Beneath Phlegethon

Beneath Phlegethon[1]

Eustace Budgell[2] died as all men wish to die: a great man. His literary legacy reflects the unappreciated work of silent genius. Nothing but his own hand determined his fate. His last breath resounded with a fury reserved for gods. And that he was. Eustace Budgell was the god of Acedia[3].

* * *

"The self is inextricable from its creation." The quote rippled in Budgell's mind as his dipped his quill into a small pot of ink. He tested it by writing the date along the side of the note.

The 4th of May, Year of our Lord 1737

Satisfied, he turned to the blank page before him. The question of why would remain long after he, so it must be addressed.

The will, of course, would seem to the world the obvious cause. Lesser shames than those felt by Budgell had driven men to suicide. A year before, Budgell had been accused of stealing a recently deceased relative’s fortune by altering his will. Indignation fueled anger as he reflected on the judge's decision that had robbed him of both wealth and dignity.

He began to write.

It is the greed of others, a family so wrought with avarice that it led them to fraud and deception, that has driven me to this point.

He stopped and read the sentence again. He pondered Dante’s fourth circle[4] and the Malebolge[5], imagining the fate of the Tindals[6] in deplorable detail. But he found no pleasure in the image. His hand gripped the quill tighter.

A death of shame proves a life of shame, he thought. He reasoned that he must more forcibly dispel the infamy that had been thrust upon him. He plunged the quill in ink before writing again.

The sum unjustly held now by the family I once claimed an extension of my own is but 30 pieces of silver[7] in the eyes of the Lord.

A smile crept over his face as he finished the line. His tongue darted out from the grin. Deeper than all the bolgia shall Nicolas[8] rest, he thought. But the smile faded quickly as he lost faith in his written words. He realized that referencing the tragic robbery would only serve to perpetuate the idea that it was what drove him to death, no matter how powerful the damnation of those responsible.

He cast down the quill and stood. He paced around his home, trying to find inspiration.

Why? The questioned lingered.

Men of great honour have taken their own lives, he thought. What allows their sin to be viewed with reverence? What separates them from the despondent trees where harpies make their home[9]?

He passed an oaken bookshelf, laden with volumes beyond his talent, but within his reach. He took up small, dark green book and turned to the frontispiece. The picture showed an overturned goblet and a lifeless hand on a stone floor. Opposite the engraving were the words "Cato, a Tragedy."[10] There, in black ink pressed from crude woodcut, lay the hand of Budgell's inspiration. He wished in his life, to fashion his fate like that of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis[11]. His impeccable immunity to corruption, his incredible political intellect and successes, and most deeply his accomplishments as a man of letters, all had served as the looking glass in which Budgell saw his ideal self.

He recalled the day so many years ago that he was witness to the drama’s premiere performance. He watched and listened, taking a critical eye to the work of his eldest cousin. The dialogue seemed to Budgell to be heavy-handed; he thought Addison had tried too hard to imitate the archaic language of republican Rome and that the cumbersome verbiage weighed down the tongue of the work’s true star: Cato. Budgell sat rapt in admiration and wonder for the figure before him

By the end of his life, Budgell shared many superficial biographical traits with Cato the Younger. Budgell served a few unremarkable years in the Parliament of Ireland, a position which, when distorted in the mirror of prideful introspection, reflected Cato’s decades of selfless public service. Cato was world-renowned for his integrity in the face of corruption, a quality that Budgell attributed to himself as well, despite the recent marring of his public virtue. But more than anything else, Budgell reveled in his self-proclaimed shared accomplishments in letters. Through his word and wit, Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis became a moral force in the Roman Senate and earned the reverence of his soldiers. Eustace Budgell sent many a letter to literary publications and felt that he too would live on through his words.

Budgell reflected upon the fate of his idol. He drew images in his mind of the old man, standing firm and stoic at the base of purgatory[12]. Through his earthly works, despite his mortal sin and even without being cleansed in Christian spirit, Cato had earned a place outside the realm of Lucifer, so surely should I too escape the forest of tormented souls that awaits the suicides, thought Budgell.

