Lichas bringing the garment of Nessus to Hercules, woodcut by Hans Sebald Beham, circa 1542-1548.

The Shirt of Nessus, Tunic of Nessus, Nessus-robe, or Nessus' shirt in Greek mythology was the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles. It was once a popular reference in literature. In folkloristics, it is considered an instance of the "poison dress" motif.^[1]

In Greek mythology, it is the shirt (chiton) daubed with the tainted blood of the centaur Nessus that Deianeira, Hercules' wife, naïvely gave Hercules, burning him, and driving him to throw himself onto a funeral pyre.

Metaphorically, it represents "a source of misfortune from which there is no escape; a fatal present; anything that wounds the susceptibilities"^[2] or a "destructive or expiatory force or influence"^[3]

[edit] Historical references

[edit] Hitler plot

Major-General Henning von Tresckow, one of the primary conspirators in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, famously referred to the Shirt of Nessus following the realization that the assassination plot had failed and that he and others involved in the conspiracy would lose their lives as a result:

No one among us can complain about his death, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions.

[edit] References in literature

[edit] William Shakespeare

In Act 4.12 of Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra, Mark Antony is in a rage after losing the Battle of Actium and exclaims, "The shirt of Nessus is upon me."

[edit] Alexandre Dumas

In his work The Count of Monte Cristo, after Benedetto reveals in court that the crown prosecutor Monsieur de Villefort was his illegitimate father, he (de Villefort) forfeits his job and he removes his robes because it was a burden and torment to him, using the shirt of Nessus as a metaphor.

[edit] T.S. Eliot

In section IV of his poem "Little Gidding," the final poem of Four Quartets, Eliot alludes to the Nessus myth and the Herculean "shirt of flame" in his lines:

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

[edit] John Barth

The Shirt of Nessus (1952) is also the title of a masters thesis of noted American postmodern novelist John Barth. Written for the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University, which Barth himself later ran, The Shirt of Nessus is not a dissertation, but rather a short novel or novella. It can be considered the first full-length fictional work of Barth's, and it also is likely to remain the most elusive. Barth, not unlike a fair number of other authors, has revealed himself to be embarrassed by his early non-published work; in this case, most anything before The Floating Opera. The Shirt of Nessus is briefly referenced in both of Barth's non-fiction collections, The Friday Book and Further Fridays, but little is known of its actual content. The only known copies not held by the author were kept in the Johns Hopkins school library and the Writing Seminars Department thesis copies - however, recent inquiries by devoted Barth fans have shown that the copy held by the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins disappeared in the mid-1960s, while the other seemed to mysteriously "walk out" of the school's special collections division of the library. It is the opinion of some notable JHU faculty members who occasionally talk to Barth that he may have even been the mastermind behind these disappearances himself. While that remains speculation, when the special collections division notified Barth in 2002 (when the volume was first found to be missing), Barth responded that he "was not altogether unhappy the library no longer had a copy".

[edit] Other appearances in fiction

In Robertson Davies' novel "Fifth Business", when Dunstan buys an expensive silk shirt at a cost beyond his means. He purchases it out of envy for his rival, Boy Staunton, who is living a life of wealth while attending the same university. "It burned me like the shirt of Nessus, but I wore it to rags, to get my money out of it, garment of the guilty luxury that it was."

In H. Rider Haggard's Montezuma's Daughter, when Otomie the princess is made to wear the garb of a low-class woman in order to escape imprisonment, the narrator states that "for her proud heart, that dress was the very shirt of Nessus." In James Branch Cabell's Jurgen, the title character dons the shirt of nessus and is transported by it on his travels, in the end of the story he is allowed to take it off, in contradiction to the usual conventions. Also in: -Mihai Eminescu's poem, Ode (In ancient meter), [1883, Romanian to English] "Or like Hercules by his garment poisoned;" "By my own illusion consumed I'm wailing On my own grim pyre in flames I'm melting..."

In Patrick O'Brian's novel “The Surgeon's Mate”, Stephen Maturin reflects on his friend Sir Joseph Blain's lament for his diminished sexual appetite . Blaine comments “You are a younger man than I am, Maturin, and it may be that you do not know from experience that the absence of torment may be a worse torment still: you may wish to throw a hair shirt aside, not realizing that it is the hair shirt alone that keeps you warm. 'A Nessus' Shirt might be more apt' said Stephen, quite unheard."

[edit] References in non-fiction

It is also the title of a 1956 non-fiction book dealing with anti-nazi groups in Germany during World War II.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Baughman, Ernest W., Type and Motif Index of the Folktales of England and North America, Walter De Gruyter, June 1966. ISBN 90-279-0046-9.
• Mayor, Adrienne, "The Nessus Shirt in the New World: Smallpox Blankets in History and Legend," Journal of American Folklore 108:427:54 (1995).

[edit] External links

• Hercules Poisoned by the Shirt of Nessus, a 15th-century illumination at the Getty Museum.