An audiobook version, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, was released by Faber & Faber Audio in 2014. [27] [28] Excerpts from Cumberbatch's reading are included in an introductory film on the novel [29] produced by William Golding Limited. This is Golding describing dust. The cathedral of stone is being dismantled and added to – creating a cathedral of dust, a phantom, a twin. In Seeing Things, Seamus Heaney evokes "a pillar of radiant house-dust". Here is Golding's creation of not one pillar, but several: "Everywhere, fine dust gave these rods and trunks of light the importance of a dimension. He blinked at them again, seeing, near at hand, how individual grains of dust turned over each other, or bounced all together, like mayfly in a breath of wind. He saw how further away they drifted cloudily, coiled, or hung in a moment of pause, becoming, in the most distant rods and trunks, nothing but colour, honey-colour slashed across the body of the cathedral … He shook his head in rueful wonder at the solid sunlight." So, as temporary as a mayfly and a serious rival and replacement. Solid sunlight. Dust definitively described by a master.

After going to see Salisbury Cathedral and learning that Golding lived just down the street from it, near St. Anne's Gate, I was compelled to read this book in which Golding imagines the creation of the enormous spire atop the cathedral. In it, he has created is a brilliant, densely woven, intensely introspective study of obsession and faith, which pushes everyone around him to the very edge of endurance. The Spire is distinctly allegorical and there are many references to how the grand medieval cathedral resembles a human body both in structure & function. Workers curse & chant bawdy songs, oblivious to the building's continuing function as a place of worship & one even conducts a sexual liaison within the walls. Another places the model for the spire between his legs to taunt Pangall, the much-beleaguered caretaker of the cathedral, someone whose red-haired wife Goody, becomes the object of continuing lust on the part of the master builder, while also infecting the mind & dreams of Dean Jocelin. For every foot a spire goes up above the church, an increased support system must be put in place below ground. And for every hope that the raising of a monumental steeple will glorify God by reaching toward heaven, there is corresponding, antithetical human depravity occurring below. Day & night, acts of worship went on in the stink & the half dark, where the candles illuminated nothing but close haloes of vapor; and the voices rose, in fear of age & death, in fear of weight & dimension, in fear of darkness & a universe without hope. "Lord, let our cry come unto thee!" There was a rumor of plague in the city. The number of faces--the strained, silent, shining eyed faces before the light that betoken the Host--increased to a crowd. If his building went up and stayed up, Jocelin would remain cruel, and vain, and foolish and avaricious – but perhaps not so broken. His struggles would have produced something enduring, and beautiful. Something that has been admired for centuries and will be for many more to come. And so the book becomes a commentary on what it takes to produce a monument. On the same day, bad weather falls on the city. Fearing that the almost completed spire will collapse, Jocelyn runs to the cathedral and drives a nail into the base of the spire ... Having gone outside, he falls without feelings. Having regained consciousness, he sees an aunt by the bedside, who has come personally to ask him for a burial in the cathedral. He again refuses her, not wanting her sinful dust to desecrate the holy place, and in the heat of the argument she reveals to him that he owes his brilliant career exclusively to her, or rather, her connection with the king. He also learns that Anselm only portrayed friendship, feeling that under Jocelyn you can get along pretty well. Knowing that he will not find support among the clergy, Jocelyn secretly leaves the house to "receive forgiveness from the unchristians." Or, in his perhaps more realistic moments, it is the realisation of Jocelin's extraordinary "will". It is what he has been able to force on the world through the power of his mind. It is a testament – as Jocelin himself frequently urges those around him to see it – to the power of faith.What is the dumb sculptor doing in the novel? He represents the muted objective narrative voice. Which we hear only as William James's description of consciousness: "one great blooming buzzing confusion".

However, as the spire is gradually erected, a hole is dug that seems to point to the fragility of the cathedral's underpinnings, an insufficiency of the original beams, also revealing an array of crawling specimens below ground that make the place resemble a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. The author's verbal imagery is often stunning and the interplay between good & evil is quite reminiscent of The Lord of the Flies, Golding's best-known work.

