A scan of The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell: Verse. Andrew Marvell lived 1621-1678.
Marvell is saying that the eunuch will become famous through his poems, which will substitute for the children he will never have. The eunuch isn't "barren" insofar as he uses his "verse" to impregnate "fame," and his poems will be repeated ("Echo nurse..."), becoming "a tuneful race."
IN EUNUCHUM POETAM: Nec sterilem te crede, licet mulieribus exul / Falcem virgineae nequeas immittere messi, / Et nostro peccare modo. Tibi fama perenne / Praegnabit, rapiesque novem de monte sorores, / Et pariet modulos Echo repetita nepotes.
Translation. UPON A EUNUCH-POET. Deem not that thou art barren, though, forlorn, / Thou plunge no sickle in the virgin corn, / And, mateless, hast no part in our sweet curse. / Fame shall be ever pregnant by thy verse; / The vocal Sisters nine thou shalt embrace, / And Echo nurse thy words, a tuneful race.
NOTE. These Latin lines apeared originally in the folio of 1681 (p. 63), where they are headed 'Upon an Eunuch, a Poet. Fragment.' G.
Richard K. Barksdale published an article in 1986 about psychological castration in modern black fiction. He taught at the University of Illinois until 1989 and died in 1993.
To give some background about older fiction, Barksdale mentions William Faulkner's Light in August in which the black character Joe Christmas is castrated by Percy Grimm. Barksdale says that Christmas “fits into the Southern gothic tradition” in the way he “puts aside his gun and submits, almost lovingly, to his castration and death.” (Peter Swiggart's book The Art of Faulkner's Novels gives more information about Joe Christmas: “His grandfather, Eupheus (Doc) Hines, kills Joe’s father, a dark-skinned circus man, and allows Joe’s unmarried mother to die in childbirth. Hines believes that Joe represents the very ‘teeth and fangs’ of Satan’s evil...”)
In more recent black fiction, however, such as in “Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man and Corregidora, in Morrison’s Sula, in Walker’s The Color Purple, and in Paule Marshall’s Praise Song for the Widow" the characters experience some “severe psychological mutilation of the black male psyche.” In all these books, the castration is metaphorical, except for Eva’s Man (1976) in which Eva Medina Canada kills her lover Davis Carter by biting off his genitals and leaving him to bleed out. Barksdale comments that “where in Faulkner’s Light in August an act of sexual violence is rooted in an interracial social problem, in Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man the act of sexual violence appears to be an interracial personal problem.” He concludes that
“some recent black American novelists have introduced male characters who, because of their penchant for sexual violence and because of their brutal insensitivity, deserve castration; and there are other male characters who, because of circumstances beyond their control, have been symbolically castrated and are hence the ‘wounded Adams’ of the black experience."
Dennis Wheatley was a popular author in early twentieth-century England. His novel The Eunuch of Stamboul enjoyed many printings with different cover designs, many of which illustrate the titular eunuch.
Wheatley dedicated his book to Capt. George "Peter" H. Hill, author of Go Spy the Land and Then Came the Dawn, who he credits as an influence. He also mentions the friendship of "Colonel Charles Davey and Mr. Norman Penzer, both of whom have known the mystery and romance of Stamboul."
The author lays bare one of his guiding stereotypes about Turks late in the story. It will be helpful for us to see it up front:
"Kazdim [the Eunuch] was so completely Oriental — subtle, shrewd, sadistic, but so certain of himself and showing so little of his emotions that it had seemed a waste of breath to bandy words with him, whereas the [Turkish] Prince was so much more a Western type that Swithin [the Englishman] felt almost as if he were up against an exceptionally depraved and brutal specimen of his own kind." (p. 207)
In this blog post, I reveal the repetitive descriptions of Kazdim as fat, ugly, and evil, which is a common treatment of eunuch characters in both fiction and non-fiction. After that, I summarize the plot (with spoilers!) and provide links to the film version.
The trope of the fat, ugly, evil eunuch
The story is notable for its portrayal of the Eunuch, Kazdim Hari Bekar. A "treacherous rascal" (p. 55), he had formerly lived in the palace "less than ten years before" the novel's action is set and had "slain beautiful disobedient odalisques with one of those glittering scimitars" (p. 122). With the fall of the old political system, he is now the Chief of Police. The career trajectory makes sense, as a character explains:
"Spying's the natural business of a Eunuch. In the big harems there were scores of bonnie lassies wi' only one husband between the lot of them and no natural ootlet fer their passions. At times they'd go fair mad fer the lack of a man, so every harem was riddled wi' plots to smuggle in some lusty young hamal or soldier fer an hour. 'Twas the job of the Eunuchs to match their cunning against that of the women, and the clever ones made a mint o'money at the game. Think of the opportunities fer blackmail in sich a poseetion, mon! When one of these onnotural creatures had nosed out a love affair he'd play the woman like a salmon trout by threatening ta tell the master if she did not find him sil'er enough to still his tongue or, if she were rich, he'd encourage her to play the whore provided he made a guid thing oot of it. But all the time he'd have to go canny as a cat, fer if the woman were caught at her tricks he'd be called on ta answer fer it and if his brother Eunuchs found him out they'd tell on him to curry favour with their boss, so he stood a double chance of having his fat neck wrung. Can ye tell me a better school than that fer a secret service man?" (p. 56)
One of the British characters speculates: "Kazdim is naturally a reactionary at heart. As one of the old school of thugs and grafters the reforms Kemal has brought in have probably robbed him of a fortune, so he would be among the first to sympathize with the aims of the Kaka [the anti-Kemal resistance]." (p. 116)
The word "Eunuch" is typically capitalized in this novel — for example, "the young Turk probably knew who the Eunuch was and his evil reputation already" (p. 109) — suggesting it is treated more as a title than a gender. There are no other eunuch characters in the novel.
Kazdim is a single-minded spy and assassin and is uniformly charmless in his conversation. Every time he appears, the reader is reminded of how enormously fat he is. We never see him eat; instead, he is always smoking cigarettes.
