An Analysis of Some of the Many Literary References in Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

“It is better to know one book intimately, than a hundred superficially.” - Donna Tartt, The Secret History.

Donna Tartt references and alludes to a myriad of great writers and literary works in her debut novel The Secret History (1992). The first time I read it, I wanted to go away and read all of the texts she mentions in order to augment my understanding and appreciation of the novel! It has been over 3 years since I read The Secret History, and since then, I have read many of the literary works that she references, so I thought that I would do a post where I discuss and analyse some of them!

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE SECRET HISTORY, READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.

1. ‘Agamemnon’ in The Oresteia by Aeschylus. During Richard’ very first Greek class at Hampden, Julian calls on Camilla to recite some lines from Aeschylus’ play ‘Agamemnon’, the first play in the tragic Greek triology called The Oresteia, written in the 5th century BCE. The play depicts the gory death of Agamemnon at the hands his wife Clytemnestra who murders him to avenge their daughter, Iphigenia. The lines recited by Camilla of those of Clytemnestra’s, as she describes the act of murdering her husband:

Thus he died, and all the life struggled out of him; and as he did he spattered me with the dark red and violent-driven rain of bitter-savoured blood to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers of God in glory at the birthtime of the buds.

When rereading this, I cannot help but think that the image of the spattering blood foreshadows Camilla during the bacchanal.

2. Poetics by Aristotle. Aristotle’s Poetics is one of the first examples of western literary criticism. In the text, Aristotle discusses the the conventions of Greek tragedy, the role of art in society, and the correspondence between art and life. Poetics is mentioned in one of the Greek classes during a conversation between Henry and Julian:

Aristotle says in Poetics, “that objects such as corpses are painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art.” “And I believe Aristotle is correct. After all, what are the scenes in poetry graven on our memories, the ones that we love the most? Precisely these. The murder of Agamemnon and the wrath of Achilles.” “Death is the mother of beauty” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.” “Well said,” said Julian. “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” (p.41)

This statement of Henry’s explains his later attitude towards Bunny’s murder. On the night preceding the murder when Henry shares his plan with Francis, Charles, and Richard, he describes it as ‘invisible, erratic, angelic. What could possibly be better, from our point of view, than allowing Bunny to choose the circumstances of his own death?’ (p.287) His questioning is entirely detached from reality. He speaks of Bunny as a fictional character in a novel he is drafting, focusing on the aesthetic, rather than on the horrific fact that he is planning to murder his friend.

Aristotle’s exact statement on this phenomenon in Poetics, reads:

A common phenomenon is evidence of this: even when things are painful to look upon - corpses, for instance, or the shapes of the most revolting animals - we take pleasure in viewing highly realistic images of them. The further explanation of this is that learning is delightful not only to philosophers, but to ordinary people as well, even though they have less capacity for it. That is why people like seeing images, because as they look them, they understand and work out what each item is, for example, “this is so-and-so”. (p.20)

3. The Iliad by Homer. Naturally, Homer’s The Iliad, one of the most famous (if not the most famous) texts in the western literary canon, is mentioned directly in The Secret History. The Iliad is an epic poem written in Homeric Greek, which opens with Homer’s invocation of a Muse as he begins to detail the final year of the Trojan War, which spanned a decade. The reference occurs directly after the aforementioned discussion between Henry and Julian:

I looked directly at Camilla, her face bright in the sun, and thought of that line from the Iliad that I love so much, about Pallas Athene and those terrible eyes shining. (p.41)

In the novel, Camilla’s eyes are described as grey, an aesthetic choice which was very much intentional on Tartt’s part. Tartt could have made Camilla’s eyes akin to those of say, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, but instead she chooses ‘Pallas Athene’, which refers to Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare. In The Iliad, there are innumerable mentions of Athena’s captivating grey eyes, as she is frequently refers to as ‘grey eyed Athene’. This visual or aesthetic connection between Camilla and Athena, serves to highlight Camilla’s intelligence, which can be observed on many occasions during the novel. Furthermore, Athena plays an extremely active role in the Trojan War. Although she does not kill anybody herself in The Iliad, she does contribute to the demise of many of the Trojan soldiers, much like Camilla who contributes to the demise of the farmer during the bacchanal, of Bunny’s later on.

