Ovid / Shakespeare
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Tag: John Dryden
August 28, 2020
“The Story of Coronis, and Birth of Aesculapius” (II) – Ovid
“The Daughters of Cecrops Finding the Child Erichthonius“ (1640)
Jacob Jordaens
_________
Once upon a time,
something interesting happens here,
where earlier in this particular myth
we had a fable, a story in which
animals play major roles, Aesop is
famous for his, for instance, as is
Jean de la Fontaine, with the
opening catchphrase above, a line
as old at least as Dryden, we’re
suddenly in the land of fairy tales,
structurally, technically
The two-shap’d Ericthonius had his birth
(Without a mother) from the teeming Earth;
Ericthonius, son of Minerva, goddess
of Wisdom, and of several other traits
and abilities, and Hephaestus, god of
Craftsmen, Metallurgy, Fire, among
other, again, areas of malleability
and possibility
Without a mother, not in the usual,
mammalian, manner
two-shap’d, half human, half serpent,
don’t ask
Minerva nurs’d him, and the infant laid
Within a chest, of twining osiers made.
Minerva hid her fearsome child in
a box, a chest, closed the lid, and
entrusted the secret contents to a
trio of sisters
The daughters of king Cecrops undertook
To guard the chest, commanded not to look
On what was hid within.
king Cecrops, mythical founder and
first king of Athens
I stood to see
The charge obey’d, perch’d on a neighb’ring tree.
I, the daw, the storyteller
The sisters Pandrosos and Herse keep
The strict command; Aglauros needs would peep,
Pandrosos, not to be cofused with
Pandora, Herse, and Aglauros, the
three daughters of Cecrops
And saw the monstrous infant, in a fright,
And call’d her sisters to the hideous sight:
A boy’s soft shape did to the waste prevail,
But the boy ended in a dragon’s tail.
there’s the ring here, nevertheless,
of Pandora’s tale, though this story
is not at all as dire for humanity as
Pandora‘s fateful introduction of
very evil into the world
I told the stern Minerva all that pass’d;
But for my pains, discarded and disgrac’d,
The frowning Goddess drove me from her sight,
And for her fav’rite chose the bird of night.
the bird of night, the owl, with which
Minerva is often associated, often
portrayed
Be then no tell-tale; for I think my wrong
Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue.
and aptly, we learn the lesson a
fable is meant, by definition, to
expose
R ! chard
August 10, 2020
Phaeton’s Sisters Transform’d into Trees – Ovid
“Heliades“ (1920s)
Rupert Bunny
______
The Latian nymphs came round him,
Latian, of Latium, a region still of Italy,
which comprised, and still comprises,
Rome, the Latians, or Latins, were its
original inhabitants, whose language,
Latin, is the root of many of our
European languages today, it is,
notably, the language of Ovid
and, amaz’d,
On the dead youth, transfix’d with thunder, gaz’d;
the dead youth, Phaeton
And, whilst yet smoaking from the bolt he lay,
His shatter’d body to a tomb convey,
And o’er the tomb an epitaph devise:
“Here he, who drove the sun’s bright chariot, lies;
His father’s fiery steeds he cou’d not guide,
But in the glorious enterprize he dy’d.”
though Ovid’s text, as translated by
John Dryden, among others, has
its difficulties, a good portion of it
is easy to understand, the secret,
mostly, is in paying attention to the
punctuation, which on occasion can
be tricky
Apollo hid his face, and pin’d for grief,
Apollo, Phaeton’s father
And, if the story may deserve belief,
The space of one whole day is said to run,
From morn to wonted ev’n, without a sun:
ev’n, evening
The burning ruins, with a fainter ray,
Supply the sun, and counterfeit a day,
A day, that still did Nature’s face disclose:
This comfort from the mighty mischief rose.
though the sun did not shine that
fateful day, the glow from the
burning debris shed a light that
allowed one to nevertheless
make out, disclose, Nature’s face,
a wry comfort midst the carnage,
midst the mighty mischief
But Clymene, enrag’d with grief, laments,
Clymene, Phaeton’s mother
And as her grief inspires, her passion vents:
Wild for her son, and frantick in her woes,
With hair dishevel’d round the world she goes,
To seek where-e’er his body might be cast;
‘Till, on the borders of the Po, at last
The name inscrib’d on the new tomb appears.
the Po, a river in Italy
the new tomb, where the Latian
nymphs lay to rest Phaeton’s
remains
The dear dear name she bathes in flowing tears,
Hangs o’er the tomb, unable to depart,
And hugs the marble to her throbbing heart.
