The Golden Ass and bowdlerisation

Having learnt that I read a bowdlerised translation of The Golden Ass (William Adlington), I got hold of the Penguin translation by E. J. Kenney and checked out a few chapters and have now realised that Apuleius’s original novel is much more graphic, much more sexual and brutal than the version I read. 

If people think Shakespeare’s plays*—compared to classical plays—are lowbrow because they have silly puns and sexual innuendos and filthy jokes, The Golden Ass is much more vulgar. In fact, it may be the crudest, most vulgar of the classic literary works I’ve read. But I never would have known, because I read the 1924 edition—not only was The Golden Ass tamed down by William Adlington in 1566, it was further expurgated by the editor F. J. Harvey Darton. 

Let me give you an example, from the story of the lascivious and evil woman who desires her stepson: 

“For by and by she sent a messenger after her husband to tell him the great misfortune which happened after his departure. And when he came home the wicked woman declared that his son had poisoned his brother because he would not consent to his will, and told him divers other leasings, adding in the end that he threatened to kill her likewise because she discovered the fact.

Then the unhappy father was stricken with double dolour of the death of his two children, for on the one side he saw his younger son slain before his eyes, on the other side he seemed to see the elder condemned to die for his offence.” (Adlington and Darton) 

Versus: 

“She immediately sent a courier to find her husband and announce to him the ruin of his house; and when he returned, which he did at once, she put on a breathtakingly bold front and charged her stepson with the crime of poisoning her son. This was not totally untrue, in so far as the one boy had anticipated the death meant for the other; but she pretended that her stepson had made away with his younger brother because she had refused to yield to his criminal lust and resisted his attempt to rape her. Even these monstrous lies did not satisfy her: she added that he had also threatened her with his sword for denouncing his crime. The wretched father, reeling from the loss of two sons, was tossed to and fro on a stormy sea of suffering. His younger son he had to see buried before his eyes, and the elder must inevitably, it seemed, be condemned to death for incest and fratricide.” (Kenney) 

By censoring the rape accusation (why?), they’re cutting what is a clear reference to the Phaedra and Hippolytus myth. 

Lots of things are removed: a stepmother’s accusation that her stepson, whom she unrequitedly desired, attempted to rape her is cut; a husband’s punishment of his wife’s lover by raping him is scrubbed; the scene of the fake priests having a romp with a “robust young peasant, finely equipped in loin and groin” (Kenney’s translation) is expurgated, etc. I compared the 1639 text (on Gutenberg, presumably not much different from the first edition in 1566) and the 1924 text against Kenney’s 2004 text (revised from his own translation in 1998).  

With the double censorship, the entire bestiality episode is thrown out of the window, but all the passages about the master’s spectacle plan and the story of the woman condemned to be thrown to the beasts are removed. The bowdlerisation presents The Golden Ass as a very different book! Apuleius depicts all the hardships and suffering experienced by a donkey, which range from physical abuse (such as exploitation and starvation and beatings and torture) to sexual abuse—the 1924 edition gets rid of the sexual abuse. It also removes some brutal passages, but they are part of Apuleius’s depiction of the world, part of his vision of humanity. 

But don’t think that I only picked up Kenney’s translation to look for the smutty passages (all right, you caught me)—I also reread the final chapter and now see the conversion in a different light. Now I see why Robert Graves calls The Golden Ass a religious novel, as the entire story is about how “in the unsteadiness of [his] green youth [Lucius] lowered [himself] to servile pleasures and reaped a bitter reward for [his] ill-starred curiosity” (Kenney), about how Lucius grows spiritually—through suffering and through witnessing the depravity and cruelty of mankind—and finally turns to the goddess of Isis. The final chapter is in a different tone, even if Lucius hesitates at first. 

And yet, I agree with Kenney when he writes in the introduction: 

“That glory of revelation and rebirth tails off into a workaday account of successive initiations and the shifts to which Lucius has to resort to meet the necessary expenses.” 

And: 

“Will he fare any better as a devotee of Isis than he did as a devotee of witchcraft?”

That is also my question. 

“Is he as much of an ass as ever?” 

How effective is The Golden Ass as a religious novel? I’m rather curious about the contemporary reception. To modern readers, the main moral messages that resonate are probably about the treatment of animals and the conditions of workers and servants. The Golden Ass has survived since the 2nd century because it’s a delight, because it’s funny** and inventive and captivating. 

*: isn’t it funny that the word “bowdlerise” we now use—to remove or change words from a book/ play/ film that are considered vulgar or offensive—come from Thomas Bowdler, who was doing that with Shakespeare? 

**: I should add a few good words about William Adlington. Despite the expurgations, it’s a funny and charming translation. His phrasing is funnier than Kenney’s. 