Jocelyn is brought a letter from his aunt, a former lover of the king, and now an elderly lady. It was she who gave money for the construction of the spire in the hope that she would be buried in the cathedral. Jocelyn refuses to answer the letter. He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head. God the Father was exploding in his face with a glory of sunlight through painted glass, a glory that moved with his movements to consume and exalt Abraham and Isaac and then God again." And what is the answer to this question? The sculptor shakes his head. "Humming in the throat, headshake, doglike, eager eyes." Is the dumb sculptor denying that Jocelin's humility is vulnerable? Or is he denying that he ever thought of portraying Jocelin as an angel in the first place? Jocelin's extrapolation is, after all, based on a gesture. Courage. Glory be. It is a final beginning. It was one thing to let him dig a pit there at the crossways like a grave for some notable. This is different. Now I lay a hand on the very body of my church. Like a surgeon, I take my knife to the stomach drugged with poppy.

When people tell you it can't be done but you hold all the cards and can have them burned as heretics for denying your will, you MAY or MAY NOT descend into madness while trying to twist yourself into knots trying to make reality conform to your will. Anselm is largely critical of the developments concerning the spire, arguing that it is destruction of the church. Jocelin had been prepared to lose his friendship with Anselm as part of the cost of the spire, but we learn by the end of the novel that they appeared not to have had a friendship in the first place. As Golding lived in Salisbury for several years, the reader easily thinks of Salisbury Spire being in the author’s mind when he worked on the scaffolding of his book. But any Spire would do. One can also forget about spires since any other building, or enterprise, could play the role. For what this novel does is edify the process through which a fixation can absorb one’s mind. Firm obsessions can dissolve uneasily as perceptions shift and flounder. And Golding’s equivocal language captures splendidly the way a fleeting chimera can take over one’s life and one’s will until it can either triumph or destroy. Day and night, acts of worship went on in the stink and half dark, where the candles illuminated nothing but close haloes of vapour; and the voices rose, in fear of age and death, in fear of weight and dimension, in fear of darkness and a universe without hope. (50) I like the idea. I really do. But honestly, I kept trying to read this as a wonderfully biting satire and it really didn't QUITE go in that direction. A finger rising toward the sky, to me, sounded like a *middle* finger. All the wonderfully strange descriptions of these people as they do relatively normal things truly delighted me, too, but then the rest of the novel became something of a sermon.Goody, who acts as an important object of love and lust, ultimately dies while giving birth. Jocelin initially sees her as the perfect woman. The function of the gargoyle is over-ridden. By Jocelin, primarily, though he is conscious of his hubris. A hubris he attributes to the sculptor. "Don't you think you might strain my humility, by making an angel of me?"

Kitabın sonuna doğru rahibin ustayı sıkıştırmaktan başka neler neler yaptığını da öğreniyoruz. Ama o da okuyanlara kalsın. Tabi Kulemizin akıbeti ne oldu? O da sürpriz. College students in the 1950s and 1960s gave the attention to Lord of the Flies, first novel of Golding; their attention drove that of literary critics. He was awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth. He received knighthood in 1988.And in spite of all the troubles and hindrances the construction of the spire continues… But the process of building is taking its toll corrupting minds and souls… And immense fear grows around… The book is short and the story simple. Set in medieval England during the reign of Henry II it concerns a new Dean who seeks to have a spire built on his cathedral against advice to the contrary and what results from this. Roger Mason, a medieval Master Mason is, in direct contrast to Jocelin, physically powerful and a rationalist. He is associated with the imagery of a bull and a stallion. Roger contends with Jocelin, arguing that the cathedral foundations are insufficient to support the spire. He is forced to continue with the project because Jocelin makes it impossible for him to work elsewhere. After the death of Goody, Roger becomes an alcoholic. In a moment of clarity, Jocelin visits Roger and we eventually learn of his suicide attempt. Beyond Mantel: the historical novels everyone must read". The Guardian. 29 February 2020 . Retrieved 25 September 2020.