The Golden Ass
An antique comment on a performance at the London Globe
My dearest friend Petronius,
Be greeted and may Apollo's sun watch over you and accompany you in good health. The last time I wrote to you was from a little village in the middle of the Germania Ulterior sitting by the banks of the river and listening to the wolves howling in the distance. My journey to the Wonders of Thule has now, after three months of constant travel, brought me to this curious island, where I have found rest for a little while, so I hope, in their main town, located in its South East, and which they call Londinium. And what a curious place it is! The nations of this island, which are separated into three parts and - at least so I was told - another, albeit smaller island, are ruled by a queen and her husband, who takes second place in the difficult business of governing them. If that shows that women are in command here, and that I have inadvertently found the true land of the Amazons I am not quite sure yet. The inhabitants also have strange habits and spend their pastime and periods of leisure with occupations, which on more than one occasion have struck me as odd: unlike civilised people they don't go to the circus to watch the gladiatorial contests, but assemble under much noise, chanting war-like songs in huge arenas - somewhat resembling our circuses - and watch sets of participants fight for a sometimes round, sometimes egg-shaped object, a kind of stuffed ball made from leather with ferocious intent and utter commitment. Not rarely have I seen players of one team or another carried off the field. Such is the excitement that often fighting breaks out and continues in the streets long after the games have finished. This, however, is an occupation thought to be pursued more frequently by the lower classes, whereas the wealthier and better educated attend theatres and temples where they listen to music - even though we would hardly recognise it as such, their barbaric instincts and ideas about what they consider to be harmony misleading them in these attempts as much as in their sports.
It is however in this context that I had the strangest and surprising revelation which concerns the memory, or rather the forgetfulness, of man. After I had attended, though not entirely enjoyed, one of their matches and some of their musical performances, I decided also to go and observe what their theatres had to offer. Studying what the countless etablishments of this kind - and believe me there is a myriad of places, showing all kinds of amusements - were presenting, I happened upon one which seemed to me a quite promising spectacle. At a place somewhat south of the river - you certainly know my friend, that this city is divided in half by the river Thames - a play was announced to be shown, whose title sounded familiar to me, so that in a moment of melancholy and longing I decided to go to this place to re-awaken the memory of the sweet and warm fragrance of our summer evenings, where we sit all night and listen to the beautiful voices of the rhapsodists, joined by the gentle singing of the cicadas in their eternal tribute to the gods of summer. Alas, what a contrast I found here! When I arrived at the place, I was surprised to see that its round was almost completely closed and separated from nature by a roof - which is understandable and necessary due to the rough climate. Neighbouring attendants assuring me, however, that this was a place unlike other theatres - usually completely closed, with no place to wander around, and space to discuss with your friends or go along one's own business where necessary - and was originally built in remembrance of their greatest poet. And then imagine my surprise at what was performed on the stage! It was our dear friends Apuleius' "Metamorphoses", the story of Lucius, who was transformed into an ass and after many adventures found salvation and regained his human form. This was shown not as a recitation, as one might have expected, and which would befit this rare work of genius, but as a kind of pantomime, except with spoken words and even singing, all of which vaguely but recognisably derived from his tale - I have to admit quite amusing and gripping to watch. Still, my surprise deepened. Not only had they transformed his novel into a play, which was forgiveable, even recommendable, but they also claimed that his was the only work of its kind, namely a Roman novel, to have survived from antiquity. By Pluto, what ignorant fools! Have they not heard about your incomparable "Satyricon" and the adventures of the rascal Encolpius in Southern Italy; and about the successful writer Longos, who wrote "Daphnis and Chloe", Chariton's tale about Callirhoe, Xenophon's "Ephesian Tales" and Achilles Tatios' story of Leucippe and Clitophon . And what about the romances about Ninus and the picaresque tales about Aesop (obviously not the fables by his namesake!) and Alexander, described not quite as we know him from the historybooks. Or the romantic novels set in faraway lands, such as the "Babylonica", the "Phoinikika" and the "Assyriaca"? Who could compete in the description of true and chaste love with Longos; in the inventiveness of its structure and the descriptions of foreign locales with Antonios Diogenes; who would not have joined in the laughter of your hero Encolpius; and who could ever forget that famous beginning: "The smile of daybreak was just beginning to brighten the sky, the sunlight to catch the hilltops, when a group of men in brigand gear peered over the mountain that overlooks the place where the Nile flows into the sea at the mouth that men call the Heracleotic…" Without straining my ailing and failing memory too much, I could recall and name no fewer than 25 novels and writers, whose gift and craftsmanship certainly deserves better than being consigned to oblivion - and of which no less than eight (three in Latin, five in Greek) have survived intact to this day. Do you remember our excitement and the endless conversations and arguments we had about the newest works appearing in neatly crafted copies? Novels of such merit, standing and charm, acclaimed throughout the world and recognised by all people, fit to read and capable to grasp the numerous allusions and quotations from other works contained in them. One thing I have to mention is that there is an abundance here of writing and writers alike. There is a multitude of biographies - about people noteworthy and not worthy - historiography, science, philosophy, literature - as they like to call it - high an low and also novels of every description. But, having read a handful at least of what I have found and been recommended, it strikes me how different and distant these have become from our works. For example, they tend to separate and fill three and four different works with what could be found in merely one of our stories. Whereas we skilfully and following the rules of composition assemble all stories into one - the work thus resembling a diamond, expertly polished by the master's hand to reflect the light from various angles and disclosing in its different facets a different view of life, at the same time joyful to watch and edifying to experience.
