A travellers guide to Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno 

‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’

The immortal worlds that send Dante Alighieri spiraling into the abyss: Nine circles, funneling down, the souls damned for eternity. Here, sinners reside in darkness, punished under God’s mandate: Enslaved and shackled; burned by fire; boiled in pitch; frozen in ice; whipped, maimed and even eviscerated. Not even Orpheus when he sought Eurydice in the underworld, stepped as far as this poet.

T.S. Eliot claimed the Divine Comedy is the foundational work of the European canon: That Dante himself, is ‘the master, for a poet writing today in any language.’ For Eliot, art should to be founded on the tradition which precedes it, and allegory was the exquisite form to bridge the past and present. There are some great writers: Dickens, Wordsworth, Camus, Mann, Chekhov and Twain. Then there are writers who happen to be geniuses; those who have reached such lofty heights, that only the stars surround them: Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Tolstoy, and finally Dante are such examples. 

Dante’s Inferno is not just a grotesque tapestry of darkness and evil. It is also a social commentary. A work which addresses the fate of 12th century Florence, Italy, Europe and even the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, it is art at the highest level, because it the addresses the timeless themes of suffering, justice, life and death in analogical terms. This is not Piers Plowman. the Divine Comedy is the foundational book of European literature, because of its form and philosophy, and it starts in the Inferno.

Map I: The Inferno. Copyright: Driftless Area Review

Map II: Bartolomeo's Inferno c. 1430

******************************

Dante begins in crisis: ‘In the midway of this our mortal life, I found myself in a dark forest.’ Lost and in despair, the poet is stalked by ‘leopard’, ‘lion’ and the ‘she-wolf.’ The forest is a metaphor of sin and ignorance. The beasts are symbols of vice: The leopard represents sexual promiscuity, the lion, is a metaphor of pride and the She-wolf denotes ambition. If prey falls victim to predator, as surely it will, Dante’s place in heaven is jeopardized. Luckily he is rescued by Virgil, the classical author of Aeneid. He has been sent by Beatrice, to deliver Dante into the safe hands of God. However first they must go through hell and back. Virgil is the symbol of wisdom and intellect. Dante cannot find salvation alone, and needs reason to discover it. Virgil starts with characteristic foreknowledge: ‘Through me you go into the city of weeping. Through me you go into eternal pain. Through me you go among the lost people.’ In hell, Contrapasso is the rule of law: In other words, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, what you reap is what you sow, and the punishment will always fit the crime. With that in mind, Charon the ferryman leads the two poets into the first circle.

Dark Wood, Gustave Dore, 1890 

Charon, Gustave Dore, 1890

First Circle
Limbo, and here there is a ‘noble castle surrounded by lofty walls.’ The inmates are the righteous pagans, who strove to do good, but nevertheless remain unbaptised, and thus cut out of God’s plan. In the gloomy palace lodge, the poets, Homer, Horace and Ovid. The mathematician Euclid. The statesman Cicero. The doctor Hippocrates. The philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Orpheus, the first artist, is also here among others. In limbo, there ‘sadness without torment,’ which nevertheless makes the very ‘air tremble.’ It is a place of melancholy, but a haven compared to what lies beneath.

The Castle of Limbo priamo della Quercia, 1444-52 

The Second Circle
The supreme judge Minos holds court and decides the fate of the new prisoners. He ‘whips his tail around himself as many circles the sinner must go down.’ The second circle is for those who lived their lives following lust and desire. Here, in the ‘black air,’ an ‘infernal gale, blows and never pauses/directs the spirits which it carries before it, harassing them with turning and buffeting.’ The sinners in their earthly life, where subject to the whims of passion, and so here they must also be subject to the same; thrown about here and there by the insensate gales. Among those being blown about are Achilles, Helen of Troy, Lancelot and Guinevere, and Cleopatra.

Minos, Gustave Dore, 1890

Circle of the lustful, William Blake 1824

Third Circle
Here in the third circle, ‘it rains eternally [...] great hailstones, muddy water mixed with snow, fall through the darkened air.’ Cerebus, the three headed dog guards this realm: ‘His eyes are red, his beard greasy and black, his belly huge, and fingers clawed. He scratches the spirits, skins them and then pulls them to pits.’ This is the circle for gluttons and we all know how greedy dogs are. Accordingly the sinners, ‘were beaten under the heavy rain [...] empty shades which looked like bodies/ they lay upon the ground strewn here and there’. In their earthly life these prisoners were entrenched in greed and addiction. In death, they are entrenched in swampland, force fed whatever falls from out the darkened sky, into their open mouths. 

Giovanni Stradano, Canto 6

Fourth Circle
This the house of avarice. Those who hoarded treasure, and those who squandered it.  Here the sinners, ‘had come together with great howls. From one side to the other, and rolling heavy weights forward against their chest. So they struck one another when they met; and then turned round and rolling back. Some shouted: why hold on, why let go.’ Virgil explains, the arbiter of God’s plan, is Fortune, and in accordance with the divine will, she elevates man only to sink him later. Those who try to outwit Fortune end up here. The rocks are the transformed treasure, accumulated in life, now dragged as heavy burdens for all the next. ‘What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?’ Dante answers accordingly. 

