Sin in Contemporary Literature

Abstract

“There is … a category of writers who, without being believers, are what the Germans call ‘God-intoxicated. ’ Such people sense, often in an unfocused way, the outspread wing of the avenging angel casting its shadow over their world. … [T]hey do not deal with individual guilt so much as a kind of generalized, universal stain, original sin in the precise theological meaning of that term.”