READING FOR SURVIVAL

Susan Sontag, an American Romancer Beatrice Gordon, Paradise Valley, Arizona

er politics anger me, but what angers me more l3l ‘s her attitude toward the United States which has nurtured her and allowed her to become what she is today. Yet, I tolerate her. Because-O! The woman can write! Susan Sontag, in her most recent novel, weaves in and out of a tale that has no mystery. Anyone familiar with British history knows how it ends. But she manages, through her wit, her knowl- edge, and her ability, to tell a finely wrought story. Reading The Volcano Lover requires some effort on the part of the reader, but the reward for diligence is pure enjoyment.

Sontag’s 1992 novel is rich and exciting; it is sexy. It is witty, compelling, and complex, but most of all, it is romance. She takes great pains to stress that this, in the very classic sense of American litera- ture, is a romance. Sontag, abiding by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s definition of romance “sways from the truth of the human heart,” incorporates the mar- velous and fantastic, and weaves the past into the present (Hawthorne vii). She has a grand time as she strays from the historical truth. Although Sontag claims to never have read contemporary ro- mances, she seems to be able, in chosen episodes, to parody them with expertise. Sontag writes about a love triangle at whose apex stands Sir William Hamilton, according to her, the greatest cuckold history has ever known (Sontag, Reading), his sec- ond wife, Lady Emma Hamilton; and the greatest naval hero the British have ever known, Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson.

Hamilton, British Envoy to the Kingdom of the Two Sicihes, was a compulsive collector-from his pur- chase of objects d’art-paintings and sculpture to the Roman cameo vases, later known as the Portland Vases-to antiquities, to stolen bits of Pompeii, to concretions of Vesuvius, to Emma, his wife who served him as a living Neoclassical artifact (Blondin 21-24). Emma collected lovers, and Nelson collected medals and praise.

Sontag does not call the characters by their true names. Hamilton is always the Cavaliere; Emma, the Cavaliere’s wife; and Nelson, the Hero. She allows her reader insight into the complexities of real people leading real lives, but Sontag fictionalizes her char- acters. These characters suffer from self-love and self- importance and are obsessed with collecting and pos- sessing. Sontag, too, seems to have a fixation on collections and collectors and appears to disapprove of those who collect. In reference to collectors and collecting she says:

Collections unite. Collections isolate. They unite those who love the same thing . . . They isolate from those who don’t share the passion . . . Don’t you see how beautiful it is ._. Collecting is a species of insatiable desire, a Don Juanism of objects in which each new find arouses a new mental tumescence.. . (Sontag, Volcano 29, 202)

It is also a book about other passions-of revolu- tions for eruptions, and about lust. She intricately draws us the passions of the Cavaliere, his obsession with the red-erupting volcano, Vesuvius, and the Cavaliere’s need for adding to his collections, -whether it be for monetary gain or merely for the sake of pos- session. The Cavaliere’s wife loves both her husband and her lover. The Hero loves the Cavaliere like a fa- ther; the Cavaliere loves the Hero like a son, and both men love the Cavaliere’s wife. These three share pas- sions, yet experience them as individuals.

Sontag’s choice of vocabulary, with its sexual over- tones, like the word “tumescence,” parallels the im- agery she carries throughout her text. The volcano carries sexual overtones for the Cavaliere. Describing his thoughts of the volcano, Sontag offers a richness in sexual imagery, He visualized

. . . its rolling insides . . . He imagined the heat on his cheek . . . the pulse in his neck beating after exertion of the climb and the pulse of the underlying lava. He recalled the boulder-framed view of the bay, the city’s drawn out curve (Sontag, Volcano 66).

In creating her characters, Sontag does so with hu- mor and an uncanny ability to transport her readers into the complicated world of 18th century Naples where the volcano competes with the encroaching French Revolution for center stage. The Cavaliere, al- ways a bit stilted, reserved, yet handsome, strong climber of the volcano, is reduced to a hallucinating blathering baby as he ages. In spite of all he is and has done, his dying wish is to be “remembered for the volcano” (Sontag, VoZcuno 372). His wife, beautiful in her youth, but brash and over-enthusiastic, ages quickly into a gross and unattractive middle-aged woman, still fat from her pregnancy with the Hero’s child. The Hero is at once both an absurd hero, il- logical in his unrelenting punishment of the Neapoli- tan rebels, concerned with his glory; and, on the other

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hand, a comic hero complete with his mistress, and even though what he does is neither proper nor hon- est, he is honored and treated like a god (Frye 43). What ever sympathy the reader has felt for this char- acter is canceled by his inhumane actions toward the Neapolitan rebel; he becomes the “Bourbon execu- tioner,” and the reader views his winning of battles as meaningless; he is a pitiful, unforgiving man, cut off-separated-from his wife, his father, his eye, his arm, and in the end, from the Cavaliere’s wife.

