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<h1 class="center">Under the Volcano Study Guide - Chapter 6</h1>
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<td valign="top">156</td>
<td>Nel mezzo ...<br>
<br>
Dante's <em>Inferno</em>, I, 1-2:<br>
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita<br>
mi ritrovai per una selca oscura<br>
('Midway this way of life we're bound upon,<br>
I woke to find myself in a dark wood') </td>
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<td valign="top">156</td>
<td>Twenty-nine clouds (Etc.)<br>
<br>
"The journalistic style of the first part is intended to represent Hugh himself" (SL, 77) </td>
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<td valign="top">156</td>
<td>A.E Housman:<br>
<br>
Death is a central theme in his cycle of poems "A Shropshire Lad", 1896.</td>
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<td valign="top">157</td>
<td>lead the whole Jewish race out of Babylon:<br>
<br>
A reference to the Babylonian captivity, <em>2 Kings</em>, 24, 25 </td>
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<td valign="top">158</td>
<td>Is it nothing to all ye who pass by:<br>
<br>
Lanentations, I, 12. </td>
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<td valign="top">159</td>
<td>City of Destruction:<br>
<br>
Christian's 'progress' in Bunyan's <em>Pilgrim's Progress</em> (1676) begins when he is persuaded to leave the city of Destruction.</td>
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<td valign="top">159</td>
<td>Mahatma Gandhi ... Jawaharlal Nehru:<br>
<br>
Gandhi (1896-1948) and Nehru (1889-1964) were both involved in the fight for Indian independence from England. </td>
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<td valign="top">160</td>
<td>Ed(die) Lang:<br>
<br>
(1902-33), virtuoso jazz guitarist. </td>
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<td valign="top">161</td>
<td>George Frederic Watts<br>
<br>
(1817-1904), painter and sculptor </td>
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<td valign="top">161</td>
<td>Segovia...<br>
<br>
(1893- ). His international reputation as the foremost guitarist of his time was established already in the 1920's. Django Reinhardt (1910-1953), jazz guitarist, "generally considered the sole European jazz musician of true originality" (15 EB). Frank Crumit (1889-1943), musician and actor. </td>
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<td valign="top">163</td>
<td><p>Philoctetes (and <em>Oedipus Tyrannus</em>)<br>
<br>
"Both of Hugh's ships, the <em>Philoctetes</em> and the <em>Oedipus Tyrannus</em>, are naned after Sophoclean plays. In the former, the relationship between Philoctetes and the older Neoptolemus is psychologically parallel to that betwen Hugh and Geoffrey. In the latter, an inexorable fate determines Oedipus' destiny as a similar one does Geoffrey's" (TK, 179) </p></td>
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<td valign="top">163</td>
<td>Gix Beiderbecke:<br>
<br>
i.e. Leon Bismarck Beiderbecke (1903-31). Jazz trumpet player. Joined Frank Trumbauer in St. Louis in 1926. Died an alchoholic at 28. The recordings of <em>Singin' the Blues</em> and <em>I'm Coming, Virginia</em> with him remain classics. A Beiderbecke cult began in 1928 following upon the publication of Dorothy Baker's romanticiezed biographical novel <em>Young Man with a Horn</em>. </td>
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<td valign="top">169</td>
<td>Conrad ... typhoons<br>
<br>
Joseph Conrad was a captain in the English Merchant Navy before turning novelist. The stroy referred to is "Typhoon" (1902). </td>
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<td valign="top">169</td>
<td>Videre: videre:<br>
<br>
See also Nordahl Grieg, <em>Skibet gaar viders </em>(1924) (<em>The Ship Sails On</em>) which, together with Conrad Aiken's <em>Blue Voyage</em> (1927), exercised the most powerful literary influence on <em>Ultramarine</em> (1933), Lowry's first novel. <em>Blue Voyage</em> was dedicated to C.M.L (i.e. Clarissa Lorenz). She claims Lowry thought the book had beed dedicated to him ("Call It Misadventure", PsS, 59). </td>
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<td valign="top">173</td>
<td>Lord Jim, about to pick up pilgrims:<br>
<br>
In chapter 2 of <em>Lord Jim</em> </td>
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<td valign="top">178</td>
<td>Goat old boy<br>
<br>
Pun on (Dr.) Gotelby</td>
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<td valign="top">180</td>
<td>Gone up to _ :<br>
<br>
Cambridge </td>
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<td valign="top">180</td>
