Octopus, oh Octopus!

Sun Jun 12 07:08:44 CDT 2016

Had to think of Slothrop and Grigori - "Holy shit it's /moving/---an 
octopus? Yes it is the biggest fucking octopus Slothrop has ever seen 
outside of the movies ..." (p. 186) - yesterday, when I was reading Bret 
Easton Ellis' "Glamorama" from 1998 in the translation of Joachim Kalka. 
In chapter 13 of part 2, the protagonist Victor Ward meets a director of 
photography named Felix who tells him about an animal horror film he 
just did. It's called - my ad hoc 're-turn translations' from page 336 
likely will differ slightly from Ellis' original words - "Sh! The 
Octopus" (actually there is, as I just saw, a movie of that title from 
1937, but this remake is apparently fictional) and the third part of a 
serial. The first movie is titled "Attention! The Octopus", the second 
"Alas! The Octopus", and the last one so far bears the working title 
"Let's scram! The Octopus". The serial is financed by Ted Turner. While 
Felix is in general not happy with "Sh! The Octopus" he nevertheless - 
"and Al Sharpton took part as Whitney Houston's extremely embittered 
father --- the embittered harpooner" -  praises the casting and reports 
to Victor that - "really ironic, isn't it?" - David Hasselhoff is the 
first victim of the octopus.

Like Slothrop, I once met an octopus in the Mediterranean Sea. I was 
diving near the Balearic Islands and saw it on a plateau. When the 
creature realized me it communicated unmistakably that it wished to be 
left alone. First - I kid you not! - it took with one of its arms a 
little stone  and, while uttering a bark like sound,  threw it in my 
direction, and then the octopus spread its ink and got lost, somewhere 
in the undersea scenery ...

When I think about the octopus in literature - in the visual arts there 
is Hokusai's "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", and "Octopus' Garden" 
by The Beatles in music - the first author coming to my mind is Ernst 
Jünger. For a couple of semesters during the mid 1920s Jünger studied 
not only philosophy but also biology. First in Leipzig, then, following 
his zoology professor Georg Grimpe who had joined the Stazione Zoologica 
di Napoli, in Naples. (Interestingly enough, Grimpe, who belongs to the 
German professors who declared their 'Avowal to Adolf Hitler' in 
November 1933, had obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on the 
vascular system of Octopoda.) The Stazione Zoologica di Napoli had (and 
still has) an aquarium where Ernst Jünger was observing a small octopus 
species named Loligo media for a couple of weeks. Not that anything in 
terms of science originated from that, but in "Das Abenteuerliche Herz" 
(The Adventurous Heart) we find a piece that expresses Jünger's 
aesthetic fascination with the creature. In that piece, which in the 
second edition bears the title "Frutti de Mare", he praises the octopus' 
ability to first burst into colors - "outta floating scale of brown, 
yellow, violet and purple shades" - and then to pale all of sudden, 
after which "only the deeply green-golden rings, which are enameling the 
eyes, are emitting an afterglow like rainbows". Jünger also emphasizes 
that to eyes used to the paler shimmer of the North the colors of a 
Southern Sea are of inexhaustible charm and linked to dreams and the night.

"Seit einigen Wochen habe ich mich hier seßhaft gemacht, als Dottore 
precatore, wie das Volk die in den Räumen des Aquariums arbeitenden 
Zoologen zu nennen liebt. Es ist ein kühler, klösterlicher Ort, an dem 
bei Tag und Nacht süßes und salziges Wasser in große, gläserne Becken 
sprudelt, inmitten eines Parks, der sich am Meer erstreckt. (...) Meine 
Aufmerksamkeit ist einem kleinen Tintenfisch gewidmet, der Loligo media 
heißt und mich jeden Morgen von neuem durch die Schönheit seines 
farbigen Schwanengesanges entzückt, den er aus einer fließenden Skala 
brauner, gelber, violetter und purpurner Töne kombiniert. Insbesondere 
liebe ich eine köstliche Art des Erblassens an ihm, eine nervöse 
Nachlässigkeit, durch die er neue, unerhörte Überraschungen  
vorzubereiten pflegt. Allzubald fällt diese Pracht dem Tode anheim; sie 
erlischt gleich flammenden Wolken, die sich im Feuchten auflösen, und 
nur die tief grüngoldenen Ringe, die die großen Augen emaillieren, 
leuchten wie Regenbogen nach. Auf seinem spannenlangen Körper spielt das 
Leben seine berauschende Melodie; es überschüttet ihn mit seinem 
Überflusse und läßt ihn gleich einer grausamen Geliebten im Stich. Nach 
so viel Glanz bleibt der Überrest wie ein bleicher Schemen, wie die 
ausgebrannte Hülse eines goldenen Feuerwerks zurück. (...) Was ein 
südliches Meer an Geheimnissen birgt, das ist für die an blasseren 
Schimmer gewöhnten Augen des Nordens von unerschöpflichem Reiz. (...) 
Diese Farben sind traumhafter; sie gehören eher der Nacht als dem Tage 
an; sie bedürfen des dunkelblauen Abgrundes zum Schutz. Zuweilen klingen 
sie in ihren satten violetten und dunkelroten Flecken, die sich in ein 
Fleisch brennen, das feinen weißen, rosa oder gelblichen Porzellanarten 
gleicht, an gewisse Orchideen wie die Stanhopea an --- ..."

(Ernst Jünger: Das Abenteuerliche Herz. Zweite Fassung. Figuren und 
Capriccios. Reclam edition, pp. 55-58)

In Hans Biedermann's lexicon of symbols (see Knauers Lexikon der 
Symbole, p. 312-313) it says that the octopus did have a mythic-symbolic 
meaning in Greek antiquity which is still unknown. Biedermann also 
speculates that the octopus might have been the real world model for 
both, Medusa's head and the Scylla. "The dark cloud of ink worked as a 
symbol of the animal's affinity to higher powers." Later the octopus 
was, in liaison with the prawn, occasionally allocated to the 
astrological sign of Cancer. The ink of the octopus was used as writing 
ink, and its bite was considered to be toxic.

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http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Hokusai_The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife.jpg&imgrefurl=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hokusai_The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife.jpg&h=467&w=670&tbnid=r-k95iOqUTHhlM:&tbnh=121&tbnw=174&docid=PczI0oAcogzWDM&usg=__9OI_jjvKccm1qvKSe8wcNfGQjKs=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivzY6E-qHNAhVBG5oKHVmfBtAQ9QEIIDAB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3LdjeCK5I

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" ... Apirana prepares the traditional bone needles, gives her a piece 
of rope to bite down on, and begins to punch the tips dipped in black 
ink into the skin of the young girl's back./ As if he were a dark 
Pygmalion, he runs his skilled hand in rehearsal over the places he 
intends to draw menacing black clouds, gruesome krakens emerging from 
the troughs ..."

(Christian Kracht: Imperium, p. 166)

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