The island of the dead: from Böcklin's visions to Fabrizio Valenza's novel

The Isle of the Dead by the Swiss symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin, in all its versions, has haunted generations of scholars and beyond. The homonymous novel by Fabrizio Valenza recalls its dark suggestions by crossing them with the oppressive atmospheres typical of Lovecraftian literature.

di Obsidian Mirror

originally published on the author's blog
cover via Die Toteninsel | Digital Produktionen ARTE

In the shade of cypresses,
and inside the urn comforted by weeping,
Is the sleep of death less hard? 

Ugo Foscolo, Of the Sepulchres, 1807

L'island of the dead. Three words that are already quite evocative. But more than the words, the image that takes shape in our mind by listening to them is evocative. It is the image of a painting on which certainly the vast majority of those who stumble upon it are forced to linger for much more than a simple moment. An image which, on the other hand, perhaps due to the wealth of details, perhaps due to theimpenetrability of the subject, requires particular attention, and certainly not a casual glance like the one granted to even more famous masterpieces.

After all, art is also (and above all) this: there is no real need to assign a title to a work, except for commercial reasons. And this is valid both for the figurative arts and for the auditory ones. How many times have we immediately recognized a melody without immediately remembering the title and its author? How many times do we recognize an image without associating it with anything but itself? 

The Isle of the Dead (The Toten Island) is no exception: it is extraordinarily easy to recognize her and even the stones know that there are several versions of her and that in 1933 she bewitched the Führer to the point of leading him to acquire one for the study of the Reich chancellery. The name of the author of her is instead far from easy to remember: it is about Arnold Bocklin, one of the main exponents of the German symbolism, a current just in case characterized by contents that are always very complex to decipher. 

The Isle of the Dead emerges in the center of a dark and still body of water. Rock formations are open amphitheatrically towards the observer. In them the vestiges of imposing pagan buildings in ruins are evident, in which openings, apparently sepulchres, have been dug. In the center, a group of tall, dark cypresses rise to the sky. A boat is preparing to dock on the island. On it, in addition to the rower, a human silhouette is standing, wrapped in a shroud that completely covers the body. At his feet, a light-colored coffin rests across the bow of the boat. The standing figure casts his shadow on the sheet covering the coffin. The lighted buildings on the island, in contrast, cast no shadows.

Boat and island therefore belong to two different worlds, that of the living and that of the dead. The tall cypresses, typical of burial places, therefore refer to mourning and the boat seems to accompany the deceased on his last journey. Not surprisingly, the figure of the rower evokes the character of Charon, the ferryman of the souls of Dante Alighieri's Hell, while the waters are reminiscent of the ancient River Styx, through which the Greeks believed the souls of their dead traveled to Hades. 

The interpretations of The Isle of the Dead of Böcklin are innumerable. In fact, anyone who has ever grappled with this work has often developed their own personal reading of the image. The one I prefer, but which I don't remember where and when I read it, nevertheless deviates from the common interpretation. It is noted in it that, upon closer inspection, the bow of the vessel would appear to be pointing towards the observer, as if it were sailing away from the island. In fact, it is known that when the rower is seated, it is easier to row with the finish line behind due to the combined use of the muscles of the arms and legs. Is it a psychological game that Böcklin is playing towards us? It can't be ruled out.

The imaginary island was modeled, perhaps, on the English cemetery of Florence, while others indicate as sources some Mediterranean islands such as the islet of Pontikonissi, opposite Corfu, the island of Ponza, due to its crescent shape , the island of San Giorgio, in Montenegro, or the Aragonese castle in Ischia, which we know for sure that Böcklin himself had visited. 

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The Veronese writer and philosopher Fabricius Valencia, recently released on Amazon platform with his new one novel inspired by the paintings of Arnold Böcklin, instead prefers to place the imaginary island off the coast of Zoagli, a small village nestled between Rapallo and Chiavari, in the Gulf of Tigullio.

