 24) After the signs and trials of settlement, in the story of a Mormon village, there typically follows a kind of golden age of community life. In the Mexican colonies, this is the period from about 1895 to 1910. From the beginning, Mexico was viewed as a land of opportunity as well as a refuge, and the Mormons became relatively prosperous. Agriculture was always limited by the scarcity of irrigation water, but the farmlands of Colonia Dublan and Colonia Diaz were productive; and the narrow, rocky valley of Colonia Juarez proved ideal for fruitgrowing. In addition, there were excellent range lands available for cattle and horses, and many men made a living hauling supplies to the mines and lumber camps in the Sierra Madre. As the years passed, New England-style Mormon villages took shape, their tree-lined streets and two-story brick houses in striking contrast to the surrounding Mexican landscape. When the main building of the Juarez Stake Academy was completed in 1905, it was the most imposing structure in the entire region. Thomas Cottam Romney quotes a report from Consul Buford in 1896 stating of the Mormons, "Their holdings are in the finest portions of Northern Mexico; the soil is very rich and productive and with the advent of railroads these lands will greatly enhance in 114 a ~value. . . . The Mormons are exceedingly prosperous and highly regarded" (1938, 146). In many respects, the colonies were like Utah villages of the time in the organization of domestic life, and the range of educational, cultural, and recreational activi- ties. The residents, however, never forgot that they were in Mexico, and the exotic quality of their surroundings lent a special flavor to their way of life. "Nowhere," Hatch declares, is the moon so full, the stars so close, and the night so enchanting as in Mexico. And no place in Mexico is more peaceful than Colonia Juarez nestled between its hills. No place so resplendently comes to life as when the moon sparkles on the silver ribbon of water in the river, filters through the trees and casts shadows or glows'on the housetops and shimmers through the balmy air. No people responded more to its enchantment or reveled more in its beauty than the people of this town (1954, 61). The Mexican colonies also resembled other Mormon communities in their mythologizing of history, as Hatch reveals in her account of the 24th of July parade in Colonia Juarez in 1900: Leading the procession was Bishop Sevey in a slouch hat and bush whiskers. By his side sat his wife Mary Ann, in a billowing wrapper and clutching frantically but patrictically a huge red, white, and green flag. Drawing his wagon and giving it special recognition was old Darky, the faithful and still active mare who with her mate [had] carried the Sevey family from Panguitch in 1885. In the wagon sat straw-hatted and tattered children peering from the folds of a patched and torn wagon cover. Other dilapidated wagons followed with old covers stretched over bows of all kinds and sizes, drawn by burros and worn-out horses. Harnesses had tugs ingeniously mended with baling wire, with burlap padding under the collars, and with no breeching. Women in slat bonnets, torn and patched wrappers, knitted as they sat perched in all positions in and on the wagons. For at least one woman, a pioneer in Utah, Arizona and Mexico, the caricature was objectionable as she observed "That is not the way we looked. We were clean, our wagons were in repair, and our neat patches were respectable looking and not just any color dabbed on" (1954, 135-36). One key distinguishing characteristic of the Mexican colonies was their preservation of plural marriage as an accepted social institution well into the twentieth century. Colonia Diaz was expressly laid out as a polygamous town, with building lots allocated according to the number of wives so that each family 115 a eeSTINE es ee a formed its own neighborhood within the larger community (Johnson 1972, 68). ‘The memoirs of Maud Taylor Bentley, though sketchy and impressionistic in form, supply a candid picture of poly- gamous courtship customs. Maud Taylor was born on 6 June : 1885, in a covered wagon in one of the temporary camps where the | Mormons were awaiting the completion of land negotiations. Her beginning thus coincides almost exactly with the beginning of the colonies themselves. Her parents were Ernest Leander Taylor, who became a leading merchant in Colonia Juarez, and Johanna Marie Skousen, member of another prominent family. In 1901, when she was sixteen, Maud caught the eye of Joseph C. Bentley, who at age forty-three already had two wives and whose eldest children were only a few years younger than Maud. The feelings of a teenager faced with a middle-aged suitor emerge vividly in her account of this courtship: One time when I was up to Alonzo's place, I was so very worried that J. C. Bentley would come up there. He had asked me to marry him and I didn't want to. One Sunday evening I went to Nora's so we could go up to Alon- zo's. I heard mother calling, "Maud." I said to Nora to hurry, “Let's get going before mother comes after me." I knew Brother Bentley was there. I gave my word that I would be home Wednesday evenings for him to come and see me and I always kept my word, but not on Sunday. (This was just a short time before we were married.) I had had typhoid the year before and my hair had come out so badly that I had had it cut short. One evening I had my hair all in rags for curlers. Brother Bentley came and mother came in to tell me to come out. I said I wouldn't with my hair in curlers. She got real mad at me because I wouldn't come out. She said that I didn't realize what a wonderful man he was. I said, "I don't care. Let him go home to his own