YW HAD never occured to me be-
fore that Luce might be short

for Lucifer. This definitely did
occur to me after following Dan-
te’s journey to Hell, Purgatory and
Heaven through the pages of a
recent Life magazine.

Dante received the full Life
treatment—technically handsome
reproductions of art works he in-
spired (Michelangelo, Dore, Dela-
croix, Rodin, among others) and a
typically Lucean touch.

If Pope Paul III could commis-
sion Michelangelo to portray the
“Last Judgement” on the walls of
the Sistine Chapel, why cannot
Henry Luce commission the crea-
tion of a Modern Inferno on the
pages of Life? There is only one
answer to a question like that:

“Turn the page and fold out to
see a Modern inferno,” was Life’s
command. What you saw was &
silk screen montage of photo-
graphs, news clippings and hate
leaflets representing some infernal
evils of the contemporary world.

With the pride of patronage Life
-wanted to make certain its readers
understood what its artist meant
with his kaleidoscope of Klans-
men, Nazis (American and Ger-
man), concentration camp corpses,
bombed out cities and other repre-
sentative symbols of our time.

“Like so many of his contem-
poraries, (Robert) Rauschenberg
views Hell not as a place devised
for man in the afterlife,” Life ex-
plained helpfully, “but as a condi-
tion created by man here and
Rw.”

Art is illusion, however. As hap-
pens in Life, reality is conveyed
by the advertisements. These land-
marks of the best goddam civiliza-
tion on God’s still-green earth add,
as Dante journeys through them,
dimensions that were far beyond
the poet’s imagination.

Dante was fascinated by num-
bers, especially seven. The text of
Life’s essay on the poet and his
work appears on seven pages. The
early portions flow past low-key
ads that are in context, not very
suggestive, about things like foun-
tain pens, automobile batteries,
charities, whiskies and colognes
for men. The ads pick up when a
summary of the Divine Comedy
— is begun.

Hall is reached at the bottom of

a page. The poet and his guide,

Virgil, pass through a gate with
the inscription, “Abandon hope,
all ye who enter here,” into the
region where the indifferent, re-
jected by ‘both Heaven and Hell,
are tormented, and on beyond to
Limbo, which is, typographically,
eft hanging between pages.

Things look grim at this point.
But then from the photograph of
a snow-covered, rustic landscape on
the facing page, a sturdy, con-
tented, confident American family
stares at you. The inscription over
its four members reads:

“How come Metropolitan Life
insures 45,000,000 people — and
can still keep track of you?”
After Metropolitan things get
worse. The poet descends to the
bottom depths of a “Hell that
looks like an open-pit mine.” Here,
“Murderers swim in blood; slaves
of desire are driven back and forth
by the howling winds; gluttons
huddle on the ground in chill
rains; the wrathful battle one an-
other in a swamp; flatterers wal-
low in human excrement; sowers
of discord, split up their middles,
drag their hanging entrails after
them through eternity.”

Flanking this description is an
advertisement -headed: “5 Things
You Should Do About The Draft.”
The first thing is something you
should not do. “Don’t panic,” says
the ad.

Some Pinko advertising copy
writer actually assumed that
somebody might panic upon re-

Dante's journey

into

LIFE

Alighieri Dante, 1265-1321

By AL RICHMOND

This article appeared in the Jan. 22 issue of People’s World, a west-
coast U.S. publication. It is reprinted here slightly abridged.

ceiving a draft notice when most
any Congressman can tell you that
all our red-white-and-blue-blooded
American boys are just hankering
for the chance to kick the Cong

around, and the only reason a

draft is needed is to give them all
a fair chance without anyone get-
ting hurt in the crush.

Badly. begun, the ad ends on an
uplift, urging draft-prone young
men to write to something -called
“Army Opportunities” for the
“free, 40-page booklet, The Secret
of Getting Ahead.” Yet, a suspicion
lingers. What was Life’s advertis-
ing department thinking about
when it placed the ad about the
draft next to hanging entrails be-
ing dragged through eternity?

Before an answer suggests itself
the mood is alteréd. Possibly as a
subtle concession to the temper-
ance forces the page facing the
gore of hell is one big, gaudy ad in
color for a Kentucky straight
Bourbon.

A turn of the page and we land
into a discussion of Dante’s mean-
ing. “Since he believed men are
imperfect and therefore dissimilar
to God, the only way to make them
resemble God’s image was to rend-

|. them in all their diversity and
multiplicity, so that in their total-
‘ity they might approach a perfect
likeness to Him.”,

This quest for God-like perfec-
tion is pursued on the opposite
page. There in all its divine splend-
or is the Automobile. It is being
subjected to the torment of an
electronic Hell. Enclosed in a me-
tallic .chamber the Automobile
‘stands beneath a galaxy of power-
ful electric globes effusing merci-
less heat. aia oe

“This severe heat test,” explains
the ad, “demonstrates the quality
that Ford Company builds into its
cooling and air-conditioning sys-
tem.”

Is this some mystical symbol-
ism, which really means, “If you
must go to Hell, why not go with
the comfort of the cooling and air-
conditioning system of a Ford
automobile?”

From the Ford plateau the essay
ascends on the next page to Mar-
tin Buber, the Jewish philosopher
who died last year, and the “I-
thou” relationship he urged upon
‘men and nations.

“This,” writes the essayist, “was
his unique expression of truth that
each person must recognize that
every other one is not merely an
object to be seen, acted upon or
commanded but is another ‘I’ with
its own visions and desires .. .”

Buber’s philosophy confronts an
“I-thou” monologue, or a “thou-I”
soliloquy, perhaps:

“Oh, you shouldn’t have.”
“(But I’m glad you did!)” —

The ad then asks, “Isn’t that
what they always say when you
give the Smooth Canadian?”

The seventh and ultimate page
of the essay is decorated with a re-
production of Boticelli’s interpre-
tation of Dante’s ascent to Para-
dise. It is & sphere dotted with
what the caption describes as ‘‘an
assembly of luminous souls.”

But the reproduction is so small
that the luminosity of the souls is
lost. They seem like, specks on the
sphere and might easily be mis-
taken for capers on a pizza.

Sure enough, on the opposite
page is a real-life pizza, a “Chef
Boy-Ar-Dee Complete Pepperoni
Pizza With Cheese . . . The spice,
tang and sizzle of pepperoni pizza.”
Slices of hot sausage float-on a red
ooze of tomato paste flecked with
the white of cheese.

As the essayist says in his pe-
roration: “But the Dante who was
ushered into the presence of God
after his trip through all man’s
vice and virtues had been subject-
ed to an experience truly total.”

a

April 29, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page

ao