The Question of Exile

Abstract

In its strict meaning, as we know, the word exile should be applied to those who are forced to leave their homeland, as Dante left Florence. He had no choice. There is of course the older and larger sense of exile which need not concern us here: that sense in which Christ, belonging to the Kingdom of God, was not of this world. The Prodigal Son, we remember, exiled himself; and having wasted his inheritance on whores and high living, returned to feast on his father’s fatted calf, so greatly did his father rejoice to have his son restored; his other son, who had remained at home, could only complain that no fatted calf had ever been killed for him. The moral of the parable is that it is important to save the wasteful from waste: the strayed sheep must be found and restored to the flock. As you see, we can hardly apply such a parable to our modern literary exiles.