folks. I don't want him" (1965, 6). The match was evidently settled between Bentley and Maud's parents before she was aware of what was happening. ‘he picture of a distinguished, middle-aged family man waiting "on the corner of the shoe shop" to greet a schoolgirl each morning and after~ noon was sufficiently out of the ordinary even in Colonia Juarez that Maud remembers, "the kids my age would tease me and I could have almost died" (1965, 7). It is equally interesting to note both her retrospective satisfaction with the marriage and i the arrangements that evidently allowed her to continue a social life with her teenaged friends, including something very much like dating, even after she was married: I learned to love that dear man. I was never sorry after I was married. Den and Frank Harris used to take me out, and the kids would go down on the flat and have | 116corn or potato roasts. They would call for me and ask Brother Bentley if I could go with them and [Papa] would say, "Sure, have a good time." (This was after I lived in the little lumber house west of Aunt Mag- gie's.) Den would take me to parties and on school hikes. One of my brothers, Loren or Harvey, would also take me to dances (1965, 7). Maud Bentley's account rambles so that it is often difficult to locate particular events in a chronological relationship. But there does emerge from her memoir a sense of the quality of everyday life, the illnesses, accidents, disasters, and the rivalries for status in an isolated, self-contained community. One feature of pre-revolutionary life was the excursions into the mountains, sometimes for hunting and fishing, and sometimes for visits to the mountain wards or those across the mountains in Sonora. When Stake President Junius Romney participated in these outings, it was evidently his practice to be first in line and thereby avoid the dust. Maud Bentley recalls an occasion when she challenged the stake president's prerogative: One morning Brother Romney was later than usual in getting started, and some of the vehicles were on ahead. Junius would whistle for them to get out of his way--and they all did until he came to our buggy. Brother Bentley was holding Rinda and I was driving when Brother Romney came up behind us and whistled. Brother Bentley said, "You had better give him the road." It was smooth, good country, and I said, "Not unless he can beat this team." I wouldn't give him the road so he turned out to pass me. I whipped up the team, and we raced for a mile and a half, I guess, but he couldn't pass. That night all the men razzed him because a woman beat him (1925, 9-10). Estelle Webb Thomas wrote her memoir, Uncertain Sanctuary, when whe was ninety, and it is, as Stewart and Ermalee Webb Udall claim in their introduction, "in all likelihood . . . the last eyewitness account" of the pre-revolutionary period in the colonies. Thomas went to Mexico as a child of eight in 1898 and left in the exodus year of 1912, so her years in Mexico formed an episode in her life with a remembered beginning and end, and she represents it with some artistry. The account begins with a reflection on her remembered innocence as the family set out on the journey from their home in Snowflake, Arizona: There were many things of which we children were blissfully ignorant at that time: that there was anything unusual about a family with three mothers and only one father; that this was not merely a grand adventure, but another of the many migrations caused by the unpopularity of our religion--another weary 17pilgrimage in search of a sanctuary (1980, 10). The Webb family settled first in Colonia Dublan, where Estelle's father established a brickyard and her mother, ‘ Charlotte, taught school and managed the railroad hotel in near Nueva Casas Grandes. In 1901, Charlotte went to Colonia Carcia to teach school, and in 1903 to Colonia Pacheco. In 1904, the entire family moved to Colonia Morelos. Thus Estelle Webb exper- ienced life in all three regions of Mormon colonization in Mexico. Though the book is brief it gives a concrete picture of life in these colonies as the author knew it during her crucial growing-up years. Webb is especially effective in her thumbnail portraits of people she knew, including, for example, “Aunt Diane," the fragile, pious woman with whom Charlotte and her daughters boarded during the first year at Garcia: Aunt Diane was an excellent cook, a perfectionist in that as in everything. But to have shortened her morning or evening devotions on account of her cooking would never have occurred to her. Often, then, with a complete lack of self-consciousness, she arose about midway through her prayer and, still praying, walked into the kitchen, stirred or basted or moved to the back of the wood-burning stove anything that might need attention, then came back to her place in the circle of kneeling worshipers. All this with never a break in the smooth monologue (1980, 42). A less idyllic picture of frontier life emerges from Webb's account of a mentally disturbed neighbor in Colonia Pacheco: In those days, people were not schizophrenics or psychotics; they were possessed of evil spirits. Aunt Sade was one of these. She was dangerously violent and shockingly abusive. Most of the women were terrified of her... . However, something about Mama, her utter fearlessness, her flashing black eyes, or the sense of strength emanating from her slight body, always quieted the dreadful old woman. Her drooling mouth would stop hurling filthy epithets, and she would cower and plead, “stop looking at me! Stop trying to make me good! (1980, 56-57) \ The greatest trauma in the history of the Mormon colonies in Mexico was the ten-year period of civil disorder that began in 1910 when Francisco Madero