literature to ponder | Richibi's Weblog

“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War) – Ovid

“The Giant“ (1943)

_________

The Giants’ War

Nor were the Gods themselves more safe above;

“justice” might have returned to Heaven,

but that didn’t mean the Gods there

were not affected by strife, nor immune

Against beleaguer’d Heav’n the giants move.

where do the giants come from, who

knows, I suspect there might be a

vestigial recollection here of larger

entities, dinosaurs, for instance,

lurking in our prehistoric memory,

our primeval consciousness, finding

expression and acknowledgment

in our myths

Hills pil’d on hills, on mountains mountains lie,
To make their mad approaches to the skie.

the giants were piling hills on hills,

mountains on mountains, building

pathways, however “mad” a

notion, to the “skie”, or sky

‘Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time
T’ avenge with thunder their audacious crime:

Jove, god of thunder

Red light’ning plaid along the firmament,
And their demolish’d works to pieces rent.

lightning “plaid”, or played, at the edge

of the heavens, destroying there the

“works” the giants had erected, the

high hills, the expanded, the extended,

mountains

rent, past participle of the verb to rend,

to tear asunder

Sing’d with the flames, and with the bolts transfixt,
With native Earth, their blood the monsters mixt;

the blood of these giants, “[s]ing’d with

flames”, and “transfixt”, or pierced,

riven, by thunderbolts, mixes with earth

The blood, indu’d with animating heat,

hot, propulsive, generating blood

indu’d, or endued, which is to say,

supplied with

Did in th’ impregnant Earth new sons beget:

the blood of the giants impregnates

the Earth, begetting sons, there, and

daughters

They, like the seed from which they sprung, accurst,

Against the Gods immortal hatred nurst,

the sins of the father are carried on to

their sons, and daughters, who maintain,

**have maintained, “nurst”, or nursed, the**

primitive rancour

An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood;
Expressing their original from blood.

the children of the giants were recognizably

**the children of these “original[s]”, these**

preliminary giants, an “impious, arrogant,

***and* cruel *brood”***

Which when the king of Gods beheld from high

the king of Gods, Jove

(Withal revolving in his memory,

What he himself had found on Earth of late,
Lycaon’s guilt, and his inhumane treat),

“withal revolving”, or having revolved,

**considered,“in his memory”, what he’d**

recently seen on Earth, the reprehensible

behaviour of a certain Lycaon, Lycaon’s

monstrous discourtesies, his “inhumane

treat[ment]”, of which we’ll hear later

He sigh’d; nor longer with his pity strove;
But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove:

an ire, a fury, worthy of the king of Gods

stay tuned

R ! chard

2 Comments

“Metamorphoses” (The Brazen Age / The Iron Age ) – Ovid

_______

To this came next in course, the brazen age:
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet…

brazen, of brass, the pride, and collective

title, of the military, not to mention of

industrialists, CEOs, still

yet…., or the Iron Age, follows

Hard steel succeeded then:
And stubborn as the metal, were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.

remember conscience, from the Golden Age,

now, during this Iron Age, “fors[aken]”

Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew.
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:

note “sails” here, a perfect example of a

metonymy, where the word means not

only the cloth, the canvas that catches

the wind, but also its larger self, the

ship, which benefits from that integral

propulsive action, like the body the

heart

Trees, rudely hollow’d, did the waves sustain;

hollowed out trees could manage to

remain above the water, could float

E’re ships in triumph plough’d the watry plain.

our archetype here would again be Columbus,

however ignominiously

Then land-marks limited to each his right:
For all before was common as the light.

though all land had earlier been common,

available to all to freely enjoy, now fences,

signposts prohibited collective access

Nor was the ground alone requir’d to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share,

crooked, awry, disproportionate

But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digg’d from her entrails first the precious oar;

“greedy mortals”, mining, not only from

“the ground alone”, but from the earth’s

very “entrails”, her “oar”, or ore

Which next to Hell, the prudent Gods had laid;
And that alluring ill, to sight display’d.

