The Catholic Book Club discussion

4. What pulls Adam back to the Catholic faith in which he was raised?

Adam is pulled back to Catholicism by Art, especially by plastic arts. Music did not have so much influence, even though he practised it a lot. But it was his travel to Italy that produced that effect.

In my opinion, his conversion could have been explained better, the novel goes a little too fast for my taste at this point.

Manuel wrote: "Adam is pulled back to Catholicism by Art, especially by plastic arts. Music did not have so much influence, even though he practised it a lot. But it was his travel to Italy that produced that eff..."

I agree. There is a fair deal of inference required to understand why Adam is pulled back; the focus is more on why, being pulled back, he goes into the priesthood. I should note that I am just getting to the point where Max is arriving in Krakow for Adam's ordination and have hoped that at some point Adam would give an account of his reversion.

Manuel wrote: "Adam is pulled back to Catholicism by Art, especially by plastic arts. Music did not have so much influence, even though he practised it a lot. But it was his travel to Italy that produced that eff..."

For the things that Alfonseca said to me. The conversion of Adams is guided more for the aesthetic than the reason. Some converts follow this way.

I think the play Hamlet has a key role in knocking Adam from his adolescent certainty in atheism, and thus for preparing him (tilling the soil?) for the impact of the Church art in and around Venice. (This part of the book made me want to return to Venice as soon as possible.)

John wrote: "I think the play Hamlet has a key role in knocking Adam from his adolescent certainty in atheism, and thus for preparing him (tilling the soil?) for the impact of the Church art in and around Venic..."
It is really curious but in "Brideshead Revisited" Venice appear, when Charles and Sebastian went to visit the Sebastian`s father Lord Marchmain.

I agree both music and "Hamlet" play a big role; interesting that in Hamlet he is already crossing himself on stage, despite the director's displeasure with that. I thought Adam gave a pretty thorough account to Max of the reasoning that went into his reversion as well as his vocation, realizing the poverty of the Nietzschean philosophy he had embraced (as well, perhaps, as seeing it being played out on a larger stage with Hitler).

About Hamlet Joseph Pearcein the book Throughtout Shakespeares eyes made a catholic enterprise of the Shakespeare`s play, certainlty Shakespeare and RaphaelHolnshead inspired in in a story of the Gesta Danorum was played by the catholic priest Saxo Grammaticus.