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"Play the Faust game. If the Devil came to your city, what form would he take? He turned up in Marlowe's Germany as a Fransiscan friar; he turned up in Bulgakov's Moscow as a disillusioned, rather worn-out caricature of Goethe's Mephistopheles. How would he turn up in Edinburgh, if not behind the mask of Deacon Brodie? – spirit of the split-tongued, hypocrite, the man who choked himself trying to swindle death. "Edinburgh's that kind of city. It's made of opposing pairs: Old Town and New Town; Scots and English; wealth and slums. It lives on the history it walled up in places like Mary King's Close. It's got the scruples of a resurrectionist and a heart-cleaning wind right off the Highlands. You're on the edge there, if you prime yourself to feel it. It's the city I'm from: the city where the Deacon is presiding genius and tour-guide. It's the place to start from." Al "Breck" Stewart |
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