A cold day in Hell

Idiomatic Hell: Because Smart Words Hurt

The saying in the heading above is given as an example of an "idiom" - i.e., an expression that is peculiar to itself grammatically or that cannot be understood from the individual meanings of the words, strong evidence that the expression was first uttered by an idiot, hence the term "idiom."

The Road to Hell is Paved: Longer Version

Hell's Road

"The road to hell is paved with pretty good intentions, but there's about forty miles of bad road toward the end that's gone all to hell."

Heartless?

Hearth

Goin' Hog Wild

Cold hands, warmth-thievin' heart!

In the Tradition of "Where's Wally?"

The Thinker

The Gates of Hell

Wikipedia

A little learning is a dangerous think.

Just look where Rodin's Thinker ended up!

Not a short distance, but reachable always, anywhere!

Asphalt Pavement
Google Images

Shall we take our daily constitutional in the cool of the day?

The road to Hell is paved with good insinuations.

But watch out for the snake in the asphalt!

Sunrise? Sunset?

Must be Nero fiddling on the roof, though, if that place is as fiery as it looks! Supposedly photographed from outside our apartment by my wife, but these blood-red structures look like the Gates of Hell, and I don't believe I've seen those gates anywhere around here . . . but one can never be too careful, so I'll keep an eye out for them.

Speaking of Hell, work starts up again today . . .

"The devil -- or hell -- is in the details!"

Dostoevsky

Gregory Eanes

A few days ago, I blogged on finding the devil in the details of Dostoevsky's writings, only to discover -- through the assistance of regular reader and redoubtable scholar, Erdal -- that the devil was missing in one of the details! With Erdal's help, followed up by research of my own, I've rectified that problem, so here is a list of selected quotes from nine of Dostoevsky's novels:

1. The Brothers Karamazov: "I am Satan, and nothing human is alien to me." (Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.)

2. Notes from Underground: "Devil only knows what desire depends upon . . ." (хотенье . . . черт знает от чего зависит)

3. The Idiot: "Devil knows what's going on now . . ." (черт знает что такое теперь происходит)

4. The Eternal Husband: "I can go to the devil, sir, but let's first have a drink!" (Я могу убраться к черту-с, но сперва мы выпьем!)

5. Demons: "This town is like hell carried in a basket, but shaken." (здешний город -- это всё равно, что черт в корзине нес, да растрес.)

6. The Gambler: "To hell with this wretched zero!" (Брось этот пакостный зеришко к черту!)

7. Humiliated and Insulted: "To hell with philosophy! Drink, my dear!" (К черту философию! Buvons, mon cher!)

8. Crime and Punishment: "When reason fails, the devil helps!" (Не рассудок, так бес!)

9. The House of the Dead: "It's truly got the devil in it . . ." (точно бес в него влез)

The attentive reader will have noticed that the devil still doesn't appear in all of these details. That's partly because the Russian term chjert/chjertu (черт/черту) can be translated as "devil" or "hell." Numbers 6 and 7 could say "devil," as in "to the devil." Even number 5 is sometimes translated as "devil," as in "It's as if the devil carried this town around in a basket and shook it." One could thus get the devil into nearly all of the details. In the Latin quote from The Brothers Karamazov, however, we find "Satan," which is not exactly "devil," but is of course the proper name for the chief of the devils (though in Hebrew, the word simply means "adversary"). The Russian term bjes (бес) can be translated as "demon," "devil," or "fiend," and I obviously prefer "devil."

Thus the revised saying: "The devil -- or hell -- is in the details!" Thanks again to Erdal for his work in finding several of these for me and for inspiring me to figure out how to check the original Russian myself. Russian experts are welcome to offer better translations for the quotes.

The secret behind this obsession with the devil and hell in Dostoesky will be revealed sometime in the not-too-distant future . . .

Rob Bell's 'Hellology'?

Rob Bell

'Prince of Darkness?'

