Volume 35, Number 19 · December 8, 1988
Confessions of a Polymorph
By John Weightman
The Wind Spirit
an autobiography by Michel Tournier, translated by Arthur Goldhammer
Beacon Press, 259 pp., $19.95
The English title and subtitle of this volume are both rather misleading. The original text, first published in 1977, is called Le vent Paraclet, without any subheading. The French expression refers directly to the New Testament, whereas The Wind Spirit suggests some pagan emanation of Nature, the sort of Spirit of the Wind that a Red Indian might believe in. In the New Testament, the Paraclete or Holy Ghost is presented sometimes as a dove descending, sometimes as the wind which bloweth where it listeth. It is the divine, aerial phenomenon that first impregnated the Virgin Mary like a pollen-carrying breeze, and later visited other privileged souls. Tournier is clearly using it, among other things, as a metaphor for artistic creativity. If he stresses a connection between the Paraclete (the Logos, the inspiring, healing, or consoling Word of God) and the physical wind, this is because the whole point of his art is to give phenomenological concreteness to psychological and spiritual impulses. Could this dimension not have been indicated by some overtly biblical phrase, such as 'The Breath of the Paraclete' or 'The Wind Bloweth'?
Review, 2568 words
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