Hope and Despair
E.A. Poe described a prisoner of the Inquisition and his tortures by the pit and the pendulum.
He is bound to a table with a pendulum above his body slowly, rhythmically closing in on him, etc. There is no inquisitor to beg to, but layers of chambers of architectural ingenuity. He is tortured well, to many points of agony and despair. The life inside the completely dark prison drives him crazy.
On the other hand, his realisation of the situation enables him. The church is his accuser, so he might be accused of wizardry. But he is no half god, he is just a victim awaking in darkness. Awaken, he has his mind to make sense of his surroundings, he is able to hope, contrarily to before, when he had to endure the physical tortures. The darkness allows him to meditate, to search for cracks, for a way to make the walls fall into the right direction, no matter how dangerous his surroundings. This research “is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”(Camus), even if he is a victim.
But finally in his cell with the walls closing in, towards a pit, a well, an abyss, the most terrifying of his challenges, the lost of hope. He begs for death:
“Death,” I said, “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or, if even that, could I withstand its pressure And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back — but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink — I averted my eyes —
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.
The redemption by the French is a fitting metaphor! In opposition to the existential-ontological acceptance of the miserable life, the victim expresses his subjectivity by screaming. He is subject to the inquisition with no words left to make sense of the despair. He needs help, which is, as always, provided by your friendly neighborhood Frenchmen.
After this fantastic happy end, I want to ask the author, if there is a the ground of the font. Deus ex Militia, the god of the revolutionary army comes to the rescue. General Lasalle is the figure of salvation because the victim that has nothing left to lose.
Luckily, Poe had written a prequel about the abyss five years earlier:
Suction and Addiction
1845 Poe described a Descent into the Maelstrom. A sailor found himself in the sucking, swirling vortex of the Maelstrom, about which no sailor ever lived to talk before.
“I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power. I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make ; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man’s mind in such extremity”.
This madness to the point of a deathwish imposed by the situation reflects another aspect of the modern life: addiction. The victim is tempted to accept his situation by identification with it. The Maelstrom’s noise is so breathtaking that it suppresses every thought, which gives an impression of a calm silence. Meanwhile paddling against the swirl is agonising, exhausting, and seem desperate. The faster he paddles, the faster he sinks. This realisation is his escape.
“It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation.”
With a clear mind he starts a seemingly paradox movement. In actu it is educated by “an old-school master of the district”(Archimedis), while his brother judges the situation by its appearance, and in the state of noise, he can’t understand reasoning. The realising victim jumps off the missleading security of the boat onto a waster cask. His brother does not follow.
“I was borne violently into the channel of the Ström, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the ‘grounds’ of the fishermen. A boat picked me up — exhausted from fatigue — and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily companions — but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story — they did not believe it. I now tell it to you — and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.”
The movements of addiction, that is the production of surplus value and accumulation of capital, too, are spiral movements, and the more they paddle, the faster they close in towards the abyss. Hope is generated by hopelessness, by capitulation. The powerless acceptance of weakness and desperation opens up a new horizon, but only for those who do not want identify defeat with death.
And the fast aging – desperately countered by selfcare and antiaging creams of all sorts – became a prominent metaphor not only the industrial culture (Buffy Season 3 Ep. 1) In the description of the escape as a rebirth, the metaphysical implications are fitting. They are essential for many rehabilitating addicts, as are their expectations of unfaithful fishermen.
Lastly I want to mention another two pictures, by Benjamin this time, that might differ from the “emergency break”. The angel of history and Scipio Africanus. I might do it tomorrow.
History and Progres
