Richibi’s Weblog

   “Primavera“ (1478) 

 

       Sandro Botticelli

 

             _________

 

 

a friend expressed some interest in Ovid’s

Metamorphoses recently after I’d sung for 

a few moments its praises, had told her I 

was revisiting it after some time with the 

intention of duly, this time, completing it, 

given that, hey, we’ve got lots of time, at 

present, all of us, on our hands, by very 

mandate  

 

it sounds wonderful, she briefed me after 

I’d sent her the appropriate link, but there 

are some parts I don’t understand

 

I’ll help, I said, only too eager to share 

the delights of this inprobable treasure,

a gift nearly two thousand years old, 

with the magic still of very revelation

 

Metamorphoses is a creation story, the 

equivalent of the Bible for those who 

revered the Roman deities, the same 

deities that the Greeks revered, but 

transplanted, renamed, to Roman 

stock, like the Puritans did their  

Christian seed at Plymouth Rock  

 

Ovid, 43 BC to 17/18 AD, was a Roman

poet, paying fealty to Augustus, Emperor

of Rome, 63 BC to 14 AD, therefore his 

Roman goddesses, gods, and his, 

contemporary, Latin

 

which was translated into English early 

in the Renaissance, but found its best

expression, to my mind still, in the 

eminent hands of Sir Samuel Garth,

John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph

Addison, William Congreve, among 

others in, already, 1717

 

listen 

 

The Creation of the World

 

       Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing:
 

Ovid is saying my topic is transformation, very

metamorphoses, plural of metamorphosis

       Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
       Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
       ‘Till I my long laborious work compleat:
       And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
       Deduc’d from Nature’s birth, to Caesar’s times. 

 

poets have traditionally called upon their related

muses to inspire them to accomplish their task,

Ovid invokes his Gods, compare Shakespeare’s 

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / The

brightest heaven of invention, his prologue to 

Henry V   

 

“Ye Gods”, Ovid says, “from whom these 

miracles did spring”, those everyday wonders 

that surround us, inspire me, he asks, that I 

might “compleat”, which is to say complete, 

his poem, “this long laborious work”

 

his “numbers” are his years, “coelestial”, or

celestial, “heat”, is inspiration

 

“tenour to my rimes” means rhythm, weight, 

to his poetry

 

“Nature’s birth”, or the beginning of time, to

“Caesar’s time”, Ovid‘s own period under

Augustus

 

Ovid asks the Gods to fuel him with the

fire to tell the story of the world from its 

very beginning to his own epoch,

Caesar’s 

 

how’s that for a project

 

 

enough for now

 

but stay tuned for, to follow, the Creation,

capital C, I tell you 

 

 

R ! chard