Read it all in one sitting. Quo Vadis is a history of the Christians under Nero's reign fronted as a love story between a Roman centurion and a Christian woman. St. Peter and St. Paul make their appearances, and overall it's a very touching work which for a Christian like myself reminds me that holy literature does exist. One can't really give spoilers about an event which happened over a 1000 years ago, so I'll speak plainly. Rome's obsession with music, art, and celebrities to the cost of the average man, the corruption of the government, the orgies, the debauchery, the fire, the colleseum, the cruxifixions, everything about this corrupt time is present in this narrative. Illustrated, is how God has conquered the center of the world.
As for the romance, this is probably the one thing which I won't spoil. All I can say is that this was one of the more fictitious parts of the narrative. Entertaining, gripping, but not something to think too deeply about. The greatest applause I can give this work is that it caused me to cry genuine tears on more than one occasion over the persecutions.
Reading of Nero also caused me a bit of despair over how the Christian world the people have begun to resemble him and his feasts. They have music, dancers, drink, and food in excess. Everyone is an emperor, a god in their own mind, and wrestlers like Croton who regard themselves as mere animals are idolized. Perhaps there's just something wrong with me. No, there certainly is given how I even know of this, but once I learned that the Olympic neighborhoods were just the locale of one giant orgy between the athletes and townsfolk I couldn't help but think that such people, who work so hard to train their bodies for medals should be collared, locked, and penned behind a gate. They're like animals, prize cows, or pigs, of whom their human masters give unto diet and training for the applause of the world. Then, when they're finished winning gold, they... why the Olympians I daresay are even worse than animals. At least the horse which wins my bets on the track has the decency of producing more horses, but in those Olympic orgies, not even babes are produced. They roil in excess, yet no fruit is produced.
And just the other day, I saw a church, a Protestant one, hosting a night off where the Christians may for themselves bear witness to these people participating in these games. Now, I don't hate athletes. Growing up, guys who played sports were cool. It's just, since the Olympics are so tied with the politics of the time, it's only natural that the sportsman themselves have their souls effected by those who master them. After reading a book like this, I just think more of us ought to pray over why Christians would be willing to distract themselves with entertainment given to us by those who hate us.
Nero and his government hated the common people. The common people hated Nero because Nero and his buddies would go through cities, kidnap virtuous women the virgins (so rare in Nero's time like today), and trade them between the men. In spite of this, the people tolerated Nero insomuch as he was able, through various welfare systems, sports, and celebrities was able to entertain them. Nero and his rich friends were responsible for the state of their lives, but Nero also gave them games to watch.
Excuse me, this is perhaps too off-topic. This book just gave me much to think about. After reading of the courage of the Christians during Nero's time, I kind of wonder whether or not there are true Christians in the Christ-conquered world today. But in all, this was probably a work which I needed to read, and I may thank God for leading it to me, and I'll keep these words from this work since it's something which I often forget.
The commandment to love is greater than the commandment to hate.I hate too well, because I am rich and think that by becoming richer I may have more virtue so far as virtue is only available to those who are rich with easy lives. This book reminded me that the poor can be more virtuous than myself, often are, and because of the faith which I profess I have no excuse not to be virtuous in all my ways. People worse off than me were sent to die in Nero's games. No matter how God judges the world, whatever ambition I might have had, these days, now, I think there's something noble in leading a normal Catholic life, to work like St. Joseph and support whatever child comes your way. Once, it was my dream to write. Now, after reading this book, I'm disguisted that I ever thought to lead a life like Nero's where one may support himself by giving to the world art which they can't eat, made worse and unreedeemable for being art made entirely to please himself.