Photo by Brent Humphreys

(Image from Time)

That rogue evangelical preacher Rob Bell, whom I blogged on some days ago, is apparently getting a lot of attention these days for his quasi-universalist doubts about Hell -- he has now made the cover of Time, as you can see above. A large number of people must be reading his book Love Wins, I guess, if it's featured in that weekly's main article, "Pastor Rob Bell: What if Hell Doesn't Exist?" (Apr. 14, 2011). The writer, Jon Meacham, poses an interesting question:

Is Bell's Christianity -- less judgmental, more fluid, open to questioning the most ancient of assumptions -- on an inexorable rise?

Bell himself wonders about much the same thing:

"I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian," Bell says. "Something new is in the air."

I'm not sure what Bell means by this, for the article doesn't speak explicitly about the point, but Meacham does go on to cite another evangelical who might be onto the answer:

"He's trying to reach a generation that's more comfortable with mystery, with unsolved questions," says [Fuller Theological Seminary president, Richard] Mouw, noting that his own young grandchildren are growing up with Hindu and Muslim friends and classmates. "For me, Hindus and Muslims were the people we sent missionaries off to in places we called 'Arabia,'" Mouw says. "Now that diversity is part of the fabric of daily life. It makes a difference. My generation wanted truth -- these are folks who want authenticity. The whole judgmentalism and harshness is something they want to avoid."

I've noticed that a lot of the music sung in churches these days, even in strict evangelical denominations, is largely 'praise' songs that are doctrinally thin, and evangelicals don't seem to know the Bible as well as they did when I was growing up. Evangelicalism has always been a religion of the heart, but that heart these days seems less tutored.

The untutored heart is perhaps not as committed to some traditional doctrines if these seem 'unfair'.

But I'm just guessing . . .

Hell hath no fury?

Pastor Rob Bell

(Image from Mars Hill Bible Church)

I'd already read about this controversy in Christianity Today some mornings ago but found too little there to report and the issue itself too big to research, given my lack of time these days, so I let the moment pass and forgot about the issue until I came across a humorous piece by Alex Beam for the Boston Globe demurely titled "A heck of a theological debate" (March 18, 2011) but reprinted in the International Herald Tribune under the less abashed title, "The knell doesn't summon thee to hell" (March 25, 2011).

Wait a minute, you say? Who's Rob Bell? Beam us up to Mars Hill, Alex:

The big noise on the God front this week comes from Rob Bell, the evangelical Christian pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible megachurch in Grandville, Mich. Bell, who is nothing if not social-media-savvy, is pushing a new book, and pushing it hard. His co-pastors informed congregants a few days ago that Bell was out-trending Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber on Twitter, whatever that means, and that his book is outselling Pope Benedict's book, "Jesus of Nazareth," on Amazon.com.

But what's the book? Love Wins. It has a modest subtitle: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. The sort of thesis topic your English professor warned you against. Too broad, you'll recall. All over the place. Not focused. Some evangelicals also dislike it. The book, anyway. 'Tis heretical:

One big heresy that Bell has been blasting on YouTube and elsewhere is that non-Christians may not be condemned to burn in hell. "[Mahatma] Gandhi is in hell?" Bell asks. "He is? And someone knows this for sure? Will only a few religious people make it to heaven?" Ix-nay, quoth Bell, who must have the inside scoop on this. He is after all, the author of "Sex God," another book with enviable sales figures.

You can see Pastor Bell broaching this devilishly tricky topic here on YouTube, or you can find the same video on his website. No, not on Sex God. On Love Wins. Stay focused. But you're wondering why I called Alex Beam's report humorous. Because he writes:

For obvious reasons, I take a personal interest in news of the underworld. I will be packing my flame-retardant pajamas for my final journey, and I am counting on a long stay, surrounded by lifelong friends and many, many fascinating writers and journalists. To say nothing of all those Wall Street types and corporate lawyers, with their clever one-liners and acerbic sense of humor. What was Mark Twain's famous line? Heaven for the climate, hell for the company.

Beam, however, also takes a more serious interest in this realm where angels fear to tread and contacts Harvard Divinity School to speak to a professor there and get the lowdown about the bottomless pit:

But what about Bell's so-called universalist heresy, which would allow for all manner of the unwashed getting into heaven? "The Bible is very diverse in its voice on this question," says Matthew Boulton, an associate professor at the Harvard Divinity School. "If God is not going to save everyone, that gives you some sort of hell. But some theologians are expressing the hope that hell may be empty."

