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(Avatars of the Octopus)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
It is often difficult to distinguish between the animals of fable and those of zoology. The sphinx, the chimera, the centaur and the hippogriff belong, and always have belonged to the first category. But animals such as the unicorn have long been catalogued and described in works of natural science. In the seventeenth century, a catalogue such as John Johnston's A Description of the Nature of Four-Footed Beasts, written in Latin, translated into English and published in London in 1678, still distinguishes eight different types with corresponding illustrations. Indeed, a unicorn is no more improbable than a narwhal, whose horn, incidentally, was long thought to be the unicorn's. If we thus confuse real animals with mythological ones, what becomes of the habits, size and appearance given to them by travellers on returning from the far countries where they claim to have seen them?
1 Cf. Roger Caillois, Méduse et Cie , Paris, 1960, p. 148-162.
2 Cf. Roger Caillois, Le Mythe et l'homme, Paris, 1938, p. 39-99.
3 References in Otto Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, Leipzig, t. II, 1913, pp. 508-513. For the Minoan, iconography in Jean Charbonneaux, L'Art égéen, Paris, 1929 and in Arne Fururmark, The Chronology of Mycenaean Pottery, Stockholm, 1941.
4 Among them Willy Ley, in a work which is in fact more fantastic than rational, Animaux fabuleux, créatures imaginaires, tr. into French, Paris, 1964, p. 126.
5 It is generally thought that the amphora contained about 40 litres.
6 Olaus Magnus, Hist. gent. sept., XXI. 5, Rome, 1555.
7 Paris, An X (1802), t. II, p. 408-410 = Pontoppidam, Hist. Nat. Norv., t. III, ch. VIII. The octopus is described in t. II, p. 113-412 and t. III, p. 5-117.
8 Ibid., t. II, p. 271-274.
9 Henry Lee, quoted by J. Schnier (p. 9) reports that an Englishman living in China saw in a shop a print showing this time a sleeve fish, attacking a three hundred ton junk and eating sailors "like strawberries."
10 Ibid., t. III p. 88.
11 Dict. pitt. hist. nat., t. VIII, pp. 338-340.
12 This is the figure given by Hugo. The Dictionnaire pittoresque d'histoire naturelle makes do with 120 pairs.
13 Print reproduced in the article quoted by J. Schnier (pl. 3, p. 17), who sees in the aggressive crab a symbol of the phallic and castrating mother (p. 26).
14 I owe all this information to the kindness of Bernard Franck, to whom I wish to acknowledge my appreciation.
15 A. Toussenel, L'Esprit des bêtes, Zoologie passionnelle, Paris, Librairie Phalanstérienne, 2nd edition 1855, p. 281.
16 Martin J. Wells, "Intervertebrate Learning," Natural History, New York, vol. LXXV, No. 2, Feb. 1966, p. 34-41.
17 Andrew Packard and Geoffroy Sanders, "Ce que la pieuvre montre au monde," Endeavour, Vol. XXVIII, No. 104, May 1969, p. 92-99.
18 J. A. Beerens de Haan, "Versuche über den Farbensinn und das psychi sche Leben von Octopus vulgaris," Zeits. f. vergl. Physiol., 1926, IV, p. 766-796.
19 Proc. Zool. Soc., London, CXL4, 229, 1963, quoted by Packard and Sanders.
20 Endeavour, loc. cit., p. 97.
21 Endeavour, loc. cit., p. 97.
22 Paris 1957 ch. X, p. 139-141.
23 Bruce W. Halstead, Dangerous Marine Animals, Cambridge (Maryland), 1959, p. 44-47.
24 This is one of the first comments of Victor Hugo in the chapter analysed: "It (the octopus) is arachnid in form and chameleon in coloura tion." The spider, here, plays a much more important role than the octopus. As far as psychoanalysis is concerned, the one and the other represent the Terrible Mother and Fatality. Cf. Charles Baudouin, Psychanalyse de Victor Hugo, Geneva, 1943, ch. VI, "Arachne-Ananke," pp. 127-148. J. Schnier (art. cit., p. 25), interpreting the confidences of a young girl, believes that, for her, the octopus symbolises attraction and love for her mother, but the spider symbolises the revulsion that she inspires in her at the same time.
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