Scope and Contents XXIX/4 The painter now reappears, regressed to childhood, his painting (still one of my own Union Jack pictures) becomes even more irrelevant as the Bomb destroys Hiroshima. Around him also explodes another catastrophe, this time of his own finances as he strives to make a book of unprecedented lavishness and as he drives himself deeper into stupendous debt. The bank statement is genuine (being my own) and the bank's name is thinly disguised by an anagrammatisation (though its symbol has appeared before in Canto XVII/2). Here the extravagance of the lunatic spenders of the Sienese Club is joined to the strange prodigality of artists. Cappochio who ends this Canto was reputed to have painted exquisite scenes from the life of Christ on his fingernails, only to lick them off when requested to show them to anyone he felt unworthy to see them. The freedom of the printing process allows one to recall the splendid redness of overdraft statements in my student years (I have had an...

Scope and Contents XXV/2 The gesture of 'figs' which is Vanni Fucci's parting blasphemy is still alive and well in many parts of the world. The sexual connotations come from a punishment imposed by Barbarossa on those who had humiliated his daughter: he made them suck a fig from the vagina of a she-mule. The special relevance to Pistoia is that the city had a high tower built topped by huge marble arms projecting in the direction of Florence and making this same gesture. Here I have paralleled the Italian sign with its rough English equivalent, the poking out of the tongue with its similar vulva associations. The head is, in outline, the mirror image of Vanni Fucci's fist: this hints at the transformation to come and seems to identify the whole personality with the gesture of derision, and also continues the mirroring aspect of the previous illustration. On a wall (perhaps of the aforementioned tower) behind appears a `poster' taken from the 'Sun' newspaper (c. 1980) showing a crude placard which...

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XXV/3 It is Ovid, the master of metamorphosis, whom Dante challenges to a stylistic dual, inviting the reader to witness his superior skill. Echoing once again the format of early book illustrations in keeping with the wealth of literary reference in the Canto, four quasi-Ovidian scenes surround a portrait of the poet (itself derived from various vague Roman likenesses). No precise events in Ovid's Metamorphoses are alluded to, though the original lithograph was itself achieved (using a series of transparencies of an original grisaille) by a process of metamorphosis. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXV/4 The fragments of Laocoon that were used as the frontispiece of this Canto in an emblematic and formal way are here reassembled (as the reptilian elements in the text reassemble and change) to make a more organic figuration. The classical elements are rearranged to form a mannerist/romantic group, a transcription of the original energies of the sculpture. The colouring is intended to recall the muscular feats of Michelangelo's supermen and the sexual implications of the formal elements are given free reign as if to combine the themes of the preceding illustrations. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Canto XXVI/1 GODI FIORENZA, the opening cry of this canto is here writ large (very large in fact since the original drawing for the lettering is fifty inches high) and in sombre colours, to stress its irony. The only gleam of relief lies in the slight displacement of positive and negative plates which, so to speak, by deliberate error serves to outline the words which would otherwise be almost indistinguishable. A Florence which Dante castigates for its loss of honour and brightness is here characterised by a lily in bloodless grey. The coarseness of texture implies a slogan in the manner of wall graffiti (`Up Arsenal' etc.) -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXVI/2 Among the flames which, in an extended image, he compares to fireflies, Dante spies out five Florentines in the perpetual dusk. Here in what heraldry would call a `field' of stylised fireflies I have placed five reduced versions of the computer-distorted lilies already used in Canto XXIV/4. These have been highlighted both by the suppression of the background mezzotint and their being encircled, as if in the telescopic sights of a gun, by target-shapes (combinations in fact of Letraset photo-registration marks) which pinpoint them as unerringly as does Dante's scorn. The number 5 is the page number of the Human Document text. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XXVI/4 The sea of the preceding image is here twice present. In the original lithograph the general background derives from a combination of xeroxed positives and negatives upon which is superimposed a spiralled cut-up of the original positive for the preceding image. The circular form suggests the churn of waters that swallow the ship of Ulysses as well as the water-covered hemisphere that the mediaeval mind imagined. Out of this arises, as if in a dream inset, a glimpse of Mount Purgatory (the positive extrusion of Hell's negative drilling as explained later by Virgil). The inset vision is once again made from the sea and mountain fragments from the Boy's Own Paper: it appears framed and set apart, for it represents somehow an anomalous interpolation in the Matter of Hell, a sight forbidden to living man and unimaginable to the infernal damned. The interior text here appears in negative for the first time as such texts will do increasingly as the reversal of human values...

