The valley of the lepers in the epic 1959 version of ‘Ben Hur’ starring Charlton Heston has to be one of the most poignant scenes in the film. Judah Ben Hur’s sister Tirzah and mother Miriam hide themselves in a cave in the company of other afflicted beings and are not allowed to meet Ben Hur though he can see a little of what the disease has done to disfigure their faces. Such was the custom at the time (and still is): social distancing and isolation.
This scene sticks in my mind today when we are in the midst of one of the greatest pandemics the world has known. However, the difference between leprosy and Covid-19 is that leprosy is caused by a bacteria and Covid-19, instead, by a virus. Both diseases, nevertheless, can be spread by mucosal secretions, both private parts, coughs and sneezes (which traditionally spread diseases) and both affect the respiratory tract. But Covid-19 is far more contagious than leprosy and that’s the really frightening thing about it.
During the time I’ve spent in the East I have come across sad leper beggars, especially in Calcutta and it’s a never to be forgotten sight to see these ragged disfigured living ghosts.
We are all potential lepers today. Indeed, we are living in our own private lepers’ valley and when we walk down the high street we try to avoid each other ‘social distancing’ ourselves. Are we sidestepping each other because we fear infection or because we do not wish to infect others? It’s for both reasons, in fact.
Like leprosy in former times there is as yet no known cure for Covid-19. This ignorance of the pandemic’s causes, the reason why it afflicts different people in different ways – from a slight infection to a horror-inducing respiratory trauma where patients have pleaded to their doctor to let them die instead and attempt to rip off their life-support oxygen masks from their faces – is truly disturbing…more atrocious than any horror movie Hollywood could have made. Even more disturbing are the claims made by the orange one, the first citizen of a country that now has the highest casualties from the disease (at 50,243 over a quarter of the planet’s deaths) that injection of disinfectant into one’s lungs could improve matters!
In these quasi-apocalyptic times it may be useful to turn to literature on the theme of plague. There are several reading lists on the web which one may pursue; the question is does one really want to read a novel set in plague times or an academic treatise discussing the plague when one tried one’s hardest to seek refuge from such trepidations?
For me the answer is yes. I do want to know how this subject has been treated by different authors as it might truly help one to face not only the physical reality of the disease but also (and for more people even more devastatingly) its mental consequences in terms of stress, depression and psychosis).
This is my little reading list. First are the books that I’ve read.
- The Decameron. Giovanni Boccaccio. A young company group of seven young women and three young men shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death and socially distance themselves from the plague that is rampaging through their city. They amuse themselves by telling stories to each other.
2. The Plague. Albert Camus. Today’s best seller on the subject and not without reason. I read it in the excellent translation by Robin Buss, a work colleague when I was a lecturer in London. A must-read!
3. Journal of the plague year. Daniel Defoe. A racy account of London’s Great Plague of 1665 written from a doctor’s viewpoint by the author of ‘Robinson Crusoe’.
4. The Betrothed. Alessandro Manzoni. The chapters dealing with the plague in this seminal Italian historical novel set on the seventeenth century were recently referred to by Pope Francis.
The following are the novels I’ve put on my reading list:
- The plague tales: Ann Benson
- Ears of wonder: Geraldine Brooks
- The hot zone: Richard Preston
- The stand: Stephen King
- The great influenza: John Barry
- Station eleven: Emily St. John Mandel
- And the band played on.: Randy Shilts
We are indeed living in post-mediaeval times and each one of us is surviving in their own sepulchral tomb. Let us be prepared to await our fate with dignity whether the scythe be natural or unnatural.