BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA (06/26/85)
From: Bard Bloom <BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA> > Thought I'd ask all you SciFi nuts about a book I've been trying to > (re)find for years. I could swear the word 'belt' or 'timebelt' was > used someplace in the title. The story is about a guy who got a belt > for his birthday from a relative. The belt is supposed to allow him > to travel in time... While putting on the belt and doubtfully > looking it over, he gets a knock on his door. He opens the door to David Gerrold's _The_Man_Who_Folded_Himself_ comes to mind. My several-year-old memories don't quite match yours, but close enough. Bard -------
KATZ@USC-ISIF.ARPA (06/26/85)
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ@USC-ISIF.ARPA> Probably others have/will answer this, but the time belt story is: "The Man who Folded Himself" by David Gerrold (I think its Gerrold). Its a pretty good book, but can be read rather quickly. Alan -------
SY.SLOGIN@CU20B.ARPA (06/27/85)
From: Thomas De Bellis <Sy.SLogin@CU20B.ARPA>
Dear Davis,
I have followed your `Problems of Science Fiction Today' with some
interest. Recently however, you said something that surprised me and
I would be interested if you elaborated on it some more. Here is your
phrase:
` But let us return to modern novel, starting with "Don Quixote De La
Mancha" and Dante's "Inferno", "Purgatorio", and "Paradiso". '
I have been a student of Italian at Columbia University for the past
five years and a student of Spanish for the past three; I feel
uncomfortable about drawing such parallels between the two works.
Consider the following facts: the date of the composition of `Don
Quixote de la Mancha' can be said to occur somewhere between roughly
1606 and 1615. The composition of the Divine Comedy can easily be
placed at at least 300 years before that. It is also easy to find
historical precedents for ideas in the Divine Comedy in previous works
by the author such as `La Vita Nuova' which dates from before the turn
of the century. Specifically, I refer to the idea of `La Donna
Angelica'.
While I might agree with that Don Quixote could be viewed as a
precursor to the modern novel, I don't think that the Divine Comedy
can be seen as such. The work is an epic poem, the story of a journey
in the tradition of the Odyssey or the Aeneid. Perhaps if you have
read it in translation, this may have escaped you, but in Italian it
is a poem (and one of the most beautiful ever written, I might add).
I can't see it as a modern novel any more than I can see the Odyssey
or the Aeneid as a modern novel. It does not in any way grapple with
the modern world. It explains the medieval and parts of the classical
world in terms of Catholic dogma. Certainly, some liberties are taken
(most notably with the devils who take people's souls before they are
dead in the fifth Malebolge), but the work can not be seen to have a
`thematic leap into the modern world of shades of grey,
existentialism, its willingness to grapple with insanity and
hatred and love and lust from the inside, not the surface.'
Things are very black and white for Dante. Either you are damned or
you're saved. If you are damned, you're damned, pure and simple. The
fact that he sheds many a tear in the Inferno for damned souls (the
example of Paulo and Francesca comes to mind) is used to underline the
fact that Dante himself is not saved since the blessed can not feel
rimorse for the fate of the damned. It is in no way indicative of a
`modern world state of grey', it is indicative of a fault of Dante
that still remains to be purged. Likewise, if you saved, then you're
saved. You may have to wait a long time in Purgatory to get into
Paradise, but you are still saved. Consider the green angels from
Mary that come and guard the penetant souls in the first part of
Purgatory. They may have been purging themselves, but they were still
saved. What the characters in the three canticles say and do is
largely used to allegorically underline their state of being saved or
not. Why they are saved or not is purely God's decision; man is not
permitted to know. Thus, their characters are never really developed
and this explains the transitory nature of most of the encounters with
souls.
As far as wealth of themes goes, that's shakey ground. Certainly
the Divine Comedy contains much original material, but a good portion
of what Dante wrote can be directly traced to Virgil. Virgil is more
than just his fictitious guide; parts of the Divine Comedy are right
out of the Aeneid. A perfect example of this is the thirteenth canto
of the Inferno where Dante breaks a branch of a bush to speak to a
soul inside. This is obviously taken from Aeneid III, 22-48 in
several respects. Other parts are based on older classical writers,
such as Ovid.
It seems to me that if you want to talk about the modern novel, a
better selection might have been something by Boccaccio. There, at
least, you don't have direct references to epic traditions. The
Decameron still suffers from lack of character development, however so
perhaps it's better to wait a couple of hundred years for some of
Machiavelli's work. Better still might be Manzoni's `I Promessi
Spossi', but I suspect that would be too late for the purposes of your
argument.
So... Please elaborate more on what you mean by the Divine Comedy
being an example of a modern novel. I had always thought that the
work was more of a late epic poem. I have read a lot of commentary
about the Divine Comedy but I don't remember ever having read that.
Then again, in the liturature business, one should always be on the
look out for new ways of looking at things. Hence, (good) science
fiction.
-- Tom
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