Jeanne..
"We suffered repulse after repulse, but Joan was here and there and everywhere encouraging the men, and she kept them to their work. When all our host was shouting itself hoarse with rejoicings, and there went up a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of corpses, with her face in her hands, crying - for she was a young girl, you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the mothers of those dead friends and enemies."
- Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan Of Arc.
Submitting to fate and giving herself fully into the arms of the Almighty, armed with human weapons, controlled by an angelic hand, as if blind, she goes to meet her tragic end.. One of the main accusations of Joan of Arc at the trial, which took place from February to May 1431, was the fact that all these 'voices' of hers, all these signs, which she interpreted quite unambiguously, were not the direct voice of God, but the mentoring of the devil, heresy. That is, this obsession should be interpreted quite literally, as an obsession with the devil, and not with God.. Perhaps every artist, every creator who turns deep within himself is familiar with similar 'voices', and no one can be sure from which side they sound, and who guides your hand, and does it matter? Decision making is always intuitive, and is always subordinated not to the voice of reason, but to what lurks deep in the subconscious. And therefore, every such decision, growing from the depths of the soul, remains exclusively in the power of conscience and not reason.
In my eighth collection, it is the image of Joan of Arc that is an antagonist, but not an antagonist of evil. A blind instrument in the hands of either the king or higher powers, possessed by divine providence, she does everything to reach the Reims throne and fulfill the task intended only for her. And despite her admission that she did not kill a single person on her way, it is in her honor that blood is shed. And 140 years later, one August night, blood will be shed again, but no longer controlled by blind force or divine providence, but by precise calculation, benefit, greed, but with the name of the same god on his lips.
When she had rescued her King from his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing. And for all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child and burned her alive at the stake.
"Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame, rolled up in a thick volume and hid her from sight; and from the heart of this darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and when by moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke aside, there were veiled glimpses of an upturned face and moving lips. At last a mercifully swift tide of flame burst upward, and none saw that face any more nor that form, and the voice was still."
- Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan Of Arc.