This decline seems to me to have begun many hundreds of years ago. When reading some of the works of the author after whom the theatre was named where I had watched the Apuleius play, I noticed that he very purposefully and shamelessly took and appropriated some of the devices and plots from our friends' and our own work. As if this was not enough, these writers also claim to have invented, although re-invented should be the correct word, the epistolary form of the novel, whereby the whole narrative takes the shape of a made-up exchange of letters, as so expertly and for the first time demonstrated by our now forgotten friend who thus told us about the wonder of his time, Alexander. Another one of them, a Spaniard called Miguel, even referred to myself in his "Tales from the North" - about the numerous adventures of two lovers, o how familiar the sound of it! - saying how he wanted to compete with my imagination by willingly and expertly turning everything on its head and exchanging North for South, Ethiopia with the lands high up North and so forth. They also have one particular and very entertaining sort of novel, which deals with the vices of man and the crimes he commits, crimes which cry for resolution, redemption and revenge, novels whose main character is invariably an investigator - they call him the detector - and who, I flatter myself, is taken from my Ethiopian tales and mirrors the endeavours of that Calasiris, whose character I introduced to unravel the mystery of Theagenes and Chariclea. In more recent time they have developed a kind of writing, which they call "fictitious documentary" and which appears even more similar to our kind of writing. They do this by means of mixing and enriching the manifold adventures of their central characters with descriptions of customs and historic occurrences and documents of many kinds in the lands and peoples that they encounter - as we have already done it centuries ago.
Finally, I might add that they also have houses where images and tales move life-like over the walls by means of optics and light and shadow. In one of these I happened to be presented with the showing of your well-known work "The Satyricon", obviously by a countryman of yours, the effect of which was quite astounding.
Comparing their achievements with ours frequently makes me want to laugh at their efforts of imitation. True, we have all imitated each others' works, but by constantly adding on and amending and through this process approaching the goal of perfection. I myself have employed many of the recommended devices in my "Ethiopian Tales" in the pursuit of perfection, for the entertainment, enjoyment and education of the audience. Like the earth which holds the sea, in which in turn swims the fish, who eats the oyster, which might contain a single shining pearl, our novels resemble and symbolise life, with its tribulations, its sorrows and the laughter of the gods - after all the pearl has grown from a single grain of sand, swept in by a river from the soil, which covers the earth.
All of this would only increase my amusement if it not also sadly did make me aware of how easily the human mind forgets and makes claims of invention and its own greatness where in reality one generations builds and depends on the other; thus each contributing to the heritage of mankind; each in turn being transformed by the following. Which also leads me to think that our own achievements might not be so unconnected to our past. Indeed I have heard people say that our works point towards Babylon and Mesopotamia and many generations back, including not only in literature and also in painting and architecture, to name but a few.
With these thoughts in mind I will now take care of the preparations for the continuation of my journey towards the utmost North, on towards the island of Thule. And who knows what wonders I might find there, which, I promise you my friend, I will hasten to refer to you - in the hope that you might find a use for those wondrous tales in your next work.
Be greeted, again, and almost from the limits of the world, from where I might
one day glimpse the surrounding Okeanos, or as they say here, the snake that coils itself around the inhabited lands of man.
Sit tibi terra levis, (May the earth be light upon you)
Heliodor
© Dirk Bennett 2003