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L'isola del mondo
by Michael D. O'Brien
A Wojtyłan-personalist odyssey of the first degree, Island of the World is reminiscent of the films of Terence Malik; it is intensely focused on a few relationships, overlaid with whispered, pondering questions, and strikes throughout with a penchant for the transcendent. While at times a bit heavy handed in its catechetical, moral, and political aims and in spelling out the meanings of a character’s name or purpose, this journey is a tour of the depth of the human heart and its capacity to resist strife and the capacity to share the deepest of love, both due to and despite man’s incommunicability. One sees that man’s interior freedom is so inalienable that it can only be communicated through the total gift of love.
St. John Paul II knew that careful reflection on the human experience with art is as, and often more effective at communicating the same reality as philosophic inquiry, and this book is a resolute proof of that belief.
[Spoilers]
There a few particular scenes that mark this book as inspired by JPII. First, there are the moments of mutual gift giving between lovers that symbolize their much deeper gift of self in their marriage—most especially the exchange of the nautilus shell and the swallow carving, foreshadowed between Josip and Josipa as children, and fully expressed in Josip’s spiritual fatherhood of so many others.
Second is the fact that Josip’s life often tracks with John Paul’s own, down to the secret cultural club under communist control.
One of the most striking themes, perhaps, is the set of questions whispered to the swallow, running throughout the text, echoing JPII’s five questions every human heart asks: “Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?” (Fides et ratio 1). O’Brien desperately wants each of us to ask them with that “sanctuary of our souls,” love.
Finally, with each tragic loss and trial of Josip’s life, we follow a recurring pattern of self-knowledge, self-possession, and self-gift—first after his loss of his family, most fully expressed with Ariadne, but then after his time imprisoned, we see Josip finding ever more new ways to give his gift of self outside of marriage, most fully with God—the deepest expression of his self-donation is back to God. “In the end, it all becomes a gift, and there is no sense of cost.”
St. John Paul II knew that careful reflection on the human experience with art is as, and often more effective at communicating the same reality as philosophic inquiry, and this book is a resolute proof of that belief.
[Spoilers]
There a few particular scenes that mark this book as inspired by JPII. First, there are the moments of mutual gift giving between lovers that symbolize their much deeper gift of self in their marriage—most especially the exchange of the nautilus shell and the swallow carving, foreshadowed between Josip and Josipa as children, and fully expressed in Josip’s spiritual fatherhood of so many others.
Second is the fact that Josip’s life often tracks with John Paul’s own, down to the secret cultural club under communist control.
One of the most striking themes, perhaps, is the set of questions whispered to the swallow, running throughout the text, echoing JPII’s five questions every human heart asks: “Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?” (Fides et ratio 1). O’Brien desperately wants each of us to ask them with that “sanctuary of our souls,” love.
Finally, with each tragic loss and trial of Josip’s life, we follow a recurring pattern of self-knowledge, self-possession, and self-gift—first after his loss of his family, most fully expressed with Ariadne, but then after his time imprisoned, we see Josip finding ever more new ways to give his gift of self outside of marriage, most fully with God—the deepest expression of his self-donation is back to God. “In the end, it all becomes a gift, and there is no sense of cost.”