<td>"Help"<br>
<br>
The Consul is asking Hugh to help him in getting shaved. </td>
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<td valign="top">180</td>
<td>wheels within wheels<br>
<br>
See Also <em>Ezekiel</em>, 1:16, 10:10 </td>
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<td valign="top">181</td>
<td>(The Consul's books)<br>
<br>
As we see them, "we are ... standing before the evidence of what is no less than the magical basis of the world. You do not believe the world has a magical basis...? Well, perhaps I don't either. But the point is that Hitler did. And Hitler was another pseudo black magican .... who has had the same inevitable fate. And if you don't belive that a British general actually told me that the real reason why Hitler destroyed the Polish Jews was to prevent their cabbalistic knowledge being used against him you can let me have my point on poetical grounds .. since it is made at a a very sunken level of the book and is not very important here anyway" (SL, 76).<br>
<br>
"With few exceptions, every book in Geoffrey's library has some functional role in the novel. <em>Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie</em> by Eliphas Levi was a key book in the 19th century for the magical analysis of religions ... The novel <em>Vice Versa</em> is pertinent as the story of the misadventures of Mr. Bultitude, a father who, by the action of an Indian charm, is transformed into the physical appearance of his schoolboy son, while the son takes the outward form of the father, each retaining his original mental characteristics. The relationship of Geoffrey and his father also has a transposable quality directly related to the Himalayas. The final parody on the exile from Paradise is intended by including <em>Peter Rabbit</em> in the library ... In Beatrix Potter's story the rabbit leaves his burrow to play in the forbidden garden where the Chief Gardener chases him causing him to lose his jacket, as does Geoffrey" (TK, 179-81). <br>
<br>
"Serpent and Siva Worship and Mythology in Central America, Africa, and Asia" (London, Trubner & Co, 1876) by Hyde Clark is a 14 page anthropolocial tract. <em>The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King</em>, translated into the english Tongue by a Dead Hand ... by Aleister Crowley (London, 1904). Constance Garnett's translation of the works of Gogol appeared in 1922-28. <em>Dead Souls</em> was a major influence on Lowry. The Mahabharata is the Hindu epic from which Lowry quotes at the beginning of ch. V. Titles such as <em>The Promised Land </em>(London, 18996) and <em>The Kingdom of the Dead </em>(1900) by the Danish writer Henrik Pontoppidan (8157-1943) might have caught the Consul's attention. The <em>Upanishads</em> are from the Hindu <em>Vedas</em>. The Mermaid Series published by Fisher Unwin in London (By Scribner's in the U.S.) 1903-9 did not include a Marson volume. <em>All Quiet on the Western Front </em>(1929), the title of Erich Maria Remaruq'e popular classic of World War I. The <em>Clicking of Cuthbert</em> is an early novel by P.G Wodehouse, also published under the title <em>Golf Without Trears</em>. The <em>Rig Veda</em> is the oldest and most important of the <em>Vedas</em>. Hugh seems to think the Sanskrit title means 'God Knows'. The OED gives the meaning as 'praise' + 'knowledge'. </td>
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<td valign="top">182</td>
<td>Siegebert of East Englia:<br>
<br>
i.e., Siegebert (or Segeberht), King of East Anglia c. 630-634. Abdicated and retired to a monastery. Bede calls him 'uir per omnia Christianissimus ac doctissimus". See <em>Bede's Ecclesiastical Histroy of the English People</em>. </td>
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<td valign="top">182</td>
<td>John Corford:<br>
<br>
Eldest son of F. M. Cornford, who fought with Lowry's friend, the writer John Sommerfield, in the Spanish Civil War. He was killed in 1936, 21 years old. </td>
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<td valign="top">183</td>
<td>Bill Plantagenet:<br>
<br>
The name of the protagonist in Lowry's unfinished <em>Lunar Caustic</em>. Sherlock Court is in St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.</td>
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<td valign="top">183</td>
<td>the world hurling from all havens astern<br>
<br>
See Melville's Moby Dick, ch. 96, where Ishmael describes "a strange (and ever since inexplicable) thing" that occurred to him at the wheel of the Pequod: "Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. ... Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. ... Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with my back to her prow and the compass". </td>
