Victor Hugo as both Apollo (the lyre) and Gilliatt (from ‘Toilers of the Sea’). Artist: G. Deloyoti. Published as front cover of “Le Hanneton” 6 June, 1867 issue no. 17. 

This is not a political cartoon, but I thought it relevant given Victor Hugo’s role in the development the octopus metaphor.

Image Source: bridgeman.co.uk

The following post aims to show links between Victor Hugo’s The Toilers of the Sea and some of the earlier octopus political cartoons from the books publication in 1866 to 1910 when obvious references to Hugo’s pieuvre disappeared. Page numbers and quotes come from the following edition (English translation): Hugo, Victor. The Toilers of the Sea. Translated by James Hogarth. New York: Random House, 2002.

Previous studies:
Moncelet (and Pierre Larousse) covered the link in an essay in Ridiculosa, and Mieville provides a compelling argument for Hugo’s role in the origins of Weird Fiction (see footnotes).

Hugo’s Devilfish:

“All ideals being admitted as valid, if causing terror is an objective, then the devilfish is a masterpiece.”¹

Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Travailleurs de la Mer’ (Toilers of the Sea) was published in 1866 in Brussels, with English translations published in New York in 1867 and later in the UK in 1896.² It was a popular book and within six years of its first publication, eight English editions were published³.

Hugo begins by listing everything the octopus is not⁴ when compared to other animals, but, in his estimation: “And yet of all animals the devilfish is the one most formidable armed”⁵.

The following are a few of the descriptions Hugo devotes to the octopus: “[T]his sea creature looks as if it were made of ashes. It is spiderlike in form and chameleon-like in coloring. […] And horrifyingly, it is soft and yielding. […] It has something of the aspect of scurvy and of gangrene. It is disease shaped into a monstrosity. […] It cannot be shaken off; it clings firmly to its prey.”⁶

“It has no bones, no blood, no flesh… There is nothing inside it: it is no more than a skin”⁷.

Monocolet, in ‘Les “viles” tentaculaires’⁸, notes Pierre Larousse⁹ observation that after the appearance of ‘Toilers of the Sea’, columnists saw the octopus as a useful, if vague, analogy. This post is intended to show a small selection of octopus cartoons that refer directly to this book, and how that has shaped the octopus ‘meme’ or metaphor.

The Terrestrial Devil-Fish:

“The cephalopod - terrestrial devil fish - a monster of centralization” (1873) in my collection of the octopus as a metaphor for an industry. The presence of the cave, and the timing² would suggest an Victor Hugo influence. It also precedes the ‘burst’ of octopus cartoons in the1880s and is slightly earlier the “Serio-Comic War Map” of Europe (1877).

Later Cartoons:

Two examples of 19th C. cartoons that quote Hugo directly are: “The Irish Devil-Fish” (1881), and “The Modern Devil-Fish” (1904)¹⁰. The quotes included in the cartoons’ captions are a variation of: “The octopus is a formidable opponent; but there is a way of tackling it. […] The octopus is only vulnerable only in the head.”¹¹

‘The Modern Devil-Fish’ is an anti-saloon/prohibition cartoon published in The Defender in 1904¹² and shows the hand of Prohibition Party stabbing the octopus through the head. What it shows is the octopus as shorthand¹³ for organisations (real and imagined) such as governments, industry and monopolies. It describes a central intelligence, with interfering dangerous tentacles that spread out from the head. Cutting off the arms will achieve little, as it leaves the rest of the beast to contend with. This stabbing/spearing the octopus through the head (as opposed to cutting off its arms) also appears in ‘Stemt Rood!’ (Hahn, 1918) and ‘Valoroso Marinaio Uccidi il Monstro E libera l’Adriatico’ (Rico, ~1915).

‘The Irish Devil-Fish’ is an anti-Land League cartoon published in Punch in 1881. It shows the Land League as the devil-fish that has entangled the UK PM William Goldstone, and it is also captioned with a variant of the aforementioned quote.

Another cartoon that quotes Hugo directly is ‘La Pieuvre’ postcard (ca. 1900): “All ideals being admitted as valid, if causing terror is an objective, then the devilfish is a masterpiece” and shows several men in suits being strangled by an octopus.