Avaricious and Prodigal, Gustave Dore, 1890

Fifth Circle
Dante and his guide, next descend to the marshy banks of the river Styx; ‘the sad brooklet’ and ‘I who stood there looking down intently, saw people covered in mud [...] And anger on their faces [...] They struck each other, and not only with their hands, but with their heads and chests, and with their feet, biting each other to pieces.’ The fifth circle is for those who lived an earthly life of rage and bitterness. The prisoners of this realm are condemned to ‘wallow like pigs in the mire,’ and in this sense, anger is a mud that sticks. Wrath the swamp that you drown in it. After passing such scenes, Dante espies ‘the city which takes its name from Dis, with its grave citizens, and huge armies.’ Dis is the stronghold of Satan, the Republic and Capital, of the Inferno. 

The Stygian Lake with the Ireful Sinners Fighting, William Blake, 1824-27

Sixth Circle
 Breaching the iron walls of the city signifies the entry into the deepest part of the underworld. Upper-hell is characterized by sins of weakness: Ignorance, lust, anger, greed, and gluttony. Lower-hell, on the other hand, is for those who act out of wickedness. Beyond the walls, ‘three infernal furies marked with blood rise up [..] [and] around their middles were tied bright green hydras, and they had small snakes and horned vipers for hair.’ Further along the wasteland Dante sees, ‘tombs that make the ground on every side uneven. Among the tombs were scattered flames, by which they were made completely incandescent [...] The lids of all of them were open and from the insides came harsh lamentations.’ The sixth circle is for heretics. Taunted by the gorgons they are condemned to burn in their coffins, while still alive. This is price they pay for denying the existence of the afterlife, and spreading false doctrine.

Farinata, Gustave Dore, 1890

Seventh circle
The seventh circle of hell is famous for a reason: All sinners who have committed acts of depraved violence reside here. Whether it is against person, property or self, the punishments are meted out measure by measure. The first crest of the circle is guarded by the ‘infamy of crete:’ The Minotaur, who stalks the track, ready to gore anyone who dares bate him. Evading the beast, Dante and Virgil approach the Phlegethon: ‘A river of blood in which everyone boils who does harm to their neighbors’ and ‘from which came the shrill cries of the scalded.’ The centaurs running along the bank ‘armed with arrows’ proclaim: ‘These are tyrants who gave themselves over to blood and rapine.’ In earthly life their lust for killing was unquenched, in Hell, they are made to boil in the blood  they shed. Its victims among others, include Alexander the Great, Dionysus, and Attila the Hun. 

the Minotaur, William Blake, 1824-27

Entrance to Dis, Priamo Della Quercia, 1444-52

Dante and Virgil cross the phlegethon and climb down to the second crest, the realm of suicides. In a wood ‘not green, but of a dark colour’ with trees ‘knotted and twisted’  and marked by ‘poisonous thorns’ they learn of punishment given to those who have taken their own life. Virgil commands Dante to pick a twig off one of the branches, and ‘the trunk called out: Why are you tearing me/ It grew a little dark with blood and said once again: Why are you dismembering me, have you no compassion.’ Compassion is the virtue that suicides lack for themselves, and because of this, they will never be resurrected on the day of judgement. As trees, they languish away all of eternity while ‘filthy harpies make their nests’ in the branches. 

Self murderers and the Harpies 

Spendthrifts running through the wood of Suicides, Gustave Dore, 1890 

The third crest is for those who are violent in speech towards God, and the perverts, paedophiles and rapists of the world. Here: ‘Droves of naked souls all of them weeping in great wretchedness’ wander aimlessly or lay supine or sat derelict on the scorched ground. ‘Upon them, all the great sand, falling slowly, rained down dilated flakes of fire.’ God hasn’t forgotten his old method and like Sodom and Gomorrah, this land and its inhabitants are laid waste. For many of the sexual deviants, while on earth their body has been the vessel of pleasure. In death, it is stripped of its dignity and becomes the vessel of pain. 

Violent Against Nature: Sandro Botticelli 1495 

The Eight Circle
Only reached via a black vortex, Dante and Virgil are flown down on the back of Geryon: ‘The savage beast with the pointed tail, who sails over mountains and breaks walls and weapons. The one who infects the whole world.’ Nevertheless Geryon has ‘the face of a just man, so mild [...] yet the rest of his body was a reptile’s.’ Needless to say, looks can be deceiving, and Geryon on an allegorical level is the symbol of Fraud. The first crest of the eight circle is for panderers and seducers. Here, ‘horned devils with great whips lashed [the sinners] from behind.’ Just as they beguiled others to do their bidding, the role is reversed and they are forced to do the bidding of others. 

Greyon, William Blake 1827

The next crest of the circle is for flatterers and Dante sees ‘people plunged in excrement.’ This a visual representation of the known trait of flatterers to speak bullshit. Now instead of exiting their mouth, the false words are going back in, clogging up the throats.

