Scythian

Scythia used to be a region in European and Asiatic Russia whose population was made up of mostly nomads. Although there is a possibility that Faulkner was referencing that this population was wealthy it could have also been that he was talking about “Scythian disease” which usually leads to “Scythian insanity”. The Scythian disease is the atrophy of the male genitals. We would associate this with an extreme loss of masculinity and forfeiture of being a male, which is the Scythian insanity. Males feel so emasculated that they begin to show signs of transvestic fetishism and even start acting like the females they impersonate (Urgo).

In chapter four of Absalom, Absalom! Mr. Compson, “depicts as a kind of fey bisexuality in Bon that seduces both Henry and Judith, in his luxuriant, almost effeminate manner even at the rural University of Mississippi” (Urgo).

//He came into Jefferson: apparently complete, without background or past or childhood- a man little older than his actual years and enclosed and surrounded by a sort of **Scythian glitter**, who seems to have seduced the country brother and sister without any effort or particular to do so//” (74, AA).

Works Cited Urgo, Joseph. //Reading Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!//. Mississippi: UP of Mississippi, 2010. Print.