Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 44

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Popular Culture Review

that he cannot reach them, that "Eternity flowed about those two"
(9). When he meets Heloise, he falls like a stunned ox, straight into
human love. None of the vast resources of his philosophy help him,
and he does not even want to resist.
Heloise is no ordinary creature. As Gilles characterizes her, she
is a young girl like the musi c of a flute, who just happens to have a
nrund like a razor and a soul wide as the sky. It is the mating of
eagles. Indeed, Gilles is made so attractive, not least through the
felicity of his language, that the reader accepts unwittingly his
physical and spiritual pandering, as do Abelard and Heloise. He
tells the young girl that the root of love is lust (23), and we not only
agree with him, but are eager for Abelard and Heloise to force the
flower into blossom.
The attraction between Heloise and Abelard is not only a thing of
the body, but also a nutter of the mind and spirit, as Waddell depicts
it and Gilles de Vannes promotes it. He even uses the philosophy of
Boethius to make carnal love sound like the chief portal to heaven,
defining paradise as "to hold and possess the fullness of life in one
moment, here and now, past and present and to come" (30). Gilles is
also a useful reflector of Abelard's profession, enabling us to
understand some of the intricacies of twelfth century scholastic and
religious politics without becoming mired in them. We are able to see
into Heloise and Abelard's minds and souls through their
conversations with Gilles, especially valuable since we seldom see
them apart from him. He is, in short, the central thematic and
technical invention of the story, and he is not only entirely fictional
but entirely an attitudinal transplant from the twentieth century.
This is not to say that his attitude is wrong; it just isn't medieval.
This is the point, of course: the book isn't medieval, it's a modem
construct that uses a medieval story already folded into the leavened
dough of the common imagination to make its own point. The point,
the hidden agenda, is that this existence is the only one we can know
for sure, and we'd best make it as rich and real as possible, for it may
be all there is. The historical Abelard would have been appalled.
Historical Heloise, reluctant nun though she was, would have been
appalled. Gilles de Vannes a de facto Sartrean existentialist, would
agree, as it is he who carries the burden of this refrain throughout the
novel. Helen Waddell has them all marching to the beat of a
different drummer without their knowing it, and perhaps without