Before the second half of the 19th century, anyone referring to decadence probably had the decline of the Roman Empire in mind. How did the term—capturing the lurid, lascivious excesses and moral turpitude of the ruling class of that empire—come to define a movement in literature (and, to a lesser extent, art)? Decadence looked to the past, but it also kept a keen eye on the present. What it discerned, diagnosed, and perhaps even celebrated, were manifold ills at the end of a century of progress.

1. Joris-Karl Huysmans, À rebours (1884)

The English critic Arthur Symons once referred to À rebours as a “breviary,” or prayer book, of decadence. Even amid recent scholarly reassessment of the parameters of the term “decadent,” we tend still to worship at the altar of Huysmans’s 1884 novel.

Set against the slightly earlier aesthetic movement, À rebours does what its title (usually translated as Against Nature, but generally suggesting inversion, turning something inside-out or backward) suggests: it takes aestheticism and turns it on its head. Its hero, Des Esseintes—aristocratic, privileged, last of his line—is obsessively fascinated by art, not for art’s sake, but entirely for his own pleasure.

À rebours posed a bold challenge to 19th-century literary conventions, eschewing the plot-driven three-volume novel for a series of catalogs. Des Esseintes, ill and disgusted by the world around him, has withdrawn entirely from society and devoted himself to musing on art, literature, music, philosophy, perfume, flowers, liqueurs, and gemstones. His tastes tend toward the extravagant, profane, and cruel: Gustave Moreau‘s paintings of Salome, Arthur Schopenhauer‘s philosophy, and a jewel-encrusted tortoise.

Huysmans offers no moralizing in the midst of enumerating these curious pleasures; rather, his protagonist is fascinated by his discoveries, even when they touch on unpleasant themes or engender pain. This set the tone for decadent literature in all its proto-Freudian fascination: pleasure and pain were to be inseparable, the twin objects of many a protagonist’s pursuit.

2. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Chapter eleven of Oscar Wilde‘s classic tale, about a young man’s Faustian pact to retain his youth while his portrait ages and takes on the burden of his secret life of sin, recounts Dorian Gray’s perilous obsession with a novel. It’s a French novel (perilous enough in itself, for many contemporary English readers). It exerts such a strong influence that Dorian follows its advice to the letter and indulges in a series of rarefied hobbies: art, music, philosophy, perfume, flowers, gemstones. Wilde stops short of naming the novel, but this catalog-like chapter is undoubtedly a tribute to Huysmans’s À rebours.

Decadent heroes are known for their synesthetic excesses—pursuing indulgence in sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch with often studious zeal. This is usually accompanied by withdrawal from social relations, and thereby a severing of ethical ties. The parable-like aspects of Wilde’s story, with its device of the decaying portrait, make the latent potential moralizing of decadent works explicit.

As Wilde argued in defending the novel, “all excess […] brings its punishment.” Dorian immerses himself excessively in art, commits murder, and—uncharacteristically for a decadent work—receives his comeuppance when, in stabbing his portrait, he kills himself. We might take Dorian Gray as a relatively straightforward cautionary tale, then: absorption in art purely for pleasure leads to a solipsistic embrace of hedonism and immoral actions which cannot go unpunished.

However, Wilde also argued—within the novel itself and subsequently, when defending it—that all art is “sterile,” and “there is no such thing” as being “poisoned by a book,” as Dorian suggests he has been. According to this argument, Dorian Gray itself has no moral, positive or negative, and this is its strongest claim to decadence. Decadent writers aimed neither to celebrate nor criticize the subjects they put on display, but to make art that was (paradoxically, since Dorian Gray has had such a notoriously rich afterlife) a dead end.

3. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (1857)

Most decadent works can trace their origins to one incendiary poetry collection: Les Fleurs du Mal, published by Charles Baudelaire in 1857 and promptly prosecuted for obscenity.

Were it solely focused on eroticizing corpses, castigating the reader for hypocrisy, and enumerating forms of monstrosity, ancient and modern, we might think of Les Fleurs du Mal as primarily an example of the grotesque.

Yet Baudelaire’s collection is an early example of decadence because of the poet’s fascination with these things—he revels in turning his attention to subjects from which others might rather turn away. He was an early enthusiast of synesthesia, writing poems about the heights of pleasure (and, consequently, the possibility of pain) which might be attained by uniting all of the senses in one aesthetic experience.

Like all the true decadents after him, Baudelaire proposed no corrective to the evils he portrayed. They are inevitable, even natural: just like the flowers in his title, Baudelaire proposes, the good and beautiful in human nature are liable to wither and decay.

4. Ernest Dowson, Verses (1896)

Ernest Dowson cut a ubiquitous figure in the literary circles of fin-de-siècle London before dying of alcohol abuse at the turn of the 20th century in 1900, leaving behind a handful of short stories and prose pieces but, most influentially, a body of tragic decadent poetry.

Like many British decadents, Dowson was a convert to Roman Catholicism, drawn to its rituals and its combination of ostentation and profundity; also like many British decadents, he was a Francophile, translating novels including Honoré de Balzac’s A Passion in the Desert and Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons.

His poems (with titles in English, French, and Latin) speak of fading love, dashed hopes, life’s dwindling twilight, futility, silence, and solitude. Best remembered is the poem Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae, whose speaker languishes in remembrance of his infidelity, all too aware that, in classic decadent fashion, he is trying to revive a love which is dying. His repetition of “I was desolate and sick of an old passion” grows more anguished with each stanza, while the description of his memories as “gone with the wind” gave Margaret Mitchell the title of her novel in 1936.

5. Aubrey Beardsley, Under the Hill/The Story of Venus and Tannhauser (1904-07)

Love and lust in decadent literature exist solely in extremes: when not lamenting their loss or lack, decadent writers at least look at these subjects slightly askew. Many were censured, like Baudelaire earlier in the century, for writing about sexual practices which their societies condemned or considered indecent.

Late-19th-century commentators pointed to perversion (which encompassed homosexuality, cross-dressing, and what they considered excessive sexual desire in women) as a root cause of social decay, and so decadent authors flocked to depict it.

Aubrey Beardsley went one step further, literally depicting darkly and disturbingly erotic scenes in the ornate black-and-white illustrations for which he is best known. As a writer, he was similarly ornate. In Under the Hill (unfinished at his death in 1898, and published in its original manuscript form nine years later as The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser), his prose is every bit as fanciful and capricious as his drawings.

It tells the story of Tannhäuser, a mortal who falls in love with the goddess Venus—familiar to many in the late 19th century through the opera by Richard Wagner, who was something of a godfather to the decadents. Yet while Wagner had made the Venusberg (the goddess’s  underground lair) into the magical stuff of opera, in Beardsley’s version it is more of a bordello, making Under the Hill a typically decadent riff on high art which reveals (and revels in) its less lofty parts.

6. Rachilde, Monsieur Vénus (1884)

Another decadent work, which took up and twisted the classical goddess of love, was the second novel of a young woman, allegedly not yet twenty years old when she wrote it, who wrote under the name Rachilde.

Monsieur Vénus brought Rachilde the scandal she craved. Authorities in Belgium, where it was originally published, were not impressed with the novel’s dedication “to physical beauty” but more preoccupied with its depiction of a sexually voracious young woman.

The novel concatenated all of the age’s sexual taboos. Raoule, the heroine, not only dominates and flagellates her lower-class lover, Jacques Silvert, but transforms him into her so-called wife, forcing him to become more and more feminine and renounce any shred of power or self-assertion.

What’s more, when Silvert is killed in a duel, Raoule delves into a further taboo, necrophilia, by making, then making love to, an effigy of his corpse. In the newly coined language of the period, Raoule appears to be a nymphomaniac: driven solely, compulsively, by pleasure.

Monsieur Vénus was so notorious that it informed later depictions of transgressive sex and gender identity. In the original manuscript of Dorian Gray, Wilde did name the novel that so influenced his protagonist: the imaginary tome was titled Le Secret de Raoul.

7. Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden (1899)

Late in Dorian Gray, one character sighs “fin de siècle,” and another responds “fin du globe”—not end of the century, but end of the world. This encapsulates the literary mood on both sides of the Channel around 1890: a profound ennui at civilization, which seemed only to have led to death, decay, disease, and depravity. As 1900 approached, many looked back and wondered what the 19th century had achieved.

Octave Mirbeau was already famous in France for novels that starkly portrayed abuse and trauma by the time he published The Torture Garden in 1899. This was at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, when a wrongful and antisemitic plot to convict an officer of treason exposed deep divisions in the French state and the fragile standing of nationalist and socialist movements.

The Torture Garden sends up authority, institutions, and the notion of cooperation in society. It tells of a superfluous political aide who is sent on a mission to China and finds himself in a beautiful garden, witnessing horrific tortures (like Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, inverting the common representation of flowers as regenerative and healthy).

Also typically for a decadent work, it combines anti-authoritarianism with a depiction of women’s sexual voracity and sadism. The narrator’s female companion takes orgasmic pleasure in watching the flagellation and other tortures taking place in the eponymous garden. Consistent with contemporary medicine and philosophy, which demonized sexual desire in women as hysteria, Mirbeau elevates women to an integral—and highly dangerous—position by virtue of their sexuality:

“Woman possesses the cosmic force of an element, an invincible force of destruction, like nature’s. She is, in herself alone, all nature! Being the matrix of life, she is by that very fact the matrix of death—since it is from death that life is perpetually reborn, and since to annihilate death would be to kill life at its only fertile source.” (The Torture Garden, Introduction)

8. Gabriele d’Annunzio, Il trionfo della morte (1894)

Decadence may have originated in France, but its stylistic innovations, its willingness to shock with its subject matter, and its apolitical apathy found disciples across the world. In Italy, its best-known practitioner was the novelist Gabriele d’Annunzio (who would become even more notorious in the first few decades of the 20th century for his involvement in proto-fascist politics as an early rival of Benito Mussolini).

Revealing the influence of Wagner on decadent literature, Il trionfo della morte features a pair of lovers who, like Tristan and Isolde, are inexorably borne toward death. Once again, its protagonist is an aesthete who has become bored and disillusioned by aesthetic experience. Visiting a beautiful mountainous village and looking at its sculptures only makes him reflect on death and depravity. He and his lover wander hopelessly during a broiling summer, every encounter pushing them further into themselves and their paranoia toward one another.

D’Annunzio’s cloying, obsessive prose makes the ending seem inevitable. With nothing to contribute to a world which disgusts them, what more is there for these lovers to do but plunge off a cliff together, in that exhilarating, tragic combination of love and death which Wagnerians called Liebestod?

9. George Egerton, Keynotes (1893)

Amid the more scandalous stylings of decadent works, it’s easy to overlook an important definition of the term, as signaling the decline of one epoch before a new one arises. Decadence in literature was transitional, with dominant forms and genres of the 19th century (realism, naturalism, the three-volume novel) giving way in this period to those of the 20th century (modernism, fragmented narratives, stream of consciousness narration).

Keynotes was the debut short-story collection by George Egerton, pseudonym of the Anglo-Australian writer Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright. It was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, and one of its publishers was John Lane, publisher of Wilde and founder of The Yellow Book, English literature’s foremost journal for decadent writing.

Keynotes was such a roaring success that Lane started the Keynotes series, 33 novels or short-story collections which included other decadent classics such as The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen and Prince Zaleski by M.P. Shiel.

Egerton’s stories were decadent in style, hinting at synesthesia by incorporating musical notation as motifs (their “keynotes”) and delving into the consciousness of her protagonists, frequently women facing moments of moral ambiguity.

Egerton’s women are sexually liberated, railing against the restrictions of 19th-century marriage, and emboldened by the work of writers like Henrik Ibsen and Friedrich Nietzsche to imagine better lives for themselves. It’s important to remember Egerton among the many male decadents (and some female, such as Rachilde) who generally make women’s licentiousness a point of perverse fascination, often simply confirming the contemporary censure around hysteria and erotomania. In contrast, Egerton used decadent style and subjects to advocate for women’s freedom and fulfillment.

10. Vernon Lee, Hauntings (1890)

Vernon Lee (born Violet Paget) had been skeptical of the aesthetic movement in English culture in the 1870s and 1880s, writing a novel that lampooned what she saw as the perfunctory attitude of aesthetes who merely collected artistic objects and experiences like a checklist exercise. Lee was a scholar of aesthetics and Renaissance art who lived at some remove from the literary vagaries of Aestheticism and then Decadence, as an expatriate in Florence, Italy.

