the symphonies of hell

Tickling my ivories and dovetailing comfortably with an uninformed bias....

Yesterday, I was skipping through television channels in search of some alpha waves when I paused briefly at a History Channel presentation about the Christian vision of hell. When it comes to scaring the crap out of people, I'm not sure who is more adept -- the Republicans with their visions of the next righteous war or the Christians depicting a toasty and horrific afterlife.

Anyway, since I live in a Christian culture, I paused. And one of the assertions I found interesting was that it was not the apostles or the Bible that brought Cecil B. DeMille to the realms of Christian hell ... it was the poets and other tale-tellers who came much later. Notably, among others, John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and, probably more important, Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" ... and more specifically, within that work, "The Inferno."

At the time he wrote "The Inferno" and depicted its nine levels of descending and increasing horror, Dante was probably about 35 and was, among other things, a pissed off young man. Due to his political alliances, he had been exiled and his wealth put under strain by the papacy and other political forces of the time. The worst of his hell realms -- the apex of awful -- was reserved for a couple of popes who had screwed Dante over. Sure, there were punishments for wrath, greed, gluttony, pride, lust, envy and sloth, but in Dante's hands, the hands of a poet, they took on a very graphic reality ... with the worst reserved for those who had done him wrong.

It tickled my ivories to think that it was a poet who might come down through the ages, tormenting those who did not live up to approved and sometimes ornamental values. The Bible might refer to hell in passing, but it was the ornamental symphony of a poet that hung baubles on the Christmas tree: Let me tell you how awful, terrible, horrific and fiery things can get! Dante may have created the Harry Potter not just of his times but of times yet to come.

The poet or prognosticator who can depict the blissful climes is bound to attract a swooning audience. Amen, brother! A-A-A-A-M-E-N! But isn't it true that where good news provokes an as-yet-unfounded hope, it's the fires of hell that strike the most alluring notes? The gouging, fiery sorrows win a hands-down roar of public approval because, what the hell, everyone has had their ox gored at one time or another; everyone has felt the lash of loss; everyone has been hurt and that pain is concrete and empirical. The bad stuff, the worries and the sorrow are verifiable in an individual life. Bliss might be nice, but discombobulation is fershur. And we bless the name of the poet who weaves our worries.

Who wouldn't lend an ear to the poet, the tale-weaver, whose depictions related to down-home experience, to a very reliable hell? As with the Republican agenda, it is ever so much more credible when the bad stuff is trotted out.

And what is true without is also true within, I imagine. The punishments, the worries and the woes come together in a symphony of credulity. There may be an element that wails, "Get me out of here!" but the fact is that the symphony is often lovely and beloved and if I did, somehow, "get out of here," my life would be gob-stopped and quite possibly boring as hell. Bliss, by whatever name, carries with it a very real promise of hell-fire.

As with all hard things, the escape route is not "out" but rather "in." Using bliss to eradicate sorrow is to enhance the square knots of that sorrow. For those fatigued by their own poetry, there is no option other than going to hell. Bliss is for bimbos. Hell is the road to any honest salvation.

And one of the first steps is to step back and allow the likes of Dante or Milton or the Bible or the Tripitaka to get some rest. OK, it's all wondrous and wide and sustaining and beautiful and horrific ... but give it a rest. There is hell ... really, really -- there is hell ... now what?

Thaddeus Golas, the author of "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment," once observed, "When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven." At one level, this is one of those smarmy, fortune-cookie nostrums that all spiritual expositors can drop like so many candy wrappers... they've got the candy, you get the wrapper. But at another level, it's a pretty good observation -- one that invites the audience to stop applauding their hellish symphonies and find out for themselves.

Sure, it's scary as hell, but what other option is there for someone who has tired of an ornate and poetic symphony of horror?