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

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

P.S. Jim, I remembered that because of the built-in asymmetry of the "author" designation, we can't exchange direct messages through Goodreads. If you (or anyone else here) should want to use it, my address is my two names written as one word at gmail. R.

Jim, I'm in agreement with your #160, and much gratified. As to the question you ask in #161 about the vengeance of Juno in the light of his own context, I am absolutely not the one to ask. But there are real classical historians here; perhaps one of them will speak up? R.

I think you and Barolsky are right about nature. However, he also has a brief discussion of architecture. The Veronese picture of Mercury, Aglauros, and Herse that I posted at 2/244 features prominently in it. Here it is again:


Veronese: Mercury, Aglauros, and Herse (1576–84, Cambridge UK)

That story essentially depends on Mercury seeking entrance in to an enclosed space. Right now, I am reading the story of Tisiphone visiting Ino and Athamas in their palace, which is another example of the same thing. A large part of the effect comes from the Fury's intrusion into a private house:

They say the doorposts shuddered when she stood
on the threshold of the house of Aeolus;
the polished oaken doors lost all their luster.

Anonymous engraver: Tisiphone, Athamas, and Ino (17th century)

And the maddened couple significantly run outside for the final act of their horrific tragedy.


Tempesta: The Insane Athamas Kills his Children (c.1610)

Historygirl wrote: "Also, if caught in an Ovid story don’t go near the water."

I'll try to bear that in mind. Interesting, though, that the Tennyson poem I have just posted ends with the opposite of that advice:

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

I agree that there is something special about the watery medium. It involves an enfolding, which is both more total and less specific than penetration. So yes, I love your perception that Hermaphroditus retains his virginity. But does s/he remain a potentially functioning lover of either gender? I suspect not—in which case, the very concept of virginity is surely moot? R.

My search also led me to two English poems which interest me, not as treatments of any one story specifically, but because they each cite several examples and thus are steeped, one might say, in an Ovidian ethos. The first is by John Fletcher (1579–1625), writing partner of Francis Beaumont, part of whose Salmacis and Hermaphroditus we saw in post 4/88.

Hear, ye ladies that despise
      What the mighty Love has done;
Fear examples and be wise:
      Fair Callisto was a nun;
Leda, sailing on the stream
      To deceive the hopes of man,
Love accounting but a dream,
      Doted on a silver swan;
Danae, in a brazen tower,
      Where no love was, loved a shower.

Hear, ye ladies that are coy,
      What the mighty Love can do;
Fear the fierceness of the boy:
      The chaste Moon he makes to woo;
Vesta, kindling holy fires,
      Circled round about with spies,
Never dreaming loose desires,
      Doting at the altar dies;
Ilion, in a short hour, higher
      He can build, and once more fire.

The other poem is "Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white" from The Princess, a long narrative poem published in 1847 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92):

      Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.

      Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

      Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

      Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

      Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

I have looked at this many times before, and always dismissed it as faded and sentimental. But now, after looking at all those Danaë paintings, I see how brilliantly sensuous the line "Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars" really is, and how that sensuality pervades the entire poem. Even though the Danae reference (he must have pronounced it in two syllables) is the only specific one, this is written by someone who not only knows his Ovid but has bathed in his essence; every image conjures up his world of seduction and transformation. The Victorians may not have been so prudish as they are reputed to be. R.

DANAE FROM GREEK SOURCES. Looking for texts about Danaë, I came upon the following poems, both originally in Greek. Simonides of Ceos (c.556–468 BCE) deals with the later part of the story, after Danaë has been cast adrift with her baby Perseus (the subject of the Fuseli painting I posted at #149). One might easily imagine it being set to music as a Lamento by someone like Monteverdi. The translation is by the Victorian poet John Addington Symonds, who gives it (rightly or wrongly) a grand Romantic pathos:

Danaë and her Babe Adrift

      When, in the carven chest,
The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest
Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet,
      Her arms of love round Perseus set,
      And said: "O child, what grief is mine!
But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast
      Is sunk in rest,
Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark,
Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark.
      Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine
Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep,
Nor the shrill winds that sweep,—
Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace,
      Fair little face!
But if this dread were dreadful too to thee,
Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to me;
Therefore I cry— Sleep, babe, and sea, be still,
And slumber our unmeasured ill!
      Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus, from thee
Descend, our woes to end!
But if this prayer, too overbold, offend
      Thy justice, yet be merciful to me!"

The other, about a millennium later, is by the Byzantine poet Paulus Silentiarius (died c.580 CE). He treats the familiar story of the golden rain, but with a cynical twist: she was only in it for the money! The poem is 5.219 in the Greek Anthology. I don't know the translator.

