Camp Concentration 020 - Stairway to Paradise

(Ladder of Heaven, by John Klimakos, 12th Century)

Camp Concentration is divided in Book One and Book Two. Each Book is divided, loosely, in two parts, which makes for a total of four structural parts.

Part 1:
The handwritten portion of Louis Sacchetti’s journal, written in the Springfield prison. In my copy of the novel, this runs from page 11 to page 19, and from May 11 to May 19.

Part 2:
Sacchetti’s typed journal, which runs from his arrival at Camp Archimedes to the “dream” scene, when he finally realizes he’s been infected with Pallidine too. This runs from page 19 to page 107 (June 2 through June 22) and finishes Book One.

Part 3:
The “asterisks” notes, written after Sacchetti, in despair, refuses to maintain a formal journal. This is the first part of Book Two, and runs from page 111 to page 120.

Part 4:
The numbered entries written by Sacchetti under Haast’s threats; they run from number 1 to number 100, and from page 120 to page 175, the end of the book.

Another way of describing the novel’s structure is that it begins and ends in “countable”, “timetable” form: first a diary, and then a series of numbered items. But, sandwiched between them, there are the “asterisk” notes, a dizzying allusive sequence, full of quotations and allegories, that reproduces the first stages of Sacchetti’s acceptance of the idea of death. It echoes the last entry of his journal, in the end of Book One: the dream sequence in which Sacchetti sees himself as Saint Thomas Aquinas (immensely fat) and in the guise of Aquinas he tells himself that he is infected with Pallidine. That dream, and the asterisk notes that follow it, are heavily allegorical and obscure, and express the refusal-cum-acceptance of Death.

But then comes the interference of General Haast (ultimately, Mordecai) who presses Sacchetti, forcing him to compose himself. He demands facts. Sacchetti refuses to maintain a diary, but he concedes in producing numbered items; they are a return to Time and to life, although Sacchetti doesn’t realize it at first.

It can be said that the journal entries in the beginning of the book show that Sacchetti is bound to Time, and thus he is bound to Death too. The asterisk notes are his descent into Hell and timelessness. Thought is amorphous, non-directional, static, entropic.

The numbered items in the last part of the book, from item 1 to item 100, are a return to Time and (now) to life again. They are the ascent journey. Sacchetti, led by Haast/Mordecai, begins a slow, step by step, journey back to the world of the living. During this ascent, he sometimes thinks he’s going downward. This is a traditional feature of so many mystical processes which bring purification and life through suffering and near-death. It also echoes the ancient motif of the necessity to pass through Hell to reach Paradise.

I'll build a stairway to Paradise

With a new step ev'ry day!

I'm gonna get there at any price;

Stand aside, I'm on my way!

I've got the blues

And up above it's so fair.

Shoes ! Go on and carry me there!

I'll build a stairway to Paradise

With a new step ev'ry day.
(George Gershwin – “I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise”)

Camp Concentration 017 - Mordecai Washington

“The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it”. (CC, p. 35, June 6 entry)

The name “Mordecai” comes from the Bible, but in Camp Concentration it provides a link to another sf novel: Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7. Roshwald is professor emeritus of humanities at the University of Minnesota, and his book appeared in 1959, eight years before Disch’s. It is the claustrophobic tale of a group of military in a subterranean shelter where they are in charge of the “push button” task, in the event of a nuclear war. They cannot return to the surface and to normal life anymore; in fact, their families receive a message from the Government stating they they have died in service and did not leave any remains. Officially “dead”, and buried in the underground bunker, they have no hope of returning to life whatsoever, and as the nuclear conflict develops, they are the last human beings to die.

The name “Washington” has obvious and ironic ressonances for anyone, and even more for an American. But maybe it was chosen, as well, because of the mirror image it provides for the character’s initials: MW. Two triangles pointing upward, two pointing downward. This pair of letters encapsulates the idea of mirror, of reversal, and also the alchemical motto of “as above, so below”. It also provides a kind of “logo” for the central (in a sense) character in a novel about people entombed in a catacomb above sea level, and also of people who (in the last pages) have to go down to the World of the Dead in order to ressurrect to the World of the Living.

That pair of letters also indicates, alchemically, the Mystical Conjunctio: Man on top, Woman at bottom. This interpretation has ominous consequences, because the only man/woman intercourse which is mentioned in the story (albeit hypothetically) is that between Mordecai and Dr. Busk, through which Pallidine, eventually, is smuggled away from Camp Archimedes and reaches the world at large. (One also muses on the significance of Washington taking Dr. Busk’s “cherry”).

Camp Concentration 014 - The Ladder

“I imagine Haast still does twenty push-ups in the morning and rides a few imaginary miles on his Exercycle. The wrinkly crust of his face is crisped to a tasty brown by a sun lamp. His sparse and graying hair is crew cut.” (CC, p. 23, June 3 entry)

General Haast insists in being called H. H. Why? Initials are a convenient shorthand to refer to people, especially in the case of one who sometimes, like Sacchetti, is just jotting down brief notes about a day’s events. Sacchetti is fond of creating nicknames for guards whose real name he doesn’t bother to ask, like Rigor Mortis (who is shortened to R.M.) and Assiduous (who is sometimes called just “Ass.”).

Disch once admitted that the title of his novel The M. D. was partially inspired by his own initials, T.M.D.

So, why he did choose “H. H.” for that character?

I submit here that he did so because those letters represent, visually, two stairs of a Ladder, the mystical ladder which bridges the space between Heaven and Earth, between the Spirit and the Matter. Disch, of course, was wholly aware of this meaning.

“To make the transition easier. That’s my Function”. (CC, p. 20, June 3 entry)

(Ladder -- from Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi)

Throughout the novel, Haast occupies the position of a mediator between two worlds. He is in charge of Camp Archimedes, he’s a military man, he’s a leader; nevertheless, due to his addiction to astrology and his dreams of “the elixir of life” he is easy prey to Mordecai and the inmates’ ellaborate alchemical charade. His symbol is The Ladder, but it could be, as easily, The Door or The Bridge. He is the way through which a dead man can live again and the prisoners can be taken from the Subterranean world to the world of the living. (The final revelation of his identity takes place in the open air).

Camp Concentration 006 - A Cracked Vellum

Woodcut by Giovanni Battista Nazari.

From the inventory of Mordecai Washington's worktable:

"...a cracked vellum sheet with a crude drawing on it, in colored inks, not much superior to an average men's room graffito. That part of the drawing I could see represented a crowned and bearded man holding a tall scepter upon which were mounted, one above the other, six further crowns. The king stood upon an odd pedestal that grew flowerlike from a vine that branched, above the king's head, into a sort of lattice. At the interstices of this lattice were six other male heads, lower, lesser types, and beside each head a letter of the alphabet, from D through I. The left-hand portion of this head-bearing vine curled out of sight into George's closed book".

(CC, p. 74, June 16 entry)

This is the cover illustraton of the novel's first edition (see below).