The Animal Part The Animal Part human and other animals in the poetic imagination Mark Payne The University of Chicago Press chicago & london mark payne is associate professor in the Department of Classics and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and the author of Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction (2007). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2010 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 isbn- 13: 978-0-226-65084-5 (cloth) isbn- 10: 0-226-65084-7 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Payne, Mark (Mark Edward) The animal part : human and other animals in the poetic imagination / Mark Payne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-226-65084-5 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-226-65084-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Animals in literature. 2. Philosophical anthropology in literature. I. Title. PN56.A64P39 2010 809(cid:2).93362—dc22 2009046954 o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48– 1992. for laura and baby carolyn, who don’t need jack kerouac to remind them “the great requirement is a loving heart” c o n t e n t s Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Imagining Animals 1 part one. the abject animal 1 • The Beast in Pain: Abjection and Aggression in Archilochus and William Carlos Williams 27 2 • Destruction and Creation: The Work of Men and Animals in Gustave Flaubert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Ezra Pound 59 part two. becoming something else 3 • Beyond the Pale: Joining the Society of Animals in Aristophanes, Herman Melville, and Louis- Ferdinand Céline 83 4 • Changing Bodies: Being and Becoming an Animal in Semonides, Ovid, and H. P. Lovecraft 109 Epilogue. I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like 145 References 153 Index of Humans 161 Index of Other Animals 163 a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Chicago who read early versions of this manuscript. Danielle Allen, Elizabeth Asmis, Robert von Hallberg, Oren Izenberg, Heather Keenleyside, Sarah Nooter, Joshua Scodel, and Richard Strier have all made this book better than it would have been without them. To David Wray I owe special thanks for the weekly talks that nourished the work at every stage in its development. I would also like to thank the members of the university’s Poetry and Poetics workshop for their comments on an early version of chapter 1, and the members of my spring 2009 class on Aristophanes’ Birds for their astute commentary both on the play and my thoughts about it. I am grateful to the Franke Institute for the Humanities for a faculty fellowship in 2007 that aff orded me an opportunity for continuous labor I would not otherwise have had. Finally, I would like to thank Alan Thomas of the University of Chicago Press for his support, and the press readers for comments that were of immense value to me in prepar- ing this work for publication.