The Shirt of Nessus

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The Shirt of Nessus, Tunic of Nessus, Nessus-robe, or Nessus' shirt in Greek mythology was the poisoned shirt that killed Hercules. It was once a popular reference in literature. In folkloristics, it is considered an instance of the "Poison Dress" motif.[1]

In Greek mythology, it is the shirt (chiton) daubed with the tainted blood of the centaur Nessus that Deianeira, Hercules' wife, naïvely gave Hercules, burning him, and driving him to throw himself onto a funeral pyre.

Metaphorically, it represents "a source of misfortune from which there is no escape; a fatal present; anything that wounds the susceptibilities"[2] or a "destructive or expiatory force or influence"[3]

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[edit] Historical references

[edit] Hitler plot

Major-General Henning von Tresckow, one of the primary conspirators in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, famously referred to the Shirt of Nessus following the realization that the assassination plot had failed and that he and others involved in the conspiracy would lose their lives as a result:

No one among us can complain about his death, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions.

[edit] References in literature

[edit] T.S. Eliot

In section IV of his poem "Little Gidding," the final poem of Four Quartets, Eliot alludes to the Nessus myth and the Herculean "shirt of flame" in his lines:

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

[edit] John Barth

The Shirt of Nessus (1952) is also the title of a masters thesis of noted American postmodern novelist John Barth. Written for the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University, which Barth himself later ran, The Shirt of Nessus is not a dissertation, but rather a short novel or novella. It can be considered the first full-length fictional work of Barth's, and it also is likely to remain the most elusive. Barth, not unlike a fair number of other authors, has revealed himself to be embarrassed by his early non-published work; in this case, most anything before The Floating Opera. The Shirt of Nessus is briefly referenced in both of Barth's non-fiction collections, The Friday Book and Further Fridays, but little is known of its actual content. The only known copies not held by the author were kept in the Johns Hopkins school library and the Writing Seminars Department thesis copies - however, recent inquiries by devoted Barth fans have shown that the copy held by the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins disappeared in the mid-1960's, while the other seemed to mysteriously "walk out" of the school's special collections division of the library. It is the opinion of some notable JHU faculty members who occasionally talk to Barth that he may have even been the mastermind behind these disappearances himself. While that remains speculation, when the special collections division notified Barth in 2002 (when the volume was first found to be missing), Barth responded that he "was not altogether unhappy the library no longer had a copy".

[edit] Other appearances in fiction

In H. Rider Haggard's Montezuma's Daughter, when Otomie the princess is made to wear the garb of a low-class woman in order to escape imprisonment, the narrator states that "for her proud heart, that dress was the very shirt of Nessus." In James Branch Cabell's Jurgen, the title character dons the shirt of nessus and is transported by it on his travels, in the end of the story he is allowed to take it off, in contradiction to the usual conventions. Also in: -Mihai Eminescu's poem, Ode (In ancient meter), [1883, romanian to english] "Or like Hercules by his garment poisoned;" "By my own illusion consumed I'm wailing On my own grim pyre in flames I'm melting..."

[edit] References in non-fiction

It is also the title of a 1956 non-fiction book dealing with anti-nazi groups in Germany during World War II.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Aarne-Thompson motif D1402.5 "Nessus shirt burns wearer up", as described in Mayor
  2. ^ E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898. online
  3. ^ Oxford English Dictionary

[edit] Bibliography

  • Baughman, Ernest W., Type and Motif Index of the Folktales of England and North America, Walter De Gruyter, June 1966. ISBN 90-279-0046-9.
  • Mayor, Adrienne, "The Nessus Shirt in the New World: Smallpox Blankets in History and Legend," Journal of American Folklore 108:427:54 (1995).

[edit] External links