The title refers to what is given as the Second Commandment by St. Augustine and generally in Catholicism (but third in the Talmud, in the Septuagint, and according to Philo): "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."
Their first collaboration was Rolfe's Fire (1999), a theatrical piece for four voices (two sopranos and two altos) commissioned by the Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company.
[1][8] Alexis went on to write the libretti for Rolfe's Orpheus and Eurydice (2004) and his chamber opera Aeneas and Dido, which premiered at Toronto Masque Theatre in 2007.
[12] Alexis has said that he had planned the cycle and completed Pastoral as early as 2009, but was unable to find a publisher until he came to Coach House Books in Toronto.
[13] Alexis has described his plan for the cycle as having been inspired by Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered (1658).
[14] Browne's frontispiece features an epigraph from Quintillian's Institutio Oratoria (VIII.3.ix) on the planting of fruit trees: quid illo quincunce speciosius, qui, in quamcumque partem spectaveris, rectus est?
"[14] In 2017, Alexis won the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize, awarded by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, for his body of work to date.
[18] The Windham-Campbell judges praised his “astonishingly clear, supple prose that propels readers through the complex philosophical questions... that have preoccupied him through two decades of work.” [1] Alexis also sat as a juror for that year's Scotiabank Giller Prize.
[19] The next book in his cycle, Days by Moonlight (Quincunx 5) was published in 2019, winning Alexis his second Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
[22] While completing the cycle, Alexis also wrote Metamorphosis: a Viral Trilogy, a three-part audio drama inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, which was released in conjunction with TO Live, SummerWorks and Canadian Stage.
[26]Alexis continues to live and work in Toronto, where he has hosted programming for CBC Radio, reviews books for The Globe and Mail, and is a contributing editor for This Magazine.