The choice of the small seaside resort as a starting point may have been inspired (the author neither confirms nor denies) by the presence, on the seabed in front of the pier, of the famous Madonna del Mare, a bronze sculpture placed in memory of the fallen sailors. The submerged sculpture obviously has no anthropological value (we can rather classify it as a tourist attraction), but, representing a unique peculiarity, it will certainly have attracted the attention of the Author. 

Instead, he is an anthropology scholar Andrea Nascimbeni, protagonist of the novel in question and contemporary of Arnold Böcklin, who decides to venture on the mysterious island to find out what lies behind those curious funerary structures. The Isle of the Dead it is a work presented in the form of a long letter that the protagonist, having survived a terrifying experience, writes to his former master Paolo Mantegazza (a name that was far from chosen by chance, as we will see later). 

Delirium envelops him hour after hour, perhaps provoked by the numerous sinister mysteries he encounters. Not even fever, however, could prevent him from tracking down the open and hidden sepulchres from the sight of fortuitous visitors. Exacerbated by the secrets of the island and the silence of its inhabitants, Nascimbeni finds momentary comfort only in a woman, with whom he falls in love. However, nothing is as it seems and the meeting with a man shrouded in mystery puts him on the alert when he invites him to leave the island. However, the anthropologist does his best to remain hidden there until the approaching feast of "32" October, as the innkeeper who hosts him jokingly defines it, because he knows that this is the moment in which he will be able to understand which strange funerary rites are celebrated in that place. 

The technique of the written report in epistolary form is certainly not new, just think of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, one of the most capable users of this literary artifice, who often imagined his protagonists, driven mad by unspeakable horrors, entrusting their will to anonymous but incautious readers. And it is precisely in one of the most successful stories of the Providence solitaire (The Shadow over Innsmouth, 1936) that we recognize the same gloomy and oppressive atmosphere of the novel of Valencia. Just as the young protagonist of the Lovecraftian tale understands that the inhabitants of the port town are, without exception, the fruit of a cross between humans and horrible sea creatures, in the same way Andrea Nascimbeni soon realizes that that island, so geographically close to modern Liguria, has remained anchored to an ancient and terrible cult to which its inhabitants turn with disarming naturalness. 

Technically The Isle of the Dead, precisely because of its accurate anthropological research, for the abstract concept of sacrifice and for the mystery of the Eternal Return (the arcane birth-death-reincarnation of human beings) should be compared more than anything else to the British folk-horror genre which, since the early seventies, with highly successful films such as Blood on Satan's Claw and the mythological The Wicker Man, opened wide doors, hitherto tightly sealed, on an uncomfortable subject such as that of the ideological clash between Christianity and paganism. 

Fabricius Valencia he is very skilled at painting characters suspended between the natural and the supernatural, or rather between the realm of the living and that of the dead, for what in all respects can be defined as the fulfillment of a initiatory journey (or of an ecstatic experience), just as he is very skilful in disseminating his novel, right from the first lines, with references that betray a certain search for details, from The golden branch by the Scottish anthropologist James Frazer to that Paolo Mantegazza who in the novel represents the imaginary recipient of the letter, but who in reality was one of the first popularizers of Darwinian theories in Italy. 

With all these premises, I would have expected that the events described in the novel would have reached their climax on Walpurgis Night, rather than on that curious date of October 32nd, which is astronomically opposed to it, but it is clear that the magical-propitiatory function of the spring rite would not have gone well with that demonic ending to which we readers arrive, despite our good will, largely unprepared. 

Born in 1972 in Verona, but of Sicilian origins, Fabricius Valencia he graduated in Philosophy in 2003 and in Religious Studies in 2011. From 2007 he started publishing novels, first with self-publishing and a good success (History of Geshwa Olers), then with many publishers, mostly medium-small, and fluctuating results. Now, after 15 novels in 15 years, Fabrizio Valenza has decided to return to self-publishing with The Isle of the Dead, which obtained an excellent response in terms of sales and criticism, also living the experience of a presentation at the Natural History Museum of Verona, introduced by an anthropologist who illustrated the historical-scientific framework. On the author's personal site insights are available on the artistic sources that inspired him in writing the story, as well as additional texts that, for narrative reasons, it was not useful to include within the story being told.