challenged the thirty-four year rule of President Diaz. This revolutionary period, and especially the exodus year of 1912, is the climactic event in virtually every account of life in the colonies, as those who had fled to Mexico for refuge were forced to flee once again. It is tempting to see it as almost too complete a reenactment of earlier Mormon flights from Missouri or Illinois as the hard-won prosperity and 118 aesesreeeseeeeeennTTEnnTTTTETETETETES |stability of the communities were destroyed and the inhabitants driven out, most of them never to return. It is important to note, however, that religious persecution, as such, played very little part in the events. The Mormon colonies in Mexico suffered threats, vandalism, violence, outright expropriation, and in some cases complete destruction not because they were Mormon but because they were anglo, because they were pice a and because they were situated in the hotbed of revoluticn activity. Time does not allow anything approaching a complete treat- ment of the events of the revolution here. The best overview is probably to be found in Hatch's history of Colonia Juarez, though it_of course omits many events that took place in the other colonies (and in fact Colonia Juarez probably suffered less physical damage than any other colony). Karl Young's Ordeal in Mexico (1968) is a collection of stories from the revolutionary period, gathered for the most part from male informants--cattle- men, teamsters, scouts. Young tells the story of Dave Brown, for example, who went with the women and children of Chuichupa on their difficult trip to El Paso, and he includes several of the photographs taken by John E. Wall during the exodus of the men. He also relates several of the adventures of Lem Spilsbury, who served, somewhat unwillingly, as a courier for both the govern- ment and the revolutionary forces and later, as a scout for the U. S. punitive expedition under General John J. Pershing, took part in the major engagement of that expedition, the battle of Carrizal. Young's book thus serves to complement the majority of published accounts which were written by women and present a somewhat more domestic point of view. But more domestic does not necessarily mean less adventurous. Maud Bentley recalls that she was often called upon to hide fugitives in a secret room in her house, and on one occasion of threatened attack she sat up throughout the night with an axe in her hands, ready to do battle $9 he death, if necessary, in defense of her children (1965, 23). The accounts of this period are dramatic reports of a succession of crises, with danger and hardship alternating with providential escapes. Depending on the author's point of view, the experience was either a dreadful nightmare from which the Saints were lucky to escape at all, or it was a difficult period but one that could be endured with sufficient courage and tact. Most of the writers can be assigned to either the "Romney- ite" or the "Bentleyite" persuasion. Junius Romney, the thirty-two-year-old stake president, was the architect of the exodus. Faced with the demand from the Red Flagger faction that the colonists surrender their weapons--a demand given added weight by the six cannon the Red Flaggers had trained on Colonia Dublan--he made the decision to call for his people's removal from Mexico, feeling that their lives and safety outweighed the loss of their material possessions. Joseph C. Bentley, the 119 ec ewfifty-year-old bishop of Colonia Juarez, believed, on the other hand, that the Saints could ride out the crisis with sufficient faith and patience. Though he acceded to the decision to leave, declaring, according to Hatch, “No matter what private opinions 1 | may maintain, I know that safety lies in obeying the priesthood and I am as always subject to its direction" (Hatch 1954, 185), he returned to Colonia Juarez as soon as he could obtain permis- sion from Church leaders to do so and became the acknowledged leader of the Mormons who stayed in Mexico. As might be expect- ed, most writers who did not return to Mexico after the exodus tend to support President Romney. His kinsman Thomas Cottam Romney, who published the first book-length account of the Mormon colonies, devotes an entire chapter to defending the exodus. On the other hand, those who returned to their homes in Mexico tend to be Bentleyites, explicitly or implicitly questioning whether the exodus was really necessary. Nelle Hatch, though she strives for a balanced view of events, is clearly a Bentleyite, and her book celebrates the courage and trials of what she calls the "homing pigeons," those who endured the revolutionary period. Maud Bentley is of course a Bentleyite, as is Karl Young. Estelle Webb Thomas was a young woman at the time of the exodus, and she does not dwell on the motives but rather records the mingled excitement and pain of the move. She recalls the adventure of smuggling guns across the border and the attractiveness of the young Mexican officers who were quartered at the Webb home, but she retains a sense of outrage at the damage the federal soldiers and their camp followers did throughout the town. (Colonia Morelos, like Colonia Dias, was rendered uninhabitable by the events of the revolution and was never resettled.) Pancho Villa emerges from these accounts as a kind of Robin Hood figure, very much in contrast to Pascual Orozco, leader of the opposing Red Flagger faction. Hatch's view of Villa and his relationship with the Mormons is representative when she declares that Villa's actions "can be explained only by drawing a picture of the man himself and understanding the power of the peaceful ways used against him by Joseph C. Bentley and other peaceably inclined colonists. These measures