The Saint and the Sinner
“Paradise awaits the brave, the strong, the pure in heart, they say.” — George Hodel, 1980.
Richard Grinell’s highly credible theory that the Exorcist Letter consciously calls out James Hogg’s 1824 classic, The Suicide’s Grave, reminds me of a novel observation of my own pertaining to George Hodel’s “Parable of the Sparrows.” It goes to the breadth of Dr. Hodel’s reading and his impressive capacity to access and repurpose that deep learning for his own ends — the very traits signaled by the Zodiac’s ingenious, cryptic allusion to The Suicide’s Grave.
“The Parable of the Sparrows” is Steve Hodel’s name for certain late-life ruminations and metaphysical speculation imparted in a personal letter written him by his father in June of 1980. The philosophical part of the letter is excerpted here:
George Hodel develops his ideas by analogy, beginning from his own observation of sparrows trying vainly to sport with would-be companions that are, in fact, only their own reflections in mirrored windows set up to shield Hodel’s Manila penthouse from the sun’s relentless rays. He notes that the glass bears countless marks from the birds’ valiant but doomed attempts to break into a “paradise of beautiful young birds who await them, who tempt them, and who respond dancer-like to their every movement.”
So far, we might detect faint echoes of the thoughts of 1920s-era George Hodel: the “futile touch of the romantic school which heightens the grotesquerie” referred to in his dispatch from the Teresa Mors murder scene, and his titling of a photographic self-portrait “Merlin Gazes at Cracked Mirrors.”
Hodel goes on to develop the sparrows analogy into a full-fledged metaphysics, pointing out the hapless birds are unaware that their strivings are being observed from behind the mirrored glass — by us. But is that where the story ends?
But are there only three of us? The birds, the glass, and we? Or is there a fourth? Who is standing behind our glass, invisible to us, incommunicable to us, gravely watching our brave attacks against the walls we cannot see? Is there a fifth presence, watching all the others? And a sixth, and others, hidden in mysteries beyond our dreams?
There’s one more analogy before Hodel wraps up the philosophizing:
Have you ever watched the insect who flies back and forth in the jetliner, seeking a tiny crumb or wanting out? How can I inform him that he is flying from Amsterdam to Tokyo, and that his life is joined with the lives of us who see beyond the crumb. But not too far beyond. We know as little about our real voyage as the insect knows about the trans-polar flight.
I was interested in where George Hodel might have got these ideas — e.g., a specific literary inspiration, or an existing religious tradition. At the beginning of the letter Hodel calls the sparrows story a “parable,” although the formal name “parable of the sparrows” does not appear in the text of the letter. I searched to see if there was an historical precedent for a parable of the sparrows.
There are a number of biblical verses referencing sparrows, most notably Matthew 10:29 — Jesus tells his followers, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” That is to say, God is looking out for you, because he looks out even for the lowliest creature. It’s probably a stretch to call that a parable, and thematically I see no connection to George Hodel’s “parable of the sparrows.”
What does seem to have relevance is something called “The Parable of the Sparrow,” which is due to the Venerable Bede:
The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.
The message of Saint Bede’s parable of the sparrow is that our existence occupies but a tiny speck within vast and inherently unknowable reaches of time and space. That is similar to, but not the same as, Dr. Hodel’s idea of unknowable, nested dimensions beyond human perception. Bede’s image of the sparrow flitting through a mead hall and Hodel’s image of an insect buzzing around the cabin of a trans-polar jetliner are also remarkably similar, even if the points being made are slightly different.
According to Steve Hodel’s recollection, his father was not at all religious. In fact, he was roundly dismissive of all forms of mysticism and all unscientific beliefs. But, like some of his literary heroes (e.g., the Marquis de Sade and Remy de Gourmont), Hodel found religious traditions fascinating culturally, psychologically, and from a mytho-poetic standpoint. It looks to me as if he took it upon himself to re-write Saint Bede’s parable of the sparrow from a secular perspective, giving it something of a science fiction twist in the process. It’s simulations all the way down — unknowable worlds within worlds, each world with its own caste of Watchers.
I’ve seen Bede’s parable of the sparrow described as “famous,” but I think that means famous in the same sense that James Hogg’s The Suicide’s Grave is famous. If you know these works well enough to be riffing on their themes and tropes in a letter to a family member (or to the San Francisco Chronicle), you are probably better read than 99.99% of the population.
As a Christian theologian, the Venerable Bede managed to put a positive spin on the vertiginous insignificance of our existence in the midst of a vast, unknowable cosmos, although one could as easily look at it quite differently. Similarly, George Hodel, writing to his son, draws an optimistic-sounding inference about the need for love inspired by the futility of a life lived as a dream within a dream. One has to wonder whether he always thought about it that way, however.