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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
THE ATTEMPT to portray hell and its leading personages by relating them parodically to heaven, or, in other words, by using inversions of varying degrees of complexity, is traditional. Scholastic theologians like St. Thomas regularly related the various virtues and kinds of blessedness to their opposites, and both Dante and Milton, the two greatest poetic infernologists, made systematic use of parody or ironic parallelism. Katherine Anne Porter, in “Flowering Judas,” a story dealing with latter-day lost souls, is clearly working in this ironic mode; she uses references to the religion of the machine, two parodie saviours, symbolic perversions of the purification ceremony of foot-washing and of the sacrament of communion, and a nun-like, lapsed devotee of the religion of revolution. At the same time, certain cautions must be observed. Miss Porter is not a theologian, nor a theological poet in the same sense in which Dante is. In most of her other works, although many of them are charged with symbolism, often religious symbolism as she says, there is comparatively little explicit use of the religious and eschatological diction and imagery so prevalent in “Flowering Judas.” In fact, even taking the word in the most extended sense, one would be unlikely to call her a “religious” writer as T. S. Eliot or François Mauriac are religious writers.
1 Quoted in “News and Ideas,” CE, xxii (April 1961), 521, from Recent Southern Fiction: A Panel Discussion, Wesleyan Coll., Macon, Ga., p. 12.
I should like to express my profound indebtedness to my good friend and former colleague, Robert E. Kaske, now of Cornell Univ., who gave unstintingly of both his literary insight and his great knowledge of things medieval. Although I accept full responsibility for the interpretations and conclusions in this study, he alone will be aware of how many of the best ideas and observations in it are his own.
2 Biblical citations are normally to the Authorized Version, but have been compared with the corresponding passages in the Douay Bible.
3 All quotations from T. S. Eliot's poetry are from Collected Poems 1909–1935 (New York, 1936).
4 All references to Dante and all quotations in Italian are from C. H. Grandgent's revised edition of La Dinna Cornmedia (Boston, 1933). Grandgent's notes have been especially helpful.
5 A minority view, but see Morton W. Bloomfield, “Joachim of Flora,” Tradilio, xiii (1957), 305, n. 243.
6 Katherine Anne Porter, “Flowering Judas,” Flowering Judas and Other Stories (New York, 1940), pp. 139–160. In view of the frequency of quotation and the brevity of the story I have thought it best not to clutter the text with excessive page numbers or footnotes. All references are to this edition.
7 Miss Porter relates sloth to “that boredom which is a low-pressure despair” in a piece on Gertrude Stein, The Days Before (New York, 1952), p. 53.
8 Aeneid iii.22-48, esp. 27–30:
Nam, quae prima solo ruptis radicibus arbos / vellitur, huic atro liquuntur sanguine guttae, / et terram tabo maculant. Mihi frigidus horror / membra quatit, gelidusque coit formidine sanguis.
9 W. H. V. Reade, The Moral System of Dante's Inferno (Oxford, 1909), pp. 397–398, 402–403, argues that the cattivi reveal Dante's recognition of the Aristotelian vices of pusillanimitas and ignavia. He makes no observation connecting them with the sin of acedia. See n. 20 below.
10 The sentence on the amari is in Reply Obj. 2. All references to St. Thomas are to the Latin edition of the Summa Theologica by Nicolai, Sylvii, Billuart, and C.-J. Drioux, 9th ed. (New York and Cincinnati, 1875), and have been checked in English in the translation of The Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, various dates).
11 Cf. Reade, pp. 399, 401. Aldous Huxley, in an interesting little essay on the historical vicissitudes of “Accidie,” does not hesitate flatly, if overconfidently, to identify this particular group of the Wrathful in the Inferno with those guilty of acedia, presumably on the basis of the words tristi and accidioso (On the Margin, London, 1956, p. 20). See also the recent study by Siegfried Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1967). In Appendix E, “The Fifth Circle in Dante's Hell,” pp. 200–202, Wenzel finds the points of resemblance between the sins of sullenness and acedia persuasive but not conclusive.