softened his rough exterior and sometimes induced him to make last minute moves in favor of the colonists in spite of avowed intentions to do otherwise (1954, 213). It seems as though every storyteller from the Mormon colonies has at least one story of capture and release by the Villista forces. Most accounts follow the general pattern of this one by Annie R. Johnson. Her husband, Elmer W. John— son, Jr., had returned to Colonia Diaz shortly after the exodus to try to salvage some property when he was taken captive by revolutionists who were living in his father's home. They accused him of smuggling ammunition to the federal forces and 120 yesentenced him to hang. Just as they were bringing a horse on which to mount their victim, intending to whip it out from under him to complete the hanging, their General, Pancho Villa, rode in from La Ascencion. Upon recognizing Elmer, as an old friend he had known in Durango, Pancho became enraged at the abuse he was receiving. His face darkened, his eyes narrowed, hard as steel, and his tight lips hissed blasphe- mous threats as he slashed the offending cords and ropes binding his friend, and quirted nearby soldiers right and left. “Por Dios!" he shouted, "had I been too late I would have shot you all like dogs." At a safe distance, his men stood aghast as their well built and impressive General gave Elmer a gallant abrazo . . . and invited him to a chicken dinner. ‘The chickens, which were taken from Elmer's own flock were served in his mother's front room to soldiers sprawled all over his mother's prized carpet (1972, 373-74). Estelle Webb Thomas recounts a somewhat similar episode that happened to her brother, Lee Webb, and Hatch tells of how Villa released a group of captured LDS missionaries in 1919. The most widely known story of Pancho Villa and the Mormons, however, is his miraculous sparing of Colonia Dublan on his return from the raid on Columbus, New Mexico. This episode, which was the subject of a film shown throughout the LDS Church several years ago, appears to be of somewhat questionable authenticity. There is no question but that Villa skirted the town rather than attacking, but the story that his advance scouts were frightened away because they mistook the lights of a switch engine in the town for the movements of a large body of federal troops seems to belong to the realm of folklore. The end of the revolutionary period found the remaining Mormon colonists in Mexico near the point of exhaustion, their economy shattered, and their population reduced to a mere fraction of what it had been a decade before. Out of the ruins of their earlier enterprises, however, they built a new life to which they continue to cling, and which those who grew up in the colonies but now live elsewhere recall fondly. For the pioneers, however, a sense of tragic loss remained. Maud Bentley paints a poignant picture of the last years of Joseph C. Bentley: The thing that made Brother Bentley feel so badly was that all of his children moved from Mexico and left him so alone. He said one reason he moved to Mexico was the sole reason of being able to have all his family around him. And before the revolution he had means to get them each and all into some kind of business. But he lost practically everything he had, and he felt that his sons were forced to go to the United States for a 121 afuture. He used to walk way up to the post office every mail, and he would come back and say, “There isn't a letter from one of my children" (1965, 55). i The pathos of such an end for the man who, as much as any other, had given his life to the Mormon colonies in Mexico suggests the ultimate failure of the original vision. But this is not only a Mexican story. It could be repeated in villages throughout Mormondom in the long decades of rural depopulation, where the proverbial “best crop" was the young men and women who left the village in search of better opportunities. In a broader sense still, it is the recurring story of the generations, as the young leave the old behind and go on to their own lives, a story repeated in every setting, and one from which there is in this world no refuge. 122 |Bibliography Bentley, Maud Mary Taylor. Sorrows, Trials and Tribulations, Triumphs, Success and Happiness on the Frontiers in Old Mexico. Privately published, 1965. Fisher, Vardis. Children of God: An American Epic. New York: Harper, 1939. Hatch, Nelle Spilsbury. Colonia Juarez: An Intimate Account of a Mormon Village. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1954. Johnson, Annie R. Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz. Salt Lake City: Publisher's Press, 1972. Peterson, Charles S. Utah: A Bicentennial History. New York: We W. Norton, 1977 Romney, Thomas Cottam. The Mormon Colonies in Mexico. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938. SCS Thomas, Estelle Webb. Uncertain Sanctuary: A Story of Mormon Pioneering in Mexico. Salt Lake City: Westwater Press, Young, Karl E. Ordeal in Mexico: Tales of Danger and Hardshi Collected from Mormon Colonists. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1968. 