His thoughts returned to that night at the theatre. Barely out of Oxford Budgell had sat smugly as the play drew to a close. He was proud at the attempt his cousin had made. He felt the drama was not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but that it was surely nothing remarkable. As the curtain closed he pondered the ratio of favorable to unfavorable reviews it would receive. However he found his answer when his polite clapping was drowned out in an uproarious round of applause that rose out of the crowd and came crashing down upon him. Almost at once Budgell felt his cheeks burn with the blood that turned Aglaulus to stone[13] and drove Cain to murder. He crouched low in his seat watched the playwright rise with outstretched arms to the crowd.

He closed the book and felt the engraved name of the author on its spine: Addison. The shadow cast by Joseph Addison shamed him and made cold his heart. Budgell was forever in that shadow but, try as he might, could not bring himself to hate his cousin for it. Instead envy overtook him. Were his own words not worthy too of the great praises and respect the world had laid upon Addison? The world knew the answer, but Budgell rejected it as misinterpretation of his genius. He could not understand why it was only through Addison that he could gain a seat of power[14] or publish his letters[15].

He tossed the book on the floor, overturning a pail of water that sat beside his hearth. The water soaked through the green felt of the cover and began to make the black ink bleed through. He glanced at the dark stain spreading over the book and turned back to the unfinished note.

My life’s end will serve as a protest, he thought. He began writing again, starting anew on an unblemished piece of parchment.

As Cato could not live under a fallen republic and the tyranny Caesar, so can I not bear to exist in a world that slights my brilliance in favour of lesser authors.

Budgell knew the fame of Addison’s opus would lead all those who read the note to conclude he was the lesser author to whom the note referred. And rightly so, he thought. Envy is assuredly justified when the glow of praise is wrongly given.

He thought back once again and recalled his cousin’s shining countenance that night. Addison took him by the shoulders and looked gleefully upon him before speaking.

“The self in inextricable from its creation, Eustace, and tonight I am all that I have ever dreamt.”

Budgell forced a congratulatory remark before another group of friends interrupted their conversation with more adoration.

The book still lay in a pool of darkened water. On the cover, the green sank to near complete blackness. Budgell picked up the note and tossed it in a ball to the ground. He realized the note would seem a parting shot at his long dead kin, an act that would do no good for his already tarnished image.

The note would have to be everything. The self is inextricable from its creation.

What creation had he left as legacy? He stood forcefully and knocked his chair back. A few letters published without his name signed at the close[16]? He stormed out of his study. The notes and minutes of years of parliamentary meetings? He threw open his door and walked toward the city without bothering to lock the house. He had no worthy creation with which to define himself. He forced himself past crowds of market-goers, no destination in mind. If his creations had amounted to nothing, then he too must be nothing; the note was his way of becoming in death the man he could not be in life. He stopped and let the uncaring crowd flow around him.

None of his notes worked because they revealed in one way or another his shortcomings in life. He needed the note to show he was above all the world that had left him unappreciated. He realized with a start how he could elevate himself in his departure. Just as the crowd cared not for the internal chaos Budgell felt and mocked him with their indifference, he must show he was apathetic to all the world that had scorned him.

He walked home and took up the quill once again. In his absence, the ink had soaked the white quill black. The note would express his indifference to the world, showing at last his greatness over it. How his genius had not thought to write of this earlier, he knew not. But at last he had a message for the existence he was leaving behind. He could not suppress a smile as began to write again.

What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.

Eustace Budgell left the note in his study. He then walked to the closest dock and hired a ferry to take him south, out of London. While waiting for his escort to arrive, he walked the banks of the river collecting the heaviest stones he could fit into his pockets. As the boat passed beneath the London Bridge, he stepped off its side and sank from air to water, from Thames to l’ultima choistra di Malebolge[17].

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[1] A river in Hades in Greek Mythology, which also flowed through the hell created in Dante’s Inferno. In the Inferno, it ran through the seventh circle, which included the violent and the suicides.

[2] Eustace Budgell (19 August 1686 – 4 May 1737) was an English writer and politician whose work consisted of three dozen letters published in a daily magazine and 12 years in the Parliament of Ireland.

