The Pig: In Poetic, Mythological, and Moral-Historical Perspective

The Pig: In Poetic, Mythological, and Moral-Historical Perspective

<I>"The Pig is the Sun...."</I> So begins Oskar Panizza’s outrageously heretical and massively erudite essay on the pig, originally published in 1900 in his journal <I>Zurich Discussions</I>. Moving from the Rig Veda to the Edda to Ovid, from the story of Tristan and Isolde to Nordic celebrations of Christmas, from Grimms’ fairytales to Swedish folklore to Judeo-Egyptian dietary restrictions, the author contends, through painstakingly philological argumentation, that the miraculous swine occupies a central, celestial position as the life-giving force animating the entire universe, usurping the place of God as the beginning and end of all things. <br/><B>Oskar Panizza</B> (1853–1921) was a German psychiatrist turned avant-garde author. In 1894 he published his notorious play <I>The Love Council</I>: "A Heavenly Tragedy in Five Acts" that depicted the spread of syphilis among humanity in 1492 through a senile god, an idiot Christ, a promiscuous Mary and a depraved Pope Alexander VI. Charged with 93 counts of blasphemy, Panizza found his instantaneous literary fame accompanied by a 12-month prison sentence. Moving to Zurich, he published a journal, <I>Zurich Discussions</I>, the majority of which he wrote himself under a series of pen names. After being expelled from Switzerland, he relocated to Paris until his 1899 publication of anti-Germanic verse led to his finances being seized. He spent the last 16 years of his life in a Bavarian mental institution.