Golden Zeus cut through the seal of untouched maidenhood
after he entered Danae’s chamber of beaten bronze.
I think that what the story means is this: Gold, the all-conquerer,
Overcomes walls and chains.
Gold reproaches all reins and every lock,
Gold bends all blinking women its way.
It turned around Danae’s mind too: No lover needs
To beg the Paphian’s favor if he has money.

By the way, Jeopardy tonight had a section on "Art and Myth." The questions included Daphne and Leda and I think one other Ovidian theme, perhaps Syrinx, but I've forgotten. Anyone who is following this group, though, would have aced the category! R.

Thanks for your recommendation of Emily Wilson. I have had my eye on it, but my classical plate is currently rather full (!).

And as for the trans experience and so forth, if you hunt the web for pictures, you will soon stumble upon a number of small-group sites that annex some of these stories as evidence in their own defense. R.

Not quite finished with Danaë, I have three more from British artists who fill out the story of the conception and birth of Perseus. The first two are by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833–98), and are in the extreme vertical format he liked so much. The finished picture, one of several versions, takes an unusual moment in the story, when Acrisius, fearful of the prophecy that his daughter's son will kill him, has ordered the building of the tower of brass, but before Danaë has been locked up there. The second is a gouache only, not worked up into a finished oil; it shows a glowing, but strangely chaste, version of the shower of gold:


Burne-Jones: Danaë or The Tower of Brass (1887–88, Glasgow)
Burne-Jones: Danaë (late 1880s, at auction)

To complete the story, we go back a century to the Swiss-British artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825). Identification of this picture is still conjectural. The Yale site says this:

Although the subject of this painting remains uncertain, its composition is connected to two drawings by the artist that illustrate the story of Danaë and her infant son Perseus, who were set adrift in a chest by Acrisius, Danaë’s father. The figure riding a chariot in the background at the right may be Poseidon, who, following Zeus’s command, brought mother and child to safety on the island of Seriphos. The dagger in the foreground remains unexplained, and its presence underscores the mysterious nature of Fuseli’s imagery.

The grayness and slight spookiness of the picture is very different from the ecstasy of the shower of gold, but it could be seen as a fitting prelude to the hero rescuing Andromeda from the sea monster. R.


Fuseli: Danaë and Perseus on Seriphos (1785–90, Yale)

Roman Clodia wrote: "Roger wrote: "But there is a long tradition in literature of swaggering rogues, whom we root for so long as we know that they will be called to account by the end."

Ha, I love a good rogue (Byron,..."

That's a very well-balanced answer. Had it not been, or if you felt that I was being unduly rigid, we should indeed freeze the discussion. But I'm sure it will come up again, and we should probably let it if it does. The question of Ovid's attitude, however, is entirely germane, and I am certainly prepared to wait to see if a social or political pattern will emerge.

In talking of Mozart, I could mention any of the Da Ponte operas, Don Giovanni especially. A serial seducer, to say the least, who is carted off by devils at the end. But if one is going to attend in a spirit of disapproval, one might as well turn in the ticket. Many years ago, I did a production with a double cast. One Giovanni was a Baptist Minister of Music in real life; the other, a former student of mine elsewhere, was a guest. The guest, though married, went to bed with the Zerlina on his first day; the Baptist alas, though a fine singer, could never let his moral guard down enough to embody the part. It was an instructive lesson! R.

Roman Clodia wrote: "The other mythological source that I know of is Pseudo-Apollodorus so perhaps he gives a fuller version of Danae? I haven't read him."

No, only two lines there also, just before the passage I quoted in post 133. R.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Er, no, sorry, I'm not on Jupiter's side!"

Of course you're not. And if you sat me down and asked "Do you really approve of Jupiter's cavalier treatment of women?" of course the answer would be No. But there is a long tradition in literature of swaggering rogues, whom we root for so long as we know that they will be called to account by the end. Think of the treatment of the Devil in plays and operas from Marlowe on: almost always as a charming and slightly comic figure.

Surely there has been a long assumption in literature that we readers will suspend moral judgments until the story is over, unless the author specifically guides us to see things in a particular moral light? I would even say that the application of real-world standards to a literary artifact is a crass intrusion into the unity of the value system within the work itself.* But it might be an interesting question to ask of a book after the cover is closed.

Given that this convenient moral blindness is more often applied in favor of men, feminists may well argue that the entire convention is pernicious, and leads to a perpetuation of sexist attitudes in real life. So it may; I see that argument. But it will take a lot more for me to reject the assumptions under which—I think—the authors were writing, even though I am quite opposed to such behavior in real life. R.