The Golden Ass: “I had seen the experience of many things, and was become more wise” [updated]

1/ I generally read classic literature in modern translations (for obvious reasons), so one fascinating thing about reading William Adlington’s 1566 translation of The Golden Ass (when Shakespeare was 2 years old) is coming across many phrases that I thought were just the language of the King James Bible: “it comes to pass”, “play the harlot”, “yield/ give up the ghost”, etc. 

2/ As written in the previous blog post, at roughly mid-point, Apuleius interrupts the main story to tell the story of Cupid and Psyche, which is about 50 pages or so. 

I’m surely not the only one who read that story and thought Psyche’s biggest problem was that she’s overly curious and couldn’t obey orders—I understand wanting to find out the husband’s identity, but why on earth does she have to open Persephone’s box for Venus? 

That however is something she shares with Lucius, the narrator of the main plot: both are overly curious; both must endure many trials; both are transformed at the end. 

3/ Apuleius’s novel and Ovid’s narrative poem are both named Metamorphoses—the name Asinus aureus (The Golden Ass) came from Augustine of Hippo and Apuleius’s novel is known by that name to this day. 

I don’t read Latin and can’t tell who’s better on the sentence level, but Apuleius’s Metamorphoses is more like my thing for multiple reasons. 

Firstly, as Ovid moves from one myth to another—over 250 myths in the book—there is no sense of forward movement and sometimes it drags (probably doesn’t help that I read it in translation). This is not a problem with Apuleius: he meanders; he digresses; he once interrupts the story for about 50 pages or so; but there is one character in the centre of the book and the story moves forward, with a clear goal that Lucius must transform back to being a human. 

Secondly, it’s funnier and bawdier (though I’m going to have to reread it in a different translation, as I suspect our Elizabethan translator to have bowdlerised it a bit). 

Thirdly, Ovid retells Greek/ Roman mythology and depicts many types of transformations (generally gods putting on disguises, or human beings getting turned into things, bodies of water, trees, animals, the other sex, or gods) and there are physical metamorphoses in The Golden Ass (witches changing shape, hapless Lucius getting accidentally transformed into a donkey, some animal hides getting turned into men through enchantment, and so on), but more importantly, the novel depicts a spiritual metamorphosis. As a donkey, Lucius experiences the suffering of animals and also meets many kinds of people that he otherwise may not have met—he meets thieves and murderers and charlatans and adulterers and sadists, etc.—and changes as a person. 

(The quote in the headline comes from B.9, ch.39) 

As I have written before, every single Shakespeare play features some kind of disguise and transformation: it could be literal (women disguising as men, kings pretending to be commoners…) but it could also be figurative (Iago acting like an honest and concerned friend as he poisons Othello’s ear, Richard III putting on various masks, Edmund playing a role and deceiving his brother and his father…)—the latter interests me more, because I’m interested in human nature. And The Golden Ass also has both.   

4/ The Golden Ass has a rather strange and puzzling ending: is it a genuine religious conversion, or does Lucius, having escaped the servitude of a donkey, now enter another servitude as a priest for the goddess Isis? I do not know—it’s hard to tell about a literary work written in the 2nd century.

However, (I can’t help that) I am modern, so I’m going to note that: a) Lucius hesitates and doesn’t seem particularly religious (to me) in the final part of the book; b) we see lots of witches and enchantresses throughout the story but the gods seem absent for the large part; c) when Lucius accidentally turns into a donkey (instead of a bird as he wishes), Fotis already says roses are the antidote, and there’s no indication that he wouldn’t be able to transform back to his human shape by eating the roses, without any intervention from Isis. 

I’m going to have to think some more about it, but The Golden Ass is probably my favourite work so far that was originally written in Latin. 

Addendum on 19/8: Now that I’ve finished reading Apuleius’s novel, I’ve realised that it was bowdlerised. How irritating! Gonna have to find another translation. 

The Golden Ass: “I will tell thee a pleasant tale to put away all thy sorrow and to revive thy spirits”

1/ Officially titled Metamorphoses by Lucius Apuleius but now mostly known as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus), this novel is interesting to me for multiple reasons. Firstly, I keep hearing people call The Tale of Genji the first novel but that’s obviously not true—The Tale of Genji was written in the 11th century—The Golden Ass was from the 2nd century, and there were other ancient novels. But what are the differences between ancient novels and novels since Don Quixote? 

Secondly, it’s one of the books that inspired or influenced Shakespeare (most obviously in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). In fact, I’m reading the translation by William Adlington (1566), the first English translation and the one that Shakespeare (must have) read. 