Empty? But some entity should be there, else what the hell's hell for? Is it merely some furious infernal furnace furnished for firing up to heat the universe? I wonder if Boulton -- or better, Bell -- has anything to say about that. Beam, by the way, doesn't mention whether or not Professor Boulton cited the specific diverse universalist and non-universalist verses on hell.

But here's what I have to say about hell, and the place ain't empty of reprobates, so be forewarned: hell's language is not for the faint of heart.

Bulgakov: Three Versions of Hell in the Griboyedov Restaurant

Irina Shipovskaia, "Griboyedov"

(Image from Master & Margarita)

Readers will recall -- even if they do not care -- that I compared two translations of a passage from The Master and Margarita depicting hell in the guise of a paradise-and-lunch jazz-bar restaurant where Moscow's offially recognized literati meet.

Here's the passage as translated by Mirra Ginsburg from the original Russian in her 1967 edition:

Dripping with perspiration, the waiters carried sweating beer mugs high over their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred, "Sorry, citizen!" Somewhere in a loudspeaker a voice commanded: "Karsky shashlik, one! Zubrovka, two! Tripe polonais!" The thin high voice no longer sang but howled, "Hallelujah!" The clashing of the golden cymbals occasionally covered even the clatter of the dishes which the dishwashers were sending down the chute into the kitchen. In short, hell. (Chapter 5, New York: Grove Press, 1967)

I compared it to Michael Glenny's translation of hell's kitchen, also from 1967:

Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously 'Sorry, sir!' Somewhere a man bellowed through a megaphone:

'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King!' The vocalist was no longer singing -- he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping chute to the scullery. In short -- hell. (Chapter 5, London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1967)

I noted that the two translators had clearly made some stylistic choices in rendering the Russian into English. Well, I've now received a copy of the translation by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, and here's how they translate the passage:

Bathed in sweat, the waiters carried foaming mugs of beer above the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously, "Sorry, sir!" Somewhere, orders were being shouted through a megaphone, "One shashlyk! Two zubrovkas! Tripe polonaise!" The thin voice no longer sang but wailed, "Hallelujah!" The crash of the jazz band's cymbals was sometimes muffled by the crash the dishes made as the dishwashers sent them down a slide into the kitchen. In a word, hell." Griboyedov (Chapter 5, Dana Point, California: Ardis Publishers, 1995)

The two translators Burgin and O'Connor tell us in their "Translators' Note" that they "have made every effort to retain the rhythm, syntactic structure, and verbal texture of Bulgakov's prose." Not knowing Russian, I cannot judge that, but from a comparison of their translation with the two others above, I'd say that they also "retain the rhythm, syntactic structure, and verbal texture" of prior translations.

I have only Ginsburg and Glenny -- both translating in 1967 and therefore very likely independent of one another -- but let's compare verbal similarities, using colored font to note parallels to Burgin and O'Connor. We'll ignore what all three have in common. First, Mirra Ginsburg's translation (using red):

Dripping with perspiration, the waiters carried sweating beer mugs high over their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred, "Sorry, citizen!" Somewhere in a loudspeaker a voice commanded: "Karsky shashlik, one! Zubrovka, two! Tripe polonais!" The thin high voice no longer sang but howled, "Hallelujah!" The clashing of the golden cymbals occasionally covered even the clatter of the dishes which the dishwashers were sending down the chute into the kitchen. In short, hell. (Mirra Ginsburg)

Next, Michael Glenny's translation (using blue):

Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously 'Sorry, sir!' Somewhere a man bellowed through a megaphone:

'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King!' The vocalist was no longer singing -- he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping chute to the scullery. In short -- hell. (Michael Glenny)

Now, the translation by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor (with parallels to Ginsburg in red and Glenny in blue):

Bathed in sweat, the waiters carried foaming mugs of beer above the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously, "Sorry, sir!" Somewhere, orders were being shouted through a megaphone, "One shashlyk! Two zubrovkas! Tripe polonaise!" The thin voice no longer sang but wailed, "Hallelujah!" The crash of the jazz band's cymbals was sometimes muffled by the crash the dishes made as the dishwashers sent them down a slide into the kitchen. In a word, hell." (Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor)

Make what you will of these parallels, but to me, they suggest some degree of dependence by Burgin and O'Connor upon Ginsburg and Glenny that ought to have been acknowledged in the "Translators' Note" (though if we emphasized exact word order, the parallels would be fewer).

