What I'm Reading: Valley of the Dead

"Through me the way into the suffering city,

   Through me the way to the eternal pain,

   Through me the way that runs among the lost.

Justice urged on my high artificer;

   My maker was divine authority,

   The highest wisdom, and the primal love.

Before me nothing but eternal things were made,

   And I endure eternally.

   Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."[i]

The poet, Dante read these words above the gate to hell - wherein he would observe the most ghastly scenes of sin and vice and human depravity.   But how did he come to such a place? What did he see in his life to inspire such horrific descriptions? 

Kim Paffenroth, a professor of Religious Studies and author of several horror novels, has in his novel –Valley of the Dead: The Truth behind Dante’s Inferno - supposed it to be “a massive, horrifying outbreak of cannibalism… Dante had witnessed what I previously thought was a deadly plague only in our modern world – zombies, ghouls, the undead, the living dead.” (pg.10 -11) [ii]

This outbreak of flesh eating monsters flung the traveling poet headlong into a valley filled with the most sordid and vile examples of human depravity imaginable.  But as in the best zombie stories, the evil isn’t so much in the reanimated corpses but in the living.  The dead are, of course, dangerous.  They are the threat that sends Dante and his companions fleeing, but it is the sin and wickedness of those still alive that raise Dante’s revulsion. 

The monsters, the shuffling and moaning corpses are, for all the danger they pose, to be pitied.  They have become creatures without will, without choice, driven by base and uncontrollable desire. 

At one point in the novel Dante and his three companions are asked by a lecherous man why they think the creatures have come.  “Tell me, in your tidy universe of a just, loving God, who made these abominations, these creatures of evil, malice, and destruction?”

One answers, “God made them so that we may overcome them and grow stronger.”  Another says, “They make no difference to us, since this life is unimportant… We care only for the soul and eternal life.”  Dante answers the man’s question saying, “They are just people left to their own sinful ways…They are what we have made of ourselves.”  And the other in his group, the only woman among them, answers, “They are here for us to pity.” (pg. 122 – 123)

Pity.  And Mercy.  Even in this hell on earth there is mercy for these creatures.  It is the living who seem to be beyond pity (though hopefully not beyond mercy.)  The dead may be forgiven their destructiveness for they do not choose it, can not resist it, and do not enjoy it.  The living encountered in this valley of the dead, are truly wicked.  They are greedy and gluttonous.  They are lustful. They are full of malice and anger and blasphemy. They are the truly monstrous.

And like C.S. Lewis’s gates of hell –locked from the inside- the people of this valley refuse to leave. They are so consumed by their selfishness that they will not leave their sin to flee neither the plague of walking dead nor the invading army that is destroying and slaughtering everything and everyone in its path. 

It’s been several years since I struggled through Dante’s Inferno. And, truth be told, I didn’t actually finish it.  I’ve wanted to read it through, but haven’t yet.  But this lack of familiarity with the Inferno wasn’t a handicap to reading Valley of the Dead.   There were several references that I recognized (the wolf upon the road, the river crossing, the fortune teller with an undead creature whose head had been turned backwards on its body, the frozen lake at the center…) and I can only assume that there were just as many that went over my head. But the novel is written clearly enough that even those without any knowledge of Dante’s writing could understand and appreciate the story.

The Zombie genre has a bad reputation (even worse that that of science-fiction or fantasy), some of which may be deserved. Many zombie movies seem to be merely an excuse to fling copious amounts of blood and gore upon the screen. Zombie novels seem to be the new fad in horror writing – a quick way for publishers to make a buck (in the same way that pulp crime novels, science-fiction novels, and romance novels have been for years). But good writing transcends the stereotypes and clichés of the genre to honestly describe the human condition.  Though there is plenty of gore and violence in Valley of the Dead (what would a zombie novel be without them?), the thoughtful reader will recognize that there is something more within these pages.

So bitter is it, death is little more;

   But of the good to treat, which there I found,

   Speak will I of the other things I saw there.[iii]

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And writing about the living dead gives me opportunity to link back to my zombie film : This Accursed Melody.

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[i]    Dante – Inferno - Canto III. 1 - 9

[ii]   Paffenroth, Kim, Valley of the Dead: The Truth Behind Dante’s Inferno, Permutated Press, 2010

[iii]  Dante – Inferno  - Canto I. 7 - 9