ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CLAYTON BRADDOCK
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on February 4, 1996.
In the biblical story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed his brother Abel.
The names were transposed in a column Friday.
THE RECENT public examination of the mystery almanac's prediction of another deep snow, if not a return to the ice age, was enough to scare the jabberwocky out of the citizenry. It was enough to endure a near blizzard and a second blitzkrieg from Canada.
It really isn't a mystery but something as old as the human race: the rumor mill. Our species loves to spread rumors as much as they love sprinkling salt: It makes us think the food tastes better.
Another human trait is, let's face it, making other people feel bad. That's what rumors do to us. It's a trait indulged by poets, theologians and mystery-almanac writers. So what's the mystery?
There's little comfort that the ice storms of '93-94 have returned to their Canadian lair or that this winter will soon sneak back to the North Pole.
The deep depression that comes with the arctic blast lingers and is not easily forgotten. The deep chill is mostly about ice.
During the visitations by snow and cold, many of us yearn for some heat - even brimstone. We needed relief from deep chill and, during the '93-94 ice storms, all we could do was gather around the fireplace and listen to what sounded like a two-platoon firefight as limbs and trees popped, cracked and fell.
What psychological weapon does the deep freeze of January and February bring to bedevil us? Obviously the absence of the sun, packed with vitamin D and other goodies, brings on the miseries. Being snowlocked with the kids for several days can send some homemakers into a deep decline because they miss shopping and rubbing elbows in the malls.
But is there something else? Maybe. After all, residents of Western Virginia aren't the first to feel the depression of cold. It can go deep into the human spirit in a kind of isolation that goes far beyond snow and ice, the gloom of cold, satellite dish out of whack, a yearning for that morning cup of hot coffee.
Humankind has been debating this over the past few hundred years.
Dante Alighieri, 15th century Italian poet and author of the "Inferno," a part of the Divine Comedy, had some wild ideas about hell and brimstone that went beyond the shortage of vitamin D or even the pain of ordinary sin.
Dante embraced a denominational view, but he still took a hard-core, anti-sin approach. His view was a lot more serious than a few third-class sinners crying out for relief. Those of us who hate ice understand the Italian poet.
As you may recall, Dante and Latin poet Virgil decided to explore hell, the residents of which were mostly politicians, kings, popes and assorted others on Dante's bad list. Hell was neatly divided into deepening levels of sin from bad to worst.
Along with the cast of serpents, dragons and demons, there were traitors, falsifiers and gluttons; evil counselors, thieves, friars and brawlers; frauds and hypocrites; purchasers and sellers of ecclesiastical preferments; tyrants and assassins; "malefactors who made secret and vile traffic of their public offices to gain money."
So far, so bad. Other than the excessive heat, it wasn't all that bad. The worst was yet to come.
The Ninth Circle contained Satan himself, Judas Iscariot and some others with bad rap sheets, down in "the bottom of all guilt or lowest part of Hell where external cold freezes and locks up the marsh that receives all its rivers."
That devilish part of hell, "the lowest part of the Universe and farthest remote from the Source of all light and heat," was a really bad place. Within the four concentric rings, the poets found Abel, slayer of brother Cain, and other sinners "who have done violence to their own kindred."
The mode of punishment - raw, deadly cold - is crucial to the concept. Dante's main point here was isolation from God. Anyone who has suffered the loneliness of a long cold night with no hope of warmth or light - even with companions in misery - knows too well the deep freeze of isolation.
When they passed one frozen sinner, the man cried out for help. Dante replied, "If thou would have me aid thee, tell me who thou art; and if I do not extricate thee, may I have to go to the bottom of the ice?" Most of us can identify with the poet's fear.
The poets, no dummies to be sure, fled to a better climate, even without a shift in the jet stream to the south.
Dante and Virgil looked up to see "through a round opening the beauteous things which Heaven bears; and thence we issued out, again to see the stars." It all comes down to this: You can always sit in the shade to beat the summer heat, but the deep chill is the pits.
Clayton Braddock, a former teacher at Radford University, is a free-lance writer based in Newport.
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