Punishment of the panderers, Sandro Botticelli, 1495

Below is a special place is for those who have committed the crime of simony; the selling of church offices. Dante comes across ‘a livid stone wall full of perforations [...] from each of these holes, there stuck out in the air, the feet and the legs, up to the calves of a sinner, the rest remaining hidden out of sight. [...] The soles of their feet of all of them were on fire, which made the joints wiggle.’ A lot of the clergy end up here, the burns to the ‘soles’ of their feet, is a ghastly inversion of the baptism, which anoints the ‘soul’ residing in the head to God. They also have their head literally buried in the sand, demonstrating their arrogance and ignorance of God’s plan. 

Punishment of the Simonists, Priamo Della Quercia, 1452

still further down, fortune tellers, wander the wasteland ‘silent and weeping.’ To Dante’s horror he sees, ‘each one of them seemed to be twisted round between the chin and the point where the thorax begins [...] So that the head was turned back to front, and they were therefore obliged to walk backwards.’ Fitting punishment for men who claimed to look ahead, they now can only see behind.

punishment of the diviners, Priamo della Quercia, 1452

politicians are boiling in tar in the next crest. Taunted by demons who bellow: ‘Unless you want to feel our hooks better not come up from out that pitch’ ‘Bit with a hundred prongs’ the black pitch is the sticky substance of corruption, that cannot be washed off. 

Hypocrites are seen as ‘painted people, who went around with very slow steps, weeping and looking exhausted’ On the outside their coats, ‘are gilded so that they are dazzling. But inside all lead and so heavy.’ The hypocrite is made to carry the weight of his lying, forced to embody the doctrine all that glitters is not gold. 

The next crest is for thieves: Dante sees them ‘running naked, terrified, without hope [...] hands tied behind them by snakes’ One particular, is so transfixed by a viper that ‘he caught fire, and burnt to ashes, [...] When he was in this manner destroyed, the dust collected itself without assistance and suddenly returned to the same shape.’ Each prisoner is condemned like the phoenix to rise from the ashes, only there is no flight. Instead serpents lay hold of each body and ‘no ivy ever clung so horribly and then they stuck together’ so much so the ‘colours began to run.’ These sinners appear to undergo some sort of grotesque transformation, where man and viper merge into a single monster. Just as they stole from others the substance of their life, so must their very life-substance be stolen from them in death. 

punishment of the thieves, William Blake, 1827

The next crest has men who are no longer human but embodiments of fire. These are the evil counselors and con men, who have encouraged others to illegal activity. 

Below is little nook reserved for the sowers of discord and schisms: Dante wonders: ‘Who could even in prose description, give an account of all the blood and wounds, I saw then.’ ‘Even a cask with the bottom knocked out does not gape in the way I saw one, ripped open from the chin to where he farts [..] Between his legs his guts hanging out.’ In life they caused divisions and split the state, in hell they must also be divided and their bodies split into parts. 

The final crest is for perjurers and impostors. In ‘the air full of sickness’ they are ‘creeping along as best they could.’ ‘Spotted with scabs’ prone to ‘insane itching.’ These counterfeiters, in earthly life were a disease on society, in death they become a disease unto themselves; stricken by leprosy or the plague, they wither away only to live again.  

The Ninth Circle

The final circle is for those guilty of treachery, and is patrolled by ‘horrible giants whom Jove still menaces [...] When he hurtles down his thunder.’ These exiled titans, compass the track, and lead Dante and Virgil into the well of Cocytus: ‘Not a matter to take lightly, describing the lowest point of the universe. Not something to be done in baby-talk.’

Virgil pointing out Ephialtes, Gustave Dore, 1890

The first round of the circle is for those who have betrayed their kin. Dante sees beneath him, ‘a lake, which was frozen [....] discoloured up to where disgrace appears. So were the shadows tortured in the ice, and with their chattering teeth sounding like storks.’

Cocytus, Gustave Dore, 1890

the second is for political traitors. They too are encased in the frozen water: ‘A thousand faces blue with cold’ who have now resorted to cannibalism, for Dante espies: ‘Two so frozen in one hole [...] And as in hunger people gnaw bread, so the one on top fixed his teeth into the lower one, just where the brain joins the nape of the neck.’

The third is for those who betray their guests. Overlooked by the ‘tower of hunger’ ‘the icy cold has harshly bound another group [...] their faces not turned down but thrown back’ Here laying supine ‘their tears do not allow them to weep, and the grief which finds the ice blocking their eyes, turns inward.’

The lowest region of the ninth circle is known as Judecca, after Judas of iscariot who sold out Christ for the price of 30 pieces of silver. This is the prison for men who have betrayed their benefactors. Here resides the angel who instigated the greatest rebellion in heaven: ‘The emperor of the kingdom of pain’  Satan himself, portrayed a giant malformed monster. He is locked waist deep in frozen waters of Cocytus, the lowest point that can ever be reached. Dante marvels at the sight:

‘Half his chest sticking out of the ice [...] 

Three faces on his head.

 One which was fiery red in the front,

 the other two grafted to that [...]

 Under each face protruded two great wings [...] 

that fluttered [...] 

It was by them all Cocytus was frozen.

 With six eyes he wept,

 and down three chins, dripped tears mixed with blood.

 In each mouth he was chewing with his teeth a sinner.’ 