12 Summa, i-ii, Q. 46, Art. 1.
13 Miss Porter used this image again in her novel Ship of Fools (New York, 1962), p. 93. The girl Jenny in that novel, like Laura in “Flowering Judas,” is not religious, but her mind moves spontaneously in religious patterns. In one internal soliloquy, or, to be more precise, internal dialogue, her “guardian demon” prompts her to say her prayers, urging her not to be a “lost soul.” Jenny, in a mood of total despair, answers: “I'm not lost, I never have been, I never will be, unless this is being lost here and now. No, I'm not lost, I can't get out of it that easily. It's only I don't know just how I came here or how I'm going to get out again, but I know where I am all right! Rehearsing for blowing bubbles through boiling pitch later on!”
14 See esp. Psalms lxix.2,21 : “I sink in the deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me… . They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”
15 Isaiah, liii.2-5.
16 See Luke vii.37 ff., and John xii. 2-3 and xiii. 5-13.
17 II Cor. vii.10. Cf. Institutes of John Cassian, Book ix, Ch. x, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd Ser., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, xi (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1955), 266 (in Latin in Vol. xvii of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiaslicorum Latinorum). Cassian lists and discusses eight principal vices (villa), including both acedia and trislitia, Book v, Ch. i, 233–234. Book ix deals with trislitia, Book x with the related vice of acedia. See also Morton Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins (East Lansing, Mich., 1952), many references but esp. pp. 96,109-110, 356, 430.
18 ii-ii, Q. 35, Art. 2. In Q. 35, Art. 1, Thomas follows John Damascene in calling sloth an “oppressive sorrow” (trislitia aggravons), and in Art. 4, Reply Obj. 3, he differs with Cassian's distinction between trislitia and acedia, agreeing with Gregory that sloth is a kind of sorrow (Gregorius acediam trisliliam nominat). The whole of 0.35 deals with sloth.
19 ii-ii, Q. 35, Art. 2.
20 Reade (p. 399) notes that acedia has been often associated with Dante's sullen (tristi) who appear in Inferno, Canto vii, but he rejects the association while admitting that Dante's use of the word accidioso in their description “is certainly remarkable.” Elsewhere (p. 401), he does admit a “degree of resemblance” between acedia and the sullen ira. Reade finally makes no effort to place acedia in the Inferno, since it was not known to Aristotle, and since Reade's thesis is that Aristotle is the principal authority for the ethical system of the Inferno. In other places, however, Reade does emphasize the relationship of acedia, invidia, and in part ira (which includes sullenness) to the more general vice of tristitia, a sin recognized by Aristotle. For my purpose, it is sufficient to assume that the general reader of the Inferno, familiar with the seven deadly sins and conscious of Dante's use of them in another part of the Divine Comedy, will probably associate the missing sin of acedia on the one hand with the souls in the vestibule who pursued no spiritual good, nor even spiritual evil, and on the other with the sullen souls who carried the fumes of sluggish (accidioso) anger trapped in their bowels. Reade himself admits that “the position of acedia is always anomalous, and we have to deal with it as best we can” (p. 260). Chaucer's Parson (The Parsouns Tale) is quite traditional in associating the vice with envy, ire, and in naming it as a cause of “wanhope” or despair. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957), pp. 249–251.
21 So I understand his argument in ii-ii, Q. 35, Art. 2, Reply to Objections.
22 Cf. II Tim. ii.21.
23 Braggioni's formula inverts Christ's “for without me ye can do nothing” (John xv.5), but is directly parallel with His saying “I can of mine own self do nothing … because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me” (John v.30; cf. John v.19 and viii.28). The people are the ostensible God of the materialistic world-saviour, though at the same time he rules them autocratically and contemptuously.
24 Cf. Christ's “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come” (Matt, xxiv.42).
25 See, e.g., Wisdom ii.24 (Douay).
26 Cf. Chaucer, The Parsouns Tale: “Now hath malice two speces; that is to seyn, hardnesse of herte in wikkednesse, or elles the flessh of man is so blynd that he considereth nat that he is in synne, or rekketh nat that he is in synne, which is the hardnesse of the devel… . Certes, thanne is Envye the worste synne that is. For soothly, aile othere synnes been somtyme oonly agayns o special vertu; but certes, Envye is agayns aile vertues and agayns alle goodnesses. For it is sory of alle the bountees of his neighebor, and in this manere it is divers from alle othere synnes. For wel unnethe is ther any synne that it ne hath som delit in itself, save oonly Envye, that evere hath in itself angwissh and sorwe” (Robinson, pp. 242–243).