As such, she was also wary of the term “decadent,” and her writing engages critically with it, even when it appears to fulfill our expectations of decadence. The four stories that make up Hauntings each scrutinize their protagonists’ interactions with an art object, whether painting, sculpture, or music. In doing so, they question whether the decadent stance of paradoxically enchanted disengagement is healthy, useful, necessary, or even possible.

Lee’s protagonists all become obsessed with art in a typically decadent manner. The composer protagonist of the story A Wicked Voice feels he is being pursued by an operatic air from the 18th century, which so consumes him that he compulsively transforms the music he is composing from Wagnerian excess into this outdated recitativo. What is more decadent and dangerous, then: the music he composes or the music he listens to?

Each of Lee’s stories leaves us with questions like this about decadent works’ relationship to, and responsibility toward, their audience. In portraying decadent themes and writing decadent works that are alluring and seductive, do writers necessarily glamorize perversity and disease? Or are these works, as Wilde argued, sterile? How much is left to the reader? These questions make Lee’s stories into compelling meta-meditations on the power of art, and suggest the enduring fascination of decadence for readers today.

Ernest Hemingway was both an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross Ambulance Service in Italy during World War I and a foreign correspondent who became captivated by bullfighting. He had a naturally adventurous spirit and was well-traveled. His father taught him to hunt and fish from an early age, which later developed into a love for game hunting. Despite marrying four different women in his life, perhaps his greatest love was Cuba, where he lived longer than anywhere else. Hemingway’s memorable experiences found their way into his works.

Ernest Hemingway and the Iceberg Theory

The Iceberg Theory, or the Theory of Omission, is a writing technique coined by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway believed that by omitting seven-eighths of a story, or by leaving it underwater, it would, in turn, strengthen the story by allowing readers to infer hidden meanings in the text. Hemingway developed this style of minimalism during his time as a reporter for The Kansas City Star, where he worked after high school, and as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star after he moved to Paris in 1921.

Since Hemingway believed authentic emotion was universally recognizable, a writer should therefore know enough about what they are writing about and be able to omit details. This will, in turn, reveal more about the story and its characters in the mind of the reader. For Hemingway, this could only be achieved if a writer selected the right details from their own lived experiences.

Hemingway in World War I and “A Farewell to Arms”

In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, an eager seventeen-year-old Ernest Hemingway was denied the opportunity to enlist due to poor eyesight. Determined to reach the front lines regardless, he volunteered with the American Red Cross Motor Corps and was sent to Italy as an ambulance driver, arriving in Milan in May 1918.

Hemingway’s daily duties involved delivering items like coffee, chocolate, cigarettes, and postcards to soldiers in the trenches. On July 8, 1918, while he was carrying out his duties near the Piave River, an Austrian mortar shell landed beside him. Despite sustaining shrapnel wounds to his legs and suffering a concussion, he still picked up a wounded Italian soldier and carried him out of the dugout. For his actions, he was awarded the Italian War Merit Cross and the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor.

Hemingway spent much of the remainder of the war recovering in the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan. He was cared for by Agnes von Kurowsky, an American Red Cross Nurse, with whom he had a brief romance. Kurowsky later served as the inspiration for Catherine Barkley in his 1929 novel, A Farewell to Arms, with Hemingway himself taking on the role of Frederic Henry. The novel draws many parallels between his own experiences during World War I, including being wounded by mortar fire and developing a relationship with the nurse who cared for him.

In reality, Kurowsky was transferred to a hospital in Florence. While they continued exchanging letters and discussing marriage, Kurowsky ultimately broke off the relationship, leaving Hemingway devastated after his return to the United States. In the book, Catherine gets pregnant, gives birth to a stillborn child, and dies during childbirth, immortalizing Hemingway’s pain from his split with Kurowksy.

The Festival of San Fermín and “The Sun Also Rises”

The Fiesta de San Fermín is an annual festival held in Pamplona, Spain, that honors the city’s first bishop and patron saint, Saint Fermín. The festival begins at noon on July 6 and ends at midnight on July 14. A key highlight of the festival is the daily running of the bulls, an aspect that Hemingway was fascinated by upon his first attendance of the festival in 1923. Hemingway attended the festival with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, returning the following year in 1924, and again in 1925. Shortly after the festival ended in 1925, Hemingway began working on what would become his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, completing it in only eight weeks.

The core group who attended the festival in 1925 were Hemingway, Lady Duff Twysden, Harold Loeb, and Pat Guthrie. They were fictionalized in the novel as Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, and Mike Campbell, respectively. Much like in the novel, tension arose in real life, with Lady Duff Twysden at the center of it. Although she was traveling with Pat Guthrie, she had begun an affair with Harold Loeb. The heavy drinking and tension in the book were real-life occurrences. Loeb became possessive of Twysden, which isolated him from the rest of the group. Altercations broke out between Loeb, Hemingway, and Guthrie.

Although Hemingway sustained injuries from World War I, they did not leave him unable to have sex like Jake Barnes in the novel. Jake’s impotence reflects the Lost Generation’s psychological wounds from World War I. Men who returned from war struggled to reclaim traditional ideas of masculinity, heroism, and purpose. Instead, they were left without meaning in a world transformed by violence and disillusionment.

This symbolism is further emphasized through the Spanish matador, Cayetano Ordóñez, who, in the novel, is known as Pedro Romero. Unlike the moral decay of the foreign visitors, Romero represents discipline, courage, and a clear sense of identity, untouched by the confusion that defined the postwar Lost Generation.

Kilimanjaro’s Frozen Leopard and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

The opening of Hemingway’s 1936 short story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, references a frozen leopard on Mount Kilimanjaro’s western summit. In 1926, a Lutheran pastor named Richard Reusch discovered a mummified frozen leopard with its paws curled up in the snow along the crater rim of Kibo Peak, Kilimanjaro’s highest volcanic cone. The remains of a goat were found a few hundred feet away from the leopard. Reusch speculated that the leopard pursued a goat up Kilimanjaro before succumbing to environmental conditions. Reusch returned the following year and removed one of the leopard’s ears to keep as a memento. Upon Reusch’s later return, however, the leopard was nowhere to be found with no explanation to follow. Despite its unexplained disappearance, it has been epitomized in Hemingway’s story.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro follows Harry, a writer dying of gangrene, who is stranded on safari in Africa with his wife Helen. Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, went on a ten-week-long safari to Kenya in December of 1933. They departed from Marseille and sailed for two weeks before arriving in Mombasa. From there, they visited Nairobi and Machakos in Kenya, then moved on to the Serengeti and the Lake Manyara region in what was then known as the Tanganyika Territory, now Tanzania.

In January 1934, Hemingway fell seriously ill due to amoebic dysentery, which caused a prolapsed intestine. Unlike Harry in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway was evacuated by plane to Nairobi for medical treatment. By mid-January, Hemingway had recovered enough to return to Tanganyika Territory to commence hunting. This ten-week-long trip to Africa provided Hemingway with enough material to write his second work of nonfiction, Green Hills of Africa, as well as two of his most famous short stories, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.

Game Hunting and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”

Game hunting in Africa during the 1930s was a luxurious and elite pastime catered to wealthy Westerners. These hunting safaris were usually orchestrated by professional “white hunters” of European descent. Typically, these hunters made local arrangements, gathered and packed supplies, and hired workers of African descent to take on the roles of porters, tent attendants, armed guards, and horse trainers.

Former United States President Theodore Roosevelt helped popularize African big game hunting after embarking on a widely publicized safari in 1909. This expedition would later influence Hemingway to travel to Africa himself for the same purpose.

Philip Percival was a famous English-born white hunter who worked as an assistant on Roosevelt’s 1909 safari. As he got older and more experienced, he went on to guide Hemingway during his first safari. Percival and Hemingway developed a strong friendship. Percival also accompanied Hemingway on his second safari in 1953.

Hemingway based the character of Robert Wilson after Percival in his short story, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. The story follows wealthy American Francis Macomber and his wife, Margot, on safari in Africa, under Robert Wilson’s guidance. The story culminates with Margot shooting at a charging buffalo, but she instead shoots and kills Francis. Whether this was intentional or not remains a mystery.

During their time in Africa, Percival recounted a scandalous 1909 safari incident involving the white hunter J.H. Patterson. While guiding British soldier Audley Blyth and his wife, Ethel, Blyth died from a gunshot wound under mysterious circumstances. Though it was never determined whether his death was suicide or murder, rumors quickly spread that Patterson and Ethel were having an affair. No charges were ever brought against Patterson, but this event permanently damaged his reputation in Africa.

Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban Experience and “The Old Man and the Sea”

Ernest Hemingway first visited Cuba in 1928, on a layover to Spain. He visited the island throughout the years, including 1932, when he brought two friends with him so they could fish for Marlin on the Gulf Coast. Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, married and purchased Finca Vigia, or “Lookout Farm,” on the outskirts of Havana.

Hemingway fell in love with Cuba, calling it home for the last third of his life. He spent over twenty years in Cuba, which was longer than he had lived anywhere else in the world. He integrated himself into Cuban life, drinking mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio, daiquiris at El Floridita, and forming relationships with Cuban fishermen in the village of Cojímar.

During the 1930s, a Cuban fisherman by the name of Carlos Gutiérrez told a story about an old man and a giant marlin to Hemingway. This would later be the basis for Hemingway’s 1952 novella The Old Man and the Sea.

While living in Cuba, Hemingway kept his fishing boat, the Pilar, docked in Cojímar, where he and Gutiérrez would venture out into the Gulf Stream in search of Marlin. The novella’s depiction of deep-sea fishing was rooted in Hemingway’s firsthand experience in Cuba and Bimini. When fishermen hauled harpooned marlin onto the boat, they sometimes recovered only the head, tail, and backbone on account of being “apple-cored” by sharks. Hemingway’s solution for dealing with sharks feasting on his catches was to shoot at the sharks. On one instance, however, he shot himself in both of his calves.

Today, Oscar Wilde’s tomb is the main attraction at Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery, drawing crowds who, since they are no longer allowed to kiss the stone, take selfies in front of it instead as they listen to tour guides recounting Wilde’s witticisms. The discreet glass screen around the sculpture, a marble sphinx, which is one of the cemetery’s more bizarre monuments, bespeaks its checkered history. We may think of tombs as unchanging, a symbol for the silence and stillness of the grave—yet Wilde’s tomb has been anything but silent.

The Last Days of Oscar Wilde

When Oscar Wilde died in Paris on November 30, 1900, aged 46, he was one of the most notorious figures in Europe. Five years earlier, in London, he had endured three highly public trials for “gross indecency” that had transformed him from a fêted playwright into a pariah.

Resisting his friends’ advice following his arrest to flee and find refuge in Paris, Wilde had taken to the stand in the Old Bailey and defended what his prosecutors called (taking a phrase from a poem by Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas) “the love that dare not speak its name.” Sentenced to two years’ hard labor, Wilde was physically and artistically broken on his release in 1897. He spent the remainder of his life in exile on the Continent, making his way at last to the French capital, a haven where men like Wilde were not ostracized for their proclivities.

Although his supporters hoped Wilde might be moved by this kindlier, more artistic atmosphere into returning to writing—in prison, he had outlined some vague plans for future writings on aesthetics and on the life of Jesus Christ, as well as writing an epistle to Douglas now known under the title De Profundis—he found that he had “lost the joy of writing.”

He fell ill with meningitis in late 1900 and, confined to his hotel room in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, is supposed to have uttered the last of his infamous quips: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.” His dutiful friend, former lover, and literary executor Robbie Ross was present when Wilde died, along with a Catholic priest who administered the last sacraments. The great outsider who, for a brief, brilliant spell, was the cream of British society was buried outside the walls of Paris in the Cimetière de Bagneux.

There, his remains lay until 1909, when Wilde’s supporters began to make plans to have them reinterred beneath a singular piece of sculpture.

Finding a Sculptor for the Tomb

For the sculpture adorning Wilde’s final resting place in Père Lachaise, Ross chose Jacob Epstein, who would go on to produce war memorials at Coventry Cathedral and the Trade Union Congress and the bust of William Blake in Westminster Abbey.

When he got the commission from Ross, though, Epstein was in his late twenties, making a name for himself in London for revolutionizing sculpture through his avant-garde vision and apparent disregard for classical beauty. Like his peer, Eric Gill, Epstein did not shy away from representing nude bodies, often contorted in uncomfortable-looking ways. By the time Ross announced him as the sculptor of Wilde’s tomb, Epstein had already courted controversy with a series of sculptures designed to adorn the facade of the British Medical Association building on the Strand in London.