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<td valign="top">185</td>
<td>Thalavethiparothiam: <br>
<br>
Thalavethiparothiam is the "custom observed in Malabar, a competition for the privilege of being decapiated after a five years' reign". See Frazer, <em>The Golden Bough</em>, 3rd ed.. Frazer has "authority obtained by decapitation", p. 53. </td>
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<td valign="top">186</td>
<td>John<br>
<br>
i.e. John Sommerfield </td>
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<td valign="top">187</td>
<td>a little self-knowledge:<br>
<br>
See Alexander Pope's <em>Essay on Criticism </em>(1.215), 'A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing." </td>
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<td valign="top">190</td>
<td>jacket ... Hugh had borrowed:<br>
<br>
which contains the carbon copy of the telegram (signed "Firmin") that Hugh read over at the beginning of Chapter 4. </td>
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<td valign="top">191</td>
<td>Coclogenus paca Mexico:<br>
<br>
obscure </td>
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<td valign="top">191</td>
<td>Der englische Dampfer<br>
<br>
(Germ.) 'The English steamer carries dazzle-paint to protect it against German submarines'. </td>
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<td valign="top">191</td>
<td>So verliess ich ...:<br>
<br>
(Germ.) 'How I left the continent of out Antipodes'. </td>
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<td valign="top">192</td>
<td>my Boehme:<br>
<br>
i.e., the Consul's edition of the works of the German mystic Jakob Boehme (1575-1624). </td>
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<td valign="top">192</td>
<td>(The Consul't books)<br>
<br>
Lowry may have come across <em>A Treatise of Sulphur</em> in <em>A New Light of Alchymie</em>: ... To which is added a <em>Treatise of Svlphvr</em>: written by <em>Micheel Sandivogius</em>: i.e. Anagrammatically, Divi Leschi Genus Amo, a widely distributed workd (Eng. trans. by John French, London, 1650) which included <em>Nine Books of the Nature of Things</em>, written by Paracelsus.<br>
<em>The Hermetical Triumph </em>by Dives sicut Ardnes S***, i.e. A.T. Limojon de Saint-Didier, originally published in Amsterdam 1689, was translated into English and published in Lodon in 1723.<br>
<em>The Secrets Reveal'd: Or, An Open Entrance to the Shut-Palace [sic] of the King </em>appeared in London in 1669. <em>The Musaeum Hermeticum</em>: (Lat.) 'The Hermetic Museum. Revisd and enlarged, teaching all disciples the sophospagyric art most faithfully, how that great and true medicine of the philosopher's stone may be found and possessed, whereby all things suffered from whatever defect may be cured'. Sopho-spagyric art is that combination of alchemy and medicine practised by the followers of Paracelsus (1493-1541). The book was printed in 1678 and contains the <em>Novi Luminus Chemici Tractatus Alter de Sulphure </em>(in Latin) by Michael Sendivogius.<br>
<em>Sub-Mundanes </em>appears to be the most recently published of the books mentioned here. For not obvious reason Lowry's text differes somewhat from the original: SubMundanes; or, The Elementaries of the Cabala: Being The History of Spirits. Reprinted from the Text of Abbe de Billars, Physio-Astro-Mystic, Wherein is asserted that there are in existance on earth rational creatures besides man. With an illustrative Appendix from the Work "Demonicality", or "Incubi and Succubi", by the Rev. Father Sinistrari, of Ameno. ... Bath, 1886. </td>
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<td valign="top">192</td>
<td>Erekia ... Ramisen:<br>
<br>
Lowry found the catalogue of evil spirits in Chapter XIX of MacGregor-Mather's <em>The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage</em>, London, 1898; one of the most patently spurious works on Cabbalism, according to A.E. Waite (<em>The Holy Kabbalah</em>, 49). </td>
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<td valign="top">193</td>
<td>why don't we go to the zoo?:<br>
<br>
Yvonne continues her speech ('One always heard ...') from a previous page </td>
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<td valign="top">194</td>
<td>Job's warhorse<br>
<br>
Described in Job, 39:19-25 </td>
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<td valign="top">195</td>
<td>zoo ... infernal regions:<br>
<br>