"He was a tall man with immensely powerful shoulders but the effect of his height was minimized by his gigantic girth. He had the stomach of an elephant and would easily have turned the scale at twenty stone [i.e. 280 lbs, or 127 kg]. His face was even more unusual than his body, for apparently no neck supported it and it rose straight out of his shoulders like a vast inverted U. The eyes were tiny beads in that great expanse of flesh and almost buried in folds of fat, the cheeks puffed out, yet withered like the skin of a last year's apple, and the mouth was an absurd pink rosebud set above a seemingly endless cascade of chins." (p. 87)
Later he is described as having a "circumference about two ells [i.e. 90 inches, or 2.3 meters] and weight nearly up to that of a Brontosaurus." (p. 164) These sobriquets make comebacks: "the twenty-stone Eunuch" (p. 172), "the Brontosaurus is after her" (p. 236). When not dinosaur-like, he is "elephantine" (p. 290).
He has a "vast protruding paunch," an "absurdly small mouth," and a "tiny fluting voice." Again, in another place: "the big man bleated in his high thin voice." (p. 173)
He is: "Huge, sinister, implacable, relentless, as though the passage of time had no meaning for him" (p. 133), owner of "those small beady eyes embedded in their rolls of fat" and a "high-pitched, child-like voice" (pp. 135-136). "His great moon-like face broke into a smile of evil enjoyment as he slowly crushed out his cigarette with that air of terrible finality." (p. 171) And: "...the great brute placidly lit another cigarette and puffed at it thoughtfully, watching him with that unwinking stare by which a snake fascinates a bird." (p. 172) Given an opportunity to execute someone, Kazdim's face is "pasty white and grinning in the torch light, a mask of unutterably cruel enjoyment." (p. 182) "The Eunuch looked old, tired and evil tempered as he sank heavily into the only armchair." (p. 255) "Over her mother's shoulder, as in some awful nightmare, she saw the vast, still form of the Eunuch, overlapping the sides of the armchair, a great pile of cigarette ends making a small mountain in a brass ash tray beside him." (p. 271)
He has "puffy eyelids" (p. 215). "The Eunuch's enormous sides wobbled and shook as though they were made of jelly." (p. 215) "Kazdim's great expanse of face had gone grey with fury." (p. 271) "The Eunuch's small dark eyes bored into hers." (p. 272)
"The only things small about him are "[h]is small feet which so miraculously supported that huge body..." (p. 272) Again, "the patter of the Eunuch's tiny feet sounded upon the first stairs..." (p. 274)
Even the description of his study contains a fat joke:
"They crossed a spacious tiled hall, with a gallery running round above it, and a fountain playing in a marble basin at its centre. Then passed into a small, comfortably furnished room, with book-lined shelves and one tall window. A great satinwood desk, from which a semi-circular portion had been cut to accommodate the stomach of its owner, and a specially made swivel chair of enormous proportions behind it, showed the room to be the Eunuch's special sanctum." (p. 290)
His allegiance to his superior, Prince Ali, is revolting in large part because Ali is revolting. When Ali enters the room, Kazdim unseats himself "and, with unexpected agility, salaamed almost to the floor" (p. 215) He addresses Prince Ali: "''To hear is to obey,' O Flower of Holiness,' cringed the Eunuch, bowing again almost to the ground." (p. 218)
Plot (with spoilers)
The story has a contemporary setting during the presidency of Mustafa Kemal Atatรผrk (1923-1938).
The first six chapters set the stage. Through a series of somewhat farcical accidents, Diana, the young daughter of Sir George Duncannon, is mauled outside a dance in England by the lips of the late Turkish sultan's nephew, General His Serene Highness the Prince Ali, Emir of Konia and Grand Commander of the Star and Crescent. Diana is unsure of his age, as "[i]t is difficult to tell with Orientals," (p. 12) except that she knows he served in the World War, but in any case he is a loathsome chauvinist and she doesn't care for his advances. In an amusing appraisal: "Half unconsciously she noticed that for so tall a man his hand was surprisingly small — plump, sensitive, womanish — and that the index finger was distinctly crooked." (p. 6) An English officer, Capt. Swithin Destime, rushes to her aid and decks Prince Ali without realizing who he is. Destime is fired from the military as a diplomatic necessity. He fears, despite his fluency in Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, that he will never get another job, but George Duncannon offers him a special covert mission for him in Stamboul as a spy. The characters sail to Constantinople.
