The Golden Ass (1469)

'The Golden Ass' is one of the earliest intact novels. Along with the more fragmentary 'Satyricon' it is our only significant window into Latin literary prose. The two have very different styles and being the only survivors of a vast canon I can only imagine what was lost and its hard to judge if this book is a typical or outstanding example of its kind. but I can see the influences that this work had on early novelists such as Cervantes where the narrative is broken up frequently with traveler's stories and folktales, the dangers of curiosity, and wordplay. It's practical sense of humor and disregard for rules I see as simply human. The novel becomes serious near the end as our narrator, Lucius, is inducted into the sacred mysteries of the Isis cult. Other aspects of Latin culture give this novel a sensibility very different from the comparatively recent 17th and 18th centuries.

This is an invaluable work and I can see its charms, but as with many of the early novels in English I grew tired of the digressions. The main plot is Lucius' transformation into an ass after stealing a witch's magic ointment. The novel is also social comedy in his comments about his stingy host, conversations, and (of course) the habits of women. The story frequently makes aside into stories, tales of witchcraft and bravery and the story of Cupid and Psyche makes up a large portion of the novel.

Much of Lucius and his culture is human, but it was hard for me to empathize with him during his struggles. An interesting artifact - I think I'd be more interesting in reading abut this work than in reading this again. ( )

Fantastic read. A blend of ancient myth and reality, not sure which one is stranger. Just the fact that it was written long before Medieval times is mind boggling ( )

The tales of Lucius Apuleius, whose adventures form the framework for storytelling at each of the locations along his journey, and there are many. Early in the tale, Lucius, because of his curiosity about magic, is transformed into an ass. As he is passed from owner to owner, he suffers beatings and cruelty and constant threats of death, but he is somehow within earshot of the stories he tells, most of which have to do with cuckoldry, and are humorous, although the punishments to the unfortunate, especially if they are slaves, are extreme. The most well-known of the tales is the Tale of Cupid and Psyche. At the end, however, Lucius is transformed back into human form, and becomes a devoted initiate into the cults of Isis and Osiris, and also has a career as a successful barrister.

Robert Graves' translation is both readable and entertaining. The wry telling of the unfortunate but sympathetic narrator's adventures invites the term picaresque, although that particular designation for novels came much later. It's easy to see the influence of Lucius on world literature. This work from the 2nd century AD seems to have influenced Chaucer, and Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream ia perhaps the most well-known instance of a human turning into an ass. Other borrowers include Milton, Boccacio, Cervantes, Dekker, Kyd and Kafka.

The description of Isis, the Mother Goddess, is adoration itself: "so lovely a face that the gods themselves would have fallen down in adoration of it." Long thick hair falling in ringlets, crowned with a garland of flowers, and a disk on her forehead, held by vipers. A multi-colored linen robe; and a black mantle covered with stars. Her left hand holds suspended a boat-shaped gold dish, and on the handle there is an asp ready to strike. She is accompanied by all the perfumes of Arabia. She tells Lucius, "I am Nature, the Universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shiny heights of heaven, the wholesome sea breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below." Perhaps an invocation of Graves' White Goddess? ( )

895/1000
signed by quentin blake
old mill stucco paper bound by kozel in full indian goatskin. ( )

"...I was obliged to face the mortifying fact that I had been transformed not into a bird, but into a plain Jackass." - Book V: Lucius is Transformed

Tales of comedy, drama, tragedy, incest, fratricide, bestiality; Apuleius' Metamorphoses contains a wide variety of tales, and is the earliest source for the myth of Cupid & Psyche.

Graves' translation was very readable.
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"I did not leave the kitchen until I had taken a careful look at her from head to foot. But for the moment I need only write about her head; the truth is that I have an obsession about hair. Whenever I meet a pretty woman, the first thing that catches my eye is her hair; I make a careful mental picture to carry home and brood over in private. This habit of mine I justify on a sound logical principle; that the hair is the most important and conspicuous feature of the body, and that its natural brilliance does for the head what gaily coloured clothes do for the trunk. In fact, it does a great deal more. You know how women, when they want to display their beauty to the full, shed their embroidered wraps and step out of their expensive dresses, and proudly reveal themselves with nothing on at all, aware that even the brightest gold tissue has less effect on a man than the delicate tints of a woman's naked body. But - and here you must excuse a horrible idea which I hope nobody will ever put into practice - if you shaved the head of even the most beautiful woman alive and so deprived her face of its natural setting, then I don't care whether she originally floated down from sea-foam like the Goddess Venus - I don't even care whether she were Venus herself, with every one of the Graces and Cupids in attendance, Venus dripping with precious balsam and fragrant as cinnamon, and with the famous girdle of love clasped about her waist - the fact is, that her baldness would leave her completely without attraction even for so devoted a husband as the God Vulcan.

What joy it is to see hair of a beautiful colour caught in the full rays of the sun, or shining with a milder lustre and constantly varying its shade as the light shifts. Golden at one moment, at the next honey-coloured; or black as a raven's wing, but suddenly taking on the next pale blueish tints of a dove's neck-feathers. Give it a gloss with a spikenard lotion, part it neatly with a finely toothed comb, catch it up with a ribbon behind - and the lover will make it a sort of mirror to reflect his own delighted looks. And oh, when hair is bunched up in a thick luxurious mass on a woman's head or, better still, allowed to flow rippling down her neck in profuse curls! I must content myself by saying baldly that such is the glory of woman's hair that though she may be wearing the most exquisite clothes and the most expensive jewellery in existence, with everything else in keeping, she cannot look even moderately well dressed unless she has done her hair in proper style." —Book II: At Milo's House ( )