the “prudent Gods” had set the precious

metals near that unholy place to ward off,

however ineffectually, eventually, potential

pilferers, plunderers

Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold:

or again “***Truth, modesty, and shame,* *the***

***world forsook: / Fraud, avarice,* *and force,***

their places took.“, lines 3 and 4 from the

top

And double death did wretched Man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betray’d,

double death, assault and betrayal, invade,

become components, properties, of Man

Now (brandish’d weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands;

immoralities follow

No rights of hospitality remain:
The guest, by him who harbour’d him, is slain,
The son-in-law pursues the father’s life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife.
The step-dame poyson for the son prepares;
The son inquires into his father’s years.

the stuff, at present, of all of our arts and

literature, of our collective consciousness,

we are the Iron Age

where

Faith flies, and piety in exile mourns;
And justice, here opprest, to Heav’n returns.

“justice” has flown, fled, to Heaven,

to our universal, and grievous,

distress

R ! chard

Leave a comment

Metamorphoses (The Silver Age) – Ovid

___________

the good times wouldn’t last, however,

discord among the gods would bring

But when good Saturn, banish’d from above,
Was driv’n to Hell, the world was under Jove.

Saturn, god of plenty, had presided over

Jove, or Jupiter, god of thunder, was

king of the gods

there would be consequences for this

disarrangement, this strife

Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell’d by gold.

silver might not have been gold, but it

was still better than brass, as, later,

we’ll see

Then summer, autumn, winter did appear:
And spring was but a season of the year.

by casting Saturn into the Underworld, Jove

set off the cycle of the seasons, whereby

Saturn, clutching his way back to the realm

of the deities, after his initial fall, would inspire

regeneration, the return of springtime, for a

while, before being ousted again, and again,

and again

The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarg’d the bad.

in keeping with the suns “oblique[ ]”

progressions, not parallel, not at

right angles

Then air with sultry heats began to glow;
The wings of winds were clogg’d with ice and snow;

the emergence of heat and cold

And shivering mortals, into houses driv’n,
Sought shelter from th’ inclemency of Heav’n.

Those houses, then, were caves, or homely sheds;
With twining oziers fenc’d; and moss their beds.

oziers, or osiers, shrubs of which the

branches have traditionally been used

to make baskets, basketry

Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labour’d first beneath the yoke.

not to mention Man, the advent of agriculture,

toil

R ! chard

Leave a comment

“Metamorphoses” (The Golden Age) – Ovid

**“Field of Poppies“ (1873)**

_______

once the Creation is complete, Time

becomes one of its components, ages,

or eras, or epochs ensue giving credence

to the fact of an evolutionary process,

instead of stasis a continuation of the

inner workings of primordial Chaos still

roils, bristles, but among more orderly

elements now

so that the first age, The Golden Age,

is positively blissful

The golden age was first; when Man yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:

Evil was not yet even a concept

And, with a native bent, did good pursue.

a native bent, naturally, by instinct, inately

Unforc’d by punishment, un-aw’d by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;

therefore

Needless was written law, where none opprest:

where no one offended, laws were

unnecessary

The law of Man was written in his breast:

a function of his emotions

No suppliant crowds before the judge appear’d,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard:

suppliant crowds, petitioners for justice

But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.

**remember conscience, something that too**

often now has fallen, it seems, by the

wayside

though we’re a long way off at present,

admittedly, from the Golden Age

The mountain-trees in distant prospect please,

please is a verb here, as in the mountain-trees

bring pleasure

but

E’re yet the pine descended to the seas:

***E’re,* or before, the pine trees *descended,***

grew closer to, gravitated toward, the water

compare here, ” About her coasts, unruly

waters roar; / And rising, on a ridge,

insult the shore.”, from earlier, where

***“water vies with* earth for its place *upon***

the strand”

instead of water, Earth encroaches here,

an equally formidable opponent

E’re sails were spread, new oceans to explore:

E’re, or before, ships set out to conquer,

see Columbus for the archetypal example

And happy mortals, unconcern’d for more,
Confin’d their wishes to their native shore.

a world without an economy

No walls were yet; nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet’s angry sound:

drums and trumpets at any distance

would’ve been cause for alarm, or at

the very least caution

Nor swords were forg’d; but void of care and crime,

**note the negative no, nor, nor hammered out**

through the last three verses, describing by

omission the state of the original age,

what there was not

The soft creation slept away their time.

soft creation, not inclined to struggle

The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovok’d, did fruitful stores allow:

Content with food, which Nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;

the subject here throughout is the “teeming

Earth”, the Earth, metonymized, becomes

**earthlings – therefore “they” replaces**

“teeming Earth” as subject in the last two

lines – who’d feed on wildings, uncultivated

plants, crab apples, for instance, strawberries

Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnish’d out a feast.