It was perhaps Epstein’s willingness to create figures, including a pregnant woman and (more importantly) male nudes, and to weather the storm that this brought upon him that made Ross select the sculptor to design and build the monument to Wilde. Like the departed playwright, the sculptor was devoted to innovating new forms in his chosen art and unafraid to face the consequences these innovations might incur.

For what was only his second commission as a sculptor, Epstein began a design based on a subject that would have pleased many of Wilde’s remaining supporters: Narcissus, a character from Greek legend who falls in love with his own reflections, and about whom Wilde had written what he called a “poem in prose.” As a handsome young man entranced by male beauty (even if it is his own), Narcissus was an iconic figure for many men who loved men in the late 19th century, especially those who, like Wilde, looked upon ancient Greece as an ideal civilization which not only tolerated, but celebrated, relationships between men.

Making the Sphinx

However, Epstein soon abandoned the Narcissus design, turning away from ancient Greece to favor a design influenced by ancient Egypt and Assyria. Epstein and his fellow sculptor Gill were interested in the art and sculpture of ancient Egypt as they explored a primitivist approach to their work (contemporaries such as Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani were similarly beginning to take an interest in so-called primitive art and sculpture).

Egypt was also, though, a particularly apt choice to honor Wilde, who was often seen wearing a large, Egyptian-style scarab ring and was fascinated by what he saw as a more exotic, permissive way of life in Northern Africa at this time, having traveled to Algiers with Douglas in 1895.

Epstein’s design for the winged figure on the tomb, which seems to lean forward like a carving of a woman on a ship’s prow, also references a poem by Wilde, written over several years and finally published in 1894, called The Sphinx. In the poem, Wilde revises the tradition of the Sphinx demanding a riddle from any passing travelers. Instead, Wilde’s speaker asks the Sphinx a series of questions, finding her silence inscrutable and frustrating. Making lurid conjectures about the Sphinx’s past, in “foul dreams of sensual life,” Wilde’s speaker muses on the Sphinx’s strange, composite body.

Although Epstein’s sketch for the monument is somewhat ambiguous on this score, the sculptor conceived of the Sphinx’s body as being made up not only of multiple species but also of male and female parts. Despite its feminine facial features and the curve of its breasts, and despite the addressee in Wilde’s poem being identified—traditionally for a Sphinx—as female, Epstein also sculpted a penis and testicles for his Sphinx.

These hermaphroditic aspects would attract attention to Wilde’s tomb before it was even installed in Père Lachaise. It was perhaps inevitable, with a bold young sculptor who had already caused outcry creating a monument to a man who had died in such disgrace that, for decades, many in England did not dare even to utter his name.

The Tomb Is Unveiled—And Soon Re-veiled

From 1909 to 1912, Epstein worked on the marble sculpture for Oscar Wilde’s tomb. Having settled on the Sphinx concept, he retained the Assyrian influences. At the same time, he tinkered with various details such as a smaller winged figure—an angel or trumpeting messenger—behind the ear of the main figure, and personifications of Fame, Intellectual Pride, and Luxury around its head.

Before transporting it to Paris, Epstein exhibited the sculpture in his London studio, and the press praised it as a great work of art. French customs officials did not agree. Refusing to recognize that Epstein’s sculpture was a piece of art and therefore worthy of a reduced import fee, they classed the Sphinx as merely a block of marble and calculated the import duty accordingly. Robbie Ross, Wilde’s executor, was forced to pay £120 just for the sculpture to enter France.

There were further troubles ahead once the sculpture arrived in Père Lachaise. Deeming the Sphinx offensive to look at because of its male appendage, Parisian authorities requested that Epstein modify the sculpture: remove the penis and testicles or cover them up somehow. In the meantime, they placed a tarpaulin over the entire monument.

A game of back-and-forth between artists and authorities followed, with Epstein removing the tarpaulin, and the officials at Père Lachaise replacing it. On occasion, Epstein was accompanied in these undercover rescue missions by Welsh artist Nina Hamnett, who was a mutual friend of Modigliani and fellow sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

Soon, the tomb was placed under constant surveillance, and Epstein resorted to bribing the officer to look away so that he might slip into the cemetery and restore his sculpture to its former glory. Not only was it being routinely covered up, but plaster had been applied to the Sphinx’s nether regions to reduce the apparent size of its testicles, which the authorities considered too large. Epstein was aghast at the modification made to his work of art—which customs officials had failed to even acknowledge as art—against his will.

The case attracted the attention of various Bohemian figures from the worlds of art, literature, and even occultism inhabiting Paris at the time.

The Tomb Is Unveiled Again—Enter Aleister Crowley

One Bohemian denizen of Paris who felt strongly about the censorship of Epstein’s sculpture was Aleister Crowley, founder of the occult league the Order of the Golden Dawn. In 1913, Crowley placed a notice in Parisian newspapers announcing his intention, “in the name of the liberty of art,” (Churton, 2022, p. 240) to rid the monument of its tarpaulin once and for all.

Calling on any sympathizers to join him in protesting “against the prudish and pornophile tyranny of the bourgeois,” (Churton, 2022, p. 241) he devised an elaborate plan to stay late at Père Lachaise the evening prior to the protest, hook up the tarpaulin with fine wires, and station an accomplice in a nearby tree, who would, while Crowley made his triumphant speech the following day, pull the tarpaulin away and unveil the sculpture in all its glory. Amazingly, the arrest that Crowley anticipated—and must have hoped for—did not take place. A crowd of supporters turned up, but the cemetery officials allowed the ceremony to go ahead.

Worst of all for Crowley, Epstein was not terribly impressed with his display of heroic anti-censorship action. A few days later, the sculptor wrote to the London Times to make it publicly known that Crowley had acted without his approval. Although he was sure Crowley and his supporters must have had a “jolly occasion” in liberating the Sphinx, Epstein himself now felt that the sculpture ought to have remained covered until the authorities agreed to have the additional plaster covering the Sphinx’s testicles removed.

The Tomb Is Altered—And Crowley Returns

What had been meant as an unerring tribute to the genius of Oscar Wilde was instead giving rise to constant squabbling and subterfuge, and by 1914, Robbie Ross recognized that the situation was untenable. Again without consulting Epstein, Ross arranged for another artist to create a bronze plaque shaped like a butterfly, which would act as a “cache-sexe,” preserving the Sphinx’s modesty.

Although this finally placated the Parisian authorities, who now permitted an official unveiling of the monument, Epstein did not attend the ceremony. Not only was his work displayed in a form fundamentally different from his intention, but there was an irony in the choice of the butterfly, as this had been the emblem of James McNeill Whistler, who had had a series of well-publicized verbal sparring matches with Wilde in the 1880s.

The tomb in its present form now seemed to tell a tale of artistic intentions which could never quite be realized due to prudery and cowardice, rather than commemorating the wit and bravery of a man who had published a volume of essays called Intentions which revealed his ability to realize his own artistic intentions exactly as he wished.

That is, until the butterfly plaque disappeared. In another attempt to épater les bourgeois and right the wrong done unto the up-and-coming genius sculptor, Crowley had struck again. He approached Epstein one day in London, wearing around his neck a bronze butterfly. Finally, the sculpture could be seen as Epstein had wished it. So the situation remained until 1961 when the Sphinx’s testicles themselves disappeared. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

In 2000, the artist Leon Johnson staged a performance at the tomb titled “(Re)membering Wilde,” which included readings of De Profundis, Wilde’s prison letter to Douglas, and the temporary attachment of a silver prosthetic to the now shattered crotch of the Sphinx.

The Afterlife of Oscar Wilde’s Tomb

By the second half of the 20th century, attitudes towards Wilde were changing. Amid the decriminalization of sex between men in Britain, his trials and imprisonment were now seen as a national outrage, and he became emblematic as a victim of state-perpetrated prejudice. Audiences rediscovered his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest, and reveled in his pithy epigrams (even those he might not have actually said).

As Wilde assumed his place in the pantheon, the guardians of his tomb at Père Lachaise found themselves, yet again, having to intervene. Fans were flocking to the cemetery, leaving tributes of various kinds: flowers, handwritten notes, pages torn from editions of his books, and—most troubling for those responsible for the tomb’s upkeep—lipstick kisses.

In 2000, anticipating an influx of devotees marking the 100th anniversary of Wilde’s death, Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland issued a public plea for the practice of kissing the tomb to stop. (By this time, Robbie Ross’s ashes had also been interred in the grave to rest with the remains of his revered friend.) Attempts to clean off the lipstick over the years were causing the stone to deteriorate, and in a final attempt to protect the tomb, in 2011, authorities installed a glass barrier around the lower half.

Of course, visitors remain determined to leave visible tributes, and the glass barrier is, itself, covered in lipstick kisses. These can be wiped away and replaced ad infinitum, while the stone remains untouched. This compromise seems the best conclusion to the story of this tomb, which was conceived as a definitive statement for posterity of art’s fearlessness and defiance, and which was nevertheless subject to the mundane vagaries of bureaucracy and prudishness. The tomb now represents exactly the paradox that Wilde recognized in the art of others and promoted in his own: that art may be both timeless and ever-changing at the same time.

Bibliography

Churton, Tobias (2022). Aleister Crowley in Paris: Sex, Art, and Magick in the City of Light. Inner Traditions.

Ellmann, Richard (1988). Oscar Wilde. Penguin.

Pennington, Michael (1987). An Angel for a Martyr – Jacob Epstein’s tomb for Oscar Wilde. Whitenights Press.

Rose, June (2002). Demons and Angels: A Life of Jacob Epstein. Carroll & Graf Publishers.

When the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri wrote the Divina Commedia in his native city’s vernacular rather than in Latin, he created a path that would determine what the Italian language would eventually become. This article traces how that decision, made in the 14th century and backed by his linguistic treatise De vulgari eloquentia, produced a 9,000-word vocabulary that functioned as a language-building laboratory. Read on to explore the regional dialect chaos Dante inherited, the institutional debates that followed his death, and why, at Italian unification in 1861, only a small number of Italians actually spoke the language Dante began creating five centuries earlier.

Timeline: The Evolution of the Italian Language

Setting the Stage: Italian Language(s) Before Dante

In 1265, when Dante was born in Florence, Tuscany, the Italian peninsula was politically fractured among independent communes (comuni), rival city-states, and the competing claims of the papacy, backed by the Guelphs, and the emperors, supported by the Ghibelline faction.

This geopolitical mosaic led to a linguistic fragmentation. Indeed, under the canopy of Latin, the language of the Church, the universities, the law courts, and literary works, emerged dozens of mutually intelligible regional dialects (many of them still spoken today). These dialects, known as vernaculars (or Romance languages), have a common ancestor in the Vulgar Latin, which spread across the territories of the Roman Empire.

Among the earliest examples of vernacular writing in Italy are the so-called Veronese Riddle, a note penned by an unknown monk between the 8th and 9th centuries, and the so-called Fragment of Würzburg, a 9th-10th-century piece of popular poetry found in 2022 by Italian scholars in the margins of a manuscript stored at the Würzburg University Library.

The first serious attempt to elevate one of the medieval vernacular languages into a literary instrument took place at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in Palermo. The group of southern Italian poets forming the so-called Sicilian School produced lyrics inspired by Provençal, northern French, and possibly Arabic poetic traditions and revolving around themes of love and angelic women. Written in a refined version of the Sicilian vernacular, the works of the Sicilian School, especially the verses by Jacopo da Lentini, are commonly credited with the invention of the canzone and the sonnet.

The Sicilian literary experiment ended with the death of Frederick II in 1250 and the subsequent dissolution of his court. The original manuscripts of the Sicilian School were also lost, but the poetry survived thanks to later Tuscan transcriptions. It was in Tuscany that the legacy of the Sicilian School was picked up by poets involved in vernacular literature.

Why Did Dante Write in Vernacular?

In Tuscany, the new cultural capital of the Italian peninsula, the spread of literary production in vernacular was aided by the proliferation of the communes, where the rise of a new merchant class contributed to the development of more secular sensibilities.

