“Metamorphoses” (The Golden Age) – Ovid
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Month: April, 2020
April 8, 2020
“Metamorphoses” – Ovid, 105
“The Creation” (1935)
Aaron Douglas
________
it should be noted that this exemplary
translation of Metamorphoses was
done by a clutch of eminent poets,
John Dryden principally, England’s
first Poet Laureate, 1688, but with
the help of, notably, Joseph Addison,
Alexander Pope, and William
Congreve, among a number of
celebrated others, under the
direction of the poet and physician,
Samuel Garth, in no later than 1717,
over 300 hundred years ago
this will explain the sometimes
disorienting spelling of some
otherwise common words, you’ve
read already, for instance, “extreams”
for “extremes”, “watry” for “watery”,
“blustring” for “blustering”
it might also be that my own reading
of the text could be influenced by
idiosyncratic interpretations given
by the above poets, who would’ve
written according to the perspectives
of their own time, the 18th Century,
somewhat altering, most likely, the
pristine intentions of Ovid’s original
as I myself, however philologically
scrupulously – mea culpa, mea
culpa, mea maxima culpa, I must
contritely confess – can, can
be forewarned
but onwards to the completion of
the Creation
High o’er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The God a clearer space for Heav’n design’d;
Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow;
a description of Heaven, “fields of light and
liquid aether”
Purg’d from the pondrous dregs of Earth below.
“the pondrous dregs of Earth”, our dwelling
Scarce had the Pow’r distinguish’d these, when streight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads, from underneath the mass;
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
“the Pow’r”, or “the God, whatever God was he”,
earlier noted
while gravitation again allows the “fields of light”,
newly “distinguished”, or separated, from the
“pondrous dregs of Earth“, to “streight…upward
shoot, and kindle”, or sparkle, like firewood, or
nebulae, aurorae, very constellations
And with diffusive light adorn their heav’nly place.
diffusive, evanescent, aetherial, nearly
transcendental
Then, every void of Nature to supply,
With forms of Gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share:
New colonies of birds, to people air:
And to their oozy beds, the finny fish repair.
note that all life forms are “forms of Gods”,
and “birds”, anthropomorphically, no less
than “people air”
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design’d:
the design follows
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form’d, and fit to rule the rest:
though the specific initial progenitor will remain
ever the secret of that Creator
Whether with particles of heav’nly fire
The God of Nature did his soul inspire,
Or Earth, but new divided from the sky
was it “heav’nly fire” or “Earth”, which malleable
And, pliant, still retain’d th’ aetherial energy:
we are, in other words, quintessentially,
however muddied, starlight
Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.
Prometheus is the Titan who fashioned
us of clay, and gifted us with fire despite
the opposition of the Gods, for which he
was cruelly punished, but that’s another
story
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
mute creation, species who have no
language, animals, lizards, insects
Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
hereditary, received from the Creator,
the primordial ancestor, generator
From such rude principles our form began;
And earth was metamorphos’d into Man.
R ! chard
April 7, 2020
“Metamorphoses” – Ovid, 104
“The West Wind“ (1891)
Winslow Homer
__________
next, the creation of climate
And as five zones th’ aetherial regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to Earth assign’d:
the five zones are the equatorial zone, the two
temperate zones, and the polar zones
The sun with rays, directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:
the equator gets the brunt of it
The two beneath the distant poles, complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
the poles get the other brunt of it
Betwixt th’ extreams, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
“temper”, as in “temperate”, as in zones
The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
fields of liquid air, cloud covers
The lighter parts lye next the fires above;
fires above, the sun and the stars
The grosser near the watry surface move:
“grosser” air, less pure, less aetherial
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder’s voice, which wretched mortals fear,
And winds that on their wings cold winter bear.
they gravitate towards the denser earth, creating
conditions “there” for storms, strife, thunder
ever so ominously
Nor were those blustring brethren left at large,
On seas, and shores, their fury to discharge:
blustring brethren, the winds, are not, we learn,
not apportioned, not not allocated
Bound as they are, and circumscrib’d in place,
They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
tempests, tsunamis, hurricanes
they call the winds
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
(The regions of the balmy continent);
And Eastern realms, where early Persians run,
To greet the blest appearance of the sun.
Westward, the wanton Zephyr wings his flight;
Pleas’d with the remnants of departing light:
Fierce Boreas, with his off-spring, issues forth
T’ invade the frozen waggon of the North.
where we encounter, incidentally, aurorae borealis
While frowning Auster seeks the Southern sphere;
And rots, with endless rain, th’ unwholsom year.
it is to be noted that in 8 AD, when Metamorphoses
was purportedly first published, one gathers from
the text that the world was understood to be
spherical, with two poles, the boreal and the
austral, from which we later get the eponymously
named Australia
the world went flat, note, only later in the
Middle Ages
R ! chard
April 6, 2020
“Metamorphoses” – Ovid, 103
“Chaos (The Creation)“ (1841)
Ivan Aivazovsky
______
But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end:
intestine, of the entrails, intestine discords,
a stomach ache, already the
anthropomorphization of the deity, our
gods created in our own image
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driv’n,
And grosser air sunk from aetherial Heav’n.
the elements begin to find, and form, each
their distinctive identities
grosser air, less pure than that of Heaven
Thus disembroil’d, they take their proper place;
The next of kin, contiguously embrace;
the elements fall in line, like congregates with
like
And foes are sunder’d, by a larger space.
space expands
examples follow
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a num’rous throng
Of pondrous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
there are the seeds again, the jarring seeds,
within the primordial Chaos, cloying to what
will become the Earth
note also the introduction of gravity, what
goes up, what goes down
About her coasts, unruly waters roar;
And rising, on a ridge, insult the shore.
water vies with earth for its place upon the
strand, in waves, tides, still, even thousands
of years later
Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
note the indecision here, the less adamant
profession of the deity before the imprint
of uncompromising Christianity, when
there would’ve been no wars of religion,
the wars were for territory
Had form’d the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
a God who would’ve presided, who would’ve
called the elements to order, and proportion
He moulded Earth into a spacious round:
Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;
And bad the congregated waters flow.
bad, or bade, as in called upon to perform a task
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part, in Earth are swallow’d up, the most
In ample oceans, disembogu’d, are lost.
disembogue is said of a waterway that joins a
larger current, a stream disembogues into a
river, a river into a sea, or an ocean
He shades the woods, the vallies he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.
sounds like Vancouver
R ! chard
April 5, 2020
“Metamorphoses” – Ovid, 102
“To Be Titled“ (1987) –
Jean-Michel Basquiat
__________
next, according to Ovid, inspired, presumably,
by the Gods, is what happens before the world
is created
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
which is to say, the earth
And Heav’n’s high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
the “face of Nature” was “One”, an
indistinguishable, perhaps not even, “face”
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d.
this undifferentiated agglomeration, this “lifeless
lump” was called Chaos
note the “seeds”, however, potential, though
“jarring”, or conflicting, the genesis for what
is to follow
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
the horns of the moon are visible when the
crescent moon lies flat on the horizon, in
the shape of a smile, presenting “horns”,
the twin elevated extensions
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois’d, did on her own foundations lye:
or lie
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
see again Chaos here
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water’s dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus’d, and each disturb’d the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.
next, the first metamorphosis
stay tuned
R ! chard
April 3, 2020
“Metamorphoses” – Ovid, 101
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