Last Tuesday I managed to escape the unproductive black hole that is UCC’s R&G Week for an hour to attend a seminar presentation as part of UCC’s sixth Dante Public Lecture Series. This seminar, presented by UCC’s own Professor Paul Hegarty peaked my curiosity as it seemed to be an outlier in the seminar series schedule, offering a completely different academic approach to Dante’s writing style and in particular, his use of sound. I would not consider myself the most knowledgeable on Dante as I have only read the Inferno. However, as my love of heavy metal should now be clear to anyone following his blog, Paul’s combination of black metal theory and Dante made it impossible to miss such an unconventional presentation topic. This discussion of sound and its performance within a text also fits in with my current studies and potential dissertation area, giving me a fresh approach to the idea of sound within text.
Paul’s argument revolved around using the sonic conventions of black metal to explain the use of sound in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The loud, harsh abjectified qualities of black metal make it difficult to grasp sonically, thus creating a sensory overload. Hell is loud in Dante’s Inferno and the damned make noise in rebellion, symbolising their autonomy and individuality. Their noise serves the same purpose as the low fidelity audio of black metal. Heaven, much like popular music, is a space where sound is so unified that it becomes silence as there is no space to hear it from. Silence and unity in both Dante and metal represent conformity and a loss of identity while noise represents autonomy.
Paul began this seminar with a history of the metal genre and an introduction to metal theory which was a useful area to begin as it is a genre most are unfamiliar with or attempt to distance themselves from due to its antisocial connotations. He made an attempt to make the topic approachable but still wished to maintain the abject nature of metal music as his musical examples at the beginning served to shock the senses of those unacquainted with the metal genre. As he moved onto discussing the use of sound in Dante, the audience seemed to become more comfortable with the topic.
It was clear from the presentation that metal was something very close the Paul’s heart as he seemed to enjoy the opportunity to introduce some of the more underground black metal bands such as 1349 to the audience.He continually made jokes about how difficult it was for him to not ‘rock out’ or perform the presentation in a ‘metal voice’. His use of an ironic presentation style helped make his approach to metal more accessible to those uncomfortable with the brash hyper masculinity and sonic abjectivity of extreme metal. This further added humour to the presentation. This ironic style was contradicted with the dry, authorial voice he employed when reading his script to his audience. This was not a natural, fluid performance but one that varied between ironic and humorous engagement and a monosyllabic reading of his pre-prepared presentation paper.
What I enjoyed most about this presentation was the sonic and visual experience it provided. As Paul was discussing the use of sound, he created a soundscape for his presentation which used extended metal works such as those by Burzum and 1349 to create an appropriate ambiance within the lecture theatre. The majority of these works did not include vocals, causing the audience to focus on the disunited, rebellious sound of the works and how they represented Hell in Dante’s Inferno. This was complemented with visuals designed to shock such heavy metal cover art, depictions of hell and pictures from World War II.
This sonic and visual experience could have been excited better in a technological sense. The audio was not included in the presentation’s PowerPoint and Paul kept switching between YouTube, PowerPoint and the general web to show illustrations of his argument. These could have all been included in one convenient area. This did interrupt to flow of the presentation somewhat but was not enough to detract from the fresh and inventive nature of the presentation.
With its few faults aside, I very much enjoyed this presentation as it combined the music I love with literature to create a fresh take on one of the world’s most revered texts. It served as a great learning experience for me in how to discuss and stage the use of sound in literature and motivated me to finally finish The Divine Comedy.