Among those active in vernacular literature was the group of poets writing in the so-called dolce stil novo (sweet new style). The expression commonly denoting this new school of poetry was first used by Dante, a member of the group, in the 24th canto of the Purgatorio. Influenced by the troubadour tradition and the Sicilian School, the stilnovisti developed a refined version of the Tuscan dialect to pen elegant and melodic verses on love. “Chi è questa che vén, ch’ogn’om la mira,” (Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon) reads the first verse of one of the sonnets by Guido Cavalcanti, Dante’s friend and the leading poet of the dolce stil novo.

It was Cavalcanti who convinced Dante to write his first major work, Vita nuova (The New Life), in vernacular rather than Latin. In the later De vulgari eloquentia (literally, “Concerning Vernacular Eloquence”; usually translated as “Literature in the Vernacular”), drafted in Latin to reach a specialist audience between 1304 and 1305 (ultimately left unfinished), Dante makes a case for the defense of the vernacular language.

In the first theoretical reflection on Italian vernacular literature, Dante, by then already exiled from Florence, emphasizes the role of the Sicilian School and hunts for the volgare illustre (illustrious vulgar) among the different dialects to form a supraregional literary language. After reviewing 14 regional vernaculars, however, he is forced to admit defeat: “We went hunting through the woods and pastures of Italy, but could not find the panther we wanted to flush out.”

Dante could not know that it would be his own version of the Tuscan vernacular to set the written standard for the Italian language.

The Divina Commedia as Linguistic Laboratory

“It is no mere rhetoric to say that we speak the language of Dante,” declared Italian linguist Tullio De Mauro. Indeed, in his Divine Comedy, the supernatural journey from Hell to Heaven through Mount Purgatory, Dante showed all the potential of the 14th-century Florentine vernacular.

In the approximately 9,000 word forms in the Commedia, the Florentine poet revealed an impressive lexical range that encompassed the technical vocabulary of Scholastic philosophy, the registers of Virgilian epic, the intricacies of theological discourse, the idioms of street speech, and terms Dante invented or adapted because no existing word would do.

Some of his expressions have become integral parts of everyday Italian: senza infamia e senza lode (without praise nor blame), le dolenti note (sore points; an expression often used by disappointed teachers), il bel paese (the beautiful country; a nickname for Italy).

Throughout the poem, Dante deployed the full spectrum of human speech (from heavenly neologisms to the obscene), making the Divine Comedy a linguistic laboratory that showed how the vernacular was capable of everything. This range, commonly referred to as plurilinguismo dantesco (Dante’s multilingualism), is never accidental. In the Inferno, the souls of the damned speak in the dialects and registers of their earthly lives, often uttering harsh, rough terms. In the Paradiso, the language, full of Latinisms and Provençal words, strains under the pressure of the inexpressibles, and Dante coins new terms as he tries to render in words what words were not made to explain.

Building the Canon: Boccaccio, Bembo, and the Accademia della Crusca

Dante died in Ravenna in 1321, still in exile from Florence. After his death, the Commedia became popular with readers from diverse social backgrounds, who found the vernacular language was far more accessible than Latin. As the popularity of Dante’s poem grew, the Tuscan dialect spread across the Italian peninsula.

Among the admirers of Dante was Giovanni Boccaccio. Appointing himself as the first Dante scholar, Boccaccio copied the Commedia by hand, wrote the first biography of the poet Trattatello in laude di Dante, or “Little Tractate in Praise of Dante”), and in 1373, delivered a series of public lectures on the Divine Comedy at the church of Santo Stefano di Badia in Florence. Though interrupted at the 17th canto of the Inferno, this was the first time any Italian vernacular work had been the subject of academic exposition.

The son of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Boccaccio greatly contributed to the growth and prestige of the Tuscan vernacular. Similarly to the Commedia, his Decameron (1349-1353), a bestseller and leading work of Italian prose, combined high and low registers and encompassed all aspects of life in late 14th-century Italy, laying the foundation for Humanism and the Renaissance. More than 80 percent of the words Boccaccio used in the Decameron are still in use today.

Together with Petrarch, who, while more comfortable with Latin, raised the vernacular poetry to its highest refinement in the Canzoniere, Boccaccio and Dante are commonly referred to as the Tre corone (Three Crowns), the triumvirate whose works made the Tuscan vernacular into the standard of modern Italian.

The canonization of Tuscan, however, was not without controversy. In the early 16th century, an intense debate, known as the “Language Question,” erupted in Italy: which vernacular should be chosen as the standardized literary language? Some proposed Latin; others, such as Niccolò Machiavelli, argued that contemporary Florentine would be the best fit. Ultimately, it was cardinal Pietro Bembo, a patrician of the Venetian Republic, who would put an end to the question with his 1525 Prose della volgar lingua (Writings on the Vulgar Tongue).

Written as a dialogue between humanists, Bembo’s book proposed the 14th-century Florentine vernacular, identifying Petrarch and Boccaccio as the model for poetry and prose respectively. Dante was left out, as Bembo, while admiring the Florentine poet, found his lexical creativity too bold.

As the debate raged across the Italian peninsula, the institutional answer came from the Accademia della Crusca (Crusca Academy; crusca is the Italian for bran), founded in Florence in 1583 by a group of friends who regularly met together to discuss what they ironically called cruscate, or “things of little importance.” What they actually did was go through texts to extract the “finest flour” (hence the name crusca) from the lexicon.

The result of this 21-year-long cataloging effort was the publication of the 1612 Dictionary in Venice. The first great dictionary of any modern European language, it drew its authority from 14th-century Tuscany, extending Bembo’s selection not only to include Dante but also more recent authors, such as Machiavelli. The volgare illustre that Dante had theorized three centuries earlier had finally become reality.

The Legacy: The Risorgimento & the Italian Language

While the still politically fragmented Italian peninsula now had a standard literary language, across the various regions people continued to speak in their local dialect. The lack of a common Italian everyday language bothered 19th-century novelist Alessandro Manzoni, who, like many patrioti (patriots), dreamed of a unified, independent Italy: “One in arm, in language, in faith.”

Manzoni’s search for a national language led him to the cultivated Florentine. After familiarizing himself with the idiom spoken in the Tuscan capital (a process he famously described as “washing the sheets in the Arno,” the river flowing through Florence), Manzoni rewrote his novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) in 1840, discarding all antiquated forms. The result was a book whose patriotic appeal brought Manzoni immediate acclaim. It also became the model for modern Italian.

Yet, when Italian unification finally arrived in 1861, the new Kingdom of Italy confronted a paradox: the Italian peninsula was now a nation, but Italians did not speak Italian. In his Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita (A Linguistic History of United Italy), Tullio De Mauro calculated that, at the moment of unification, no more than approximately 2.5% of the population used standard Italian as their everyday language. The vast majority spoke their dialects as the main means of communication. Illiteracy was also widespread.

It took compulsory education, mass literacy, military conscription, internal migration, radio and television to complete, by the mid-20th century, the linguistic unification that Manzoni dreamed of achieving. Throughout this long process of nation building, Dante was always present. The Risorgimento made him into a myth, casting him as the father of the Italian language. His exile from Florence was read as a prefiguration of Italy’s centuries of foreign domination.

The novel Lonesome Dove follows two retired Texas Rangers, Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, who own the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in the small Texas town of Lonesome Dove. As they drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Montana, they endure dust storms, dangerous river crossings, and conflict with the Kainai (Blood) people.

Lonesome Dove’s Woodrow Call and Captain Augustus McCrae

The two central characters in Lonesome Dove, Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, are loosely inspired by real cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, respectively. Goodnight and Loving are the namesakes of the Goodnight-Loving Trail, which they themselves established in 1866. The historic cattle trail originated in west Texas, running southwest to connect with the Pecos River before continuing up the river’s valley to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. It was primarily used for the movement of Texas Longhorns, which later became unnecessary due to the arrival of railroads in West Texas in the early 1880s.

The fate of Loving is similar to that of Gus. While along a stretch of the Pecos River in 1867, Loving was trapped by Comanche braves and was subsequently shot in the arm and side. While he managed to escape to Fort Sumner, he later succumbed to his injuries after developing gangrene. Before he died, Goodnight promised to honor his wish of being buried in Texas. Although he was temporarily buried in Fort Sumner while Goodnight drove the herd to Colorado, he later had Loving’s body exhumed and transported home to Texas for it to be reburied.

Similarly, in the novel, Gus is wounded in the leg by two arrows during a conflict with members of the Kainai (Blood) tribe, leading to a fatal infection. Even though Gus’s leg is amputated in the novel, he still passes away from complications with blood poisoning. Before his passing, he asks Call to bury him in Texas. Although Call leaves Gus behind, he later retrieves his body and takes him to an orchard in San Antonio, where he buries him. Despite the similarities, McMurtry had insisted that Call and Gus were not meant to be accurate depictions of Goodnight and Loving. In fact, McMurtry himself has stated that Gus and Call are more closely influenced by Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.

Everyday Life of Texas Rangers

Although ten experienced frontiersmen were hired as rangers in 1823 for an expedition against bands of Native Americans, it was not until 1835 that a specific force known as the Texas Rangers was formally instituted by Texas lawmakers. Texas Rangers patrolled the frontier, fought in military battles, and arrested cattle rustlers. Despite stories of their bravery and heroism, that idea is somewhat hypocritical due to incidents of executing thieves without a fair trial, driving Native American tribes from their land, and, in some cases, the lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans along the border between Texas and Mexico. Post-Civil War, the role of Texas Rangers shifted to suppress lawlessness, track fugitives, protect the border, and manage conflicts.

While Gus and Call are retired Texas Rangers, they still uphold the law when they learn that the Suggs Brothers and their gang attacked Wilbarger and stole his horses, resulting in his death. When Gus, Call, Pea Eye, and Deets discover Jake Spoon with the Suggs Brothers, they hang him alongside them. As the Texas Rangers did, Gus and Call act as judge, jury, and executioner. However, despite adhering to a frontier code of justice, Jake is their old friend and former Texas Ranger himself who accompanied Gus and Call into Mexico to rustle cattle. The difference is that while stealing of horses was common in the frontier, riding with men who murdered a civilian was unforgivable, as in their eyes, Spoon shared the same responsibility. Call is known for his stoic nature, maintaining a strong moral boundary in the decision to hang Spoon.

Cattle Rustling Across the Borders

Following the end of the Civil War, cattle rustling became a problem in southwest Texas, especially around the 1870s, when the novel is set. Cattle theft began after the severe winter of 1863-1864, when large numbers of cattle strayed from their native range and ranchers had very little capacity to retrieve them. Consequently, cattle became an easy target for any horseman who wanted to make two to four dollars for nothing but driving the cattle across the river into Mexico. Cattle rustling posed very little risk, as by this time the Texas Rangers had disbanded and local Texas law enforcement had limited capacity to prevent cattle raids.

Raiding of Texas ranches was consistent between 1865 and 1878. It was estimated that at their peak, these cattle raids saw as many as 200,000 head of cattle stolen annually. However, ranchmen of Mexico also fell victim to Texas thieves who swam herds of cattle across the Rio Grande during the night, often leading them to Kansas markets. This is reflected in the novel when the Hat Creek outfit enters Mexico to rustle thousands of cattle and drive them towards Montana, in an attempt to establish the first cattle ranch north of the Yellowstone River.

Conditions on cattle trails were often unpredictable and treacherous. Many hazards included harsh weather, cattle thieves, difficult river crossings, stampedes, and conflicts with Native American groups. The Hat Creek company experiences dust storms, dangerous river crossings, and conflicts with Native Americans as they drive the herd through Texas.

Tensions With Indigenous Nations of the Plains

Early settlers in Texas and Native American groups often came into conflict with one another on the plains. Sometimes, their conflict was in relation to cattle theft. While Native Americans were more likely to steal horses, if their food supply was low, they were known to butcher beef, dairy cows, and oxen. Other times, they stole cattle to right wrongs or push white settlers from their hunting grounds. They were also known to start stampedes and kill cattle if they could not move them.

In the novel, fears of raids, ambushes, and attacks during cattle drives by Native Americans are common. It becomes a reality later in the novel when the Hat Creek outfit is in Wyoming, and their horses are stolen by half-starved Indians. Call, Gus, and Deets pursue them; however, Deets is killed by the last remaining Comanche brave. Gus and Pea Eye are later attacked by Kainai (Blood) warriors after the cattle drive arrives in Montana, an encounter that leads to Gus’ eventual death.

Blue Duck is an Indigenous man known by Gus and Call as a Comanchero. He is an antagonistic force in the novel responsible for raids, murders, rapes, and kidnappings. Blue Duck was a real Native American, but this was purely coincidental, and the similarities between the two end there. Blue Duck is in the novel as particularly violent and merciless.