Scope and Contents Canto XXVII/1 As in the example given by Dante of the artificer of the Sicilian Bull, the devisers of guileful intricacy are finally and eternally trapped in their own machinations, becoming part of the schemes that were once part of themselves. The famous, rather cold-looking arrogant boy at the bottom left of the image seems to dream his Macchiavellian and megalomaniacal dreams and spins a mechanical web of devices. So Guido da Montefeltro spins his tale of dupes, stratagems and accomplices and we learn how he, the crafty, becomes in turn the dupe of a craftier Pope. The cast of any such tale is indicated here by faces which emerge from and disappear back into the mechanistic maze (they are easiest discerned with half-closed eyes; or appropriate suspicion). The collage is from the Boy's Own Paper (rich in impossible tasks of DIY engineering) and the Illustrated London News. Around the picture is a hand drawn frame of netting, to refer both to a tangled web of deceit and to hint...

Scope and Contents XXVII/2 The river of eloquence that encircles the Folly for Wisdom (cf. IV/1) is here quoted, starting in the top left hand corner in its original colour and progressively twisting itself into a cunning tongue of flame, to signify both Guido's misuse of his gifts of persuasive oratory and the form he takes on his final punishment. This is Eloquence without the Wisdom it is designed to frame. Dante's earlier view of Guido da Montefeltro (Convito IV. XXVIII. 8) is quoted beneath (as his own mistaken eloquence in describing Guido as 'our noblest Italian. . .'). Also quoted is a fragment of T. S. Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' which refers to Guido's final servility before Authority and repays one of Eliot's many compliments to his favourite poet of the past; for the prefatory quotation to `Prufrock' is taken from this Canto where Guido says, 'If I believed my answer was addressed to one who might go back into the world this flame would stop vibrating and stand still. --...

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XXVII/3 In returning to Dante's running verbal vendetta against Pope Boniface VIII the initial illustration to Canto XIX is revisited. It tumbles now to emphasise the single key which indicates that this Pope at least can only make the dispensation of a long season in Hell, though he is seen here affording the impotent absolution that he gives to Guido. In the background the sign of blessing is seen parodied in a form reminiscent of the blasphemous gestures of Canto XXV/2. The image of Boniface comes from a drawing that I made in 1979 in the foyer of the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, where a poster featured his equestrian statue. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XXVII/4 The end of Guido's sad tale (in contrast to that of his son, related in Purgatorio, who repented in the very mouth of Hell) is of a long repentance negated by a single action. Here in his Franciscan robe we see him tumbling down after the black cherub had snatched him from St Francis himself (in a scene dominated once again by the eloquence of evil). Amongst the fallen angels are all the counterparts of the true Angelic Orders. The black Cherubim whose representative we meet here in the eighth Bolgia of the eighth circle are of the eighth order and represent the intellect. He is presented here as three Roman eights, black and twisted. St Francis, whose image Guido has tried to 'mirror', as indicated in the drawing, drifts back up without his dubious prize whereas Guido is pierced by pain in a parody of the Saint's stigmata, and his face is now concealed as he would wish his fate concealed on earth: it is at this point in the Inferno that the souls become less keen on having...

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XXVIII/2 By singular good fortune a professional anatomist of distinction was numbered amongst the subscribers to the original book and Dr. B. Moxham has supplied anatomical information (cf. also XXXIV/3) and, most invaluably, the pictures of a sectioned corpse that I have used here. That the split cadavers are themselves split intc separate photographs that here are brought together as a fairly ill-fitting mosaic is itself appropriate. The worst-sliced figure can be thought to represent Mahomet (that is, as Dante thought of him) who speaks while poised to depart. The image is made up out of nine photographs with (in the original assemblage) gouache additions -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XXVIII/3 This picture, itself divided and split, brings together recapitulated themes from my past work. The Berlin Wall (already hinted at in Canto XVII/1) was the subject of two paintings done in 1973 (Berlin Wall with German Grass and Skies cf. Works/Texts pp. 186-9) and stands here for the divided city to make a parallel with the city of Florence seen in the upper inset panel. The view of mediaeval Florence is taken from a contemporary representation of the city; it is divided into two by a broken version of the emblematic lily itself segmented into black and white areas with the city's image further divided by a blue and white cross. The image thus conflates the divisions and subdivisions of Guelph and Ghibelline that sundered the city's peace throughout the Middle Ages. Black and White divisions are taken up in another guise via the recapitulation of a similar theme which occurs in a series of paintings made for an exhibition in South Africa in 1974/1975, most of which went...

