Ovid / Shakespeare
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Category: poems to ponder
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?
April 24, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, V) – Ovid
“Allegory of Gluttony and Lust“ (1490 – 1500)
Hieronymus Bosch
_____________
This was a single ruin, but not one
Deserves so just a punishment alone.
the punishment of Lycaon, Jove says,
was not an isolated incident, more
miscreants need to be held
accountable for deeds equally as
blameworthy, equally as horrid
Mankind’s a monster, and th’ ungodly times
Confed’rate into guilt, are sworn to crimes.
Jove doesn’t think much of the human
race, nor of th’ ungodly times, for that
matter, that promise more crimes, are
sworn, he believes, consigned to them
confed’rate is an adjective here,
meaning participating, in agreement,
party to the events
All are alike involv’d in ill, and all
Must by the same relentless fury fall.
Jove here, much like the Christian God,
intends to subject the entire human race,
not just Lycaon, to punishment for its
pervasive monstrosities, its innate
aberrations
Thus ended he; the greater Gods assent;
By clamours urging his severe intent;
The less fill up the cry for punishment.
all Gods are in agreement, the greater,
and [t]he less, by very clamours urging
Jove’s blanket, and severe, censure,
once he has ended, completed, his
proclamation
Yet still with pity they remember Man;
And mourn as much as heav’nly spirits can.
there remains among the Gods,
however, the memory of early Man,
which is to say the people of the
Golden Age, but the trials and
tribulations of earthlings generally
would not be of much consequence
to the deities, it is suggested, who
as immortals, and as a function of
their infinite longevity, wouldn’t be
very likely, anyway, to mourn,
would find it an unfamiliar concept
They ask, when those were lost of humane birth,
What he wou’d do with all this waste of Earth:
if, the Gods ask, all humans were
obliterated from the Earth, what
would he, Jove, do with what
remained, bereft as it would be
of human stewardship
If his dispeopl’d world he would resign
To beasts, a mute, and more ignoble line;
Neglected altars must no longer smoke,
If none were left to worship, and invoke.
if Jove were to grant the dispeopl’d
world, a world without humans, to
beasts alone, the mute, and more
ignoble species, who would tend
the altars, who would worship
To whom the Father of the Gods reply’d,
Lay that unnecessary fear aside:
Mine be the care, new people to provide.
leave it to me, Jove, Father of the
Gods, tells them, I will provide
a new and improved model
I will from wondrous principles ordain
A race unlike the first, and try my skill again.
from new and wondrous principles,
Jove promises, I will create from the
scratch, as my German teacher used
to say, a better humanity
let’s see how that turns out
R ! chard
April 20, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, III) – Ovid
“Charon Carries Dead Souls across the River Styx” (1861)
Konstantin Makovsky
____________
Jove, god of Thunder, speaks
I was not more concern’d in that debate
Of empire, when our universal state
Was put to hazard, and the giant race
Our captive skies were ready to imbrace:
I was not especially disturbed, Jove says,
when the state of our universe was
challenged, or debate[d], when the giants
tried to usurp our territory, were ready to
imbrace, or embrace, take on, our
vulnerable, [o]ur captive, skies
For tho’ the foe was fierce, the seeds of all
Rebellion, sprung from one original;
because the enemy, then, the adversary,
came from the one original source, its
however manifold predations, its
however myriad desecrations, would’ve
been identifiable to Jove, not foreign, not
unmanageable, he would’ve recognized
the black sheep of the Olympian family,
the giants
Now, wheresoever ambient waters glide,
All are corrupt, and all must be destroy’d.
ambient, nearby, related, infected, corrupt,
all has been corrupted
Let me this holy protestation make,
By Hell, and Hell’s inviolable lake,
here’s another anachronism, for Hell wouldn’t’ve
been even a concept in the era of Ovid, where
the Underworld, and Hades, entirely different
afterworlds, would’ve prevailed, areas of
persistent gloom and shade, see Homer here,
for instance, or Virgil
the Underworld of the ancient world was
surrounded by five rivers, Hell’s inviolable
lake, the most famous of which was the
river Styx
in the Divine Comedy, Dante updates this
watery boundary for his own 14th Century
readers, and makes it the passageway to
the fifth circle of Hell, where Charon
remains, after even over a thousand
years, the very same ferryman
see above
nor was there either any of our present
conception of Heaven, Heaven would’ve
been Olympus then, the exclusive domain
of the Gods, either Greek or Roman
I try’d whatever in the godhead lay:
Jove says, I tried everything a god
could use
But gangren’d members must be lopt away,
Before the nobler parts are tainted to decay.
you’ve got to lop[ ] away, cut off, the bad
parts before they infect the more vital
components of the body
There dwells below, a race of demi-gods,
Of nymphs in waters, and of fawns in woods:
Who, tho’ not worthy yet, in Heav’n to live,
Let ’em, at least, enjoy that Earth we give.
not all beings are corrupt, but nymphs
and fawns, innocents, Jove pleads,
should be given consideration on
Earth, if they be not yet worthy of the
majesty of Heav’n, and granted earthly
areas of enjoyment in the confines of
their forsaken place
Can these be thought securely lodg’d below,
When I my self, who no superior know,
I, who have Heav’n and Earth at my command,
Have been attempted by Lycaon’s hand?
