Written between 150 and 180 CE, this is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It is a bawdy picaresque which follows the adventures of a young nobleman called Lucius whose flirtation with magic results in him being transformed into a donkey who is then stolen by a gang of bandits. He then undergoes a series of adventures and is told a number of stories.
In many ways the novel is a collection of stories, of which the longest details the love affair of Cupid and Psyche, one of the few Hero's Journey type legends that have a young girl as the protagonist. Collections of stories are common in early fiction, such as Boccaccio's Decameron, The Thousand and one Nights, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Most modern novels structured in this form have a stronger overarching narrative, as does the Golden Ass. I'm thinking of books like:
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Love and other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward
The success or failure of such a book depends partly on the strength and coherence of the interconnections and partly, (mostly?) on the quality of writing.
Another category in which the Golden Ass might be considered is as a picaresque in which case it might be compared with
The Golden Ass is even more imaginative than Candide in getting its characters into impossible scrapes and then coming up with a marvellous escape. It is similar to Candide in the nice little asides which the author interpolates: "Forgive this outburst! I can hear my readers protesting: 'Hey, what's all this about? Are we going to let an ass lecture us in philosophy?'" (C 17) It certainly outdoes Candide in the Pythonesque fecundity of the author's imagination. It is incredibly colourful, utterly bonkers, and rather bawdy. A great read, brilliantly translated by the late, great Robert graves.
Some of my favourite moments:
- "I lay prostrate on the floor, naked, cold, and clammy with loathsome urine. 'A new-born child must feel like this', I said to myself. 'Yet how different his prospects are! I have my whole life behind me, not in front of me'." (C 1)
- "How daintily, how charmingly you stir that casserole: I love watching you wriggle your hips. And what a wonderful cook you are! The man whom you allow to poke his finger into your little casserole is the luckiest fellow alive. That sort of stew would tickle the most jaded palate." (C 2)
- "Cupid, that very wicked boy, with neither manners nor respect for the decencies." (C 7)
- "The first lamp was surely invented by some love who wished to prolong all night the passionate delights of his eye." (C 8)
- "The old sages had been right to speak of Fortune as blind and even eyeless, because of the way she rewards the unworthy or the positively wicked. She never shows the least sense in selecting her favourites: indeed, she even prefers men from whom, if she had any eyes in her head, she would feel to recoil in disgust." (C 10)
- "She was malicious, cruel, spiteful, lecherous, drunken, selfish, obstinate, as mean in her petty thefts as she was wasteful in her grand orgies, and an enemy of all that was honest and clean." (C 13)
- "You know the proverb: no crime discovered, no crime committed." (C 15)
- "Soon a golden sun arose to rout the dark shadows of night ... and the calm sky shone with its own deep blue light." (C 18)
Great fun. January 2021; 247 pages
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