Cornels, shrubs

The flow’rs unsown, in fields and meadows reign’d:

flowers bloomed unbidden, covering fields

I watch the cherry blossoms grace our

streets with their opulence as I speak,

decking our April days with springtime,

**“still, even thousands of years later“,**

a remnant, a bequest, of that golden

past

And Western winds immortal spring maintain’d.

like very Paradise, stretching into even

immortality

In following years, the bearded corn ensu’d
From Earth unask’d, nor was that Earth renew’d.

renew’d, tilled, harvested

From veins of vallies, milk and nectar broke;

valleys engender streams that create

the conditions for milk and nectar

And honey sweating through the pores of oak.

or our own indigenous syrup of maple

R ! chard

Leave a comment

“Death is nothing at all…” – Henry Scott Holland

_____________

upon learning of the recent demise

of my younger sister, my only sibling,

a friend sent me the following passage

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away

into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains

exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we

lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we

were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar

name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put

no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or

sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we

enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my

name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be

spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death

but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because

I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing

is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was

before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we

meet again!”

it is usually presented as a poem, but

was part of a sermon, rather, given by

Henry Scott Holland, the very pastor

who composed it, at St Paul’s

Cathedral, in London, after the death

it expresses well the experience I’ve

had with others of my beloved

departed

intimations of my sister are already

popping up in my reality, soon, I told

another friend, I’ll be talking to her

more often than when she was not

gone

much as is the case with my father,

for instance, away some 30 years

now, but an abiding presence,

however mystical, still, and,

it appears, forever

I consider myself profoundly

blessed

R ! chard

Leave a comment

who’s afraid of the subjunctive

“Impression, Sunrise” (1873)

Claude Monet

________

who’s afraid of the subjunctive

much like Elizabeth Taylor as Martha
in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”,
my answer is, I am, George, I am

the subjunctive is an esoteric mood,
even more abstruse in English than
in other languages, where the verb’s
conjugation highlights its presence,
in English, it’s nearly identical to the
indicative, the mood everybody
instinctively speaks in, facts

the subjunctive is about aspiration,
like the conditional, abstract, not
real, but its intention, rather than
the conditional’s inherent
impediment, a condition, shoots
for the stars, isn’t introspective,
but adamant, imperative

it is necessary that one be, it is
urgent that one have, it is
important that one effect, a
particular thing or event, all
subjunctives after the
doorkeeper word, “that”

one finds the subjunctive in
Shakespeare, master of grammar,
perhaps unparalleled in English,
a lot – O, that this too solid flesh
would melt, / Thaw and resolve
itself into a dew! – and follows
with Elizabeth Barrett Browning –
Pardon, o pardon that my soul
should make, / Of all that strong
divineness which I know / For
thine and thee …, for instance,
who is so profoundly indebted to
Shakespeare for her aesthetics

one wondrous day, I realized that
Proust’s entire “À la recherche du
temps perdu“, his “In Search of
Lost Time“, my Bible, was set in
the, French however, subjunctive,
the mood, there as well, of
possibility, therefore rather than
the definitive recreation of an
earlier time, Proust was
describing a sensibility, a personal
interpretation of a previous reality,
however bolstered by intimate and
apparently precise recollection of
shimmeringly imprecise, though
personally accurate, impressions

note here the similar preoccupations
of Proust’s contemporaries, the, aptly
named, Impressionists

everything, Proust was saying, as
were also the Impressionists, is in
the eye of the beholder

the subjunctive is the mood that
sets this instinct in motion

R ! chard

psst: Somerset Maugham I remember
being noteworthy as well for his
immaculate use, in his South
Pacific tales, of the subjunctive,
extremely elegant in its refined
construction, even with its
English austerities, like making
lace out of mere cloth, impressive
despite its impracticality, or
perhaps even because of it

