“Europa’s Rape” – Ovid
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Category: parsing art
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
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
July 19, 2020
The Story of Phaeton (VI) – Ovid
“Mountain Fire“ (c.1903 – c.1908)
John Singer Sargent
_________
because Phaeton was light, nor cou’d
he fill the seat, the horses he would’ve
controlled forsake / Their stated course,
and leave the beaten track
What cou’d he do? his eyes, if backward cast,
Find a long path he had already past;
If forward, still a longer path they find:
Both he compares, and measures in his mind;
And sometimes casts an eye upon the east,
And sometimes looks on the forbidden west,
note the description of the movement
of the eyes, backward, forward, east
and west, uncontrolled, erratic, nearing
madness, despite attempts, however
futile, to remain rational, steady, his
very mind, comparing, measuring, is
quickly losing its bearings
forbidden, once again, this should
probably read forbidding
The horses’ names he knew not in the fright,
Nor wou’d he loose the reins, nor cou’d he hold ’em right.
“Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now,
Prancer, and Vixen! / “On, Comet!
On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!,
who drove another of the very few
famous chariots in our Western
cultural history
couldn’t help it
the only other one I could think of
is that of the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse, red, white, black,
and pale horses, which I won’t get
into, but to say that they have no
names
the horses who drove the Chariot of
the Sun, meanwhile, were called
Phlegon, Aeos, Aethon, and Pyrios,
though I fully admit that I had to
look those up, then again I’ve never
had to ride the Chariot of the Sun
it appears that Helios / Phoebus /
Apollo had other steeds in his stable
as well, for a rainy day, but they don’t
feature in this particular story
Now all the horrors of the Heav’ns he spies,
And monstrous shadows of prodigious size,
That, deck’d with stars, lye scatter’d o’er the skies.
lye, lie
There is a place above, where Scorpio bent
In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent;
Scorpio, the constellation Scorpius,
visible only in the Southern hemisphere
Scorpio, represented by a scorpion,
thus has eight legs, or arms, and a
highly distinctive tail
In a wide circuit of the Heav’ns he shines,
And fills the space of two coelestial signs.
coelestial, celestial
Soon as the youth beheld him vex’d with heat
Brandish his sting, and in his poison sweat,
Half dead with sudden fear he dropt the reins;
vex’d with heat, from the wayward
chariot, Scorpio [b]randish[es]
his sting
poison sweat, Scorpio, under the
influence of the heat, sweat[s],
exudes, produces, characteristically,
poison
The horses felt ’em loose upon their mains,
mains, manes, long hair
And, flying out through all the plains above,
Ran uncontroul’d where-e’re their fury drove;
Rush’d on the stars, and through a pathless way
Of unknown regions hurry’d on the day.
hurry’d on the day, kept the day going
at its usual, however presently pathless,
or uncharted, pace
And now above, and now below they flew,
And near the Earth the burning chariot drew.
ever, and increasingly, ominously
The clouds disperse in fumes, the wond’ring Moon
Beholds her brother’s steeds beneath her own;
wond’ring, confused, puzzled
Brother Sun, Sister Moon
The highlands smoak, cleft by the piercing rays,
Or, clad with woods, in their own fewel blaze.
smoak, smoke
fewel, fuel
where the highlands are clad with
woods, they blaze in the fires
consuming their own trees
Next o’er the plains, where ripen’d harvests grow,
The running conflagration spreads below.
But these are trivial ills: whole cities burn,
And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn.
an apocalypse
The mountains kindle as the car draws near,
the car, the chariot
Athos and Tmolus red with fires appear;
Athos, Mount Athos, Tmolus, Mount
Tmolus, both mountains in Greece,
both named after mountain gods
Oeagrian Haemus (then a single name)
Haemus Mons, an early name for
the Balkan Mountains
Oeagria, Agria, a town in Greece
And virgin Helicon increase the flame;
Helicon, Mount Helicon, notable for
being the home of the Muses
Taurus and Oete glare amid the sky,
Taurus, the Taurus Mountains, a
mountain range in southern Turkey
Oete, Mount Oeta, a mountain in
Central Greece
And Ida, spight of all her fountains, dry.