In chapter seven, the British party disembark their yacht in Stamboul and the fun begins. A young Turkish man, Reouf, confides the intention of his political group, the Kaka, to overthrow Mustafa Kemal. At that moment, Kazdim, "one of the strangest looking individuals they had ever seen," appears and interrupts. He warns them that he speaks English and lets them know he'd like to show them "the wall" built by Emperor Theodosius in the fifth century. Although Swithin intuitively feels "intense distrust," he idiotically asks the man if he is a tour guide and, yet more idiotically, he and Reouf climb into the wall with him. (p. 88)
"The repulsive-looking fat man" leads them to an oubliette (a hole through which people are dropped from a great height into a river) and warns them that "such things still might happen to those who are so clever that they make the big mistake." (pp. 90-91) (Later, Swithin recalls the eunuch's face as "gloating" at this moment. (p. 144)) That evening, Kazdim shows up and announces, in a "thin falsetto," that "that of which we spoke together has happened." Reouf rises and leaves with Kazdim. Swithin remains clueless. A woman at the table tells him: "That is the Chief of the Secret Police, Kazdim Hari Bekar, the Eunuch of Stamboul!" (p. 107) She has to explain further: "That man is a monster of sadistic cruelty; 'e 'as never missed an execution an' delights in carrying them out 'imself!" (p. 108)
Swithin tells Diana that he treated Tania Vorontzoff as a messenger for some confidential information. Diana tells him that this was a big mistake, since Tania works for Kazdim and "the second Kazdim sees that letter he will be after you." (p. 118)
In the next scene, Kazdim hides behind a pillar (as best he can, a "vast grotesque figure...in a modern lounge suit" (p. 122)) to spy on Peter Carew, who is dining with Tania. Kazdim then surprises Tania at her home, seating his "vast form" in "their largest armchair" and generating "a little mountain of cigarette stubs". Tania's mother, the Baroness, deliberately calls Kazdim by the title "Effendi" (i.e. lord) because she knows he likes it, even though he has to ask her to refrain from doing so because the title is no longer usable under the new laws. (p. 132, see also 258) "His little rosebud mouth curved into a smile between the huge hanging cheeks wrinkled like withered apple skin," Wheatley says, just before Kazdim threatens the Baroness: "I am your protector as long as you obey my every word — if not..." (p. 133) While talking with Tania he suddenly shouts "Silence!" and adds: "A chattering woman is a scourge to thought." (p. 137) He threatens to send Tania and her mother back to Russia, as he controls their permit to live in Turkey. He tells her she's not the only attractive woman he can find for the job he needs done. "Allah! why is that thou hast cursed women by making them such imbeciles? Think, girl. Think, I say!" (pp. 137-138) He twists her ear gratuitously on his way out the door. (p.138)
Reouf's drowned corpse is recovered, hands tied behind his back, and Swithin finds time to talk with Reouf's brother Arif. Arif says he knows that "that hell-spawn Kazdim" killed him. (p. 148) Swithin argues that Kazdim did so not to damage the Kaka but to protect it, as Kazdim likely believed that Reouf had loose lips and was a liability. He believes that Kazdim, despite his position for the current government, is himself secretly a Kaka rebel. Swithin warns Arif that "that devil Kazdim is high up in this thing so he will be one of your new rulers. Surely you are not mad enough to wish to make a Minister of your brother's murderer." (p. 158)
Kazdim and his two armed guards lie in wait in his own apartment for Swithin to arrive. (p. 168) As he threatens Swithin with immediate death via oubliette, "the Eunuch chuckled." (p. 174) Swithin resists and ends up bound, gagged, semi-conscious, sharing the back seat of a car with Kazdim, driven to the oubliette. Two guards drop him down the hole.
The guards are described as follows:
"Both were huge negroes, naked to the waist, their black skins shiny and glistening, their white eye-balls staring at him with dumb animal curiosity.
Kazdim spoke to them in his high falsetto. The mouth of one opened in a half-imbecile grin and Swithin realized dimly, through a wave of sickening horror, that the man had no tongue — and that they were mutes, old henchmen of the Eunuch's from his Palace days perhaps, the instruments of many hideous crimes under his orders if they could only tell of them." (p. 182)
This description is dehumanizing insofar as they have "animal" rather than human "curiosity" and even "eye-balls" rather than eyes. The word "dumb" is complicated insofar as it is immediately revealed that they are, in fact, mute (a secondary definition of the word "dumb"), but Swithin had not known this until after they were described as "dumb."
Swithin miraculously survives his attempted execution. When he next sees Prince Ali, he tells a swaggering lie that Ali and Kazdim are expected to be hanged together (p. 209). Kazdim, for his part, is amazed to see Swithin alive. Swithin says "I have nine lives like a cat," and Kazdim thinks of ways to kill him again:
"give you a drink of strychnine, stick a knife into your liver — shoot you through both lungs — impale you on a stake — hang you by the neck — cut your throat — and, finally, burn your body. Thus will we dispose of the eight lives which you have left, and if I exercise some care, you will, I trust, remain conscious up to the seventh operation — although each would prove fatal in itself after a lapse of time."
Asked for alternatives, Kazdim suggests
"bowstringing — cutting of the head — flaying — suffocation by pillows — starvation — sewing up in a sack with wild cats — snake-bite — or feeding you to the rats in one of the old cisterns,"
methods he claims to "have witnessed in my time." (p. 213)
Here, then, we finally get some back story on Kazdim's character. He says that he was mentored by "'Twisted Beard' Pasha" who was the "Comptroller of the Household to His Majesty the Sultan Abdul Hamid," and also by the "Grand Eunuch Djevher Agha." Swithin taunts him, saying that Djevher Agha, just like Kazdim, had "royal proportions and many chins" which resulted in a botched hanging, a long time choking on his own blood, with his head finally "nearly a yard from his shoulders and his great carcass suspended by a rope of neck not thicker than my wrist." (pp. 214-215) (Note: I suspect Wheatley may have gotten this information about Djevher Agha's hanging from the 11th chapter, "Cleansing of the City and Dispersal of the Imperial Harem," of Francis McCullagh's 1910 book The Fall of Abd-ul-Hamid.) But this is the only information we are to receive about the formation of Kazdim's character. We don't hear about how he came to be castrated or why he is so evil.
He spies on Tania and her mother, and reveals himself, "huge, triumphant, his little black eyes glinting, his tiny mouth twisted into an evil snarl." He indicts them with "a thin vindictive screech." (p. 273) He kills Tania's mother by slapping her on the neck with his bare hand (p. 274), the very touch of his skin proving itself lethal.
When Ali says in front of everyone that he intends to commit a prolonged rape against Diana by making her bathe, dress, and make obeisance to him according to the elaborate harem ritual, Kazdim "smiled with devilish amusement and toyed with the big automatic." (p. 295) He is, to complete the poetry of the novel-length fat joke, shot in the stomach (of course by Tania). He issues "a thin wail" of mortal injury. "His black eyes started out from between their rolls of fat, a terribly agony seemed to shake his great body for a second, then he crashed forward..." (p. 297) Swithin muses shortly afterward: "The only clear thought she had left was to get the Eunuch — and she did." (p. 301) We don't see Kazdim finally expire and he isn't given any last words, but we hear he returned fatal gunfire at Tania before he died.
Film version
In 1936, the year after the publication of the novel, it was turned into a film called "The Secret of Stamboul." Kazdim was played by Frank Vosper, who never made another film because he died suddenly in early 1937.
In this short clip, beginning at 1:30, you can see Kazdim on the left dropping an object into the oubliette to impress Reouf and Swithin. The dialogue is not the same as in the book, nor is the actor as physically large as the novelist insisted the Eunuch was.
