“Europa’s Rape” (ll) – Ovid
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Category: a poem to ponder
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
“The Story of Aglauros, transform’d into a Statue” (lV) – Ovid
“Statue in the Park of Versailles“
Giovanni Boldini
________
Envy, at the instigation of Minerva,
has flown towards the site of her
commissioned mischief, to hex
Aglauros, who’s miffed her
When Athens she beheld, for arts renown’d,
With peace made happy, and with plenty crown’d,
Athens, its glories, architectural,
literary, political, philosophical, would
have been impressive still, despite its
intervening decline, to the mind of a
Roman poet of the later First Century,
compare, say, a contemporary poet’s
evaluation of Great Britain’s grandeur
during its 19th Century supremacy, or
of the United States’ promise before
its late-20th-Century deterioration
Scarce could the hideous fiend from tears forbear,
To find out nothing that deserv’d a tear.
Envy, the hideous fiend, was upset
because she couldn’t find anything
to cry about, anything that deserv’d
a tear
Th’ apartment now she enter’d, where at rest
Aglauros lay, with gentle sleep opprest.
with gentle sleep opprest seems
to me oxymoronic, conflicting
definitions, how could a gentle
sleep oppress, but let’s continue
To execute Minerva’s dire command,
She stroak’d the virgin with her canker’d hand,
Then prickly thorns into her breast convey’d,
That stung to madness the devoted maid:
Her subtle venom still improves the smart,
improves the smart, accentuates
the sudden pain
Frets in the blood, and festers in the heart.
Frets in, unsettles, the blood, festers,
rots , becomes cankerous, in the heart.
To make the work more sure, a scene she drew,
And plac’d before the dreaming virgin’s view
Her sister’s marriage, and her glorious fate:
Th’ imaginary bride appears in state;
The bride-groom with unwonted beauty glows:
For envy magnifies what-e’er she shows.
Aglauros is not only struck with
subtle venom, but subjected to
psychological manipulation, if
you’ll excuse the reference to
modern analytical methods, is
made to see [h]er sister’s
marriage, Herse‘s, as well as
her glorious fate
For envy magnifies what-e’er
she shows, an observation
worth remembering
Full of the dream, Aglauros pin’d away
In tears all night, in darkness all the day;
the dream, though Envy might’ve
envenomed Aglauros in her sleep,
the unwanted vision continues to
plague her throughout the following
days, and nights
Consum’d like ice, that just begins to run,
When feebly smitten by the distant sun;
Or like unwholsome weeds, that set on fire
Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire.
the slow torture in the mind of
rancour there eating away at
the psyche
Giv’n up to envy (for in ev’ry thought
The thorns, the venom, and the vision wrought)
The thorns, the venom, and the vision,
all three, wrought, writhing, smouldering,
in ev’ry thought
Oft did she call on death, as oft decreed,
decreed, resolved
Rather than see her sister’s wish succeed,
To tell her awfull father what had past:
her awfull father, Cecrops l, founder
and first king of Athens, according to
myth
awfull, as in inspiring awe, reverence
At length before the door her self she cast;
the door, of her chamber, where the
God Hermes / Mercury had asked
Aglauros to speak in his favour to
her sister, Herse, whom he had
wanted, if you’ll remember, to woo
cast, set herself up awaiting the
God’s return
And, sitting on the ground with sullen pride,
A passage to the love-sick God deny’d.
Aglauros denies the God his wish,
she will not praise him to her sister
The God caress’d, and for admission pray’d,
And sooth’d in softest words th’ envenom’d maid.
caress’d, used endearing words
In vain he sooth’d: “Begone!” the maid replies,
“Or here I keep my seat, and never rise.”
I’ll stay here till you leave, Aglauros
tells Hermes / Mercury
“Then keep thy seat for ever,” cries the God,
the impudence of vying with a god
has its consequences
And touch’d the door, wide op’ning to his rod.
his rod, his caduceus, his winged
staff
Fain would she rise, and stop him,
Fain,willingly
but she found
Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground;
Her joynts are all benum’d, her hands are pale,
And marble now appears in ev’ry nail.
As when a cancer in the body feeds,
And gradual death from limb to limb proceeds;
So does the chilness to each vital parte
Spread by degrees, and creeps into her heart;
‘Till hard’ning ev’ry where, and speechless grown,
She sits unmov’d, and freezes to a stone.