*I don't know if this means anything to you, but some years ago, I was doing a production of Così fan tutte at both Peabody and Curtis. I wanted to take the plot a step or two nearer to reality than most productions, and make the girls gradually catch on to the trick that was being played on them. Well, the Curtis singers were bused down to see the Peabody production, and were horrified; I had to go up the next day to put the fires out. The climax came when one of the young women exclaimed "I would never sleep with my sister's boyfriend!" To which the only answer is: "Good for you, but what's that got to do with anything?"

DANAE PAINTINGS. One reason why I wanted to be sure to include Danaë, despite the brevity of her mention, is that the myth has given rise to some of my favorite paintings. The Wikipedia article has a gallery with almost a dozen examples. Looking through them, you see a greater consistency of treatment than in almost any other subject we have examined. Almost always, there is a nude or semi-nude figure lying back on a bed, some representation of the rain of gold coming in from above, and often an attendant Cupid or sometimes a nurse. The following by Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) is a typical example:


Orazio Gentileschi: Danaë and the Shower of Gold (1621–23, Getty)

The ones that knock me off my feet, however, are those that make clear that the shower of golden coins was not merely a form of bribery, but the actual substance that impregnated Danaë and fathered Perseus. Some painters even go beyond to show Danaë's sexual pleasure. Such is the case, I think, in Titian's Prado version of the story (there are other versions, painted over a twenty-year span, in Naples, St. Petersburg, London, Vienna, and Chicago), despite the presence of the nurse, who does regard the gold for its monetary value only. And, almost three centuries later, it is absolutely true of the version by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), whose ecstatic pose and glowing thighs leave no doubt about what is happening.


Titian: Danaë (1560–65, Prado)


Klimt: Danaë (1907, private collection)

There are, of course, paintings which do not show these traditional ingredients. One rather beautiful one is that by Rembrandt, which has a golden Cupid but otherwise no representation of the gold. So far, it is only a golden light flooding into Danaë's bedroom and woken her up; she has not yet opened to receive it.


Rembrandt: Danaë (1636–43, St. Petersburg, Hermitage)

Finally, a couple of outliers. One is by Jan Gossaert (1478–1532), still maintaining something of a Gothic tradition, showing Danaë in a tower and more or less clothed. The other by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770) does away with the shower of gold entirely—indeed with any idea of a closed room—and has Jupiter arrive in terrifying, tremendous person. Titian's Hermitage version of his basic design also gives a glimpse of the god's face, but this is a different proposition entirely. (Did someone mention cellulite?!)


Gossaert: Danaë (1527, Munich)


Tiepolo: Danaë (c.1736, Stockholm)

Roman Clodia wrote: "…reading makes us, as readers, troublingly complicit with the act of sexualised looking"

True, but it occasionally works the other way around too, as in the case of Salmacis.

I only focused on Ovid's views of women because the book you mentioned makes a point of analyzing female and/or feminist writing in an Ovidian light. But there is another reason too. I have noticed recently, most particularly with the Bacchantes and Salmacis, that Ovid appears to be depicting women in terms of slurs or hidden fears projected upon them by men: they are hysterical, unpredictable, seductive, castrating…. Being a male author, I do not see this the other way around.

Oh yes, Jupiter is a thorough cad, and in a #MeToo context, wrong, wrong, wrong. But we kind of root for him, don't we? No such sympathy is easily extended to Juno, however just her grievances. R.

Danaë gets two lines at the beginning of the story of Perseus and Atlas. Here they are (with the preceding two) in the Charles Martin translation:

Acrasius makes war against the god,
whom he denies was the true son of Jove,
and says the very same thing about Perseus,
conceived by Danaë in a rain of gold.

I tend to assume that all the incognito amours of Jupiter would be told at length in the Metamorphoses, but in this case I was wrong. The rather prosaic source, it appears, was the Fabulae of Ovid's slightly older contemporary Gaius Julius Hyginus (c.64 BCE – 17 CE). Here is his version of the story:

Danae was the daughter of Acrisius and Aganippe. A prophecy about her said that the child she bore would kill Acrisius, and Acrisius, fearing this, shut her in a stone-walled prison. But Jove, changing into a shower of gold, lay with Danae, and from this embrace Perseus was born. Because of her sin her father shut her up in a chest with Perseus and cast it into the sea. By Jove's will it was borne to the island of Seriphos, and when the fisherman Dictys found it and broke it open, he discovered the mother and child. He took them to King Polydectes, who married Danae and brought up Perseus in the temple of Minerva. When Acrisius discovered they were staying at Polydectes' court, he started out to get them, but at his arrival Polydectes interceded for them, and Perseus swore an oath to his grandfather that he would never kill him. When Acrisius was detained there by a storm, Polydectes died, and at his funeral games the wind blew a discus from Perseus' hand at Acrisius' head which killed him. Thus what he did not do of his own will was accomplished by the gods. When Polydectes was buried, Perseus set out for Argos and took possession of his grandfather's kingdom.

