I'm not completely sure what to make of this but I was completely caught up in reading it. The world seemed so real.

"Não odeias o deus que te tratou dessa maneira, que te fez tudo isso? Não odeias esse ser tão absurdamente cruel?
A velha esperou um pouco antes de responder: parecia refletir. Depois, disse:
Não sei quem ele é. Como poderia, assim, odiá-lo? Ou Amá-lo? Em verdade, parece-me que não o odeio, e que não o amo.
Pensando bem, acho que tais palavras não têm sentido quando se trata dele. Não é como nós e não podemos compreendê-lo. É incompreensível, insondável. É deus."

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In "The Sybil," Par Lagerkvist deals with divine punishment. The book is simply written and short, as is Lagerkvist's style, but it is also deep and meditative.

In the book, an old man asks a former Greek oracle to predict his future. The man has been cursed with immortality because he refused to let Jesus Christ rest on his was to the cross. The oracle begins to tell the story of her life. She was born to poor formers and given to a temple early in life. While at the temple, she is constantly drugged and forced to make prophecies. During a visit home after a particularly grueling divination session, the young woman - the "Sybil" of the title - has a trist with a young man. When she returns to the temple, she is punished by the Greek god for the trist since she has pledged her virginity and life to this god. God rapes her, she is kicked out of the temple, and gives birth alone to god's son, a child with severe intellectual and motor disabilities who is fully dependent on his mother even as an adult.

Thus, the entire book is a discussion of two people who have supposedly done "wrong" by the divine and are punished.

Lagerkvist's writing is simple and unique. It is easy and quick to read. I have read and enjoyed his other works and "The Sybil" stands with them. It is insightful, contemplative, and quite philosophical. ( )

This book tells the stories of two people touched by the divine: a man who would not let Christ rest his head against his home while he was being led to the cross, and a woman who spent many years as a pythia. They meet in a lonely mountain cabin and exchange their stories of being touched by a force which Lagerkvist characgterizes as jealous, overwhelming, brutal and passionate, and ultimately incomprehensible to humanity.

Beautifully written, but may not appeal to those who believe in the endless compassion and succor of their god(s). ( )

This is a grand novel in the classical European tradition by the 1951 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Swedish author Par Lagerkvist. It is a poetic parable, telling a mythic tale of a wandering Jew, a man who journeys to Delphi to consult the oracle. However, arriving there, he is turned away: the question he wants to pose is one that is very often asked– one that is of little interest.
And it is true; his question is one that many want to have answered. He wants to know what his destiny is. However, the question must be viewed in its context, even if it is a common one. For this particular man has been condemned by God to an eternal life without blessing – to wander through the world to all eternity, and find no rest. Probably rightfully, he regards this as a punishment; and when the reality of life eternal dawned on him, life lost its meaning for him, and he lost everything – his wife, his child, his joy in life.
“Eternity .. It has nothing to do with life, I thought; it is the contrary to all life. It is something limitless, endless, a realm of death which the living must look into with horror. Was it here that I was to dwell? .. “To all eternity ..” That was my death sentence: the most cruel that could be devised.”
The man has lost everything, he feels. His eyes are empty – they are dried up wells. There is no life inside any more.
Having been turned away from the oracle, he learns about an old priestess, a sibyl, who lives in disgrace up in the mountains; a woman that once served the oracle and had special powers– she was close to God. So he walks up the mountain to find her and pose his question.
There, he learns that she too, has had a clash with God. Like him, she has been punished. Or that she has most likely been punished. And gradually her story is revealed.
The Sibyl is a wonderful, often delightful book. Like so many of Lagerkvist's tales it is a contemplation on the nature of God and the relationship of God to man. A book about joy and sorrow, hope and hopelessness. It is beautifully written, full of heavy symbolism, quite moving and a very thought-provoking and captivating read. ( )