“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, XIII) – Ovid
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Category: poetry
May 16, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, XII) – Ovid
“After the Storm“ (1872)
Gustave Courbet
__________
A thin circumference of land appears;
And Earth, but not at once, her visage rears,
And peeps upon the seas from upper grounds;
as the land begins to peep[ ] through
the water, a circumference of land
appears, a circle of Earth within the
earlier universal water
to rear, to raise upright, boldly, the better,
here, for Earth‘s visage, Earth‘s face, to
peep[ ] upon the seas from newly gained
upper grounds
The streams, but just contain’d within their bounds,
By slow degrees into their channels crawl;
streams, just recently redefining their
boundaries, or bounds, [b]y slow
degrees settle, become waterways,
channels, rivers, rivulets, rills
I love crawl here, incidentally, the slow,
insidious, infiltration of a territory, silent
and immutable, as [t]he streams, at the
dispassionate pace of nature, find their
individual course
And Earth increases, as the waters fall.
the waters fall, the waters recede
In longer time the tops of trees appear,
[i]n longer time, after a while
Which mud on their dishonour’d branches bear.
for which the only solution here, would
be, I thought, however ironically, a
shower, rain
but I digress
At length the world was all restor’d to view;
But desolate, and of a sickly hue:
see, for instance, above
Nature beheld her self, and stood aghast,
A dismal desart, and a silent waste.
desart, is desert, even my spellcheck
insisted
meanwhile, back on Mount Parnassus,
our two survivors, look around
Which when Deucalion, with a piteous look
Beheld, he wept, and thus to Pyrrha spoke:
let me point out that what follows,
which is to say when Deucalion
… thus to Pyrrha spoke, we have
an extended monologue, rather
than a narration, the poet, Ovid,
has given a voice to Deucalion,
his character, his creation
I was reminded of Shakespeare‘s
monologues, especially since the
metre is iambic pentameter,
Shakespeare‘s signature poetic
rhythm
it should be noted that this translation
of Metamorphoses is from 1717, a
century and a very year after
Shakespeare‘s demise, in 1616, time
for poets to have imbibed his already
profound influence
nor could they not have been marked
by the spirit of their own time, and the
many transformative epochs since
Metamorphoses had been written, in
the year 1, that would’ve affected the
translation
the original Latin text, for instance,
was in dactylic hexameter, not
iambic pentameter
Oh wife, oh sister, oh of all thy kind
The best, and only creature left behind,
By kindred, love, and now by dangers joyn’d;
Of multitudes, who breath’d the common air,
We two remain; a species in a pair:
The rest the seas have swallow’d; nor have we
Ev’n of this wretched life a certainty.
The clouds are still above; and, while I speak,
A second deluge o’er our heads may break.
Shou’d I be snatcht from hence, and thou remain,
Without relief, or partner of thy pain,
How cou’dst thou such a wretched life sustain?
Shou’d I be left, and thou be lost, the sea
That bury’d her I lov’d, shou’d bury me.
Oh cou’d our father his old arts inspire,
And make me heir of his informing fire,
That so I might abolisht Man retrieve,
And perisht people in new souls might live.
But Heav’n is pleas’d, nor ought we to complain,
That we, th’ examples of mankind, remain.
cou’d our father, Jove, Deucalion asks,
breathe into me his inspiration, his old
arts, his informing fire, so that I could
reconstitute Man, retrieve him, and
supply the perisht people with new, and
presumably more honourable, souls
He said; the careful couple joyn their tears:
He said, or this he spoke, and the
couple joyn their tears
And then invoke the Gods, with pious prayers.
Thus, in devotion having eas’d their grief,
From sacred oracles they seek relief;
And to Cephysus’ brook their way pursue:
Cephysus, or Cephissus, was a river god,
associated with the river Cephissus, which
runs through Central Greece
The stream was troubled, but the ford they knew;
the ford, the way across the stream
With living waters, in the fountain bred,
living waters would gush from a
spring, around which a fountain
would’ve been built
They sprinkle first their garments, and their head,
Then took the way, which to the temple led.
The roofs were all defil’d with moss, and mire,
The desart altars void of solemn fire.