123Measuring the Achievement of the New LDS Hymnal Karen Lynn We've all heard about the boy who learned that he could cry wolf" only so many times before he ran out of people who would believe him. Many people have said to me, "A new hymnbook? I'll believe it when I see it." But faith will be vindicated. After all the years of work and discussion-~and rumor--we will have a new hymnbook early in 1985. "Will there really be one?" is certainly the first ques- tion. The next question is undoubtedly something like, "How revolutionary will it be?” The answer is--not as revolutionary as some would have liked, but more revolutionary than we had dared hope. With seventy-five added hymns, new format, new indexes and other apparatus, it is far more than a revised hymnbook; it is a new hymnbook, and a much more respectable entry in the library of Christian hymnals. In this overview I would like to talk about the role of already existing materials, then about the role of new contributions, then about some of the additional resources this hymnbook will include. Feelings have run high when it comes to the new hymnal. As people became aware that I was on the Music Committee and involved in some of the recommendations, they would come to me with a note of urgent concern in their voices. The concerns were of two types. The ones who were not musicians were worried that something they loved would be cut from the book. ‘The ones who were musicians were concerned that something they couldn't stand would be left in. We knew from the beginning that it would be impossible to | please everyone. We are trying to prepare for a whole spectrum | of reactions. I believe that each of us on the committee began at an early point to develop our own strategy for responding to people's countless suggestions and objections and opinions. Michael Moody is the chairman of the General Church Music Com~ mittee. His technique is to smile as only Michael can smile and say in molto amabile tones, "A little of everything!" My own preference is to adopt the solution of a newspaper editor who answered all his mail by saying the same thing: “Dear i so-and-so: You may be right. Sincerely yours,. . ." \ Of the two worried groups that I mentioned--the non-musi~ cians who feared something would be cut, and the musicians who feared something might be kept--the first group fared better~ Any hymn that is widely loved and often sung ran no danger of being dropped in 1985. Most of the twenty-five titles cut from the hymnal are those that were just not used. Few will miss “Come Go with Me Beyond the Sea," or "Beautiful Zion for Me." However, a few more may note the passing of "Each Cooing Dove. And quite a number will mourn the loss of “Though in the Outward ee ar 126Church Below" and " ‘ome, Thou Fount of Every Blessing." The general membership of the Church had many suggestions to offer regarding hymns to be added--hymns, or in some cases songs, in print elsewhere but not in the present hymnal. The new hymnal will include the two most requested items: "How Great Thou Art" and "In Our Lovely Deseret." In answer to widespread requests, "I am A Child of God,"."Love One Another," and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" are now part of the hymnbook. We have three new Christmas hymns--"Away In a Manger," “Angels We Have Heard on High," and "Once in Royal David's City"--and the Thanksgiving hymn'that begins "We Gather Together To Ask The Lord's Bless- ing." Out of ninety hymns in Emma Smith's first collection, twenty-six appear in this hymnbook. You'll note some minor text changes as you sing some of the old hymns. Gone is the Marxist doctrine of “Only he who does something is worthy to live. The world has no use for the drone." This now reads "Only he who does something helps others to live. To God each good work will be known." Gone is the carpe diem assertion that "There is no tomorrow, but only today." ‘This now reads, “Prepare for tomorrow by working today." "Up, Awake, Ye Defenders of Zion" is now less blood- thirsty. Some language is more inclusive--"Oh Hark! A Glorious Sound is Heard" now substitutes "In honor, grace and power" for "In manhood, grace and power." And at least a few grammatical and syntactical problems have been dealt with. There is no reason, for example, for a song with the refrain "Put your shoulder to the wheel" to include the phrase "With all thy might and zeal," and it no longer does. We no longer "yoo-hoo unto Jesus" in "How Firm a Foundation"; this line is now "Who unto the Savior for refuge have fled." A few concessions to modern usage were made, such as a change from “Sunshine makes the heart so gay" to "Sunshine chases clouds away" in "When The Rosy Light of Morning." For me, one of the most exciting additions to the hymnal is the group of wonderful hymn tunes, long-standing favorites in the Christian world, that are now part of our hymnal. All musicians in the church will immediately want to familiarize themselves with Darwall, St. Theodulph, Austria, Sine Nomine, and Forest Green, to name just a few. And several historically or doctrin- ally important texts that to this point did not have musical settings to do them justice will appear with fine new settings. Two that come to mind as examples are "Know This, That Every Soul is Free," and “If You Could Hie to Kolob." As for new contributions, calls for tunes and texts went out a number of years ago in the Ensign and in church music bul- letins; and Michael Moody estimates that since that time, five or six thousand submissions were received from Church members and sifted by the Music Committee and by specially appointed Kymnbook Committee members. Few tunes came in without texts, whereas many texts came in without tunes. Although more texts than tuneswere submitted, the committee felt that on the whole we had more first-rate tunes to choose from than first-rate texts. About 90 percent of the rejections were for obvious technical problems. Sometimes a competent text or tune was not used just because another tune in the same meter or another text on the same subject seemed to do the job better. Few of the texts that came in to Salt Lake were general worship hymns--few psalm adaptations, for example. Instead, the texts focused on specifically LDS themes--the Restoration, Joseph smith, the Book of Mormon, missionary work (with many writers alluding to D&C 4, with the field all