The film was also known as "The Spy in White." The full film is here:
The 2013 novel Like Fire Through Bone by E. E. Ottoman is told from the perspective of Vasilios Eleni, a eunuch who serves Panagiotis Xarchakos in a household that includes Panagiotis' wife Eudoxia and her own eunuch servants. The setting seems to be Byzantine, but the level of historical accuracy is unclear. It may be considered a fantasy world.
Vasilios' history
When Vasilios was 14 years old, he was conscripted into an army along with his father and brother on their tiny island home where they fought with swords against the Empire. However, at age 15, he was captured and castrated, was no longer "considered a man," swore he'd rather die, and refused food, "determined to die with honor or whatever his fifteen-year-old self had thought that was, thin and almost skeletal in shackles, still healing from where he'd been made a eunuch." But when Panagiotis bought him for ten solidus and gave him the choice – work to death in the iron mines, or learn to read and write and become his secretary – Vasilios chose the latter. The eldest eunuch in Panagiotis' household was cruel to him. Vasilios decided "that I would become the best eunuch I could be, that people would talk about me with envy and admiration." He had to submit to Panagiotis's sexual desires, and felt that he must "uphold his image as the calm and collected castratos."
Vasilios dresses up nicely in a "red, finely woven, lamb's-wool, ankle-length tunic with a gray woven trim, his best leather belt, and gray slippers." He has "smoke-dark skin, short-cropped dark hair, and dark eyes." On another occasion, walking near the Emperor's palace, Vasilios thinks he looks vulnerable "in his fine clothes and the headscarf that clearly marked him as a eunuch and, therefore, unarmed."
Autonomy
The household eunuchs have an ambiguous amount of autonomy. Eudoxia says: "I always prefer my servants to be able to think and make decisions for themselves when necessary. It is an admirable quality, especially in a eunuch." Panagiotis tells Vasilios that "your condition means you cannot be expected to perform a man's duties, but I trust you above all others, and you have never given me reason to regret that trust." But Vasilios warns a subordinate domestic eunuch who has transgressed that "most other masters would beat you every day for daring to even think beyond what you were ordered to do. We are eunuchs and that makes us more valuable than most servants, but never forget that we are still owned. ... You have disappointed not only the expectation of our master and mistress, but the very duties you were designed to do." Vasilios treats him relatively leniently, lashing him instead of mutilating him, but he regrets that the other household eunuchs are fearful of him after this incident. He reminds everyone: "A jewel [this book's word for a concubine who was castrated in boyhood] who refuses to serve his master in bed gets beaten with a switch, not merely less wine for a week."
When Panagiotis dies, the household eunuchs prepare his body, and Vasilios thinks "suddenly that he no longer belonged to Panagiotis. They were equals in some strange way, because in death Panagiotis no longer held the wealth and power he had in life, the ability to enrich or destroy Vasilios's life with a single word."
Gender
A six-year-old girl asks him: "Are you really a eunuch?" and her mother reprimands her: "That's not a polite thing to ask over a meal." When the girl persists, saying, "the others said you weren't really a man because you are a eunuch, but you look like a man to me," Vasilios finally answers, "In some ways, I am still a man, and in some ways, I am not. In many ways, I still think of myself as a man, but often, I and other eunuchs are grouped with women and girls, like at the public baths, for instance. Most of the time, though, I think eunuchs are a little bit of neither and a little bit of both."
All of the eunuchs in the story have a first male name and a second female name. The main character, Vasilios Eleni, meets two noble eunuchs, Ilkay Zoe and Xรชgodis Aetia.
Role
"Ilkay Zoe was the most famous eunuch in the Empire, maybe the most famous eunuch who ever lived. A brilliant strategist and most trusted advisor to the previous Emperor, he'd been given his freedom when the late Emperor had been on his deathbed." He is portrayed as beautiful in palace art. Theofilos Yalim is his lover.
When Vasilios meets Ilkay, he has this dilemma:
Vasilios didn't know how to address Ilkay respectfully. Usually eunuchs referred to each other by their male names, but usually eunuchs weren't free or as well-thought-of as Ilkay. Should he use both his male and female names? Every eunuch was stripped of their male birth name and given a new male and female name when they were cut. The double name signified the fact that they were no longer male but not female either. To use both would be to show the greatest amount of respect yet even that seemed somehow not enough. Vasilios tried to remember if there was another even more formal title he should be using. He didn't know if Ilkay had a title anymore.
Xรชgodis Aetia, despite being married to a woman, presents as a eunuch because he wears silver earrings. He's tall, gray-haired, wearing a "long ankle-length tunic in gray and dark blue," and "carried himself with the air of someone who was used to being obeyed instantly and without question". He seems to have a high voice that he forces down artificially when he speaks.
Another high-ranking figure who appears only briefly in the book is a "very dark-skinned" eunuch wearing "expensive lamb's wool, with the glint of silver in his ears and around each wrist as well." The eunuch bows to Vasilios. He is the servant of the Lady Adhira Rahimi.
"If you could do anything, what would you do?" - Nereida
"I don't know. I try not to think about what will never be. I am the eunuch of a well-placed household, good at what I do, and that is enough." - Vasilios
"Is it?" - Nereida
Crush
Panagiotis offers the sexual services of Vasilios, his property, to a man named Markos. Markos declines to use Vasilios sexually, but says he would like Vasilios to accompany him on an errand. When they are in private, Markos tells Vasilios that he would like to attempt to buy his freedom so that they can have consensual sex.
Vasilios is bewildered by Markos' expression of attraction. Usually, as far as Vasilios believes, men are attracted to eunuchs when they are castrated early in life and with care not to scar them excessively so that they can be "jewels" (concubines). This does not describe Vasilios' life story, and he is not even young anymore. Furthermore: "If Markos wanted a lover equal to himself, wouldn't he want one who still fully functioned as a man?" On his own body, "there was nothing left but a tiny puckered nub of scar tissue and another long, raised scar below it." Markos eventually tells him that he's impressed that Vasilios retains his own will: "You have held your own. Even while kneeling, even while following every rule and order, you are still your own person. And that is amazing."
