Inferno XXII: The Falling Man.

Inferno XXII: Ciampolo and the Malebranche

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Their tour of the eighth circle continues in Canto XXII, and Dante and Virgil attempt to stall the brutal mauling of a sinner, plucked from the tarry pitch below, by asking questions about his background. While Virgil quizzes him, the antagonistic demons cut bits of flesh from the pitiful soul, but he ultimately escapes their escalating torture when he distracts them sufficiently—leaping from the cliffs to the black goo below. The scene is summed up at the end of the canto:

  

The Navarrese chose his time well;

He planted his feet on the ground, and in an instant

He leapt and escaped their designs.

*    *    *

I remember having dreams as a kid in which I was hiding from something—a monster or some other menace (Blacula, or Charles Manson, glaring with his coal black eyes as he did in news photographs, were perennial threats). In these dreams I was always wedged in the triangle of space behind an open door, looking through the crack on the hinged side. While safe for the moment, the threat was imminent and I was terrified of being discovered, and then God-knows-what. The primal instinct to flee overpowered the rational need to remain in hiding and the decisive moment always came. As the perp came closer I would leap from my hiding place, arms and limbs flailing in self-defense, screaming like mad to scare him off. I would then find myself awake.

The last bit of Canto XXII of L'Inferno evoked immediately a now famous image from 9-11 known as The Falling Man. Having lingo ago reached meme status, I'm a little sheepish about my exploitation of it for this drawing, but it remains potent to me so I wanted to refer to it. The image is that of a man plummeting head first from the World Trade Center tower, his arms to his sides, his left leg elegantly crooked to lend graceful proportion. The beauty of the image belies its horrific narrative. Moments before, the man was on the ledge of the building, undoubtedly agonizing in the face of a terrifying decision: jump or suffer an excruciating death by incineration. 

I like illustrating most when I am able to anticipate the visual literacy shared by most people and yet leave a few secrets to be discovered in the process of deciphering an image. Depending on this for dialogue with a viewer's memory and expecting their semiotic response system to engage, enabling them to answer the questions I am posing, can be deeply gratifying. This image unfolded that way, and—despite its tedious making—I really enjoyed all phases of its development.

Inferno XXI: "He made a trumpet of his rump."

Inferno XXI: The Malebranche

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

In the fifth ditch (or malebolgia) of the eighth circle of Inferno, Dante and Virgil are immersed in tarry darkness, which—while unnerving—provides cover from a comically furious band of nine demons known as the Malebranche. Hidden behind the rocks, Dante is eventually revealed when Virgil addresses the rowdy brood. They threaten to attack but are stopped by Malacoda, their leader, as he engages Virgil in conversation, and even offers to accompany our heroes on the next leg of their journey. Much excitement ensues and their leader releases an explosive burst of gas from his butt or, in Dante's words, "ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta" (he made a trumpet of his rump):

Per l’argine sinistro volta dienno;

ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta

coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;

ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.

They wheeled about along the left dike,

but not before each had thrust his tongue between 

his teeth in signal to their leader;

and he made a trumpet of his rump.

*    *    *

I grew up in a politically liberal yet sexually repressive household. My father and mother were born in 1918 and 1920, respectively, and I never saw them display affection with enjoyment or abandon. My father would arrive home from work at 5:00pm, and meet my mother in the kitchen. She would greet him cheerfully, and as their lips would touch, his gaze would meet mine with a furtive look of embarrassment, or even panic. When we watched the Jackie Gleason Show, with its sexy chorus girls in skimpy costumes, my dad would mutter "nothing but bums, all of them." He was fearful and disdainful of all things carnal, as was my mother, who was raised in a superstitious, Irish-Catholic household in Boston, with the remnants of 19th century moral codes guiding her conscience ("Marguerite, you know that the Blessed Mother frowns on little girls who whistle"). She squelched my own sexual expression early on in life (without revealing too much here's a snapshot: little boy, boner, bed) with a fierce glare.

