Hey! Ok so you know what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?
You know that part in Memnoch where Lestat is talking about how Jesus didn’t actually have the human experience he came to earth to have because HE KNEW HE WAS GOD THE WHOLE TIME? Like he knew there was an afterlife, he knew there was a god, he knew he was the son of god, he never experienced the void we all feel because we DON’T KNOW what happens after death. People believe things but they don’t actually know from experience.
So Jesus in Memnoch never had a human experience, he “died” for humans when he had no real idea of what we experience. And Lestat called him out on that. This stuck with me when I first read the book.
Idk something about that feels…relevant right now. You know what I mean?
Ah…. This is a delicious question. Thank you so much!! I love Memnoch the Devil. Great book.
I don’t know what you refer to, though, when you say that it’s relevant right now. I can think of a couple of current-day events to which this may apply to, so I won’t assume. If you want to clarify I’d be thankful.
So, I think that is the most interesting part of Memnoch, the inability to comprehend a different being, especially someone who is fundamentally powerful and omniscient. But that goes both ways. We can't understand them, nor them us.
I think that discussion happens between Memnoch and God. And I just love it. So Memnoch, rightfully so, points out at different times in their discussion.
“Lord, you're not playing fair in this experiment. You've known all along you're going back, you're going back to be God!' You've known all along you were God.”
[Humans] beheld their mortality, and they seek to propitiate a god who has abandoned them to all this. Lord, they look for meaning, but they find none in this. None.
'Lord, even when I went to Sheol,' I said, 'I didn't know whether or not I'd ever come back to Heaven. Don't you see? I don't claim to have your understanding of anything. (…) So the suffering and the darkness spoke to me and taught me, because I took the risk that I might never overcome it. Don't you see?'
God started this whole thing as a way to know himself, but humans are not his kin. If we take what Memnoch assumes here:
I don't think God knows [where he comes from]. I think that's the whole purpose of the physical universe. He thinks through watching the universe evolve, He's going to find out. What He has set in motion, you see, is a giant Savage Garden, a giant experiment, to see if the end result produces beings like Himself.
What if, he thinks he’s doing the right thing, based on a strict misunderstanding of these beings, that are mortal, that do not have editorial power over reality. You can intellectually understand them, know every fact about them; but as you said “he never experienced the void we all feel because we DON’T KNOW what happens after death”. Knowing by experience, by flesh, is a whole different thing. And the flesh as the way to knowledge is a recurring theme in Rice’s work.
There is wisdom in the flesh, in the way the human body does things. – Marius, The Vampire Lestat
"In the flesh," Maharet said. "In the flesh all wisdom begins. Beware the thing that has no flesh. Beware the gods, beware the idea, beware the devil." – Maharet, The Queen of the Damned
Even fleshless beings that obtain flesh have the potential of being very dangerous in this world: Amel + Akasha, Lasher… (we have more successful cases, but… still it is a predominant theme)
For a eternal being like God, thirty years in the flesh, without knowing by experience the existential dread that flesh-beings have regarding mortality, is not enough.
This whole exchange when God reveals his plan to be crucified, it’s just brilliant (and funny), because you can see the root of the misunderstanding.
'Lord, it will have to be done in confusion and misunderstanding. That spells chaos, Lord! Darkness!' " 'Naturally,' He said. 'Who in his right mind would crucify the Son of God?' " 'Then what does it mean?'”
As the reader, you are in the same position. Like "What the fuck, God? How is this the plan?". And there lies the beauty of this book. There is no answer. Either you yield to faith, that there is this being that knows what they're doing in their great knowledge, or you admit that suffering has no meaning or purpose. Or the third (and for me most terrifying option) that there is such a being, but they just does not understand suffering and see in it something that they just want to keep in existence for a purpose that would be indifferent or even irrational for human beings.
And that's why Memnoch is existentially terrifying as a book.