Stradano, Lucifer 

Lucifer, William Blake, 1827

After this final nightmare; the vision that is culmination of all previous visions, Dante and Virgil make their escape. ‘My guide and I started out on that road, through its obscurity to return to the bright world’ Dante leaves us with a final promise: ‘I saw some of the lovely things that are in the heavens [...] [and] emerged to see the stars again.’ 

Dante and Virgil Gazing at the Stars, Gustave Dore, 1890

**********************************

I have read Purgatorio and Paradiso but they are forgettable. In today’s world God is characterized by his absence, so to, is happiness for that matter, because it remains something intangible, defined by the stasis, which for us discontented humans can never be reached. Pain on the other hand is visceral and common, and Evil recognizable. Dante’s Inferno is not just under the world but upon it; flooding the surface, as if bubbling up from Cocytus. Punishments laid down there, whether they are executed by fire or ice, are also witnessed in our world. It is the legacy of postmodernism to know that Hell is also a place on earth.

To deviate ever so slightly into theology, this means the divine-plan has failed: We are either all victims, subject to God and the Devil’s capricious Law which attacks the weak and innocent. Or we are all sinners, caught up in a web of evil so vast and interconnected, that it is impossible not to be condemned. Dante’s Divine Comedy continues to resonate with readers, not just because it gives us front row seats to the freak show, but because, the scenes delineated are recognizable. Though couched in the stuff of nightmares, some of what Dante sees has an all too human reality about it. Our knowledge of hell may be belated, but Dante’s vision remains, because it is is a work of art which recognises humanity’s darkest fears, and deepest dreams. It is the poem that has become the palimpsest in which all other latter-day works of art are scribed. 

Allegorical Portrait of Dante, Bronzino, 1530

Early picture of Dante, 1336, by the School of Giotta, Florence 

Keats, by Andrew Motion

Keats by Andrew Motion

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be [...]

  then on the shore

  Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,

 Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats, now considered one of the greatest poets to have ever lived, died of consumption in 1821. He was 25 years old. Unrecognized, unrequited, and underestimated in his lifetime, this young genius toiled away to create authentic works of art, that have been loved by many generations. However, he went to the grave without recognition. Until reading this biography I never realized just how harrowing and tragic Keats’ life really was.

I think any fan of the Romantics will feed into the myth of ‘destiny;’ the idea that such writers will leave this earth early, just by the nature of their gift, and the fevered fire in their soul. However, I always assumed that even the most lowly would get some recognition and a glimpse of posthumous fame in their lifetime. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron all did, but alas not so with Keats’. Diligent studies of Shakespeare, obsessive analysis of Spenser, dreams Milton, and yet Keats was derided by the upper-crust critics: ‘Back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills and ointment boxes.’ All the while, for year on end, he sickened unto death.

This is why I really wanted to like this book! However, after picking up a biography on a poet, written by a fellow poet, I was expecting something, dare I say, a bit more poetical! Motion writes with the pomposity of a 19th century schoolmaster. There is no sparkle or flair to the language and there is the rather offensive assumption that readers should be familiar with such things as: Negative Capability, Soul-making, and the Mansion of Many Apartments. Most of all though, Andrew Motion for a poet, displays a surprising lack of empathy. There is no warmth in reporting on the trials and tribulations Keats’ endured, no compassion when speaking of his final hours in Rome. Instead, dry scholarly observations abound. Admittedly the work is magisterial in terms of research, and it is one of those books, you come away from feeling suitably enriched and a little bit cleverer than you were previously. However, it is so academic, that any enjoyment or pleasure in the story of this brilliant man’s life is diminished considerably. 

Unfortunately there is not much else to say! Motion limits his insight of each poem to the standard cliches, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ has a subliminal subtext of rape. ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ seeks to evoke reality but is defeated by abstraction. ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is about life and death, and the search for synthesis, and ‘to Autumn’ is about a beautiful season but the coming loss. Worse still, in my opinion Motion, continually wants to explain Keats’ poems in their historical context. A reference here is about his brother George, a line there is about a recent corn legislation, a stanza everywhere is about classism. To me a poem should transcend all of this and be ahistorical. Keats better than anyone aimed for this and achieved this, and so to my mind, his poems should be read in a similar vein.

Overall if you are a professor of Romantic literature, an undergraduate studying your English degree, or just an eccentric who likes dull academic criticism then this book may be for you! If, on the other hand, you are like me, and you want to read about the poets, because their poetry moves you, their lives inspires you, and their legacy enthralls you, then maybe it’s not. Andrew Motion will never be able to write like fellow Romantic biographer Richard Holmes, because the latter cares more deeply and on a more emotional level about the subject. Besides that, he’s just a more engaging writer!

Keats’ was all about rich and sensuous language. Evocative and beautiful images. Transcendent and eternal themes. This is why, I find it so disheartening that Motion’s book is so boring! The Romantic’s are part of our culture and heritage, like the superstar songwriters of today, their poems are about love, life and loss. If we want to reconnect with the past, as we should, Keats’ needs a more imaginative writer than Motion to facilitate it. To paraphrase Keats ‘Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!’ and so we need a writer to really give this poet his wings. 