Man made like God is born to serve like God. This is no longer a book review. Quo Vadis is a masterpiece of Christian literature. A bit flawed, but wonderful. The Pope of the time even gave an address to the author's funeral. Read it, since this is probably one of the few pieces of so-called "Christian Literature" which will make one a better Christian. Les Miserables was written by a whoremonger and a hater of the Church, yet it's always advertised as premiere Catholic literature. This one was actually written by a man, Henryk, who actually tried to lead a virtuous life. Quo Vadis, is peak. It's striking in how similar the time of Nero may be to our own times.
I read this on the recommendation of a psychoanalysis visual novel game called Alter Ego during university classes when I should have been studying all whole having a pretty dancer kick the back of my chair. She probably wished to flirt, but from the hands of lust during this time I had recently suffered a bit of trauma which left an indelible mark on my body and soul. I see now, because God loved me that he scarred me, that if I had never been scarred I would have found the ground opened before me in the bed of Jezebel. In essence, if I had not been damaged enough to read a book like Notes From the Underground I would have committed myself to the pleasure which drew so many souls into Hell. But of this book, written by Dostoyevsky and written so shortly compared to all his better known works, I like it most because it's the only novel of his I finished while also being the most concise about the point of why he wrote: to prove God is real, to prove sin is ugly, and to show how man may offer himself to God in spite of all his sins through confession, penance, and repentance.
The whole book is a Christian book, of whom Christians who suffer, Christians who have learned to hate their neighbor can understand. The book is the confession of one man, an ugly man, a spiteful man, in short a man not easily loved and therefore a man who can't easily love by the truth of Scripture which states that it is nothing for a man to love they who love him. To add a comment from myself, which I now realized through pitiful hate, the reason why I hold so much envy, hate, and smoke for Christians who are beautiful is because to me they warrant nothing for loving the world which makes it so easy to love them; for who hates a beautiful woman or beautiful man, and what beautiful person will hate an enemy they do not have? Back to the narrator of this book though, he is a Christian, but a bad one. The only good about him from an outsider's point of view is that he defends God against the intellectual heresies of the time: those who say men have grown so smart that they can live without God, or those who say that men evolved from monkeys. He visits prostitutes, he hates women, and he hates people who choose to fornicate through the rules of romance. He never explains why, but his hatred for such people on the last point can only be understood by men who can relate to such a man.
Such is me. I like this book very much because I find the protagonist relatable. For legal reasons, as an author, those terrible people who in soul may wish to be invited to ... the feasts of "The Beast," I will speak in poetic terms. I enjoy the consent of slave women more than freedwomen, because one can whistle to one and have though they themselves don't want while for the other one must always bend themselves like a dog so that they may willingly give what they want. Like the narrator of Notes From the Underground, I am like this man, except for youth and the hope which comes from youth, I've kept my chastity.
I would recommend this book to people who hate themselves, to ugly people, incels because the narrator has the psychology of an incel but not the stupidity to let money sit in their purses, and to people who commit licentious sins of the variety where they commit sins of lust because people aren't willing to sin with them, i.e., they aren't good at charming Circassian girls so they know how to find company in Nevada, Amsterdam, or Paris, or act before God as Onan.
I would not die for this work, so I don't love it, but I do recommend it for people like myself. For me, it was important that I read it for my growth as a Catholic, and even though Dostoyevsky is an Orthodox author, he understands better than Protestants the value of suffering for the Christian soul. Now this book is also a love story, because Dostoyevsky can't help but make all his protagonists love a licentious woman and vice versa, but reading this, I prayed that since I haven't fallen so low as the Underground man, though I could, that I may be able to receive better lots.
To summarize. Notes From the Underground is a book ugly people understand, but beautiful people will not. The truth however, is that the "ugly" or those who call themselves such are ugly in soul, that part which is most important for a man's beauty. God makes ugly people in looks true, but people often forget that Leah, the lazy-eyed maid, got to have Jacob before Rebekah. An ugly person can get pretty far, so long as they trust in God, but a person who could actually be beautiful, but who calls himself "ugly" on the notion of his own despair; no matter how beautiful this "ugly" person is, they can't have any happiness.