There must be other versions too, for one hears of Danaë being locked up either in a bronze cell or at the top of a bronze tower—the point being that the skylight was the only point of access, hence Jove's trick with the golden rain. R.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Switching topic, I came across this book today: Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters. Something to check out when I'm next in the library."

I glanced at it briefly. Personally, I'm not good on social philosophy so will give it a miss. On the other hand, I'd be very interested to hear a summary of what it says.

Which brings me to a point that I was pondering only this morning. We are still very far from a comprehensive picture of Ovid's attitude to women, aren't we? While there are traces of feminism showing occasionally, we have a lot more women who are unfairly victimized and, recently, an increasing number who are really rather nasty pieces of work. Someone should be keeping a tally! R.

DANAE IN OPERA. Since the reference in Ovid is so short, I suppose there is no harm in skipping ahead to the Danaë story now. She is the heroine of the second-last opera by Richard Strauss, Die Liebe der Danaë, finished in 1944, but not premiered until 1952. It is a really strange piece: a comedy with some moment of sublime grandeur. It also departs from the classical sources by combining the stories of Jupiter and Midas, who at one point substitute for one another. To get a very brief sense of the musical qualities of the opera, try this teaser for the 2011 modern-dress production from Berlin, also available on DVD. The first brief excerpt is Danaë telling her maid of her dream of the shower of gold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmanA...



There is (currently) a video of the complete opera in the garish 2016 production from Salzburg (photo above). The cue below takes you to the start of the golden rain sequence, here treated by a dozen gilded dancers, looking like a parody of the title sequence of Goldfinger. But it is worth enduring for the full duet that follows:

https://youtu.be/XeAM9UsMfCU?t=418

As with most Strauss operas, the best music comes in the last 40 minutes. Realizing that Danaë loves Midas and not him, Jupiter lovingly renounces her and goes on his way. You could find it in the full video, starting at about 2:00:00 for the serene orchestral interlude that covers the scene change. Or you could listen in sound only to the following:

https://youtu.be/2tgx6bOoYxI

Jim wrote: "I hope that Cellini's sculpture of Perseus holding high the severed head of medusa still sands in the Piazza della Signoria in Firenze."

Following up on Jim's mention of Perseus (although that is skipping a bit ahead), I have been looking into this mother, Danaë, who surprisingly gets only two lines in Ovid. Several things to share there, but she too is in the future,

However, on looking further into her story, I came upon the following from the Bibliotheca of "Pseudo Apollodorus" (C1–C2 CE) that is relevant to this part of the Met.:

And Acrisius had a daughter Danae by Eurydice, daughter of Lacedaemon, and Proetus had daughters, Lysippe, Iphinoe, and Iphianassa, by Stheneboea. When these damsels were grown up, they went mad, according to Hesiod, because they would not accept the rites of Dionysus, but according to Acusilaus, because they disparaged the wooden image of Hera. In their madness they roamed over the whole Argive land, and afterwards, passing through Arcadia and the Peloponnese, they ran through the desert in the most disorderly fashion. [tr. Sir James Frazer]

It makes an interesting parallel to the stories of the Bacchantes in Book III and the Minyades in Book IV, doesn't it? Apparently Bacchus went around driving women mad, either as part of their worship, or because they refused to worship! R.

Duh! In looking for examples, I completely forgot the fact that opera routinely stops the clock every time it begins a slow ensemble. Thank you for reminding me. I didn't have that particular professional hat on while I was writing; I'm having too much fun resuming my previous one as an art historian!

But speaking professionally, as an opera director now, one of the perpetual challenges is whether to maintain any overt dramatic action during these ensembles, and where and how to resume it when they are over. The Rosenkavalier trio is an especially demanding case in point. However, all this is off-topic, so if you want to pursue it further, let's go to direct message. R.

Yes, Jim, it stunned me when I saw it in the book. As to your point about music, don't you think that music can do both: propel the story through time, but also slow or even freeze it? Think of the difference between Mars and Neptune from Holst's Planets or the opening of Act III of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. R.