Trauma, by Professor Gordon Turnbull

Trauma, by Professor Gordon Turnbull

From Lockerbie to 7/7: How Trauma Affects Our Minds, and how We Fight Back

Psychological trauma is a phenomena as old as humanity. Ancient Egypt soldier ‘Hori’ recounts the terror preceding battle: ‘You determine to go forward [...] Shuddering seizes you, the hair on your head stands on end, your soul lies in your hand.’ Herotudus the first Historian, tells of the Athenian warrior, who became stricken by blindness after battle, though ‘being wounded on no part of his body.’  Samuel Pepys, London diarist, and man about town, says the Great Fire has caused ‘sleeping and waking, such fear of fire in my heart, that I took little rest.’ The best account of trauma so far: Shakespeare’s play Henry IV, Lady Percy, soliloquizes on her estranged husband: ‘O, my good lord, why are you thus alone? [...] In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd [...] [heard] Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents [...] And thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep, That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow [...]  And in thy face strange motions have appear'd.’ 

Flash-forward and trauma has been with us ever since: From World War I to Iraq and Afghanistan, shell-shock to post-Vietnam-syndrome. However it was only in 1980 that the DSM V created the diagnosis PTSD. While tending to the survivors of Pan am flight 103 and Lockerbie, pioneering trauma psychiatrist Gordon Turnbull had an epiphany: Until then, PTSD had been viewed as a mental illness and suggestive of an innate character flaw. Turnbull saw what he saw, and subsequently broke ranks: ‘PTSD was not an illness, but a survival tool [...] [it] wasn’t a case of the body going wrong. It was a natural response to highly unnatural events.’ Common sense now, but in the old days it was a radical step from tradition and had a profound effect on treatment. 

The first part of the book is perhaps little too rambling and self-indulgent and at some points almost reads as an autobiography: One ‘polymath’s’ rise in the psychiatric profession and the innovative theories he discovered. Perhaps this can be forgiven because Turnbull is not only recounting his own life, but discussing the long drawn out development of trauma theory. And it is true he played a part in getting the diagnosis the recognition it deserved. The latter half of the book really illustrates how primitive treatment was, even three decades ago. It shows how far we have come from psychoanalysis to Neurology! 

The book really shines when it is discussing cutting edge research into trauma. Turnbull is a talented writer, who makes extremely complex events occurring on the molecular level understandable. According to him psychological trauma actually has a ‘Biological signature’: The hippocampus acts, ‘a bit like a USB cable connecting left and right side of the brain.’ Left brain is used to store memory, right brain sensory impressions. High levels of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline ‘nibble away’ at the hippocampus ‘and kill the nerve cells,’ creating a failure in function. Flashbacks, the core PTSD symptom occurs because the hippocampus now ‘has difficulty passing sensory information from the right to left side of the brain.’ 

But there is more: Disassociation is not just zoning out but can be accounted for by ‘hypo-arousal,’ ‘tonicity,’ or in layman’s term ‘playing dead;’ an evolutionary tool from our jungle days. Physical problems from IBS to headaches, can occur, because the brain releases neuropeptides when in a state of arousal. These peptides ‘reach into all organs and tissues of the body [...] [meaning] that emotional memory is stored in the body’ as ‘imprints’ which provoke, physiological changes. Finally even the most maladapative behaviors, like drinking, drugs and even violence, seen ‘through the eyes of a trauma victim’ are tools for adaption: Avoidance is where ‘the left side of the brain shuts down,’ Alcohol and drugs, ‘boost [damaged] endorphin levels,’ and finally violence, is a ‘conditioned response,’ and outlet for chronically high levels of adrenaline.  

Overall, the theory is this: The brain is using its greatest tools on a psychological, physiological and neurological level, to help us survive. However, our greatest asset, is out of sync with modernity, for we are no longer on the African Savannah. Nevertheless, the brain still behaves as if we do, and will do anything to help us live and reproduce!

Admittedly Turnbull is a little too radical in some respects advocating hypnotherapy, Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, tapping and emotional freedom technique, and even speaks of a sixth sense. While some of these ideas like ‘EMDR’ and ‘intuition’ are becoming empirically validated, others like hypnotherapy need more research. Concepts like ‘Emotional Freedom Technique’ and ‘thought field therapy’ on the other hand are unscientific in my opinion!Nevertheless, Turnbull is an engaging and convincing author. In the future who knows maybe some of his more radical ideas will find mainstream acceptance. Ultimately, his book not only discusses the symptoms of trauma but also the way to recovery: ‘Neurogenesis,’ and ‘neuroplasticity.’ The brains ability to rewire and remake all the damage trauma causes, and turn it into a new beginning. 

Dark Matter, by Michelle Paver

Dark Matter, by Michelle Paver

Michelle Paver got the idea of writing a ghost story after touring Svalbard; an isolated archipelago in the Arctic ocean. She writes: ‘It was summer so there was this endless rather eerie light [...] What most impressed me was the peculiar unnerving stillness of the place [...] It was as if all the land was watching.’ It appears the Arctic still has its mystery, and remains the last great wilderness of the world. As result it is the perfect place for a gothic tale.

