The Death of Peregrinius - Esoteric Chat https://esoteric.chat/feed/conversation/11262/ 2025-02-26T23:35:27Z esoBB Robert Adamant https://esoteric.chat/post/45396/ 2024-10-26T22:09:55Z Robert Adamant It really very well expresses the importance of devotion being a personal struggle.
Maybe there's some profound loneliness that's required.
If you need spectacle or the support of others in order to prove how devoted you are it becomes more suspect.
It's strange because it almost seems to argue that the most devoted people are the ones who struggle quietly and alone.
Except that it is really hard to say public self immolation isn't an expression of commitment.
Maybe it's that Peregrinius realizes that he's a parasite and immolates setting an example for the other people in a way.

I think Peregrinius does have some self awareness at the end but it seems deeply sad to me. More like he realizes his luck has run out and like a heroin addict who comes to think that only an overdose will be enough to make him feel anything at all jumps in the fire to avoid having to live a shameful, normal life.
I had a random recollection of one of Lucian's deeper cuts, a letter titled "A Literary Prometheus" responding to a critic that called him a Prometheus because his style is a gross combination of many preceding others. The parallels between that and how Peregrinius is characterized makes me think that Lucian might've been writing more sympathetically than we tend to imagine.

A reading of the event

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