Eryx and Othrys, and Cithaeron, glow,
And Rhodope, no longer cloath’d in snow;
High Pindus, Mimas, and Parnassus, sweat,
And Aetna rages with redoubled heat.
spight, in spite
Ida, Eryx, Othrys, Cithaeron, Rhodope,
Pindus, and the more familiar Parnassus,
and Aetna, or Etna, are all mountains, or
ranges, in the Mediterranean, Mimas, an
island there, which is to say, a partially
submerged mountain, all of them
sweltering
see above
Ev’n Scythia, through her hoary regions warm’d,
Scythia, a region northeast of Ancient
Greece, barbarian to the more cultured
people of Greek Antiquity, coarse
forebears of the Cossacks
hoary, sullied white, tired, withered
In vain with all her native frost was arm’d.
even so frosty a region as Scythia
was not immune to, arm’d against,
the running conflagration
Cover’d with flames the tow’ring Appennine,
And Caucasus, and proud Olympus, shine;
And, where the long-extended Alpes aspire,
Now stands a huge continu’d range of fire.
the Appennine, Caucasus, Olympus,
and Alpes, or Alps, are all mountain
ranges throughout Europe, the
representative part then of the
known world
Th’ astonisht youth, where-e’er his eyes cou’d turn,
Beheld the universe around him burn:
The world was in a blaze; nor cou’d he bear
The sultry vapours and the scorching air,
Which from below, as from a furnace, flow’d;
And now the axle-tree beneath him glow’d:
Lost in the whirling clouds that round him broke,
And white with ashes, hov’ring in the smoke.
He flew where-e’er the horses drove, nor knew
Whither the horses drove, or where he flew.
R ! chard
February 25, 2020
on Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6, the “Pastorale”
“The Sound of the Flute“
Xu Beihong
________
for Susan, who urges
me ever to write
a friend wrote recently, extolling a
performance of Beethoven’s Sixth
Symphony he’d just seen, a
noteworthy conductor conducting
then again, how can you go wrong,
I wrote back, with that already
enchanting music, sent him, in
return, a version I’d ferreted out,
tried out for him, had been duly
enchanted, had laughed, had cried,
taken shelter from the storm, come
out the other side transported, again
I wondered about the power of music,
during my intermittent musings
throughout the variegated movements,
as the peregrinations ambled on along
their own magical explorations, long
irrepressible arpeggios running up or
down the scales, performing
arabesques at their peaks, rumbling
tremolos at their grumbling bottoms,
before returning to the more stable
middle ground of the melody
where, I wondered, does it all find its
source
sounds, individual sounds, would
have been signals of danger,
originally, a single note from a horn
warning of strangers on the way to
a community of otherwise peaceful
cohabitants if not only family, a twig
cracking in the forest when you
believe you’re all alone
individual sounds would’ve picked
up meaning beyond their own pitch
and volume, resonance, reverberation,
rotundity, through Darwinian, even,
time
a mother’s voice, for instance,
identified immediately, upon a single
note, perenially, by any of her brood
it’s a long way from there to a symphony,
but those are its roots, why we laugh, why
we cry, take shelter from the storm, and
come out the other side transported
notes are written, emblazoned, on
our consciousness, our lives depended,
depend still, on it
listen
R ! chard
psst: interestingly, our Darwinian evolution
has produced pitch as an identifying
factor for our species, a female voice
is higher than a male’s, this has
allowed us, as a species, to sing
June 3, 2019
a juxtaposition of verb moods
“The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog“ (1818)
Caspar David Friedrich
_______________
a cardinal rule, the juxtaposition of two
things of the same sort will exponentially
increase the information gleaned of either
therefore the following
“The Impossible Dream“, listen
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lay peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe
To reach the unreachable star
and “Climb Every Mountain“, listen again
Climb every mountain
Search high and low
Follow every byway
Every path you know
Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
‘Till you find your dream
A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live
Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
‘Till you find your dream
Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
‘Till you find your dream
an initial similarity, they are both
inspirational
an initial divergence, the former is
in the infinitive mood, which is to
say that the lesson is for all time
in all places and for all people,
while the second is an imperative,
in other words, an exhortation,
something only pertaining to the
future, though the other conditions,
of place, and of person, can still
apply
note that the verse, in either, is in
the indicative, in keeping with, in
each, the altered air, the second,
and contrasting melody, which in
both, note, personalizes, makes
the recommendation actual, no
longer merely idealized, the
indicative is the only mood which
deals in facts, the other moods
are all imagined, dreamed
let me point out that in comparison
with songs in the indicative, love
songs and the like, the show tunes
above find their source in medieval
religious music, hymns, liturgical
stuff, and more recently,
comparatively, specifically in
England after the Protestant
Reformation with Handel’s both
church and ceremonial music
in which England went on to
specialize, incidentally, while other
forms of music there, the racier,
secular European stuff, had been
demonized, deemed sinful, and
thus proscribed
England would only get its mojo back
in the 1960s with the Beatles
R ! chard
May 29, 2019
the indicative
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