Roger’s Comments (group member since Aug 29, 2018)

Roger’s comments from the Ovid's Metamorphoses and Further Metamorphoses group.

In pose, maybe. But her face and gestures are so simpering. You might be interested in the first few minutes of this, from Cavalli's La Calisto. A different conquest, but the situations are closely parallel.

https://youtu.be/aep9hvp-IiI

By the way, nobody has answered my question about why, rape or not, Jupiter's women all seem to enjoy it? R.

Reading aloud the hexameters? I don't know how it was in Germany, but concepts of Latin pronunciation changed drastically during my own schooldays, and I rather think the Germans / French / Italians each have their own ideas. So reading itself becomes not only a kind of interpretation, but also an assertion of nationality and generation. R.

Ce Ce wrote: "On a personal note, I am reading Met in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean..."

In what kind of vessel, Ce Ce, and under what auspices? R.

I think I am going to have to retreat from my description of Apollo's attitude as failed wooing rather than attempted rape. Roman Clodia's points and those of others are too compelling. I was pleased to see that the early-C16 Spanish poet quoted by Kalliope in #58 basically ends with a penitent Apollo. I was so struck with this sonnet that I spent yesterday evening translating them (see #62)—so much more satisfying than listening to the election results (although they turned my way in the end)!

When we started this group, I had no idea that comments would come so thick and fast, and on such a wide range of topics. I can see that I am going to have to make some rules for myself in order to retain any other life! R.

Ce Ce wrote: "I suppose Ovid could have heard..."

Thanks for joining in my head-scratching, Ce Ce. The information from the Canadian Encylopedia is interesting, but as you say, the point is not whether humans had explored the Arctic, but how Ovid could have heard about it (let alone the Antarctic). My own guess is that he had heard of the wintry lands where the Roman Empire had basically decided to call a halt (Scotland, for example), and simply extrapolated the rest. R.

Thanks for those two pictures, Kalliope and Fionnuala. I did not include the Teniers in my own selection, feeling it was altogether too insipid for the story; you would think that Juno and Jupiter were simply chatting. The Giulio Romano is a different story. It's over half a century since I was in room, but its vertiginous force is outstanding.

While Genesis and other traditions have their parallel Creation myths, this whole layer of back-stories involving the gods themselves seems uniquely Graeco-Roman. Or am I wrong? R.

Kalliope, here is a very rough translation of the Garcilaso de la Vega sonnet you posted (#58). Tell me if it comes even close. I know it is far from literal, but I did try to keep the rhythm and the restrictive Petrarchan rhyme-scheme!

Now Daphne's fragile arms had started growing,
to lengthen into sturdy wooden branches.
Upon her head, green leaves appeared in patches
to clot her golden hair, and shade its glowing.

Around her limbs, before so lithe and flowing,
a carapace of rough-skinned bark advances.
Her milk-white feet in darkest earth are planted,
dragged down by twisted roots, all motion slowing.

    The one who was to blame for this disorder
    now wept—and weeping, caused the tree to flourish,
    deep watered by his tearful ministration.

    What sorry fate, what stultifying torture,
    that by lamenting, he should daily nourish
    the very reason for his lamentation!

I may make changes as I think of them. R.

Well, even as a long-married man, I can recall that the gaze that lets one imagine some at least the hidden flesh is very much part of the initial attraction, and any wooing worth its salt requires some pursuit. And women can also use the chase trope quite effectively for their own ends; it is part of flirtation.

Daphne, however, didn't. She is simply trying to escape. And that is where the scenario tilts toward rape.

Except for those two opposite-acting arrows of Cupid. If the malicious boy is the prime mover, do judgments on the individuals still have the same force? R.

I think I can understand the Spanish, but need to check. The opening octave (for this is a Petrarchan sonnet, right?) all refers to Daphne. but the sestet switches to Apollo? Very neat, if so, and quite poignant in the last two lines.

All of which would then support my point that, in contrast to horned Pan and the perpetually horny Jupiter, this is a failed wooing, not attempted rape. Which fits nicely with Roman Clodia's information that, for neo-Platonists, this becomes a metaphor for Art's perpetual pursuit of Beauty. Very, very nice! R.

Looking back at my recent pictorial postings, I note that while the pictures of Io show her decidedly enjoying Jupiter's advances—and, from memory only, I think this is a common feature in pictures of his conquests—none of the Syrinxes, except perhaps the Badedji, seem to be having a good time at all. I suspect there are both mythological and moral lessons to be drawn from this, but will leave those to others. I need (finally) to sign off. R.

Our postings of that Correggio crossed, Kalliope. No harm; it's worth seeing twice. R.

PAN AND SYRINX.


Hendrik Goltzius. Around 1589. From the original Dutch edition


Jan Brueghel and Rubens. 1611. Jan Brueghel was a specialist in nature painting. Rubens (or others in his workshop) did the figures (see further below)


Peter-Paul Rubens. 1636. A sketch for a similar composition to the above, that much more effective for the sense of moverment that results from the loose handling.


Gilles-Lambert Godecharle. 1804. I guess he's been looking at the Bernini Daphne!


Adrien Badedji. 2012. An artist unknown to me, but I enjoy his part-Dali, part-Picasso inspiration.

