Carnival in Hell: Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus

 

 Numbers in brackets refer to endnotes.  Translations of excerpts are my own; the German is provided in endnotes. 

 

 

     Grimmelshausen’s picaresque novel, Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, like Goya’s engravings of scenes during the Peninsular War, provides a vivid picture of the disasters of war. Set during the Thirty Year’s War, one of the most destructive conflicts in history, in which the population of German lands was reduced by two-thirds through violence, disease, and starvation, the narration is full of blood, unrestrained cruelty, and sadism. Like Brecht’s play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder which borrows the era and tropes on one of Grimmelshausen’s characters from a sequel to Simplicissimus, the material is grim and the work is unapologetically anti-war, though the main character, like workers throughout history, is willing to enlist in one army after another.  Yet the tone of this often violent narrative is paradoxically profoundly comic in the profound Rabelaisian vein Bakhtin called carnivalistic.

     The depredations of war on the German countryside are depicted in frightful detail. Tortures and peculiar sexual humiliation like kissing the victor’s anus are described [1] and the reader learns of the chaos and horrors of battle [2].  The verses that accompany the fascinating symbolic frontispiece of the book declare that the author’s purpose is to encourage readers to “abandon folly and live in peace” [3].  By the author’s estimation the human race is a bestial lot: “People are in  part more swinish than hogs, more fierce than lion, more lecherous than goats, more sly than foxes, more voracious than wolves, more foolish than apes, more poisonous than snakes and toads, yet all alike eat human food and only through their shape can they be distinguished from beasts.” [4]

     Human rapaciousness is evident not only in  the barbaric conduct of war; the entire structure of feudal society is shown to be profoundly exploitative.  Though many aspects of Grimmelshausen’s own background are obscure, he cannot be said to have had a privileged upbringing.  Orphaned at an early age, he either enlisted or was conscripted into a Hessian military unit while still a child.   While he later held various administrative positions of local importance under noble lords, his novel contains numerous critiques of the feudal order.  Though the utopia described by Jupiter is infected with German chauvinism, it nonetheless suggests the possibility of a society free from economic or religious discord.  Jupiter calls for an end to “corvées, watches, contributions, assessments, wars, or any other burdens on the people” as well as ending conflict among the Christian sects [5]. 

     Grimmelshausen questions the socio-economic hierarchy at the very outset, confusing categories by maintaining that Simplicissimus’ father was in a way like a monarch, having a palace (his home), lackeys (sheep and goats), arms (pitchforks and spades), a mode of life he calls “truly noble” [6].  He asks what title Adam had boasted [7], rather as John Ball three hundred years earlier had posed the question, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?”  This radical point of view simmers throughout the story.  At other points, to note only a few examples, Simplicissimus criticizes the practice of making military officers only of aristocrats, notes that only the poor are punished for their crimes, and laments that people are judged less by their own characters than by the opinions of their superiors [8].   When Simplicissimus dreams, he thinks of society as a tree with the workers, the only productive ones, as its roots.  

But the root was made up of people who count for little, like craftsmen, day laborers, mostly farmers and that sort, who nevertheless gave the tree its strength, and again rebuilt it when it lost some from time to time; indeed, they made up for the loss of fallen leaves from their own resources, to their own even greater ruin; besides, they sighed over those who sat on the tree [soldiers[, and not unjustly, for the entire burden of the tree rested on them, pressing them so much that all the money from their pouches, even from behind seven locks, slipped away.  [9]

     Who is the character who can so critically assess his own superiors?  At times he is a court jester, the figure considered traditionally to enjoy a particular privilege of speaking truth to power [10].  In this role he is able to “uncover all follies and criticize all vanities, for which role my position at the time suited admirably.” [11]  He is identified as a fool simply because he tells the truth [12]; his job is to “delicately point out their faults to this person and that” [13].

     Simplicissimus’ position as a “fool,” is expressed as well by his being called a calf (cf. the English term mooncalf) and by his display (like Midas, Apuleius, and Bottom) of asses’ ears.  While his lack of experience makes him in some ways ludicrous, it also signifies his purity.  He is like the young Parsifal, a genuine naïf, ignorant of the ways of the world and thus able to react in a fresh and spontaneous way [14].  His childhood is a sort of Eden, while the world around him is decidedly fallen. 

