I, Lobster: A Crustacean Odyssey

Chapter 7 | The "Palinurus"/Palinurus Problem

Palinurus is a lobster, a person, and a mythic messenger. In its taxonomic classification, Palinurus is a genus of lobster in the Palinuridae family, also known as spiny or rock lobster, and sometimes called langouste. Palinurus is also the pen name that Cyril Connolly—the English writer, editor, and influential intellectual—used to write The Unquiet Grave. Naming Palinurus his “ancestor” and “old incarnation ” he writes: “O Palinurus Vulgaris . . . whether feeding on the spumy Mauretanian Banks or undulating—southward to Teneriffe , northward to Scilly—in the systole and diastole of the wave: free me from guilt and fear, free me from guilt and fear, dappleplated scavenger of the resounding sea!”1 Connolly wrote The Unquiet Grave from the fall of 1942 to the fall of 1943,years when France was occupied,the European culture he loved seemed doomed, and his own marriage had failed. His prayerlike plea expresses doubts and despair about his own time and the past. The Unquiet Grave was first published in December 1944 in Horizon, the literary magazine founded by Connolly in 1940 and edited by him until it ceased publication in 1949.2 Later published independently, The Unquiet Grave is a strange book, seasoned by aphorisms from and appreciations of other writers. The references in the excerpt brought the past to bear on the current war’s immediacy. Mauretania was an ancient kingdom on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, part of the Roman Empire until the fifth century ce, when the Vandals invaded it. The first British ocean liner named after Mauretania was launched in September 1906; at the time, it was the largest and fastest ship in the world, sleek and beautiful. The second liner, named to honor the glory of her predecessor, was launched and christened in July 1938, three years after the old ship had been sent to the scrap yard. The Palinurus/Palinurus Problem The Palinurus/Palinurus Problem , 95 Each of the seaworthy Mauretanias was called to military service during the world war of its era. The second one was still carrying troops as Connolly wrote. Both the Homarus and Palinurus lobsters are found in the seas that wash the Scilly Isles, off the coast of Cornwall. Perhaps Connolly knew the story of a vessel named Palinurus that was wrecked on the Scilly rocks in December of 1848. Seventeen bodies were recovered, but there were no survivors to tell what happened or how many more had died. Systolic and diastolic, the heartbeat of past and present, of seasonal migrations, departures and returns, doublings and repetitions : “free me from guilt and fear, free me from guilt and fear,” Connolly pleads. Filled with depression and self-doubt, he considered opium and suicide, but he chose life and literature, and Palinurus as his alter ego—both the lobster Palinurus vulgaris, the “dapple-plated scavenger,” and the man, described below. Perhaps he took the lobster’s name to express his doubt and dejection . Connolly knew and admired T. S. Eliot, so he may have been thinking of that disturbing phrase from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (quoted in the last chapter), “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Scuttling suggests uncertainty. Their isolation and combativeness implies loneliness. The fact that they are dark-hued searchers on the bottom of the ocean projects an aura of despondency. Palinurus the man was an ancient Roman character with few appearances but of lingering importance in Virgil’s Aeneid. After the battle at Troy, when Aeneas is telling his story to Dido, he introduces Palinurus, as the helmsman of his own ship and leader of his fleet. Connolly uses John Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid, first published in 1697: And in redoubled peals the roaring thunder flies. Cast from our course, we wander in the dark. No stars to guide, no point of land to mark. Ev’n Palinurus no distinction found Betwixt the night and day; such darkness reign’d around.3 That phrase“ev’n Palinurus”suggests that, despite the lack of navigational aids—stars, horizon, or landmarks—the skilled Palinu- 96 , i , l o b s t e r rus could have found his way, but that he was vulnerable because, as we will soon discover, the will of the gods opposed him. Having won the love of Dido,Aeneas abandons her.Distraught, she throws herself onto her funeral pyre.As...