Claudius’ “Pumpkinification”
Emperor Claudius

One of the most curious pieces of surviving classical Latin literature is The Apocolocyntosis of the Divine Claudius. The author was the stoic philosopher and politician Seneca, (3 BCE – 65 C.E.). It is a viciously satirical treatment and lampoon of the deification of the recently deceased Emperor Claudius (10 B.C.E. – 54 C.E.).1

The term apocolocyntosis, means to turn into a gourd. It means in effect to call some one the equivalent of a cabbage head or vegetable in other words an idiot.2 Robert Graves in his novel Claudius the God, provides a translation of The Apocolocyntosis of the Divine Claudius, but translates the title as The Pumpkinification of Claudius,3 which is certainly is not a exact translation although a very amusing. Of course one has to also note that Pumpkins are in fact a type of gourd.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, called the younger, was during his life time a philosopher, poet, playwright and politician. He is best known today for his philosophical writings and more specifically his letters on various subjects, although he also wrote plays.4

Seneca

Seneca was a Stoic philosopher and his main influence was on later western philosophy through his philosophical writings. He also had an effect on the development of play writing and theatre and drama through his plays.

Although Seneca in his writings portrayed himself as a Stoic philosopher, basically indifferent to wealth and fame, contemporary attitudes towards him were highly ambivalent. The writer Robert Graves in his novel Claudius the God has his character Claudius says concerning Seneca:

There was a lot more about my wonderful loving-kindness and mercy and a passage putting into my mouth the most extravagant sentiments about the noblest way of bearing the loss of a brother. I was supposed to cite my grandfather Mark Antony's grief for his brother Gaius, my uncle Tiberius's grief for my father, Gaius Caesar's grief for young Lucius, my own grief for my brother Germanicus, and then relate how valiantly we had each in turn borne these calamities. The only effect that this slime and honey had on me was to make me quite satisfied in my mind; that I had not wronged anyone by his banishment except perhaps the island of Corsica.5

The context of the above is a revoltingly suck-up piece of writing that Seneca wrote during his exile in Corsica, (by Claudius), in which Seneca lays on the flattery with a trowel.6

Seneca despite his statements concerning his un-interest in money and power was both ambitious for power and greedy for money. He became both a very wealthy and a very powerful man. He was recalled from exile in c. 48 C.E., and became the tutor of the future Emperor Nero. When Claudius died, was murdered, in 54 C.E., Seneca became one of Nero’s most important advisers and became very rich and was enormously powerful. Seneca eventually fell out of favour with Nero, retired and a few years later was forced to commit suicide after being accused of plotting to kill the Emperor Nero.7

Thus it appears that Seneca was in many ways was indeed what Grave’s character describes as:

-that flashy orator, that shameless flatterer, that dissolute and perverted amorist.8

The term apocoloccyntosis is a mocking pun on the term apotheois which means deification. For after Claudius’ death it was declared that the Emperor Claudius was a god and in fact temples were dedicated to him.9

Seneca probably had a grudge against Claudius for being exiled and further the Emperor Nero seemed to have enjoyed mocking his dead father by adoption Claudius. So that sometime in the 50s C.E., Seneca wrote this piece of satire including it, as per Seneca’s rather servile attitude towards power some flattery of Nero.10

There is some debate over if Seneca wrote this piece of satire but it seems to be settled that he did. The historian Dio Cassius does in fact mention Seneca as the writer of the The Apocolocyntosis of the Divine Claudius, which seems to be conclusive as to authorship.11

The satire is about the now dead Claudius’ attempts to be accepted as a god by the other gods in heaven.

Being Seneca he begins with a piece of servile flattery of Nero:

I wish to give future generations an account of the events in heaven on the thirteenth of October of this new year of grace that inaugurated our present period of prosperity.12

There is then some cutting references to Claudius’ ill health and lameness and some jokes concerning his liberality in granting Roman citizenship. Claudius is also wondering around lost until the god Mercury finds him.

There is then a poem concerning Nero which is quite effusive and revolting in its sucking up. To quote:

As the shining Sun, whenso the ruddy Dawn,
The shades of night dispersed, brings back the day
Looks on the world and starts his chariot off:
So Caesar comes, so Nero appears to Rome,
His bright face fired with gentle radiance,
His neck all beauty under his flowing hair.13

Emperor Nero

Seneca than mocks Claudius’ death:

His last words heard on earth came after he’d let off a louder noise from his easiest channel of communication: ‘Oh my! I think I’ve shit myself’ For all I know, he did. He certainly shat on everything else.14

The Gods then here that Claudius is there and demanding to be heard but that:

He was making some sort of threat, as he kept shaking his head; he was also dragging his right foot. When asked his nationality, he made some answer with a confused noise and in indistinct tones. It was impossible to understand his language: he was neither Greek nor Roman, nor any known race.

