Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Madeleine L'Engle is best known for her science fiction trilogy A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newbery Award; A Wind in the Door; and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, winner of the American Book Award. She is also a distinguished poet and an award-winning writer of nonfiction.

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What is the source of personal writing? When do we begin to consider our own lives worthy of a story? These powerful and passionate selections of spiritual autobiography do not merely represent a vital literary tradition; they bring together fifty-eight writers whose search for truth and understanding has spanned over two millennia and several continents.

From Saint Augustine and Rabi'a to T. S. Eliot and Kathleen Norris, each of these autobiographers tells the story of the inner life as a spiritual quest. Although separated culturally, historically, and linguistically, they are united by their efforts to respond to Socrates' challenge to "know thyself." In four parts this insightful collection includes works by:
-- Wanderers and seekers, like Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Merton, who feverishly explore many experiences and world views
-- Pilgrims and missionaries, like Anne Bradstreet and David Livingstone, who unwaveringly pursue God and holiness in lives of self-sacrifice
-- Mystics and visionaries, like Julian of Norwich and Annie Dillard, who discover the ecstasy of epiphany in a life of contemplation and seclusion
-- Scholars and philosophers, like Simone Weil and Blaise Pascal, who seek to ground spiritual conviction in a rational certitude.

Strong, deep, and enduring, the selections in this illuminating anthology remind us that "the unexamined life is not worth living" and speak to us with an immediacy that transcends time and space.

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Pilgrim Souls

Touchstone

EDITORS' PREFACE

Fashioning the Soul: The Shape of Spiritual Autobiography

The idea for this book originated in a chance conversation between two literature professors lamenting the absence of a comprehensive anthology of spiritual autobiographies. We had both noticed that autobiography -- the story of the formation of a self -- is one of the most enduring genres of Western literature. Historically, writers view the self as a soul; for them the story of their life is a spiritual autobiography. Continuing this tradition, many contemporary authors write from a subjective framework: personal journalism and criticism, memoirs and family histories,spiritual journeys and geographies have all become popular. Yet where was the collection of spiritual autobiographies for interested readers, writers, students, and teachers? We felt they needed a volume that would be historically comprehensive, including the classics of the genre, and up-to-date, presenting the most recent writing of this kind.

In compiling this anthology, we began by asking: What is the source of personal writing about the inner life? When do stories about the self begin to be told? How did such writing develop historically? Unlike sister genres -- travelogues, family memoirs -- spiritual autobiographies focus on events and experiences that shape the inner person in relationship to God. The authors of spiritual autobiographies concentrate on examining their interior experiences in order to discover coherence, structure, and meaning in the shape of an individual life.

Most scholars locate the sources of spiritual autobiography in the personal histories of antiquity and in the Christian traditions of confession, profession of faith, and personal testimony. Early versions of these forms originate in the preclassical world, where the only individuals thought to be worth writing about were kings, pharaohs, or military heroes. These official histories and epics related public deeds as the justification for glory and honor; the individual's character or soul did not come under scrutiny.

When did attention begin to turn to examining one's inner life? Perhaps with the philosophical autobiographies of thinkers like Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Their quest for truth and understanding involved self-examination and an active effort to resolve the moral and spiritual conflicts in the individual psyche, or soul.

The Wisdom books and histories of the Hebrew Bible bear a different emphasis, reflecting the development of monotheism. Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, rejects the idea that individuals can find meaning in life through their own efforts. Even the heroes and leaders of the Israelites, far from being glorified, are depicted in all their human frailty: Jacob was a deceiver, David an adulterer and murderer, Moses also a murderer who stammered and was afraid to appear in public. The source of wisdom for these figures is external; what shapes their lives and souls is the pursuit of God.

Although the foundations for the modern form of spiritual autobiography were established by Saint Paul in the New Testament, the most significant figure in its evolution is Saint Augustine, whose Confessions influenced many of the authors in this collection: Petrarch, Saint Teresa of Avila, John Bunyan, C. S. Lewis, and others. Most spiritual autobiographies adhere to the Augustinian formula, itself a revised and amplified version of Saint Paul's story. The basic plot structure contains four parts: (1) a description of the individual's life before spiritual awakening, (2) an account of the events leading up to the individual's encounter with God, (3) a description of the actual encounter with God and the impact of this event on the narrator, and (4) a celebration of the new life following this event. There are few surprises or changes in this basic story line, even in such modern revisitations as those by Paul Claudel, Leo Tolstoy, or Kathleen Norris.

Since most European and American spiritual autobiographies are crafted within the Judeo-Christian tradition, the reader should understand the supernatural terms of these texts and what was at stake for their writers. Although many of the authors refer to their works as "confessions," the meaning is not limited to the idea of penitence alone, nor is the question of guilt or criminality central to the genre. This form of spiritual autobiography is, more accurately, a type of testimonial intended to sway the reader to the author's way of belief, through what has been described as "first-person evangelization." The idea of providing witness reappears in the term personal testimony, introduced by the American Puritans.

Personal testimony conveys the almost legal idea of deposition or witness. Saint Paul's spiritual autobiographies were actually delivered in his own self-defense before Jewish and Roman tribunals. In a personal testimony, the confessor describes the radical changes that have taken place in himself and bears witness to the conversion that transformed his aimless life to a life dedicated to God. Yet the personal testimony is more than a conversion narrative, as it continues to relate the spiritual progress and growth of the confessor as a proof of God's power.

For writers of the medieval and Renaissance periods, moral struggle within the soul was described dramatically, with different characters taking on the roles of inner emotional states. In the courtly romance, spiritual goals were embodied in the form of an unattainable beloved. Personal accounts of spiritual struggles were often couched in terms of a dialogue between the individual and a spiritual confessor, as in Petrarch's confessional works, or between a troubador and his lady, as in Dante's La vita nuova.

During the Reformation, personal testimony of a spiritual conversion was crucial evidence of individual predestination, proving that one had been preselected by God for salvation. For the American Puritan communities, an individual's testimony was not only to be documented in prose, but was also to be verified by visible transformations of the individual's heart, mind, and actions. A convincing personal testimony was the requirement for church membership, and for inclusion among the community's "elect." The ultimate stakes, however, were even higher: eternal salvation or damnation. Many Christian writers stress that a godly life should supersede material pursuits, even to the point of apparent folly, as in the case of Saint Francis, who abandoned wealth and position to embrace poverty and service to a leper colony. Writers of spiritual autobiographies proclaim that what was previously of value is now of little reckoning in contrast to attaining the coveted "pearl of great price." The authors of spiritual autobiographies from Saint Paul to Albert Schweitzer sound this same note: after a spiritual rebirth, the absorptions and pleasures of their earlier lives appear empty and tasteless.

The Enlightenment transformed European and American life by eroding spiritual certainties, yet the formulaic structure of spiritual autobiography, where an enlightened narrator reviews a dismal past, continued in secular writing and fiction. Modern writers begin with a more skeptical attitude toward the possibility of obtaining a genuine understanding of themselves or their lives. The very process of writing about oneself is called into question. C. S. Lewis, for example, lamented that "even keeping a daily journal" was of little use, as events appear meaningful only in retrospect, so that unrecorded trivial occurrences might...