Her daughters too lament, and sigh, and mourn
(A fruitless tribute to their brother’s urn),
And beat their naked bosoms, and complain,
And call aloud for Phaeton in vain:
All the long night their mournful watch they keep,
And all the day stand round the tomb, and weep.
Her daughters, the Heliades, along
with Phaeton, were the children of
Clymene and Helios / Phoebus /
Apollo, god of the Sun
Four times, revolving, the full moon return’d;
So long the mother and the daughters mourn’d:
the equivalent of, more or less,
four months
When now the eldest, Phaethusa, strove
To rest her weary limbs, but could not move;
Lampetia wou’d have help’d her, but she found
Her self with-held, and rooted to the ground:
Phaethusa and Lampetia, both daughters
of Helios / Phoebus / Apollo, but with
Neaera, and not, as Ovid indeed writes
in his Latin text, with Clymene, were
therefore not strictly speaking Heliades,
but stepsisters only of Phaeton
furthermore, Ovid has them find their
purported brother in the Eridanos, a
river only later identified as the Po,
so that Dryden cannot be faulted for
this not inaccurate anachronism
in either case, I suspect either’s metre
might’ve played a poetically pertinent
part in these divergences
A third in wild affliction, as she grieves,
Wou’d rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves;
One sees her thighs transform’d, another views
Her arms shot out, and branching into boughs.
in one version, Helios / Phoebus /
Apollo and Clymene had three
daughters, Aegiale, Aegle, and
Aetheria, in another they had five,
Helia, Merope, Phoebe, Aetheria
and Dioxippe, you’ll note that
Phaethusa and Lampetia are not
among then
And now their legs, and breasts, and bodies stood
Crusted with bark, and hard’ning into wood;
But still above were female heads display’d,
And mouths, that call’d the mother to their aid.
there’s a pattern here, a friend said
when I spoke to her about what
was coming up
you mean these nymphs turning
into trees, I asked
yes, she replied
look at it the other way around, I said,
not that the girls are turning into trees,
but that the trees are becoming human,
becoming our kin, we are acknowledging
their humanity, anthropomorphically, which
is why some of us actually hug them, the
world in Ovid’s earlier myths is still being
created, not just the generic tree, but
poplars, maples, laurel, out of the share
of the common soul we impart to them,
not only metaphorically, as in these myths,
but even organically, we are, after all,
all, fundamentally, stardust
What cou’d, alas! the weeping mother do?
From this to that with eager haste she flew,
And kiss’d her sprouting daughters as they grew.
She tears the bark that to each body cleaves,
And from their verdant fingers strips the leaves:
The blood came trickling, where she tore away
The leaves and bark:
the process is not unlike watching,
helplessly, a daughter leave home,
age, take on life’s tribulations
the maids were heard to say,
“Forbear, mistaken parent, oh! forbear;
A wounded daughter in each tree you tear;
Farewell for ever.” Here the bark encreas’d,
Clos’d on their faces, and their words suppress’d.
let go, let go, the daughters cry,
holding on to us only hurts
The new-made trees in tears of amber run,
Which, harden’d into value by the sun,
Distill for ever on the streams below:
the river Eridanos was supposed to be a
river rich in amber, the resin, apparently,
of poplar trees there having drifted to the
nearby stream, hardened
I’m reminded of the sap of our own
indigenous maple trees becoming
a prized delicacy
The limpid streams their radiant treasure show,
Mixt in the sand; whence the rich drops convey’d
Shine in the dress of the bright Latian maid.
Latian, or Latin, maids have been
weaving amber into their apparel
ever since
R ! chard
August 2, 2020
Story of Phaeton (VIII) – Ovid
the initial page of the Peterborough Chronicle (14th Century CE)
___________
Jove call’d to witness ev’ry Pow’r above,
And ev’n the God, whose son the chariot drove,
That what he acts he is compell’d to do,
Or universal ruin must ensue.
had Dryden applied commas above,
as I am, you might’ve noted, nearly
compulsively wont to do, commas
being a significant part of my religion,
the verses might’ve been more easily
understood, put a comma after
witness and the object of the
witnessing, in this case an entire
independent clause, That what he
acts he is compell’d to do, finds its
natural position, clarity, Jove has to
do, he says, what Jove has to do
I cannot too much blame Dryden for
this literary indiscretion, this peccadillo,
to my mind, for punctuation has been
an evolving thing, there was a time
when there was no punctuation at all,
not even spaces between the words,
see above, this translation, of 1717,
stands somewhere within the gamut
of our ever evolving English grammar
the God, meanwhile, whose son the
chariot drove, in, above, the second
pentameter, is Phoebus / Apollo,
Phaeton‘s father
Strait he ascends the high aetherial throne,
Jove does
From whence he us’d to dart his thunder down,
From whence his show’rs and storms he us’d to pour,
But now cou’d meet with neither storm nor show’r.