4. The Bacchae by Euripides. Euripides’ The Bacchae is undoubtedly the most important literary reference on this list because it directly link’s to the novel’s culmination. Like ‘Agamemnon’, The Bacchae is mentioned during Richard’s first Greek class at Hampden in a discussion about ‘madness induced by the gods’ (p.42) In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the god of wine, ritualistic madness, and religious ecstasy, who is known for his rituals, commonly termed bacchanals. Described in The Bacchae as ‘the god who makes men fools and women mad’, Dionysus arrives in Thebes to avenge Semele, his mother, and to wreak revenge on Pentheus, king of Thebes, for denying existence as an Olympian deity. When Pentheus refuses to submit, Dionysus responds by causing mass revelry and hysteria among the women of Thebes, thus disrupting the social order. Under the powerful influence of Dionysus, the women of Thebes participate in a bacchanal:

Our women, I discover, have abandoned their homes on some pretense of Bacchic worship, and go gadding about in the woods on the mountain side, dancing in honour of this upstart god Dionysus, whoever he may be. […] they give themselves to lecherous men under the excuse that they are the Maenad priestesses […] when the sparkle of sweet wine appears at their feasts, no good can be expected from their ceremonies. - Pentheus in The Bacchae.

The climax of the play is the brutal murder of Pentheus at the hands of his own mother, Agaue and the other maenads (female followers of Dionysus):

Agaue was foaming at the mouth, her eyes were rolling wildly. She was not in her right mind; she was under the power of Dionysus, and she would not listen. She gripped his [Pentheus’] arm right between wrist and elbow; she set her foot against his ribs; and she tore his arm off by the shoulder. […] Every hand was thick red with blood; and they were tossing and catching to and fro, like a ball, the flesh of Pentheus.

Despite the graphic violence of The Bacchae, the concept of bacchanals are romanticised by Julian in The Secret History, as he speaks of them as a sort of spiritual cleansing, a cathartic release of ‘primitive impulses’:

What could be more terrifying and beautiful to souls like the Greeks, or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, “more like a deer than a human being”. To be absolutely free! One is quite capable of course of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! […] If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and looked that naked, terrible, beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn. That to me is the terrible seduction of Dionysiac ritual. Hard for us to imagine. That pure fire of being. (pp.44-45)

It is this romanticisation of bacchanals that inspires the group to try one themselves, and this of course results in the murder of the farmer, and by extension, Bunny’s. I believe that reading The Bacchae after The Secret History is vital, because it illuminates Henry’s explanation of the bacchanal and the magical realism in chapter four. In the play, the women have been stripped of their autonomy by Dionysus, acting out his murderous intents for him. This technically absolves them of responsibility for Pentheus’ murder, as it is impossible for mortals to resist the influence of a god. The question is, can the same be said of the Greek class? I hardly think so. Henry claims that they actually saw Dionysus, and of course if this were true, then it would absolve them of the farmer’s murder to a degree. However, a difference between the maenads and the Greek class, is that the Greek class actively chose to hold a bacchanal, unlike the maenads who were driven to do so by Dionysus. The Greek class knew that murder is the outcome of the bacchanal in The Bacchae, and still attempted it. Why? Did they assume it would be safe? Or did they simply not care? Or did they (or Henry in particular) believe that they would be able to resist the influence of a God? Perhaps they did not think it would truly work and lost control when it did. We do not know.

