Clavis Libri

Theme

God and the Divine

God, the gods, and divine action: providence, theophany, intervention of the gods, the divine that acts in history.

Paradise

Dante Alighieri

the glory that penetrates the universe and shines more in one part and less in another (canto I), the reason God creates, which is so that his splendor may say I subsist (canto XXIX), the point of light on which heaven and nature depend (canto XXVIII), the pure light of the Empyrean, intellectual and full of love (canto XXX), and the three circles of a single measure (canto XXXIII).

One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

Luigi Pirandello

the sense of God he keeps within and the house men build for feelings (chapter V of Book VII), the vital point that was God (chapter V of Book VII), the bishop who comes down on foot (chapter VI of Book VII), the God who wants to undo rather than build (chapter VII of Book VII), the canon who lives for the house of God without ceasing to want to be someone (chapter III of Book VIII), and the bells heard from outside (chapter IV of Book VIII).

Demons

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Stepan, who believes in a being that becomes conscious of itself within him, and Shatov, who answers that whoever loses the people also loses God (Part One, Chapter I), Kirillov and the pain of fear (Part One, Chapter III), the penitent woman who teaches Marya Timofeyevna the joy of damp earth (Part One, Chapter IV), the man-god and the people who are the body of God (Part Two, Chapter I), the major who gets up at night to make the sign of the cross (Part Two, Chapter VII), the complete atheist whom Tikhon prefers to the indifferent man ("With Tikhon"), Fedka, who demands from Pyotr the faith he has lost (Part Three, Chapter IV), Shatov, who preaches a God in whom, Marie says, he does not believe (Part Three, Chapter V), Kirillov, who concludes that if there is no God he is God, and draws from the three crosses a sentence against the planet (Part Three, Chapter VI), and Stepan's profession of faith about love and immortality (Part Three, Chapter VII).