I am always impressed and a little surprised when I encounter Canto XXI of L'Inferno, wherein the pious Dante delivers with gusto the imagery from the passage above. His delight in vulgarity is infectious, even if he disguises it by presenting it as the shameful product of a marauding band of demons. The plain truth is that Dante periodically indulges in vulgar bits of narrative, just as Chaucer did several decades later in The Canterbury Tales. Here's an excerpt from The Miller's Tale:

This Nicholas just then let fly a fart

As loud as it had been a thunder-clap,

And well-nigh blinded Absalom, poor chap;

But he was ready with his iron hot

And Nicholas right in the arse he got.

It's a dirty shame that things which come naturally to us as a species—the smelly, comically sonic marvels of flatulence, the unbridled enjoyment of animalistic sexual encounter, naughty delight in a dirty joke, unbridled promiscuity, empowerment to identify our own gender and sexual orientation —are arbitrarily relegated to the shadows of sin. Less than 500 years ago our carnal nature was factual. It was expected of us. We reveled in it. Michel Foucault wrote extensively on the subject of changing sexual mores and the first volume of his History of Sexuality begins with a bang: 

“At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax compared to those of the nineteenth century. It was a time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies “made a display of themselves.”

Reading Dante offers a glimpse of humanity's relationship with the illicit in medieval times, underscoring the notion that, whatever our proclivities or indulgences, we were born this way.

Inferno XX: The Diviners.

Inferno XX: The Diviners

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Dante arrives at a chasm which is "bathed in tears of agony," and beholds a gloomy, glacial procession of sinners. These are the diviners: magicians, soothsayers, fortune tellers, and military strategists who dared predict the future. Their perverse punishment is to possess a single mode of expression—incessant tears—while walking backwards with their heads twisted around.

*    *    *

We live where our attention is. When we direct our attention fully to the present moment, we are fully alive. —Eknath Easwaran 

The medieval church considered divination a form of heresy, usurping the omniscience of God as the sole author of fate. Dante's diviners are an absurd brood, weeping in an excruciatingly slow procession while walking backwards, with their heads twisted 180º to enable them to see where they are going.

I'm the least qualified person to discourse on present mindfulness. A consummate worrier, I've nevertheless made an effort, but failed, to "live in the present" over the years. Sure, I believe that the future is not yet a reality and the past cannot be changed, but I spend a lot of time wondering how the consequences of my past idiocy will haunt me in the future.

For years I had a couple of anxiety dreams about the future. One dream was so exquisitely metaphorical that I actually cherished it when it recurred several times, even though it terrified me when it inhabited my sleep. It involved a tornado on the distant horizon, a sure sign of impending doom and destruction. Sometimes I was in a car, and other times I was in some sort of structure—a glass skyscraper, a house, looking out a kitchen window. In each instance I was engrossed in some conversation or some other activity involving other people when my attention would be drawn to the window. Looking out, I would catch sight of the ominous ribbon of black dust and debris, always on the horizon (it had to remain there—otherwise it would be about the present). I would always wake before it tore my life apart.

The second dream was also a recurring narrative that haunted my sleep. It was much more disturbing than the tornado dream, and seemed to be as much about the past as it was about the future. I would find myself in a deep pit somewhere, unable to get out and eventually made aware that I was in the grave with someone I had killed, albeit accidentally. Panic would inevitably ensue when I realized that the body would soon be buried by others, whose voices I could hear approaching from the landscape above. I would soon be discovered and punished, a victim of my own transgressions.

I haven't had either of these dreams for many years, and I do think they stopped around the time that I came out to my kids and separated from the wonderful woman to whom I was married for 20 years. No more fear of consequences for that horrific, unintended crime (which was a metaphor for the secrets I was keeping, I'm sure). To this day, when I reflect on the realism of that dream, I have to remind myself that I'd never harm a fly, and that my future no longer includes fear of being outed as a metaphorical murderer.

Inferno XIX: Comeuppance.

Inferno XIX: The Simonists

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Our heroes have arrived at the lip of the third bolgia in the eighth circle of hell. Looking across the expanse of stone, they see spirits buried upside down in holes in the ground—dozens of legs kicking spasmodically as the soles of their feet are licked by oily flames. They are, no doubt, very uncomfortable, having been shoved head first into stone. These are the simonists, people who used ecclesiastical positions of power for personal gain, and among them is a particularly noteworthy offender.

