As both books one and two of the Corvus Chronicles: ( #The Stranger and #The Beloved) are delayed due to circumstances within and outside of my control - I have decided to provide another advance insight into The Visitor. This insight is both a central theme - Fidelity - and some hints on how to recognize some of the puzzles within The Visitor.
Fidelity:
Fidelity - accuracy, recording, record.
Fidelity - loyalty (often sexual).
Infidel - heathen.
But what has any of this to do with the central message within #The Visitor?
The Visitor is a recording of a past event which is yet to happen. It is hard for the reader to totally understand this in part due to The Visitor being the seventh book in the Corvus Chronicles. As such, it strives by one connotation to be accurate, or display fidelity.
The Visitor also talks about loyalty. Yes, some of the narrative is a about relationships, from both a perspective of love and sexuality - and provides other examples of fidelity along that spectrum.
What is interesting though is the Visitor does not talk about infidelity. In fact, on purpose the visitor himself on the chapter of Good and Evil provides a specific poetic parable to emphasize this point.
“For good and evil cannot co-exist.
In your hearts, you know what is good.
Evil only lives where good is dismissed.
So let’s speak only of good, as we should.
Do not let darkness gain strength in your heart
And take from you your Love and your light.
Do not let your anger pull you apart
And blur what is wrong and what’s right.
For where Love is absent darkness takes root
Where darkness takes hold, anger thrives.
And where anger grows, there hate may be born
And where hate lives - Love can’t survive.”
The concept of fidelity within The Visitor is a concept that is hard to understand. To some extent it is like trying to understand “The Word made Flesh” without understanding either YHWH (which also may not be spoke) or Adonai - or being unaware of the Deuterocanonical or Apocryphal books which flesh out a continuity in the fidelity of Christian history.
And this takes us to the root of “fidelity” within the context of The Visitor.
The Apocryphal books are considered by many to be heretical or even boarder-line “heathen”. Many argue they are “falsely attributed works”. In fact, in Latin aprocryphus means “secret or non-canonical”.
“Pseudepigrapha are falsely-attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. Pseudepigraphy covers the false ascription of names of authors to works, even to authentic works that make no such claim within their text. ”
Here in lies the twist in Book VII of the Corvus Chronicles: The Visitor. The reader is subjected to picking up the penultimate volume of the story at the beginning. No context, no continuity. We are not even sure at the end who the visitor is. The Visitor is pseudepigraphical in nature. It is where the book crosses from fiction to non-fiction without notice or apology.
As already shared in some of the earlier blogs (see The Visitor - Revisited on this website); The Visitor is a bit of a puzzle.
Although The Visitor is the first book published of the Corvus Chronicles, it is book VII. Publishing book VII first is a clue. VII has a specific meaning and is part of the codex to figuring the book out.
WHY IS THE VISITOR (THE SEVENTH BOOK OF THE CORVUS CHRONICLES) PUBLISHED BEFORE BOOKS I THROUGH VI?
AND WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE CENTRAL THEME OF FIDELITY?
Fidelity is more than just about an accurate recording, a faithfulness, or an opposite of infidelity. It is the essence of awareness.
Fidelity is about being true. Not just true to yourself, or true to others, but true to everything above and beyond anything. It is about recognizing truth, responding to truth in a way that is true. It is about living in a manner that is consistent with truth, at all costs. It may cost you your peace, your comfort, your family, and even yourself. It is when you move beyond the questioning to a knowing. It is responding to grace with grace. It is beyond hope, it is even beyond Faith, it is knowing and remaining true to the knowledge which is at times both assuring and inconvenient.
The first few pages of “The Visitor” provide context on who the visitor is. On page 11, the reader is introduced to someone who is not the visitor, “The Beloved”. Yet, the visitor makes it clear through the book, the Beloved is the part that completes himself. How they met and who they are, and how they became one are matters dealt with in early books within The Corvus Chronicles.
So the reader, basically has no foundation on which to start to interpret what is going on. Names are not used. Simply descriptors in place of names. The Visitor, and The Beloved. The reader can assume there is a relationship between the two and the relationship involves Love, but the reader does not understand the fullness of their oneness. Even though it is stressed, they can never be apart, they complete each other, and their is a “oneness” mentioned throughout the book.
We first meet the Beloved around page 11. As we meet the Visitor’s description of the Beloved, he provides a clear clue to the reader, in saying : He looked at me in puzzlement and said,
She is part of me as I am her,
As such, we are never apart
And while I am here, and she may be there
She is always right here in my heart.
Immediately after this stanza of poetic parable, the reader is informed that the Beloved was destiny, the Beloved was required for completeness. We are also informed about the duality of the Visitor, and that it he could understand extremes, dualities, opposites - the human condition that he struggled until he met the Beloved.
So, that was already pretty easy. Now comes the time to suspend your assumptions, and look deeper.
The looking at me in puzzlement is looking at you, the reader in puzzlement. And the hint is the word “PUZZLEment”.
The “beginning”, or first letter in the stanza is “S” - the seventh letter (for the seventh book) is “I” and the “ending” seven characters later including spaces is “R”.
The next seven characters including space include AS_SUCH …. We are never apart
Removing the middle, the compromise, the opposites the Visitor cannot understand; meaning to take out the SSs (for seven) and you (U) which should never come between the oneness; the reader is left with the letters “ACH”.
Putting these clues together the reader would find SIRACH.
Now, back to the beginning. SIRACH is one the septuagint (Aprocyphal) books in the Bible. As already discussed this is a pseudepigrapha book; one where the author and authenticity is debated. A work who’s work is attributed to someone in the past, but not necessarily confirmed.
If one takes the time to then read SIRACH, they will no doubt they are reading a much earlier version of The Visitor. It is an inspired book of advice on how to live with fidelity. Chapter I of Sirach is about “praise of wisdom”. Wisdom is described in Sirach as “a female”, and is no less than “The Beloved”. The understanding.
Going even further, page 77 of the (again the repetition of sevens, SS) Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books of the New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible (1st printing Hendrickson Press) leads us the following verse on the top of the page (Sirach 33:14)
Good is the opposite of evil,
and life the opposite of death,
to the sinner is the opposite of the godly;
Look at the works of the Most High;
They come in pairs, one the opposite of the other.
It is at this point the reader should be fully aware that this is the duality of the Visitor. The extremes with which he lives. At the opposite of infidel (sinner). Everything is a duality. Except the wisdom (The Beloved) through grace comes upon the Visitor.
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If you are still struggling with the message of The Visitor, then I would encourage you to read “Sirach”, and then re-read.
This is the message and the madness of The Visitor. Story within story. Poetic Parables telling a story of love through a love story.
There is more for the reader to find. For example, simply go to Chapter VII. (Yes again, seven) and you will find the title again is awkward to ready, although the message is clear. When you stumble, stop, and search. Love Absolute Never Can End. Within here you will find another clue to the the pseudepigrapha nature of “The Visitor”.