[C]ivilization is itself but a mixed good, if not far more a
corrupting influence, the hectic of disease, not the bloom
of health. -- Coleridge, ON THE CONSTITUTION OF
CHURCH AND STATE

Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of
days it'd die of remorse on the third. -- Hugh Firmin, in
Lowry, UNDER THE VOLCANO

Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano has been
termed "modern literature's most powerful ac-
count of doom" ( Falk213), a suitable appellation
given the novel's manifold Faustian dimensions. ¹
However, if Faustianism -- in incarnations from
Marlowe to Spengler -- is primary to the text's
makeup, narcissism is closely secondary to it. In-
deed, these two tropes combine in Lowry's fiction
to depict what might be called "the narcissistic
tragedy of Faust" ( Satinover109). In Chapter 6 I

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