When he finally has the chance to have a sexual relationship with Markos, Vasilios confides that he does not enjoy performing oral sex on men, and Markos confides that he does not enjoy anally penetrating eunuchs (even though, Vasilios assures him, "that according to the Church it is not immoral to take a eunuch that way.")
Demon hunting
Vasilios has the opportunity to hunt a demon named Gyllou. A woman named Arite says she can't open the door to cast it out, but she says that Vasilios is gifted with "the sight" to find the person who can open the door. Vasilios is reluctant to leave Panagiotis's funeral preparations. "I don't have a choice," he says. Arite says: "Maybe not now, not yet, but there will come a time when you will have a choice, and then you will need to choose between being the obedient eunuch or trusting in God and letting what happens, happen after that."
Vasilios and his posse go on a quest to the monastery of the Archangel Michael, believing that there is a chance that they can send the demon back to Hell, but at the same time fearing that "the punishment for a eunuch who ran was death." The monk says that women aren't allowed inside, but eunuchs are. Vasilios meets Brother Stavros who is half-man, half-snake, and who suggests that Vasilios might like to join the religious order. Vasilios replies: "Thank you, but I don't think I am cut out for such a life." Th author then implies that he is simply not religious: "...thinking of the faith of his childhood, the statues, offerings, and rules about what the Gods would or would not tolerate. He'd been young and known little about faith or belief, and then he'd been taken, cut, and sold. He shook his head." Elsewhere he says he is not superstitious about the color of cats' eyes: "I believe we make our own luck."
In a dream, Vasilios sees Malachi: "This figure was tall, with striking, strong features and wide shoulders. The figure was dressed in dark-blue silk, of a shade Vasilios had never seen before, with a scarf pulled over his head and tucked around his shoulders in the way eunuchs wore them. His skin was the color of fire-darkened copper." The figure shaves his head bald wears gold earrings, and carries a dark red snake. His "eyes were dark, but flecked through with gold."
Like many other books that feature eunuch characters, "Equal of the Sun" opens with a description of the main character’s castration. The eunuch narrator in this instance recounts his story for a princess, upon her request.
Yet this story differs significantly from other books that employ the same gambit. Equal of the Sun, set in mid-sixteenth-century Iran by novelist Anita Amirrezvani and published in 2012, is one of the deepest and most complex treatments of a eunuch character in modern literature.
The story is narrated by a young man of noble birth. Distraught that his father has been fingered as a traitor and summarily executed, he promises himself that he will ferret out his father’s persecutor, but to do that, he needs access to the palace. So, at seventeen years of age, he voluntarily submits to castration and applies to the palace as a eunuch servant. He is accepted as the personal servant of the quick-witted Princess Pari, daughter of the Shah, who privately declares the eunuch to be her “chief of information.” He is taken under the wing of other high-ranking eunuchs who give him his palace name, Javaher, meaning “jewel.” His mentor is Balamani, who came from India as a child slave and who is second in command to the chief eunuch Anwar, who came from Africa.
Javaher feels a close bond with his princess, whom he often calls “the lieutenant of my life.” She tells him, “How curious it is that you were sent to me: I would never have expected to feel such kinship with a eunuch.” And he thinks to himself: “I began to feel, when we were alone, that we were not just princess and servant – we were hamrah, companions on the same road.” Smarter than her brothers, the princess wishes to rule alone and thinks of Javaher as her “acting vizier.” She even presents him with a religiously engraved, gilt steel dagger in a leather scabbard as a symbol of their pact.
She reflects on their bond: “My job is to mother my country, not bear children. Yours is the same.” In silent response, Javaher thinks: “How different we were from ordinary men and women!” Reconceiving his personal mission as the “grand and strange” goal of leading the country to a brighter future makes him feel hopeful.
Javaher is selected by the princess in part because he presents a well controlled demeanor at court. However, he is capable of passive aggression. While arguing with Balamani over how they will respond to news of a murder, his nonverbal language reveals his anger indirectly: “I lifted the blanket off my bedroll with so much force that it flew onto the floor.” He is not often molested, presenting himself as a force to be reckoned with.
Not all the eunuchs in the story are described in complimentary terms. Abteen the scribe is “sunken-chested” with “rounded shoulders,” humorless and bored by gifts. Fareed is a messenger who is never assigned to stay long because his botched castration causes him always to smell of urine. A nameless guard lolls in sleep outside the women’s chamber, enabling Javaher to sneak in. Seen in the eunuchs’ private bath, Anwar and his friend look like women with “pendulous breasts and flat pubic areas.”
Javaher, on the other hand, is described as more masculine in appearance because of the relatively late age at which he was castrated. He retains sexual interest in women and manages to have an active sex life (which is described explicitly) despite the complete loss of all of his male organs. At first, while relearning how to urinate, it seems that “the vertigo was so great I feared I would slip into the latrines. Was I male? Female? What was I?” Yet soon he comes to feel that “my freshly healed wound had reinvented my capacity for pleasure.”
Javaher has a strong sense of self. He knows himself “as a man, not just as a eunuch. I was, after all, more than a mutilation, in my own eyes.” He finds inspiration in other eunuchs, including the Chinese eunuch Cai Lun who was said to have invented paper and Alexander’s lover Bagoas who “led the ancient empire of Iran, crushing even mighty Egypt,” whose names he invokes prayerfully. He sympathizes with other eunuchs, as when he throws stones to anonymously wake a guard so he will not be punished for sleeping on the job.
He is ambivalent about his situation. He fears that women will leave him as they graduate to marriages. “Most women crave children, and that was the one thing I could not provide,” he acknowledges. “Yet I was still a man, wasn’t I?” In a nightmare, a woman asks him in bed: “What are you?” Yet he is able to recognize that “something deep within me wanted to sacrifice myself for my father, just as he had given his life for us,” and this sacrifice lends meaning to his life choice and its consequences. When his princess writes a poem celebrating him and his “third sex” nature, he glows: “My birth as a eunuch had finally been recognized and recorded with as much fanfare as the moment a male child enters the world.” Just as he recalls hearing a blind poet who puts great feeling into each word, he finds that “there was glory in being half, not whole, glory in the task of it.”
