Anne Rice on faith and art
Religious belief and passion fuel much art and literature. One recent example is the film based on The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.
Composer Richard Wagner said in his essay “Religion and Art” (1880) : “One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion.”
Anne Rice grew up in New Orleans a Catholic, but abandoned it at 18, to live in the Haight-Ashbury and write her vampire Lestat series. She also wrote pornography and erotica under pen names.
About her life in the late 1950s she says, “I felt I had to deal with my faith and reconcile it with the world around me. My childhood was very sex-obsessed and repressed. I felt when I accepted a world without God, I accepted reality, and stopped believing in illusion.”
Following the death of her husband in 2002, she has returned to her faith in a new way, realizing “I didn’t have to write the books I had been writing forever.” Praying to Christ, she said, “I’m going to write about you. I’m going to be your apostle.” Her new novel on the boyhood of Jesus is Christ the Lord : Out of Egypt
“I think it’s sad that the strident voices of Christianity have cemented in the public mind that we are dumb. I feel I have to play my role as an artist and creator. But like many Christians, I want to speak out for what I believe in.”
[quotes from Twists of faith - Anne Rice's vision of Christianity is reflected in her new book. By Anne-Marie O'Connor, Los Angeles Times Dec 26, 2005; photo by Don Bartletti]