Aglauros has become of stone,
a statue
But still her envious hue and sullen mien
Are in the sedentary figure seen.
still, though Aglauros might’ve been
rendered inanimate, it’s interesting
to note that she’s nevertheless
become immortal, immortalized
see, for instance, above
R ! chard
October 23, 2020
“The Story of Aglauros, transform’d into a Statue” (lll) – Ovid
“The Envious“
Gustave Doré
_______
all mythologies have their picture, their
rendition, their evocation of an afterlife,
states of either resignation, in earlier
traditions, perdition or bliss in the later
Christian view, manifest, these latter,
in Dante, his depictions of Hell,
Purgatory, and Heaven in his
Commedia, are probably its most
explicit evocations
the Greek and Roman pictures of
their own representative Underworld,
available in Homer, Horace, Virgil,
notably, is less compartmentalized,
less extreme in its divisions, a gloom
pervades, but nowhere fire and
brimstone, nor the diametrically
opposed consolation of archangels
and trumpets, only an unending
sense of desolation, be one worthy
of it or not
limbo comes to mind
but Envy’s realm is actual, not
belated, in the Ancient Greek and
Roman traditions, it is of this world,
present, however horrid, a place
that lurks in the hearts of men, of
people, always, ever, accessible
Dante situates his nexus of Envy in
Purgatory, the afterlife, the nether
world, its Second Circle, of seven,
Wrath, Envy, Pride, Lust, Gluttony,
Greed, Sloth
for Ovid, you can reach Envy’s
dominion, in the nearby mountainous
areas, if only you’ll follow Minerva
the one course is transcendental,
the other, organic, note, physical,
carnate
Directly to the cave her course she steer’d;
Against the gates her martial lance she rear’d;
The gates flew open, and the fiend appear’d.
the fiend, Envy herself
A pois’nous morsel in her teeth she chew’d,
And gorg’d the flesh of vipers for her food.
yech
Minerva loathing turn’d away her eye;
as, incontrovertibly, would I
The hideous monster, rising heavily,
Came stalking forward with a sullen pace,
And left her mangled offals on the place.
Soon as she saw the goddess gay and bright,
She fetch’d a groan at such a chearful sight.
Livid and meagre were her looks, her eye
In foul distorted glances turn’d awry;
A hoard of gall her inward parts possess’d,
And spread a greenness o’er her canker’d breast;
Her teeth were brown with rust, and from her tongue,
In dangling drops, the stringy poison hung.
She never smiles but when the wretched weep,
Nor lulls her malice with a moment’s sleep,
Restless in spite: while watchful to destroy,
She pines and sickens at another’s joy;
Foe to her self, distressing and distrest,
She bears her own tormentor in her breast.
the passage, without explication,
speaks for itself, I cede to its
manifest erudition
The Goddess gave (for she abhorr’d her sight)
her sight, what she was looking
upon
A short command: “To Athens speed thy flight;
On curst Aglauros try thy utmost art,
And fix thy rankest venoms in her heart.”
Minerva condemns, curs[es],
Aglauros
This said, her spear she push’d against the ground,
And mounting from it with an active bound,
Flew off to Heav’n:
Minerva reminds me of my own
generation’s Wonder Woman
meanwhile, the hag, Envy, with
eyes askew
Look’d up, and mutter’d curses as she flew;
For sore she fretted, and began to grieve
At the success which she her self must give.
success, the humiliation of
Aglauros
Then takes her staff, hung round with wreaths ofthorn,
And sails along, in a black whirlwind born,
the picture of a witch on a
broomstick shouldn’t
here be unanticipated
O’er fields and flow’ry meadows: where she steers
Her baneful course, a mighty blast appears,
Mildews and blights; the meadows are defac’d,
The fields, the flow’rs, and the whole years laidwaste:
the whole years, the yearly crops
On mortals next, and peopled towns she falls,
And breathes a burning plague among their walls.
the, not unfamiliar to us, season,
now, of the witch
R ! chard
October 17, 2020
“The Story of Aglauros, transform’d into a Statue” (ll) – Ovid
“Minerva or Pallas Athena” (1898)
Gustav Klimt
_______
Hermes / Mercury, messenger god,
has spotted Herse, Greek princess,
from on high, the most beautiful
among a procession of shining
virgins and, fir’d, swoops down to
earth, to th’ apartment of the royal
maid, in order to seduce her
The roof was all with polish’d iv’ry lin’d,
That richly mix’d, in clouds of tortoise shin’d.
tortoise, tortoiseshell, either the
colour, or the substance itself,
are referenced here, or maybe
even both
Three rooms, contiguous, in a range were plac’d,
contiguous, one beside the other
The midmost by the beauteous Herse grac’d;
Her virgin sisters lodg’d on either side.
