As a child, the story of the Garden of Eden was always one
of those tales that felt incomplete to me.
Most bright children ask the obvious questions: “Where did the girl that
Cain married come from if Adam and Eve were the first people?” The truly
imaginative struggled to put images to the garden beyond a vague, happy place
filled with flowering trees and soft, thick grasses. Here, C. L. Moore takes the unimaginable
beauty of paradise and make it imaginable.
Everything from the diffuse light of God’s attention to the chorus of
angels, to the sudden and dramatic fall from grace of Adam and Eve gets painted
in rich language that helps the reader gain a glimpse of that first chapter of
God’s plan for humanity. And yet, she
manages to leave enough unsaid to hint at the greater beauty that lies even
beyond the sight of mortal men – men such as the reader.
Her descriptions and characterization of the Serpent in the
garden are equally evocative, and while they don’t give the reader a detailed
and concrete image of the first fallen angel, they provide enough hints and
guides to suggest a terrible dark beauty.
So too with Lillith, who makes for an interesting choice of
viewpoint character. As the most knowledgeable of the three members of the very
first love triangle, hers in an obvious choice…in retrospect. And that’s one of the marks of genius. The mind that can show the world a new idea
that anyone could have thought of, but no one did, is looking at the world with
a clarity and creativeness that is awesome to behold.
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