However, Burgin and O'Connor have, apparently, corrected the penultimate sentence in the passage to say that the noise of the dishes was sometimes louder that that of the cymbals (rather than vice-versa).

I'll leave to the Russian language experts to tell us if Burgin and O'Connor got that penultimate point right.

Mikhail Bulgakov: A Vision of Hell

Mikhail Bulgakov

Unlike Varenukha, casting a shadow...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Hell in The Master and Margarita is depicted as the otherwise mundane paradise of the jazz-bar restaurant in the Griboyedov House, the meeting place for Moscow's offially recognized literati. Here's the scene of that hellish restaurant as translated by Mirra Ginsburg from the original Russian in her 1967 edition:

Dripping with perspiration, the waiters carried sweating beer mugs high over their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred, "Sorry, citizen!" Somewhere in a loudspeaker a voice commanded: "Karsky shashlik, one! Zubrovka, two! Tripe polonais!" The thin high voice no longer sang but howled, "Hallelujah!" The clashing of the golden cymbals occasionally covered even the clatter of the dishes which the dishwashers were sending down the chute into the kitchen. In short, hell. (Chapter 5, New York: Grove Press, 1967)

Hell, is it? Then, this world seems none so bad. Let's compare it to Michael Glenny's translation of hell's kitchen, also from 1967:

Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously 'Sorry, sir!' Somewhere a man bellowed through a megaphone:

'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King!' The vocalist was no longer singing -- he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping chute to the scullery. In short -- hell. (Chapter 5, London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1967)

Clearly, the two translators have made some stylistic choices in rendering the Russian into English, but this hell seems a liveable one . . . almost, were it not for the sudden, unexpected death of the house director, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, whose unfortunate, or perhaps fated, decease will soon be rumored throughout the crowd and temporarily disturb those gathered in this pandaemonium.

Bulgakov's hell, in both translations, appears very worldly, too worldly -- but that's his point, I gather. The world has lost its reflection of transcendence and exists only as it is, solely an earthly paradise, guaranteed by the Communist Party's inner-worldly providence. But there is a slight problem that arises with mortals in charge of planning, a problem in the workers' paradise noted halfway into the first chapter by the mysterious professor and expert in black magic, Woland, to the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov, who writes under the pseudonym Bezdomny (i.e., "Homeless"), and to the soon-to-expire Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz:

'But this is the question that disturbs me -- if there is no God, then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order?'

'Man rules himself,' said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an obviously absurd question.

'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?'

'In fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlioz, 'imagine what would happen if you, for instance, were to start organising others and yourself, and you developed a taste for it -- then suddenly you got . . . he, he . . . a slight heart attack . . .' at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure . . . . 'Yes, a heart attack,' he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat,' and that's the end of you as an organiser! No one's fate except your own interests you any longer. Your relations start lying to you. Sensing that something is amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlatan, and even perhaps to a fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the man who thought he was incharge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and his fellow men, realising that there is no more sense to be had of him, incinerate him.

'Sometimes it can be even worse: a man decides to go to Kislovodsk,' -- here the stranger stared at Berlioz -- 'a trivial matter you may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and falls under a tram! You're not going to tell me that he arranged to do that himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say that someone quite different was directing his fate?' The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter. (Michael Glenny's translation, Chapter 1)

This, as one might expect, is precisely how Berlioz dies later that day. In fact, the good Professor Woland even goes on to predict in precise and clear detail exactly how Berlioz will expire, his head chopped off by the wheels of a tram, thereby establishing two things. First, human beings have plans that "gang aft agly" -- oops, I meant to say, "go often askew" (but inadvertently slipped into a Scottish brogue!). Second, there is a plan, apparently, for Woland knows what will happen to Berlioz, but it's a plan that obviously runs counter to mortal intentions. In that sense, it "rules the life of man," but can one say that it "keeps the world in order"? The accident that kills Berlioz brings disorder to his little literary world, so any maintenance of order would have to be understood on a larger scale -- a bit like an anti-entropic principle of the universe. Disorder on a small scale . . . but a larger order sustained, a larger-than-human order.

