A Dantean Landscape

Dante Makes a Second Trip into the Inferno

Just past the midway of this mortal life, I found myself once again in a gloomy wood astray, gone from the path direct, that is to say, lost and once more in need of a guide. And I cried out aloud, “Have mercy on me, spirits or living men, whate’er thou be, man or what once was a man. Help me, Virgil; I am off course in this dangerous place.

In that moment I saw a figure approaching, dressed in Florentine robes and wearing the poets' laurel upon his head. “You are not the noble Virgil, my former guide through these woods.”

“No, Master Durante degli Alighieri, I am not. That renowned poet was otherwise occupied when you called, and I have been dispatched in his place to assist you. I am Giovanni Boccaccio, and I count this meeting as a treasure for I am among your greatest admirers and, in life, was inspired by your writing. It is true that I was young when you were old but in this place time is disjointed. 

“And now we must hurry; time may be disjointed here, but it is not unlimited. If we are to reach your destination before morning, we must take a shortcut – a dangerous path that will lead us through the Inferno, but having journeyed in those realms once before, it will be easier progress for you this time.”

With that my attendant took my hand and led me through those gates where I recognized that inscription, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

We traveled together in silence until we came to the banks of that boiling river of blood, The Phlegethon which winds around the seventh circle of hell, wherein are boiled the souls of those who committed violence against their neighbors. I remarked to my guide, “The river here seems much wider than before, it has flooded over its banks.”

“Indeed,” replied Boccaccio, “the levees are hard pressed to contain the floodwaters. A corps of engineers is working day and night (if such temporal designations have any value here) to strengthen the walls and to build them up to prevent a catastrophic breech.”

We continued some time in sight of the howling river and I began to hear two voices, shouting at each other. The first, in a slow twangy accent shouted, “This is all your fault you jackass!” To which the second replied, in a more cultured voice, “Let me be clear; it is your fault!” And they continued like this, never ceasing.

“Boccaccio, tell me, who are these that argue so?”

“The first,” said my guide, “was the scion of a wealthy family and the proud leader who allowed his country to be involved in a series of disastrous and expensive wars based on wicked lies and a murderous desire for revenge.”

“I can easily understand why such a man would be brought to this place. And the second?”

“The second followed him, and, after a time, brought those wars to an end.” 

“Then should he not be regarded as a man of peace? Why is he confined here?”

My guide pointed, as we had come around a bend in the path, and I could see the man of this second voice. He could not stand upright for he was bent low by the weight of a noble medallion that hung around his neck. “He is here, like the first, for his violence against his neighbors. While he publicly brought the former’s wars to a conclusion, he continued, even increased secret violence committed from a distance. And, despite his reputation for peace, continued to supply arms to other nations committed to murder and violence against their neighbors.”

I paused and shuddered. Goose pimples dotted my flesh despite the heat of the boiling Phlegethon. “Please,” I said, “Let us not linger here.” Boccaccio took my hand again and led me on. The path to which he directed my steps carried me to my destination before too long and I was safe again. But the memory of that second journey through the Inferno has never left me.

Dr. Tarrec and Michael Scot

I received another letter from my friend Dr. Tarrec today. His letters never fail to amuse me.

My dear Jefrey,

You know that I do not often watch the televised programs broadcast on television. I much prefer the study of books, and, in any case, I am usually far too busy with my alchemical experiments to waste time watching game shows or situational comedies or programs of the incredibly misnamed “reality” variety.

However, I have recently discovered a television program from several years ago that goes by the name of The Office. I do not know if you are aware of it. Perhaps you have seen it? It is an engaging and really quite humorous. But I was caught up into the program, not because of its laughter inducing antics, but because I know – or knew, rather – Michael Scot.

What must have been a lifetime or two ago, he and I travelled together through the Nomansland region of Italy, collecting material for his treatise on alchemy –De Sole et Luna. He was, in those days, the very tooth of wisdom. Together we turned a coven of witches into stone. There was not a doctor in all the realm who knew more about the urine of the Equus africanus asinus. We were imprisoned together, for a time, in a sweaty dungeon by Baron Ffouljakes. It was locked and forgotten in that oubliette that we worked out the details of what would become eventually become his Super Auctorem Spherae. 

I do not know how the Wizard of Balwearie escaped from the fourth Malebolge of the eighth circle of Hell, that pocket of the Inferno reserved for fraudulent practitioners of magic, wherein the damned have their heads twisted around backwards on their bodies. Master Durante degli Alighieri saw him there during his visionary travel. But that Scottish born mathematician, philosopher, necromancer, and astrologer was always incredibly clever. If anyone could have found a way to escape, it would have been Michael Scotus. Perhaps he stole a trick from those Italian mummers who would dress as the devil during the Gioco de Veglio, “the game of the old man,”  and slipped surreptitiously through the gates of hell.

I did not immediately recognize my old compatriot in the show, and do I understand why he pretends now to be this Steve Carrell figure. His disguise is consummate, portraying himself as the bumbler clown, but knowing him as I do, I can see through his dissimulation. There are flashes when his chemystical genius pierces through the veil of buffoonery. He once wrote that “every astrologer is worthy of praise and honor, since by such a doctrine he knows many of the secrets of God and things which few know,” and that is, my friend, what she said…



P.L. Tarrec

Achilles, Satan, and My Year with the Classics

Apparently this is going to be the year that I read (or in a few cases, re-read) the classics of western civilization.  Earlier this year I read, for the first time, Homer’s Iliad.  This prompted me to then pick up Homer’s sequel to it, The Odyssey at the public library along with the Roman poet, Virgil’s sequel The Aeneid.  And now as I’m just halfway through The Odyssey I realize I’m going to have to re-read Milton too.

The realization came to me when I read Achilles’ words to Odysseus in Hades:

“By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man -
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive -
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” (The Odyssey 11. 556 -558)

and I recognized Milton’s reflection of those words put into the mouth of Satan in Paradise Lost:

“…Here at least

we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice

to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” (Paradise Lost 1.258-63)

And then I compared the opening lines of The Iliad with the opening lines of Paradise Lost:

The rage of Achilles—sing it now, goddess, sing through me

the deadly rage that caused the Achaeans such grief

and hurled down to Hades the souls of so many fighters,

leaving their naked flesh to be eaten by dogs

and carrion birds, as the will of Zeus was accomplished. (The Iliad 1. 1 – 5)

"Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat
Sing, Heavenly Muse…(Paradise Lost 1. 1 – 6)

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?  Apparently a lot more than Tertullian was willing to allow.

So here’s the plan (so far):  I’m going to finish reading The Odyssey and then begin The Aeneid.  After that I’ll launch into Pharsalia by Lucan (also known as Civil War).  My friend, Joel Watts, and I may be collaborating on some writing about that one; Joel believes that an appreciation of Lucan can give you a better understanding of the Gospel of Mark.  After that, I’ll re-read Paradise Lost.   

After that? Who knows – perhaps some Sophocles, Oedipus the King, or Antigone (which I’ve seen performed on the stage, but haven’t read…) Maybe some Aristophanes – The Frogs (Brekekekèx-koàx-koáx...) and Lysistrata, maybe? Dare I try Dante again?  I’ve started The Inferno three times…

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]

***

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