     The vogue for picaresque novels had been initiated with Lazarillo de Torres (1554) and Simplicissimus clearly belongs to the genre.  Considered in this light, the narrative is an amusing account of a trickster figure.  The bleak view of the world of unpredictable extreme violence is offset by the hero’s survival, generally through cunning means.  The reader can enjoy his adventures, since, no matter how often he falls, he always bounces back for another round.  As a trickster, he generally succeeds by means of outwitting his antagonists. 

     Though he had at first been described as a tabula rasa [15], he becomes something close to a culture hero with his inventions and innovations [16].  He resorts to trickery to get the best of a besieged city, a landlord, and his fellow soldiers [17].  Further, though he began knowing nothing whatever of God, he becomes something of a divine instrument.  His initial instruction by the pious hermit, his friendship with Herzbruder who is in a way his spiritual double, and his eventual retirement to the contemplative life at the end mark the foundation of his values in Christianity.  With his “clear conscience and sincerely pious mind”, he is shocked at the sinfulness of everyone around him, many of whom make idols of money  or food. He seems, in fact, to some “an oracle or the voice of God “ [18].  Overlaid atop the folkloric elements of Simplicissimus’ character is a strange sort of hagiography, in which the main character’s early misdeeds are followed by a conversion experience [19] and at the end as ascetic a hymn as one might imagine taking leave of the world [20].  Here Simplicissimus reminds the reader of other fables of spiritual growth such as Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West, Langland’s Piers Plowman, or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

     And yet, it is difficult to take this old confidence man at his word.  He has earlier demonstrated such élan vital, such ebullience, rivalling the comically swollen appetites of Gargantua and Pantagruel.  Grimmelshausen’s affirmation of things as they are is evident in his style.  The picaresque template itself is bouyant, comic, optimistic.  The book mingles genres as though a single model would be too restrictive including stories within stories, sometimes verses (as in Bk. I, ch. iii) or a dialogue (Bk. I, ch. vii).  Often the language boils over in a rich plentitude, as when Simplicissimus lists the daily round of activities at his Edenic childhood home (Bk I, ch xi) or when he catalogues a long paragraph of examples of memory (Bk. II, ch. viii) or the much longer learned catalogue of heroes of humanity (Bk. II, ch. x).  Sudden rhetorical effusions belly out at times, such as when he describes a scene of gambling in a rich manner that recalls the paintings of Pieter Breughel the Elder.  The passage is lengthy, but it represents a host of similar pyrotechnic displays of language throughout the book.

 

Quite a few were missing, a number did win, only to squander what they got.  Because of that some cured and thundered.  Consequently some were cursing; some cheated , some received sword-blows.  Hence the winner laughed and other bettors ground their teeth.  Some sold their clothes and anything else they cherished, while others won back their money.  Some wanted honest dice while others wanted loaded ones in the game and introduced them surreptitiously.   Others then tossed them away, smashed them, tore them apart with their teeth and tore others’ coats from their shoulders.  Among the loaded dice were some from the Netherlands which one had to roll in a looping motion.  These had such pointed backs like the skinny donkeys the soldiers rode that they rolled fives and sixes.  Others were from the highlands, the sort that one had to toss from a Bavarian height, others from Hirschhorn, mad heavy on the top and light on the bottom, while others were filled with quicksilver or lead, yet others with trimmings of hair or with sponges, chaff, or coal.  While some had pointed corners, others were rounded; some were like long cobs while others resembled broad tortoises.  Every one of these varieties was made for nothing but cheating.  T hey did the very thing they ere made to do.  One could equally well rock or gently let them slide.  It didn’t help with knots,  not to speak of two fives or two sixes or, on the other hand, two ones or two twos.  With these scoundrels they pinched, plotted, and stole each other’s money, which they might well have robbed or at any rate risked life and limb or otherwise gained through hard effort and work.

 

     While this passage is more than ordinarily sustained, such effusions occur throughout [21] Simplicissimus and the author’s poetry can (for instance in his best-known lyric “Komm, Trost der Nacht”) sound almost mystical.  The unmistakable tone is one of acceptance and affirmation of a monstrously flawed world.  If the final message of Rabelais is the motto of the Abbey of Thélème “Do as thou wouldst,” Simplicissimus’ might be “struggle but celebrate.”  Grimmelshausen recognizes the suffering inherent in life which people then multiply with added cruelty absent in nature, and yet his hero jumps in whole-heartedly, eager to play the game and suffer the blows and witness all the absurdity of human behavior with a mordantly ironic eye when the scene is too dreadful to laugh out loud.  Others might paint a rosier view; unfortunately, it is difficult to imagine a truer.

