Island Fifteen - Isle of Devils

and Wounded Remorse

(Extract from: Muse of the Long Haul Thirty-One Isles of the Creative Imagination)
Copyright, Dr Ian Irvine, 2013 all rights reserved. All short extracts from the texts discussed are
acknowledged and used under fair usage related to review and theoretical critique under international
copyright law.

Image: Illustration of
Dantes Inferno (canto 6),
by Stradanus, 1587.
Second image illustrates
canto 8 and third image
depicts The Lower hell
(both by Stradanus). These
three image are in the
public domain
internationally.
Publisher: Mercurius Press,
Australia, 2013. NB: This
piece is published at Scribd as
part of a series drawn from
the soon to be print published
non-fiction book on
experiential poetics entitled:
Muse of the Long Haul:
Thirty-One Isles of the
Creative Imagination.

Island Fifteen - Isle of Devils and Wounded Remorse

I came across Julian Barnes novel The Sense of an Ending only very recently. Its a brilliant,
very human book in which an ageing Tony, the main character, initially reconstructs youthful
memories of two important relationships after receiving notification that he is to inherit the diary
of Adrian, a former friend (who had committed suicide many years ago). He is to receive the
diary due to the death of the mother of a former lover (Veronica). We soon realise that the diary
may contain important details regarding the reason for Adrians suicide. Veronica, however,
doesnt want to hand over the diary and she and Tony are thrown into an email exchange, and
eventually a series of meetings, that bring back memories for Tony of Veronicas difficult
nature when theyd been together.
In Part One Tony creates what amounts to a screen narrative about his youth. Like
Oedipus in Oedipus Rex, however, he is not content with the story as constructed and he
unconsciously seeks Veronicas help to uncover a more realistic version of his pastbasically
the narrative of Part Two of the book.
A series of unnerving discoveries ensue, beginning with a jealous and vicious letter Tony
had sent to Veronica and Adrian soon after theyd become lovers. The letter shocks both Tony,
as narrator, and the reader. As a raw historical artefact it instantly smashes his previous version
of the past (as narrated in Part One). Faced with an affable though unreliable narrator the reader,
like Tony, is forced to consider the mechanisms by which human beings construct acceptable
versions of the past. The past as a terrain of the psyche becomes everyones abyss and for a time
we assume that Tony is about to uncover something heinous that due to some kind of
psychological split he is denying responsibility for.
Barnes, however, refuses to simplify our task and the narrative closes with us really no
wiser as to Tonys level of responsibility for the tragedies hed helped set in motion as a young
man. Remorse, in this book, turns out to be multifaceted and complex, it is also inter-relational
a fundamental aspect of the human experience. We dont know whether to castigate Tony for his
youthful indiscretions (and failure to acknowledge the truth to himself later) or acquit him due to
the moral failures of others. Id like to refer to this kind of remorse as wounded remorsei.e.
emotion arising out of historic circumstances in which two or more people created suffering
together due to their incapacity to relate.
Although The Sense of an Ending is a novel it strikes me that its main themes regarding the
fallibility of memory and the perplexities surrounded wounded remorse are very relevant to
writers of biography, autobiography and memoir. This is the appropriate time to state that
although this is not primarily an autobiography engaged in forensic analysis of all the
relationships of my pastit is primarily an attempt to plot the nuances of creativity in a life
nevertheless, readers should be aware that this narrator has, no doubt unconsciously, created
screen narratives through this bookthe very fact of my limited knowledge of other peoples
intentions and even actions at key moments in the past guarantees that this is likely.
All of us recall specific situations, perhaps even entire periods of our life, that we wish
wed lived differently. Usually we feel we lacked somethinga level of emotional intelligence,
moral insight or specific knowledge about ourselves or our situation that might have made a
difference, might have caused less strife for ourselves or others. The existence of this lack
whether resulting from trauma, social conditioning or inherited personality traitsis the tragedy
of the human condition. Catholicism had a device for handling the guilt associated with the

