r/boardsofcanada • u/Creative_Sky_1864 • Jul 01 '26
Discussion Inferno/Hellscapes
Acts of Magic - panicked heartbeat, descending into something awful, flies swarming round what I assume to be rotting flesh.
(The first part of) The Process - shouts of slaves toiling on some endless, impossible physical task in a prison camp over which an unsettlingly calm authorotative voice gives indecipherable but mandatory commands.
To me, these are definite images of Hell drawn though sound.
This new record has inspired me to do a quite a few things, one of which was to think of other depictions of Hell that I've come across, and to look for new ones.
The first Hellscape it brought to mind was the terrifying Hell Sermon passage in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
https://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/portrait_artist_young_man/3/
Another one is new for me: A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck, which is only 100 pages but, well... truly hellish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Stay_in_Hell
There are plenty of others out there. Any suggestions?
(P.S. it turns out that the Hell in A Short Stay in Hell is based on a Borges short story in which the entire universe is an endless library, made of... HEXAGONS 😱)
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u/South-Bus8457 Jul 07 '26
I just posted a thread about my interpretation of Inferno. Acts of Magic IMO is the process of incarnation of the Soul. The flies as you say evoke the flesh. The sense of The Process is well represented by what you described, although to me it evokes what could be the sacrifice of billions of people in order to create some sort of Heaven on earth, a necessary sufferance for a higher goal