The 1870s did see desperate and sometimes violent actions from Indigenous groups due to survival pressures, and intensified by the encroachment of white settlers, whom tribes viewed as invaders into their territory and hunting grounds. However, frontier violence was reciprocal, with settlers also committing violent acts against Native American groups. Blue Duck is more of a sensationalized stereotype, creating an antagonist that aligns with the fears of White settlers.

Diversity Within Cowboys

Despite conflicts between early settlers with Mexicans and Native Americans, there was a lot of ethnic diversity on the cattle frontier, with many cowboys of Black, Mexican, or Native American descent. Joshua Deets, an African-American former Texas Ranger and ranch hand at the Hat Creek Cattle Company, was inspired by Bose Ikard, a friend of Charles Goodnight who accompanied Goodnight and Loving on their 1866 trip to Colorado. While Ikard and Deets both worked as trackers and cowboys for their respective duos, Ikard died of natural causes in Texas, unlike Deets in the novel. However, Call carved an epitaph for Deets, similar to the one Goodnight carved for Ikard after his death.

While not based on any real-life individual, Bolivar, a former Mexican bandit, works as a cook for the Hat Creek Cattle Company. This is reflected in real-life, as before White settlers were prevalent across Texas, Spanish and Mexican ranchers brought generations of expertise and techniques in roping, riding, and handling livestock, which American ranchers and cowboys later adopted. While Bolivar is valued, Mexican workers in Texas sometimes faced discrimination and exploitation, specifically following the Texas Revolution and Mexican-American War. While Bolivar is not explicitly discriminated against, insight into Gus’ point of view early in the book suggests that breakfast is too important a meal for a Mexican bandit to be trusted to cook.

Is Lonesome Dove Accurate?

Lonesome Dove is not a strict historical account, but that was never McMurtry’s intention. Gus and Call have remained beloved heroes for many readers by drawing on real figures like Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, incorporating the hardships of cattle drives, and reflecting the lawlessness of the post–Civil War West. Lonesome Dove portrays a fictional narrative that closely mimics the real-life hardships that settlers and ranchers experienced. It is not an attempt to romanticize the Old West, but rather to capture the authenticity, to criticize it for the terrible culture and events that took place. As a result, Lonesome Dove stands not only as a classic Western novel but also as a powerful literary interpretation of life on the 19th-century frontier.

The Diary of a Young Girl, written by Anne Frank, a teenage German Jew, while in hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, is perhaps the most widely read account of the Holocaust. Quotes from Anne Frank’s diary and other writings are often part of official commemorations of the Holocaust and school curricula worldwide. Written under exceptional circumstances, Anne Frank’s account is a testament to perseverance and humanity in the face of the constant threat of persecution and death.

The Diary of Anne Frank

Anne Frank received her diary, a red-and-white plaid notebook, on her 13th birthday on June 12, 1943. At the time, the young Anne was living in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands with her older sister, Margot, and her parents, Otto and Edith Frank. Like many other German Jews, Otto had decided to leave Germany after Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933. In Amsterdam, Anne’s father opened a pectin firm, and, despite the initial financial struggles, the family began to feel at home, temporarily safe from the anti-Semitic persecution waged by the Nazi regime.

In the first entry, dated June 12, Anne expressed her hope to turn her diary into a close confidant: “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” At the time, the 13-year-old did not yet know that the plaid journal would become her lifeline in the following years, a way to try to make sense of the unprecedented historical circumstances she was forced to witness. In the two years spent in hiding, writing in her diary “kept her company and kept her sane,” as Nathan Zuckerman, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), remarked.

Anne Frank and her family went into hiding on July 6, 1942, less than a month after Anne’s birthday, when Margot was notified of her imminent deportation to a work camp in Nazi Germany. “So there we were, Father, Mother and I, walking in the pouring rain, each of us with a schoolbag and a shopping bag filled to the brim with the most varied assortment of items,” wrote Anne in her diary.

After unsuccessfully trying to secure visas to immigrate to the US, Otto began turning an extension, the “secret annex,” on the second floor of his firm’s headquarters at 263 Prinsengracht into a hiding place. Otto’s business partner, Hermann van Pels, and his family and dentist Fritz Pfeffer later joined the Franks in the annex.

Until August 4, 1944, when a group of German soldiers discovered and arrested them, along with their Dutch helpers, Anne recorded her daily life in the annex, her fears about the present, and her hopes for the future in her diary. She wrote letters addressed to a real and imaginary group of friends, mainly Kitty, a character created by Dutch writer Cissy van Marxveldt in the Joop ter Heul book series.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on Nazi Rule

The Frank family’s hopes that the Netherlands could provide a stable refuge from the persecution and anti-Semitic violence of the Nazi regime shattered on May 10, 1940, when German troops crossed the country’s borders (even though the Dutch government had declared its neutrality) on their way to France. The Dutch army surrendered five days later, on May 15.

As the Nazi authorities took control of the country, the approximately 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands had their rights and freedom gradually stripped away, as the Nazis, led by the Reichskommissar (Reich Commissioner) Arthur Seyss-Inquart, sought to exclude them from society. Soon, Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothes with the word Jood, meaning “Jew” in Dutch.

In her diary, Anne reported the worsening situation in an entry written on June 20, 1942, and listed the long series of restrictions introduced by the Nazi authorities against the Jewish population:

“Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use street-cars; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3 and 5 P.M.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty parlors; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M.; Jews were forbidden to attend theaters, movies or any other forms of entertainment; Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any other athletic fields; Jews were forbidden to go rowing; Jews were forbidden to take part in any athletic activity in public; … You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that, but life went on. Jacque always said to me, ‘I don’t dare do anything anymore, ’cause I’m afraid it’s not allowed.’”

The Dutch population initially protested against the anti-Semitic measures, organizing a general strike in February 1941 following the arrest of several hundred Jews. In the following years, however, the Nazis began to systematically round up the Jews residing in the Netherlands and send them to the Westerbork and Vught camps. From there, starting in the summer of 1942, most prisoners were transported to the concentration and death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The survival rate among the Dutch Jews was especially low, with only 27 percent of the deportees managing to return home after World War II. Adolf Eichmann, one of the main coordinators of the Holocaust, was favorably impressed by the efficiency of the deportation from the Netherlands, commenting, “In the beginning you could say that the trains from the Netherlands were really rolling; it was quite wonderful.”

In the “secret annex,” Anne Frank frequently commented on the unprecedented situation she lived in and the horrors of the Holocaust. “The world’s been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the scum of the earth rules over young and old, rich and poor,” she wrote on May 25, 1944.

On October 9, 1942, she had already confided to her imaginary friend Kitty:

“Dearest Kitty,

Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews. … If it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed. Perhaps that’s the quickest way to die.”

Unbeknownst to Anne, in January 1942, 25 high-ranking Nazi officials had coordinated the so-called “Final solution to the Jewish question” at the Wannsee Conference, setting in motion the plan for the systematic deportation and extermination of European Jews.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on Self

Anne Frank’s diary is not only an eyewitness account of a young Jewish girl living under Nazi rule, but it is also a literary work depicting the emotional, psychological, and ethical maturation of a young woman and writer. While the earlier entries focus on her outings with friends to ice cream parlors and encounters with the first admirers, in hiding, Anne turned to introspection, reflecting on her identity and place in the world.

“Even though I’m only fourteen, I know what I want, I know who’s right and who’s wrong, I have my own opinions, ideas and principles, and though it may sound odd coming from a teenager, I feel I’m more of a person than a child, I feel I’m completely independent of others.”

March 17, 1944

“I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.”

April 14, 1944

Some of the most widely known of Anne Frank’s quotes, these excerpts allow readers to get a glimpse of the young writer’s self-awareness regarding her personal development. During the long hours spent in careful silence to prevent any noise from betraying their whereabouts, Anne often turned to her diary for comfort and sanity. In his The Development of Anne Frank, John Berryman remarked how her unprecedented circumstances heightened Anne Frank’s “power of expression” and forced her to mature more quickly, drawing a parallel between her “conversion of the child into a person” to the conversion described by St. Augustine in his Confessions.

Anne Frank’s penchant for self-reflection also emerges from the following quote taken from the final entry on August 1, 1944:

“I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‘light-hearted’ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‘deeper’ Anne is too weak.”

Anne Frank’s Quotes on People

Anne Frank’s surprising belief in the goodness of humanity despite the horrors of the Holocaust is perhaps her most famous quote:

“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

July 15, 1944

After World War II, when news of the death camps began to spread, Anne’s remark on human nature turned her diary into an emblem of prevailing humanity in the face of a systemic oppression specifically designed to negate her and her fellow Jews’ very right to exist. “Consider if this is a man,” famously asked Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in his poem, “Who toils in the mud/ Who knows no peace/ Who dies for half a loaf/ Who dies by a yes or a no.”

However, it would be mistaken to write off Anne’s quote as a naive faith in the goodness of humanity by a 15-year-old girl. Rather, her declaration is a desperate effort to find meaning in a suddenly meaningless world, and to hold on to hope amid a growing sense of doom.

In an essay titled Give!, Anne had already argued that “Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”

Reaffirmed against the backdrop of persecution, her faith becomes more poignant, a testament to her powerful voice that would resonate with so many generations of readers.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on the Future

During the two years spent in hiding, Anne Frank and the other inhabitants of the “secret annex” alternated between despair and hope regarding their future after the war. While news of the Allies’ advance increased their optimism, the forced proximity, lack of privacy, and frequent quarrels led to frustration and demoralization.

In a series of entries from 1943, Anne expressed her mounting dread, comparing her plans for the future to a “castle in the air.” A couple of quotes from October and November give readers a sense of her struggle against despair and emphasize the power of art:

“I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage.”

October 29, 1943

“I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other.”

November 8, 1943

Stuck in a present of constant danger, Anne saw her writing as a way to reaffirm her identity and secure her memory against the threat of erasure.

“I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me!”

April 5, 1944

In April 1944, Anne had already begun editing her diary, deleting some previous entries and adding some new ones. Her plan to publish her writing after the war dates back to March 1944, when she heard a speech by the Dutch Minister of Education in exile exhorting his fellow citizens to document their wartime experiences for posterity. For the young Anne, writing then became an act of self-assertion in the face of a hostile force that sought to annihilate her and her family.

Anne’s plan for her future tragically died with her in February 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she and her sister Margot contracted typhus. Her diary and other writings, however, survived the war thanks to Miep Gies, who kept Anne’s journal and other papers after the Franks’ arrest in 1944. After the war, she returned them to Otto, the only inhabitant of the “secret annex” to survive the Holocaust. Moved by his daughter’s writings, Otto published them in 1947 with the title Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex), the title Anne herself had chosen.

Today, the Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into over 75 languages, making Anne Frank a symbol of perseverance and her writings a “bid for immortality.”

No 20th-century anthology of literature would be complete without Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Whether it’s a man who wakes up transformed into an insect or a clerk fighting against bureaucracy over an unknown crime, few readers are left unmoved by the writer’s surrealism. In order to get the full picture of the man and his works, here are 15 facts about the German-language writer that may seem unusual at first, but in reality, they are quintessentially Kafkaesque.

1. Kafka Wrote in German, Although He Was a Jew From Prague

Kafka was born into a Jewish middle-class family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, the writer’s mother tongue was actually German, even though he could hold a conversation in Czech and later in Yiddish.

Nearly all of his works, except for a few personal letters, were in German, so Kafka ranks among the greatest German-language authors, even though he hailed from a different ethnic and regional background. Literary critics have noted that his German possessed a “platonic purity,” devoid of slang and contemporary colloquialisms, reflecting Kafka’s upbringing away from German-speaking centers, such as Vienna and Berlin.

2. He Was Actually a Doctor of Law

Kafka attended one of the oldest universities in the world, Charles University in Prague, between 1901 and 1906. He initially enrolled in chemistry, only to transfer to law school after two weeks, but his indecisiveness did not end there.

During the second semester, he also enrolled in German studies, as he desired more lessons in art history and philosophy. At the time, Kafka knew he wanted to be a writer, but he was also aware he needed a Brotberuf, a job that would pay the bills. During his law studies, Kafka befriended Max Brod, who would later become essential for the publication and promotion of Kafka’s work.