*    *    *

"Sometimes, when I lack the motivation to get out of bed and start the day, I remember revenge..."

Thus spake a particularly witty friend on Facebook last week, delighting me with his self-mocking spitefulness. I'm happy to boast that I'm not a vindictive person, but I do love a good tale of revenge in film and literature. Farrah Fawcett in Extremities, imprisoning her vile attacker in a fireplace. Hansel and Gretel, giving the momentarily clueless witch a run for her money into a blazing oven. Hamlet, hell-bent and psychotically obsessed with avenging his father's fratricide. And of course, there's Steven King's Carrie, launching a blazing, telekinetic massacre in a high school gym while drenched on stage in pig's blood. You go, girl.

Dante sometimes seems all about retribution, and—like many before and after him—he deftly utilizes narrative fiction to skewer his nemeses, wresting complete control in life's infinite power struggle by indulging himself and his reader in wicked comeuppance for transgressors. Dante delights in the imaginary punishment of his contemporaries by an omnipotent God, and their humiliation is made all the more public in the incremental distribution of his poem to the populace.

It's no coincidence that the simonists are buried in holes that resemble baptismal fonts. This instrument of purification and rebirth is perfectly suited to Dante's exquisite irony, and the lead recipient of this punishment is none other than Pope Nicholas III, who foreshadows the eventual arrival of (in Dante's eyes) an even more deserving papal cad—Pope Bonafice, the political leader of the Black Guelphs, the group that banished Dante from his beloved Florence. 

Comeuppance is a word perfectly suited for the concept of exacted revenge, and Dante masterfully guides it in Canto XIX, as things are turned around, over and upside down with cruel yet delightful irony. 

Inferno XVIII: Fecal Matter

Inferno XVIII: Fecal Matter

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Dante has arrived in the eighth circle of Inferno, in the first of ten pouches (ditches) called the malebolge (translated as “evil pouches”). Here he witnesses a band of panderers (pimps, flatterers, et al), tormented by demons as they move in procession along the floor of the valley His gaze is arrested by the sight of one pathetic sinner whom he recognizes, covered with a thick layer of excrement.

*    *    *

Dante’s cruel sarcasm is on full display in his exchange with Alessio Interminei of Lucca, a flatterer who asks Dante why he feels compelled to stare him down more than the others. The retort is mean-spirited and antagonistic:

"Why, if I remember,

I saw you once before with dry hair.

You are Alessio Interminei of Lucca,

so I study you more than all the others.”

Dante’s towering literary reputation sometimes overshadows his arrogance and cruelty. He can be a tool, but he’s still funny as shit.

This is a shitty drawing in more ways than one. I’m pleased enough with the bottom half, but the top surrenders itself to whimsy, my eternal predilection. Not that whimsy can't be terrifying. Just ask the two foolish children who, lured by promises of treacle tarts by the androgynous, superficially mirthful Child Catcher, met sudden, horrifying entrapment in Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang. The bottom of my drawing is certainly whimsical, but there is to me more perversity in the characterizations and the way lines, visual hierarchy, and other formal/design decisions contribute to a sense of severe agony in its figures. I need to do something about the demons—they’re a bit more like characters from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show than the fierce antagonists they’re meant to be. Maybe I’ll simply obfuscate them in an inky cloud. Things are scarier when you can’t quite see them.

I need to study how imagery evolves this way for me, how some parts go wrong while other parts seem to fall in place almost effortlessly (although I should be careful to say that nothing ever feels effortless); how sketches sometimes seem more essential and honest than finished drawings or, conversely, how finished drawings finesse the seeds of simple ideas into more sophisticated form. I had a wonderful student once, Matt Leines, who had undertaken an independent study project with me. We met every week to discuss his ideas, and I recall at one point he came to me with an expression of frustration. He had a sketch—small and in a notebook—and he had a finished illustration—a bit larger. His question was simple: “why doesn’t this look like that?” In other words, what was it about the sketch that he had been unable to apprehend in the finished image? We went round and round and—apart from the typical technical explanations (eg.: perhaps his use of mediums didn’t translate well at larger scale and on a different substrate?) I think we ultimately decided that sometimes the honest impulse for mark-making, the exploration of form and meaning in its most naive, open and meandering mode of drawing and painting, is impossible to replicate.