white and ready to har- vest), temple work, genealogy, home and family, and many priest hood hymns. But a hymn text is not a general conference address. Here is the paradox: most of us think we want hymns about the unique aspects of our Church. We ask, where are the hymns about the welfare program, about genealogy, about tithing? after all, we tell our literature classes and our creative writing classes that the more detailed and specific a piece of writing, the more encompassing and convincing it will be. Yet this idea often backfires in the case of a hymn. A satisfying hymn text is usually rather general; it handles specific LDS references ina subtle way. We somehow want a hymn to pay its dues in terms of a general feeling of praise or worshipfulness before it can touch on anything too particular. It is wonderful when both things can happen at once. A new text by John Tanner, “Bless Our Fast, We Pray," is a hymn entirely given to the subject of fasting, yet the word "fast" appears only once, and it is also a hymn of general supplication. The committee did quite a bit of recombining of tunes and texts. Many times editing was needed. Almost always the author or composer was willing to make changes. By definition, hymn— writing is a unique kind of creative effort. Whereas a poet may claim artistic privilege and say, "To change my poetry is to deny the integrity of my self-expression; public response and editor- ial comment are beneath my concern," the hymn-writer is seeking a public response, seeking in fact to express public feelings and to affect a broad community of people in an immediate way, as is a hymn composer. So it should not surprise us to find names we do not know on the list of new contributors, along with names of well-establish- ed LDS poets and composers. Some might wonder why, when we knew we would be requiring new hymns, we didn't just send the ten finest LDS poets and the ten finest LDS composers for a week's yetreat at Aspen Grove. But it doesn't always work that way. Hymn compilers throughout the Christian world note the same phenomenon. Here is a statement from William J. Reynolds, former president of the Hymn Society of Americ 126Hymns have been written by people--for the most part people unknown beyond their immediate locality. The author-composer indexes of our hymnals include only in rare exceptions names of those noted for poetic gifts or talented composers of melodic lines. But the names in these lists are of ordinary persons whose lyric expression and melodic tunes were found singable and meaningful to those who sang them and sang them and sang them again. Poetic lines of famous poets and tunes of noted composers as found in our hymnals are usually the reworking of some well-intentioned hymnbook editor. . . . Those whose names are found in our hymnals today were not professional hymn writers or tune composers. . . . all of these found in their daily living the seed bed for their writings." [The Hymn, October 1978, p- 205. our Church is not in the habit of interchanging texts and tunes, at least not in our day. We don't think of a tune as existing on its own, and we usually refer to a tune not by the tune name but by the title of the text we've paired it with. The new hymnal will help us become aware of tune names, and of the tradition of tune names in Christian hymnody. An early LDS hymn book called The Psalmody printed a tune name rather than the text title above Sach Rymne tune names such as "anti" or “Bountiful.” But many later tunes bore no name, so the composer or the composer's descendants were invited to name that tune for this hymnal. Sometimes the tune name is something like “Louise, after the composer's wife. Other bear geographical names or the names of scriptural characters. The indexes are one of the strongest features of the book. Whereas the previous hymnal had only two minimal indexes, the new one will have seven: (1) a much more comprehensive index of topics; (2) an index of scriptures that correlate with each hymn; (3) an index of titles, tunes, and meters; (4) a metrical index, with all hymns of the same meter grouped together; (5) an index of tunes by tune name; (6) an index of authors and compos- ers, with the LDS contributors marked; and seven, an alphabetical list of titles and first lines. The indexes that offer the greatest new potential for the hymnbook as a resource are Probably the scriptural and topical indexes. The First Presi- dency has provided a preface; and a section called "Using the Hymnbook" explains beat patterns, musical notation, the theory of hymn meter, hymn selection (with a caution that not all hymns in the book are suitable for sacrament meeting), and other matters. Hymns will be grouped according to topic--"Restoration," “Christ- mas," and so forth--so most hymns can be easily located without knowing a hymn number. These are significant improvements by any measure. When your friends are slapping their foreheads and exclaiming, "You mean ‘Should You Feel Inclined to Censure’ is still there?", you should remind them that most of the seventy-five added items represent real quality, the scope and legitimacy of the hymnal 127 ec rrrare now much greater, and the balance sheet will show that the hymnal is indeed a step forward in the LDS hymn tradition. 