Why are so many texts riveted by idea of ‘beckoning’ in that they are concerned with a form of resurrection or a return to life in its most ‘lived’ sense? Do we desire to return to the fullness of our original innocence and to be ‘reunited’ with some primal love? Or is it that we inhabit inauthentic structures which make the experience of the lived life spectral and ever haunted by the possibility( and improbability) of ‘real’ connection and relationships?
Are we ‘called’ to life or do we have to intiate the call ourselves? One implies fateful destiny and the ‘masterplan’ the other stresses personal resopnsibility and agency yet both heavily invest in the concept of the right( and wrong) path? Think of jane Eyre hearing the voice of Rochester when she is deliberating her chocies surrounding ST John Rivers’ marriage proposal and Jeanette Winterson’s Bronte-like debate in Oranges are not the only FRuit where the narrator declaims the virtue of the ‘one who knows your name’ …
Both describe the ‘beckoning’ of destiny and the role of ‘real’ listening in order to hear the ‘true’ messge and destiny of one’s life. High Romanticism indeed and enormously seductive of course as beckoning involves spirit, sacrfice and transcendent truth!
Dickens Tale of two Cities: Recalled to Life
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Are we all secret Sydney Cartons on the sly? !