Ixion in Heaven by Benjamin Disraeli
"Ixion in Heaven" is a political satire by Edward Bulwer Lytton, first published in 1832, that reinterprets the ancient Greek myth of Ixion. The narrative begins with Ixion, once a king of Thessaly, who finds himself in dire straits due to debt and familial strife. His father-in-law, Deioneus, dies after falling into a pit Ixion had dug, leading to a series of misfortunes, including attempted violence from his wife, Dia. Invited to Heaven by Jove, Ixion initially revels in the divine comforts but quickly grows dissatisfied and begins to challenge the Olympian gods. His infatuation with Juno, Jove's wife, further alienates him from the celestial beings. Ultimately, Ixion's fate is sealed not by his ambitions or romantic indiscretions but by a more mundane offense: being late for dinner. As punishment, he is bound to a wheel and cast out of Heaven, where he laments his lost pleasures while eternally condemned to turn in the void. This tale intertwines themes of hubris, divine retribution, and the consequences of human folly within a satirical framework.
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Ixion in Heaven
First published: 1853 (serial form, New Monthly Magazine, 1832-1833)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy—mythological
Time of work: Undefined, in a classical Heaven
Locale: Mount Olympus
The Plot
Part 1 of Ixion in Heaven, published in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s New Monthly Magazine in 1832, so delighted Benjamin Disraeli’s contemporaries that a second part was brought out the following year. This political satire takes the form of a contemporary revision of the myth of Ixion found in Greek poet Pindar’s Pythian Odes and in Apollonius Rhodius. It includes, from myth, the elements of Ixion’s murder of kin, the temptation of Juno, Juno’s escape through a fog, and Jove’s binding of Ixion to a wheel and casting him out of heaven. Other elements are Disraeli’s own touch, such as Jove’s interest in his food surpassing his interest in Juno.
The novel opens with Ixion, king of Thessaly, self-described as “sometime a king, . . . now a scatterling, alone on a thunderstruck plain, addressed from the skies by Jove.” Ixion has married well but has run up debt, which his creditors soon decide to recall. Jove hears how Ixion’s father-in-law, Deioneus, fell into a pit Ixion dug; how Deioneus then died and Dia, Ixion’s wife, tried to have Ixion decapitated; and how no princes would help Ixion. Jove, exclaiming Ixion to be a “frank dog,” invites him to Heaven, which Ixion finds to be a lovely place, with perfume fountains, lapis lazuli steps, and a palace made of pearl, crystal, and ruby.
Ixion, though, is not content with merely being provided a respite from his problems on Earth. He soon begins insolently ordering the Olympians around. Finally, struck by the arrows of Cupid, he falls in love with Juno. It would be an understatement to say that he does not make himself a favorite on Olympus. Although it is Mercury who warns Ixion of Jove’s capricious and tyrannical tendencies, Mercury and Ganymede are the ones who betray Ixion, whom they consider to be “an outcast among his own wretched species.” Jove believes them, for he says he can believe anything “of a man who keeps me waiting for dinner.” In this version of the story, it is ultimately not for offenses against the Olympians, nor for his affair with Juno, but for being late for the evening meal that Ixion is bound to a wheel of Apollo’s chariot with the girdle of Venus, then cast out of heaven to turn for eternity. As he is hurled across the firmament, Ixion shouts to Jove that as long as he turns on that wheel, his memory, presumably of his pleasures with Jove’s wife, will sustain him.