3. Prague Turned Kafka Into a Tourist Attraction, Which Is a Bit Ironic

Kafka was not attached to Prague as Immanuel Kant was to his native Königsberg. Nevertheless, he never permanently moved out of the city on the Vltava River. That is why it is easy to associate Kafka’s image with the Czech capital, but the city itself did not dutifully honor its famous resident for much of the 20th century.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Kafka’s legacy became more prominent in the streets of the city. A society that bears his name was founded in 1990, and the writer got a museum a decade and a half later. However, more touristy sights, such as the Head of Franz Kafka, David Černý’s outdoor kinetic sculpture, have turned the writer into a brand, which does not really align with Kafka’s existential themes.

4. Allegedly, Kafka Had a Porn Stash

In his contemporary study, Excavating Kafka (2008), James Hawes argued that Kafka subscribed to pornography and had quite a stash of hard porn. Naturally, literary critics lashed out at this claim, but it remains a fact that the writer’s relationship towards the opposite sex was anything but ordinary. He never married and visited brothels during adulthood.

Brod spoke of his friend’s “sexual desire,” which some critics linked directly to his work. Since Kafka’s characters are steeped in guilt, often for no apparent reason from the reader’s standpoint, the source of this guilt could very well lie in the writer’s furtive obsession with pornography.

5. Kafka Flirted With Socialism

Kafka’s opus does not come across as overtly political, but the writer himself did express a political stance, at least in his early youth. His classmate, Hugo Bergmann, distantly remembers Kafka wearing a red carnation in support of socialism. This aligns with the fact that before World War I, the writer attended the meetings of a Czech anarchist youth club (Klub mladých).

However, this somewhat leftist orientation is quite ironic when we take into account how Kafka was posthumously treated as a writer in communist Czechoslovakia. When his works were not outright banned, they were ignored by the authorities, which, ironically, made Kafka popular in the West, which lauded him as an anti-totalitarian writer.

6. Kafka Considered Moving to Mandatory Palestine in the Early 1920s

Near the end of his life, in late 1923, Kafka moved to Berlin with the last woman in his life, Dora Diamant. The German capital was meant to be a stepping stone to a permanent move to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, but tuberculosis cut the writer’s life short just a year later.

The reasons for the move were more symbolic than practical; anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe at the time, but Kafka really sought a simpler life with his emotional partner. The writer wanted to reconnect with his Jewish roots in a place far away from the formal practice of Judaism he was accustomed to.

7. Kafka Passed Away From Starvation at 40 Years Old

Kafka had known about his tuberculosis since 1917, but the sickness took a turn for the worse in March of 1924, when he was diagnosed with laryngeal tuberculosis. He went to a sanatorium just north of Vienna, but sadly, he passed away there in June of the same year.

Kafka’s actual cause of death was starvation, because his disease made it too painful for him to eat. Unfortunately for the writer, parenteral nutrition became a thing only after World War II. One final twist of fate was the short story Kafka was editing on his deathbed, which was published posthumously. It was morbidly, yet fittingly entitled: A Hunger Artist (Ein Hungerkünstler).

8. Kafka Burned Most of His Works

The period Kafka spent in Berlin with Dora Diamant was not particularly prolific: she actually helped him burn his works. Critics usually put the estimate at 90% of all of Kafka’s works that ended up in flames. Furthermore, the writer never actually finished any of his major novels.

That’s why it does not come as a surprise that Kafka requested from his friend and editor, Max Brod, that all of his works “be burned unread” after the writer’s death. In one of literature’s most famous acts of defiance, Brod not only refused to burn Kafka’s manuscripts, but he also reconstructed many of them and famously published them.

9. Kafka Was Not Famous During His Lifetime

Although he is considered one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, Kafka was largely anonymous in his day and age. His fame was restricted to narrow literary circles and almost exclusively to German-speaking readers and critics.

For example, his first major translations into English did not appear until the 1930s, after the writer’s death. Kafka’s global popularity really took off after World War II, after Brod finished publishing the bulk of his friend’s writing. His motifs, such as alienation, absurdity, authoritarian regimes, and unresponsive bureaucracy, resonated with post-war audiences and remain topical to this day. Expectedly, Kafka is a writer popular with Gen Z, who are pragmatic yet highly anxious.

10. There Was a Real-Life Trial Over Kafka’s Unpublished Papers

One of Kafka’s greatest novels, The Trial (Der Prozess), became surreally real in the late 2000s. After Brod passed away in 1968, his secretary (Esther Hoffe) came into possession of thousands of Kafka’s unpublished papers. They were eventually passed down to her daughters, who refused to hand them over to the National Library of Israel, which initiated a legal process in 2008.

The sisters argued that the collection was a gift to their mother, but the Tel Aviv court ruled in 2012 that Kafka’s writings needed to be handed over for archiving. The country’s Supreme Court upheld the decision in 2016, ending the eight-year-long legal process, which was quintessentially Kafkaesque.

11. There Is an Adjective Derived From the Writer’s Surname

One of the greatest testaments to the literary grandeur of Franz Kafka is the adjective derived from his last name: Kafkaesque. Admittedly, the word has the primary meaning of simply referring to the author or his writings, but it can equally be used to denote “a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.”

These epithets stem from Kafka’s works, such as a person waking up transformed into an oversized insect or a protagonist caught up in endless bureaucracy over an unnamed crime. In literary theory, these elements create a Kafkaesque atmosphere in which characters feel as if they are in a nightmare, facing absurd and illogical circumstances that leave them feeling trapped and helpless.

12. Orson Welles Thought of The Trial as His Greatest Movie

The American filmmaker Orson Welles is arguably best known for the panic he caused in 1938 while reading an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds over the radio. The fact that he had convinced the listeners that a Martian invasion was real just confirmed his talent, which, perhaps, reached its peak in the 1941 drama Citizen Kane.

However, in his own words, The Trial is the best movie Welles had ever made. This was a 1962 adaptation of Kafka’s eponymous novel that largely stayed faithful to the original plot and, to a great extent, managed to bring to life the Kafkaesque atmosphere that had previously existed only in literature.

13. Gregor Samsa Did Not Turn Into a Cockroach

The opening sentence of Kafka’s 1915 novella, The Metamorphosis, is definitely one of the most popular and striking sentences in the history of world literature: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

Since 1933, the English version has had a couple of dozen translations, and, famously, they have not been consistent on what the protagonist had transformed into. The German original, ungeheuren Ungeziefer, is ambiguous itself, so translators got creative, labeling the fictional animal as a bug, vermin, insect, and, famously, a cockroach. Perhaps the latter stuck in the reader’s heads the most because it vividly encompassed the ridiculousness of Gregor’s transformation.

14. Kafka Was Actually a Fun Guy

Although Kafka’s literary motifs were somber, the writer himself did not possess a dark personality. His acquaintances often described him as a person with a dry sense of humor. Brod, for instance, remembered how Kafka laughed out loud after reading the first chapter of The Trial, an existential work that is anything but overtly humorous.

That’s why some critics regard Kafka’s surrealism, at times absurd, as ironic, in the sense that the plot can be so ridiculous that it turns into satire. Kafka did not have an easy life, having to constantly balance between his day job, writing, and love life, which did not leave much room for humor.

15. Kafka Died Before World War II, yet He Is Associated With It

Kafka passed away nine years before the Nazis came to power in Germany, but his work has inevitably become related to World War II, although it was in no manner directly related to it. As mentioned earlier, Kafka’s popularity rose in the aftermath of the global conflict, as existentialism and alienation plagued post-Holocaust Europe.

Although the writer did not personally experience these horrors, all three of his sisters were deported to concentration camps, where they lost their lives. Furthermore, Max Brod had to flee with Kafka’s unpublished manuscripts to Palestine at the beginning of the war, but the Gestapo still got hold of some of Kafka’s letters. It is somewhat ironic that Kafka’s literary legacy was defined by historical events that came after the writer’s death.

Inspired by Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Roman poet Virgil composed his own epic poem between about 30 and 19 BC, when Augustus ruled as the first Roman Emperor. Left unfinished at the poet’s death, the Aeneid follows the Trojan prince Aeneas as he flees from the ruins of Troy and sails toward his promised new homeland: present-day Italy. In the Aeneid, Virgil included mythical locations, but also used many real places that his Roman readers would have recognized. Most of them still exist today. Here are 12 stops on Aeneas’ route, in order, from Troy to Lavinium, Italy.

1. Troy, Hisarlik, Türkiye

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“I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy, exiled by fate, came to Italy and the Lavinian shores.” Aeneid, Book I

Virgil’s epic poem begins with the fall of Troy. After a ten-year war, the Greeks, thanks to Odysseus’ cunning trick of the Trojan Horse, have entered the city. As everything around him is in flames, the Trojan prince Aeneas, carrying his father Anchises on his back and holding his young son Ascanius’ hand, flees from his motherland. He will never return.

Today, the city of Hisarlik, in present-day northwestern Türkiye, is widely believed to be the location of Troy. After the first excavations headed by Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century, subsequent digging campaigns have uncovered at least nine layers of cities built one on top of another.

The layer of Troy commonly identified as the city mentioned by Virgil and Homer is Troy VIIa, dating to the Bronze Age. It was demolished by a fire around 1180 BC. Subsequently rebuilt, the city was again destroyed in the 7th century BC.

2. Thrace, Southeastern Balkans

“There I was building a city—my people were eager—and I called the place Aeneadae, from my own name,” Aeneid, Book III

After fleeing from the burning Troy, Aeneas and the other Trojan exiles reach Thrace (an area comprising present-day Bulgaria and parts of Romania, Greece, and Turkey), where they start building a city: Aeneadae.

While Aeneas hopes to have found a place to settle, an eerie event changes his mind. As he tries to uproot a tree from a burial mound, the ground and bark start to bleed. The tree then speaks to him with the voice of Polydorus, Priam’s youngest son.

During the Trojan War, King Priam sent the young prince to the allied Thrace for safety. After Troy’s defeat, however, the Thracians sided with the victorious Greeks and killed Polydorus. Now, the murdered prince’s spirit tells Aeneas to leave Thrace.

3. Delos, Cyclades, Greece

“Seek out your ancient mother. There the house of Aeneas shall rule over all regions, as shall his sons,” Aeneid, Book III

After re-burying Polydorus, Aeneas sets sail again and lands on the sacred island of Delos in the Aegean Sea. In ancient Greece, Delos was an economic and religious hub, and, according to myth, the birthplace of the gods Apollo and Artemis.

On Delos, Aeneas receives a prophecy from the oracle of Apollo: he must seek his “ancient mother,” the land from which his ancestors came.

Today, Delos is a largely uninhabited archaeological site, where visitors can admire the Temple of Apollo and the Terrace of the Lions. The granite island, about 1.3 square miles in area, is one of the smallest of the Cyclades. The island group forms a rough circle around Delos, hence the name Cyclades, “encircling islands.”

4. Crete, Greece

“There is a place, Crete, the island of great Jupiter, lying amid the sea, where Mount Ida is, the cradle of our race,” Aeneid, Book III

Upon receiving Apollo’s prophecy, Aeneas sets sail to Crete, mistakenly identifying it as the ancestral homeland mentioned by the god. Dominated by mountains (Mount Ida, its highest point, is more than 8,000 feet tall), Crete is the fifth-largest island of the Mediterranean Sea and was home to the Minoan civilization, a Bronze Age culture.

When the Trojans reach their new destination, they begin to build a settlement. However, once again, misfortune strikes. A plague strikes and crops fail. Then, the gods appear to Aeneas in a dream to inform him of his mistake: the “ancient mother” of the prophecy is not Crete but Italy, the homeland of his ancestor Dardanus.

5. The Strophades, Ionian Sea, Greece

“Suddenly, with a horrible swoop, the Harpies are upon us from the mountains, shaking their wings with a loud clatter.” Aeneid, Book III

After leaving Crete, black storm clouds hinder the Trojan refugees’ voyage. In search of food, they land on the Strophades, two tiny islands in the Ionian Sea, west of the Peloponnese. There, Aeneas and his crew held a feast after killing several cows and goats roaming free on the island.

Their meal, however, is soon spoiled by the arrival of unwanted and unpleasant guests: the Harpies, winged, bird-like creatures with women’s faces, and the local residents. Furious, their leader, Celaeno, curses the Trojans, delivering a rather grim prophecy: they will reach their destined land, but they will be so hungry that they will “eat their own tables.”

The real Strophades are remote, largely uninhabited islands. In the 13th century, the emperor of Nicaea, Theodore I Laskaris, built a fortress-like monastery there.