human conditionthe confessional. Unfortunately, the desert fathers, priests, bishops, Popes,
etc. of the Medieval period consciously or unconsciously harnessed the moral machinery of
confession to advance religious and political imperatives related to their own control and
dominance of the populace. In the process a genuine organism based moral conscience in
human beings (linked to legitimate guilt, shame and remorse) was first distorted and then all
but lost.
Useful as the various liberation sociologies and psychologies I encountered in my youth
were for confronting external oppressive circumstancescircumstances restricting and distorting
my life, as it wereI had to discover for myself the after-resonance of what Ive here labelled
wounded remorse. Like everybody else, I guess, there are decisions I made, things I said, etc.
that I wish I could take back now. It is easy to blame ones parents, for example, for their
personality traits and actions but much harder to confront ones own failures as a father or
mother, lover or friend, etc.. I now believe, that simplistically blaming others (assuming ones
own moral superiority) may even make one blind to personal shadow traits. Maybe this is a
realisation is linked to young adulthoodit was certainly the period during which I began to
understand personal responsibility apart from mere socially imposed morality. In life, despite
ones best intentions, relationships fail and others are hurt in lasting (sometimes irreversible)
ways due to our lack. We are in the terrain of what Jung calls the Shadow, but Jung, like all
the psychoanalysts, should have emphasised more clearly the importance of finding ones
internal, psycho-organic (rather than externally imposed) moral compass.
For me, I was cast ashore on the Island of Wounded Remorse between 1988 and
1991as an adult I dearly wish Id been the person I became in 1992 throughout that period. A
useless wish, since the past is what it is.
From the perspective of mid-life I now believe that social conditioning, social insanity
(e.g. the experience of oppression) as well as certain traumas can put people into shared
situations with others that lead to them creating new trauma for themselves and others
especially in ones youth. Disempowered young people often face the world like trapped and
wounded animals, rudderless, capable of insensitivity and cruelty due to their pain and
frustration. Luckily for me I never did anything that would have completely wrecked my life
suicide, criminal activity, etc.but my experiences between 1988 and 1991 certainly made me
realise how easy it is for young people in particular to do potentially irreparable damage to
themselves and/or others. In our age the mass media encourage us to anaesthetise the
transformative possibilities inherent in facing up to our own shame, guilt and wounded remorse
via constant invitations to judge others from the voyeuristic safety of our couchesthus
breeding the kind of blindness I associate with the posture of moral superiority.
Barnes refuses to let his readers off the hookthe insignificance of his youthful sins
(compared to that of murderers, rapists, paedophile priests, dictators, etc.) is not the point. The
particular crimes and the particular personality failings that generated them are almost
irrelevantthe issue is the reality of remorse as a part of the human condition. I occasionally
experience remorse arising out of my young adult years. My youthful personality failings
(embedded vices) and the occasional bad decisions, like Tonys, were also, relatively speaking,
insignificantbut they existed. Like Tony my great unrest arises out of the knowledge that
though others also contributed to each situation (i.e. acted badly) this does not free me from
remorse. Wounded remorse still afflicts me now and thenmostly in regard to my failures as a
father related to a relationship break-up. There are things from that time that I wish I could
change and put right, even now as I near fiftywishing, however, doesnt change the past

(though actions in the present can mitigate the ongoing affects).

