"Yet it puzzled me that no one around me seemed to take God very seriously. We neither believed nor disbelieved. He was our oldest habit. For me, He was horribly the invisible head above the Board of Superintendents, the Almighty Judge Who watched you in every though and deed, and to Whom I prayed for help in passing midterms and finals, His prophetess Deborah leading me safely through so long as I remembered to say under my breath as I walked in the street, 'Desolate were the open towns in Israel, they were desolate, until that I arose, Deborah.' He filled my world with unceasing dread; He had such power over me, watched me so unrelentingly, that it puzzled me to think He had to watch all the others with the same care; one night I dreamed of Him as a great engineer in some glass-walled control tower high in the sky glaring fixedly at a brake on which my name alone was written. In some ways He was simply a mad tyrant, someone I needed constantly to propitiate. Deborah alone would know how to intercede for me. Then He became a good-luck piece I carried around to get me the things I needed. I resented this God of Israel and of the Board of Superintendents; He would never let me rest."
A Walker in the City p. 46-7
A Walker in the City p. 46-7
This (long) passage to me speaks to what God might mean to a lot of children raised in a religion tend to view God as someone who has been introduced so strongly that they don't really know any other way to view Him. I would also like to compare this quote to a passage in another autobiography by James Joyce called "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in which he refers to himself as "he" rather than "I" and under the name Stephen Dedalus. The quote goes:
"It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be but he could think only of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God’s name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God."
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man p. 28
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man p. 28
I found the two quotes similar, and am interested if anyone else can see this strange comparison. What's interesting is that Kazin is writing as a Jew, and Joyce as a Catholic. Any thoughts?
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