6. Buthrotum, Butrint, Albania

“Could it be that a second Pergamum has risen here, built by some Hector’s hand?” Aeneid, Book III

On the next stop on his long journey, Aeneas finds some familiar faces. Indeed, a group of fellow Trojans has already settled in Buthrotum, present-day Butrint, under the leadership of Helenus, one of Priam’s sons. After being captured by Pyrrhus, Helenus and his wife, Andromache, managed to gain their freedom and succeed to a portion of Pyrrhus’s kingdom after his death.

Before his departure, Helenus and Andromache advise Aeneas to take the long way around Sicily to sail past the Strait of Messina, where Scylla (a multi-headed monster) and Charybdis (a deadly whirlpool) lurk. Part of Odysseus’s crew, on its way home, had already fallen victim to the hazardous passage.

Today, Butrint is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Layered with Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Venetian ruins, the city is wrapped in forest and overlooks a lagoon.

7. Sicily, Italy

“A port there is, untouched by winds’ approach; but nearby Etna thunders with appalling crashes, and sometimes hurls a dark cloud to the sky,” Aeneid, Book III

Following Helenus’ advice, Aeneas lands safely in Sicily near Mount Etna. As the tired Trojans are resting on a beach, they encounter a ragged Greek soldier named Achaemendes. He landed on the island before them as part of Odysseus’s crew, but was left behind when the others managed to flee from the Cyclops Polyphemus.

As he finished telling his misfortunes to the Trojans, Polyphemus, blinded by Odysseus, stumbled down the shore. Achaemendes and the Trojan run to safety as the other Cyclopes follow Polyphemus to the beach. They will make a second stop in Sicily after leaving Carthage (more on that later). Here, they hold a series of games to commemorate the anniversary of Anchises’ death.

Today, Mount Etna is still Europe’s most active volcano, and the Strait of Messina, though thankfully free of the mythical Scylla and Charybdis, has strong currents. As for the island of Sicily, its position as a crossroads of Mediterranean civilizations (Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Arab, and Norman) left behind traces of Italy’s long (and fragmented) history.

8. Carthage,  Tunis, Tunisia

“O queen, the grief you bid me to renew is unspeakable… But if you have such longing to know sour disasters, I will begin,” Aeneid, Book II

When Aeneas’ crew sets sail from Sicily, the goddess Juno, who harbors no love for the Trojans, whips up a storm that blows the refugees off course, leading them to the coast of North Africa. There, they reach Carthage, ruled by Queen Dido. According to tradition, the African city was founded by the Phoenicians, probably in 814 BC. In the Aeneid, however, Virgil traces the origin of Carthage to Dido herself, who, according to the Roman poet, founded the settlement after fleeing from her brother Pygmalion, who murdered her husband.

In Carthage, the Trojan prince shares with the queen the tale of the fall of Troy and his subsequent voyage through the Mediterranean Sea. Queen Dido falls in love with Aeneas, even though she vowed never to love again. During a storm caused by Venus (Aeneas’ mother) and Juno, Dido and Aeneas consummate their love.

Their relationship, however, is not destined to last. Indeed, Jupiter sends Mercury to remind Aeneas of his mission: to found a new Troy in Italy. Despite Dido’s plea to remain in Carthage, the Trojan prince leaves, telling her he must obey the gods, even when their plans do not align with his desire. Distraught, Dido builds a pyre and, after cursing Aeneas, takes her own life. The curse foreshadows a future enmity between Rome and Carthage: the Punic Wars.

Today, the ruins of Carthage are an extensive archaeological site belonging to UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

9. Cumae, Campania, Italy

“The descent to the Underworld is easy; the door of dark Dis stands open night and day. But to retrace your steps and escape to the upper air—that is the task, that is the toil,” Aeneid, Book VI

Like Odysseus, Aeneas must journey to the underworld before fulfilling his destiny. After finally reaching the Italian shores, the Trojan prince arrives at Cumae, near present-day Naples. There, he consults the Sibyl, a prophetess who lives in a cave carved into the rock. The priestess warns him that he will face more trials in Italy, but agrees to guide him into the underworld to speak with his dead father.

Anchises rests in the Elysian Fields among the souls of the virtuous. During their reunion, he shows his son that from the line of Ascanius a Caesar will come, who will guide Rome into a “Golden Age.” In the Underworld, Aeneas also meets the soul of Dido, who refuses to speak to him.

Today, the “official” Sibyl’s cave (Antro della Sibilla) at Cumae is a long, trapezoidal tunnel cut into volcanic rock, with shafts of light cutting through from its sides. Probably of Etruscan origin, the cave is located near the ruins of the Temple of Apollo and the Acropolis that look out over the Tyrrhenian Sea.

10. The Tiber Mouth, Lazio, Italy

“Here at last, worn out by the seas, by every hazard of land, by long wandering, the Trojans set foot on the shore of Latium,” Aeneid, Book VII

After years of wandering and trials, Aeneas lands on the shores of Latium, the area around the Tiber River in present-day Lazio, central Italy, and sails up the stream. Ravenously hungry, they bake flatbreads (the antecedents of modern pizza) and pile them with fruits. When they finish the toppings, they devour the flatbreads too, prompting Ascanius to joke that they have even eaten their tables. This fulfills the Harpies’ prophecy and confirms to Aeneas that he has finally reached his promised land.

The mouth of the Tiber River is located near present-day Fiumicino, mostly known for its international airport. Just south of the town is the ancient harbor of Ostia Antica, where visitors can walk through some of the best-maintained Roman ruins.

11. Pallanteum, Palatine Hill, Rome

“This forest, this hill with its leafy crown—some god inhabits it, which god we know not… We Romans believe that Jupiter himself we have often seen here,” Aeneid, Book VIII

When Aeneas and the Trojans land at the mouth of the Tiber River, they are welcomed by the king of the region, Latinus. Other local rulers, however, resent their presence and the prospective marriage between Aeneas and Lavinia, Latinus’ daughter. Among the resentful is Turnus, leader of the Rutuli tribe and Lavinia’s suitor.

As war between the Trojans and Turnus is about to break out, the god of the Tiber River tells Aeneas to form an alliance with the Arcadians and their King Evander, a Greek who founded the city of Pallanteum in Italy. During his visit, Evander leads Aeneas through the site of the future city of Rome.

Virgil identifies Pallanteum as the Palatine Hill, one of the settlements that will form Rome and the very site of its mythical birthplace. Indeed, according to Roman legend, the infants Romulus and Remus, abandoned on the Tiber River, were deposited at the foot of the Palatine.

Today, the Palatine Hill is a plateau located near the Roman Forum. It houses mostly ruins dating back to Imperial Rome and offers a sweeping view of the Forum and the Capitoline.

12. Lavinium, Lazio, Italy

“He shall build a city for Lavinia his bride, and shall call it Lavinium. Wars, horrid wars I see, and the Tiber foaming with blood,” Aeneid, Book VI

After defeating King Turnus in single combat, Aeneas marries Lavinia and fulfills his destiny by erecting a new city of the Trojan refugees: Lavinium, named after his wife. It is from Lavinium that his son Ascanius will eventually found Alba Longa.

Located southeast of Rome, near present-day Castel Gandolfo (the town where the popes’ summer residence was built in the 17th century), Alba Longa is, according to legend, the birthplace of the future founders of Rome: Romulus and Remus. Indeed, their mother, Rhea Silvia, was the daughter of Numitor, the King of Alba Longa.

In the 20th century, archaeological excavations on the site where Virgil places Lavinium have revealed 13 altars, Bronze Age artifacts, and a shrine that may have been associated with Aeneas by the Romans. These findings confirm that the area was occupied long before the birth of Rome.

Source

• Virgil. Aeneid.  Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press, 1916 (rev. 1934).

The Old English epic poem Beowulf is set in a pre-Christian world, but was written by a Christian author. This creates a complicated mix between pagan and Christian elements that are present in the poem, and scholars have debated how to understand the religiosity of the poem without coming to a clear consensus. This article will attempt to sort through how to think about Beowulf and religion.

The Pagan Setting

The epic poem Beowulf takes place in a pagan world. The Geats, Danes, Swedes, and other peoples that surround the North Sea in the poem inhabit a land that has not yet been touched by the Christianity that had spread for centuries under the Roman Empire. Yet, Christianity is an important presence in the poem. It enters the poem through the anonymous author, who makes it clear to us that he is a Christian.

Religious and spiritual practices are not explicitly described in Beowulf. Yet a pagan aesthetic dominates the poem, and we can get a sense of a pre-Christian worldview from the characters. The pre-Christian character of the world is specifically confirmed by the poet in a stark line in which it is said that “Almighty they knew not.”

The place of religion in Beowulf is a highly contested and uncertain topic. Explicit references to the pre-Christian practices of the characters combine with frequent allusions that the characters make to a God that sounds very much like the monotheistic Christian God. The pagan historical context of the poem’s origins contrasts with the fact that the author was certainly Christian. These contrasts leave us in an uncertain place.

Neither study of the context of the poem’s composition nor study of the content of the poem itself provides a clear sense as to the place or the nature of religion and spirituality in Beowulf.

Themes and Ethos

If there is a moral strain that runs through the poem, it is not an ethos typically associated with Christianity and its teachings. Beowulf’s greatness and his heroism come from his martial prowess and his desire for glory and fame. Though there are some comparisons that can be made between the poem’s protagonist and Jesus Christ, the poet does not shy away from the point that Beowulf’s heroism is a product of his violent strength and not of his suffering. The inflexible logic of the blood-feud is also central to Beowulf. That the violent death of one’s kin must and will be met with retributory violence and war is taken as natural.

Moreover, Beowulf does not seek to reject vanity or worldly goods like a typical Christian saint. Beowulf triumphs in the treasures and weaponry that he wins from his battles with the monsters. He glories in his own strength and martial prowess, extolling his own heroism to others and basking in others’ praise of him. The poet does not condemn this. Indeed, the final line of the poem eulogizes the dead Beowulf as “the keenest for fame.”

Yet, whether the centrality of violence and feud in the poem represents a genuinely pre-Christian ethos, preserved by the poet, or whether it reflects the Christian martial culture that remained central in northern Europe throughout the early Middle Ages is unclear. The frequent references to God that are made by characters throughout the poem could suggest that the poet is actually conveying the sensibilities of his own time in the 8th or 9th centuries AD, rather than conveying any kind of pagan understanding of morality and the divine.

Moreover, Beowulf’s fight with demonic monsters is not difficult to interpret in a Christian framework. Heroic figures fighting and banishing demons and devils have been a constant theme in Christian literature over the centuries. Beowulf’s dramatic sacrificial death after defeating the Dragon and saving his people has unmistakable resonances with the death of Jesus. Meanwhile, Hrothgar, king of the Danes, fits neatly into the mold of an aged patriarch who counsels Beowulf in ways that are reminiscent of a sermon.

The “Heathen Poem” Interpretation

Victorian scholars tended to dismiss the religious language in parts of the poem as essentially window-dressing by the Christian poet added onto what was essentially a pagan, pre-Christian tale. This view emphasizes that the frequent uses of the term “God” in the poem are vague enough in their context not to have to be referring to the Christian God, and could easily be replaced with a word such as “fate” and have the same meaning. It also stresses the extent to which themes that are central to Christianity (such as Christ, the cross, the trinity, etc.) are not mentioned at all.

Perhaps most controversially from a modern perspective, this theory views the parts of the poem in which unmistakably Christian references are made as later glosses to the core text of the poem. Thus, there is a core pre-Christian story, and a later poet, or poets, who wrote the poem down, added the Christian elements on top of the heathen core. Most later scholars have rejected this theory, seeing the poem as a single work rather than a text that has been glossed by later Christian authors.

This theory was largely replaced in the later 20th century by the so-called “dramatic irony thesis,” which suggests a gulf between the narrator and the characters. The former can comprehend a spiritual dimension to the actions of Beowulf and his battles with the monsters, but the characters themselves are ignorant of this higher significance amidst their heathen conception of the world.

This interpretation is supported by a section of the poem in which the poet describes the reaction of the Danes to the assaults of Grendel upon their hall, Heorot. The poet states:

“They prayed aloud, promising sometimes, on the altars of their idols unholy sacrifices (…) Such was their practice, a heathen hope; Hell possessed their hearts and minds: the Maker was unknown to them (…) the Almighty was unheard of “ (translation by Michael Alexander).