For Javaher, this mythic “task” is not so much to be physically whole but to live honestly. After separate altercations with two men, Javaher explains to Balamani:
“I may pay the price of my life for my words, but at least I said them. I don’t care that I made an enemy. I don’t care that I may lose my posting. For once, I did not feel as if what was true in my heart as as different from what was on my lips as day to night. I became like hot white light, pure and clean. I felt as if my testicles had grown to the size of mountains and I had earned the right to shout out, 'I am a complete man!'"
In many novels, eunuchs are villains or objects of pity or scorn. Where they are supporting characters, they often have nearly non-speaking roles and are typecast in terms of their job functions rather than being allowed to convey a sense of self and autonomy. Anita Amirrezvani has bucked the trend by depicting a eunuch who is indisputably a full human being. She reveals that she began writing the novel with "six alternating narrators" until, unsurprisingly, Javaher "emerged as the most compelling of the bunch."
Originally posted to Helium Network on May 1, 2013.
Dora Levy Mossanen's sensuous novel Harem follows three generations of Jewish women in Persia. Rebekah, given to an abusive husband before she reaches puberty, finds a better life after his death as a textile merchant and a prostitute. A scar she retains from the torture has seemingly magical properties. Her daughter, Gold Dust, is said to contain a kind of music within her bones. She is given to the Shah's harem at a young age and becomes his favorite even before she sleeps with him. She bears a daughter, Raven, an albino who grows unusually rapidly and is destined to become a fearless queen.
A reference to the queen Nakshidil places the characters in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The setting is richly described with the scents of fruit and spices and the fabrics and adornments of the period.
One of the main characters is the Shah's high-voiced, opium-addicted Chief Black Eunuch. Known as Narcissus, he is responsible for selecting girls for the harem and occasionally ventures into the Jewish quarter to buy alcohol, which is how he first meets Rebekah and her daughter, clad in satin paisley pants and a red turban ornamented with sapphires.
Narcissus keeps his pickled organ in a jar, believing he'll be denied eternal paradise if his body cannot be made whole after his death - an odd detail, as this was a famous custom of eunuchs in China, and this story is set in the Turkish harem. However, given the magical elements of the story, some creative license may be granted. The Shah's body exudes the odor of black roses; his daughter swims with sharks. So it is unsurprising that Narcissus is a master of the dark arts: he fasts, inhales fumes, and communes with spirits. When he wishes to curse Gold Dust with female offspring, he makes paste of snake brains, kills a rooster, and cuts a lock of her hair to burn.
The three women are locked in a tense relationship with Narcissus. Initially Rebekah must get his attention to gain access to the harem and she must continue to demonstrate her importance to him. But before long, Narcissus fears his status is in jeopardy because the Shah gives confidences and considerations to his young sultana that he does not give to his chief black eunuch. Rebekah and Narcissus therefore strive to undercut each other in secret.
The trio must also contend with Moon Face, a nasty harem lady, and her personal eunuch servant Gulf Lily, whose tongue was cut off, preventing him from speaking but not from scheming. There is also an individual called Hazel-Boy to whom the reader is previously introduced as a boy by another name before he reappears in the story as a palace eunuch. "He was man and woman in one," the author writes, "without each gender's complicated intricacies."
One of the more provocative comments in the book about race and gender is uttered toward the end. Gold Dust's physician, a Jew like her, complains to her mother Rebekah that he cannot examine the patient if he is not permitted to remove her clothing. "If a hakim [doctor] is not a mahram [sexually off-limits] and a confidant of the harem, who is? Do I have to cut off my member before I examine her?" he protests. "Go tell the Shah...that I'm a Jew, and like all other persecuted Jews, I've long lost my manhood!"
As even fictional human lives do not wrap up neatly, this sweeping three-generation saga cannot redeem the poverty and cruelty that characterized the times for so many, but the reader is rewarded by investing sympathy in Rebekah's clan. Although the occult elements are never explained and it is unclear whether supernatural occurrences "really exist" in this fictional world, the characters are nonetheless understandable and their lives carry weight and elegance.
Originally posted to Helium Network on June 24, 2012.
The character Schahabarim is the high priest of Tanit and a eunuch who, although infrequently mentioned, plays an important supporting role in "Salammbo," Gustave Flaubert's fictionalized retelling of the Mercenary War in 241-238 BCE in North Africa. The novel was originally published in French in 1862. Religion is an important motivator for the characters in this novel and Schahabarim is a guardian of many of these spiritual secrets and traditions.
It is possible to tell the story excluding mention of Schahabarim. The main characters include Matho, a Libyan soldier in the Carthaginian army who leads frustrated soldiers in a revolt against their leader Hamilcar, and Salammbo, Hamilcar's beautiful virgin daughter. Matho falls in love with Salammbo at first sight and becomes obsessed with her, feeling love and hate simultaneously and losing all sense of judgment.
As Salammbo is unaware of Matho's existence, he resolves to find her again. Matho and his sidekick Spendius break into the temple looking for the Carthaginian's fabled sacred veil called the "zaimph." In so doing, Matho makes a fatal cultural misunderstanding; it is criminal even to cast one's eyes upon the zaimph. Matho steals the zaimph from the temple and then presents it to Salammbo who is asleep in bed. She is horrified – according to superstition, her life is now at risk – and calls for her servants as Matho escapes. Salammbo, who feels a mixture of attraction and repulsion to Matho, later presents herself in his tent with the intention of either stealing the zaimph back or bargaining her body for it if necessary. Matho begins to seduce or rape her but falls asleep. Salammbo takes the zaimph and upon her return to her father Hamilcar, he betrothes her on the spot to his ally Narr'Havas, a serial rapist on the battlefield who feels only a lukewarm excitement about the opportunity to possess a beautiful woman, and about whom Salammbo likewise feels indifferent.
