This day in history: French poet, journalist, and novelist Anatole France was born on this day in 1844. His greatest work is a book called The Revolt of the Angels (La Revolte des Anges, 1914). Loosely based on the Christian understanding of the War in Heaven, it tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Bored because Bishop d'Esparvieu is sinless, Arcade begins reading the bishop's books on theology and becomes an atheist. He moves to Paris, meets a woman, falls in love, and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off, joins the revolutionary movement of fallen angels, and meets the Devil, who realizes that if he overthrew God, he would become just like God.
"God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot."
Arcade realizes that replacing God with another is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth." "Ialdabaoth", according to France, is God's secret name and means "the child who wanders".
France's political leanings — he was a socialist — heavily influenced Revolt, leading to the theme that successful revolutions always create greater tyrannies than those they overthrow. The bitterness created by the revolt is reflected in the "biting and harsh" descriptions. Joe Loewenberg has described the novel as an "imaginative narrative ... the ripest expression of Anatole France's urbane genius, a masterpiece of criticism at once ironic and eirenic".
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See also 125 Books on ANGELS & Angelology to Download
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