“The Story of of Cadmus” – Ovid
“Lying Cow” (1883)
Vincent van Gogh
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Month: November, 2020
November 22, 2020
“Europa’s Rape” (ll) – Ovid
“The Rape of Europa” (c.1732 – 1734)
François Boucher
___________
Agenor’s royal daughter, as she plaid
Among the fields, the milk-white bull survey’d,
Agenor, king of Tyre, in Phoenicia,
an area comprised then of ancient
Lebanon, as well as a good part of
the Eastern, and later, the Southern,
which is to say the African,
Mediterranean coasts, father of,
notably, Europa, his royal, his
indeed mythic, daughter
And view’d his spotless body with delight,
And at a distance kept him in her sight.
Europa is intrigued, delight[ed], by this
milk-white …spotless …bull, but from
a distance, discreetly, furtively
At length she pluck’d the rising flow’rs, and fed
The gentle beast, and fondly stroak’d his head.
pluck’d, dared, mischievously, to
confront
the rising flowers, offering [their] cup
to the sun
He stood well-pleas’d to touch the charming fair,
But hardly could confine his pleasure there.
And now he wantons o’er the neighb’ring strand,
Now rowls his body on the yellow sand;
to wanton, to play, to frolic, often
immodestly, like puppies, goats
strand, shore
rowls, rolls
And, now perceiving all her fears decay’d,
decay’d, dispelled, dissipated,
evaporated
Comes tossing forward to the royal maid;
Gives her his breast to stroke, and downward turns
His grizly brow, and gently stoops his horns.
grizly, grizzly, grayish
In flow’ry wreaths the royal virgin drest
drest, adorned
His bending horns, and kindly clapt his breast.
‘Till now grown wanton and devoid of fear,
Not knowing that she prest the Thunderer,
the Thunderer, Jove / Jupiter / Zeus
She plac’d her self upon his back, and rode
O’er fields and meadows, seated on the God.
however heedlessly, however
immoderately, immodestly,
however innocently
see above
He gently march’d along, and by degrees
Left the dry meadow, and approach’d the seas;
Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,
Now plunges in, and carries off the prize.
The frighted nymph looks backward on the shoar,
shoar, shore
And hears the tumbling billows round her roar;
But still she holds him fast: one hand is born
born, borne, held
Upon his back; the other grasps a horn:
Her train of ruffling garments flies behind,
Swells in the air, and hovers in the wind.
see here also for a more windswept
picture of Europa, more in keeping
with the last few lines
Through storms and tempests he the virgin bore,
And lands her safe on the Dictean shore;
Dictean, of Dicte, or Dikti, a mountain
range in Eastern Crete, site of the
Diktaion Antron, or Dictaean Cave,
the place where Jove / Jupiter / Zeus
was apparently born, if it wasn’t the
Idaean Cave, which is to say a cave on
Mount Ida, therefore Idaean, also in
Crete, both hollows having claimed
the right to be called the site of the
exalted provenance
Where now, in his divinest form array’d,
In his true shape he captivates the maid;
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus manifest, no
longer bull, but divinity, dripping
still in bovine potency, however
residual
Who gazes on him, and with wond’ring eyes
Beholds the new majestick figure rise,
His glowing features, and celestial light,
And all the God discover’d to her sight.
once, to a man who’d bewitched me,
how could you touch me, I wrote, you
must’ve known you would transfix me,
leave me breathless, which he,
however inadvertently, had, did
I went on, of course, to not populate
continents, nor to become queen of
Crete, but was Europa, in that
instance, before my own exalted
entity
R ! chard
November 15, 2020
“Europa’s Rape” – Ovid
“Bulls” (1948)
Bertalan Por
____
though I’d heard, indeed, of the rape of
Europa, I wasn’t aware, I’d thought, of
the details, was loathe, therefore, to
read on, in the next segment of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, having been earlier
put off by such incidents in that text
as it turned out, Europa isn’t raped,
but, rather, abducted, more or less
willingly, however innocently, by
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus, and will even,
later, consensually, bear his children
who will then migrate, from their base
in Crete, to populate, to people, the
continent which we’ll come to know
as Europe, after their mum
but that’s a whole other story
meanwhile
When now the God his fury had allay’d,
And taken vengeance of the stubborn maid,
From where the bright Athenian turrets rise
He mounts aloft, and re-ascends the skies.
the God, Hermes / Mercury, if you’ll
remember, had just transformed
Aglauros, the stubborn maid, into a
statue for having been impudent
with him, and mounts aloft now,
re-ascends the skies over Athens,
where the damsel had lived
Jove saw him enter the sublime abodes,
the sublime abodes, Olympus,
home of the gods
And, as he mix’d among the crowd of Gods,
Beckon’d him out, and drew him from the rest,
And in soft whispers thus his will exprest.