 

  

 

1.  Bk. I, Ch. xiv.  See also the tortures for dissenters in even Jupiter’s utopia, Bk. III, ch. v.

2.  Bk. I, Ch. xxvii.

3.  “Entferne der Torheit und Lebe in  Ruh.”  The artist is unknown. 

4.  “Wie teils Menschen säuischer als Schwein, grimmiger als Löwen, geiler als Böck, neidiger als Hund, unbändiger als Pferd, gröber als Esel, versoffener als Rinder, listiger als Füchs, gefräßiger als Wölf, närrischer als Affen, und giftiger als Schlangen und Kröten waren, welche dennoch allesamt menschlicher Nahrung genossen und nur durch die Gestalt von den Tieren unterschieden waren.”  Bk. II, ch. 7.

5.  “Daß man von keinem Fronen, Wachen, Kontribuieren, Geldgeben, Kriegen noch einziger Beschwerung beim Volk mehr Wissen.”  Bk. III, ch. iv.  Bk. II, ch. v describes the plan to reconcile divided Christianity.  The racial component here (the primacy of Germany and the recognition of  England, Sweden, and Denmark as essentially Germanic) is disturbing. 

6.  “Sehr adelig.”  Bk. I, ch. i.

7.  “[Er] fragte, wie man der Menschen ersten Vater tituliert hätte?”  Bk. II, ch. x.

8.  Bk. I, ch. xvii; Bk. IV, ch. xiii, and Bk. II, ch. ii.

9.  (Bk. I, ch.  xv)  “Die Wurzel aber war von ungültigen Leuten, als Handwerkern, Taglöhnern, mehrenteils Bauren und dergleichen, welche nichtsdestoweniger dem Baum seine Kraft verliehen, und wieder von neuem mitteilten, wenn er solche zuzeiten verlor; ja sie ersetzten den Mangel der abgefallenen Blätter aus den ihrigen, zu ihrem eigenen noch größeren Verderben; benebens seufzeten sie über diejenigen, so auf dem Baum saßen, und zwar nicht unbillig, denn die ganze Last des Baums lag auf ihnen, und drückte sie dermaßen, daß ihnen alles Geld aus den Beuteln, ja hinter sieben Schlössern hervorging.”

10.  This role is referred to in Bk. II, ch. iv; Bk. III, ch. xi, and Bk. III, ch. xiv.

11.  “Alle Torheiten zu bereden und alle Eitelkeiten zu strafen, wozu sich denn mein damaliger Stand trefflich schickte.”  Bk. II, ch. x.

12.  “My lord himself said, ‘I toom you for a fool, since you spoke the truth so unashamedly.”  (Mein Herr selbst sagte: »Ich halte ihn für einen Narrn, weil er jedem die Wahrheit so ungescheut sagt.).  Bk. II, ch. xiii.

13.  “Dem einen und dem andern seine Mängel artlich verweisen möchte.”  Bk. II, ch. xiv.

14.  Cf. representations  of the infant Jesus, Jung’s “wise child,” etc.

15.  “Einer leeren ohnbeschriebenen Tafel.” Bk. I, ch. ix.

16.  Some of his marvelous inventions re described in Bk. III, ch. i.  He is an expert at making powder and artillery pieces in Bk. V, ch xxii.

17.  See Bk. III, ch. ix for the duel and siege, Bk. III, ch. xxiv for landlord, Bk. IV, ch. x for his comrades-in-arms. 

18.  “Ein reines Gewissen und aufrichtig frommes Gemüt.”  Bk. I, ch. xxiv.  “Ein Orakel oder Warnung Gottes.”  Bk. II, ch. xiii.