Occasionally I write (create) out of my personal stock of wounded remorse.
The literature of wounded remorse is rich indeed and apart from Barnes contemporary
take on the phenomenon a number of others have fascinated me over the yearsand thus
deserve a brief mention here. Coleridges classic poem The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
addresses the theme at a metaphysical level. The guilt associated with the Mariner slaying the
albatross, as well as the resultant consequences for his ships crew, propels the entire narrative.
Interestingly, all of the Mariners skills as a story-teller (however compulsive the act is for him)
arise out of his ongoing sense of guilt. Further back in history, the tale of Oedipus, alluded to
earlier, is perhaps the major text dealing with Western notions of guilt/shame/remorse.
Interestingly the remorse of Oedipus is no less raw for it having been inspired by acts and
decisions associated with a divine curse.
Despite the greatness of these texts in exploring remorse, guilt and shame, it is Dantes
Christianity inspired Divine Comedy that offers the most comprehensive treatment of the
theme in Western literature. By his inventive use of Christian understandings of the Deadly and
Capital sins and vices we are encouraged to some extent to assemble our own list of embedded
personality traits that might generate routine suffering capable of haunting us with wounded
remorse later. In those days one had to do this by critiquing the priest dominated confessional
terrain of late Medieval Christianity. Today one might need to question the moral codes of
secular societyto what extent are they about control, dominance, conformity? If remorse can
be inspirational for artists so too might concentrated study of humanitys main vices (what Ill
call here embedded vices). Here Dante is superior to Coleridge and perhaps Sophocles. There
were seven vices in Dantes day, but I suspect wed need to list at least thirteen to make sense of
our own age.
Dante and the Problem of Embedded Vices
The concepts of evil and suffering change with the observers particular take on reality. In
recent centuries the West has seen the collapse of ancient metaphysical (largely Judeo-Christian
and ancient Greek) understandings of both concepts to be replaced by more or less secular,
sociological conceptions. Supernatural explanations for the forces behind human suffering are
distinctly out of fashion these days. The average Westerner laughs at the idea of non-material
demons capable of entering the human soul through temptation or suffering before gradually
directing proceedings to the detriment of others and even the person in question.
Though I am no philosopher Ive been fascinated with the various paradigms that have
been developed over the millennia to explain both acts of evil (or substitute your own posttraditional secular term) and the thoughts or impulses that motivate them. Back in 1984 as I
wandered the back-roads of the UK in search of castles and Celtic burial mounds with my
brother Andy in our beat-up blue mini-van I carried with me a battered, ancient looking copy of
Dantes Infernoa book Id bought with one of my last travellers cheques. The Inferno, of
course, is all about the High-Medieval Christian idea of evil and thus it is intimately attached to
the concept of sin and to theological understandings of the seven deadly sins.
Given I was fairly pessimistic about both the social world and my own life at that time it
seemed like the ideal book to be carrying around with me given I was probably a closet lateteenage Gotheven before such a sub-group existed. I remember opening the book one night
whilst drinking a good pint of bitter in a Stratford-Upon Avon pub well-stocked with peanuts.

Andy and I were pretty poor at the time and still needed money for petrol to get back to Wales
after a flying visit to my grandparents in North-Yorkshire. We were bunked up in some B.O. and
flee-ridden dormitory and despite the lack of cash didnt feel like heading back there so early in
the night.
Andy was busy reading a local newspaper and planning a trip to Holland, for my part I
was deciding whether to return to Worcester to play more Second Eleven cricket with no money
and no flat. I read the commentary to Canto One and perused the poetry: Midway along the
journey of our life/ I woke to find myself in a dark wood A wonderful summary of my own
psychic turmoil if ever there was one! Shortly after the beast put in an appearance
immediately interpreted by my good self in terms of Jungian Shadow symbolismand Dante
and I were off to a flier.
I probably only read three or four cantos, however, there in the pub given Andy was
getting bored and we were both hungering for something more than peanuts. We wandered off to
buy some greasy English fish and chips and eventually wandered back to the dormitory.
A fortnight later, however, I carried the Inferno around with me as I wandered the tourist
attractions of Oxford alone. Andy was off in Holland having a great time with windmills and the
likehe eventually returned to my brothers home in Wales bleary-eyed and short of a wallet
after rolling around on the deck of a ferry, Liverpool football club supporters all around.
I was assiduously reading the introductory notes to the bookAhem, hell has various
levels things get worse the further down the pilgrim travels each level deals with various
deadly sins ahem, the various sins are illustrated by way of stories told by or about famous
(and not so famous) dead sinners hmm, each sinner is punished in an appropriate way. I
was reading the introductory notes because for some weeks on and off Id been finding Dantes
Medieval Italian name-dropping difficult going. In the morning I visited the Ashmoleum
Museum and the Bodleian Library. In the museum Id encountered an Etruscan lion made of
bronzegreen as seaweed given its antiquity. Id stared into glass cases full of ancient Egyptian
domestic items, combs, bracelets and the like. Id also wandered around the Shrine of Taharqa
from the temple of Amun (691-666BC). None of the stone engravings on the rectangular
building made any sense at all to a New Zealand cricketer, but I was captivated. Even more so by
the so-called Princesses fresco from Tell el Amarna dated to 1370 BC. The languorous redbrown female forms that dominate the fresco had large black eyes and were touching each other
intimately, though it seemed to me in an asexual manner.
Id also wandered through the Bodleian Library with its polished floors, high ornate
Medieval ceilings and heavy as all hell bookshelves stuffed full of real bookslarge, ancient
volumes advertising academic learning in ages past. Id bought three postcardsone showed
Christ Church kitchen back in the medieval period (there were no fridges!), the other showed the
library proper. My collection was growingI had a black and white postcard of The Measurers
from the Museum of the History of Science, a couple of overview pictures of the maze-like
complexity of Oxfords ancient city centre and so on.
The last stop was the Sheldonian Theatre. To tell the truth I was finished for the day, the
Ashmoleum had been the highlight, though Id loved the archaic scholarly atmosphere of the
Bodleian. All in all the day had left me with a profound sense of peace and well-being I still
struggle to explain. In retrospect this was my first trip after departing from Worcester and the
grind of practices, one day games and Second Eleven matches lasting three days. In a deeper
sense, however, it was the moment of transitionthe moment I went and looked at things that
interested me, but didnt really interest anyone in my family.

