The Pilgrimage of Mr. George Moore

Evening News, 17 February 1914, page 5, 623 words

[Illustrated with A sketch by A.E. Klempner at a special sitting for “The Evening News.”]

To Sit on the Banks of Jordan and Visit Jerusalem.

The name of Mr. George Moore is to be added to the long and illustrious roll of pilgrims to the Holy Land.

In a few days this distinguished author will take staff and scrip and set out on the journey to Jerusalem.

The circumstances are these: For some time Mr. Moore has been thinking of a drama, in which the personalities of the Christ and of St. Paul should be contrasted, and the scene is to be in Palestine.

“So,” said the representative of this journal, “you feel that you must see the actual Palestine, that you cannot be content with the idea of it?”

“I feel that I cannot describe a country that I have never seen, if I don’t know whether this place is on a hill or that in a plain; whether there is a river in sight or not.

“The smallest doubt of this kind stops the pen; it bothers you; you can’t idealise when you don’t know how far it is from the monastery to the Jordan.

By Jordan's Banks.

“The monastery is in the wilderness. Is there a river there? If there is, I should like to see the river and spend a morning by its banks. There is sure to be a spring or well; if so, what sort of a spring? Can you see the Dead Sea or can’t you? These are the questions that I must get answered before I begin writing, and so I am going to the Holy Land.”

“What is this monastery you are talking about?”

“My plot is this — you will kindly remember that you are addressing the Fifth Evangelist — Jesus was an Essene monk. He left His monastery and preached with great success in Galilee, proclaiming Himself the Son of Man. His followers persuaded Him to proclaim Himself the Son of God, and He accordingly did so. In the Garden of Olivet He repented of this blasphemy — as it would seem to a devout Jew — but He was arrested, condemned, and nailed to the Cross.

“”But Jesus did not die. He swooned on the Cross, was taken down, and carried to the house of Joseph of Arimathea, who cured Him. He then returned to the Essene Monastery to do life-long penance for the sin which He had committed.

Jesus and Paul.

“Twenty years afterwards, Paul was brought before Agrippa, who said ‘let him go.’ But Paul appealed to Caesar. This was clearly quite an unnecessary appeal. And we must conclude that Paul made it because he wanted to go to Rome.

“My story is that the apostle was released on parole, returned to Palestine, and preached somewhere near the Dead Sea, and thus the two characters are brought together.

“But the names don’t really matter.

“What I should like to describe is the contrast between the two characters: between an ironical mystic — that is Jesus — and Paul: the man in the full tide of belief.

“My Christ, you must remember, is a man of fifty-five; he has nothing to do with the Christ of the Gospels. He no longer believes in the conversion of the world; ‘the world is always the same, the Kingdom of God is within you.’

“This is what I am going to try to write — mind. I don’t say that I shall succeed — and I think that I shall write it first as a story. That will enable me to become familiar with the subject, to get into it. The play will follow later.”