Herse, you might remember, had
two sisters, Pandrosos and
Aglauros, daughters of King
Cecrops, they’d seen the child
Ericthonius, half man, half snake,
son of Minerva, who had been
given to them, into their care,
cradled in a basket, a chest, of
twining osiers, which they were
categorically not to open, but did,
to their great, to their utter, indeed
mythic, chagrin
Aglauros first th’ approaching God descry’d,
descry’d, witnessed, beheld
And, as he cross’d her chamber, ask’d his name,
And what his business was, and whence he came.
“I come,” reply’d the God, “from Heav’n, to woo
Your sister, and to make an aunt of you;
however unabashedly be he
forthright
I am the son and messenger of Jove;
My name is Mercury, my bus’ness love;
Do you, kind damsel, take a lover’s part,
And gain admittance to your sister’s heart.”
take a lover’s part, Mercury entreats,
be of help, he asks Aglauros, in this
amorous adventure, strategize a path,
gain admittance for me, to your sister’s
heart, to her serene acquiescence
She star’d him in the face with looks amaz’d,
As when she on Minerva’s secret gaz’d,
Minerva’s secret, her babe,
Ericthonius, half man, half snake,
whom Aglauros had earlier,
however treacherously, beheld
And asks a mighty treasure for her hire;
sure, says Aglauros, I’ll help, but
what will you give me in return
for my service, my hire
And, ’till he brings it, makes the God retire.
Aglauros will not assist till she
receives the mighty treasure she
requests for her hire
Minerva griev’d to see the nymph succeed;
Minerva, is not happy to see Aglauros
get anything at all because of her
earlier indiscretion, disobediently
uncovering Ericthonius, the
goddess’ son
And now remembring the late impious deed,
When, disobedient to her strict command,
She touch’d the chest with an unhallow’d hand;
In big-swoln sighs her inward rage express’d,
That heav’d the rising Aegis on her breast;
Aegis, the shield that Minerva wore,
fashioned by the Cyclopes, brothers,
one-eyed giants, in the workplace of
Hephaestus, god of Craftsmen, Fire,
Metallurgy, it bore the Gorgoneion,
the head of Medusa, which would
turn one to stone when looked upon
see above
Then sought out Envy in her dark abode,
Defil’d with ropy gore and clots of blood:
Shut from the winds, and from the wholesome skies,
In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies,
Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light
Invades the winter, or disturbs the night.
Envy, its personification, is a goddess
here, though the representative of
Envy is usually considered to be
Phthonus, a male deity
next stop, Envy’s dark abode
stay tuned
R ! chard
October 13, 2020
“The Story of Aglauros, transform’d into a Statue” – Ovid
“The Dancers” (c.1905)
Maurice Denis
________
This done, the God flew up on high,
This done, Hermes, the God, had just
turned Battus to a Touch stone
and pass’d
O’er lofty Athens, by Minerva grac’d,
Minerva, the Latin version of Athena,
was patroness of Athens, grac’d,
indeed, by the very Parthenon, then,
and still now, her temple
And wide Munichia, whilst his eyes survey
All the vast region that beneath him lay.
Munichia, the ancient name for a steep
hill, now called Kastella, in Piraeus, the
port of Athens
‘Twas now the feast, when each Athenian maid
Her yearly homage to Minerva paid;
let me point out that during the period
when pantheism prevailed, which is to
say anything earlier than the Emperor
Constantine, 272 – 337 AD, who
established Christianity as the official
religion of the Roman Empire, and going
back to the very beginnings of recorded
history, but at the very least to the epics
of Homer, his Iliad, his Odyssey, the 8th
Century BC, which tell of the Trojan War
and its aftermath, from the even more
distant 12th Century BC, homage was
paid, around the Mediterranean, to gods
and goddesses of Olympus, temples
were built, rituals performed in their
honour, much as in the Christian Era,
believers attend church, build cathedrals
to their preferred deity, feasts to Minerva
were as fervent then, in other words, as,
later, were those of devotees to their own
Christmas and Easter, say, celebrations
In canisters, with garlands cover’d o’er,
High on their heads, their mystick gifts they bore:
And now, returning in a solemn train,
The troop of shining virgins fill’d the plain.