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus wants something
from Hermes / Mercury
“My trusty Hermes, by whose ready aid
Thy sire’s commands are through the world convey’d.
sire, Jove / Jupiter / Zeus is the father
of Hermes / Mercury, his sire
Hermes / Mercury, the messenger god,
patron of travellers, heralds, newscasters,
those who convey information
through[out] the world
Resume thy wings, exert their utmost force,
And to the walls of Sidon speed thy course;
Sidon, a city still in Lebanon
There find a herd of heifers wand’ring o’er
The neighb’ring hill, and drive ’em to the shore.”
Thus spoke the God, concealing his intent.
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus, the God, has
an ulterior motive, a conceal[ed] …
intent
The trusty Hermes, on his message went,
And found the herd of heifers wand’ring o’er
A neighb’ring hill, and drove ’em to the shore;
mission accomplished
Where the king’s daughter, with a lovely train
Of fellow-nymphs, was sporting on the plain.
the conceal[ed] …intent is exposed,
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus, in character,
is on the prowl
The dignity of empire laid aside,
(For love but ill agrees with kingly pride)
power, empire, will not abide being
deprived, we’ve seen ample examples
of that in our, even most recent, past
The ruler of the skies, the thund’ring God,
Who shakes the world’s foundations with a nod,
Jove / Jupiter, Zeus, god, remember,
of Thunder
Among a herd of lowing heifers ran,
Frisk’d in a bull, and bellow’d o’er the plain.
Frisk’d, accoutered, dressed up as,
in the guise of, a bull
Large rowles of fat about his shoulders clung,
rowles, rolls
And from his neck the double dewlap hung.
dewlap, a looseflap of skin hanging
from the throat of some animals, or
birds, cattle, for instance, turkeys,
a wattle
His skin was whiter than the snow
see above
that lies
Unsully’d by the breath of southern skies;
a breath of southern skies would
melt away white snow, revealing,
fatefully, ignominiously, patches
of [ ]sully’d earth
Small shining horns on his curl’d forehead stand,
As turn’d and polish’d by the work-man’s hand;
His eye-balls rowl’d, not formidably bright,
rowl’d, rolled
But gaz’d and languish’d with a gentle light.
as in doe eyes
His ev’ry look was peaceful, and exprest
The softness of the lover in the beast.
a wolf, if here a bull, in
sheep’s clothing
stay tuned
R ! chard
November 2, 2020
my 10 best films – “Copenhagen”
______________
yesterday – a Sunday afternoon, much
like Sundays the way they were
supposed to be, gracious, cordial, if
somewhat reverent, but, especially,
and quite specifically, as specified in
its prevailing Good Book then, restful
– a friend and I watched a second of
my ten favourite movies
Copenhagen, a three-character play
that had won the Tony in 2000, had
been made into a film a couple of
years later, with Daniel Craig, no
less than Daniel Craig, yes, that
Daniel Craig, if you’ll pardon my
gushing, the most recent, and
therefore ,to my mind, nearly
definitive James Bond, with a
couple of other less well known,
though supremely capable,
performers
Daniel Craig is Werner Heisenberg,
the German physicist who’d studied
with Niels Bohr, his Danish tutor,
both becoming, individually, great
names in the history of 20th-Century
nuclear physics, right up there with
Einstein and Oppenheimer
the year is 1941, Denmark is
occupied, Heisenberg, though
earlier a beloved student, is
now a political enemy, of his
earlier mentor, Niels Bohr
conflicting, apparently, ideologies,
incompatible, clashing, loyalties,
fell even apparently indissoluble
intimacies
it is allowed by the German High
Command that Heisenberg visit
Bohr in Copenhagen, at his home,
to, perhaps, glean information
about the atom bomb, its
composition
Heisenberg, if not necessarily
coerced, is, however informally,
tasked with getting whatever
relevant information from Bohr,
who is not directly involved with
either the German or American
pursuits, his interest is essentially
theoretical, to the extent that he
can maintain that pose despite
intense international pressure
they meet, they met, an actual
historical event, Michael Frayn
the playwright, imagines their
meeting, which has never been
recorded, the play is a work of
the imagination, but of an
imagination of the very highest
order, and philosophical insight
Schubert provides most of the
music, sets the tone for the
film, the much more refined
atmosphere of polished Europe,
the Europe we look toward, like
Romans looked toward Athens,
for their moral and aesthetic
pre-eminence, a Europe that
profoundly reverberates still in
our, however globalized,
collectivity
listen
try hard to see the movie
R ! chard
November 2, 2020
“The Story of Aglauros, transform’d into a Statue” (lV) – Ovid
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