Rebel Angels in the University of St John and the Holy Ghost

The Rebel Angels by Canadian author Robertson Davies was first published in 1981, but I stumbled across it in a second-hand bookshop just recently.

Unintentionally I seem to have picked two books in a row with angels in them. Or, not, as the case may be. No angels here. Lots of intellectuals, a few gypsies, a straying monk and a dead art patron though. And lots of high-brow talk of rebel poets like Rabelais, since one of the protagonists is a writing postgraduate work on Rabelais. The former monk Parlabane, a larger-than-life character in every conceivable way, including his habits of lust has a voracious appetite for anything and everything, including intellectual stimulus. He does get on peoples nerves a bit as such a character undoubtedly would in real life. And he stumbles across an old unpublished work by Rabelais. But all this is fairly incidental.

The “rebel angels” refers to Samahazai and Azazel who betrayed the secrets of heaven to King Solomon and got kicked out of heaven for their trouble. In this particular story though they are used to describe two college professors by their love-interest Maria Theotoky. She is the young postgraduate who falls in love with her professor… eh-hem. Young woman, middle aged professor. Written by, let’s see now, middle aged professor-type… Not bad though, if you enjoy the mix of literary asides, theological discussions, murder, kinky sex and the occasional verbal pun. The story is told through two different narrative perspectives, Maria Theotoky and Father Darcourt. It is pretty well organized, they take turns, no big narrative leaps and bounds.  

 

Reading about Robert Davies I realise I must have been sleepwalking to just pick this book of the shelf at random. Davies is prolific enough, has been short listed for the Booker prize and all that. This novel is enjoyable in its way, especially if you have some experience of university life, but somehow it’s a book very conscious of being literature. I don’t mean that in any meta-fictive post-modern way, but more as an indication of its literariness.

 

You can definitely spend a rainy afternoon in worse ways.

 

Mule