So, some things turn to shit.

Inferno XVII: The Face of A Just Man

Inferno XVII: The Face of A Just Man

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

In this canto, Dante and Virgil meet Geryon, the winged monster of fraud, who rises from the abyss to transport them downward, from the edge of towering cliffs to the eighth circle of Inferno.

*    *    *

Geryon is an ancient mythic character whose early appearance in Greek myth bears little resemblance to the 14th century monster Dante created for Canto XVII of L’Inferno. Often freely transforming characters from history and literature (King Minos of Crete, for example, in Canto V, is transmogrified into a beastly guardian of hell with a serpent’s tail) Dante’s poetic license never fails to deliver with absolute potency the moral lessons he most wants to convey. And, truth be told, it’s easy to accept that once a character enters the underworld, just about anything can happen. Kings grow tails and mythic Greek monsters change costume.

The story is about to dedicate itself to the world of sins collectively known as fraud, a particularly detestable offense in Dante’s estimation. The eighth circle features the Malebolge, a sequence of ten ditches wherein fester perpetrators of all classes of fraud: panderers and seducers; flatterers, simoniacs (those who sold ecclesiastical favors); sorcerers; barrators (corrupt politicians); hypocrites; thieves; counsellors of fraud; sowers of discord; and falsifiers.

Geryon is described as the “foul effigy of fraud,” and this is expressed in his chimeric corporeality: he has a reptilian body, lavishly decorated and resembling a middle-eastern carpet. His arms are hairy and a deadly scorpion’s tail is concealed at the end of his enormous body. But his most fraudulent attribute is his deceptive visage: “the face of a just man.” 

Throughout La Commedia, Dante integrates significant use of the number three in imagery, structure and narrative. Robert Hollander brilliantly discusses Geryon as one of the most cleverly crafted metaphors of the poem: “This embodiment of fraud is thus presented as the counterfeit of Christ, three-in-one rather than one-in-three.”

I really loved making this drawing—the scale of the monster is extremely exaggerated in my conception, much bigger than I’ve seen him represented in the precedents I researched. And, on a technical note, somehow the pen behaved itself (for once) and I was able to pull it off to my satisfaction.

Inferno XVI: Getting Personal with the Sodomites

Inferno XVI: Getting Personal with the Sodomites

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Continuing his engagement with the depraved yet beloved souls in the Third Ring of the Seventh Circle, Dante chats with some comical characters, a trio of Florentine sodomites.

*    *    *

Brunetto Latini is left behind, and Virgil encourages Dante to stop and talk to a group of sodomites whose eccentric behavior is alternately absurd and endearing. The main speaker identifies himself as Jacopo Rusticucci, and his friends as Guido Guerra and Tegghiaio Aldobrandi. Highly regarded by Dante in life, these three Florentines were Guelphs who discouraged engagement in battle. The trio behaves with erratic absurdity, joining hands and running in circles as a sort of human wheel as they attempt to dodge the burning flakes of flame. They’re badly charred from their eternal exposure to fire. They question Dante about the state of Florentine politics.

Curiously, as Robert Hollander points out, it’s surprising and very odd that Dante once again treats a group of typically reviled sinners (sodomites) with such affection and respect, just as he did Brunetto Latini in Canto XV. It’s a puzzling aspect of the narrative, this graciousness bestowed upon homosexuals, but there you have it.

I made two versions of this drawing, the first (below, the only bit of it left after destroying it in my use of the ugly mess of paper as an ink blotter) being a complete failure after two full days of toil. I’m still a little unsure why I disliked it so much, but my conviction was profound enough to compel me to start again. I suspect my displeasure came from the lack of energy in the composition—the three guys simply formed a circle dropped in the center of the image. It was also a little too silly in my opinion, despite the relative levity of the scene described by Dante. 