Before the gradual, prostrate they ador’d;
The pavement kiss’d; and thus the saint implor’d.
the gradual is a hymn sung within
the context of a full religious service
desart here is again desert, but in
this instance signifying deserted
the saint, an anachronism here,
for saints were not at all even a
concept at the time of Ovid,
would’ve been Themis, goddess,
at Delphi, on Mount Parnassus,
of Divine Justice
R ! chard
May 13, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, XI) – Ovid
“Neptune and Triton“ (1620 – 1622)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
____________
When Jupiter, surveying Earth from high,
Beheld it in a lake of water lie,
That where so many millions lately liv’d,
But two, the best of either sex, surviv’d;
He loos’d the northern wind;
the new world begins
fierce Boreas flies
To puff away the clouds, and purge the skies:
Serenely, while he blows, the vapours driv’n,
Discover Heav’n to Earth, and Earth to Heav’n.
Boreas, ruler of the northern wind, as in
aurora borealis, at the instigation of the
officiating Jupiter, disperses the clouds,
drives away the vapours, allowing Heav’n
to see Earth, and Earth to see Heav’n,
nothing between the earth and the
clear blue sky
The billows fall, while Neptune lays his mace
On the rough sea, and smooths its furrow’d face.
while billows fall, gusts of boreal wind,
Neptune, god of the Sea, as well and
simultaneously in the service of Jupiter,
smooths the surface of the water by
laying his mace, a club with spikes,
upon it, to still the unruly waves
Already Triton, at his call, appears
Above the waves;
Triton, son of Neptune, also a sea deity
a Tyrian robe he wears;
Tyrian, of Tyre, a city in what is now
Lebanon, but was then Phoenicia, it
was famous at the time for its cloth
of a particular colour, Tyrian purple
Tyre is one of the oldest continuously
inhabited cities in the world
And in his hand a crooked trumpet bears.
Triton is characteristically depicted
with a conch shell, a crooked trumpet
see above
The soveraign bids him peaceful sounds inspire,
And give the waves the signal to retire.
[t]he soveraign, or sovereign, is none
other than Neptune, his father
His writhen shell he takes; whose narrow vent
Grows by degrees into a large extent,
writhen, twisted, contorted, as is typical
of a conch shell, which grows from
where one blows into it, by degrees,
towards the much larger opening from
which the sound emanates
Then gives it breath; the blast with doubling sound,
Runs the wide circuit of the world around:
Triton blows into the conch, gives it
breath, the blast [ ] doubling [the]
sound, resounding, reverberating,
the world around, the world over
The sun first heard it, in his early east,
And met the rattling ecchos in the west.
The waters, listning to the trumpet’s roar,
Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.
the waters begin to recede
R ! chard
May 11, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, X) – Ovid
“Deucalion and Pyrrha Praying before the Statue of the Goddess Themis“ (c.1542)
Tintoretto
_____
A mountain of stupendous height there stands
Betwixt th’ Athenian and Boeotian lands,
Boetia was, and still is, a region of
Central Greece, its largest city is,
and was, Thebes, a major rival in
ancient times of Athens
The bound of fruitful fields, while fields they were,
bound, boundary, the fruitful fields
within a certain limited area, between
Athens, here, and Boetia
But then a field of waters did appear:
Parnassus is its name; whose forky rise
Mounts thro’ the clouds, and mates the lofty skies.
Parnassus is a mountain in Central
Greece, however forky, however
forked, craggy, uneven, sacred
especially to Apollo, god of too
many things to list here, and the
site, at Delphi, on its south-western
slope, of his Oracle, famous for
being consulted on a variety of
matters, from personal to affairs
of state, its high priestess was
believed to incarnate the very
voice of Apollo
Parnassus was also the home,
incidentally, of the Muses, goddesses
in their own right, of the several arts,
who ministered to Apollo
High on the summit of this dubious cliff,
Deucalion wafting, moor’d his little skiff.
Deucalion is the Abrahamic Noah‘s
counterpart, sole survivor, with his
wife Pyrrha, of the flood
the cliff is dubious because the
mountain is still deep in water,
its summit precarious yet
He with his wife were only left behind
Of perish’d Man; they two were human kind.
they two alone were left of humankind,
of perish’d Man
The mountain nymphs, and Themis they adore,
Themis, goddess of Divine Justice
And from her oracles relief implore.
