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The hypocritical octopus | Haquelebac

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Recently when reading what Victor Hugo had to say about octopuses (none of it good)in Travailleurs de la Mer, I came across this line: “The octopus is a hypocrite. You don’t even notice it, and suddenly it unfolds itself.” For Hugo the octopus is murderous — it lies disguised in ambush, and then suddenly it opens up and gets you! (which indeed it often does, if you’re a fish). Elsewhere, Hugo writes of the sea itself “The wave is hypocritical: it kills, hides the evidence, plays dumb, and smiles“. To me, the English word hypocrite does not simply mean “someone who feigns innocence”, which is how Hugo uses it here. To me hypocrisy is the ostentatious affectation of virtue by someone who is unvirtuous, especially when the hypocrite also loudly condemns someone who has committed the same sin that he himself is committing. This sent me on a long but interesting wild goose chase through the dictionaries. The consensus seems to be that Hugo, who has never been accused of not being vivid

The hypocritical octopus | Haquelebac Haquelebac An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur. The hypocritical octopus Recently when reading what Victor Hugo had to say about octopuses (none of it good)in Travailleurs de la Mer , I came across this line: “The octopus is a hypocrite. You don’t even notice it, and suddenly it unfolds itself.” For Hugo the octopus is murderous — it lies disguised in ambush, and then suddenly it opens up and gets you! (which indeed it often does, if you’re a fish). Elsewhere, Hugo writes of the sea itself “ The wave i

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