As a 21st century sodomite, I’m much happier with the second, final iteration (top), perhaps because it became an opportunity for some personal critical commentary—a little jab at the bearded Boston bros who desperately cultivate an A-list image. Having hacked away of late at the jungle that is gay dating I think I’ve developed an ability to spot these guys pretty quickly. Most have the requisite muscles and beards—slaves to the trends that elicit a sort of conformist desire. Their Instagram feeds possess an exquisitely balanced ratio of sexy photos of themselves in the gym, sensitive shots of them lovingly playing with dogs or nieces or nephews alongside nocturnal images of Ptown weekends with the boys. Lots of teeth and tank tops. They overcompensate with abundant expressions of interest in sports and beer. They seem friendly, happy. They describe themselves openly as “laid back,” but their grimaces vaguely indicate a deeper underlying anxiety. 

What draws these men to places like Boston, with its competitive, cold, gay subculture? A desperate need for tribal belonging paired with a desire to be desired? Hell bent on transcending, once and for all, lonely childhoods filled with rejection? Tough to say, but so many of these men seem damaged by the time they’re 40, eating themselves alive as they inch toward late middle age.

Inferno XV: An Unexpected Reunion

Inferno XV: An Unexpected Reunion

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

Once Virgil has completed his lengthy parable of the Old Man of Crete, our heroes forge ahead in the seventh circle, eventually crossing paths with a gang of sodomites—those who have perpetrated violence against nature. At this juncture, Dante exchanges greetings with the mentor and guardian of his youth, Brunetto Latini.

*    *    *

Inferno XV features one of the oddest and least understood placements of personalities. This is the realm of the sodomites,  those nasty gents whose buggery has doomed them to the scalding sands of the seventh circle, eternally dodging flakes of flame that rain from the sky. Dante is shocked to encounter a beloved figure from his past, a gentleman named Brunetto Latini, who guided Dante for many years, intellectually, socially and morally. He greets Dante with a mix of joy, affection and desperation. But why is Brunetto—a revered and beloved figure in the life of Dante—punished so cruelly? He is condemned to a fate reserved for sodomites and yet there is no historical evidence that he was himself  homosexual, nor is there any revealing discussion of this confusing placement embedded in the dialogue.

The conception of this illustration came very naturally, as the starting point is rich: the potent irony of Dante, once the student, reversing roles with a former authoritative father figure (and I have to admit that I wondered if Brunetto’s appearance here was a way of hinting that some previously concealed and inappropriate man-boy dynamic existed); the somewhat desperate way that Brunetto reaches up to grasp Dante’s robe, and the possible erotic inferences in that movement. I felt as if my task here was to reference an unspoken (and still uncertain) past between the two characters, avoiding explicit commitment to anything sketchy but leaving open a few possibilities. 

Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete

Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

A fantastic interlude occurs in the fourteenth canto of L’Inferno as Virgil revives imagery from Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, an image of a giant statue made from various materials, from precious and strong on the top to crumbling clay at the bottom.

*    *    *

After leaving the Forest of Suicides Dante and Virgil traverse the burning sands of the the seventh circle of hell. Their conversation is set aside for a time as Virgil relates the allegory of the Old Man of Crete, an image borrowed from the second chapter of the Book of Daniel, in which the great King Nebudchadnezzar is visited by a dream of a giant statue, metaphorically composed of various materials—strong to weak, precious to worthless. In Virgil’s description the statue is an enormous colossus, emerging from the side of Mount Ida in Crete. 

The statue’s back faces Egypt, heretofore the world’s dominant society, and looks to Rome in deference to Christian rule. As a symbol of humanity’s crumbling moral and political fortitude it has a head of gold, arms and breast made of silver, bronze abdomen and thighs, and iron legs. His right foot, upon which he rests most of his weight, is made of crumbling, kiln baked clay, a symbol of the deteriorating institution of the medieval Catholic Church. He cries tears (through cracks in his body, not as I have depicted it in the illustration) which on the ground below create the four rivers of Inferno: Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus. 

This is my favorite drawing so far, in part because of the sheer complexity of the image I needed to make. I relied a bit on ancient conceptions of Nebudchadnezzar is developing the costume and styling of hair and beard (see below), and really enjoyed interpreting the various active aspects of the image, finding concise and iconic ways to indicate is gaze, the tears, the geography, and materiality.