Deucalion and Pyrrha pray to Themis
at Delphi, its first high priestess, hungry
for, and heedful of, her oracles, counsel
see above
The most upright of mortal men was he;
The most sincere, and holy woman, she.
a chance at a new world
R ! chard
May 7, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, IX) – Ovid
“The Nereids“ (1886)
Joaquín Sorolla
_______
once the water begins to everywhere
oferflow, humans are left to somehow
find shelter, or perish
One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is born:
born here should be our 21st Century
borne, as in carried away, past participle
of the verb to bear, to transport, a
combination, incidentally, of verb forms,
and divergent spellings, we’ve seen
here before
And ploughs above, where late he sow’d his corn.
ploughs, in the line above, deftly plays
with a double meaning, to plough as in
to struggle through, and to plough as
in to work a field, the struggle is through
water this time, however, not through
grassland
Others o’er chimney-tops and turrets row,
And drop their anchors on the meads below:
meads, meadows
Or downward driv’n, they bruise the tender vine,
Or tost aloft, are knock’d against a pine.
tossed, or tost, upon the waves, people
are thrown about indiscriminately, some
against things that they break, bruise,
the tender vine, for instance, others
against things that break them, the
pine[s], all order, in the chaos, having
been subverted
And where of late the kids had cropt the grass,
kids, baby goats
The monsters of the deep now take their place.
monsters of the deep, creepy things
that lurk beneath the waves, now
graze where earlier there’d been
pasture, baby goats
Insulting Nereids on the cities ride,
Nereids, sea nymphs, daughters of Nereus
and Doris, god and goddess themselves,
of water, fifty of them, one brother, Nerites,
all often accompanying Poseidon, supreme
ruler of the Sea, Neptune‘s Greek
counterpart
the Nereids were especially known, in later,
less turbulent times, to come to the aid of
sailors
And wond’ring dolphins o’er the palace glide.
wond’ring, would be wandering, as
in to roam aimlessly, but one can
hear rustling, in the background of
that unconventional spelling, the
idea of dolphins wide-eyed,
marvelling, filled with wonder, at
this new, palatial, environment
On leaves, and masts of mighty oaks they brouze;
brouze, browse, or the more familiar,
graze, said of animals who eat grass,
whereas those who browse, or brouze,
eat leaves, shrubbery, greens which
grow higher up
And their broad fins entangle in the boughs.
the fins of dolphins become entangled
in the branches, boughs, of trees
The frighted wolf now swims amongst the sheep;
wolf and sheep, cast asunder, much
like, above, man at the mercy of the
pine, or the tender vine, all equals
in their overriding fight for survival
The yellow lion wanders in the deep:
the deep, the water
His rapid force no longer helps the boar:
earlier inherent skills have been
rendered irrelevant
The stag swims faster, than he ran before.
The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,
Despair of land, and drop into the main.
the main, the ocean
Now hills, and vales no more distinction know;
the water has flattened all horizons
And levell’d Nature lies oppress’d below.
Nature, distinct from water here,
now lies below the water’s surface
The most of mortals perish in the flood:
The small remainder dies for want of food.
if Ovid remains to tell the tale, one
must suppose that this story must,
however relatively, have a happy
ending
stay tuned
R ! chard
May 5, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, VIII) – Ovid
“Scene of the Deluge“ (1820)
Théodore Géricault
_______
following upon the threat of water,
rather than fire, to destroy the world,
under the command of Jove, dutifully
abetted by Neptune, his Olympian
brother, sea god himself, with his
fleet of observant minions, the
rivers, streams, waterways, the
annihilating flood takes place
Ovid recounts
The floods, by Nature enemies to land,
And proudly swelling with their new command,
Remove the living stones, that stopt their way,
the living stones, you’ve got me there,
these could only be stones as initial
matter somehow contributing to the
advent of an inherent life source, later
activated, induced into vivifying action
we are dust, in other words, we return
to dust, inert dust, however
incomprehensibly
And gushing from their source, augment the sea.
the flowing rivers augment, enlarge,
the growing sea, covering the land
Then, with his mace, their monarch struck the ground;
a mace is a club with metal spikes
With inward trembling Earth receiv’d the wound;
a comma after trembling here would
make this line easier to read, “With
inward trembling, Earth receiv’d the
wound”, but not everyone is as
punctilious about grammar as I am
And rising streams a ready passage found.
streams easily found their way
amidst the bracken, the shrubbery,
the rushes, to overwhelm the
otherwise quiescent pastures
Th’ expanded waters gather on the plain:
Manitoba, often, lately, in spring
They float the fields, and over-top the grain;
Then rushing onwards, with a sweepy sway,
Bear flocks, and folds, and lab’ring hinds away.