19.  Here in Bk. V, ch. ii., though Simplicissimus had seemed to be religious in earlier scenes. 

20.  “Etliche fehlten; etliche gewannen, etliche verspielten: derowegen auch etliche fluchten, etliche donnerten; etliche betrogen und andere wurden besäbelt. Dahero lachten die Gewinner, und die Verspieler bissen die Zähn aufeinander; teils verkauften Kleider und was sie sonst lieb hatten, andere aber gewinneten ihnen das Geld wieder ab; etliche begehrten redliche Würfel, andere hingegen wünschten falsche auf den Platz und führten solche unvermerkt ein, die aber andere wieder hinwegwarfen, zerschlugen, mit Zähnen zerrissen und den Scholderern die Mäntel zerrissen. Unter den falschen Würfeln befanden sich Niederländer, welche man schleifend hineinrollen mußte, diese hatten so spitzige Rücken, darauf sie die Fünfer und Sechser trugen, als wie die mageren Esel darauf man die Soldaten setzt. Andere waren oberländisch, denselben mußte man die bayrische Höhe geben, wenn man werfen wollte: etliche waren von Hirschhorn, leicht oben und schwer unten gemacht: andere waren mit Quecksilber oder Blei und aber andere mit zerschnittenen Haaren, Schwämmen, Spreu und Kohlen gefüttert; etliche hatten spitzige Eck, an andern waren solche gar hinweggeschliffen; teils waren lange Kolben, und teils sahen aus wie breite Schildkrotten. Und alle diese Gattungen waren auf nichts anders als auf Betrug verfertigt, sie taten dasjenige, wozu sie gemacht waren, man mochte sie gleich wippen oder sanft schleichen lassen, da half kein Knüpfens, geschweige jetzt derer, die entweder zween Fünfer oder zween Sechser und im Gegenteil entweder zwei Eß oder zwei Daus hatten: Mit diesen Schelmenbeinern zwackten, laureten und stahlen sie einander ihr Geld ab, welches sie vielleicht auch geraubt oder wenigst mit Leib- und Lebensgefahr oder sonst saurer Mühe und Arbeit erobert hatten.”  Bk. V, ch. xiv.

21.  See, for instance, the description of the dinner in Bk. I, ch. xxix or the following list of drinkers’ activities in Bk. I, ch. xxx. 

 

Merie Tales of Skelton

 

The stories here discussed may be read in a modernized form at https://www.exclassics.com/skelton/skel007.htm.  Numbers in parentheses refer to the stories according to that source.

 

     John Skelton was capable of scholarship, witnessed by his translation of Diodoris Siculus, as well as of the magnificent rhetoric of Magnificence and the serious social and religious engagement of “Why Came Ye nat to Courte?”, but he is doubtless best known to those who have not read his complete works as a merry humorist.  His poems in this vein range from the “coarse” satire of “The Tunnyng of Elynoare Rummynge” to the delicate wit of “Phyllyp Sparowe” and jeux d’esprit such as “Jolly Butterkin.”  Apart from his writings, though, a significant factor in his reception was the publication a generation after the poet’s death of Merie Tales of Skelton (1566).  This collection of anecdotes is in part similar to other joke books such as the Hundred Mery Talys (1526) and Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres (1530), but it bears a resemblance as well to the celebrity stories that remain popular on television and in magazines today.  Skelton was close to the Tudor court and a sufficiently well-known figure that his supposed characteristics could form the basis for popularly circulating stories, either based in reality like anecdotes of Wilde’s wit or simply the basis for gags like Jack Benny’s tightfistedness.  Though the stories are largely if not entirely fabricated of whole cloth, they do reveal the era’s taste in humor as well as indicating Skelton’s reputation a generation after his death. 

    Most of the stories depict Skelton as a clever trickster, a sort of epigone of a character familiar from myth and folklore.  He calls “fire!” in an inn simply in order to get a drink at night (1), convinces a fellow traveler to pay his way to London by pretending to cure him of disease (2), displaces a friar from his bed after shitting on him and making him think he had soiled himself (9), and harasses a cobbler (12) and a miller (13) for his own entertainment.  Two are standard gags on the theme of gender: the macaronic epitaph for Swanborn the hen-pecked “knave” who had been often beaten by his wife (5) and the cowardly cobbler who suggests his wife would be a likelier warrior (12).  Another is a simple “man-bites dog” reversal with an ostler who bites the horse that had bitten him (11).

     The casual cruelty of comedy in which everything is played for laughs, exemplified by people swatting and kicking each other in Chaplin’s silent films and Wile E. Coyote suffering multiple defeats, any of which would have been lethal in a more realistic desert, is evident in all his deceptions, most transgressively perhaps when he shits on the friar’s sleeping body.  More likely to disturb a modern reader, though, is his putting the miller who cheated him through a series of challenges and, toward the end, still thinking ”it better that such a false knave should lose his head than to live” (13).  

