The Flight to Lucifer

The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy
Cover of the first edition, showing jacket illustration of the Primal Man from De Occulta Philosophia by Cornelius Agrippa
Author Harold Bloom
Cover artist Muriel Nasser
Country United States
Language English
Genre Fantasy
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
 1979
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 240
ISBN 0-374-156441

The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy is a 1979 novel by the critic Harold Bloom, inspired by his reading of David Lindsay's fantasy novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920). The plot, which adapts Lindsay's characters and narrative and features themes drawn from Gnosticism, concerns Thomas Perscors, who is transported from Earth to the planet Lucifer by Seth Valentinus.

The book received mainly negative or critical commentary, and was compared, including by Bloom himself, to Star Wars (1977). Bloom eventually repudiated the work.

Plot summary

Thomas Perscors ("through fire"), an incarnation of Primal Man, is taken from Earth to the planet Lucifer by Seth Valentinus, a reincarnation of the gnostic theologian Valentinus. Their guide is Olam, who is an Aeon, an emanation of the true god. Lucifer is controlled by "Saklas", which is a Gnostic name for the false creator. Olam has brought Perscors to Lucifer to fight Saklas, and has brought Valentinus so he can remember his true self. Perscors cripples Saklas and changes the order of things across all of Lucifer.[1]

Reception

Mainstream media

The Flight to Lucifer received mixed reviews from Martin Bickman in Library Journal and the critic John Leonard in The New York Times,[2][3] and a negative review in Kirkus Reviews.[4] The book was also reviewed by Frank McConnell in The New Republic and Marilyn Butler in the London Review of Books and discussed by the journalist David Kipen in The Atlantic.[5][6][7]

Bickman wrote that, "Despite the often dazzling imagery and the fast narrative pace, a reader without a detailed knowledge of Gnosticism is likely to be disappointed, if not dismayed", but concluded that the book belongs, "in large public and academic collections as another facet of one of our most important and controversial literary theorists."[2] Leonard compared the book to the science fiction writer Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (1976) and to Star Wars (1977), and questioned the accuracy of Bloom's treatment of Gnosticism.[3] Kirkus Reviews described the book as tedious and, "A close-to-unreadable exercise, only for those who share Bloom's gnostic preoccupations--or collectors of literary oddities."[4] Kipen dismissed the novel as unsuccessful.[7]

Bloom's view

Bloom, writing in Agon (1982), described The Flight to Lucifer as his "first attempt at literary fantasy", and explained that it was inspired by David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (1920), with his characters "Thomas Perscors" and "Saklas" being the equivalents, respectively, of Lindsay's original characters "Maskull" and "Crystalman". He identified Edmund Spenser and Franz Kafka as additional influences on his novel. He gave his relationship to Lindsay's novel, which according to his own account he had "obsessively" read hundreds of times, as an example of his theory of the anxiety of influence. He considered Lindsay's novel to be superior to his, partly because he attempted deliberately to assimilate Lindsay's characters and narrative to second-century Gnosticism rather than being a "naive Gnostic" like Lindsay, who according to Bloom inadvertently created a personal Gnostic heresy. He wrote that despite its "violent narrative", his novel "has too much trouble getting off the ground" and "reads as though Walter Pater was writing Star Wars." He nevertheless saw The Flight to Lucifer as having some merit, and wrote that it "does get better as it goes along" and "towards its close can be called something of a truly weird work".[8]

Bloom stated in a 2015 interview with Daniel D'addario in Time magazine that after re-reading The Flight to Lucifer, he decided that the novel would "never do", and that, "I had to pay the publisher not to have a second printing of the paperback. If I could go around and get rid of all the surviving copies, I would."[9]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Bloom 1979, pp. 3–240.
  2. 1 2 Bickman 1979, p. 848.
  3. 1 2 Leonard 1979.
  4. 1 2 Kirkus Reviews 1979.
  5. ↑ McConnell 1979, pp. 32–34.
  6. ↑ Butler 1982, pp. 11–12.
  7. 1 2 Kipen 2005, p. 177.
  8. ↑ Bloom 1983, pp. 206–207, 213, 222–223.
  9. ↑ D'addario 2015, p. 64.

Bibliography

Books

  • Bloom, Harold (1983). Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503354-X.
  • Bloom, Harold (1979). The Flight to Lucifer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-15644-1.
Journals

  • Bickman, Martin (1979). "The Flight to Lucifer (Book Review)". Library Journal. 104 (7).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Butler, Marilyn (1982). "Bloom's Gnovel". London Review of Books. 2 (13).
  • D'addario, Daniel (2015). "10 Questions". Time. 185 (17).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Kipen, David (2005). "Easier said than done". The Atlantic. 295 (1).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Leonard, John (1979). "Books of the Times". The New York Times (April 30, 1979).
  • McConnell, Frank (1979). "The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy". The New Republic. 180 (20).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • "Kirkus Review". Kirkus Reviews (May 1, 1979). 1979.
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