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XXVIII/4 Bertran de Born holds high his severed head in the midst of fractured wreckage of an imposing edifice, a house divided. Haunting this picture are my memories of houses ripped open by the Blitz. The structure is collaged from fragments illustrating many different kinds of building belonging to different social orders (the Schism of Class via palace and tenement) as well as places of worship of various kinds indicating religious factionalism. The smashing of what was once a unity is asserted by the identical pillars on either side of the riven entranceway. The text echoes Dante's image of the head held like a lamp to underline the implication that Bertran, a poet, should have illuminated the world with his intellect and eloquence instead of bringing it into deeper darkness. There is also a reminiscence in the image as a whole of the final vision of the Fall of the House of Usher. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Canto XXX/1 Clarity, reason and judgement were represented in Canto XI by a head (selected from Canto III/1) shown against a graph to signify Aristotle and his systems of classification. Here, to represent madness, head and graph are cut up and the fragments scrambled and superimposed, all falling to the bottom of the image area. As Homer's mask is broken and elevated in Canto XXVI so Aristotle's is here debased by the flight from reason of the fraudulent. In terms of colour the graph has now become more real as it registers the lowest of this group of categories, mad bestiality. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXX/2 Within the crags and boulders of this Bolgia we find the forger Master Adam who falsified the coinage of Florence. A dropsical wreck, his vast middle makes his legs useless, and only one arm retains its strength. The hint of red recalls Master Adam's death by fire at the stake. Behind him Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha go on their endless rabid chase into the gloom, in search of souls to bite. The figures and the landscape in this, almost the most literal of the book's images, are concocted from Dore's illustrations to the Inferno. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXX/3 The coins of Florence which were becoming an international currency (hence the Florins of Britain and Holland) showed the emblematic lily on one side and the figure of John the Baptist on the other (cf. Canto XIII/4). These were the coins that Master Adam falsified, by the addition of a percentage of dross to the metal (thus in his punishment he himself becomes swollen with waste matter). The progressive degradation of the coin in his hands is shown here by progressively more inaccurate pressings (of a rubber stamp that I had made of the coin) into the soft ground of the original plate, themselves progressively more crudely bitten. The image of the coin also rotates as one reads downwards through the image until one reaches the final punning text. The stamping on the plate seemed to have an appropriate relationship with coining and various metallic colours were used in the original printing. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXX/4 The cartoon format is reverted to (cf. Canto XXII/l) for the almost slapstick dialogue between Sinon and Master Adam the vulgarity of which is such that Virgil reproaches Dante for listening to it. Abuse has to be teased out of Mallock's text, but it can be found. The odd emphasis provided by the capital letters was gained by the use of the publisher's catalogue at the end of A Human Document. `Suboroff is the name of one of their authors, though in this context it seems to have a different sort of meaning -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Canto XXXI/1 In a series of drawings called Letters from a Cranes kin Bag I explored what might be called primordial letter-forms (it was in a craneskin bag that Hermes carried the elements of written language, for cranes seem in their skeins of flight to spell out letters in the sky). Here the same forms do double duty in describing the language of Nimrod, architect of the Tower of Babel (whose tongue speaks gibberish now) and the unified language of the world that his vainglorious scheme brought to an end. The same basic lithograph represented, in Canto V11/2, the incoherent speech of Plutus, though there it was partially concealed by overlay. The colours relate to rock paintings I studied in the Kalahari from which these forms derived: they also have a hint of earth-based building materials for it was Nimrod's folly to try and make the earth stretch to Heaven. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXXI/2 Over a huge gap in time Dante foresees the now frighteningly realised possibility of monstrous power allied to intelligence. Nature he observes is sensible to have made its most powerful and hugest creatures without the guile to make use of their destructive potential. Here the dreaming boy (an innocent echo of the boy in Canto XXVII/1) sees looming up in his future a brutal force whose actions could be malignly controlled by artificial intelligence. The microchip which here stands for the monster's face and brain was one of the first ever illustrated (in the Scientific American which I subscribed to in the sixties). Reason, Faith and Hope are eclipsed and Culture is destroyed as vultures fly ahead to feed off the open book. The rest of the collage is from fragments of the Boy's Own Paper. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.