Sontag states that this romance can be read as opera (Sontag, Reading) and opens her text with an epigraph from Cosi Fan Tutte, act ii. A late chapter relates the incidence of the evil police chief of Naples, Baron Scarpia, his machinations of a painter, a polit- ical prisoner, and their relationship with the opera diva It is the story of Tosca, yet Tosca, too, is un- named by Sontag. Scarpia is the villain in the black cape, the one who is truly evil, the one who is re- buffed by the Cavaliere’s wife. Scarpia manipulates the diva but she stabs him and commits suicide. Sontag reflects on Scarpia’s character:

We know about evil people. bike Scarpia Baron Scarpia is truly wicked. He exults in his wicked- ness and his intelligence. Little pleases him more than practicing his skills of decep- tion....[And] there is the sheer love of inflicting pain. Scarpia, too, is ruled by his emotions. But the combination of emotions with power cre- ates...power (Sontag, Volcano 313-314).

Scarpia serves as foil for the Hero, and although the Hero does not seek to deliver pain, he commits evil in his desire for fame.

Real people enter and exit scenes: Goethe, the painters Romney and Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, the King and Queen of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and various relatives of the Cavaliere. Some of the most memorable scenes in this novel occur in meet- ings of the Cavaliere, the Cavaliere’s wife, and the Hero. Here Sontag presents the trio almost poignantly, with an undercurrent of absurdity. Sontag’s narrator describes them:

What is a hero supposed to look like? . . . the hero is maimed toothless, worn, underweight little man . . . [The] trio [consists of] . . . a large woman and a small man who are full of feeling for each other, and a tall emaciated m;tn who loves them both and rejoices in their company (Sontag, Volcano 207,227).

Sontag is well known for her essays from the 1960s and 1970s but particularly for the later ZUness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, so we think

of her as a “serious” writer. The reader is surprised by her comic ability in scenes in which she describes the lovers’ moments together. Their first meeting is public and is one of contrasts. The Hero returns vic- torious from the Battle of the Nile to a gaudy regatta on Naples Bay. The Cavaliere and his wife are bril- liantly dressed in blue and gold, and they and the Ring and Queen of the Kingdom in the awninged Royal barge await the Hero. The band plays “Rule Britannia,” the crowds cheer wildly as Nelson, giddy in the glar- ing noon heat, appears on the deck of his ship

. . . haggard, coughing, his hair powdered but too long, his empty right sleeve pinned to -the breast of his dress uniform, a red gash above his blind eye where he had been struck by a fragment of grapeshot . . . He was racked with coughing spasms, he had fever . . . He knew how to endure the unbearable. He was put to bed . . . in the British envoy’s residence. [The Cavalier-e’s wife] sang to him. And she touched him. She cut the nails of his left hand and bathed his poor gashed forehead with milk. When she leaned over to wash and trim his hair, the smell from her armpits was like oranges, or sweeter, like lilies, he’d never known a woman could smell like that. He kept his eyes closed and breathed in through his nostrils (Sontag, Volcano 191-195).

Later, after the lovers have consummated their re- lationship, the narrator describes another intimate moment:

She loves to undress him, as if he were a child. He had the most beautiful skin of any man she had known, soft as a girls. She pressed her lips to the poor scorched stump of his arm. He flinched. She kissed it again. He sighed. she kissed his groin and he laughed and pulled her onto the bed, into their position-they already had habits (Sontag, Volcano 262-2631).

Sontag’s descriptions are vivid; she places the reader in the midst of the action:

. . . on the slopes of Vesuvius, illuminated by the orange glow of molten rock. He stood motion- less, his pale grey [sic] eyes wide open. The earth trembled beneath his feet. He could feel the hairs of his eyelashes, his eyebrows move with the uprush of burning air. They could climb no higher. Surefooted, pushed down by the bil- lowing smoke and falling rocks at their backs, they moved diagonally from the lava1 stream . . . . Where is the boy? There, going the wrong way. This way. Come! I can’t. [The boy] stepped up

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lightly on the lava ledge and started across. Christ walking on water could not have amazed his followers more. The boy did not sink into the surface. The Cavaliere followed. It was like walking on flesh (Sontag, Volcano 82-83).

Sontag through her narrator, moves the reader from the present to days of the French Revolution and then back again, juxtaposing history to fiction. Thx Volcano Lover is a fine example of the American romance, it is well constructed and meticulously writ- ten, each word carefully placed to obtain the great- est effect. There is a preciseness of language, some sentences constructed in shorthand-bits and frag- ments that sharpen and hone her talent for placing words on the page. One can read her philosophy, her attitude toward revolution; one can read and search for metaphors-they are superb and plentiful. One

can compare her book to other romances, or one can analyze her narrator, or one can admire her play of the language, or her use of imagery. Or one can sim- ply read the story. The Volcano Lover is a good read.

REFERENCES 1. Hawthorne N. The House of Seven Gables. New York: New American Library; 1981. 2. Reading, from The Volcano Lover, Centennial Lecture; Novemb’er 19, 1992; Scottsdale, Arizona. 3. Blondin JA. Neoclassicism and Economics: “Passions on Display.” The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag. Unpublished essay, 1994. 4. Sontag S. The Volcano Lover. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux; 1.992. 5. Frye N. The Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1973. 6. Garis L. Susan Sontag Finds Romance. The New York Times Magazine. August 2, 1992:21-44 7. Sontag S. The Project of Literature: The Process of Writing Literature. Colloquia, Centennial Lecture. November 20, 1992; Tempe, Arizona.

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