…

Claudius flared up at this point and fumed as loudly as he could. No one understood what he was saying. He was, in fact, giving orders for the goddess Fever to be taken away. With his shaky head, which was steady enough only on those occasions, making the familiar gesture with which he had people’s heads cut off, he had ordered her to be decapitated. You’d have thought they were all his freedmen the way no one took any notice of him.15

The god Hercules questions Claudius who responds. There is then a gap in the text before it resumes. Hercules in the missing portion seems to have been convinced to become Claudius’ champion. When the text resumes Claudius is being questioned about his qualifications to become a god.

Their follows a series of speeches about whether or not Claudius should become a god. Just when it seems that Claudius might win the Augustus intervenes, (he is a god having been deified after his death), to condemn the motion. After accusing Claudius of murdering many of Augustus’ descendants, Augustus says:

Do you now want to make this man a god? Look at his body – the gods were angry when it came into the world. In short, let him say three words one after the other and he can drag me off as his slave. Who’s going to worship him as a god? Who’ll believe in him?16

Augustus than asks the heavenly Senate to instead punish Claudius for the wrongs he as done. There follows a list of Claudius’ murders and the recommendation that he be deported. So Claudius is deported.

There follows a digression about Claudius’ funeral and about how Lawyers are in mourning a mock funeral dirge. Part of which goes:

Weep, Weep
For the man’s good judgements.
Who could master
Hearing either
One or neither.

…

Pound, pound
Your breasts
In solemn mourning,
Lawyers for retainers
And all the other gainers!
Weep, weep
Ye new poetic prattlers
And ye tribes of
Lucky dice box rattlers!17

Claudius is sent to Hades, (hell) where is greeted by the spirits of those who he had killed. There follows another listing of Claudius’ victims:

The rumour spread quickly that Claudius had arrived. Up rushed first of all the freedman Polybius, Myron, Arpocras, Ampheus and Pheronactus – all of whom Claudius had dispatched ahead to avoid being anywhere without attendants.18

Claudius is then sent before a tribunal to be tried for his numerous murders and there is then some debate over the appropriate punishment. After some nonsense concerning punishing Claudius by having him toss dice with a box with a hole in it, Gaius Caesar, (the Emperor Caligula), shows up. He claims Claudius as one of his slaves. Claudius is then given to Gaius Caesar who then employees him as a legal secretary.

The piece is very funny and like much satire rather unfair. As per usual Seneca flattered Claudius while was alive but did not hesitate to ridicule him once he was safely dead. Of course what helps to make it even funnier, in a black comic way, is that Seneca who seems to have built his political career on excessive flattery of those in power was eventually forced to kill himself by Nero who he had flattered with oceans of praise.

1. Sullivan, J. P., Introduction, Petronius, The Satyricon, Seneca, The Apocolocyntosis, Penguin Books, London, 1986, pp. 209-218, at 212, Wikipedia Claudius Here.

2. IBID, Sullivan, p. 209.

3. Graves Robert, Claudius the God, Penguin Books, London, 1934, pp. 427-439, and Petronius, The Satyricon, Seneca, The Apocolocyntosis, Penguin Books, London, 1986, pp. 221-223.

4. Sullivan, Wikipedia Seneca the Younger Here.

5. Graves, p. 164.

6. Robert Graves is not inventing this the piece is called The Consolation for Polybius, does indeed exist and does contain some of the most stomach turning suck-up to the then Emperor Claudius imaginable. It can be found at Stoics Home Page Here.

7. Claudius, Seneca the Younger.

8. Graves, p. 402.

9. Claudius.

10. Sullivan.

11. Cassius, Dio, The Roman History, Book 60, s. 35, at LacusCurtius Here.

12. Petronius, The Satyricon, Seneca, The Apocolocyntosis, p. 221.

13. IBID, p. 223.

14. IBID, pp. 223-224.

15. IBID, pp. 224, 225.

16. IBID, p. 228.

17. IBID, p. 230, 231.

18. IBID, pp. 231.

Pierre Cloutier

Aesop

Aesop conversing with a Dog

Aesop was the semi-legendary teller of fables attributed to him which go by the name of Aesop’s Fables. Lots of children have read those fables as children but in antiquity they were commonly quoted and used by everyone and have since then merged into the collective memory of all mankind.