if Lycaon could attack me, Jove, god
of Thunder, asks, how can these
innocents, nymphs, fawns, ever be
safe
At this a murmur through the synod went,
And with one voice they vote his punishment.
the punishment of Lycaon, which we’ll
soon encounter
Thus, when conspiring traytors dar’d to doom
The fall of Caesar, and in him of Rome,
The nations trembled with a pious fear;
All anxious for their earthly Thunderer:
Thus, or in a similar manner, did the nations
of the earth tremble when Caesar, their
earthly Thunderer, was assassinated
nations, incidentally, is another anachronism,
nations didn’t appear on earth until the
18th Century, with the French Revolution
Nor was their care, o Caesar, less esteem’d
By thee, than that of Heav’n for Jove was deem’d:
Ovid addresses Caesar here, his contemporary,
and compares that emperor’s esteem for nations,
his reliance on their allegiance, to the esteem
Heav’n has for Jove
Who with his hand, and voice, did first restrain
Their murmurs, then resum’d his speech again.
Jove calls for silence in the assembly
before speaking again
The Gods to silence were compos’d, and sate
With reverence, due to his superior state.
The Gods … sate, or sat, then took heed,
bowing to Jove’s superior position
the tale of the punishment of Lycaon
will follow
R ! chard
April 17, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, II) – Ovid, 110
“The Marriage at Cana“ (1563)
Paolo Veronese
_________
Jove “sigh’d;” if you’ll remember, “nor
longer with his pity strove; / But kindled
to a wrath” which was worthy of him
Then call’d a general council of the Gods;
Who summon’d, issue from their blest abodes,
And fill th’ assembly with a shining train.
Jove calls the gods together to discuss
the abhorrent conditions on Earth, who,
upon being summon’d, leave their blest,
or blessed, homes, and fill Jove’s
assembly hall with their glittering train,
their advancing pageantry
A way there is, in Heav’n’s expanded plain,
Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below,
And mortals, by the name of Milky, know.
when the skies are clear in Heaven’s
expanded plain, its wide expanse,
mortals can see the Milky Way
The ground-work is of stars; through which the road
Lyes open to the Thunderer’s abode:
this Milky Way is paved with stars, which
lead to Jove’s, the Thunderer’s, domain
The Gods of greater nations dwell around,
And, on the right and left, the palace bound;
the dwellings of the gods who represent
the greater nations of the era, of Rome,
for instance, or Greece, surround,
encircle, the Thunderer’s abode, his
palace
The commons where they can: the nobler sort
With winding-doors wide open, front the court.
the more common gods, those of
lesser nations, live where they can,
while the winding-doors of the nobler
gods, doors which can be activated
mechanically, on hinges, though
perhaps here divinely, stand wide
open for this colloquy, this exalted
conference, before the celestial
court
This place, as far as Earth with Heav’n may vie,
I dare to call the Louvre of the skie.
if one were to compare [t]his place
this court, to anything on Earth, have
it vie with, one would liken it, Ovid
says, to the Louvre
there’s evidently an anachronism
here since the Louvre didn’t exist at
the time of Ovid, so that the translators
have replaced the “Palatia” of Ovid’s
original Latin, which refers to the
Palatine, the most central of Rome’s
Seven Hills, where imperial palaces
were built at the time of Augustus,
63 B.C. to 14 A.D., which is to say
during Ovid’s time, 43 B.C. to
17 /18 A.D., by this relatively more
recent palatial residence, the Louvre,
in order to make the text more
contemporary, like settings and
attire are used in Renaissance
art to kindle the viewer’s sense
of connection
see, for instance, above, where
Veronese depicts the scene of Jesus
attending a marriage at Cana, a village
in Galilee, and transforms water there
into wine to accommodate a shortage,
midst Roman, note, rather than Galilean,
trappings, splendour
When all were plac’d, in seats distinctly known,
And he, their father, had assum’d the throne,
seats distinctly known means the
traditionally assigned places, with
Jove, “their father”, at the head of
the convocation
Upon his iv’ry sceptre first he leant,
Then shook his head, that shook the firmament:
leant, or leaned, [t]hen shook his head
in revulsion
Air, Earth, and seas, obey’d th’ almighty nod;
And, with a gen’ral fear, confess’d the God.
the elements, “Air, Earth, and seas“,
acknowledge, or confess’d, the God,
with quivering anxiety
At length, with indignation, thus he broke
His awful silence, and the Pow’rs bespoke.
Jove, after a silence, bespeaks, or
addresses, the assembled Pow’rs,
the other divinities
R ! chard
April 12, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Brazen Age / The Iron Age ) – Ovid
“British Industries. Steel“
Richard Jack
_______
The Brazen Age
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
The Iron Age
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
April 11, 2020
Metamorphoses (The Silver Age) – Ovid
“Poor Woman of the Village”
Gustave Courbet
___________
the good times wouldn’t last, however,
discord among the gods would bring
on the Silver Age
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
the Golden Age
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.
no longer “immortal”
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.
see above
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
April 10, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Golden Age) – Ovid
“Field of Poppies“ (1873)
Claude Monet
_______
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
see above
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
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
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