Footnotes

Image Source: Matt Stagg (2008) ‘An octopus drawing by Victor Hugo‘ (Accessed: 17th Mar 2009)

1. Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea, trans. James Hogarth (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), p. 349.
2. Wikipedia (2009), ‘Toilers of the Sea’ (Accessed: 17th Mar 2009)
3. Graham Robb, “Introduction,” in The Toilers of the Sea (New York: Random House, 2002).
4. ‘taxonomic transgressions’ - Miéville, China. “M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire.” Collapse IV (2008): 105-28.
5. Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea, p. 350.
6. Ibid., p. 350-51.
7. Ibid., p. 352.
8. C Moncelet, “Les “Viles” Tentaculaires: Réquisitions Satiriques De La Pieuvre,” Ridiculosa, no. 10 (2003).
9. In Ibid.
10. Note the use of the word “Devil-Fish”, Hugo, at least in the translated version, refers to devilfish in the chapter the quote appears, but only call it ‘pieuvre’/octopus in the truncated paragraph quoted.
11. Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea, p. 357. An exception to this is the “La Pieuvre” (~1900) postcard which uses “All ideals being admitted as valid, if causing terror is an objective, then the devilfish is a masterpiece” p. 349
12. Later re-printed during the Prohibition by the Chicago Tribune in 1925?
13. Robert MacDougall, “The Wire Devils: Pulp Thrillers, the Telephone, and Action at a Distance in the Wiring of a Nation,” American Quarterly 58, no. 3 (2006).

The cephalopod - terrestrial devil fish - a monster of centralization (?) (1873)

This is the earliest cartoon (1873) in my collection of the octopus as a metaphor for an industry. The presence of the cave, and the timing¹ would suggest an Victor Hugo influence. It also precedes the ‘burst’ of octopus cartoons in the1880s and is slightly earlier the “Serio-Comic War Map” of Europe (1877).

I think the caption reads: “The cephalopod, -or terrestrial devil fish-, a monster of centralization”. It was published on the 4th March 1873 by the New York Daily Graphic.

Between its humanoid teeth the octopus holds a piece of paper: “Congressional Honor”. The human mouth appears below a normal octopus orifice. Most of its limbs are trains, except for the lowest one which is very serpentine. The motive (Victor Hugo) of the cave makes an appearance. As does USA (Lady Liberty?). An unusually creepy image.

Other little details is the train (at least I think it is a train) is approaching in the background, following the power lines. Also, the birds are flying an orderly and serpentine line.

Image source: “Railroad Cartoons: The Image and the Locomotive”,http://sophia.smith.edu/~maldrich/introduction.html (Accessed: 21st May 2009) – Some interesting late 19th C & early 20th C railroad cartoons.

Footnotes

1. Six years after publication of “Toilers of the Sea” in English in New York

“The Modern Devil Fish” was (re)published July¹ 1925 in the Chicago Tribune. The is a caption beneath the cartoon that reads ‘”The tentacles of the Devil Fish cannot be destroyed unless the HEAD, the source of their sustaining power, is destroyed.” – Victor Hugo “Toilers of the Sea”‘². The cartoon is an incitement to vote (the knife) for the Prohibition Party (the arm). The head of the octopus is the ’saloon’, and the arms are ‘political corruption’, ‘defiance of law’, ‘partnership with thieves’,  ‘traffic in girls’ and ‘gambling’.

The date of July 1925 may be a reprint date. This cartoon (unconfirmed) appeared in “Prohibition Cartoons” by  Donald Farquharson Stewart and Henry W. Wilbur with the blurb: “The cartoons in this volume originally appeared in the Defender [publishing company] during the campaign of 1904″.

Image Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00492/Cartoons.htm (Accessed: 15 Mar 2009)

Footnotes:

1. Might have been late June, the date is derived from a letter to the editor from an edition published in July 1925, that refers to the cartoon appearing in the Chicago Tribune a week before. I don’t have access to back issues of the paper to confirm this.
2. Victor Hugo again.

Les “viles” tentaculaires : réquisitions satiriques de la pieuvre (Monocelet, 2003)

A short post to point out this article (in French): Moncelet, C. (2003) Ridiculosa N°10, Les Animaux pour le dire, Université de Bretagne occidentale/ Université de Limoge, p. 43-60. Moncelet notes the pieuvre or monstrous octopus originates with Victor Hugo’s “Travailleurs de la Mer” (Toilers/Workers of the Sea).

I find this interesting as I am currently reading an article by China Miéville’s (Collapse IV, Urbanomic) in which he argues that the emergence of the Weird/tentacular can be traced back to Victor Hugo’s “Travailleurs de la Mer”. The Moncelet article is mostly a run down on the various incarnations of the octopus and serpentine/hydra as caricature. It is accompanied by a selection of cartoons and posters. Worth a look even if you can’t read French.