108Some Popular Non-Mormon Books Read by Mormons Before 1900 Edward L. and Eleanor C. Hart It is always best to begin a paper like this with scholarly modesty. My wife and I do not claim that the present study is definitive. We hope it will be perceived, rather, as some early spadework on a subject that will not only entice others but at the same time offer some help in finding answers to the fascina- ting questioi what kinds of non-Mormon reading material were Mormon readers involved with during the period from about 1874-1900, or roughly the last quarter of the nineteenth century? You may wonder why we begin our period a year before 1875 when the precise year beginning the quarter century would be so much neater. The reason is that the spark from which this whole paper was fanned into such flame as it may possess occurred in an i874 journal entry of Emmeline B. Wells. Eleanor had been working with Emmeline's journals and had come across the fact that on 10 September 1874 Emmeline's daughter Em celebrated her twenty-first birthday and was given, among other things, a book of Shakespeare's works. ‘Two days later, on 12 September, Em received a late present of Lucile by Owen Meredith. Four days after that, the forty-six year old Emmeline wrote in her journal that she had “been siting here alone all the evening reading Meredith's Lucile and Leigh Hunt's The Wishing-Cap Papers" (which, incidentally, had had its Boston publication just he year before, in 1873). All of these facts are interesting enough by themselves, at least in retrospect, but would not have been sufficient to push this paper into being without an addi- tional interesting coincidence. As Eleanor was reading the journals of Sarah Patterson she came across an entry that Sarah had written thirty years after Emmeline B. Wells's daughter had had her twenty-first birthday. Sarah Patterson, then nineteen years of age, wrote in her journal in Idaho that she "began reading Lucile" on 1 August 1904 and that she "finished Lucile" on 24 August. She had also read A Daughter of the North and Evangeline as part of the required curriculum of Fielding Academy in Paris, Idaho. The recurrence of the as-yet unfamiliar title Lucile, a book with apparent popularity so many years apart, caused Eleanor to share the phenomenon with me, and together we found answers to questions regarding the identity of Lucile and its author Owen Meredith. These answers were not difficult to find, but the process of finding them projected us, almost before we knew it, into the larger question of non-Mormon authors read by Mormons during the period we had become interested in. Before passing on to some broader aspects of our inquiry, though, I think we should satisfy any curiosity regarding Lucile and Owen Meredith. The name Owen Meredith was a pseudonym used 129_ ce BS a by Lord Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton (1831-1891); he was the son of the first Lord Lytton, Edward George Bulwer Lytton, the author ! of The Last Days of Pompeii. The author of Lucile, later in life, became Viceroy of India. As for Lucile, it is a verse romance in anapestic tetrameter couplets. And you know how hard | anapests are to sustain. Even Shakespeare gave them up after a few experimental passages in Love's Labor's Lost (I1.i.232-256) and elsewhere. Prolix is the word most critics used to describe Lucile, which was published first in England in 1860 and reprint~ @da number of times there and in America. Some of the narrative \ of Lucile was borrowed from Madame George Sand's Lavinia; and Owen Meredith defended himself against charges of plagiarism by freely admitting that elements of the plot were borrowed and that they were so well known as Sand's that nothing needed to be said, but that the kind of verse and interpretation he gave the narrative was an original use. The defense I refer to is ina copy of an undated American edition donated to the BYU Library | from the library of President George Albert Smith and bearing the | holograph signature of his wife Lucy W(oodruff) Smith. ! While it is true that one swallow does not make a spring and that three readings of a book do not necessarily make it popular, still, we think it is true that the placing of Lucile in the hands of three women of varied times and locations does give the book a kind of currency, especially since it keeps reappearing on | lists to be introduced later. More importantly, doing so suggests at least two approaches to the reading being done by Mormons during the last quarter of the nineteenth century: approaches that can be carried farther than we have been able to take them here. The first is to search many more diaries and journals than the fourteen we used for this study, looking Specifically for clues as to what the authors of them were reading. The second is to study the contents of the libraries of church members whenever catalogues or at least lists of books can be found. We suspect that not a lot of private library holdings will be discovered, but lists of the contents of the libraries of some important church leaders do exist, and those libraries will hold clues to the reading habits of the rest of the members of the church for the period under investigation. Before going any farther, also, we should recognize that material tangential to the subject of this paper has been done by others. O£ special inerest to us, perhaps, is a paper in the Utah Historical Quarterly (Fall 1982, 325-39) by Matthew Durrant \ anc eal E. Lambert titled “From Foe to Friend: The Mormon Embrace of Fiction." The article discusses the attitude toward | fiction as seen editorially in such church publications as the Juvenile Instructor, edited by George Q. Cannon, and the Contri- i butcr, edited by Junius Wells. During the first half of the ' nineteenth century, say Durrant and Lambert, church members were too busy with problems of sheer survival to have much time for fiction. From then until the 1880s a negative attitude toward 130fiction developed. Some of the reasons for that official negativity, they say, were first, that fiction is not true, and, second, that the reading of fiction has deleterious effects upon its readers. Finally, reading fiction is a