see above
The God well pleas’d beheld the pompous show,
The God, Hermes still
And saw the bright procession pass below;
Then veer’d about, and took a wheeling flight,
And hover’d o’er them: as the spreading kite,
kite, a bird of prey
That smells the slaughter’d victim from on high,
Flies at a distance, if the priests are nigh,
And sails around, and keeps it in her eye:
her eye, the kite is given the feminine
gender here, perhaps following upon
the original Latin word’s grammar
So kept the God the virgin quire in view,
And in slow winding circles round them flew.
quire, archaic spelling of choir, a
group of instrumentalists or singers
As Lucifer excells the meanest star,
Or, as the full-orb’d Phoebe, Lucifer;
Lucifer, the Morning Star, the planet
Venus, as it appears in the East
before sunrise
Phoebe, pre-Olympian goddess
representative of the moon, thus
in the verse above the very moon
So much did Herse all the rest outvy,
And gave a grace to the solemnity.
Herse, a Greek princess
outvy, outvie, to surpass
Hermes was fir’d, as in the clouds he hung:
fir’d, inflamed, aroused, thus
flung as would be a missile,
the word fir’d here shimmers
with both meanings
So the cold bullet, that with fury slung
From Balearick engines mounts on high,
Glows in the whirl, and burns along the sky.
Balearick engines, slingshots,
the people of the Balearic Islands,
off the coast of Spain, were famous
in ancient times for their use of the
slingshot, or sling, especially as a
weapon
At length he pitch’d upon the ground, and show’d
The form divine, the features of a God.
He knew their vertue o’er a female heart,
their vertue, the virtues of both [t]he
form divine and the features of a
God, however be these identical,
allow grammatically for the
possessive adjective their to be
used here
And yet he strives to better them by art.
Hermes would rather seduce with
art, which is to say with charm
and artistry, than by his august
credentials merely
He hangs his mantle loose, and sets to show
The golden edging on the seam below;
Adjusts his flowing curls, and in his hand
Waves, with an air, the sleep-procuring wand;
The glitt’ring sandals to his feet applies,
And to each heel the well-trim’d pinion ties.
pinion, the outer part of a bird’s wing,
including the flight feathers, which
Hermes applies to his sandals
His ornaments with nicest art display’d,
He seeks th’ apartment of the royal maid.
to be continued
R ! chard
October 4, 2020
“Love Opened a Mortal Wound” – Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–1695)
___________
in both style and substance, the
following poem reminds me of
Emily Dickinson‘s wonderful stuff
the poet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,
1651–1695, was the illegitimate
daughter of a Spanish father and
a Creole mother, who chose to
follow her many intellectual pursuits
and become a nun rather than submit
to the rigours of love and a secular life
R ! chard
_________________
Love Opened a Mortal Wound
Love opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.
Wild, distracted, sick,
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thought—a thousand deaths.
Blow after blow, my heart
couldn’t survive this beating.
Then—how can I explain it?
I came to my senses. I said,
Why do I suffer? What lover
ever had so much pleasure?
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
(translated by Joan Larkin
and Jaime Manrique)
Con el Dolor de la Mortal Herida
Con el dolor de la mortal herida,
de un agravio de amor me lamentaba;
y por ver si la muerte se llegaba,
procuraba que fuese más crecida.
Toda en el mal el alma divertida,
pena por pena su dolor sumaba,
y en cada circunstancia ponderaba
que sobrarban mil muertes a una vida.
Y cuando, al golpe de uno y otro tiro,
rendido el corazón daba penoso
señas de dar el último suspiro,
no sé con qué destino prodigioso
volví en mi acuerdo y dije:—¿Qué me admiro?
¿Quién en amor ha sido más dichoso?
September 28, 2020
“Ocyrrhoe transform’d into a Mare” (II) – Ovid
“Indigo Sky Mares“
Laurel Burch
______
Thus entring into destiny, the maid
The secrets of offended Jove betray’d:
the maid, Ocyrrhoe, daughter of Chiron
and [t]he nymph Charicle
Ocyrrhoe had offended Jove, but
especially Hades, Jove’s brother,
ruler of the Underworld, when she
had prophesied that Apollo‘s child
with Coronis would be an acclaimed
healer, thus defraud[ing] the tomb,
thereby saving people from the
clutches of Hades, the especially
aggrieved god
More had she still to say; but now appears
Oppress’d with sobs and sighs, and drown’d in tears.
