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St. Anthony is shown as a solitary monk living in a mountain hut, removed from civilization. Discouraged with prayer and the holy life, he is under constant attack by temptations, which come in the form of visions or hallucinations, the vividness of which so impressed Freud. These hallucinatory scenes often involve St. Anthony in dialogues with various figures. One of them is the Devil, who, as a black, shadowy flying figure with bat-like wings, makes an early appearance (in the second section) and brings with him the seven deadly sins. In this same section St. Anthony is confronted with sexuality and lust, embodied by the Queen of Sheba. Next comes perhaps the greatest temptation of all for him: that of knowledge, which his former disciple Hilarion offers to him. In the middle sections of the work, the hermit confronts a series of figures representing many of the great Christian heresies (the Manichaeans, the Arians, the Montanists, and others), as well as the old gods of the Mediterranean world (Apollo, Jupiter, Juno, Diana, and Isis). In the sixth and penultimate section, St. Anthony, in a lengthy dialogue, is tempted by the Devil himself. In some instances, St. Anthony gives in to the temptation, but before he has the chance to carry out his sin the hallucination suddenly vanishes. At the very end of the seventh section, after confronting Death, Luxury, and the Sphinx, St. Anthony still hopes for God’s love. He lifts his face to the rising sun, which has on it, as on a great disc, the face of Christ; then, crossing himself, he returns to prayer.
Flaubert’s portrayal is always ambiguous with respect to the experiences of the hermit. We can never be sure whether what is being described is an hallucination of a psychopathological kind or a true religious vision, or perhaps some mixture of the two. Freud explained the experiences depicted in part with a reference to Flaubert’s epilepsy.15 In any case, The Temptation is a book saturated with Christian cosmology and theology. This traditional Christian material is here in the hands of an ambivalent, early modernist writer. Flaubert portrays the experience of temptation, as when nightly this poor, wretched, and somewhat unprepossessing hermit struggles in his mind (or psyche, or soul) to resist evil, and to save his soul. There is much of Faust in this work, and indeed Flaubert acknowledged the influence of Goethe’s classic.16 Goethe’s FaustGoethe was Freud’s most admired writer, and thus in many respects it was fitting that Freud, who never received the Nobel Prize, was awarded the Goethe Prize.17 Much of Freud’s identification with Goethe is captured in the following remarks, made in an interview near the end of his life: |