The story follows Jack, a lonely man in London, living on the edges of society. Somehow he manages to secure a place on an Arctic expedition, and its just what he needs in order to get his life back on track. The landscape is beautiful and desolate in equal pitch. Most of all it is empty. After succumbing to illness, one by one his companions choose to leave, and Jack is left to salvage the mission alone. Or so he thinks, for there is someone else lurking on the island: ‘Twilight came [...] when I saw a man standing in front of the cabin [...] round cap, and ragged boots [...] he turned to face me a dark figure against the glare.’ As endless winter sets in and with it, days a of perpetual darkness, Jack descends into insanity, as he struggles to contend with the entity wandering out in the snow. 

I wish I could have liked this story more! On a superficial level it was good, with gothic descriptions, intriguing questions, and pot-boiler tension; it seemed to have all the right ingredients, but for me, it just didn’t work. The hero of the story Jack, didn’t strike me as a particularly interesting. Indeed, he was often unlikeable, because of his downright petulant and aggressive attitude. He can be found saying such things as: ‘I wanted to smash their smug faces,’ or ‘I’ll smash your face in,’ among his other complaints. Beside this, the gothic motifs and themes, despite being understated, remained too obvious and cliche for me. Ghosts haunt on Halloween and fittingly in the Artic ‘tomorrow was the 31st of October.’ Jack notes of the entity, ‘I knew with some ancient part of me, it wasn’t alive,’ ‘rage. Close. Coming for me.’ ‘Intense unwavering, malign. Such malevolence. No mercy.’ Finally there were several questions that were asked in the book, but not answered in any depth. For example, the best horror stories, leave the reader wondering whether the ghost is real, or a product of a disturbed mind. This was hinted at, in Dark Matter, but never truly answered. For me the whole book was too linear and lacked depth. As a result it was largely forgettable. 

What did shine through was the attention to detail. The evocative and precise language which depicts the beautiful landscape of the Arctic:

‘A fierce sun, blazed in the sky astonishing blue [...] dazzling snow capped mountains enclosed a wide bay dotted with icebergs. The water was a still as glass [...] tall cliffs the colour of dried blood [...] shining pavements of pewter rock.’

 The novel, also had that unputdownable feel, keeping the readers in suspense as we follow the hero as he descends into madness. Finally, the ghost itself, was an eerie creation, and like all good stories, appears on the backdrop of Norwegian legends and folklore. Overall though, Dark Matter, was a little too ordinary and obvious for me. Maybe I’m too old for ghost stories :(

Blood Meridian, by Cormac Mccarthy

Blood Meridian, by Cormac Mccarthy

Blood Meridian is Cormac Mccarthy’s other great masterpiece. Never have I personally encountered a work of such hypnotic power, as this. One get’s the sense on reading it, that the Mccarthy may in fact be insane, for the words on the page seem to appear, fully-formed, as if from a delirium. It is a nightmare of such depravity it lacks comprehension.

It is also a classic. What Harold Bloom calls, ‘a canonical imaginative achievement, both an American and universal tragedy of blood [...] Comparable to Melville and Faulkner.’ Indeed, the only other book that I have read which seems even remotely similar is Dante’s Inferno.

‘The Kid’ is the hero of the novel, but Mccarthy pitilessly denies us access to his character, personality or conscience. This makes him a cypher; a pair of eyes, in which a unfolding tapestry of violence can be witnessed. There are no good guys or bad guys in this world, no purpose or motive, message or moral. Everything exists in and of itself, where Mccarthy ‘converts goriness into a terrifying art.’ 

The opening is memorable, for it is, precisely the visual dimension of the work, that takes precedent:

‘See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt [...] Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. [...] his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost [...] Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens.’ 

This is all we learn of the Kid’s life. A mere summary of three pages, before he dwindles into another world. After leaving home, he joins the Glanton Gang, a band of mercenaries recruited by the US government to roam the deserts of the American West and kill indians. Here, the Kid learns that his prior life has been inconsequential, and that only in battle, does he truly live. Out on the killing fields he meets ‘the most frightening figure in all of American Literature,’ Judge Holden. A Nietzschean warmonger who evokes philosophy, law, and religion to justify his bloodlust. His pronouncement on the world is this:

‘The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world’ ‘Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.’

This is the mandate he lives by, and indeed its hard to stomach some of the outrages he incites because of it. 

‘Dragging the victims out, slathered and dripping with blood, hacking at the dying and decapitating those who knelt for mercy. [....] One of the Delawares emerged from the smoke with a naked infant dangling in each hand [....] and swung them by the heels each in turn and bashed their heads against the stones so that the brains burst forth through the fontanel in a bloody spew and humans on fire came shrieking forth.’

The indians are no better: 

‘hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream [...] One in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil [...]  Passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs [...] gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs.’

Rape, murder, genocide, infanticide, nothing is beyond limits in Blood Meridian. The story  culminates in a dream like encounter out in the far reaches of the  desert, with the Kid fighting for his survival. Even then there is a sense that this landscape of savagery will never end. War ‘never sleeps [..] and will never die.’ 

