‘You should punish your appetites rather than allow yourself to be punished by them.’ Epictetus, Fragments
It’s hard to think of an isolated instance of mortification that is worse, or more typical, or more mortifying than any other, since mortification seems to me the natural, and fairly predictable consequence of any public display of lyricism. Still, there are degrees of mortification (from Ecclesiastical Latin: mortificare, to kill or subdue), which may be classified thus:
1: Mild Form: Reading to any audience in a ‘cabaret’ setting (i.e. they’re only there for the beer/wine/vodka mixers/cold sausage pies/raffle).
Optional variation: audience member vomits/passes out/dies halfway through the performance.
2: Persistent Form: Former lover turns up and sits brooding in front row throughout reading.
Optional variation: Former lover weeps/sniggers/bleeds in front row throughout reading.
3: Virulent Strain: Any award ceremony where the shortlisted poets, ignorant as to the result that is about to be announced, are obliged to wait, in a roomful of their peers (and other hostile parties), while the sub-sub-minister for Sport, Leisure and the Creative Industries demonstrates his or her complete ignorance of anything even remotely related to poetry or the arts (including the name of the award, and the institution making it).
Optional variation: Announcement of the winning book/poem/project which is not one’s own; c.f. Gore Vidal, ‘Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.’
Bewildering and occasionally fatal variation: Announcement of a winning book/poem/project that is not only not one’s own, but transparently political/transparently autobiographical/absurdly technical/pure Home Service.
Its etymology notwithstanding, mortification is rarely fatal and is relatively short-lived. The usual treatment is stoicism and temporary withdrawal. In cases where mortification is suspected, the patient should on no account be offered, or allowed to partake of, alcohol.