Issue 4 Animals Fall 2001  Ingestion / The Epic of the
Cephalopod  Allen S. Weiss   Consider the cephalopod represented
in Victor Hugo’s ink-and-wash drawing of an octopus, Pieuvre (c.
1866), a black, nearly formless stain that evokes the morbid,
lugubrious aspect of this animal, described by Hugo: “One would
say a beast made of ash that inhabits the water. It is spider-
like in form and chameleon-like in coloration.”1 As is the case
for the most extreme examples of zoological and botanical
classes, such animals touch on the limits of monstrosity,
evoking worldly fears and unconscious anguish. One can, in fact,
localize the source of the octopus as monster par excellence, as
a creature of nightmares and terror, an icon of the horrors of
death: It was the moment when Victor Hugo, in Les travailleurs
de la mer (1866), substituted the local word pieuvre, used only
in the Channel Islands, for the more common term poulpe. One
should remember that in French, the word for the living animal
is usually different from t