Escapism

On flight and dueling desires, and Dante’s hell

Photo mine, shot on a day when I needed the almost-endlessness of water and sky.

Cari amici,

It’s taken more than a week for my brain to recover¹ from election trauma²; until now I’ve been barely able to speak much less write. And my Italian-language skills, both comprehension and speech, tanked. Not that I couldn’t have understood what I heard; instead, my panicked thoughts left me barely able to hear what was being said. As for speaking, my mind was a blank screen that had once held everything I ever knew about Italian.

I’m better now, and my Italian has returned to normal, for the most part. But worry—about things like my children’s access to healthcare, the hate and racist violence that my Asian American family members and friends might face, and my own dismal future if America’s incoming dictator makes good on all his claims—has triggered my sometimes-latent-but-always-there desire to escape.

But wait, you say—you’ve already escaped! Have I? Living in Italy, where upcoming regional elections will reveal whether we’ll continue our lean toward the far right, doesn’t put me in some kind of bubble. I also live in Europe, where half a dozen countries have far right governments in power. And no matter which nation we call home, we all inhabit a beleaguered planet that’s careening, dangerously and terrifyingly, toward what my father fought against in World War II and toward a self-destruction brought on by climate change, which will only get worse with money-grubbing cretins in power. All of this triggers my tendency to flee rather than fight, even though flight will get me, and you, and us, nowhere.

Flight is in my DNA, apparently. I’ve always been restless, eager for change, in love with the new. As a young child I knew I would, someday, leave my native Virginia. I didn’t know where I would go (I had, perhaps, a more aimless tendency than most of my peers by the time I was old enough to think things through), but I knew I wanted out. I wasn’t unhappy. I loved my family. But I’ve always sought more: a feeling, knowledge, a revelation. Something inside me has always urged me: Go, go. It’s why I write fiction, because on the page I live without boundaries.

Are you like this? If so, you know it’s a confounding state of being. As much as I want to get out of Dodge, I also crave a stable home, a community. Flight doesn’t require permanent relocation, of course, but I’m always dreaming of moving. Even small, temporary wanderings ignite a kind of duality in me. Some days I feel frozen in limbo because of two well-matched, warring desires: to stay home (thus indulging my introvert nature) and to set off for some unexplored place (thus satisfying my need for the new).

Recently I had dinner with an Italian friend who understands these twinned desires, to stay and to go. The urge to escape—and the knowledge that it comes with a price—first resonated with her when she read Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno in high school. There, Odysseus explains what led him, a “counselor of fraud,” as Dante puts it, to be condemned to the Eighth Circle of Hell. The passage³ describes Odysseus’ compulsion to see the world:

“When

I departed from Circe, who held me back

more than a year there near Gaeta,

before Aeneas gave it that name,

neither the sweetness of a son, nor compassion for

my old father, nor the love owed to Penelope,

which should have made her glad,

could conquer within me the ardor

that I had to gain experience of the world

and of human vices and worth;

but I put out on the deep, open sea alone,

with one ship and with that little company

by which I had not been deserted.

The one shore and the other I saw as far as Spain,

as far as Morocco, and the island of the Sardinians

and the others whose shores are bathed by that sea.

I and my companions were old and slow

when we came to that narrow strait

which Hercules marked with his warnings

so that one should not go further;

[…] and, turning our stern toward the morning,

of our oars we made wings for the mad flight[.]

See? Odysseus knew he was pushing the envelope with his “mad flight.” Then came the consequences Dante made him suffer:

[…] there appeared to us a mountain, dark

in the distance, and it seemed to me higher

than any I had seen.

We rejoiced, but it quickly turned to weeping;

for from the new land a whirlwind was born

and struck the forequarter of the ship.

Three times it made the ship to turn about with all the waters

at the fourth to raise its stern aloft

and the prow to go down, as it pleased another,

until the sea had closed over us.”

If Dante considered this urge—to go, search, escape, discover—a compulsion deserving of hell, I won’t argue with him. In fact, I’d say it’s a particular kind of hell all on its own.

If you’re feeling the urge to flee but there’s no ship at your disposal, never fear. The more banal version of “leaving it all behind” doesn’t even demand that you leave your house, though long walks in places of beauty make for meditative balm. Lately I can’t focus enough to read, so I’ve been self-distracting (cioè, escaping) by bingeing the series The Americans⁴—maybe a strange choice considering the timing (but see footnote). At least it’s making me think.

Tante belle cose. Alla prossima (which, since I’m leaving soon to go to my son’s wedding, will be in a few weeks).

Cheryl

Italian phrases of the day

Here are a couple of new-to-me words and expressions I’ve heard lately.

• Speriamo di essere all’altezza! (translates to “Let’s hope I’m up to the task!”) (h/t: Elena)

• minchiarimento (which in popular usage, even by an Italian linguist (Vera Gheno), means “mansplaining,” though Reverso will insist on the neutral blandness of “clarification”) (h/t: Giorgia)

• Don’t make the mistake I did in translating a play of mine, when I had some female characters describe themselves as buone donne. In vernacular Italian, that’s the same as saying puttane. If you want to say they’re good women, call them brave instead. (That’s the feminine plural form of bravo, if you’re one of those opera- or ballet-goers who yell “bravo!” at female performers.)

Poem of the day

Let’s let L’Inferno speak for itself, shall we? Here are the passages quoted above as Dante wrote them.

“Quando

Mi diparti’ da Circe, che sottrasse

me più di un anno là presso a Gatea,

prima che si Enëa la nomasse,

né dolcezza di figlio, né la pieta

del vecchio padre, né ’l debito amore

lo qual dovea Penelopè far lieta,

vincer potero dentro a me l’ardore

ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esparto

e di li vizi umani e del valore;

ma misi me per l’alto mare aperto

sol con un legno e con quella compagna

picciola da la qual non fui diserto.

L’un lito e l’altro vidi infin la Spagna,

fin nel Morrocco, e l’isola d’i Sardi

e l’altre che quel mare intorno bagna.

Io e ’ compagni eravam Vecchi e tardi

quando venimmo a quella foce stretta

dov’ Ercule segnò li suoi riguardi

acciò che l’uom più oltre non si metta;

[…] e volta nostra poppa  nel mattino,

de’ remi facemmo ali al folle volo[.]”

[…] n’apparve una montagna bruna

per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto

quanto veduta non avëa alcuna.

Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto,

ché della nova terra un turbo nacque

e percosse del legno il primo canto.

Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l’acque,

a la quarta levar la poppa in suso

e la prora ire in giù, com’ altrui piacque,

infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso.”

P.S. My book! Which you can buy here or on the usual sites, or, better yet, order it from your local bookstore. Another fab option is to ask your library to stock it. If you read it and like it, please tell your friends and/or leave a few lines of praise on any bookish site. You’d be surprised how much a rating or review helps authors. Baci!

1. I’m using this term very loosely.

2. If you support Agent Orange in any way, feel free to unsubscribe. Any comments to that effect will be removed.

3. Edited and translated by Robert M. Durling.

4. At this particular point in history, I’m taking morbid pleasure in watching a show about Russian spies and assets in cold-war America.

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