“Prometheus has come down…as the prescient logos, the real presence of the Incarnate Word.” In the café the eagle comes as Prometheus breaks into the realm of history whereupon everyone is quiet “…listening to his own voice.” “The misunderstood gift of the spirit is something that one immediately sells or suffocates.” After this scandal or stumbling block, Prometheus considers the above and gives a speech at the Hall saying that 1) everyone should have an eagle and 2) they already do. The crowd is bored, and it takes dirty pictures and fireworks to keep them amused. Cocles likes it, and Damocles falls ill going home. Later at the funeral, he avows, “J’ai d’autres idées sur mon aigle.” (I have other ideas about my eagle.), a total change and a prophecy of freedom and eternal life–the “…divine fire and fervor which are offered mankind.” The crime is of waiting. The eagle is like a devouring belief in progress, a false doctrine of better things to come, whereas the true wealth of redemption is ferveur and attente, “…mystical states of readiness for communion and communication here and now.” ”The denigration of the present is superstition, heresy, false prophecy….”
At the funeral Prometheus begins with, “Let the dead bury the dead,” and then turns to the audience all smiles and begins his parable of Tityrus and his oak tree. Tityrus has a true lack of understanding of Menalque’s dubious gift, the seeds and the strong temporal roots of the tree, in the futility of human efforts to decipher transcendent messages. As an ever-expanding civilization has sprung up because of the tree, he says to his lover Angela, “All these occupations will be the death of me. I can’t go on. I’m feeling worn out, these solidarities with fellow humanity activate my scruples; if they increase I decrease.” So they (T and A) go down to the boulevard and take their seats, since something or one is about to descend. It is Meliboeus, naked with his flute and going to Rome, who takes Angela with him leaving Tityrus alone in the marshes before time.
The story is a diversion. Prometheus says, “If it had more relevance you wouldn’t have laughed so much.” “Thus [is] the inscrutability of creations which go beyond human intention. Laughter without understanding [is] a relief for the present, renouncing attempts to rationalize mystery.” Cocles does not see any connection and to whom Prometheus suggests he not try to understand through reason. “Weak are the fetters of conscience destroying beauty and innocence; one must internalize divinity.”
The eagle represents determinism willed by history that wastes individual freedom. There is no straight line from Adam and Eve to Utopia. “The liberating leap beyond history the multitude fails to see.
Like Baudelaire, there is the attraction and repulsion of a sickly beauty caused by man’s estrangement from nature. Gide could be seen as toying with Jansenism, Calvinism, and more in this farcical mystification of faith, grace, and predestination with its eagle Last Supper. The end is levity and speed. The broken window of the café has been replaced, and Prometheus tells the others to be calm, the eagle will not return, an end to death’s reign. Redemption takes place in the present, and with history begins a consciousness of being. “Suffering and a worship of the letter have produced a literature from which Prometheus has gained a joyful banquet vanquishing fear of threat of death.
Epilogue: from Prometheus, this quill, to me, to you.