Dante’s Purgatorio, Philip Terry (Carcanet Poetry, 255 pages, 2024, £16.99)
This substantial tome is a follow-up to Phil Terry’s Dante’s Inferno, also published by Carcanet, in 2014. We are still in Essex, this time in Mersea Island rather than on the University campus, and Terry’s re-working of the Italian master’s original has a contemporary Swiftian flavour which combines sharp commentary with outrageous humour, scatology and a contemplation on the nature of our earthly existence. Here we have an array of current and not quite current characters, including Grayson Perry, Damian Hirst, Boris Johnson, Samuel Beckett, Shane MacGowan and Tim Atkins. This is at once a serious, scholarly book in its ambition and enterprise but one which finds fun and pleasure in such an undertaking and hopefully in so doing will find a wider audience than might be expected from a poetry book with Dante in the title!
In this interpretation Virgil is replaced by Ted Berrigan and Beatrice by Marina Warner in the journey up the mountain towards heaven, accompanied by the poet Dante/Terry. There are references to the poet’s hometown of Belfast as well as much about the politics of ‘the business university,’ quite an irony given the history of the University of Essex which could be abbreviated to ‘politics and poetry’ if one went in for such soundbites! The work is laid out in triplets as is the original and the best way to get to grips with it other than by producing a somewhat reductive and possibly tedious summary is to quote sections from the cantos which give a flavour of the overall project:
After there greetings had been repeated
Three or four times, Ginsberg took a step back and said:
‘Hold on a minute, haven’t we met before?
Who are you?’ And Berrigan, laughing, replied:
‘Before many of these souls worthy to become
Better came to this weird mother of a mountain,
My bones were buried on Long Island.
I’m Ted Berrigan, veteran of Korea,
And veteran of Essex. We crossed paths
Many a time, we even hung out together –
I remember one beautiful day at Cherry Valley in
Particular, I think Bob Dylan was there,
And hey, I edited your friend Orlovsky’s
Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs,
But I guess we were just too wrapped up in our own
Poetic worlds, too stoned too, to become good friends.’
This was the answer that my guide gave him, and
As one who suddenly beholds some strange thing
At which he marvels will at first believe,
Then doubt what his eyes tell him and mutter
‘It’s … — but can it really be?’ so seemed Ginsberg.
Then he scratched his chin and raised his arms
To the heavens, and now getting down on his knees,
Clasped my guide around the waist in homage.
(from Canto VII)
It’s a very readable, conversational style and the relocation across time and space shows how it’s possible to reinvigorate epics from the past even given the gap between a religious society and one which is arguably more secular and post-industrial. One advantage of this ‘longer view’ is that works of art, for example, can be viewed in context, as in the relation between Bosch and Magritte in Canto XI where the replacing of the burden of a rock with a washing machine (the ‘Siemens Avantgarde’) is simply hilarious. I can’t claim to have picked up all the references but this is the sort of book which you can digest quite easily, choosing to move on when necessary and come back at a later point if you want to refresh or re-assess your reading. It’s a pleasurable experience as the text is filled with interesting stuff and there are endless connections to be made and thought about and Terry’s approach combines the traditional with the more experimental, something which is true of his work elsewhere.
‘All men by nature desire to know,’ says
Aristotle in his Metaphysics,
And terrified by the quake that had just
Shaken the mountain I was anxious to know
What its cause might be, worried that we were
In danger, and what we should do in an emergency.
Fear drove me to hurry along
The cluttered path, dodging the helpless
Bodies that lay prostrate in their pain,
Like the injured piled in a tube station
After some catastrophe on the line.
Then suddenly – just as you will read in the Gospel
According to Luke that Christ, new-risen from the
Hollow tomb, appeared to the two men on the
Emmaus road – a shade appeared beside us!
He had come up from behind us as we
Were trying not to step on the prostrate forms,
As we were unaware of him till he spoke.
‘Greetings, Earthlings! He said. ‘Peace be with you.’
At once, we quickly turned to face him, and Berrigan
Answered him, grinning, with the Vulcan sign for peace.
‘May the law that sentenced me to eternal
Banishment,’ said Berrigan,’ grant you the keys
Of the mountain, and speed you to the top!’
(from Canto XXI)
Terry keeps close enough to the original to maintain a strong connection as far as I can ascertain but the colloquial language, as in the s/f ‘Greetings, Earthlings’ causes some amusement. He retains a mix of erudition and entertainment which is rare in such ‘transcribing.’
I sat before her, paralysed, confused,
I opened my mouth, my throat starting to speak,
But not a single breath of speech escaped.
‘It’s true, isn’t it,’ she pressed, that you were
In charge when Marina was forced to quit?’
I felt as I often do at a conference
When some arsehole hits you with a question
Out of the blue and you’ve no idea how to respond.
Yet at such moments the mind takes over on
Automatic pilot, the lips start moving, even
If you’ve no idea what words will come out –
And you sit there, stiffly, watching the drama unfold
As if you were nothing more than a distant bystander.
‘Well,’ I heard myself say, ‘not exactly.’
And I fumbled on: ‘Technically the Head
Of Department at the time was Jonathan
Lichenstein, but there was some bad shit flying
Around, and what with one thing and another
I did get involved. I was bound to, in a way,
As I’d worked more closely with Marina
Than anyone. I did all I could, as did
Some other colleagues, like Karin Littau,
Who were brave enough to stick their necks out.
But you sensed that things weren’t going to work out.
(from ‘Canto XXXI)
This book is obviously going to appeal to an audience of contemporary literary academics and students, primarily perhaps those who are critical of the current ethos in higher education and also to scholars of Dante who might be intrigued by this continuing engagement with the past. Phil Terry is arguably doing for Dante what Christopher Logue did for Homer though from a more entrenched academic position. I’d also hope for a wider readership as this is a perfectly readable tome with many references to popular culture and contemporary politics and has something to say about both. Dip in and see for yourself.
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Steve Spence
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