     Other episodes rely on what must have been elements of Skelton’s public personality.  Some imply a bossy arrogance (8, 12, 13).  Skelton is represented as jealously defending the territory of his own parish (8), and having little patience with religious questioners (3).  His conflicts with ecclesiastical authorities are foregrounded repeatedly (6, 7, 10, 14).  Several stories (1, 15) indicate his fondness for drink, though a third suggests the opposite (4). 

    Of the fifteen sketches in the Mery Tales two have value beyond being examples of Renaissance humor and clues to Skelton’s image, if not his true personality.  One draws attention by its length alone.  Skelton’s miller who gives short weight (13) is part of a long tradition, including Chaucer’s pilgrim miller of whom his antagonist the reeve says: 

 

A theef he was for sothe of corn and mele,

And that a sly, and usaunt for to stele.

                                (“Reeve’s Tale,” 3939-3940)

 

The miller’s habitual sharp practices are assumed in Merie Tales and the plot concerns his gaining forgiveness from Skelton by his craftiness which allows him to accomplish a series of apparently impossible tasks.  The development of the tale is leisurely enough to more closely resemble a folktale than a joke.  In the course of detailing the miller’s four labors the narrator manages to indulge in scatology as well as ridiculing a priest before concluding with a grisly artifice involving the head of an executed criminal.  All three somewhat shocking elements sustain the narrative development and all may be forgotten when, in the end, Skelton does pardon the fellow. 

     Surely for most readers the most charming story is that of Skelton’s presenting his child to his congregation in church (7, appended).  Priestly celibacy, of course, had not been a dogma in the early church and was not required until the eleventh century.  Differences on the issue were one factor is the Great Schism.  After celibacy was asked of priests, enforcement remained very uneven.  Some priests, even after being reprimanded for keeping lovers and children, went then for years without changing their ways or losing their responsibility for the souls under their care.

     The story might possibly be a version of a real event, but, whether it is or not, it is told with such an appealing innocence and such natural wholesome confidence that it is memorable regardless of historicity.  Rather than reacting defensively, Skelton’s response is proud, accusing those who had complained of him to the bishop of jealousy and boasting of the beauty of both his wife and child and showing off the little one naked before the people, declaring “"How say you, neighbours all? is not this child as fair as is the best of all yours? It hath nose, eyes, hands, and feet, as well as any of your: it is not like a pig, nor a calf, nor like no fowl nor no monstrous beast.”

     He meets their secret denunciation of him not with a defense but by accusing his detractors of arrogance and predicting that those who exalt themselves shall be humbled.  He concludes with a witty turn by telling how he had to cure the presumption of his student hood which he tamed by making of it breeches (to wear upon his rear).  Only after he had taught the garment a lesson by this treatment, could he resume wearing it on his head.  After this whimsy the passage appropriately concludes “It is merry in the hall, when beards wag all.”  The reader would very much like to believe in the veracity of this account.

     The Merie Tales then illustrate several common varieties of comic story, one of which derives humor from a reversal, such as the trickster getting the better of an adversary, a woman beating her husband, or a man biting an animal.  Other stories are generated with the psychic energy invested in taboo topics, such as sexuality, excretion, and drinking.  As the book appeared only a generation after Skelton’s death, some stories may have arisen from incidents or traits associated with him during his life, among which one may number his susceptibility to the pleasures of the bottle and the flesh, his dislike of the church hierarchy and the mendicant orders, and his possessiveness about his own parish.  Living at the same age as the great Continentally-influenced sonneteers Wyatt, Surrey, and Sidney, Skelton composed idiosyncratic, more wholly English verse in forms sometimes of his own invention while also acquiring enough celebrity status to attract legends after his passing.  His own poetry remains well worth reading, but readers who scan the amusing anecdotes of the Merie Tales will enjoy as well a curious sidelong glance illuminating both the poet and his age.

 

 

 

How Skelton, when he came from the bishop, made a sermon. [Tale vii.]