********************

The most amazing part of the book for me, is Mccarthy’s language, comparable only to Milton in stature. The depictions of the landscape are especially beautiful, although the archaic wording, strange syntax and grammar, take some getting use too:

‘The wind blew the white pumice from the crests like the spume from sea swells and the sand was scalloped and fraily shaped and nothing else was there save random polished bones.’

‘Ice had frozen on the rock and the myriad of icicles among the conifers glistened blood red in the reflected light of the sunset spread across the prairie to the west.’

‘Spectra horsemen, pale with dust, anonymous in the crenellated heat [...] Like beings provoked out of the absolute rock and set nameless and at no remove from their own loomings’

Wow, I just love it!

Some critics have argued that Blood Meridian is nihilistic. Others believe that the work is strongly moral, and that ‘judge holden, the prophet of war, is unlikely to be without honour in the years to come.’ To me this all seems beside the point. Mccarthey’s novels, and this one particularly, seem to exist only as visual feasts. He is an author concerned with images alone. This is where he shines.

For me, Blood Meridian, is perhaps the only frightening book I’ve read, for the level of violence can’t be surpassed. Yet the scenes, are not fictional, and can be read in accounts of battle since time immemorial. This is why the work is so powerful. Again, I return to my original point, Blood Meridian doesn’t even seem a work of fiction, nor crafted by human hands, but appears like some demonic testament springing from hell, and perhaps bringing a prophecy for the future. 

Primo Levi: If This is a Man and the Truce

If This is a Man. The Truce, by Primo Levi

 It is in the midst of utter desolation that the Levi discovers the real meaning of his predicament:

‘That precisely because the lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive to tell the story to bear witness; that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization [...] We still possess one power, the power to refuse our consent.’

Indeed, Levi not only survives Auschwitz, but through his profound morality, was able to embody the personal and collective suffering of the Jewish Race. In turn, he became a champion for all the world. One of the truly great writers and emancipators of the modern era, who was able to raise the banner of freedom at all costs. Before this status however, he must content, with the nightmare world he found himself within. 

‘In an instant, our women, our parents, our children disappeared,’ and ‘for the first time we became aware, that our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of man. In a moment of prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: We had reached the bottom. It is is not possible to sink lower than this.' ‘Imagine now a man deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, habits, his clothes, in short of everything he possesses: He will be a hollow man reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of his dignity and restraint.’

Levi lost everything within Auschwitz. He became an shell of a man, beset with hunger, sickness and despair. Nevertheless, he believed his suffering had value. That ‘no human experience is without meaning or unworthy of analysis.’  Furthermore by reflecting on the experience he was able to understand why the Holocaust occurred in the first place.

‘For those survivors remembering is a duty. They do not want to forget, because they understand that their experiences were not meaningless, that the camps were not an accident, an unforeseen happening. The nazi camps were the apex the culmination of fascism in Europe’ In the Truce he goes further stating, ‘we felt we had something to say, enormous things to say to every German [...] We felt an urgent need to settle our accounts. to ask them to explain and comment [...] they ought as a sacred duty to listen, to learn everything immediately from us.’ 

Of course this intellectual analysis doesn’t help in the camp itself, and Levi has to wrestle with the fundamental problem of why some men lived and others died. For him, the camp can be separated into a dichotomy of the ‘drowned and saved.’ Those who survive do so because they possess strength, cunning and treachery. The survivor ‘will become stronger, and so will be feared, and he who is feared, is ipso facto, a candidate for survival.’ Those that die, do so because they are weaker, ‘to sink is the easiest of matters [....] [men] who finished in the gas chambers have the same story or more exactly have no story; they followed the slope down to the bottom like streams that run down to the sea.’

 Camp life is a microcosm of wider society, only without the necessary safe guards . The old law of jungle comes into play, man in a state of nature, bound to the principles of evolution, where one beast devours the other. Levi quite rightly asks, ‘is this a man?’ for when humanity is reduced to raw hunger and blind necessity, disturbing visions emerge. Nevertheless, Levi is able to see past this flaw  to the integrity beneath. In The Truce particularly, we learn of the gradual adjustment to living on the outside, and a life that offers a better future. 

While not a pleasant read ‘If This is a Man’ is a truly important book, for not only does it bear witness to such terrible events, but also shows with the moral clarity of a genius, why and how such experiences came to be. Levi shows, that literature is not redundant, that the world is not a dream, and life not a metaphysical event. That through all the bloodshed, we still share our common ground.  That kindness, tolerance and the idea of freedom, renew the world and a world that is as real as it gets. And as such, there is always a need for men to tell such stories, for suffering precedes wisdom.

Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth, My Autobiography

Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth

Let me start with a confession. I think Mike Tyson is a great guy, and to me, he’s an inspiration and role-model. I have always been drawn to those men who have lived chaotic, extreme, and often destructive lives. Those people who have plummeted to the depths of despair, but also the peaks of exaltation. Those individuals who have lived a reckless lifestyle, hurtling towards their own demise, and don’t care to stop it. I’m not sure what that says about myself, but it’s like Jack Kerouac said: ‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars!’