"There were, also, edifices appropriated to objects of quite another kind. One of these was an immense aviary, in which birds of splendid plumage were assembled from all parts of the empire. Here was the scarlet cardinal ... Adjoining this aviary was a menagerie of wild animals .... The collection was still further swelled by a greate number of reptiles and serpents ... The rude followers of Cortes ... gazed on the spectacle with a vague curiosity not unmixed with awe; and, as they listenned to the wild cries of the ferocious animals and the hissings of the serpents, they almost fancied themselves in teh infernal regions". Prescott IV from 'Stout Cortez'</td>
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<td valign="top">195</td>
<td>Alacran<br>
<br>
(Span) 'scorpion'</td>
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<td valign="top">195</td>
<td>A curious bird is the scorpion. He cares not for priest nor for poor peon:<br>
<br>
Echoes Dixon Lanier Merritt's limerick "The Pelican" (1910) :<br>
<br>
A wonderful bird is the pelican,<br>
His bill will hold more than his belican.<br>
He can take in his beak<br>
Food enough for a week<br>
But I'm damned if I see how the helican. </td>
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<td valign="top">195</td>
<td>666:<br>
<br>
Also the number of the beast from the earth in <em>Revelation</em>, 13:1-18, and the occult signature used by Aleister Crowley (1875-1954). </td>
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<td valign="top">196</td>
<td>Pathans:<br>
<br>
The name applied in India to the Afghans. </td>
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<td valign="top">196</td>
<td><em>Nemesis, a pleasant ride:</em><br>
<br>
foreshadows the death of the Consul.</td>
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<td valign="top">196</td>
<td><em>No se permite fijar anuncios</em>:<br>
<br>
(Span.) 'No bill posting'</td>
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<td valign="top">196</td>
<td><em>Father is waiting ... forgotten:</em><br>
<br>
As if spoken by the goats. Their father is the aggressive goat from Chapter 4 "sill on the warpath". </td>
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<td valign="top">197</td>
<td>Guelphs:<br>
<br>
Medieval Italian party which supported the Pope. </td>
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<td valign="top">197</td>
<td>no angel with six wings is ever transformed<br>
<br>
This is the 30th of the Cabbalistic Conclusions originally published in Rome in 1486 by Picus de Mirandula (from A.E Waite, <em>The Holy Kabbalah</em>). </td>
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<td valign="top">197</td>
<td>Telluris Theoria Sacra<br>
<br>
Burnet's <em>Theory of the Earth</em>: "Containing an account of the origin of the earth, and the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the consummation of aoll things", London 1681, 1684; 1689, 1690. It "considered the world a mighy ruin, a damaged paradise caused by sin and the Flood" (TK). Thomas Burnet (1635?-1715) entered Christ's College, Camgridge, in 1654. </td>
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<td valign="top">197</td>
<td>Cascaras! ... Ay, que me matan!:<br>
<br>
(Span.) "Shells! Snails! Holy Virgin. Ave Maria! Fire, fire! Alas, how they kill me!" </td>
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<td valign="top">197</td>
<td>Acabose:<br>
<br>
(Span.) 'the last straw'. The Consul has sighted Lauruelle, whose arrival is symbolically heralded by the aeroplane. </td>
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<td valign="top">198</td>
<td>old bean<br>
<br>
i.e., the Consul </td>
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<td valign="top">198</td>
<td>il vient d' arriver:<br>
<br>
(Fr.) 'He has just arrived' </td>
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<td valign="top">199</td>
<td>cartero:<br>
<br>
(Span.) 'postman' </td>
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<td valign="top">199</td>
<td>for your horse<br>
<br>
i.e., 'house' </td>
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<td valign="top">199</td>
<td>Senor Caligula<br>
<br>
Caligula, the Roman emperor, planned to appoint his favourite horse, Incitatus, a consul in Rome. The Consul's reply is, of course, occasioned by the postman's faulty English. </td>
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<td valign="top">201</td>
<td>... and vanished<br>
<br>
"The chapter closes with a dying fall, like the end of some guitar piece of Ed Lang's, or conceivably Hugh's (and in this respect the brackets eariler might represent the 'breaks') -- oddly but rightly, I felt, the path theme of Dante, however, reappearing and fading with the vanishing road" (SL, 76). </td>
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