Excerpts
from J. M. Lefévre, La Pensée Blanche,
2000; Compiled and translated by Ellopos with an introduction by Nat Gerrs
Introduction
AN
INTRODUCTION to an
introduction reminds me of Borges' infinite labyrinths. However, I'd
like to do it because I love Borges! and because this is a book that we wouldn't easily expect
from a modern writer - or anyone.
The White
Thinking records a journey
to the truth, belonging, thus, to a long tradition that starts, maybe, with Parmenides. Structured in the form of letters
sent by the hero to his friend Paul, the book's literary style slides softly
from a short story to a (symbolical) confession with the emphasis placed on the
latter. The final invention of the author to have a third person publish
those letters, combined with the overall initiation-character, where
truth is only a weak synonym, or rather a shadow of sanctity, make this book somehow seem like
an hagiography or rather the idea of a probable hagiography. History, philosophy and literature are
united expressing man's wholeness.
The story roughly goes like this. Jean, a man
"full of heart", wishes and tries to become a member to a society of illuminati so that he would finally give a meaning to
his life. In the relevant talks great parts of the Western philosophical,
religious and literary tradition are discussed or implied in a way
that - combined with the other activities of the persons of the story - reveal
almost everything
as a sort of a "divine conspiracy"
for the salvation of Jean's being, which is his real initiation to what he
seeks, with love and death as the most obvious names of that
initiation's way.