This passage suggests a profound disconnect between the poem’s narrator and the characters and the world that he is narrating. One can then interpret the frequent references to God by the poem’s protagonists as the poet’s insertion, who uses the vague term “God” as a stand-in to represent the characters’ essentially pre-Christian understanding of the divine. This would make sense considering the fact that Christian writers in the Early Medieval Period rarely make reference to pagan gods or beliefs in any kind of detail.

The Christian understanding possessed by the poet is also demonstrated in a line about a third of the way through the poem. The narrator reminds his listeners that God “guided then the dealings of mankind, as he does even now,” suggesting that, whether or not Beowulf and his comrades were aware, the Christian God was overseeing their actions and guiding their battles.

The poet makes a point of demonstrating the limits of the characters’ knowledge at other times as well. Most notably, when describing Grendel’s approach to Heorot, where Beowulf lies in wait, the poet foreshadows that Grendel will meet his fate in the coming encounter.

A Christian Poem?

However, there is a different interpretation that views the entire poem as deeply influenced by a Christian ethic, to the extent that Beowulf and the other characters themselves are essentially Christian figures.

It is striking the extent to which Beowulf calls upon God in a way akin to a saint from a medieval hagiography (i.e., the life of a saint). He does so before his fight with Grendel, and after his fight with the Dragon, and at various points throughout the poem, he thanks God for his good fortune. It is also worth noting the context in which Beowulf was written. Saints’ lives were extremely popular in early-medieval England and had great influence in literary circles at that time.

Another notably religious character is Hrothgar, king of the Danes. Hrothgar talks to Beowulf about God and warns him not to indulge in arrogance and worldly gain, in a speech that is reminiscent of a Christian sermon. When Beowulf first arrives at Heorot, Hrothgar thanks the grace of “Holy God” for sending Beowulf to the Danes, reinforcing the idea that characters within the poem might understand people and events as being guided by a single deity.

Even background characters are often spoken of as though they were in touch with a Christian understanding of their world. In describing the death of the despairing king of the Geats, Hrethel, the poet states that he “chose God’s light.” Do we infer from this that a king whom we would assume to be pagan actually had an understanding of the poet’s Christian God somehow? Or is the poet simply speaking in Christianized language in the absence of an understanding of pagan spirituality?

It is also important to note how often the poet emphasizes Grendel’s lineage from Cain in the Old Testament. Grendel’s ostracism from society is explained as originating from when his ancestor Cain “warred with God.” That Grendel is a descendant of the fratricidal biblical character is one of the only things that the poet tells us about the monster’s background and origins. But if we see the poet as framing Beowulf as a saintly Christian hero, then Grendel’s origins, coming from one of the foundational sins of mankind in the Bible, add a spiritual dimension to their conflict that a contemporary Christian audience would have appreciated.

A Complicated Picture

Some writers have suggested that the Beowulf poet expresses a common sentiment in medieval literature, which is the curiosity as to whether pagan heroes of the past have a chance at eternal salvation. Perhaps the poet wants to believe that some virtuous pagans might be able to attain eternal salvation, and toys with the idea that men like Beowulf and Hrothgar might have their souls saved, despite living in a pre-Christian North Sea world.

Debate around the place of religion and Christianity in Beowulf will continue. Part of what makes the epic poem so appealing is its enigmatic character, its refusal to be fit perfectly with any one theme or concept. It is a shifting, complicated story whose characters can seem at once pagan heroes of old, and yet also Christianized figures who engage in a spiritual battle with demonic evil. The poet is one of the greatest mysteries. Is this narrator shaping the narrative themselves, or simply telling a pre-existing story? What is the distance between the poet and the characters that they explore? Is the Christian poet crafting a Christian story? Or are they preserving pagan folklore?

Every reader will decide for themselves how to interpret the spiritual aspects of Beowulf. The poem retains its hold on our imagination today precisely because it crafts a world that defies easy interpretation and forces us to immerse ourselves in its mysteries and explore its murky depths.

Sylvia Plath is often reduced to her dramatic biography, but she should be known not for her complicated relationship with her father, her tempestuous marriage to a fellow poet, and her eventual suicide, but rather for her poetry itself—poetry of tremendous range and accomplishment, of experimentation and mastery, of exquisite and often painful beauty and rage. This list of seven must-read poems gives an overview of the particularly fertile years of 1958-1962, providing brief summaries of the poems’ subjects and some of the potential meanings behind them.

1. Full Fathom Five, 1958

“Full Fathom Five” is a sea-drenched poem, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Greek myths of Poseidon mixed into one. Most likely about her father, or men in general, the poem is of an “Old man” who surfaces with his “white hair” and “white beard,” whose face is of “archaic trenched lines.” He is an “old myth of origins / Unimaginable.” The “dangers are many,” but even though Plath sees that he is suffering, dying perhaps, she is wary. He is rooted deep in the earth, and she only feels safe exiled to his “kingdom’s border.”

Plath compares her father to the ancient sea god of Poseidon in order to suggest his power, inscrutability, and inexorable sway over her. Yet in this poem, as compared to “Daddy,” she is a bit more removed, even cool in her tone (albeit still cautious about his tidal pull). It’s not surprising that she chose the god of the sea for the comparison, as she loved the ocean and spent her summers on the North Atlantic coast, which she associated with her father. In remembrance of this period and Otto Plath’s death, she said: “And this is how it stiffens, my vision of that seaside childhood. My father died, we moved inland. Whereon those nine first years of my life sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle…”

2. The Colossus, 1959

Another poem usually interpreted as being about her father, “The Colossus” is a grotesque portrait of a man who loomed too large for her. She depicts him as a huge statue who is pieced and patched together, loud and obnoxious utterances issuing from his lips. He thinks himself “an oracle, / Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.” She’s spent her life climbing over him, spending her days eating her lunch “on a hill of black cypress,” and squatting at night in the “cornicopua / Of your left ear, out of the wind.” Like “Daddy,” she addresses the poem to him, her tone searing, a meld of revulsion and attraction.

Plath’s father died when she was eight. He was a biology professor who studied bees and was quite intelligent, but he refused to get appropriate medical treatment for his diabetes and eventually developed gangrene and sepsis. Plath wrote of him in her diary, “I adored and despised him, and I probably wished many times that he were dead. When he obliged me and died, I imagined that I had killed him.” While she obviously didn’t control how and when he died, she was able to write poetry in order to work through her complex emotions.

3. Tulips, 1960

“Tulips” is set in a hospital room, where a bouquet of bright red tulips has been delivered. Rather than being a welcome surprise, they’re “too excitable” for the white, sterile room. Plath is a cipher, having given up her “name and my day-clothes to the nurses / And my history to the anestheist and my body to the surgeons.” She’s been “swabbed clear of my loving associations,” but she isn’t exactly upset about it. In fact, she notes that the “peacefulness is so big it dazes you” and that she feels free. Nothing is asked of her; she simply wants to  be “utterly empty.” Yet here the flowers are, and they’re watching her. She can hear them breathing “like an awful baby,” “their sudden tongues and their colour” upsetting her. Now they come between her and the sun in the window that once blurred her in its brightness, now they “eat [her] oxygen.” The room is warmer, her concentration is on them. She can feel her heart now, and she decides the tulips “should be behind bars like a dangerous animal.”

Ted Hughes, Plath’s husband from whom she later became estranged, has said that the poem is about the tulips she received while recovering in the hospital from an appendectomy, but it also evokes her multiple attempts at suicide. Despite this bleakness, most critics believe that by the end of the poem, Plath has decided to return to the living rather than embrace the pleasant nothingness of death. For now, at least, there is enough in life that appeals to her, and she will not let herself dissolve into nothingness.

4. Lady Lazarus, 1962

A searing poem permeated by simmering rage, “Lady Lazarus” is one of Plath’s most famous works. She narrates the poem as if she were a spectacle, a sideshow, someone whose disintegration and death are being consumed by an audience. She mocks “the peanut-crunching crowd” who clamor to see her “big strip tease,” who will pay a price for “the eyeing of my scars” or “a word or touch” or “a bit of blood.” With a smile, she proclaims that “Dying / Is an art, like everything else” and that she “[does] it exceptionally well.” At the end of the poem she cautions them all to “Beware,” and, in the astonishing closing lines, exults that “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.”

Plath tried to commit suicide at ages 10 and 20 (and then, at age 30, succeeded). In this poem she situates herself after the second attempt and as currently undertaking a third, scathingly suggesting that people enjoy watching her destroy herself. They’re eating snacks and finding a prurient delight in her disintegration. Since we are also readers of this poem, we’re complicit as well. There is particular rage at inhabiting a female body, which is subject to even more voyeurism, oppression, and abuse. That rage lets loose at the end of the poem, where she rises from the dead like the biblical figure of Lazarus: “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.”

5. Daddy, 1962

“Daddy” is a poem that most people who read Plath encounter early on, and it tends to confirm the prevailing opinion that this is a writer with deep trauma, whose poetic images are dark and twisted, and whose usage of Nazi references is problematic. And indeed, all of those things are true—Plath did have a troubled relationship with her father, she did embrace the dark, and she did weave in references to Jews and Nazism in a way that necessitates our critique. However, there’s much more at play in Plath as a person and as a poet, and certainly in “Daddy.” This is a poem feminists laud for its rage, that some critics see as more about her fears of creative paralysis, and that is remarkably skillful in its structure and rhyme.

In the poem, seen as one of the most emblematic of the “confessional” school of poetry, Plath works through her feelings towards her father. He was “Marble-heavy, a bag full of God.” She tells him she could never talk to him; the “tongue stuck in my jaw.” His being oppressed her so that she “began to talk like a Jew” and began to feel like a Jew. With his “neat mustache” and his “Aryan eye,” he was a “man in black with a Meinkampf look.” She glories in how there’s now a “stake in your fat black heart” and how the “villagers never liked you.” As they dance upon him, she says, “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

A comment is necessary on those Nazi allusions, which aren’t just here in “Daddy.” Plath was German, not Jewish, and had studied the Holocaust from a historical lens. Her understanding of the Holocaust’s unfathomable horrors made its way into her poetry as she grappled with major themes of oppression, trauma, violence, patriarchy, and more. As critic Al Strangeways writes, “the Holocaust assumed a mythic dimension because of its extremity and the difficulty of understanding it in human terms, due to the mechanical efficiency with which it was carried out, and the inconceivably large number of victims.” Plath uses it alongside other mythic and religious examples of violence to probe the deepest depths of personal and universal trauma.

6. Ariel, 1962

“Ariel” is a poem full of motion. It begins with the scene of “Stasis in darkness” before it explodes into an open field with a rider galloping across the expanse. Something “hauls me through air,” the narrator says, calling herself a “White Godiva” who sloughs off “Dead hands, dead stringencies.” In her hurry she finds some oblivion, turning into “foam,” a “glitter of seas,” an “arrow.” That oblivion is also found in her ultimate destination— “Into the red / Eye, the cauldron of the morning.”

A short but immensely important poem in Plath’s oeuvre, Ariel’s meaning is not totally obvious at first read. Does it just depict a breakneck ride at dawn? Or the liberation of the creative impulse that comes from writing poetry? Or suicide, an oblivion of the self? Or the melding of the human and the animal to achieve freedom? Plath’s haunting, ambiguous poem allows for numerous interpretations.

7. Contusion, 1962

One of Plath’s very last poems, “Contusion” is undeniably bleak. It’s short and evocative, a collection of images that fill the reader with a dull horror. In the first stanza, the image is a bruise that stands out on the white body with its deep purple coloring. In the second stanza, the “sea sucks obsessively” on a pit of rock. In the third, a “doom mark” that is “the size of a fly” crawls down a wall. In the fourth, the “heart shuts, / The sea slides back, / The mirrors are sheeted.”

All the images are of closure, ending, finality. In the first stanza, the bruise seems to be on a corpse, as Plath contrasts the pearlescent whiteness of the skin. There is no vitality here, no life. Critics often discuss “Contusion” alongside “Edge,” her very last poem, written only a few days before her death. That poem begins with “The woman is perfected. / Her dead / Body wears the smile of accomplishment,” so “Contusion” feels like a natural companion. Its structure is one of repetitive morphemes (the smallest grammatical units of speech), which give it a sense of mundanity and inescapability, and its signifiers are unconnected (body and sea and mirror), precluding our ability to find narrative, unity, meaning, and, ultimately, hope.