Leave a comment

< Older Posts

Newer Posts >

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

	Tonyia on November / Month of the Sonata…
	how to listen to mus… on how to listen to music if you…
	how to listen to mus… on how to listen to music if you…
	how to listen to mus… on how to listen to music if you…
	richibi on “Metamorphoses” (The Giants…

Category: literature to ponder

“The Giant“ (1943)

_________

“justice” might have returned to Heaven,

but that didn’t mean the Gods there

were not affected by strife, nor immune

Against beleaguer’d Heav’n the giants move.

where do the giants come from, who

knows, I suspect there might be a

vestigial recollection here of larger

entities, dinosaurs, for instance,

lurking in our prehistoric memory,

our primeval consciousness, finding

expression and acknowledgment

in our myths

Hills pil’d on hills, on mountains mountains lie, To make their mad approaches to the skie.

the giants were piling hills on hills,

mountains on mountains, building

pathways, however “mad” a

notion, to the “skie”, or sky

‘Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time T’ avenge with thunder their audacious crime:

Jove, god of thunder

Red light’ning plaid along the firmament, And their demolish’d works to pieces rent.

lightning “plaid”, or played, at the edge

of the heavens, destroying there the

“works” the giants had erected, the

high hills, the expanded, the extended,

mountains

rent, past participle of the verb to rend,

to tear asunder

Sing’d with the flames, and with the bolts transfixt, With native Earth, their blood the monsters mixt;

the blood of these giants, “[s]ing’d with

flames”, and “transfixt”, or pierced,

riven, by thunderbolts, mixes with earth

The blood, indu’d with animating heat,

hot, propulsive, generating blood

indu’d, or endued, which is to say,

supplied with

Did in th’ impregnant Earth new sons beget:

the blood of the giants impregnates

the Earth, begetting sons, there, and

daughters

They, like the seed from which they sprung, accurst,

Against the Gods immortal hatred nurst,

the sins of the father are carried on to

their sons, and daughters, who maintain,

have maintained, “nurst”, or nursed, the

primitive rancour

An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood; Expressing their original from blood.

the children of the giants were recognizably

the children of these “original[s]”, these

preliminary giants, an “impious, arrogant,

and cruel brood”

Which when the king of Gods beheld from high

the king of Gods, Jove

(Withal revolving in his memory,

What he himself had found on Earth of late, Lycaon’s guilt, and his inhumane treat),

“withal revolving”, or having revolved,

considered,“in his memory”, what he’d

recently seen on Earth, the reprehensible

behaviour of a certain Lycaon, Lycaon’s

monstrous discourtesies, his “inhumane

treat[ment]”, of which we’ll hear later

an ire, a fury, worthy of the king of Gods

stay tuned

R ! chard

“British Industries. Steel“

_______

To this came next in course, the brazen age: A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage, Not impious yet…

brazen, of brass, the pride, and collective

title, of the military, not to mention of

industrialists, CEOs, still

yet…., or the Iron Age, follows

Hard steel succeeded then: And stubborn as the metal, were the men. Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook: Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.

remember conscience, from the Golden Age,

now, during this Iron Age, “fors[aken]”

Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew. Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:

note “sails” here, a perfect example of a

metonymy, where the word means not

only the cloth, the canvas that catches

Hills pil’d on hills, on mountains mountains lie,
To make their mad approaches to the skie.

‘Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time
T’ avenge with thunder their audacious crime:

Red light’ning plaid along the firmament,
And their demolish’d works to pieces rent.

Sing’d with the flames, and with the bolts transfixt,
With native Earth, their blood the monsters mixt;

**have maintained, “nurst”, or nursed, the**

An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood;
Expressing their original from blood.

**the children of these “original[s]”, these**

***and* cruel *brood”***

What he himself had found on Earth of late,
Lycaon’s guilt, and his inhumane treat),

**considered,“in his memory”, what he’d**

To this came next in course, the brazen age:
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet…

Hard steel succeeded then:
And stubborn as the metal, were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.

Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew.
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:

Then land-marks limited to each his right:
For all before was common as the light.