The Carthaginian army then takes a turn for the worse; starving under siege, soldiers resort to eating each other. In despair, the city's inhabitants turn away from the relatively gentle goddess Tanit (sometimes called the Rabbet, the feminine form of "ruler"); they build a great bonfire and sacrifice dozens of their own children to the bloodthirsty god Baal (also called Moloch). This seems to provide a change of military fortune. The Carthaginians then blame the rebel Matho for all their troubles and decide to execute him by allowing a mob to slowly torture him in the streets on the day of Salammbo's wedding to Narr'Havas. Matho finally falls dead in Salammbo's presence, and a few seconds later, she keels over and dies of no apparent physical cause. The narrator attributes this to her crime of having touched the zaimph in the process of rescuing it from Matho.
While not essential to the plot, the eunuch Schahabarim adds layers of color to the story. He appears infrequently but his actions are always of great significance.
All of the goddess Tanit's priests are eunuchs. They live in the temple's "third enclosure" and ceremonially, they appear in groups, as "pallid men, wearing white robes with red fringes falling right down to their feet. They do not have beards, or hair, or eyebrows; in their hands, sparkling with rings, they carry immense lyres and they were all singing, in shrill voices, a hymn to the divinity of Carthage." They have "black skin." They are "weaker than old women" and understand Salammbo's songs in "an old Canaanite dialect." When the high priest Schahabarim is first distinguished as an individual he is described in this way:
"His deep-set eyes shone like the lamps in a tomb; his long thin body floated in his linen robe, weighted with the little bells which alternated at his heels with lumps of emerald. He had frail limbs, a slanting skull, a pointed chin; his skin looked cold to the touch, and his hollow face, furrowed by deep wrinkles, looked as if it was contracted in some eternal longing, some grief."
He tells Salammbo the secret origins of the cosmos, referring to primordial "monsters without feeling" while he himself appears "more unfeeling than the stones". He is described as having "divinity." He is the one who first mentions and explains the meaning of the zaimph for the reader's benefit. After Matho awakens Salammbo and shows her the zaimph, she is plagued by nightmares, and Schahabarim is her constant solace during this time. When the Carthaginians want to burn Salammbo as a human sacrifice to compensate for the loss of the zaimph, Schahabarim orders her to recover the relic. He goads her on, counsels her to be willing to submit to Matho sexually if necessary, establishes a date that she must set out, and instructs her servant Taanach to beautify her for the journey.
The bulk of details about Schahabarim's background is delivered on several pages in the second half of the book. He was castrated for the worship of Tanit. He recalls "that the high pontiff, years ago, had come forward to the clanging of cymbals to take away his future virility under a dish of boiling water." He once "studied at the college of Mogbeds, at Borsippa, near Babylon," traveled widely, and became the most knowledgeable man in Carthage, coming to believe that the Earth is round and in motion. He is adored personally, as he helped raise Salammbo when she was a child and is now her dearest friend. "She could not live without the relief of his presence," Flaubert wrote. She feels "terror, jealousy, hatred, and a kind of love" for him.
When Salammbo falls ill, Schahabarim believes that Tanit has attacked her, and he unsuccessfully tries to produce a cure by having
"her apartment sprinkled with verbena and maidenhair; every morning she ate mandragora; she slept with her head on a sachet of perfumes blended by the pontiffs; he had even used baaras, a flame-coloured root which drives away evil spirits to the North; finally, turning towards the Pole Star, he murmured three times the mysterious name of Tanit..."
Tanit is an enigmatic goddess whose ways are partially revealed through Schahabarim. When the mercenaries revolt and search the tent of their superior, they find "three images of Tanit, and, in a monkey skin, a black stone which had fallen from the moon." The relic of the black meteorite is a historical reference to the worship of the goddess Cybele whose worshippers castrated themselves and were spreading the practice westward from Mesopotamia during the century in which this story takes place. That Carthage's goddess Tanit might also be served by eunuch priests is therefore not far-fetched from a historical perspective. The black stone, as it appears in this one instance, represents this eunuch cult and the mystery and terror it inspires. Schahabarim is a living representation of and a spokesman for Tanit and her eunuchs.
Although Flaubert suggests that the eunuchs as a group are timid creatures, as when he writes that "Salammbo, used to eunuchs, was lost in wonder at this man's [Matho's] power," Schahabarim knows he has non-physical sources of power. He explains that the gods, the "hermaphrodite Baals," reveal themselves only to castrated priests because eunuchs are "men in spirit, women in weakness." (Later there is reference to a different sort of eunuch priest, the Kedeschim, who are said to have "painted eyelids, symbolizing the hermaphrodite nature of their Deity, and, perfumed and robed like the women, these eunuchs resembled them despite their flat chests and narrower hips."
Schahabarim is empowered insofar as he has his own man-servant who is "used for dangerous missions" and who he sends to accompany Salammbo in her quest to retrieve the zaimph. During a period of anxiety, while the rest of Tanit's priests remain in their "third enclosure" habitation in the temple, only Schahabarim leaves to visit Salammbo. By this time, the strict fatherly figure has lost all tenderness and simply appears monstrous. "By some inconceivable inconsistency," Flaubert writes, "he could not forgive the young girl for following his orders – Schahabarim had guessed all – and obsession with this idea fitted the jealousy caused by his impotence. He accused her of being the cause of the war." Schahabarim's anger and irrationality develop into a kind of weakness that undermines Carthage.
During a desperate period when the Carthaginian mob has forgotten the goddess Tanit and her eunuch priests, Schahabarim appears to them in a white robe and opens
"one of the doors in the trellisses intended for those who were to go in and offer victims. This, thought the priests of Moloch, was an outrage he had come to perpetrate against their god; with sweeping gestures they tried to repulse him. Fed on sacrificial meats, dressed in purple like kings and wearing triple tiaras, they spat on this pale eunuch worn out by fasting, and angry laughs shook their black bears, spread over their chests like the rays of the sun."
Schahabarim, however, makes a reverential gesture toward the statue of Baal, which is an "apostasy" against the relatively benign goddess Tanit.
"One could feel the last bond snapping which linked mens' souls to a merciful divinity. But Schahabarim, because of his mutilation, could not take part in the worship of Baal...the priest, henceforth without a god, disappeared into the crowd, which drew away at his approach."