Skelton the next Sunday after went into the pulpit to preach, and said, "Vos estis, vos estis, that is to say, You be, you be. And what be you?" said Skelton: "I say, that you be a sort of knaves, yea, and a man might say worse than knaves; and why, I shall show you. You have complained of me to the bishop that I do keep a fair wench in my house: I do tell you, if you had any fair wives, it were some what to help me at need; I am a man as you be: you have foul wives, and I have a fair wench, of the which I have begotten a fair boy, as I do think, and as you all shall see. Thou wife," said Skelton, "that hast my child, be not afraid; bring me hither my child to me:" the which was done. And he, showing his child naked to all the parish, said, "How say you, neighbours all? is not this child as fair as is the best of all yours? It hath nose, eyes, hands, and feet, as well as any of your: it is not like a pig, nor a calf, nor like no fowl nor no monstrous beast. If I had," said Skelton, "brought forth this child without arms or legs, or that it were deformed, being a monstrouus thing, I would never have blamed you to have complained to the bishop of me; but to complain without a cause, I say, as I said before in my antetheme, vos estis, you be, and have be, and will and shall be knaves, to complain of me without a cause reasonable. For you be presumptuous, and do exalt yourselves, and therefore you shall be made low: as I shall show you a familiar example of a parish priest, the which did make a sermon in Rome. And he did take that for his antetheme, the which of late days is named a theme, and said, Qui se exaltat humiliabitur, et qui see humiliat exaltabitur, that is to say, he that doth exalt himself or doth extol himself shall be made meek, and he that doth humble himself or is meek, shall be exalted, extolled, or elevated, or sublimated, or such like; and that I will show you by this my cap. This cap was first my hood, when that I was student in Jucalico, and then it was so proud that it would not be contented, but it would slip and fall from my shoulders. I perceiving this that he was proud, what then did I? shortly to conclude, I did make of him a pair of breeches to my hose, to bring him low. And when that I did see, know, or perceive that he was in that case, and allmost worn clean out, what did I then to extol him up again? you all may see that this my cap was made of it that was my breeches. Therefore, said Skelton, vos estis, therefore you be, as I did say before: if that you exalt yourself, and cannot be contented that I have my wench still, some of you shall wear horns; and therefore vos estis: and so farewell." It is merry in the hall, when beards wag all.

Hermes and the Art of Poetry

Having quoted Greek on these pages in characters that do not transfer to the blog and in distracting transliterations, I have decided this time to simply quote from the close if old-fashioned Loeb’s Library version by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. My references to line numbers are, of course, to the Greek. I would have preferred to use my own translation, but my version of the poem is as yet incomplete.




