The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

one day, I was struck by something rather obvious—namely, that any religious ritual is arbitrary unless one is able to see past it to a deeper meaning.” He paused. “Do you know,” he said, “what Julian says about the Divine Comedy?” “No, Henry, I don’t.” “That it’s incomprehensible to someone who isn’t a Christian? That if one is to read Dante, and understand him, one must become a Christian if only for a few hours? It was the same with this. It had to be approached on its own terms, not in a voyeuristic light or even a scholarly one. At the first, I suppose, it was impossible to see it any other way, looking at it as we did in fragments, through centuries. The vitality of the act was entirely obsfucated, the beauty, the terror, the sacrifice.” He took one last drag of his cigarette and put it out. “Quite simply,” he said, “we didn’t believe. And belief was the one condition which was absolutely necessary. Belief, and absolute surrender.”