Carthage subsequently makes human sacrifices of dozens of children. Thus a single eunuch's public statement of faith – or loss thereof – proves capable of dissolving parent-child bonds and sealing the fate of the youngest generation.
In the last scene, Matho has just submitted to execution by torture. "Except for his eyes his appearance was no longer human; he was just a long shape, completely red from top to bottom...He fell over backwards and did not stir." Schahabarim, now dressed like the priests of Moloch and carrying their typical sacrificial carving knife, approaches Matho's "corpse," carves out his still-beating heart, lifts it on the "golden spatula" and presents it as an offering to the sun. Only after this awful sacrifice does a divine force strike Salammbo dead.
Although the last line of the book claims that Salammbo's death is her punishment for having violated the sanctity of the zaimph, one might note that it also hurts her father figure, Schahabarim. The gentle girl had had a mitigating influence on him, and now she is gone. Schahabarim, once a stereotypical "jealous" and "unfeeling" eunuch who nevertheless doted on his female ward, has become an apostate man-slayer who has renounced the goddess and pledged himself to a bloodthirsty god.
[Quotations are from Gustave Flaubert's "Salammbo," translated into English by A. J. Krailsheimer.]
Edward Said wrote in Orientalism: In Flaubert, "illness is presented to us as if in a clinical theater," and thus in scenes like Matho's death, "sentiments of repulsion or sympathy are repressed entirely; what matters is the correct rendering of exact detail."
Ahausarus is a supporting character in Steven Saylor's mystery "Roman Blood." The story is set in 80 B.C.E. in Rome. Ahausarus is a servant of Caecilia Metella.
Originally published to Helium Network on Feb. 19, 2014.
Steven Saylor's novel "Roman Blood" is a murder mystery set in Rome in 80 B.C.E. The story is narrated in the first person by Gordianus the Finder, who is hired as a detective by the accused murderer's defense lawyer Cicero. Cicero wishes to find out who the real murderer is in advance of the trial. Cicero's slave boy Tiro, who is explicitly rendered as a non-eunuch, accompanies them. The novel does, nonetheless, have one eunuch as a supporting character.
The eunuch Ahausarus: A 'scatterbrained' servant
When Gordianus, Cicero and Tiro come to the house of Caecilia Metella, they encounter an unexpected situation. The eunuch Ahausarus is introduced as follows:
"The announcer arrived, obviously disappointed to find that it was Cicero and not some groveling client from whom he might extort a few denarii before allowing further admission to the house. From small signs – his high voice, the visible enlargement of his breasts – I realized he was a eunuch. While in the East they are an indispensable and ancient part of the social fabric, the unsexed remain a rarity in Rome and are looked on with great distaste. Cicero had said that Caecilia was a follower of Oriental cults, but to keep a eunuch in her household struck me as a truly bizarre affectation."
This comment – that Ahausarus's presence is a "bizarre affectation" on the part of Caecilia – immediately paints Ahausarus as a sort of Eastern relic, a stereotype, not as a unique person and certainly not one with autonomy. His presence is rather a comment on Caecilia's autonomy.
The trio are escorted into Caecilia's inner sanctum, heavy with the fragrance of burning sandalwood and myrrh, where she keeps an eight-foot-tall statue of a goddess. The statue's torso included representations of severed testicles, and the goddess held a bloodstained blade. Caecilia is extremely unhappy with the arrival of the three males into this particular room. Men are forbidden to pass beyond the curtain. "No, no!" she cries. "That stupid eunuch!...How could he have made such a stupid mistake?...I don't see how he could make the same mistake twice. Do you think he does it on purpose?...But Ahausarus is far too valuable to be gotten rid of, and too delicate to punish. If only he weren't so scatterbrained." Although Saylor does not explicitly state it, Caecilia likely finds Ahausarus useful insofar as, given his status as a eunuch, he is able to perform certain functions that are restricted to men, yet he is also able to join her in the sanctuary of the castrating goddess.
Ahausarus's normal duties
Cicero's client, the accused murderer Sextus Roscius, is staying in a different part of Caecilia's enormous house. Ahausarus appears multiple times in the story only within the context of his usual job function as a greeter and escort within the property. Gordianus narrates:
"The eunuch Ahausarus led us there through a network of increasingly narrow and less resplendent hallways...Ahausarus made a show of admitting us with a flourish through a final curtain. 'Sextus Roscius, the son of Sextus Roscius,' he said, bowing his head toward the figure who sat in the center of the room, 'a much-esteemed client of my mistress. I bring visitors,' he said, making a vaguely dismissive gesture in our direction. 'The young Messalla, and Cicero, the advocate, whom you have met before. And another called Gordianus.' [The slave] Tiro he ignored, of course, as he also ignored the woman who sat sewing cross-legged on the floor in one corner, and the two girls who knelt beneath the skylight playing some sort of game. Ahausarus withdrew."
Ahausarus is rarely called simply by his name, unless someone is addressing him directly. The narrator – who had been so surprised to see a eunuch in the first place – more commonly refers to him as "the eunuch Ahausarus," as in these sentences: "Caecilia, in fact, was unable to join us; the eunuch Ahausarus explained that the interview with Sextus Roscius had exhausted her." And: "Finally a slit opened and through it peered the calculating eyes of the eunuch Ahausarus."
The eunuch's officious personality, complete with arched eyebrows and rolled eyes, is revealed in this passage:
"Ahausarus refused to wake his mistress. Nor would he allow us to stay the night. ("Impossible," he sniffed haughtily, as if hosting Sextus Roscius and his family were taint enough on the household.)...After some hurried negotiations (mostly I begged while the eunuch arched his eyebrows and stared at the ceiling), Ahausarus was quite happy to see us off..."
His last task in the book is to clean up incriminating evidence, as ordered by his mistress Caecilia.
A typical eunuch character
Ahausarus is a typical example of the way that many eunuch characters are presented in fiction: silly, with an overinflated view of his role, yet able to be bribed. He is also a typical example of a slave stereotype, as he does whatever he is told but often makes goofy errors, and the reader doesn't get to learn his private thoughts and thus has no idea whether he errs on purpose as a form of rebellion.