It all came to a head in the Sheldonion Theatre. I sat under the magnificently painted
domed ceiling marvelling at its vertigo-inducing vastness of vision. Given I didnt understand at
that time the narrative that was being portrayed all I could do was stare at the ceiling with its
apocalyptic centreit reminded me of a sunsetbright with flames or clouds and some kind of
spiritual light flaring, struggling at the focus point. The curved middle circle of the ceiling
depicted people in various heroic and dramatic postures, they seemed to be suspended on dark
thunder clouds here and there giving way to patches of eerie blue sky. In my hand the cover of
The Inferno seemed to match the apocalyptic mood of the fake heavens above me.
The Seven, Eight, Ten, Fourteen, etc. Cardinal Vices?
After reading Dante in the UK in 1984 I set him aside
until my university studies at La Trobe in 1993where I
came across him again in my Honors year. He was
emolliated in Neo-Platonic theorising by the lecturers
however, which all seemed quite beside the point to me,
given the violence and vividness of the story-line. It
wasnt until the desert father became significant in my
PhD research on morbid ennui and I had to teach
Medieval history that I returned to Dante. Historically the
term ennui was preceded by the Roman idea of taedium
vitae (sickness of living); the Christian vices known as
tristitia [melancholy] and acedia [joylessness/alienation
from the joy of a life in God] eventually fused into the
vice of sloth, and the Humoral illness known as black
melancholy.
The Medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri
(b.1265d.1321), in his great work The Divine Comedy,
gave European literature possibly the greatest description of the Cardinal Sins and Cardinal
Virtues. His chivalric love for Beatrice daughter of Folco Portinari and Simone dei Bardi was
the inspiration for his greatest works, two long poems written in the Italian vernacular: the Vita
Nuova, a series of love poems (directed at Beatrice) with prose commentary and the The Divine
Comedy (which contains three books: Inferno, Purgatory and Heaven). Beatricewho died in
1290 still in her youthwas given mystical status by Dante.
In the story the main character, Dante the Pilgrim, first descends into the Christian
version of the underworld to become acquainted with some of the great sinners of historyand
the punishments God is making them endure. The vices, in particular, are given graphic symbolic
treatment at this stage of the story. His guide through this terrifying realm is the shade of the
Roman poet Virgil. Later, as the pilgrim leaves Hell and Purgatory for heaven, Beatrice takes
over. Hereafter the virtues are on display and instead of darkness, heaviness and pain, the pilgrim
finds himself in a realm of lightness, light and love as he moves as though flying from one bright
celestial orb to another. This is a world in which Love literally moves the heavens.
Given I myself was suffering with my own experience of unrequited love back in 1984 I
tended to pay more attention to Beatrices role in the drama than was healthy for a proper
understanding of what Dante was really on about. Of course the romantic love theme was typical
of the eras poetry and Dantes work displays a unique commitment to the erotic and mystical