 “You perhaps are of an obstinate mind and gross ears, mock and contemn those things which are reported for truth; but know you not that a thing which is accounted untrue by the wild opinion of men, which either is rarely seen, seldom heard, or passes the capacity of man’s reason, will, if it be more narrowly scanned, you shall not only find it evident and plain, but also very easy to be brought to pass.” (B.1, ch.1) 

The copy I’ve got from the library is a 1924 edition, edited (and helpfully modernised) by F. J. Harvey Darton. 

2/ There’s a sequence in The Golden Ass in which Lucius attacks and kills some thieves, who later turn out to be animal hides—“blown bladders” or “blown goat skins” in Adlington’s translation but apparently “wineskins” in some other translations—it must be an allusion to this scene when Cervantes depicts Don Quixote stabbing some wineskins, thinking they’re giants. It also helps me understand Don Quixote’s “logic”: the goatskins in The Golden Ass are transformed into men through a witch’s enchantment. 

The Golden Ass makes me think of Don Quixote often: it has witchcraft and enchantments and metamorphoses; it has digressions, stories-within-the-story; it is episodic, a picaresque novel. Did Cervantes have the novel of Apuleius in mind, or did The Golden Ass heavily influence the romances mocked and parodied by Don Quixote?

The central difference between The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, etc. and The Golden Ass—to go back to the question previously raised—is that The Tale of Genji and Don Quixote are realistic—depicting the real world—whereas The Golden Ass depicts a world in which a man sneaks into a witch’s room and tries to turn into a bird but ends up transforming into a donkey. That probably makes it close to the romances that were popular in the medieval period, but then I have never read romances and don’t know the differences between them and modern non-realistic novels (allegory novels, fantasy novels, monster smut, etc). As far as I know, the definition of the novel says nothing about realism (“an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting” in Britannica; “an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events” in Merriam-Webster…): there’s no reason to reject the novel label for The Golden Ass. 

However, it’s obvious that Don Quixote marked something different, hence the “first modern novel” (as well as “first postmodern novel”). It’s fascinating to read Don Quixote, then the novels influenced by it (Joseph Andrews, The Female Quixote…), and now the novel that influenced it (at least indirectly). 

3/ I’m fascinated by literary development and influence. Novels all trace back to The Golden Ass, the only ancient Roman novel to survive in its entirety. Picaresque novels in the West (Don Quixote, Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones…) all trace back to The Golden Ass. Literary works depicting society through the perspective of an animal (“Kholstomer”, The Heart of a Dog, I am a Cat…) all trace back to The Golden Ass. 

I’m aware of two films that tell the story through the eyes of a donkey—Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) and EO (2022)—and now will have to watch them (even though it’s probably unlikely that they allude to Apuleius).   

It’s also interesting that Apuleius’s not Italian: he was born in the Roman province of Numidia, which is now Algeria; he’s North African. However, he studied in Athens and travelled widely, and the book is full of references to Greek/ Roman mythology. There’s even a Socrates, who becomes a witch’s sex slave. 

4/ As a fan of War and Peace and Moby-Dick, I am used to digressions and this is not a complaint, but it’s rather curious that at roughly midpoint, The Golden Ass has a rather long interruption: the story of Cupid and Psyche—by my calculation—takes up about 15% of the novel! I also didn’t know that the myth of Cupid and Psyche was from here, whether it originated here or Apuleius was retelling the myth and it’s the earliest extant version.  

The story is about Psyche, who is so beautiful that people worship her and neglect Venus. That enrages Venus, as one would expect, so she goes to her son Cupid and wants her revenge: 

““I pray thee” (quoth she), “my dear child, by motherly bond of love, by the sweet wounds of thy piercing darts, by the pleasant heat of thy fire, revenge the injury which is done to thy mother, by the false and disobedient beauty of a mortal maiden, and I pray thee without delay, that she may fall in love with the most miserable creature living, the most poor, the most crooked, and the most vile, that there may be none found in all the world of like wretchedness.”” (B.4, ch.12) 

Cupid doesn’t obey her, but let’s leave that for now—what does that make you think of? Oberon taking petty revenge on Titania by using love potion on her: 

“OBERON […] The next thing then she waking looks upon, 

Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, 

On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,

She shall pursue it with the soul of love…” 

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2 scene 1) 

Titania falls in love with Bottom, who has now got an ass’s head. In other words, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare gets inspiration not only from the main plot of The Golden Ass, but also from the framed narrative: there are obvious allusions (Oberon mentioning “young Cupid’s fiery shaft” and “the bolt of Cupid) and, more importantly, the entire play is about love, the unpredictability and almost randomness of love, jealousy, etc. 

5/ A few fairytales seem to trace back to the Cupid and Psyche story in The Golden Ass, especially “Beauty and the Beast” and “Cinderella”. I see the similarities. 

The quote in the headline comes from the old woman who’s part of the gang of thieves, as she begins telling the story of Cupid and Psyche to Lucius (now a donkey) and a captive maiden.