Jove, being rendered impotent by the
raging fires, the immutable trajectory
of the very Sun having been
catastrophically, however improbably,
distorted, is left, at that time, or Then,
as the next line starts up, with no
option
Then, aiming at the youth, with lifted hand,
Full at his head he hurl’d the forky brand,
In dreadful thund’rings.
forky brand, a forklike piece of burning
wood, Jove’s trident
Thus th’ almighty sire
Suppress’d the raging of the fires with fire.
I’m reminded of the planned explosions
at the mouth of the oil wells in Kuwait,
wellheads, after the Gulf War, that were
meant to still for a critical moment the
fires, that would otherwise burn out
of control, in order to squelch the
disastrous conflagrations
At once from life and from the chariot driv’n,
Th’ ambitious boy fell thunder-struck from Heav’n.
The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
The studded harness from their necks they broke,
Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke,
Here were the beam and axle torn away;
And, scatter’d o’er the Earth, the shining fragments lay.
The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair,
Shot from the chariot, like a falling star,
That in a summer’s ev’ning from the top
Of Heav’n drops down, or seems at least to drop;
‘Till on the Po his blasted corps was hurl’d,
corps, body, from the French, or
corpse
the Po, a river in Italy
Far from his country, in the western world.
one wonders, however, what happened
to the Earth, the Chariot of the Sun,
upon their fiery interaction, perhaps
the Sun, fallen behind the horizon,
beyond the western oceans, set out
again, the following morning, with its
usual master, Phoebus / Apollo, at
its steady reins, for the world to
see again another day under that
lord’s august intervention
R ! chard
July 23, 2020
The Story of Phaeton (VII) – Ovid
“Landscape of Ruins and Fires“ (1914)
Félix Vallotton
_______
‘Twas then, they say, the swarthy Moor begun
To change his hue, and blacken in the sun.
Moor, a flagrant anachronism here,
as Moors, Muslim inhabitants of
North Africa, didn’t exist before the
advent of Islam, which began in the
Seventh Century CE, Ovid, in Latin,
uses Ethiopian, which would entirely
throw off, note, Dryden‘s poetic
metre, thus Moor
Then Libya first, of all her moisture drain’d,
Became a barren waste, a wild of sand.
Libya, Ancient Libya, a much larger
country of North Africa than the
Libya we know of today
The water-nymphs lament their empty urns,
Boeotia, robb’s of silve Dirce, mourns,
empty urns, the water has evaporated
Boeotia, a region still of Greece
Dirce, upon her gruesome death, which
I won’t get into here, was transformed
by Dionysus, god of revelry and fertility,
into a fountain, which became revered
silve, sylvan, of the forest, the
countryside
robb’s, I’ll guess robbers, because
Boeotia is where Dirce, abducted,
became a fountain
Corinth Pyrene’s wasted spring bewails,
And Argos grieves whilst Amymone fails.
Corinth, a city still in Greece
Pyrene, a princess, who was, another
distressing story, transformed into the
Pyrenees, by Heracles, her seducer,
as well as being a god renowned for
his extraordinary exploits
Argos, a city still in Greece
Amymone, another unfortunate maiden,
who was granted by Poseidon, god of
Water, for, throughout her tribulations,
her probity, springs, sources of water,
for her community, which, in the
instance, all fail[ ]
The floods are drain’d from ev’ry distant coast,
Ev’n Tanais, tho’ fix’d in ice, was lost.
Tanais, the river today known as the
Don in Russia, thus fix’d in ice
Enrag’d Caicus and Lycormas roar,
Caicus, a river in Asia Minor, now
given a different name in a different
script, Bakırçay, which I’ll let you
try to pronounce
Lycormas, a river in Ancient Greece,
now called Evinos
And Xanthus, fated to be burnt once more.
Xanthus, or Xanthos, a river in Ancient
Asia Minor, which was yellowish already
due to its surrounding tainted soil, thus
burnt once more
The fam’d Maeander, that unweary’d strays
Maeander, a river in Ancient Asia
Minor
Through mazy windings, smoaks in ev’ry maze.
smoaks, smokes
mazy, maze, cute
From his lov’d Babylon Euphrates flies;
The big-swoln Ganges and the Danube rise
In thick’ning fumes, and darken half the skies.
the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the
Danube, rivers which still go by their
ancient names
In flames Ismenos and the Phasis roul’d,
Ismenos, or Ismenus, a river in
Boeotia, Greece
Phasis, ancient name for the
Rioni River in Georgia, Eurasia
roul’d, rolled
And Tagus floating in his melted gold.