Professor Woland refers to this as the "seventh proof" of God's existence! But what sort of proof is a death foretold? There seems to be something of the contingency variant on the cosmological argument for God's existence. Or perhaps there's something of the teleological argument here. Yet, Woland has agreed with Berlioz that the five traditional arguments for God's existence prove nothing, and he has also rejected Kant's 'sixth' argument, the appeal to morality. So . . . what is this seventh argument, exactly? I'm not certain that it is something that can be precisely worded, but I'll reflect further on what Bulgakov might have meant. Keeping in mind that he's an ironist and satirist, of course . . .

Anyway, one can easily see how such a novel -- and such a novelist! -- would offend the Soviet orthodoxy of the 1930s, but on Stalin's whim, Bulgakov was allowed to work as literary consultant to the Moscow Art Theater until his personal experience of the seventh proof at the age of 48 in 1940.

Uncle Cran's Diabolical Tale...

Lightning Strikes . . .

. . . and fishy tales.

"I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."

(Image from Wikipedia)

Uncle Cran has a diabolical tale to tell, a close encounter of the brimstone kind, utterly unlike the numinous encounter of my more venerable Uncle Isam:

Since my many {or mini} fans are waiting with 'baited' breath for my latest fishy tale (do I have a fishy tail also?), here is another true even if fantastic tale of yesteryear:

Fishing, A Lightning Strike, (What Is That Strange Odor)?

A lifetime ago, at the tender age of 12, Cran (sometimes called Cranford, CB {by Aunt Cora}, or You Little Brat, stop bugging me {by brother Bradley}, called 'me' or 'I' by myself) decided to go fishing.

With a cane pole, can of worms, my sure-enough imitation Barlow knife, and a string attached to a twig for a stringer, I blithely walked the trail down to Big Creek, at a bend in the creek next to the 'crooked bottom' hayfield, where there was a deep hole that I was sure had some catfish. Recent rains had muddied the creek, which is the best time to find catfish feeding.

Pretty soon I had a stringer of foot long catfish . . . then in the distance there was a rumble of thunder. Hating to quit, I kept fishing until it began to rain, the thunderstorm getting nearer. Lightning and thunder was getting closer and more ominous, so I gathered up my gear and fish, and started home.

Just then there was a brilliant flash, and a deafening boom, as lightning struck [a tree] just a short distance away, not more than 100 feet from me! The hair on my neck was standing up from static electricity, and a strange odor assailed my nostrils.

Terrified, I ran all the way home through the rain and lightning, a distance of slightly more that a quarter of a mile [Editor: All uphill, too!].

After I got home safely, drenched and shivering (from fear as well as being chilled), we had fish for supper, and all was well with the world again, but the question lingered in my mind . . . What was that strange odor when the lightning hit the tree?

Innocently, I told this to big brother Bradley. He (as his son Jeffery does presently [Editor: Blood will tell.]) laughed at me, and said, "I'll tell you what you smelled. That was you when you . . . (let us say 'pooped' [Editor: Nah, let us say "shat."]) your pants. I was hurt, even as at present when being 'dissed.' But I stubbornly insisted there was a strong, acrid odor just as the lightning bolt hit the tree.

Years later, I read a book by John Morris II, In Search for Noah's Ark [Editor: Noah's Ark and the Ararat Adventure?]. There he described being caught in a lightning storm on Mount Ararat, where he and his fellow explorers had a similar experience, except they were nearly killed. He spoke of a "strong odor of sulphur" at the time.

