Euphuism explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• The Role of Art and Literature in Shaping Experience

  The chapter explores how Apuleius's 'Golden Book' shapes Marius's ideals and how literary style and language are seen as tools for personal and cultural transformation.

• Aesthetic Education and the Cultivation of Sensation

  Marius's reflection on the story of Cupid and Psyche and his appreciation of beauty in language and ritual illustrate his aesthetic education and cultivation of refined sensation.

• The Transition from Paganism to Christianity

  The description of the Isis procession and the pagan mythological references highlight the pagan context, while Marius's ideal of love and hiddenness hints at themes that would later be central to Christian thought.

Characters to notice

• Marius

  Marius is deeply influenced by Apuleius's story of Cupid and Psyche, which shapes his ideal of love and beauty. He shares Flavian's literary ambitions and participates in the euphuistic revival of Latin.

• Flavian

  Flavian is the leader of the new literary school, designing a program to revive the Latin language through careful word choice and style. He composes a mystic hymn to the vernal principle of life.

• Apuleius

  Apuleius is the author of 'The Golden Book' (Metamorphoses), which inspires Marius and Flavian. His use of vernacular Latin and his literary style serve as a model for the euphuistic movement.

• Pliny

  Pliny is quoted as an advocate for the value of contemporary genius and the power of the Latin tongue, supporting the literary revival Flavian envisions.

• Cupid

  Cupid appears in the story of Cupid and Psyche, transformed in Marius's memory from a petulant boy to a more earnest figure, representing perfect imaginative love.

• Psyche

  Psyche is the central figure in the episode from Apuleius, embodying a tremulous hope and the hiddenness of perfect things, which Marius reflects upon.

• Dante

  Dante is referenced in comparison to the transformed Cupid, who becomes like the 'Lord, of terrible aspect' who stood at Dante's bedside.

• Praxiteles

  Praxiteles is mentioned as the sculptor of the Erôs, to which Marius compares the manly earnestness of his idealized Cupid.

Key passages

• “The hiddenness of perfect things: a shrinking mysticism, a sentiment of diffidence like that expressed in Psyche's so tremulous hope concerning the child to be born of the husband she had never yet seen⁠—'in the face of this little child, at the least, shall I apprehend thine'⁠— in hoc saltem parvulo cognoscam faciem tuam”

  Perfect things are often hidden, and there is a shy, mystical quality to them, as seen in Psyche's anxious hope that she might recognize her unseen husband in the face of their future child.

  Marius reflects on the theme of hidden beauty and the longing for recognition, drawn from the story of Cupid and Psyche.

• “The literary programme which Flavian had already designed for himself would be a work, then, partly conservative or reactionary, in its dealing with the instrument of the literary art; partly popular and revolutionary, asserting, so to term them, the rights of the proletariate of speech.”

  Flavian's literary plan was both conservative in its respect for tradition and revolutionary in its embrace of popular speech, championing the language of the common people.

  This describes Flavian's approach to reviving Latin by blending classical forms with vernacular expressions.

• “For words, after all, words manipulated with all his delicate force, were to be the apparatus of a war for himself.”

  Words, carefully chosen and wielded with skill, would be Flavian's weapons in his personal struggle for influence and recognition.

  Flavian sees literary style as a means of power and self-assertion.