“This is particularly true in the case of the infamously “disgusting” passages such as the depiction of the grinningly putrid horse’s head full of pullulating eels, followed by the very smell and sliminess of Agnes Matzerath’s vomit: a literally nauseating episode, yet also the introit to a haunting fable in which Agnes sees a fathomless abyss open up before her, and duly plunges into it.” From a book about Gunter Grass.
What are eels doing in a putrid horse's head? And what is pollulating?
Are these common European eels, hatched in the Sargasso Sea, or some other kind of eel? Moray eels, perhaps? Conger eels?