It's interesting to learn that Hell is having a comeback, Alison. I do know
that I as an adolescent under the influence of Joyce's _Portrait_ & other
reading very much regretted not having been exposed to hellfire sermons
instead of the boring mealymouthed guff I got at Sunday School before I
refused to go any more (my parents were atheists but liked to get rid of me
on Sunday mornings...), or at official Scout occasions in church, before I
left *that authoritarian organisation. I think your child's imagination can
be stimulated by that ~ after all, with you as mother she's hardly likely to
develop serious anxiety about sin & damnation, oder? (You could make a
poetic game out of it). <The subversive humanistic message of the Gospels>
is exactly right ~ everybody do read René Girard's _Je vois Satan tomber
comme l'éclair_! (Don't know if it's in English yet.) I see I must read the
Rukeyser book, if I can get it from Amazon de or uk (I haven't got a credit
card) ~ I'd like to know when it was written, as "the corruption of
consciousness" is a central term of Collingwood's _Principles of Art_ in the
context of "disowning" (1938 ~ he says "I call it corruption of
consciousness"), one of those big books for me, ever since I read it nearly
40 (!) years ago, though I haven't re-looked at it for ages, except for the
illuminating brief discussion of _The Waste Land_ with which it ends.
Best
Martin
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