I needed to write a parable about Hitler. My friend said “Don’t.”
I sat down at my desk and waited. What I glimpsed was an afterworld. There were no physical torments. Only this: that he had to relive his life, as actor and observer both, a thousand times, out to the farthest consequence of his acts, with a constantly growing awareness of the horror, and a constantly growing, unbearable, shame. (In that world there are no ideas to escape into.)
I showed the parable to my friend. He winced. He said, “You have no right to imagine it that way.”
I said, “But according to our sages, on the last day even Lucifer will be forgiven.”
He said, “You must crawl to the very center of evil before you can see the stars.”