27 Seelected Essays (New York, 1950), p. 380. Cf. After Strange Gods (London, 1934), p. 61 : “The number of people in possession of any criteria for discriminating between good and evil is very small; the number of half-alive hungry for any form of spiritual experience, high or low, good or bad, is considerable.” In Miss Porter's Ship of Fools, the ship's doctor, Dr. Schumann, refuses to engage in a philosophical discussion of good and evil. On such matters, he says, he relies on the teachings of the Church. But, he goes on, “I agree with the Captain, it takes a strong character to be really evil. Most of us are too slack, half-hearted, or cowardly—luckily, I suppose. Our collusion with evil is only negative, consent by default, you might say. I suppose in our hearts our sympathies are with the criminal because he really commits the deeds we only dream of doing! Imagine if the human race were really divided into embattled angels and invading devils—no, it is bad enough as it is,. with nine-tenths of us half asleep and refusing to be waked up” (p. 294).
28 ii-ii, Q. 20, Art. 3. Cf. Q. 20, Art. 4, where St. Thomas discusses the relationship between despair and sloth, concluding in Reply Obj. 2 that “despair is born of sorrow.”
29 Cf. Dante's Charon addressing the souls of the damned before ferrying them across Acheron (Inferno) :
I'vegno per menarvi a l'altra riva, Ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e'n gelo.
30 Cf. T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men,” st. iii:
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness …
31 And cf. Inferno xxxiv.39; the “crimson” (vermiglia) of one of Satan's faces is customarily interpreted as wrath or hatred, the opposite of caritas or divine love. In the liturgical year, purple is also the color of the seasons of penitence, but if purple here has any significance related to penitence, it can only be that of the fruitless remorse of Judas and the damned. Thus, the tree in Laura's garden with its gnarled, black branches and, in the Lenten season of spring, its great clusters of blossoms, suggests the cycling of endless betrayal and endless remorse.
32 Braggioni's own eyes are worth noticing. They are “the true tawny yellow cat's eyes,” and elsewhere are “ill-humored cat's eyes.” The yellow of his eyes is matched by “his glossy yellow shoes” and, most strikingly in Mexico, his “kinky yellow hair.” In view of this insistence upon his feline quality and the garish array of colors in his costume, with a strong undertone of yellow, it does not seem fanciful to see in him the qualities of Dante's Leopard of the Inferno, Canto i, with its sinuous motion and gaudy, spotted pelt (pel maculato). The Leopard has been variously interpreted as representing lust or the sins of Incontinence, or, more generally by modern commentators, the sins of Fraud. In either case, or in both, the relevance to Braggioni is clear.
33 Ray B. West and Robert Wooster Stallman, The Art of Modern Fiction (New York, 1949), p. 288. West's analysis is reprinted, revised, from his article “Katherine Anne Porter: Symbol and Theme in ‘Flowering Judas’,” Accent, vii (Spring 1947), 182–188. The point about Eugenio is one of a number on which I must differ with West's analysis. Another is his curious contention that Braggioni is somehow better than Laura because he has “the revolutionary ideal” as a guide, and that the scene of his foot-washing proves him to be “capable of redemption” (p. 291).
34 Cf. Eliot's Mr. Eugenides, “son of the well-born,” in “The Waste Land.”
35 Writers at Work, introd. Van Wyck Brooks, 2nd series (New York, 1963), p. 153. Elsewhere in the same interview, Miss Porter observes that reading the Shakespeare sonnets, “and then all at one blow, all of Dante” was “the turning point of my life” (p. 141).
36 See, e.g., Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York, 1950), p. 26: “For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from earth but to set up Heaven on earth.”
37 “Three Statements About Writing,” The Days Before (New York, 1952), pp. 128,129.
38 This Is My Best, ed. Whit Burnett (New York, 1942), p. 539.