Pater's Marius: The Temple of God and the Palace of Art

PATER'S MARIUS: THE TEMPLE OF GOD AND THE PALACE OF ART By Lawrence F. Schuetz (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) Pater's Marius the Epicurean has of late undergone a long-deserved critical reclamation. Since T. S. Eliot's curt dismissal of the novel as "incoherent" and "a hodge-podge of the learning of the calssical don,"1 criticism has focused on a delineation and defense of Marius's structure, particularly its mythic patterning. The Dionysus-Apollo myth, which pervades much of Pater's work, has generally been seen as the basis of the novel's structure.2 While the Dionysus-Apollo myth does establish the pattern of the novel's broad cultural-historical background, I would suggest that the basic structural pattern of the novel is provided by Marius' re-enactment of the Cupid-Psyche myth. Rather than an abstract Dlonyslan figure representative of broad cultural movements, Marius Is a unique "anima" who retains his Individual Identity In re-enacting the archetypal"^ quest of the human soul for union with the divine Ideal, here made more difficult by a period of social, cultural and religious upheaval. As Monsman has pointed out. Pater Interpreted the Dionysus-Apollo myth as an embodiment of the cultural evolutionary cycle. The sacrificial death of Dionysus, "by renewing the creative powers of humanity , makes way for the cultural awakening, for the 'renaissance' which Is the Apollonian phase of civilization."3 Set In late second century A. D., Marius encompasses Just such a critical point in cultural history, the crossroads of the decaying Roman (Dlonyslan) and rising Christian (Apollonian) cultures. But the novel's specific references to both Dionysus and Apollo, and the imagery associated with them , are primarily applied not to Marius but to various lesser figures who are more broadly representative of their respective cultures. The decadent Roman culture is represented on several planes as approaching the moribund state of the autumn Dionysus about to give place to a new Apollonian culture. In the crucial "Two Curious Houses" section (Chs. XX-XXI), In which Marius Is offered a "choice" between the Roman and Christian Ideals, Apulelus appears as the epitome of contemporary Roman art. He Is portrayed as a virtual reincarnation of Dionysus, with "locks so carefully arranged, and seemingly so full of affectations, almost like one of those light women."'*' The feast given in his honor is redolent with imagery of the autumn Dionysus: "The heap of cool coronals, lying ready for the foreheads of the guests, . . . the crystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues of the autumn fruit" (II, 80). Moreover, The Death of Paris, danced by Commodus for Apulelus· entertainment, closely resembles a bacchanal.5 Even the villa in which the feast takes place, the first of the "Two Curious Houses," is situated in a "wild neighborhood" pervaded by an aetherial music like "a solitary reed-note" (II, 81). This entire scene, in fact, seems to Marius "a kind of allegoric expression " of Dlonyslan decay (II, 91)· This decadence had, indeed, already been foreshadowed in Flavian, Marius· earliest literary mentor and himself a devotee of Apulelus (I, 97-98). Flavian dies gradually of the plague, reflecting the pattern of "reverie, illusion, delirium" with which Pater characterizes the later decay of the Middle Ages.6 On a political plane, Verus, co-ruler with Aurellus, "might well have reminded people of the delicate Greek god of flowers and wine" (I, 197). His patroness is Venus Genetrlx, a magna mater figure similar to the Dlonyslan Semele. Like Dionysus, Verus returns from conauests in the East with a "more than womanly fondness for fond things" (I, 199), together with the plague, symbolic of spiritual decay, that ravishes Rome and ultimately destroys Verus himself.'' Even Aurellus, the "Stoic emperor," is associated with the winter Dionysus. After his speech on despairing withdrawal from life - a kind of "philosophical suicide" - "in effect, that night winter began , the hardest that had been known for a lifetime," and "the wolves came from the mountains" (I, 215).° Thus, the Dlonyslan imagery of decay covers the three significant cultural planes of art, politics and philosophy. Similarly, the major Apollonian imagery is associated with figures broadly representative of the rising Christian culture...