Occhyroe would have had more
to prophesy, but was impeded by
involuntary physical spasms
“My voice,” says she, “is gone, my language fails;
Through ev’ry limb my kindred shape prevails:
kindred shape, the bodily
characteristics of her father,
her kin, the centaur Chiron
Why did the God this fatal gift impart,
And with prophetick raptures swell my heart!
prophetick raptures, Occhyroe, who
knew her father’s arts, and could
rehearse The depths of prophecy,
had inherited through her father,
Chiron, who had himself received
it from Apollo, his own father, the
gift of divination, for better, for
either, we’ll learn, or for worse
What new desires are these? I long to pace
O’er flow’ry meadows, and to feed on grass;
I hasten to a brute, a maid no more;
what’s happening, What new desires
are these?, Occhyroe cries, or nearly
neighs, rather, at this point, I’m
becoming a brute, she groans, an
animal, a maid, no more, she objects
But why, alas! am I transform’d all o’er?
My sire does half a human shape retain,
And in his upper parts preserve the man.”
why, Occhyroe asks, since my
father, Chiron, is partially a man,
am I transform’d all o’er?, why
is there nothing left of me that
is human
Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords,
distinct, clear, easy to decipher
affords, allows, permits
But in shrill accents and mis-shapen words
Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare
The human form confounded in the mare:
Occhyroe has become a horse,
the proof is in her braying
‘Till by degrees accomplish’d in the beast,
She neigh’d outright, and all the steed exprest.
all the steed exprest, was
everywhere the very picture
of a horse
Her stooping body on her hands is born,
born, borne, carried
Her hands are turn’d to hoofs, and shod in horn,
Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane,
And in a flowing tail she frisks her train,
The mare was finish’d in her voice and look,
And a new name from the new figure took.
Occhyroe can no longer be called
Occhyroe, she is no longer she,
but a new figure, needing to be
identified as something else
R ! chard
September 21, 2020
“Ocyrrhoe transform’d into a Mare” – Ovid
“Centaur and Nymph“
Arnold Böcklin
________
Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Charicle to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevel’d on her shoulders, came
To see the child, Ocyrrhoe was her name;
Ocyrrhoe, daughter of Chiron and [t]he
nymph Charicle, c[o]me …[t]o see
the child
With hair dishevel’d on her shoulders,
there’s a suggestion here, regarding
Charicle, of madness, or possession
the child, the babe, the celestial boy,
the infant, ript, by its very father,
Apollo, from his unfaithful lover,
Coronis’, womb, and [given] … to
the centaur Chiron”s charge, into
its, or his, care
She knew her father’s arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
it appears that Ocyrrhoe, daughter of
Chiron and the nymph Charicle, was
a poetess, was possessed, on her
father’s side, of poetry, could reveal,
decipher, or rehearse / The depths
of prophecy, in sounding verse, was
able, as wordmongers sometimes do,
to tell truth, deliver, in rhyme, incisive
evaluations
Once, as the sacred infant she survey’d,
the sacred infant, the child born of
Apollo and Coronis
The God was kindled in the raving maid,
The God, the child, the sacred infant,
by virtue of being half, if only half,
divine, having been fathered by the
god, Apollo
kindled, inspired
the raving maid, Ocyrrhoe, beset by
neurotic, irrational, though prophetic,
it is proposed, powers
And thus she utter’d her prophetick tale:
“Hail, great physician of the world, all-hail;
great physician of the world, the fated
child of Apollo and Coronis would
become a healer of legend
Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations, and defraud the tomb;
defraud the tomb, recall from the
hereafter, resuscitate, revive,
return to life
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfin’d!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
thicker, more populated
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
Thy daring art, medicine, the mighty
infant will eventually be recognized
as a celebrated man of healing
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
guilty head, when Hades, king of the
Underworld, complained to Zeus, his
brother, that the mighty infant was
stealing his subjects, the departed,
Zeus shot the great physician down,
acknowledging the healer’s guilt, of
his defraud[ing] the tomb, condemning
the culprit with a punishing, an
annihilating, thunderbolt
Then shalt thou dye, but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a God.