[3] State of apathy toward one’s self and toward god, considered in medieval times to be the precursor to the sin of sloth

[4] The fourth circle of the Inferno was home to the greedy and avaricious.

[5] The name for the eighth circle of hell, home to those who commit fraud. This circle is split into ten pockets, called bolgia, which are collectively referred to as the Malebolge.

[6] The name of the family that accused Budgell of changing the will of his brother-in-law.

[7] This was the sum of money Judas received for turning Jesus over to Roman authorities.

[8] The member of the Tindal family who ultimately received most of the money from the will.

[9] In the Inferno, Dante puts the suicides in the seventh circle, where the sinners are transformed into trees who bleed and weep when hurt. Harpies, Greek mythological creatures who are half woman, half bird, roost and claw the trees.

[10] An acclaimed play written by Budgell’s cousin, Joseph Addison.

[11] Roman senator, military leader and orator who fought against Julius Caesar in Caesar’s Civil War to maintain Rome as a republic, rather than let it become a dictatorship and empire. When he was defeated, he committed suicide instead of living under the empire.

[12] Despite being a pagan, committing suicide and having never been baptized, Cato was made by Dante to be the gate-keeper to Purgatory in The Divine Comedy, instead being placed in Hell with other virtuous pagans or suicides.

[13] A figure in Greek mythology who was turned to stone by her husband for jealousy.

[14] Joseph Addison had used his connections to get Budgell his first political appointment, but Budgell’s insubordination lost him the job shortly thereafter.

[15] All the writing that Budgell ever got published was in a magazine owned by Addison.

[16] When publishing his letters, he signed them with an X.

[17] This is a line from Canto XXIX of the Inferno and means “the final cloister of Malebolge,” meaning the 10^th and last pocket of the eighth circle of hell. This pocket was home to the falsifiers (liars, counterfeiters etc) who in hell were consumed by a self-delusion and self-deception so great, that made them insane.

For James

I’ve spent years demonizing the uselessness and popularity of the serif, yet every i and h and n of this sentence has been given the superfluous means of visual support.

It’s like a makeover. Every letter now looks to their extremities with the bile of false modesty and replies “Oh, these? Why, yes, they’re new. I just thought they really said to the world: I’m changing my appearance in a futile effort to change whatever part of my personality has been stopping me from ever finding lasting satisfaction in my accomplishments without constant praise from others. And they were on sale.”

But it doesn’t matter. My choice of fonts, like my choice of vintage clothes and lost sobriety, does nothing to change who I am. I am not an artist at heart. Neither is my brother. He was accepted to the finest art school in the country and is astonishingly talented, but he is not an artist. And neither am I.

There is, within myself, a deficiency. I lack that which gives a person the ability to truly create. I feel like a dentist, perpetually in a midlife crisis, dreaming of being lauded for his artistic creations, but knowing that his only true worth comes from the benevolent torture of others.

It is one of my deepest fears that everything creative I do, or have done, is simply a mix of replication and an oddly good memory. That every doodle I draw, photo I develop, film I make and every sentence made of strings of lovely trochees is nothing but a veiled piece of artistic plagiarism.

That being so, I’ve given up trying to change this. I’ve embraced my deficiency. Rather than fighting it, it has now become my goal to simply do things I find worth doing and hope that the veil is thick enough (and the stolen art beneath it great enough) that I can feel the transient, addictive glow of praise. This has yet to produce results, but I figure this objective is worth at least a few decades of my life.

I wish never to be Salieri to someone’s Mozart. The thought of it creates a deplorable reaction in me, a physical manifestation of jealousy that I can’t suppress. The idea is only worsened if it is undeniably true that the other party deserves the title more than I. My quick acceptance into the role of second best has always been preceded by a slew of defense mechanisms which enable me to speak without screaming.

But I’m not Salieri. I’m a dentist with a paintbrush.

And so I will paint my way into death, into obscurity, always clinging to the dim hope that the praise I might one day receive will push back a few more years the inevitable day when my short-lived existence will cease to have any significance upon the world I once inhabited.

Maybe if I try to put all these emotions into my next painting…