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The Crocodile, or The War Between Good and Evil
The Crocodile (1792) is a brilliant epic, one of those rare books of which one can say that no one ever wrote anything else like it.
The eponymous Crocodile is an attempted saboteur of the Divine Plan, an instrument of the Adversary, who claims to have created and shaped the universe--but who is, after all, a liar. As for the divinity, he remains invisible, but is described as a jeweler whose wife who supervises a Society of Independents, the members of which never meet but are always in session.
Add to these concepts a plague of books, which reduces human knowledge to a soggy pulp; the sunken city of Atalante, where everything stopped dead at the moment of its submersion; and the fact that the ultimate hope of a beleaguered Paris in the face of diabolical catastrophe is an aging Jew armed with a little box, and the cocktail is, to say the least, original and appealing to the connoisseurs of the bizarre.
The eponymous Crocodile is an attempted saboteur of the Divine Plan, an instrument of the Adversary, who claims to have created and shaped the universe--but who is, after all, a liar. As for the divinity, he remains invisible, but is described as a jeweler whose wife who supervises a Society of Independents, the members of which never meet but are always in session.
Add to these concepts a plague of books, which reduces human knowledge to a soggy pulp; the sunken city of Atalante, where everything stopped dead at the moment of its submersion; and the fact that the ultimate hope of a beleaguered Paris in the face of diabolical catastrophe is an aging Jew armed with a little box, and the cocktail is, to say the least, original and appealing to the connoisseurs of the bizarre.
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1799
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About the author
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
164 books15 followersLouis Claude de Saint-Martin was a philosopher, known as "le philosophe inconnu" ("The Unknown Philosopher"), the name under which his works were published. His works, along with those of Martinez de Pasqually, provided the foundation for the French Martinist movements of mystical and esoteric Christianity.
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September 7, 2024
Once in a while you run across a book that is like nothing you have ever read. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, for example, comes to mind.
Most of the action is described. It is mostly someone talking about what they did or what they saw. There were some wonderful ideas here, like the discovery of Atlantis and its varied inhabitants. Some of the text was hard to get through, I lost a bit of concentration, otherwise it would probably be a five-star.
Most of the action is described. It is mostly someone talking about what they did or what they saw. There were some wonderful ideas here, like the discovery of Atlantis and its varied inhabitants. Some of the text was hard to get through, I lost a bit of concentration, otherwise it would probably be a five-star.
Displaying 1 of 1 review