Bear here is a verb, not a noun, meaning
that animals, flocks, and folds, and lab’ring
hinds, are carried away, borne away,
borne asunder
Nor safe their dwellings were, for, sap’d by floods,
sap’d, sapped, deprived, weakened,
rendered unsuitable
Their houses fell upon their houshold Gods.
household Gods, icons, Lares or Penates,
personally held by the Ancients, like we
now keep pictures, tokens, of our own
particular, however often secular,
rather than religious, idols
The solid piles, too strongly built to fall,
High o’er their heads, behold a watry wall:
though tall, and apparently indestructible,
the solid piles are nevertheless submerged,
the very recent South Asian tsunami, for
instance, or the Japanese one that
provoked the nuclear incident that put an
end there to that earlier profoundly
nationally integrated industry, if you’ll
remember
Now seas and Earth were in confusion lost;
A world of waters, and without a coast.
water, water, everywhere, but the last
thing you want to do is drink
next, how humans survive
stay tuned
R ! chard
May 1, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, VII) – Ovid
“The Garden of Earthly Delights“ (1510 – 1515)
Hieronymus Bosch
__________
Nor from his patrimonial Heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down;
let me say something about Heaven
here, a concept that is quite different
from the earlier Ancient Greek and
Roman understanding of the term,
was it, for that matter, even a term
then, of the Ancients, that would’ve
meant nothing other to them than
the blue sky above, not at all an
area reached by extraterrestrial
transcendence
the abode of the gods and goddesses
at the time of Ovid was Mount Olympus,
and had been for centuries, much closer
to the earth than the more ethereal home
we imagine of the gods today, every one
of them, however professedly uniquely
supreme, otherworldly
all gods, note, no goddesses, what’s up
with that, I’ve long wondered
the Underworld was for the Ancients
the dwelling place of the departed,
somewhere deep beneath the earth,
or at the very ends of all the seas,
never totally beyond the very
cosmos, as our prevailing faiths
now uniformly preach
the image of Heaven, Hell, and
Purgatory for that matter, that last
a completely Catholic invention – to
account for the salvation, however
partial, of innocent souls deprived
of Heaven for not having been
christened, though not able yet, at
so early an age, to have sinned –
was pretty well codified by Dante
in the 14th Century in his
masterpiece, The Divine Comedy,
a daunting, but profoundly
illuminating read, which has
shaped our impression of these
several possible afterlives ever
since
see above
this particular translation, however
magisterial, but crafted after over a
thousand years of Catholic cultural
domination, cannot avoid the impact
of the Catholic understanding of
Heaven
neither, now, can we, for that matter,
intimately imbued as we are with
the binding faiths of our relatively
more recent forebears
be therefore perspicacious
Aid from his brother of the seas he craves,
To help him with auxiliary waves.
later, we’ll learn that Jove’s brother
of the seas is Neptune, god of all
aqueous things
The watry tyrant calls his brooks and floods,
Who rowl from mossie caves (their moist abodes);
rowl, or roil, upset
mossie, mossy
And with perpetual urns his palace fill:
To whom in brief, he thus imparts his will.
Neptune is stockpiling water, with
the help of his conforming waterways
Small exhortation needs;
no time, in other words, no need,
to do much coaxing, much
exhortation
your pow’rs employ:
use, put into action, or employ,
your pow’rs
And this bad world, so Jove requires, destroy.
Jove, god of gods, is here commanding,
authorizing, orchestrating
Let loose the reins to all your watry store:
Bear down the damms, and open ev’ry door.
The floods
will inexorably follow
stay tuned
R ! chard
April 29, 2020
“Take care of your link with life” – Buffy Sainte-Marie
“Blue Sky“ (1932)
Emily Carr
_____
while on the topic of alternate
mythologies, look what I found,
a poem of Buffy Sainte-Marie
on our present collective
crisis
the faith is that of our indigenous
brothers and sisters, who’ve
managed to keep their ancient
stories alive despite years of
intense political and official
opposition
their lore was never ever less effective
than Roman lore was to the Romans,
Sainte-Marie‘s Mother Nature no less
noble and inspirational than Juno,
queen of Rome’s Heaven, nor, for
that matter, than to Catholics their
Virgin Mary
listen
Take care of your link with life
Hold your head up
Lift the top of your mind
Put your eyes on the Earth
Lift your heart to your own home planet
What do you see?
What is your attitude
Are you here to improve or damn it
Look right now and you will see
We’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with life
It ain’t money that makes the world go round
That’s only temporary confusion
It ain’t governments that make the people strong
It’s the opposite illusion
Look right now and you will see
They’re only here by the skin of their teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with Life
Life is beautiful
If you’ve got the sense to take care of your source of protection
Mother Nature
She’s the daughter of God and the source of all protection
Look right now
And you will see she’s only here by the skin of her teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with life
And carry it on
We’re saying
And carry it on
And keep playing
And carry it on
And keep praying
And carry it on
Buffy Sainte-Marie
R ! chard
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
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