With that being said Mike Tyson fits the criteria. A man of all qualities: Heavyweight champion, convicted rapist, street thug, psychiatric patient, and Hall of Fame Boxer. He has lived an interesting life to say the least. What struck me most about Tyson is recent years is how much he has changed, and how he is now simply, a good man. Considering his background, and where he came from, this is an astonishing, if not a superhuman feat.

He grew up in the Brownsville slums of Brooklyn New York. ‘It was a very horrific, tough and a gruesome kind of place [...] Cops were always driving by with their sirens on; ambulances always coming to pick someone up; guns going off, people getting stabbed [...] I never really felt safe on those streets.’ He had no father in childhood, his mother died when he was 16, his sister died when he was 24, and on top of that, he saw many friends brutally slain in gang violence. It was definitely a hard knock life. Surprisingly, Tyson was bulled. He says ‘I still feel like a coward to this day because of that bullying.’ ‘I knew that the demons from my childhood were on my trail everywhere I went [...] that little boy that had been bullied, brutalized and abused.’ After getting involved in gangs, and armed robbery, he ends up in the juvenile penitentiary, where he takes up boxing with legendary trainer Cus d’Amato. What follows is a superstar rise to the top of professional boxing. 

However, tragedy struck when Cus D’Amato died just before Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion. For Tyson, this was like loosing a father, and the only person who ever loved him. He states ‘By the time I won the belt I was truly a wrecked soul.’ From here on out, Tyson lived reckless lifestyle, and in all honesty, it’s miraculous he survived at all. He says: ‘So what did I care if I died. I never had no fucking life. What did I have to look forward to?’ It is too difficult to pull out individual stories, due to the sheer number of them. Tyson’s excess lifestyle involved, coke, crack, cannabis, orgies, alcohol, 42 girlfriends, sex addiction, and bipolar disorder. Not to mention rape, prison, lawsuits and biting.

We all know the story from there. When talking about the Lennox Lewis fight, Tyson is honest: ‘All those years of snorting coke and drinking and smoking weed and screwing around with massive amounts of women had finally taken their toll [...] Iron Mike had brought me too much pain, too many lawsuits, too much hate from the public, the stigma I was a rapist [...] Each punch I took from Lewis, chipped away at that pose, that persona. And I was a willing participant in its destruction.’  A rather ignominious end for one of the greatest fighters who ever lived, but I’m more interested in Tyson outside the ring, and after years of self-destruction, his gradual recovery.

He says: ‘One day I woke up and said to myself, I ain’t going to do this shit no more. I wanted to be awake, I want to be of service. I wanted to be a player in the game of life, functioning with all your marbles and responding to the best of your ability.’ ‘its not always a happy ending when you talk about recovery, but when endings our happy, they’re almost a godsend. People are going to die in our family, they’re going to run away and get high and OD. [...] Getting involved in the recovery program was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. These are great people and they never get enough credit from our society.’

 Unfortunately in 2009, Mike Tyson suffered another loss this time his baby daughter Exodus in a freak accident on a treadmill. Tyson states: ‘Loosing exodus was the most bitter and helpless feeling I ever had in my life. [...] Its been four years now and I still don’t know how I’m going to survive this.’ One never completely recovers, and so it is inevitable, that Tyson still suffers the despair and emptiness of his early years. However there is a new commitment to at least try to be a better man. He’s now more reflective now: ‘I’m glad I’m not that guy anymore [...] Doing good feels better than doing bad. Believe me I should know. I’ve gotten away with doing a lot of bad things. Theres no satisfaction in that, only in doing good. [...] I still have a lot of work to do. I have to try and love myself. I’m learning to live in this world, and be happy.’

Tyson’s early life was dysfunctional to say the least, and those feelings accumulated at such a vulnerable age don’t just go away. On bad days, the boxer muses: ‘I’ve been betrayed so much in my life that I don’t trust people now. When people make you feel incapable of being loved, you keep those feelings and they never go away. And when you feel incapable of being loved, then you want to hurt people and do bad things. [...] It doesn’t mean anything to anybody but when you come from sewage it means a lot [...] I just know I’m going to hell. And I was born in hell.’ 

Despite this grim tug of war between two faces of the same soul, Tyson is now relatively stable in no small part to his family. The story ends with him reading his favourite Napoleon letter addressed Josephine, but its not what you think. “‘you are my second, a better self, you are my virtue, you are my merit, you are my hope, my heaven, my intercessor, you are my guardian angel, how I love you so’ Tyson then says. ‘I read that out loud and then Kiki and I cry together. Ain’t that something?

 It really is! From ghetto rugrat and armed criminal, to Mike Tyson husband and father. As Charles Dickens said ‘Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.’ I would vouch to say it is now quite obvious, that Tyson’s rage really stems from his vulnerability and suffering. ‘That shame of being poor, gave me more pain than anything in my life.’ In such a case, I think we can forgive him for his other behaviour. 

So for me, this was truly an amazing book and one I am very grateful for. To see someone like Mike Tyson, redeem all that anger, despair and addiction into something good, is in my mind amazing. Apart from that, Tyson is a born storyteller, and an eccentric, hilarious guy. What shines through more than anything else though is his warmth and humanity. For me this makes it the best book I’ve read in probably the whole year!