Читать книгу The Unknown Satanic Verses Controversy on Race and Religion - Üner Daglier - Страница 9

Epigraph

Despite The Satanic Verses’ overarching concern with racial and religious dogmatism, Rushdie overtly tied its diverse plots and unrelated story lines and their competing but unassociated heroes, almost always spiritually gifted, through the theme of rebirth. Or the first thing that a close textual analysis of The Satanic Verses suggested was its being a novel about rebirth. Befittingly, it began with a semi-phrase strictly corresponding to rebirth. And this accorded with the novel’s twin concerns. Alternative attempts at rebirth, whether eventually successful or failed, whether generated by immigration and cultural synthesis or holy visions and angelic communications, together composed it.

The Satanic Verses’ transcendental visionary heroes were, either individually or with their disciples, engaged in the pursuit of spiritual renewal, or rebirth. And the very nature of immigration involved an attempt at remaking oneself, or rebirth. Further, the immigrant desire for rebirth smacked of an infringement upon a quintessential godly prerogative, or creation, and it was possibly blasphemous. A short passage from Defoe’s (1819 [1726]) The History of the Devil, which served as the novel’s epigraph, confirmed the devious nature of migration. It stated, Satan was confined to become a vagabond, a wanderer, without a fixed abode, and that although Satan, given his angelic quality, held a sort of empire in the skies, this did not negate his punishment, as he was always without a fixed place, or territory, where he could stand upon.

In other words, The Satanic Verses was conceived ambitiously and its epigraph was a playful indication of its complex tasks. However, those of its chapters which attempted to unite the novel’s twin concerns were strained and no match for the artistic beauty of its other chapters that were exclusively devoted to a single theme, that being supernatural religion or Islam. Indeed the novel’s opening chapter, rich and disorienting, perfectly illustrated Rushdie’s great ambitions and insurmountable limitations.