by John D'Agata
he probably left his house: My walk along the route that Edvard Munch might have taken to see that sunset is speculative, of course. But there are guides all over Oslo who will volunteer to show you their own interpretations of Edvard’s route to the shore. The most authoritative one is described by Frank Hoifodt in Munch in Oslo (Oslo: N. W. Damm & Son, 2002), pp. 12–15.
“There is evil there”: Some of the more intimate details in this walk are taken from Rolf E. Stenersen’s memoir, Edvard Munch: Close-Up of a Genius, trans. Reidar Dittmann (Oslo: Gyldenal Norsk Forlag, 1944).
needed to understand its ancient pagan history: As Jenny Jochens outlines it in Women in Old Norse Society (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 88.
“There shall be no more folk singing”: Ibid., p. 90.
“forcing upon the culture”: Ibid., p. 92.
the wide-eyed, pale, and hairless ghosts: The practice of child exposure in Norway was itself known as utburd (literally, “to set out”), which lent its name eventually to the ghosts that it produced. I learned about the superstitions surrounding utburds on a dog-sledding expedition I took outside Oslo during November 2002. We were actually looking for trolls.
that his sister would be committed: Bohm-Duchen, The Private Life of a Masterpiece, p. 153.
He didn’t need the Earth, 10 million years ago: See Donald Olson, Russell Doescher, and Marilynn Olson, “When the Sky Ran Red,” Sky and Telescope (February 2004).
Venus had a smoker’s voice: My exchange with Venus Lovetere took place over a period of a few weeks during December 2002, by telephone, e-mail, and in person.
I sat beside the Presleys: I first met the Presleys together at their home in Las Vegas on October 2, 2002.
We drove across the valley to Tae Kwon Do: Levi’s parents and I visited Tae Kwon Do for Kids on October 4, 2004. Levi’s former coach, Cory Martin, taught us about the nine levels of belts in Tae Kwon Do.
I also learned that God resides: God does not reside in the ninth order of heaven, but at the time I thought He did. I misremembered Dante’s claim that in the Ninth Sphere of Heaven, or the Primum Mobile, as he calls it, there is a “ring of happiness” in which all angels live, and at the center of which is a point of light which Dante identifies as God. This is in The Divine Comedy, Canto 29.
Odin had to hang for nine days: According to the Old Norse poem “Hávamál” in the Poetic Edda, Odin hanged from what was called Yggdrasill, which translates literally as “Odin’s horse,” referring to the ancient idea of a gallows being the “horse of the hanged.”
There are always nine Muses alive: According to the Greek poet Hesiod in his Theogony.
Always nine maidens: Nine maidens were often required in order to carry out important Celtic rituals, the most common of which were ceremonies involving cauldrons—the symbol of female strength—for which nine maidens were necessary to “keep a cauldron warm with a collective breath.” 188 Always nine floors: Not always, but according to “The Development of Pagodas” in The Beijing Review, it is ideal that a pagoda have at least a nine-tiered steeple on its roof.
If a servant finds nine peas: Confirmed by Richard Webster in The Encyclopaedia of Superstitions (Woodbury, NJ: Llewellyn Publications, 2008), p. 182.
Possession, they say: See Mark Rose, “Nine-Tenths of the Law: English Copyright Debates and the Rhetoric of the Public Domain,” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 66, no. 75 (2003), pp. 75–87.
Nine people, says the Bible: The Bible says a lot of things.
For nine, said Pythagoras: Pythagoras also considered nine “the finishing post,” explaining that the number represents the conclusion of the series 1–9, and therefore “the last pure digit before the creation of hybrid forms.” In A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science, Michael Schneider amplifies Pythagoras’s philosophy by calling nine “the horizon that lies at the edge of the shore before the boundless ocean of numbers that repeat in endless cycles…. Nine is thus the unsurpassable limit, the utmost boundary, the ultimate extension to which the archetypal principles of number can read and still manifest themselves in the world” (p. 302).
I think we knew, however, that he really fell: This is confirmed by the Clark County Coroner’s “Report of Investigation, Case Number 02–04648,” which details that Levi was observed by video surveillance jumping from the Stratosphere’s observation deck on the 109th floor at 5:58:34 p.m. “According to security cameras,” the report explains, “it took 8 seconds for the decedent to reach the pavement at 5:58:42 p.m., 833 feet below.” 189 Sometimes we misplace knowledge…Sometimes our wisdom, too: These two lines are loosely adapted from a pageant play that T. S. Eliot wrote in 1934 entitled The Rock. It was performed as a fund-raiser for Anglican churches in London. The exact lines are: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”—Choruses, Part I, “The Rock,” in The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot (London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1969). Our word “wisdom” comes from the Indo-European root wid-, which means “to see.” “A wise man has no extensive knowledge,” Lao-tzu once wrote. “He who has extensive knowledge is not a wise man.”
Why
Levi came home at 2:00 a.m., etc.: The details of Levi’s last few hours come from a variety of sources, including his parents, his Tae Kwon Do coach, some vendors in the mall at the Stratosphere Hotel, and my own observations while retracing his steps. These details were all accurate in 2002, the year that Levi died, but I know that some of them are now out of date. Several of the stores, kiosks, and restaurants described here have since moved to other locations or gone completely out of business. But I have chosen to be loyal to the facts and images that surrounded Levi as he made his way to the tower on that summer evening.
