The advantages of a liberal arts education

"Actually, this is perfect viewing for the day between Good Friday and Easter," said the Resident Fan Boy, not quite pompously.  

After an exhausting afternoon guiding younger daughter and Demeter (and, truth be told, the RFB himself) through the steps of decorating eggs using shaving cream, I felt like kicking back with a bit of ballet on my Royal Opera streaming subscription, and chose The Dante Project.

As we watched Dante descend and dance through a tour of the circles of Hell, with the poet Virgil as a guide and partner, the RFB continued:  "Because Jesus spent the day after the Crucifixion..."

"Harrowing Hell," I said, not taking my eyes from screen.

"...he went down to..."

"Harrow Hell."

"....save the people born before Christianity..."

"The Harrowing of Hell!"

"What?"

"It's called the Harrowing of Hell. It's like you couldn't even hear what I was saying!"

"Well, I never heard it called that."

The Resident Fan Boy is also a son of the rectory, so I, the lifelong Unitarian, was rather surprised. 

"You've never heard of the Harrowing of Hell?"

"Well, I guess you're the one who studied theology..."

English literature, actually.  It did come up.

Even more Doré

Can't resist adding a couple more items about Gustave Doré as a result of searching around the web for things to illustrate yesterday's post.

As I mentioned, there were three or four screens dotted around the galleries, showing works by Doré followed by film clips showing his influence.  One particularly surprising one were these engravings from The Divine Comedy

 followed by a fairy scene from the 1935 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

There were also several links with various film versions of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.  However, while I was looking up images last night, I came across this

and was immediately reminded of this scene from 1951's Scrooge, my very favourite rendition of A Christmas Carol.

I also searched high and low for excerpts from the documentary shown at the National Gallery of Canada with English subtitles, but all I could find  (aside from the usual slightly tedious promotional video from the National Gallery) was an overview of the exhibit from the Musée d'Orsay which features many of the same speakers (though not Tomi Ungerer, alas). Although I recognize much of what is glimpsed in this video, I'm left with the impression that the show at the Musée d'Orsay was considerably bigger. On the other hand, as I observed in yesterday's post, I'm pretty sure I didn't see everything, even in two visits.

Upping the Dante

When I first encountered Dante's Divine Comedy, it wasn't through Alghieri's verse. It was via those amazing 19th century engravings by Gustave Doré.

I was in a Grade Twelve "English Seminar" class (the kind where you assigned yourself your own projects), and I did a class presentation on Doré's vision of The Divine Comedy because I had just discovered them and I was fascinated. Being an adolescent, I was especially drawn to the gruesome tortures Dante invented for everyone he didn't like. (Isn't revenge the next greatest teen dream after sex?) Some guy from the university was observing the class that day and asked me at the end how Dante's paradise would differ from a modern conception of heaven. I didn't have much time to think (did I mention I was an adolescent?), so I blurted out the first thing that came to me. I had just been learning about how filthy life was in medieval times, or indeed, any time before the anti-septic twentieth century came along and this had made a great impression. (Hygiene, another teen obsession -- or it should be...) I told him how clean Dante's heaven is and how smelly and vile the Inferno is, with many of the punishments relying on disgust in addition to agony.

"After a life spent walking through all kinds of waste, both human and animal, a sparkling Paradise must have looked very, very good to Dante," I said to our class visitor, although probably not in so many words. I was seventeen at the time, after all.

Of course, as revolting as it is, Hell is way more interesting. At least, Dante's version is.Anyone remember Rod Steiger's Night Gallery? One of my favourite stories in this TV anthology features a slightly miscast John Astin as a hippy who suddenly finds himself in a sort of Limbo waiting room when he gets bumped off in a motorcycle accident. Upon learning he's destined for damnation, he has visions of Doré's renditions of the Inferno, and although sobered by the prospect, you can tell he's intrigued. He gets sent to a rec room where he'd unable to turn off the ragtime music on the Victrola and a pleasant elderly couple relentlessly show him vacation slides. When he complains, the devil himself shows up to assure him that this is indeed his own special hell and that there's a room exactly like it "upstairs" where it's someone's idea of paradise. We leave John Astin sobbing: "Noooo.... Bummer! BUMMER!"

Elder daughter has been struggling with this week's essay, meditating on heaven, hell and purgatory while everyone else has somehow found the time to celebrate the end of mid-terms. Yep, I remember this. One guy was expressing his joy on his drum kit upstairs (no, no, no -- a real drum kit). I listened to him in the background while elder daughter slumped over her computer monitor and we discuss reciprocal love and lust and why Francesca and Paolo find themselves whirling in a fiendish wind in the upper levels of hell. At least they're in the upper reaches of the Inferno, one circle closer to purgatory and heaven than the gluttons who only love themselves.And at least they're together.

Noise, filth, hopes to be abandoned, lessons to be learned, and always that feeling that others are having a way better time than you are. Sounds like the Divine Comedy to me. But I don't point that out to daughter. It wouldn't fit in her thesis.