Katabasis (Kuang)

[jsburbidge]

This book does a switch in models as it moves along, although it becomes evident only at the end.

 

There are two different traditions of stories about dealing with the dead. the first is the set of Ishtar - Demeter - Orpheus - Heracles stories about going into hell to get someone back. (In the western canon proper the wholly successful instance is Heracles saving Alcestis.) The second is the (more literary) stories of dealing with the dead to find out about yourself, or the future. This begins with the Nekuia in the Odyssey, in which Odysseus doesn't actually descend to the underworld, but only to its borders, to consult with Teiresias, but meets with a flock of shades of those he knew. In Virgil there is an actual descent (Facilis descensus Averno: Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis; Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est) for prophesy delivered by Anchises about the future, his own and his descendants. Dante's voyage through the three parts of the afterlife are patterned on Virgil: the end result of the threefold vision is the knowledge of self and of the order of the world.

 

Katabasis starts out by looking like the first, and ends up as the second, with a neat pivot which is not complete until the second last chapter. Between those two points it proceeds through an underworld which is rather like Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio laid in top of one another. There are other traditions of the afterlife as well - it's understood that the end of it is reincarnation, very un-Dantean but grounded in Virgil, although one does have to reflect that nothing seems to be really known about the equivalent to the Elysian Fields in this model. And there is a notable contribution of Eastern gods of the dead.

 

The skewering of the worst of academia is sometimes funny and sometimes more depressing. I recall graduate school, and have no interest in doing it again. It is particularly effective in its take on the City of Dis..

 

Ultimately, building on Dante, this is primarily a journey of self-discovery and redemption (small r), and finally ends hopefully, with a reference to the last line of the Inferno: "e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle".
 

Comments

[graydon]

I think that's the first time I've seen someone compare grad school to the City of Dis.

An intriguing review!