So now I know it wasn't a figment of my imagination. I had noticed the same odor. In fact, on my farm I had an electric fence to keep my cows from breaking out of the pasture. I had noticed that the cows would smell the fence, and if it was active, they would leave it alone, but if the fence charger wasn't working, they would stick their heads through the fence. I couldn't detect anything, as I am cursed (or blessed) with a poor sense of smell because of my sinuses. I told my wife Gay, who can detect an offensive odor at amazing distances. She sniffed the fence, and said, "It smells like sulphur."

Now I am vindicated! It wasn't me, it wasn't my imagination, it was actually a reality, just as all my stories are true, trustworthy, perhaps dull and uniterestering, but are honest facts, not the strange, fantastic ramblings of certain unnamed individuals, whose initials are HJH and JK [Editor: Unidentifiable.].

Vindicated indeed! Confirmed by some fellow who fruitlessly sought Noah's Ark in 'Turkey' and calls himself John Morris the Tooth! However, we all know the true source of sulphurous fumes, none other than the darkest prince himself (who sometimes visits the Ozarks). Morris and company were nowhere near the divine sanctity of Noah's Ark but closing in on the very gates of Hell! Uncle Cran, lacking that proverbial sense to get in out of the rain, was himself dangerously close to that foul precipice.

Learn from Uncle Cran's lesson: Don't go fishing in troubled waters.

"A Universe of death..."

"A Universe of death"

(Image from Art Passions: Doré Gallery)

Continuing my theme of excursions through Hell, where some of my plagiarizing students will soon be residing, let us join a band of fallen angels as they explore a universe of death:

Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands,
On bold adventure to discover wide
That dismal world, if any Clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks
Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge
Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud
Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen Continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where Armies whole have sunk: the parching Air
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of Fire.
Thither by harpy-footed Furies hail'd,
At certain revolutions all the damn'd
Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce,
From Beds of raging Fire to starve in Ice
Thir soft Ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixt, and frozen round,
Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean Sound
Both to and fro, thir sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so neer the brink;
But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The Ford, and of it self the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In confus'd march forlorn, th' adventrous Bands
With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast
View'd first thir lamentable lot, and found
No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile
They pass'd, and many a Region dolorous,
O'er many a Frozen, many a fierie Alpe,
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,
A Universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,
Gorgons and Hydra's, and Chimera's dire.

(Dartmouth College, Milton Reading Room, PL
2.570-628)

Lines 622-624 call this place a universe of death where all life dies, but we see many apparently living things here and are informed that nature breeds things perverse. All life dies here, and death lives, but what do these statements mean, especially "death lives"? The oxymoronic combination recalls the similarly hellish description "darkness visible" (PL 1.63).

Death appears in Milton's Hell as an amorphous but powerful and even deadly figure encountered by Satan as he approaches Hell's gates to attempt his way out:

... The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on. (PL 2.666-673)

The formlessness of personified Death (first described, incidentally, starting in line 666) provides a clue, for what nature breeds in Hell is "Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, / Abominable" (PL 2.625-626). The formlessness of Death stands reflected in the perverse forms glimpsed by the band of rebel angels as they fly through Hell. The term "Abominable" recalls the abominations of Leviticus, creatures that do not properly fit into God's classificatory schema and by their improper form incur the designation "unclean," not proper for eating. The formlessness also finds analogue in the fallen angels' deterioration, the loss of their proper form.

Little wonder, then, that Hell's proper place lies deep within the formless realm of chaos.

Excusions through Hell...

Farinata degli Uberti Addresses Dante

Woodcut Illustration by Gustav Doré

The Divine Comedy: The Inferno: Canto 10

(Borrowed from Wikipedia)

On Lost Nomad's blog, in response to a post on Korea and the upcoming World Cup, I left the following remark on my experience living in Korea when it was hosting the previous World Cup:

At the last World Cup, a Korean colleague at Hanshin University asked me what it was like being a foreigner in Korea during the World Cup.

I looked around at the many Red Devil Korean fans decked out with flame-red horns and flame-red shirts — the shirts often even sporting Dogebi-Demon designs — and I replied: "I feel like I'm in Hell!"

Hell, yes, but I didn't suffer much. I rather enjoyed it, as did my two little half-Korean kids, who were running around in the red-devil shirts singing "Oh, piss on gorilla!"