I mentioned above that Aesop is semi-legendary. I do this because, although it appears that Aesop really did exist much of what passes for his biography and what fables are attributed to him seems to be complete legend.

For example the only surviving “Life” of Aesop from antiquity is an amusing but highly dubious collection of stories called The Life of Aesop.1

Thus the life describes Aesop has:

Aesop (according to Planudes, Cameraius and others) was by Birth, of Ammorius, a Town in the greater Phrygia; (though some will have him to be a Thracian, others a Samian) of a mean Con-dition, and his Person deformed, to the highest degree: Flat-nos'd,hunch-back'd, blobber-lipp'd; a long mishapen Head; his Bodycrooked all over, big-belly'd, badger-legg'd, and his Complexion so swarthy, that he took his very Name from't; for Aesop is the same with Aethiop. And he was not only unhappy in the most scandalous Figure of a Man, that ever was heard of; but he was in a manner Tongue-ty'd too, by such an Impediment in his Speech, that People could very hardly understand what he said.2

According to the tale Aesop by his kindness was healed by the prayers of certain Priests so that he could speak. By his wits he saved some of his fellow slaves from punishment and also pissed off his master so he was sold in Ephesus to the Philosopher Xanthus and taken to live in Samos.3

The account then describes how Aesop by various means outwitted his master and mistress and eventually obtained his freedom. He then proceeded to tour various parts of the Middle East meeting the famous and telling his fables. He adopted a ungrateful young man named Ennus as his son and finally met his death at the hands of the inhabitants of Delphi who unjustly accused him of sacrilege.4 Afterwards the Delphians were punished:

The Delphians soon after this, were visited with Famine and Pestilence, to such a degree, that they went to consult the Oracle of Apollo to know what Wickedness it was had brought these Calamities upon them. The Oracle gave them this Answer, that they were to expiate for the Death of Aesop. In the Conscience of their Barbarity, they erected a Pyramid to his Honour, and it is upon Tradition, that a great many of the most eminent Men among the Greeks of the tragical End of Aesop, to learn the Truth of the History; and found upon Enquiry, that the principal of the Conspirators had laid violent Hands upon themselves.5

How much of this is to be taken seriously? Not very much.

For example although the most common view in antiquity was that Aesop was a Phrygian According to the Greek Philosopher Aristotle and the historian Herodotus he was actually a Thracian from the town of Mesembria. He seems to have lived in the late 7th and first half of the 6th century B.C.E., and may have died c. 564 B.C.E. He does seem to have spent much of his life in Samos and was also probably a slave for some time before being freed. Aesop was also likely misshapen to some extent although the accounts we have likely exaggerate.6

Herodotus mentions that Aesop, probably captured in war, was a slave of a man named Iadmon, not Xanthus, who also owned the notorious courtesan and fellow Thracian Rhodopis. Herodotus also mentions the story of the Delphians killing Aesop.7

It is virtually certain that the story of Aesop’s death given above is an invention and bottom line is we have no idea when and how Aesop died.8

It appears that in life Aesop acted as a clerk / Secretary for his master and negotiated on his behalf, further that he was in the habit of making his points by telling short fables. The wit and cleverness of these tales soon gave Aesop a reputation for intelligence.9

In fact it appears that after he was freed Aesop seems to have been a respected figure in Samos. Aristotle preserves the story that Aesop was called upon to defend a local politician accused of corruption and on trial for his life Aesop told the following story:

Aesop was defending a demagogue at Samos who was on trial for his life when he told this story: ‘A Fox was crossing a river but she got swept by the current into a gully. A long time passed and she couldn’t get out. Meanwhile, there were ticks swarming all over the fox’s body, making her quite miserable. A hedgehog wandered by and happened to see the fox. He took pity on her and asked if he should remove the ticks, but the fox refused. The hedgehop asked the reason why, and the fox replied, “These ticks have taken their fill of me and are barely sucking my blood at this point, but if you take these ticks away, others will come and those hungry new ticks will drink all the blood I have left!” And the same is true for you, people of Samos: this man will do you no harm since he is already wealthy, but if you condemn him to death, others will come who do not have any money, and they will rob you blind!’10

The Politician was spared.

Now it does appear that after Aesop death all sorts of tales and saying were attributed to Aesop. This includes tales from Egypt, Iraq, Asia Minor, India and of course Greece and Italy.11

Now we know from Herodotus and from Aristophanes that knowledge of Aesop’s fables was pretty widespread by the end of the 5th century before Christ in fact Aristophanes mentions Aesop a couple of times in his plays including this section of his play The Birds:

Peisthetaerus: Oh, how I grieve for you birds: once you were kings!
Chorus Leader: Kings? Of what?
Peisthetaerus: Of all creation. Of me, of him, of Zeus himself. Before Kronos and the Titans, before Earth itself, you existed.
Chorus Leader: Before Earth itself?
Peisthetaerus: Yes, indeed.
Chorus Leader: That’s news to me.
Peisthetaerus: Then you must be very unobservant, or very uneducated: you don’t know your Aesop. According to him, surely, the Lark was the first of all the birds to be born, and this was before Earth existed: so when her father took sick and died, what was the poor creature to do, with no Earth to bury him in? He lay in state for four days and then she buried him in her own head.
Euelpides: What a Lark!12

It appears by then that collections of Aesop’s fables were circulating, probably in very small collections of a few fables attributed to him written up.13

The first large collection of Aesop’s Fables was put together in the late 4th century B.C.E., by a Demetrius of Phalerum who wrote a book called the Aisopeia. Although it as not survived it appears to have been the main source for the many anonymous collections of fables that circulated.14

Later Greco-Roman writers like Phaedrus, Babrius, Aphthonius, Avianus compiled collections of Aesop’s Fables. An 11th century C.E. writer called Syntipas also preserved a collection of fables attributed to Aesop.15

The fables themselves in their original form are coarse, full of mockery, derision and gloating over the misfortunes of others. In other words they are frequently very cruel. As one book states:

The underlying ethos of the world of Aesop is ‘you’re on your own, and if you meet people who are unfortunate, kick them while they are down’.16

Another fact to remember is that the moral that appears at the end of most of Aesop’s Fables were added later on and did not exist in any of the original stories.17

A few examples of less familiar Aesop’s Fables:

The Dog and the Hare

A hunting hound seized a hare and attempted both to bite it and lick its chops at the same time. The hare tired of this and said: ‘Hey you, either bite me or kiss me, so that I can know whether you are enemy or friend.’18

The Shepherds, the Lambs, and the Wolf

This is one of Aesop’s fables. A wolf saw some shepherds eating a lamb in their tent. He approached the shepherds and said, ‘Why, what a great uproar there would be if I were to do the same thing!’19

The Bees and Zeus

Begrudging the honey they gave to men, the bees went to Zeus to ask him to give them the power to kill with their stings anyone approaching their honeycombs. Indignant at their envy, Zeus condemned the bees to lose their sting-barbs every time they stung someone, and to die as a result.20

Prometheus and the Tears

This is also something that Aesop said. The clay which Prometheus used when he fashioned man was not mixed with water but with tears. Therefore, one should not try to dispense entirely with tears since they are inevitable.21

It would be of interest to know what sort of tales the real Aesop told, but we are unlikely to know what if any of the tales attributed to him he in fact ever told. Still it is an achievement to be associated with a very large collection of interesting and edifying stories and jokes. I frankly suspect the real Aesop would have been pleased.22

1. A copy of The Life of Aesop can be found Here.

2. IBID, Ch. 1.

3. IBID, Ch. 4.

4. IBID, Ch. 5-19.

5. IBID, Ch. 19.

6. Aesop, Aesop: The Complete Fables, Penguin Books, London, 1998, pp. ix-xi, hereafter called Aesop 1, Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, pp. ix-xi, hereafter called Aesop 2, Herodotus, The Histories, Anchor Books, New York, 2007, Book 2, s. 134.

7. IBID, Herodotus.

8. IBID, Note 2.134.4a, See also Aesop 1, Aesop 2, ix-x.

9. IBID, Aesop 1.

10. Aesop 2, Fable 29, pp. 18-19, from Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 2, s. 20.

11. Aesop 1, pp. xix-xxiii, Aesop 2, xx-xxix, xxxvi-xxxix.

12. Aristophanes, Aristophanes: The Knights / Peace / The Birds / The Assemblywomen / Wealth, Penguin Books, London, 1978, Lines 471-483, pp. 170-171.

13. Aesop 2, pp. x-xi. claims there was no written collections at this time. I find this unlikely I suspect though no large collection of such tales existed only a few collections of a few of the fables, but no large comprehensive collection.

14. Aesop 2, pp. xx-xxi.

15. IBID, pp. xxi-xxv.

16. Aesop 1, pp. xvii.

17. Aesop 2, xiii-xiv.

18. Aesop 1, Fable 182, p. 134. I have decided to exclude the moral and let the tales stand on their own.

19. Aesop 2, Fable 392, p. 183.

20. Aesop 1, Fable 234, p. 173.

21. Aesop 2, Fable 516, p. 238.

22. The two best recent readily available collections of Aesop’s fables are Aesop 1, (358 fables) and Aesop 2, (600 fables). See also Aesopica, Here, and Aesop’s Fables, Here.

Pierre Cloutier

des Esseintes and Latin Literature

One of the most enjoyable books I have in my book case is a very strange but quite fun English translation of the novel A Rebours,1 by J. K. Huysmans, published originally in 1884.

J. K. Huysmans

The book had the distinction of being referred to in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Grey,2 and has one of the most bizarrely eccentric “heroes” in all literature. The thoroughly weird Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes. A man whose taste in furnishings, to give but one example is bizarre.3 The jewel encrusted living tortoise ambling about his living room should give anyone an indication of our “hero’s” taste.

Now my purpose here is not to discuss des Esseintes taste in decoration but his taste in Latin literature. It is one of the most enjoyable essays in Classical literary criticism ever published and our fictional “hero” does not lack in interesting opinions.4

The truth was that the Latin language, as it was written during the period which academics still persist in calling the Golden Age, held scarcely any attraction for him. That restricted idiom with its limited stock of almost invariable constructions; without suppleness of syntax, without colour, without even light and shade; pressed flat along all its seams and stripped of the crude but often picturesque expressions of earlier epochs – that idiom could, at a pinch, enunciate the pompous platitudes and vague commonplaces endlessly repeated by the rhetoricians and poets of the time, but it was so tedious and unoriginal that in the study of linguistics you had to come down to the French style current in the age of Louis XIV to find another idiom so willfully debilitated, so solemnly tiresome and dull.5

Not fair but having read all too much of this stuff while taking Classics at university I can vouch for the fact that this critique contains a great deal of truth. Certainly the fictional des Esseintes is right about the essentially boring nature of much of this literature. Much of it is dull and tedious indeed.

Has for Virgil, supposedly the ultimate genius of this period we have our fictional “hero” say that Virgil:

…impressed him as being one of the most appalling pedants and one of the most deadly bores that Antiquity ever produced;…

…he might in fact have put up with all the indescribable fatuity of this rag-bag of vapid verses; but what utterly exasperated him was the shoddy workmanship of the tinny hexameters, with their statutory allotment of words weighed and measured according to the unalterable laws of a dry, pedantic prosody;…

…and that poverty-stricken vocabulary with its dull, dreary colours, all caused him unspeakable torment.6

That our fictional “hero” is describing here is that supposed “masterpiece” of Latin literature Virgil’s Aeneid. Now the important thing to remember about Virgil’s “great” epic poem is that it is indeed a dreary painful poem to read. It has however an inflated reputation. Virgil supposedly was dissatisfied with what he had written. It was apparently only a first draft, and Virgil in his will requested that it be destroyed. Unfortunately and sadly his request was ignored and the Aeneid joined that large corpus of “masterpieces” whose reputation seems to be based upon the idea that if something causes extreme pain and agony to read through it must be good. The old good medicine tastes bad idea. In this case the poem is simply a grade z variation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer and spectacularly inferior to both. I remember being forced to read the Aeneid in a classics course I took and being stunned by its bottomless dullness. It was a torment to read and it was dull in ways that were amazing to me.

Years later I read with joy and pleasure Huysmans’ creation des Esseintes comments about that overrated hack Virgil. At last someone who admitted the sheer boredom of Virgil’s lifeless poem! I do however mourn for the millions of poor students who for over 2000 years been forced to read this “masterpiece”. I also deeply regret that this dull piece of crap survived. It is and remains unalterably sad that Virgil’s last wishes were not carried out.

Ovid’s writing is described has “limpid effusions”7. Any reading of Ovid would indicate that although Ovid was a very good writer; his writing was indeed weak and lacking in backbone. Certainly the writings he did in exile, which consisted of alternating whining about his “suffering” and embarrassing suck ups to the Julio-Claudian dynasty would make anyone want to tell him to “shut the @#$% up!”.

Horace is described has writing “vulgar twaddle”, “stupid patter” and further that Horace:

…simpers at his audience like a painted old clown,8

Having read Horace, who I find very amusing, I find this an unfair criticism but I can certainly see where Huysmans through des Esseintes is coming from. Horace certainly does seem to be playing for the audience and his stuff does read at times like a bad episode of Seinfeld. Certainly a lot of Horace does read like a knowing smirk with an undercurrent of “aren’t we so clever!!”.

Regarding Cicero I must say I fully agree with the following:

In prose, he was no more enamoured of the long-winded style, the redundant metaphors and rambling digressions of old Chick-Pea; [Cicero] the bombast of his apostrophes, the wordiness of his patriotic perorations, the pomposity of his harangues, the heaviness of his style, well-fed and well-covered, but weak-boned and running to fat, the intolerable insignificance of his long introductory adverbs, the monotonous uniformity of his adipose periods clumsily tied together with conjunctions, and finally his wearisome predilection for tautology. All signally failed to endear him to des Esseintes.9

Cicero is one of those overrated figures whose reputation seems to be based on the idea that he should be read and not read at the same time. Thus we are told how brilliant he is even though a reading of his writings reveal a man who, although he is a first class orator and rhetorician, is in most other respects a thoroughly unoriginal, pedantic mind. Cicero did however have a first class ego; he was definitely a legend in his own mind. As revealed in much of his writing; which reads properly has so much mental masturbation and unlimited self-love. Cicero love of himself seems to have been bottomless and so was his admiration for his political skills and abilities. Cicero never tired of telling others how great he was. Unfortunately Cicero was never has great has he thought he was and spent most of his political career on the outside looking in. Cicero was simply outclassed by so many other politicians of his time and rather than realize that he was outclassed whined about how he was not getting his due.

Not surprisingly Cicero ended up getting killed by far more able and ruthless politicians who realized that they were dealing with, at most, an annoying dilettante who unfortunately believed his own self created myth.

I have little to add to Huysmans’ comments through his character des Esseintes concerning Cicero. Cicero’s style is indeed full of the most annoying self satisfaction and is in the end dreary and dull. Cicero’s style can be summed up by the phrase “I love me! I really love me!!”10

Regarding Caesar des Esseintes says:

Nor was Caesar, with his reputation for laconism, anymore to his taste than Cicero; for he went to the other extreme, and offended by his pop-gun pithiness, his jotting-pad brevity, his unforgivable, unbelievable constipation.11

Although I frankly enjoy Caesar’s well crafted laconic style describing it has constipated is in fact fair. Caesar who was affected by a major case of extreme self-love, carefully crafted his writings to give the impression that they were simply reports of events and unbiased. Amazingly many have taken his writings as such. Of course they were in fact extremely well crafted propaganda pieces designed to glorify Caesar and whose laconic style was simply a ploy to hide the obvious propagandistic nature of the pieces.

Finally Huysmans has des Esseintes describes Livy as “pompous and sentimental”12. A characterization which I deem to be entirely fair. Livy’s importance has a historian of Rome has led to outside estimations of his literary talent. Well simply because Livy is important has a historian of early Rome does not mean he was a great writer. In fact Livy was a rather dull writer in most respects. Livy seemed to have a knack, at least in translation, of reducing exciting episodes to a muzak monotone. That and his rather embarrassing, to modern readers, pro-roman slant of his writings makes a lot of what he wrote have an “official” state sanctioned aspect that makes it a history we have to read between the lines of.

That is it for the time being about Huysmans and his character des Esseintes ideas about Latin literature. It was and is good to have someone say publicly that the Emperor indeed has no clothes.

The Comte de Montesquiou who was one of the
models for des Esseintes

1. Translated into English with the title Against Nature, Huysmans, J. K., Penguin Books, 1959. You can find more about Huysmans at Huysmans. Org Here

2. IBID. p. 5.

3. IBID. Chapter 2, pp. 25-39, for the mind bending details.

4. IBID. Chapter 3, pp. 40-52.

5. IBID. p. 40.

6. IBID. pp. 40-41.

7. IBID. p. 41.

8. IBID. p. 41.

9. IBID. p. 41-42.

10. Apologies to Sally Field.

11. Huysmans, p. 42.

12. IBID. p. 42.

Pierre Cloutier