Katabasis

The ancient Greeks and the peoples of remote antiquity already knew of journeys of the soul, but these were often journeys to the infernal regions, descents into hell, catabases, with obstacles, such as encounters with various monsters, menaces of all sorts, the crossing of the bridge of the dead or the passage of mysterious rivers on foot or on horseback.

The logic of the underworld is most on show in the Phaedra and the Hercules [of Seneca], which feature the returns of Theseus and Hercules from their katabases.

Willy, the concentration camp survivor who has experienced more evil than any other character, places no value on catabasis. When asked (in connection with Aeneid VI) 'Do you think everyone ought to descend to the underworld?', he replies briskly, 'Certainly not! It's very dark and stuffy and one is more likely to feel frightened than to learn anything.[…]'

Therefore, Erling Holtsmark's point that literary-mythic katabasis captures “the imagined physical orientation of the other world relative to this one” (25), is superseded in a post-mythic, ostensibly secular worldview by a journey that takes place within an underworld that is an exteriorized 'projection' of a protagonist's putative interior world, the domain especially of the unconscious, memory and dream.

How did the man in the moon come down? The distance between the earth and moon is by no means inconsiderable, and other obstacles “too tedious to mention,” lie in the way of this famous Catabasis, which his lunar majesty is declared to have performed.

“Unconscious of the danger she descended, When the defendant's negligent conductor, Ere her catabasis was fully ended, Started the car,—the nail held fast and chucked her Heels over head and calling on her gods, On the hard road, and yanked her several rods.

The depths of his drinking were achieved after Jane left him, but the bathysphere was well on its way down while she was still there. The low point of his catabasis took time to reach, but the steadily descending trajectory is hard to miss.

2dly, That of a great military expedition, offering the same romantic features[…]which mark[…]the Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon.