Young Ioannis
You can reach the root of a meaningful truth when you wander alone in an accessible time only through a story that envelops you and traps you throughout your life.
Young Ioannis. I recommend this latest publication from Polirom, signed by Mika Waltari. I read it with pleasure right now, next to a very clear stream, with the same pleasure with which I read his other novels. Reading makes you more forgiving with the wanderings of life, just as the act of writing determines a writer to assume several roles: as a creator and, at the same time, as part of creation, as a director and as a character alike. The spiritual side is also related to the practice of reading and writing, pushing man to learn more about the purpose of his world in a world different from his own, a world reminiscent of his own parallel existence at other times, in other places, in other conditions.
You feel more inspired, maybe wiser, but certainly more mature, better, closer to the essence of the spiritual life when you read Young Ioannis, so that throughout the book you feel that you yourself become the soul of a character in search of sacred destiny. Or this inspiration does not come from the adventures of a character who lives in the story of an exceptional writer, and who has long lived a life full of trials, but from the fate of a younger, more ambitious, more thoughtful, more eager to compromise, more energetic in achieving the proposed goal. He draws from every life experience a teaching full of warnings, full of moderation, full of truth and power, his greatest pleasure being the ability to write original texts for eternity. He was a scribe, and like any scribe, his life was less dear to him than words lined up with art in a divine order.
And if Young Ioannis saw the omnipotence of God in every expression of the phenomenon of life, in any comparison between the transient and the eternal, between creation and evolution, it was because his whole being seemed to be a work similar to that of angels who know how to appreciate everything. It surrounds them. Full of a warm, bright and beautiful soul, he always related himself to the complex connection between Earth and Heaven.
In the end, he realizes that any man who dreams of conquering the sacred mysteries of high science is forced to forge a different path in this life, which is a passage through history into another life. And only this multiplicity of one’s own soul, essential in the work of thoughts that defy any imagination, can produce the beauty of a world that has lost its meaning. The sky of the Kingdom of God is crossed by fire, but also by an electric current, a vital cosmic energy called Orsermisthos, directing attention to the existence of a huge arsenal of the imaginary.
Are you driven by the feeling that you have to make your way in a world that translates, like in a movie, your inner life (sensitivity and conflicts of consciousness) into a universally valid philosophical reflection?
A man who feeds on past centuries, perhaps even on the entire historical evolution experienced by humanity, is the heart of a God who tests the limits of his tolerance for the effects of his creation. This philosophical reflection is valid for all those who have understood that the spirit of science is nothing but a placement of human consciousness in an external, universal world.
The young Ioannis, wandering alone through the thoughts of a mind troubled by sad memories, but carried by dreams and thirsty for knowledge, is the manifestation of a tragic character through the prism of destiny that he fails to keep under control at will, being led by a mysterious force in the midst of turbulent events, miraculously escaping the greatest dangers each time. This is God’s hand. He is as much a hero full of nobility as Don Quixote, often wounded in his pride, but never so severe that he no longer accepts reality, both reaching the same biblical revelation: “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise ones.”
And when I think of Young Ioannis, by studying a resilient, inquisitive destiny, caught only between peaks and abysses, I think of myself, of the same elevated being who knew the regret of having arrived too late in the place decided by providence, guilt for the things that remained unsaid or undone, the compulsion to become someone other than I would have liked to be. Deep, uplifting, nostalgic, I begin to define myself by what I am able to go through to give meaning to a spiritual life that is only now beginning to gain acceptance among the possible favoring factors. I imagine life is easier if I endure it in silence.
And, likewise, I can imagine no other mask of the inability to know the absolute than by enduring a life that demands its right to a world without truth, less invigorating, but receptive to the coincidences and signs of a destiny that assumes a grand history. If in a certain way I am identical with Young Ioannis through all the trials of life I have gone through, something still differs from us. One is far too proud of humility, the other has learned that being proud is like hurting God, rejecting Him from the soul in which clairvoyant knowledge grows.
Are you able to entrust your drama of destiny in the hands of a divine will, and at the same time to recognize that you cannot reduce your elevated knowledge only to what reason offers you?
“I felt more and more mature, more knowledgeable. I was sure that I carried in me a wealth that would have made even the richest people envious. And the experience of life made me stronger because I understood that I never deserve to become a slave to my own body in the blind pursuit of fleeting satisfaction. I had to be the master; the passion was the slave I could force to obey me if I wanted to. This certainty made me stronger.”
The fundamental expression of the glorious soul of a hero, in close connection with the very appearance of God at any time and in any situation, can sometimes be confined to a single character trait that is most striking in the eyes of a good Christian: self-obsession. Whoever trusts too much in the lessons of wisdom, who fills his leisure drama by giving himself entirely to a passion or an overflowing dream, risks not finding the drama of peace that he so desperately needs to achieve happiness.
I feel that the need to know someone else, less subject to transient desires, burns in me. I think sometimes I have to close my eyes to wisdom, or at least pretend I have no knowledge. Lest I look ridiculous due to the colossal stupidity of looking smart. It would have been better if the ingenious hidalgo had been portrayed through the ontological horizon of André Malraux’s characters, whose thinking does not follow events, but precedes them.
As for me, I would like to believe that I am different from the character who, in another life, embodied me with such mastery. I will avoid extreme despair, I will avoid the silence before an outburst of madness. In the ancient Egyptian scriptures, especially in the “Teaching of Ptah-Hotep”, is repeated the exhortation which I myself would like never to disregard: “Spend your days in joy, live contentedly, and do not waste your time destined for joy.”
Can you transpose yourself into the reality of a destiny that is always repeated in another version of time, insofar as all your inner experience is crystallized in a conception regarding the journey of the soul through its many incarnations?
The reality in which man meets God is a fragility of the moment as touching as it is unbearable, as if extracted from the bitter knowledge of other worlds. The young Ioannis mastered the art of great knowledge, but he did not know the art of controlling the dream of life in terms of the feeling of immeasurable soul satisfaction. I suspect that the happiness he deserved so much in his lifetime may have been received in the other world.
The exalted pride of his knowledge was the ax stuck in the middle of his life. And what he considered to be an undeniable reality was in fact a warning to awaken his conscience.
I am still writing my own story in the present of a life whose message escaped even Don Quixote, springing from the contemplation of the heart of Christ, and which Young Ioannis did not successfully process: “The outcome of today is the revelation of tomorrow.”
I learned from the life of Young Ioannis that I must not be the product of a huge crucible called history which, like a huge oceanic wave drowning a rock, catalyzes itself in an overwhelming journey of the soul through the wilderness of loneliness.
If, however, the core of my story provokes a mobilization of all the spirits of the present time, against a sincere reconciliation of conscience, near a predetermined destiny, hindering some ingenious hidalgo to adapt to the circumstances of a life without joy, it means that God deserves his fate of being misunderstood, of being ridiculed, minimized, marginalized.
The Great Knowledge refers to the life you live in order to fulfill a dream that waltzes with pain and happiness, and from which you have to learn that there are only two vibrant nuances between them: one cannot exist without the other, and whoever gives up one for the other is doomed to perish.
The Young Ioannis is every aspirant to the tree of knowledge, and this aspiration gives meaning to a life that can only be lived through sacrifice. Read this book if you want to be happy, understanding that happiness often means bypassing great knowledge, and that life is gentler and more generous with those who do not seek God.
A few verses from “The Harpist’s Song”, a text of great significance to the history of Egyptian thought, now come to mind:
“No one returns from there
To tell how they are doing,
To tell us what they need,
To reassure our hearts.
Until we ourselves go where they went.”
