Honesty and Truth

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joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.

MARY SHELLEY Frankenstein, 1831

Beijing became a Dantean pit of underworld activity in the years following the country's economic expansion.

PAUL JOHNSTON Body Politic, 1997

It is also a timely reminder in the midst of the current Kosovo crisis of the real issues that confront us in taking on Slobodan Milosevic and his thugs; of the acts that have been perpetrated across the former Yugoslavia in the name of Serbia's most rabid nationalism. Peress's award-winning photographs, and Stover's cool, unhysterical prose, take you to the most awful place on earth, beyond even Dante's imagination.

The Observer, 1998

Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (i746-1828) was a Spanish painter and etcher. His set of sixty-five etchings The Disasters of War (1810-14) express the cruelty and horror of war through scenes of death, execution, pillage, and famine. One such engraving, called 'Great exploits with dead men', depicts mutilated corpses hanging from a tree.

Three bodies hung from the branches, pale in the shadow, as monstrous as Goya etchings.

JOHN FOWLES The Magus, 1977

Grunewald Mathias Grunewald (c.1460-1528) was a German painter whose most famous work, the nine-panel Isenheim Altar, contains scenes of figures suffering, with twisted limbs and contorted postures. The central panel of the altar depicts the crucifixion of Christ, with Christ's body distorted by the torture of the Cross and covered with festering wounds.

'The neighbours don't care. The children love you. Come live with us and see in the spring. You're dying of carbon monoxide down here.' 'I'd drown in flesh up there. You pin me down and the others play pile-on.' 'Only Donald. And aren't you funny about that? Rodney and I absolutely agreed, a child shouldn't be excluded from anything physical. We thought nothing of being nude in front of them! 'Spare me the picture, it's like a Grunewald.'

JOHN UPDIKE Bech: A Book, 1970

Horses

PEGASUS and SLEIPNIR are two examples of a creature familiar in myth and fantasy, the flying horse.

Black Beauty Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty (1877) gives an account of the life and adventures of a horse who has many different owners and experiences. The book became an enduring children's classic.

Pegasus In Greek mythology, Pegasus was a winged horse which sprang from

1 9 0 HUMILITY

the blood of the Gorgon Medusa when Perseus cut her head off. Pegasus was ridden by Perseus in his rescue of Andromeda, and by Bellerophon when he fought the Chimera.

I opened them to see the deer as stunned as I was peering at me through the glass, standing utterly still, unable to move. But standing. After an interminable moment, he lifted his head and took off like Pegasus across the turnpike.

CAROL BRENNAN Chill of Summer, 1995

Rosinante Rosinante or Rozinante is the name of Don Quixote's scrawny old horse in Cervantes' romance. The name can be applied to any worn-out or emaciated horse. •See special entry • DON QUIXOTE on p. 128.

Plump and naked . . . they [camels] were a great contrast to our shaggy, Rosinantine beasts.

PETER FLEMING News from Tartary, 1936

Sleipnir In Scandinavian mythology, Sleipnir was Odin's eight-legged horse which could outrun the wind on water or land, or through the air.

Humility

This theme covers examples of both false and true humility. •See also

Arrogance, Pride.

Uriah Heep Uriah Heep is the shrewd, deceitful clerk of the lawyer Mr Wickfield in Dickens's David Copperfield (1850). By pretending always to be 'so very 'umble' he insinuates his way into Mr Wickfield's confidence and becomes one

of his partners. Heep uses this position to defraud people of money, until he is exposed, sent to prison, and condemned to transportation for life. His name is a byword for obsequiousness and false humility, and his often-repeated gesture of rubbing his hands together as he speaks is sometimes alluded to in this context.

Under Asbery's urbane expression you could imagine a secret grimace of pleasure at Margot's confusion, at my shock. Uriah Heep's servility had disguised a lot of hate. MAX BYRD Finders Weepers, 1983

Mr Gerald Suzman was portly, but he walked the path from the road with sprightliness that belied his considerable expanse of belly. He had a grey goatee beard and a sharp eye, and if he occasionally rubbed his hands together it was as an expression of pleasure or satisfaction, not a Heep-like tic to ingratiate himself.

ROBERT BARNARD A Hovering of Vultures, 1993

Jesus The Bible portrays Jesus Christ as one from a humble background who preached a message of humility and meekness. Born in a stable, Jesus became

the meek: for they shall inherit the earth' (Matt. 5: 5). • See special entry • JESUS on p. 223.