Apollo, aggrieved, had had his son,
the child, the sacred infant, reinstated,
after tortuous ministrations, as an
immortal god, an entirely, however,
other story
And thou, my sire, not destin’d by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,
How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to dye,
And quit thy claim to immortality;
When thou shalt feel, enrag’d with inward pains,
The Hydra’s venom rankling in thy veins?
the child, the sire, not destin’d by [its] birth
/ To turn to dust, which is to say, to be no
longer mortal but immortal, how will it, not
wanting particularly to survive, quit [its]
claim to immortality, deal with the
impossibility of dying, [w]hen [it] shal[l]
feel, enrag’d with inward pains, agonies,
that compel it to seek personal annihilation
Hydra, a snakelike monster with many
heads, whose venom and very breath
were poisonous, stationed at one of
the entrances to the Underworld
The Gods, in pity, shall contract thy date,
And give thee over to the pow’r of Fate.”
contract thy date, make mortal,
subject once again to Fate
R ! chard
September 7, 2020
“The Story of Coronis, and Birth of Aesculapius” (IV) – Ovid
“Apollo and Coronis“ (1606 – 1608)
Adam Elsheimer
__________
On her incestuous life I need not dwell
(In Lesbos still the horrid tale they tell),
And of her dire amours you must have heard,
For which she now does penance in a bird,
That conscious of her shame, avoids the light,
And loves the gloomy cov’ring of the night;
The birds, where-e’er she flutters, scare away
The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day.”
Nyctimene, daughter of Epopeus,
king of Lesbos, a Greek Island in
the Aegean Sea, had been defiled
by her father, Minerva, out of pity,
transformed her into an owl, the
above verses tell the story of
that owl, Nyctimene
The raven, urg’d by such impertinence,
Grew passionate, it seems, and took offence,
And curst the harmless daw; the daw withdrew:
The raven to her injur’d patron flew,
And found him out, and told the fatal truth
Of false Coronis and the favour’d youth.
the raven, Apollo’s own bird, having
discovered Coronis to be unfaithful
to their master, its and hers, remained
intent, despite the daw’s warnings,
earlier here reported, on informing
the god of the Sun
The God was wroth, the colour left his look,
wroth, angry
The wreath his head, the harp his hand forsook:
[t]he wreath, … the harp, Apollo’s
usual attributes, symbols of his
harmony, concord
His silver bow and feather’d shafts he took,
And lodg’d an arrow in the tender breast,
That had so often to his own been prest.
though Apollo is not usually
associated with bows and arrows,
his twin sister Diana, goddess of
the Hunt, always is, it would not
be unusual to conflate the two
deities for poetic, or indeed
mythological, purposes
Down fell the wounded nymph, and sadly groan’d,
And pull’d his arrow reeking from the wound;
And weltring in her blood, thus faintly cry’d,
“Ah cruel God! tho’ I have justly dy’d,
What has, alas! my unborn infant done,
That he should fall, and two expire in one?”
This said, in agonies she fetch’d her breath.
it is supposed here that the unborn
infant is indeed Apollo’s
The God dissolves in pity at her death;
He hates the bird that made her falshood known,
And hates himself for what himself had done;
The feather’d shaft, that sent her to the Fates,
And his own hand, that sent the shaft, he hates.
Apollo is suffused with regret, anger,
self-recrimination
Fain would he heal the wound, and ease her pain,
Fain, with pleasure, gladly
And tries the compass of his art in vain.
the compass of his art, the range
of his ability, in this case vain,
faulty, ineffective
Soon as he saw the lovely nymph expire,
The pile made ready, and the kindling fire.
pile, pyre
the sentence lacks a verb here, it
should read The pile was made
ready, just saying
With sighs and groans her obsequies he kept,
obsequies, funeral rites
And, if a God could weep, the God had wept.
I’ll have to watch out for gods
weeping, I suspect some have,
some can
Her corps he kiss’d, and heav’nly incense brought,
And solemniz’d the death himself had wrought.
corps, body, corpse
wrought, brought about, made
happen
But lest his offspring should her fate partake,
Spight of th’ immortal mixture in his make,
Spight, in spite
He ript her womb, and set the child at large,
And gave him to the centaur Chiron’s charge:
Chiron, first among the centaurs,
half man, half horse, was highly
revered as a teacher, having
been raised by the twins, Apollo
and Diana / Artemis, supremely
accomplished deities
Then in his fury black’d the raven o’er,
And bid him prate in his white plumes no more.
black’d, Apollo turned the snowy
plume[d], [w]hite as the whitest
dove’s unsully’d breast raven
black
prate, babble, talk incoherently
R ! chard
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