THE FLIGHT TO LUCIFER: A GNOSTIC FANTASY/A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 240 pages. Rare Harold Bloom and David Lindsay collectible set. A very near-fine copy of "A Voyage To Arcturus" 1968 Ballantine First Softcover Edition, rare in its First Printing and in this condition, with a fine copy of "The Flight To Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy" First Hardcover Edition, signed by Harold Bloom. The author's debut and only novel. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Harold Bloom's "The Flight To Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy". An epic set in another world, where time has been arrested and where the conflicts of the ancient world still prevail. The animating idea of Gnosticism is the problem of evil because orthodox religion has never been able to address it satisfactorily. Bloom's insight - that what we have in America is an anti-materialistic, Gnostic religion (fully examined in his great book, "The American Religion") - is given narrative expression in his otherworldly fantasy. It is wholly, not just partly, inspired by David Lindsay's "A Voyage To Arcturus", and is his attempt to re-write the latter. Bloom subsequently reaffirmed the superior literary quality and achievement of Lindsay's novel as compared to his only literary endeavor. It is therefore fitting that a copy of "A Voyage To Arcturus" comes with and completes this set, for comparison and illumination. First published in 1920, it was an abject commercial failure that has since been re-discovered to ecstatic praise: "The greatest novel of the twentieth century" (Colin Wilson) . Another great Gnostic novelist sums up Lindsay and Bloom succinctly: "How can there be such monstrousness in the world if a Good God created it? The answer is that there is not one Creator but two. The true God is concealed in His realm of light. The affairs of the material world are handled by the secondary Creator God, the Demiurge. The Demiurge is powerful and bars humanity's way to its true purpose. He is the jailer who holds us all captive in the prison of matter. Only escape from the prison of the body leads the soul into the otherworldly realm of light. At most, sparks of this light are scattered in the material world" (Vladimir Nabokov) . An absolute "must-have" set for Harold Bloom and David Lindsay collectors. This copy of "The Flight To Lucifer" is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Harold Bloom. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. It comes with a near-fine and rare copy of David Lindsay's "A Voyage To Arcturus" 1968 Ballantine First Softcover Edition/First Printing, upon which Bloom's novel is based. As far as we know, this is the only set available online and is in fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare set thus. Two of the greatest literary figures of the Modern Age. A fine collectible set. (SEE ALSO OTHER HAROLD BLOOM TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374156441.