Day 928, Quasi-Quarantine: Fever-Dream Quality Propels A Tale Of Love Lost To Alcoholism In "Under The Volcano"

 

" ... And for a moment they stood on the porch without speaking, not holding hands, but with their hands just meeting, as though not quite sure they weren't dreaming this, each of them separately on their far bereaved cots, their hands but blown fragments of their memories, half afraid to comingle, yet touching over the howling sea at night."

Reading like a fever dream, "Under the Volcano" tracks the alcoholic shenanigans of "the Consul" -- Geoffrey Firmin -- a British government employee and frustrated novelist drifting through Mexico and estranged from his wife, Yvonne. 

When Yvonne returns after a year to spend "Day of the Dead" with him, the pair experiences the day separately even while together, as a host of characters drift through the narrative. Yvonne has had affairs with both the Consult's half-brother, Hugh, and his longtime friend, Jacques Laruelle, lending extra tension and weight to the pending reconciliation.

"How indeed could he hope to find himself, to begin again when, somewhere, perhaps, in one of those lost or broken bottles, in one of those glasses, lay, forever, the solitary clue to his identity? How could he go back and look now, scrabble among the broken glass, under the eternal bars, under the oceans?"

"You are walking on the edge of an abyss where I may not follow."

Malcolm Lowry brilliantly weaves symbolism, imagery, and mysticism into the tale, rendering the novel a tragedy, a romance, a case study on alcoholism, a comedy, and a quasi-autobiography. According to Stephen Spender in the foreword, "'Under the Volcano' is, it is true, perhaps the best account of a 'drunk' in fiction."

"He was not the person to be seen reeling about in the street. True he might lie down in the street, if need be, like a gentleman; but he would not reel."

The emotion sneaks up on you as the characters literally and figuratively slide inevitably toward the barranca. As the Consul is increasingly depicted as a bystander in his own life, the questions of choice and destiny emerge, and we are forced to reconcile his inaction with all the sentiments and repercussions he foresees in the event that he were to act on his unvarnished desires.

"He had few emotions about the war, save that it was bad. One side of the other would win ... And in either case one's own battle would go on."

While one wishes that Yvonne's perspective was more clearly articulated and acknowledges that the prose can bog down into a mix of languages and stream-of-consciousness, "Under the Volcano" is an unquestionable masterpiece.

"Even almost bad poetry is better than life, the muddle of voices might have been saying, as, now, he drank half his drink."