IV Verweise auf Apollo im Roman

"And I found you, my friend, the crown of my quest. Could you not have existed, could you not have been waiting for me in this monastery which we have inhabited together? That is impossible my dear. Were you there by accident? No, no, I should have had to invent you, and by the power which you yourself bestow I should have been able to. Now indeed I can see my life as a quest and an ascesis, but lost until the end in ignorance and dark. I was seeking you, I was seeking him, and the knowledge beyond all persons which has no name at all. So I sought you long and in sorrow, and in the end you consoled me for my life-long deprivation of you by suffering with me. And the suffering became joy." (Postscript by Bradley Pearson, Murdoch 1999: 391)

Die Figur Loxias ist ein unklarer Charakter, eine Figur, die man nicht fassen kann und von der man wenig weiß. Es ist aber nun mal so, dass Iris Murdoch selbst darauf hingewiesen hat, dass Loxias für Apollo steht. Daneben gibt es genügend Hinweise im Roman, die Loxias einer göttliche bzw. eine übernatürliche Funktion zuschreiben kann.

Bradley selbst sagt, dass er sein Werk jemandem widmet, den er nicht nennen darf. Weshalb das so ist wissen wir nicht. Der Beiname Loxias steht auch für den Obskuren, also Dunklen den man nicht begreift. "Specifically as god of prophecy, Apollo was known as Loxias ("the obscure")." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo). Siehe auch Punkt III.
1. Der Name Loxias und Bradley's direkte Anreden
Seite 10
19 dedication
79 confession
108 to love god
124 ..., 126
183 climax
Alle geben ihren Kommentar zu Loxias ab.
389?, P.L. Bradley ist der einzige, der ihn nicht mit dem Namen nennt.
393, 396
Christian:
"I think by now everyone must know that 'Mr. Loxias' is really a well-known publisher who hopes to make a lot of money out of publishing Bradley's memoirs, which I hope he will." (Mudoch 1999: 396
401
Francis:
"As for alleged Mr Loxias, he too is soon to be our friend [Bradley] in a thin disguise. There is even a markd similarity of literary style. The narcissism of the deviant eats up all other characters and will tolerate only one: himself. Bradley invents Mr Loxias so as to present himself to the world with a flourish of alleged objectivity. He says of P.Loxias 'I could have invented him.' In fact he did!" (Murdoch 1999: 401)
402, 407
Rachel:
“For the crime of publication I blame the self-styled Mr Loxias (or ‘Luxius’ as I believe he sometimes calls himself). As several newspapers have hinted, this is a nom de guerre of a fellow-prisoner upon whom the unfortunate B.P. seems to have become distressingly fixated. The name conceals the identity of a notorious rapist and murderer, a well-known musical virtuoso, whose murder, by a peculiarly horrible method, of a successful fellow-musician made the headlines some considerable time ago. Possibly the similarity of their crime drew these two unhappy men together. Artists are notoriously an envious race.” (Murdoch 1999: 407)
408, 410, 411
Julian:
"Mr Loxias must be a good teacher. (Indeed I konw he is: if teacher is the word.)" (Murdoch 1999: 409)
"Pearson seems to me merely sentimental when he concludes that music is the highest art. Does he belive it? He is parroting. No doubt Mr. Loxias has influenced him. Music is an art and also a symbol of all art. Its most universal symbol. But the highest art is poetry because words are spirits at its most refined: its ultimate matrix. Excuse me, Mr Loxias." (Murdoch 19999: 410)
415, 416
Loxias:
"As for my identity: I can scarcely, ‘Dr’ Marloe, be an invention of Bradley’s, since I have survived him. Falstaff. It is true, survived Shakespeare, but he did not edit his plays. Nor am I, let me assure Mrs Hartbourne, in the publishing trade, though more than one publisher has reason to be grateful to me. I hear it has been suggested that Bradley Pearson and myself are both simply fictions, the invention of a minor novelist. Fear will inspire any hypothesis. No, no. I exist. Perhaps Mrs Baffin, though her ideas are quite implausibly crude, is nearer to the truth. And Bradley existed." (Murdoch 1999: 415)
Er sagt "ich existiere" im Postscript.

2. Patara
Neben dem Namen Loxias ist Patara der zweite Name, der auf Apollo verweist.

"In der Frühzeit berühmt war das Apollon-Heiligtum von Patara mit seinem Orakel, dem später das Orakel von Delphi den Rang streitig machte." (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patara)

Der Name erscheint schon in Bradley's Vorwort, in dem er ankündigt, dass ihm wundervolle und schreckliche Dinge geschehen.

"Or did I know by intuition that wonderful and terrible things were really imminent at last, trembling into being just behind the curtain of the future? My searching eye was caught by the advertisement: a seaside cottage at a modest rent. Its name was Patara, I had made the necessary arrangements and was just about to depart when Francis Marloe as the messenger of fate knocked upon my door. I did eventually get to Patara, but what happened there did not include anything that I had expected." (Murdoch 1999: 18 f.)

Er möchte dorthin weil er Ruhe braucht um sein, von ihm langersehntes Projekt, ein neues und außergewöhnliches Buch zu schreiben, zu vollenden.

18, 19,... 311,

death & that 326,

ordeal am Anfang

"It may seem ridiculous or monstrous that after that telephone call I was obsessed not less but even more with the necessity of making love properly to Julian. That failure, of which she made so little, had come to seem to me a symbol of the whole dilemma. It was at any rate the next obstacle. After that I could thnk, after that I would see my way. Until then I could wait and not be accused. And I had perhaps begun quietly to feel that if I could only get that right I should emerge at last into the bright light of certainty;" (Murdoch 1999: 326 f.)

"Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story." (Murdoch 1999: 10)

"The book had to come into being because of Julian, and because of the book Julian had to be. It was not, though indeed time matters little to the unconscious min, that the book was the frame which she came to fill, nor was she the frame which the book filled. She somehow was and is the book, the story of herself. This is her deification and incidentally her immortality. It is my gift to her and my final possession of her. From this embrace she can never now escape." (Murdoch 1999: 389)

Das was in Patara passiert ist auch essentiell dafür, dass Bradley überhaupt i der Lage ist das Buch zu schreiben.

'Yes,' I said (331)

love writing

divine power

390

black eros 327-332, 390

3. Rachels Kommentar:

„B.P. (as I shall shorten his name henceforth) alleges that in prison he has found God (or Truth or Religion or something). Perhaps all men in prison think they have found God, and have to in order to survive.” (Murdoch 1999: 403)

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII