The Golden ***.

[MANICHAEAN]

The Golden ***.

Disparaged by some, and inspirational to others, Apuleius’s “The Golden Ass” or “Metamorphoses” is a must for those with an interest in how Western literature has evolved.

After the Roman Empire split into its Western and Eastern halves, Greek, which had been widely used all over the Empire faded from use in the West, all the more so as the political and religious distance steadily grew between the Catholic West and the Orthodox Greek East. The vernacular languages in the West, (the languages of the modern-day EEC), developed for centuries as spoken languages only: most people did not write, and it seems that it very seldom occurred to those who wrote, to write in any language other than Latin, even when they spoke French or Italian or English or another vernacular in their daily life.

All the more significant then, that “The Golden Ass” was not lost but was passed on to future generations of both readers and of writers like; Shakespeare, T.E.Lawrence, Cervantes, Swift and Rushdie who it seemingly influenced.

For though on the face of it no more than a bawdy Latin novel, there are depths, which as the author himself points out, one should pay close attention to, namely the continual struggle of individuals to come to grips with and function in a largely unintelligible world.

Part of the inherent struggle depicted in “The Golden Ass” is that which arises from man’s own inner desires for pleasure; so significant with today’s emphasis on consumerism. Apuleius’s is a tale of attaining the maturity and the wisdom needed to survive one’s desires.

But “The Golden Ass” should not be read as containing a Puritan message of converting sexual love into a love of God, (a theme explored by Graham Greene), or an abandonment of magic in favour of religion. Sensuality, (as argued in another thread), is not inherently vulgar, nor is magic, spiritualism (call it what you will) always evil. Both can take either a destructive or a positive form.

Finally, why was an *** chosen to become through magic the lower half of the main player in this tale? The reason lays in that the *** in Roman days representing cruelty and lust. Thus when in “The Golden ***,” Charite escapes from the dacoits and rides home on Lucius’s half human, half assed back, Apuleius remarks that this is the extraordinary sight of “a virgin triumphantly riding an ***.” This could be interpreted in a more meaningful way as “Purity dominating the lusts of the flesh without bit or bridle,” a truly impressionable image.

[mortalterror]

When I read it, I saw it as an allegory about slavery, men being reduced to the level of animals. The story would make perfect sense as a slave narrative minus the witchcraft. Over and over, the protagonist is captured and sold from one bad master to another. You could say that he became free once he became a man again. The story could cover a real shame in an entertaining manner, the way that Horace jests that he didn't flee a battle but was swept up in a cloud by a goddess like Paris.

[Pompey Bum]

Ah! I suspected I was dealing with persons of classical learning!

Yes, Apuleius' Metamorphoses: one of my favorite books since I read it at 19 in Graves' translation, in the original Latin as a graduate student, and in the incomparable Addlington translation many times since. Addlington's Elizabethan English gives does justice to Apuleius' rich and playful use of language, which in my opinion, Graves' modern translation does not. Loeb has a polyglot edition with slightly modernized spelling (only), but for those who like a challenge (and love our beautiful English tongue), here is an online version of Addlinton's original text. (An epub version is also available for free from Gutenberg).

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1666/1666-h/1666-h.htm

For those not familiar with The Metamorphoses (not to be confused with Ovid's poetic work of the same name), it is a novel, written a millennium and a half before Cervantes, telling the tale of a young man named Lucius, whose fascination with black magic leads him, in the earlier chapters, to pursue an illicit affair with the all-too-willing slave of sorceress in a town much troubled by witches. The slave, Photis, betrays her mistress's secrets to Lucius, but she doesn't understand them well enough to prevent disaster. Attempting to turn him into a bird (temporarily) so they can make love in flight, she screws up the spell and turns him into an donkey instead.

Panicking a little, Photis, leads the braying as s (his human consciousness still intact) to the stables for the night, fearing her mistress's return. Despite his indignation, she assures him that she will fetch the antidote--roses to be eaten--in the morning. But during the night, the house and stables are raided by bandits. Lucius is led away to their lair as a pack animal, where he witnesses a series of adventures, horrific, comic, or otherwise (including overhearing, at the length of several chapters, the story of Cupid and Psyche--the version usually told today is Apuleius' and is generally considered to be his masterpiece) before breaking away. By that time, however, the seasons have turned. There will be no roses for him to eat until spring, and poor Lucius must endure his bestial body, bought and sold into increasingly degraded positions, until he can be somehow saved.

That action constitutes the first quarter or so of the book (along with side stories of witches and wonders), but it is really just the premise for the main story, which is about Lucius' miserable bondage to his asinine and bestial body and his growing awareness of his true self as distinct from his material being.

The Golden As s has a reputation among those who have never read it for being a pornographic book. It is far from that, although admittedly it comes from a Europe that was not much acquainted Judeo-Christian morality, and a few graphic accounts of carnality and violence here and would certainly have earned it a "not submitted" rating if it were a movie today. On the other hand, a pornographic graphic novel of The Golden As s was penned by the Italian cartoonist Milo Manara, with grossly pornographic/S&M elements added willy-nilly. That has not helped the books reputation as literature, especially among those of the "Classic Comics" school of reading ancient literature.

That being said, let me confess that my favorite parts of The Golden As s are the earlier chapters, in the town oppressed by witches, mainly because the tone is more upbeat than later sections (but also because of all the cool witch stories). There is also an element of nostalgia for me, remembering the personal appeal the story of Lucius and Photis held in the days when I first read it, blind as I was to the folly of my own blundering adventures, and indifferent to the consequences they inevitably used to bring down on my head.

But in later readings, a darker aspect of the story--no doubt Apuleius' original intent--has emerged. In those earlier chapters, Lucius frequently mentions his aristocratic lineage. He is haughty with others and is clearly just "slumming it" with Photis during what he expects will be a brief stay in town. She is really nothing more than a cheap lay to him. Photis, likewise, has only animal lust for Lucius. Despite their punchy talk of making love in flight, she abandons him to the beasts of the stable as soon as the going gets rough. (But she's such a great character!)

Most shocking of all to me was the implicit violence at "the end of the affair." Lucius' indignation at Photis seems comical at first. But read more closely and you will see him fantasizing (or planning?) to blind her by rearing up and kicking her eyes out with his hooves. That was not the Lucius and Photis I had remembered from my undergraduate years. And in the final analysis, Lucius remains utterly indifferent to Photis' fate as the bandits are clearly butchering the household. Was she killed? Was she gang raped? Was she sold as booty? Apuleius doesn't say and Lucius doesn't even wonder. She's just out of the story. In a certain way, the events in the early chapters of the book are presented as too appealing. Or perhaps that is Apuleius' point.

When I read it, I saw it as an allegory about slavery, men being reduced to the level of animals. The story would make perfect sense as a slave narrative minus the witchcraft. Over and over, the protagonist is captured and sold from one bad master to another. You could say that he became free once he became a man again

That is a beautiful interpretation of Apuleius' allegory, MT, and one worth preserving, even though I doubt that's what The author meant. Like most 2nd century Greco-Roman aristocrats, Apuleius wouldn't have had a problem with slavery--not of that kind, in any case. While it is surely a story of how human beings become "reduced to the level of animals," The Golden As s is usually considered a Platonist parable about the spirit's bondage to the material. (Apuleius had studied Platonism in Athens, Anatolia, and Egypt, and had a reputation as a Neo-Platonist philosopher long after his death). In the book, Lucius' vanity and sexual folly lead him deeper and deeper into "cruelty and lust" (as Manichaean puts it); or perhaps the converse would be better: his lust for Photis leads him to cruelty (witness his thoughts about his lover just before the bandit raid) and increasing degradation as the story continues. As you say, he is "captured and sold from one bad master to another," until he reaches a point of near total degradation as a beast in the arena--at which point he receives a gracious salvation.

This is a story of slavery, but the slavery of the soul to the body. That is why Lucius makes such a point of his descent from the Platonist Plutarch in the first pages of the book, it is also why the (ultimately Neo-Platonist) Christian theologian Augustine--for all his disdain of his fellow North African's "paganism"--repeatedly refers to him in The City of God as "the philosopher Apuleius" (as opposed to, say, "the guy who wrote the dirty book Apuleius). Augustine knew The Golden As s well. Its confessional tone and influenced his famous Confessions; and Augustine was, in fact, the first one we know of to have called The Metamorphoses "The Golden As s," which he does in The City of God.

I will also differ a little from Manichaean's view that Apuleius does not advance "an abandonment of magic in favour of religion...nor is magic...always evil." Black magic, which the witches in the earlier chapters practice by stealing organs from corpses, and which always involves the physical body (whether one is being turned into a bird or a donkey), is a real bad guy in this story. It is Lucius' morbid fascination with the subject that leads to his affair with Photis and all that followed. (Apuleius was famous in his own lifetime for having successfully defended himself from a charge of using black magic--it may have been something he dabbled in at one point).

What makes it difficult is the end of the novel. (I'm going to speak obliquely because I don't want to give anything away). While we might see the end as magical, Apuleius and his contemporaries would have considered it legitimate religion (even philosophy), as opposed to illegitimate black magic. The other confusing thing about the ending is that the "saving presence" (again, I am trying to be discreet) has Pharaonic Egyptian associations to us. But by Apuleius' time, a Neo-Platonic syncretism had arisen in philosophical circles, and it is that to which Apuleius is referring. I hope that is not too obscure.