elements associated with that tradition. In a sense Beatrice leads Dante to a mystical revelation
unparalleled in other Medieval writingsa revelation that gives us a profound insight into the
entire Medieval worldview. As is common in the secular literature of the period, the beloved
(especially a distant, unattainable, unrequited beloved) becomes a muse figure for Dante
the inspiration for his writing. That love for a woman should be central to a mans quest for God
seems to sit uncomfortably with much Biblical teachingJesus, of course, being the proper path
to the Father.
Interestingly The Divine Comedy fuses some of the fundamental teachings of the
Christian tradition with those of a variety of classical philosophers and writersparticularly
writers from Pre-Christian Greek and Roman traditionshence the role of the Roman poet
Virgil. Dantes particular understanding of the theology of sin (in the Christian context) is
central to The Divine Comedy. The relevant symbol system is of course that of the Seven Deadly
Sins. True to form, Medieval demonological interpretations of the vices, dating back to the
Desert Father of the early Christian period, figure prominently.
However, there is also a profound Classical element to Dantes reading of the capital vices.
To understand where Dante is coming from we need to understand that Medieval Christianity
was powerfully influenced, at the philosophical level, by the teachings of the Neo-Platonists. The
revival of learning that accompanied the rebirth of European townspost-Dark Agesalso gave
rise to a renewed interest in the old philosophers. Dantes depiction of the soul journey initiated
by his love of Beatrice is thus simultaneously both Platonist (therefore Pagan) in tone and
Christian.
It goes without saying that the Inferno is primarily a
story of descent, into the underworld; into the darkest
reaches of the human soul and into the darkest realms of
collective Christian understandings of Hell. The pilgrims
soul journey is heroic in a different way to that of classical
heroes like Odysseus or Aeneas who also visited the
underworld for knowledge and understanding. The courage
of Dantes main character is the courage to look squarely
at both the motivations behind, and the actions indicative
of, a particular monotheistic confrontation with evil. We
are inclined today to read all of this psychologically i.e.
due to his love for Beatrice Dante endured a kind of
psycho-spiritual cleansing (or emergency); a Dark Night of
the Soul (via negativa) that gave rise to a piece of literature
unprecedented in its scope and majesty. In some senses the
journey of Dante the poet-pilgrim signifies the journey of
the archetypal artist/writer as shamanic culture healer as
much as it signifies the journey of a particular Christian pilgrim. Under these circumstances it is
not surprising that the Muse (Beatrice) figures so prominently as the source of the poets
visionary inspiration.
These last mentioned aspects of the work interested me greatly back in 1984indeed they
made it a seminal work for me as a trainee writer. To paraphrase George Steiner in In Blue
Beards Castle: it is the job of writers and artists to explore both the dark corners of not only
their own psyches but of their cultures history. The Inferno is an example of such a maxim in
action.

Summary
Arising out of my own organic moral compass (developed via life experiences), I would like to
suggest that we can make a list of Postmodern Vicesthey number 14 as far as I can tell and Im
not entirely convinced that we can see them as purely psychological phenomena. They are:
Envy, Greed, Lifelessness/joylessness (or Spiritual Numbness), Unhealthy Narcissism,
Reification (i.e. the urge to convert living things into abstractions), Pettiness (or Lack of
Imagination), Destructive Lust, Authoritarianism, Destructive Anger, Insentience (Lack of
Empathy), Flight from Self, Love of Conformity, Falseness and Cynicism. In my experience any
of these vices can embed themselves in a persons psyche via various means. Once embedded
they routinely generate suffering. And any suffering arising from our being periodically
possessed by these vices eventually generates shame, guilt, remorse and wounded remorse even
if, for a very long time, decades in the case of Tony in The Sense of an Ending, we have settled
for screen narratives to protect us from confronting our own shadows.
A task of the true artist is to address this phenomenon through their workhowever
uncomfortable it makes us feel, and whatever the risks to self or others in a voyeuristic,
judgemental age such as our own. It is not enough to use writing, music, art, etc. to cathart (as
per Expressionistic poetics) ones own suffering at the hands of others onto the page or canvas
the bravest artists also address the way in which embedded vices generate shame, guilt, remorse
etc. in turn giving rise to concepts such as the need to apologise and confess, as well as a longing
for redemption and forgivenesshowever these concepts might be envisaged in a post-religious
age.

Author Bio (as at May 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet/lyricist,
writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in
publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The Antigonish
Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia)
and Takahe (NZ), as well as in a number of Australian
national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005
(Black Ink Books) and Agenda: Australian Edition, 2005.
He is the author of three books and co-editor of three
journals and currently teaches in the Professional Writing
and Editing program at BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as
the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and
social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative,
normative and dysfunctional forms of alienation and morbid ennui.