Yeah, I know that "오 필승 코리아!" ("Oh, Pilseung Korea!") means something like "Oh, victory to Korea!", but it sure as hell sounded to me like pissing on gorillas.

A sure-fire way to piss them off, by the way, and not something that you'd want to do to creatures as powerful as gorillas, or you might end up in a level of Hell like the one experienced by this guy in a dream:

On November 22, 1998... I was catapulted out of my bed into the very pit of hell. My point of arrival was a cell that was approximately fifteen feet high by ten feet wide with a fifteen-foot depth...

I was not alone in this cell. I saw two enormous beasts, unlike anything I had ever seen before .... entirely evil, and gazing at me with pure, unrestrained hatred, which completely paralyzed me with fear....

The creatures weren't animals, but they weren't human, either. Each giant beast resembled a reptile in appearance, but took on human form. Their arms and legs were unequal in length, out of proportion -- without symmetry....

Two more creatures came into the cell, and I had the feeling that these four beings had been "assigned" to me. I felt as though I was being "sized up" and that my torment would be their amusement....

One of the creatures picked me up. The strength of the beast was amazing .... approximately one thousand times greater than a man.... Then the beast threw me against the wall. I crumbled onto the floor .... as though every bone in my body had been broken...

The second beast, with its razor-like claws and sharp protruding fins, then grabbed me from behind in a bear hug. As it pressed me into its chest, its sharp fins pierced my back.... He then reached around and plunged his claws into my chest and ripped them outward....

Rather worse than raging gorillas, actually. As for the fellow who says that he experienced this torment, his name is Bill Wiese, and he has detailed the experience in a book, 23 Minutes in Hell, for which he'll surely get his 15 minutes of fame.

A man with a far less painful excursion to Hell is none other than the hero of yesterday's blog entry, Joseph Michael Gandy. We find his story in Christopher Woodward's Guardian article, "Let there be light" posted on April 1 (no foolin'), 2006. Gandy, who also dreamt of hell, encountered a rather different place than Wiese describes, and a far more sophisticated devil:

In his dream he was standing on a staircase, watching a man sweet talk a girl at a window. Gandy was in love with the girl. Suddenly, a stranger took his arm. You must take her by force, he whispered; I am your friend, and will show you how. The man took him to palaces and dinners, and gave him presents. You are the Devil, Gandy exclaimed. He was seized, and woke in Hell. It was a city manufacturing luxuries in glass and gold, where "heavy cranes ... lift Foreign Goods from Ships". Hell was modern London.

Gandy escaped from "a low dungeon" by climbing a mile towards the light while the Devil drank with "lawyers, aldermen, &c". Outside was a mountain of empty wine bottles. Gandy made a sudden run up the slope, but the clatter of bottles alerted Satan. "I find you are like the rest of the world," he sneered: Ungrateful. But in a flicker of the eye, he relented and conjured up a circle of wine bottles to dance in the air around him: "Take a bottle of whatever you please and we will make it up again." Gandy took a bottle and hit the Devil. Pieces of glass stuck in his bald head. He hit him again, and escaped into the light.

Gandy's later painting of Pandemonium, which we saw in yesterday's entry, doesn't look much like London, but both the painting and this dream suggest a place far more refined than Wiese's vision.

I suppose that Gandy, Wiese, and I all three experienced a hell appropriate to our sins.

As Woodward tells us, Gandy interpreted his own dream:

What was the moral? Do not accept favours from the rich, he concluded. If you cannot repay them pound for pound, they will "play with the temper of a grateful mind ... debauch it, and make you their slave."

Gandy was a prototype of the Romantic genius, the one needing but spurning patrons, and his dream shows him struggling with his inner demons -- a cliché vividly experienced.

But not quite as vivid as Wiese's vision. I haven't read this man's book, so I don't know what, specifically, his punishment was for, but I suppose that I should note that he was a California realtor.

As for me and my most real of these three unreal hellish experiences, I was punished for the sin of being from a country that has never taken the truly global World Cup seriously and that insists on calling its annual, national baseball playoff between the American League and the National League by the quaint title of World Series.

As Koreans have often reminded me...