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SCOTT HORTON?When Critics Are Really Pumpkins |
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Contributed by Scott Horton
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Manus manum lavat. It means, roughly, ?one hand washes the other.? The phrase appeared for the first time in a play by Seneca in which he ridiculed the culture of corruption that had settled in during the reign of Gaius Claudius Caesar. Seneca called the play Apocolocyntosis, which could be rendered into English as Turning into a Pumpkin. His point was simple: the integrity of things and people is essential. We shouldn?t hold ourselves out to be one thing and really be something else. For Seneca the phrase manus manum lavat explained ?the way the world works,? but there?s something a little sleazy and dishonest about it?a lack of integrity, or honesty to one?s beliefs, a sort of minor moral compromise. . . .
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