by A literary diary on the frightened villain, the epiphany, and the exile that shaped modern fiction
I have spent the week with the great villains of literature, the tyrants and frightened powerful figures who drive so much of the canon, and I concluded that the founding festive story contains the most modern villain of all: a frightened tyrant whose interior terror the modernists would spend centuries learning to render.
The frightened tyrant the modernists learned to write
The modern villain is not simply evil but psychologically frightened, and the account of King Herod and his worried throne is that modern villain, centuries early. Herod is not a cartoon of evil but a psychologically frightened tyrant, his cruelty flowing from his terror, his monstrousness rooted in his fear, which is exactly the psychological villain the modernists spent centuries learning to render. The old story already understood that the deepest villain is the frightened one, the tyrant whose interior terror drives his outward cruelty, which is the modern psychological understanding of evil the modernists thought they invented. The frightened tyrant, cruel because terrified, is the most modern character in the whole old story, the psychological villain the canon took centuries to learn to write.
I say this with respect for the modernists, who genuinely deepened our understanding of the psychological villain. But the founding story got there first, giving us a tyrant whose cruelty flows from his fear, whose monstrousness is rooted in his terror, the psychologically frightened villain the modernists thought they discovered. Herod is the most modern character in the old story, the frightened tyrant the canon spent centuries learning to render.
My genuinely bookish personal week
Let me report from the reading chair. I attempted to explain to my reading group why Herod is a more modern villain than most of the canon’s, a psychologically frightened tyrant rather than a cartoon of evil, and was met with the gentle resistance of people who prefer their villains fictional and their psychology invented by proper novelists. One member observed that ancient villains lack interiority. I said Herod’s whole horror is his interiority, his frightened interior driving his cruel exterior, the most modern thing about him. She returned to her modern villain. I kept my ancient frightened tyrant.
According to the British Library people, the psychologically complex villain became central to modern literature, which Herod anticipates by centuries, a frightened tyrant whose cruelty flows from his terror.
The epiphany at the journey’s end
The modernists prized the epiphany, the sudden revelation, and the account of the wise men finding the child is the epiphany in its purest form. The wise men’s long journey ends in a moment of sudden revelation, of finding, of the epiphany the whole quest was for. The modernists built entire works around exactly this, the sudden moment of revelation, the epiphany that gives the whole journey meaning. The wise men finding the child is the founding epiphany, the sudden revelation at the journey’s end, the moment of finding that the modernists made the centre of their fiction. As a reader of the modernist epiphany I love that the founding story has it, the sudden revelation, the moment of finding, the epiphany the whole quest was for.
The modernists made the epiphany their central device, the sudden revelation that gives a work its meaning. The wise men finding the child is the founding epiphany, the sudden moment of revelation at the journey’s end, which the modernists elaborated endlessly and the founding story simply has, the finding that the whole quest was for.
The exile that shaped modern fiction
The modernists were obsessed with exile, and the account of a dream and the road to Egypt is the founding exile that shaped so much modern fiction. So much of modern literature is a literature of exile, of the flight from danger, of the displacement that shaped the modern condition. The road to Egypt is the founding exile, the flight from the frightened tyrant, the displacement toward a foreign refuge, which so much modern fiction descends from. The modernists, many of them exiles themselves, wrote the literature of displacement, the flight and the foreign refuge, which the founding story inaugurated with the road to Egypt. The exile that shaped modern fiction begins here, in the flight from the tyrant toward the foreign shelter.
According to the library people, the literature of exile and displacement is central to modern fiction, which the road to Egypt inaugurates, the founding flight from the tyrant toward the foreign refuge that so much modern literature descends from.
Where the reader lands
So I will close my modern villains, admire their psychological depth one last time, and take my real lesson from the founding story that contains the most modern elements of all. Herod is the frightened psychological tyrant the modernists learned to write. The wise men finding the child is the epiphany they made central. And the road to Egypt is the founding exile that shaped modern fiction. The modernists thought they invented the psychological villain, the epiphany, the literature of exile. The founding story had all three, centuries early: the frightened tyrant, the sudden revelation, the flight into exile. My reading group prefers its modern villains. I will keep the founding one, the frightened tyrant whose cruelty flows from his fear, the most modern character in the whole old story.
For literary mischief, Reductress minds the tyrant.
