'Visions of Heaven and Hell'
by Elena Volkova
1. The Descent into Hell
1) The Harrowing of Hell
In the Christian faith by contrast, God miraculously raises people from the dead and descends into hell after his own death on the cross. There he rescues the faithful and opens the door to heaven for them. This is the first thing Jesus Christ does after his crucifixion: he takes Adam and others out of the world of death and brings them to their heavenly home.
2) Artist as Jesus and this world as Earthly Hell
The Descent into Hell, or the Harrowing of Hell, is archetypal and may refer to the calling of any writer, and even to the religious understanding of literature in general: every artist descends into the ¡®hell¡¯ of human life, in the sense that he has to engage with the realm of sin and suffering, crime and punishment, darkness and despair to save people either from their blindness, negligence, despair, or desolation. Literature tends to represent human life, the world in which we live and which we are called to transform, as a metaphor of hell. Any work of literature that deals with conflict, pain, suffering, grief, misery, and disaster bears an analogy to hell, where life lacks love, bliss, and harmony.
2. The Descent of Heaven to Earth: Theocentric Vision
1) Three Types of Paradise in Bible
Heaven may be used as a synonym for paradise, or the Garden of Eden. There are three types of paradise in the Bible: the first, the natural terrestrial one, is planted by God on earth for human habitation (Gen. 2: 8,10; 4: 16). It is not in heaven, but since it is the place where people can see God face to face and live in peace with him, it may be seen to partake of the Heavenly Kingdom. There is no spiritual difference between heaven and earth in the beginning: God creates both as parts of a new universe. The second appears only after Adam and Eve have been expelled from paradise. For a time, there is no Eden, but Christ¡¯s crucifixion opens the door to a celestial paradise. Finally, heaven is also represented mystically in the form of sacred or secular visions, in revelations or dreams. A personal ¡®dream¡¯ displays the author¡¯s meekness, and his or her lack of control over the dream. It is authorized by the One who gives it, and confirmed by those capable of interpreting.
2) The Basic Archetypes of Heaven in the Bible
Biblical visions provide literature with the basic archetypes of heaven-those of the kingdom (up there), the garden (down here) and the city (descending from there to here). All of them also function as metonyms of God who dwells there in heaven, here in the earthly paradise, and descends twice-from heaven to earth, and from earth into hell.
3. Life as Pilgrimage: The Road to Heaven through Hell: John Bunyan
The most widely read English pilgrimage story was written by John Bunyan(1626-88). His Pilgrim's Progress presents scenes and characters that embody virtues and sins which may be understood to partake of heaven or hell . Christian and Evangelist (those who know and follow the Word of God), Goodwill, Interpreter(of the Bible), Patience, Discretion, Prudence, Piety, Charity; Hopeful, and Faithful certainly ¡®stand for the world to come'. With the help of them the pilgrim succeeds in the ¡®harrowing of hell', represented by the appearance of the characters Obstinate, Pliable, Worldly-Wiseman, Morality£¬ Civility£¬ Discontent, Shame, Ignorance, and other sinners, as well as by Apollyon, Beelzebub, and Legion, who are of infernal origin and construct a Vanity Fair on earth (according to a ¡®hell on earth¡¯ archetype) as a trap for the pilgrims to the Celestial City. All the characters are allegories of the proper and the improper, of true and false understandings of Christianity. Heaven in Bunyan has obvious allusions to the vision in Revelation: ¡®The city shone like the sun, the streets were paved with gold, and in the streets walked many people with crowns on their heads. They had palms in their hands, and carried golden harps with which to sing praises. Some had wings, and they spoke to one another saying, ¡° Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord!" ¡¯ Having approached paradise each pilgrim has to show a certificate to Enoch, Moses, and Elijah at the gate of the city to prove that he had passed all the way from the City of Destruction up to Heaven, which signifies the fullness of the spiritual battle one has fought. Bunyan¡¯s hero Christian is a warrior, who fights a spiritual war against sins and the enemies of God.
5. Heaven and Hell: Married and Divorced by Blake
William Blake in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell includes the doctrine of eternal torments among the list of the major Errors made by ¡®all Bibles and sacred codes'. Yet this is probably because Blake followed Swedenborg in naturalizing the supernatural, both heaven and hell, as imaginative projections. The narrator literally descends into ¡®hell¡¯: 'As I was walking among the fires of Hell delighted with the enjoyment of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some Proverbs; thinking as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of hell show the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any descriptions of buildings or garments: Blake treats hell with the respect Christians traditionally pay to heaven and he looks for infernal wisdom instead of longing for the heavenly one. Blake¡¯s Hell is an ironic image of what the church has done to the idea of the human and the divine: both have been divided into two antagonistic counterparts (soul and body/heaven and hell) while man and world, both microcosm and macrocosm, are inseparable within them and driven by Energy, which is the source of the Poetic Genius. The descent into hell (both as a place and a state of mind) is a very important Romantic motif, because the Romantics placed special emphasis on evil and its power over human hearts. The tradition started in the Gothic novel and was developed by S. T. Coleridge, P. B. Shelley, Lord Byron, E. A. Poe and other writers.