JUPITER AND IO.


Bartolomeo di Giovanni. Around 1490. In my home gallery (The Walters, Baltimore). A kind of strip-cartoon approach, telling the whole story in one.


Correggio. Around 1530. So weird, so evocative!


Abraham Bloemaert. About 1592. Focuses on the Mercury/Argus part of the story.


Godfried Maes. Later C17. I love the "Who, me?" look on Jupiter!


John Hoppner. About 1785. A very interesting comparison to the Correggio.

DAPHNE.


Pollaiuolo. Around 1475. Unusually early for an Ovidian subject.


Bernini. Around 1625. Already posted in the Images folder.


Chasseriau. 1845. Interesting for Apollo's post-change adoration.


Unknown. I found this in researching the Richard Strauss opera Dafne.

SEDUCTIONS/RAPES

I had not realized that we would plunge into the various seduction (or more often rape) stories quite so soon. Yet here, at the end of Book I, we get three of them back to back. Besides the obvious factors linking them, though, there are some interesting differences.

• Apollo and Daphne. This, as I think someone said earlier, is not really Apollo's fault, but the mischief of Cupid. It is also the one I am least sure about labeling as attempted rape, since both Apollo's lust and Daphne's resistance are sparked by Cupid, since his language is pretty close to that of a wooer, and since he continues to worship her even after her transformation. [However, there is that interesting little aside after she vows virginity that "her comeliness conflicted with her vow," which sounds awfully like that old canard of rape-justification that anyone who looks/dresses like that is asking for it.]

• Jupiter and Io. This is the most complex of the three stories, with four or five distinct episodes. Here there is no doubt about either the lust or the rape; the Latin has rapuitque pudorem, or "raped her modesty." It is different from most other of Jove's conquests, in that not only is the god transformed (into a cloud), but so (when Juno finds out) is the victim (into a heifer). And finally, that the transformation (though not of course the rape) is reversible; Io regains her form and voice, though she is pregnant. A little bit of humor here, wittily rendered by Charles Martin:

She had some trouble getting her legs back,
and for a time feared speaking lest she moo.
as so quite timidly regained her speech.

• Pan and Syrinx. Another clear scenario of attempted rape; there is no Cupid to inflame Pan's lust. But here too there is a kind of silver lining. Being denied the nymph, Pan settles for the next best thing, and takes the gift of music. [Is there an implication that the invention of pan-pipes (the syrinx) is the invention of music also?] Debussy wrote an evocative piece for solo flute called Syrinx. The story is interesting also in that it is a tale within a tale, told by Mercury to distract Argus, so that he could rescue Io.

I shall be posting works of art based on these three stories as I get the time to do so. R.

Heat makes the middle zone unlivable,
and the two outer zones are deep in snow;
between these two extremes, he placed two others
of temperate climate, blending cold and warmth.
      —Book I, 69–72, tr. Martin

A query. What was known of the Earth in Ovid's time? Their own temperate zone they would have known. Also, I suppose, that it gets colder as you go North and hotter as you approach the equator. But had anyone really seen even the Arctic, let alone the sub-equatorial zones?

And one more. The preamble to this says something like "just as heaven is divided into five zones, so this structure is repeated on earth." What is the heavenly division that Ovid is talking about? R.

Re TED HUGHES:

I have indeed read the Hughes version, and reviewed it here. Part of this is a demonstration of how Hughes, as well as slimming Ovid down, feels equally free to fatten him up; I quote ten lines added to the Age of Iron.

For those that haven't dipped into Hughes, here is a brief sample, showing how completely he transforms the text by abandoning any hint of long hexameters, and feeling entirely free to call upon concepts that would have been unknown in classical times. Although he retells less than a quarter of the book, I find him marvelous for what he does.

Before sea or land, before even sky
Which contains all,
Nature wore only one mask—
Since called Chaos.
A huge agglomeration of upset.
A bolus of everything—but
As if aborted.
And the total arsenal of entropy
Already at war within it.

And picking up on RC's remark on the ambiguity of the God figure, here is Hughes:

God, or some such artist as resourceful,
Began to sort it out.
Land here, sky there,
And sea there,
Up there, the heavenly stratosphere.
Down here, the cloudy, the windy,
He gave to each its place,
Independent, gazing about freshly.
Also resonating—
Each one a harmonic of the others,
just like the strings
That would resound, one day, in the dome of the tortoise.

Hughes' "or some such artist as resourceful" reminds me a bit of Mark Twain saying that the Iliad was written either by Homer or some other poet of the same name.

Hughes' remarks upon harmonics, though, are an expansion of a single word in the original—concordi—another example of how he both trims and elaborates at the same time. R.

Vit, Elena, Iset, and Desirae (and anyone else I have somehow missed), thank you. Your comments greatly enrich the discussion. I am already reeling! R.

Thanks, RC. I noticed this just after posting. The B&N edition is revised (very lightly) and annotated (quite usefully) by Robert Squillace. Having this already, though, makes me a little reluctant to get the Loeb with the Latin, even though it is something I really should have. R.

Thank you, Peter. I have marked this for when I get back to proper reading again! R.