     Along with Homer and Hesiod, the so-called Homeric Hymns provide the earliest information about the literary theory of ancient Greece. These poems exemplify the role of poetry in providing access to the astonishingly efficient mythic system by which the Greeks understood the world. The Hymn to Hermes is the primary source for an aetiological myth of the origin of lyric poetry, a sort of back-story to the shining Olympian, Apollo who is commonly associated with the art. With the attribution of the lyre to Hermes comes a more dialectic complex picture of artistic signification, portrayed prior to the unadulterated Apollonian light, as a necessary duality of lie and truth.
     Most will recall the charming "Hymn to Hermes" an infant trickster story, something like Krishna the butter thief. The baby’s cheeky mendacity and his comically ingenious stratagems are undeniably entertaining, but in the hymn’s plot-line, they serve in the end simply to bring Hermes together with Apollo to allow the gift of the tortoise-shell lyre. Hermes had invented the instrument that very morning, but he gives it up to resolve strife he has himself created, a peace offering to the god who is to govern poetry for the next thousand years and more. [1]
     Hermes’ very first act is to seize the tortoise in his courtyard. With a lie, using his characteristic wile, he tells the animal it is dangerous outside (37), and a moment later, he kills it and fashions the lyre. His emphasis is wholly upon pleasure, for him it is a “comrade of the feast” (31), inspirer of joy (32). In a rush of invention, he conceives the instrument “as a swift thought darts through the heart of man when thronging cares haunt him, or as bright glances flash from the eye.” (43-45) He sang on it “sweet random snatches, even as youths bandy taunts at festivals,” (55-56) sliding into a celebration of his own birth and of the muses. The creative process is described as a delight in itself, the exercise of the forebrain damping pain and providing pleasure in itself, as well as enabling future art. After this mental work in done, the god’s attention turns to his belly. Motivated by a desire for meat (unsatisfied apparently with the prospect of nectar and ambrosia), his mind turns then to his larcenous plot, a design of “sheer trickery” such as “knavish folk pursue.” (66-67).
     Poetry appears then at first as a pure party pastime, whether it is casual improvisation or theogonies. It seems in this way on a par with other desires, such as a wish for a satisfying meal. Yet its unique characteristic is the unpredictable glancing energy of creative human thought which, through its potent symbolic manipulation, can design a new and useful object or compose a song.
     When Apollo first hears the lyre, his reaction is upwelling laughter. (420) Hermes sings again the story of the gods, first among them Mnemosyne “for the son of Maia was among her following,” (430) inspiring in Apollo a “longing” (eros) ”not to be allayed.” (434) He finds it in particular a “path” to remedy “desperate (or “irremediable”) “cares” (or “suffering”). (447) In his speech (436-463) Apollo praises the invention as a “marvel,” “noble,” “heavenly,” “wonderful, “sweet,” and “glorious,” while calling Hermes a “trickster” and “thievish.” He concludes by promising not to “deceive” Hermes, the habitual deceiver who does not shrink from bald-faced lies even before all-knowing Zeus.
     Instructing Apollo, Hermes advises him to give himself to “merriment” (or “triumphal display”[2]) The emphasis remains solidly on convivial dinners, “rich feast and lovely dance and glorious revel.” (480-481) According to Hermes, the lyre rewards the listener who is susceptible to “delight” (484) while bringing “the ignorant” only “vanity and foolishness.” (488) He proceeds to consider his theft repaid, though he asks to be caretaker for the herd, prophesying abundant offspring and assuming co-ownership. Apollo is so taken with the music he accepts with pleasure. (493-494)
     Through the hymn poetry, the lyric art, is consistently identified with pleasure, whether on the occasion of casual party verses or solemn hymns to the divine. Both offer necessary relief: the symbolic manipulations of art are essential to both passing the time with friends and reflecting on first principles and final things. The disquiet that awakes in the reader when the tortoise is tricked into death, by nature, one might say, at the outset can be salved only by verbal art. Redemptive song compensates for the distressing void of mortality, providing both “entertainment” and supernatural explanations in a pre-Horatian version of “teach and delight.”
     Little, however, in the character of Apollo matches the subversive, all-too-human character of Hermes. He is a con man because of his own selfish interests. He cancels out his own assertions by declaring his undependability. In this poem Hermes provides Apollo with a gift beyond the lyre: dissimulation.
     After the settlement between the Olympians, all seems harmonious, but Apollo’s nervousness about being again tricked leads him to elicit from Hermes a solemn vow not to steal from him. With this renewed settlement comes the acid test of the value of poetry: prophecy. Apollo says that only he can be confidant of Zeus with reference to the future, yet he prevaricates about the value of omens, claiming sometimes to tell the truth through signs and sometimes to deceive. This ambiguity is very broadly true, as he says also that he bedevils men as well as blessing them. He illustrates this very contradictory revelation – the truth that is untrue – by telling Hermes of the mysterious bee-like Thriae whose oracular reputation for speaking the truth (561) is tempered by the fact that they also lie (563). (We might all make the same claim for our prophecies.) Another analogue concludes the poem when Hermes is said to “profit” some and “cozen” others. (577-578)
     One would then have to qualify the marvelous image Nietzsche imagined, doubtless aware that he had heightened the contrast: “In an eccentric way one might say of Apollo what Schopenhauer says, in the first part of The World as Will and Representation [I:1, 3], of man caught in the veil of Maya: ‘Even as on an immense, raging sea, assailed by huge wave crests, a man sits in a little rowboat trusting his frail craft, so, amidst the furious torments of this world, the individual sits tranquilly, supported by the principium individuationis [principle of individuation] and relying on it.’ [The World as Will and Representation, I:4, 63] One might say that the unshakable confidence in that principium has received its most magnificent expression in Apollo, and that Apollo himself may be regarded as the marvelous divine image of the principium individuationis, whose looks and gestures radiate the full delight, wisdom, and beauty of ‘illusion.’” [3]
     The author of the "Hymn to Hermes" would have agreed with Nietzsche when he said, “Much will have been gained for aesthetics once we have succeeded in apprehending directly-rather than merely ascertaining-that art owes its continuous evolution to the Apollinian-Dionysian [sic] duality, even as the propagation of the species depends on the duality of the sexes, their constant conflicts and periodic acts of reconciliation.” He surely had in mind just such a conflict and reconciliation as that narrated in the  'Hymn to Hermes. '


1. Since writing this piece I have been told of an admirable treatment along similar lines in Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art.

2. Aglaia is also one of the Graces according to Hesiod.

3. Both quotations are from The Birth of Tragedy in Francis Golfing’s translation.