The Terrors of Ice and Darkness

July 25, 2007

The Terrors of Ice and Darkness, by Christoph Ransmayr, is a stunning work of fiction and history. It combines the awful and awesome true story of an expedition towards the North Pole in the 1870s and the story of a fictional Italian man who is obsessed with that story and in 1981 attempts to follow in the path of those ill-fated explorers.

Both stories are compelling. Members of the 19th century expedition aboard the Admiral Tegetthoff tell their own story in their journals. It’s hard to believe that these entries are the work of hard-working explorers not professional authors. Amidst the scientific observations and notes of the weather and other phenomenon are entries like this by Commander Julius von Payer:

When ebb and flood do not lift the groaning and straining drift ice, when the sighing wind is not brushing across the stony chinks, the stillness of death lies upon the ghostly pale landscape. People speak of the solemn silence of the forest, of the desert, even of a city wrapped in night. But what a silence lies over such a land and its cold glaciered mountains lost in impenetrable, vaporous distances–its very existence must remain, so it seems, a mystery for all time… A man dies at the North Pole alone, fades like a will-o’-the-wisp, while a simple sailor lifts the keen and a grave of ice and stones waits for him outside.

Ransmayr weaves a narrative thread that fills in gaps by expanding on the story of the expedition:

And now they drift along on their floe, an island of ice, shrinking, growing larger again, and its wooden heart is their ship. They drift in a blinding void, in darkness, to the north, northeast, northwest, and north again– fully at the mercy of unknown ocean currents and the tortures of the ice. They are sailing for nowhere. Everything presses in on them, moves toward them. Two years, during eight months of which the sun does not rise. The loneliness and the fear. A cold that freezes wool blankets tacked to cabin walls for warmth under a layer of ice as thick as a man’s arm. Weak lungs fighting for breath. Frozen limbs– medical officer Kepes can stave off the fatal consequences only by agonizing amputation. With scissors they cut the rank flesh of scurvy from each other’s gums; then they cauterize the wounds with hydrochloric acid. And finally, delusions and despair.

Despite being trapped for the greater part of the first year, dealing with scurvy, frostbite and madness, once freed by Spring thaw the expedition continues North and goes through the whole cycle again… and only then does the manual labor of exploration start. Through it all the officers of the ship maintain discipline, getting together for weekly dinners with the crew, continuing on as if they are not trapped and near death at every moment. For exercise and to keep their mind occupied they build fantastic ice structures near their stilled ship. I constantly found myself turning to the front of the book, trying to reconcile the experiences they were having with the normal-looking faces in the expedition’s photographs. There is terror of all kinds here, from the material terror of frozen extremities, snow blindness and the constant fear of being swallowed up as the ice buckled and heaved to the overwhelming oppression of the long darkness and incredible cold. It’s hard to believe any of them survive.

When they finally retreat, it is on foot dragging their provisions in life boats over the snow. They toil for two months struggling through waist deep snow, over mountains, around crevasses to proceed just the nine miles of the hundreds before them if they hope to make it home alive.

As this story unfolds, Ransmayr also tells the story of the Italian, Mazzini, who is obsessed with the story of the expedition. He has practically memorized the journals as well as the stories of hundreds of other expeditions, some of which suffered even worse fates. He saves his money to travel North as far as he can, following the same route as the Tegetthoff expedition, eventually managing to tag along on an ice-breaking scientific expedition. But the expedition turns around and Mazzinni is unsatisfied. He has followed the same path, but the means are too dissimilar… so he decides to go North again. But the second time he will not return.

While Mazzini’s story is the lesser one (in size and intensity), it is interesting and useful. It allows Ransmayr to closely examine what binds together the original explorers and their modern acolyte… and what, besides time, will always separate them.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

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