waste of time. Grisly accounts were given the readers of editorials of the Juyenile Instructor and the Contributor of people going mad or ‘committing crimes after reading lurid tales. According to the article's authors, however, editorial attitude began to change in church publications toward the end of the century as the possib- ilities for using fiction to disseminate the truths of the gospel began to be discovered by the editors. The 1880s, say Durrant and Lambert, were a transitional period, during which an ambival- ence was apparent. On the one hand, for a time the Instructor continued to editorialize against fiction, and on the other hand the pages of the same magazines began to contain more and more faith-promoting fiction. The power of fiction in the influencing of minds had been discovered, but still the old bias lingered for a time. At one point, after publishing fiction in its own pages, the Juvenile Instructor justified the presence of fictional techniques in a story by claiming that the details were "substantially true" (p. 334), which reminds us of the crude ploy of Daniel Defoe two centuries earlier to put himself in well with his Puritan peers by smuggling the lurid fictional life of a criminal into jail the night before an execution so that the purported author could hand it down to Defoe from the scaffold just before he was hanged. ‘That made it truth rather than fiction. At any rate, say Durrant and Lambert, by 1888 the acceptance of fiction by church publications was complete, and the editors were then intent upon making a distinction between good writers and bad writers, and naturally the good writers were recommended to their readers. Junius Wells recommended Washington Irving, and, also writing for the Contributor, B. H. Roberts recommended that readers delve into the works of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Browning, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, and, of course--Lord Lytton. As we said in introducing this segment referring to the study of the editorial attitude toward fiction in church publica- tions, however, it is tangential to our main pursuit. One cannot argue with the conclusions of Durrant and Lambert~-they are documented and accurate; one may, however, make a distinction between the official recommendation of an attitude in a church publication and the actual reading practice of the members of the church. To obtain the perspective we recommend here, let us step back a little and look at a statement by eminent inter- preters of Mormon History, Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, in their book, The Mormon Experience (New York: Knopf, 1979). Speaking of Mormon development in the arts they write: “One of Joseph Smith's statements on the fundamental beliefs of the church declares that {if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or f good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.' 131This should leave ample room for Mormons to participate in music, dance, literature, painting and sculpture" (p. 328). We contend that it is at least possible to believe that when confronted by a conflict between a broad general principle and a non-binding narrower interpretation, the bulk of 2yicant members will follow the general principle. Hence, we b¢ that it is not unlikely that in their discovery of a diiierence between good literature and bad literature, editors of church publications may have been following rather than leading, coming belatedly upon a distinction that their discriminating readers had known all along. But this is a point that we do not want to belabor here, before all the evidence is in. In a sense, this is tangential also to the main question of what outside literature Mormons were reading during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Before returning wholeheartedly to that topic, though, let us insert just one thought. In the Mormon society in the Western United States there was a constant intercourse with the rest of the world carried on by missionaries leaving and return~ ing, bringing with them the books and other reading materials current in the lands they visited. To this day their sensitive descendants acquire tastes for the artistic accomplishments of other peoples, and it would be strange if nineteenth-century missionaries had not bought and read books. Their journals, in fact, tell us that they did. In pursuit now of the main concern of this paper, we return to 1874, the beginning date we have arbitrarily chosen for this study, and look around a little, first in Salt Lake City, to see if the daily newspapers give us any ideas about what the inhabi- tants are reading. We notice, to begin with, few advertisements for books and few books advertised for sale by stores--most of those offered being the blank record-keeping kind. We do, though, find this advertisement in the Salt Lake Tribune for Wednesday morning, 7 January 187 Public Reading Room and Free Circulating Library At the Ladies Library Association Room on First South Street, opposite Delmonico's. Open every evening from 6 to 10. On Sundays and Wednesdays from 1-5 p.m. All are welcome. Strangers are especially invited. Well, it does not say No Mormons Allowed, so we have to assume i that Mormons in Salt Lake had a place to go to borrow books in 1874. And then our memory jogs us with the reminder that a ter~ ritorial library had been in existence since 14 February 1852. on the day following the previous announcement in the Tribune, we jearn that a fund-raising tea party produced $150 for the Ladies | Library, and that they placed on their shelves a complete set of Chambers" Encyclopaedia and a Webster's Unabridged Illustrated : 132 a

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