Of the actual murder, Henry recalls that he punched the farmer on reflex, leaving his hands ‘covered with blood’, but Charles, Henry says, remembers ‘becoming aware that what he was pulling at was a man’s arm, with his foot braced in the armpit’ (p.189). The Hampden newspaper reveals that the farmer was found with his stomach hanging out, which of course does not align with Henry’s claim that he only punched the farmer, but it does align with Charles’ claim, and reading The Bacchae explains what they really did - they tore the poor man apart. Donna Tartt certainly does give her readership a lot of material to ruminate over - which I love. Richard says to Henry: ‘these are fundamentally sex rituals aren’t they?’ and asks ‘what exactly did you guys do?’ to which Henry replies ‘Well, really, I think we needn’t go into that. There was a certain carnal element to the proceedings but the phenomenon was basically spiritual in nature.’ (p.187) The ‘carnal element’ seems incredibly sinister when one considers that Camilla was the only female present. Plus, Henry reveals that Camilla said she felt like a deer during the process, and at one point Henry, Francis, and Charles remembered chasing a deer… Towards the novel’s end, when Francis and Richard discuss the sexual relationship between the twins, Francis says it was the bacchanal revealed that ‘Charles was so much worse than anyone had expected.’ (p.514) It is haunting to think of Camilla may have endured that night.

Euripides’ The Bacchae really is the most important literary influence in The Secret History. Without it, the farmer would not have been killed, nor would Bunny, and Henry would not have ended his life.

5. Madame Bovary (1856) by Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary is referenced briefly in the first half of the novel by Henry. This occurs when Charles brings the greyhound, Frost, to Francis’ country house:

The dog’s name was Frost. It loved Camilla, and followed her everywhere: Henry quoted long passages about Emma Bovary and her greyhound: “Sa pensee, sans but d’abord, vagabondait au hasard, comme sa levrette, qui faisait des cercles dans la campagne…” (p.94)

In Alan Russell’s English translation of Madame Bovary, the lines Henry quotes read thus:

At first her mind roved aimlessly hither and thither, like her greyhound, which went circling over the grass, yapping after the yellow butterflies, giving chase to the field-mice or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. (p.57)

Tartt’s reference to Madame Bovary is one of the most interesting to me, because it reflects the dynamic between Henry and Camilla. In Madame Bovary, Emma is married to a man named Charles (which is of course the name of Camilla’s twin brother), but she engages in two extra marital affairs, one of which takes place in a hotel room. Towards the end of The Secret History, Henry and Camilla’s relationship takes place in the confines of a hotel where he helps her to move to in order to escape her abusive brother. Although Emma Bovary is not being abused by her Charles, there are similarities in the clandestine and illicit nature of the respective affairs. Emma is committing adultery, and Camilla is made to feel as though she is as well by her incestuous brother.

6. Paradise Lost by John Milton Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost is mentioned twice, I believe, in The Secret History. Its first mention, is by Richard toward the beginning, who quotes it:

While to a certain extent, Milton is right - the mind can make a Heaven of Hell and so forth, - it is nonetheless clear that Plano was modeled less on Paradise, than that other more dolorous city.’ (p.8)

This quote referred to by Richard is one of the most famous in Paradise Lost, and it is said in Book 1, by Satan:

The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

Richard quoting Satan here is very apt as it precedes him revealing the very active tole that he played in Bunny’s murder.

The second mention of Paradise Lost is from Henry, who on one morning spent at Francis’ country house, rises early to begin a translation of the poem into Latin, explaining:

I am interested to see what I will wind up with. Milton, to my way of thinking, is our greatest English poet, greater than Shakespeare, but I think in some ways it was unfortunate that chose to write in English - of course he wrote not an inconsiderable amount of poetry in Latin, but that was early, in his student days; what I’m referring to is the later work. In Paradise Lost, he pushes English to its very limits but I think no language without noun cases could possibly support the structural order that he attempts to impose.’ (p.91)

This translation of Henry’s is never mentioned again. Did he manage to finish it before his death? I guess we will never know…

7. ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘IlPenseroso’ by John Milton. Two more of Milton’s poems are mentioned in The Secret History during a conversation between Richard and the twins about Henry and Bunny’s friendship:

‘They don’t seem to care for each other, do they?’ They seemed astonished to hear this. ‘They’re old friends,’ said Camilla ‘Best friends, I would say,’ said Charles. ‘At one time you never saw them apart.’ ‘They seem to argue quite a bit.’ ‘Well, of course,’ said Camilla, ‘but that doesn’t mean they’re not fond of each other all the same. Henry’s so serious, and Bun’s so sort of - well, not serious - that they really get along quite well.’ ‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘L’Allegro and IlPenseroso. A well matched pair.’ (p.68)

L’Allegro and II Penseroso are companion poems of contrasting imagery. L’Allegro translates to ‘the happy man’, and II Penseroso translates to ‘the melancholy man’ or ‘the pensive man’. L’Allegro is a pastoral poem in which Milton invokes Mirth, or Euphrosyne, the goddess of joy and mirth. On the other hand, II Penseroso is of a melancholic and introspective tone in which Milton invokes Melancholy: ‘Hail, divinest melancholy! Whose saintly visage is too bright.’ In the context of Charles’ comment, Bunny is L’Allegro, and Henry is II Penseroso.

7. Vanity Fair (1847) by William Makepeace Thackeray. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is only mentioned in passing in The Secret History when Richard and Charles are playing card games:

Charles and I were drinking whiskey and soda. He had been trying to teach me to play piquet (‘because it’s what Rawdon Crawley plays in Vanity Fair’) (p.101)

Vanity Fair is actually one of my favourite nineteenth century novels. It is a whooping 800 page satirical novel of the English upper class during the Napoleonic Wars. Rawdon Crawley marries one of the main characters: Rebecca Sharpe, a scheming social climber. He also has a proclivity for gambling and card playing, - piquet in particular, which was very popular among the upper classes. ‘Vanity Fair’ is described by Thackeray as ‘a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs, falseness, and pretensions.’ The mention of Vanity Fair in The Secret History, albeit brief, accentuates the pretentiousness of the characters because the Greek class itself is a miniature Vanity Fair, as seen in the ‘falseness and pretensions’ of its members.

8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is also only briefly mentioned:

I read The Great Gatsby. It is one of my favourite books and I had taken it out of the library in hopes that it would cheer me up, of course it only made me feel worse, since in my own humourless state I failed to see anything except what I constructed as certain tragic similarities between Gatsby and myself. (p.79)

I always find Richard’s comparison of himself to Jay Gatsby to be a humorous one because I think it highlights his lack of self awareness. If you have read Gatsby, then you will know that Richard is nothing like him! At best, he is an unremarkable emulation of Nick Carraway. If anybody in the novel is Jay Gatsby, then it would be Henry.

There are many other literary works that are referenced/mentioned/alluded to in The Secret History including Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Shakespeare’s Othello, Plato’s The Republic, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s The Aeneid, and Dante’s The Divine Comedy, but the ones above are from books that I have read, and/or are of particular interest to me. For example,I have read Othello, but it is mentioned only once in passing that it is hardly worth analysing! If you have read and loved The Secret History, then I hope that this post has been informative in some way.

Thanks so much for reading. Until next time! <3

Works Referenced:

Aeschylus, ‘Agamemnon’ in The Oresteia trans. Robert Fagles (London: Penguin Classics, 1977)

Aristotle, The Poetics trans. Anthony Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Euripides, ‘The Bacchae’ in The Bacchae and Other Plays, trans. Philip Vellacott (London: Penguin Classics, 1954)

Fitzgerald Scott F, The Great Gatsby (London: Marshall Cavendish, 1988)

Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary trans. Alan Russell (London: Penguin Books, 1950)

Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore

Milton, John, Paradise Lost (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Tartt, Donna, The Secret History

Thackeray Makepeace, William, Vanity Fair (London: Penguin Classics, 1968)