Tagus, a river in the Iberian
Peninsula
The swans, that on Cayster often try’d
Their tuneful songs, now sung their last and dy’d.
Cayster, a river in Turkey
The frighted Nile ran off, and under ground
Conceal’d his head, nor can it yet be found:
His sev’n divided currents all are dry,
And where they row’ld, sev’n gaping trenches lye:
it is being suggested that the Nile
had at one point seven tributaries,
some of which dried up, never
recovered
rowl’d, rolled
No more the Rhine or Rhone their course maintain,
Nor Tiber, of his promis’d empire vain.
the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Tiber
are all European rivers
vain, deprived
The ground, deep-cleft, admits the dazling ray,
And startles Pluto with the flash of day.
dazling, dazzling
Pluto, god of the Underworld, who
would be understandably startle[d]
by a flash of day
The seas shrink in, and to the sight disclose
Wide naked plains, where once their billows rose;
billows, of [t]he seas
Their rocks are all discover’d, and increase
The number of the scatter’d Cyclades.
discover’d, uncovered
Cyclades, a group of islands in the
Aegean Sea, between present-day
Greece and Turkey
The fish in sholes about the bottom creep,
sholes, shoals
Nor longer dares the crooked dolphin leap
Gasping for breath, th’ unshapen Phocae die,
Phocae, plural of Phoca, is the
generic name, and therefore,
interestingly, capitalized, for
seals, walruses, sea lions
And on the boiling wave extended lye.
lye, lie
Nereus, and Doris with her virgin train,
Seek out the last recesses of the main;
Nereus, and Doris, Sea god and
goddess, parents, notably, of the
Nereids, sea nymphs, the virgin
train
the main, the ocean
Beneath unfathomable depths they faint,
And secret in their gloomy caverns pant.
secret, unseen, alone, untended
Stern Neptune thrice above the waves upheld
His face, and thrice was by the flames repell’d.
Neptune, principal god of the Sea
it is interesting to note that where
earlier the earth had been
submerged in water, during the
Giants’ War, now the earth is
engulfed in flames, a primordial
global warming, as it were, the
result, consider, of a human,
Phaeton, trying to take on the
duties of a god, a warning the
Ancients were already delivering,
so many years, so many centuries,
so many millennia, ago
I suspect, worldwide, indigenous
people would be telling a similar
tale were we able to access their
own, unfortunately unwritten,
though undoubtedly comparable,
ancestral wisdom, going back,
perhaps, even as far
R ! chard
July 11, 2020
The Story of Phaeton (IV) – Ovid
“Dawn“ (1873)
Fyodor Vasilyev
_______
Thus did the God th’ unwary youth advise;
Helios / Phoebus / Apollo tells his
son Phaeton, th’ unwary youth,
that he shouldn’t try to ride the
Chariot of the Sun himself
But he still longs to travel through the skies.
Phaeton, however, is inclined to
disregard his father’s advice
When the fond father (for in vain he pleads)
At length to the Vulcanian Chariot leads.
Vulcanian, of Vulcan, god of fire,
metal, metalworkers
Vulcan, according to Ovid here,
built the Chariot of the Sun
A golden axle did the work uphold,
the axle is the principal part, the
beam between the wheels, that
holds the chariot together, that
did the work, which is to say
the chariot, uphold
Gold was the beam, the wheels were orb’d with gold.
The spokes in rows of silver pleas’d the sight,
The seat with party-colour’d gems was bright;
the chariot was made of precious
metals and gems, was therefore
bright, resplendent
Apollo shin’d amid the glare of light.
Apollo, Sun god, would surely, as
well as the chariot, be radiant,
glowing
note that the Sun god is called
Apollo here, where earlier he’d
been called Phoebus, the Latin
name replacing the Greek, but
upon further investigation I found
that it was Dryden who’d made
the switch, Ovid had called the
Sun god Phoebus in the original
Latin text
The youth with secret joy the work surveys,
Phaeton is beside himself, eager
with anticipation
When now the moon disclos’d her purple rays;
purple rays, tinged with the colours
of dawn
see above
The stars were fled, for Lucifer had chased
The stars away, and fled himself at last.
Lucifer, the Morning Star, the
planet Venus, as it appears in
the East before sunrise
having suspected Dryden of having
replaced with Lucifer another name
from the original Latin text, I was
surprised to discover that Lucifer
had been indeed translated faithfully
from Ovid’s poem, which means that
the Christian name we’re familiar
with as another name for Satan has
to have been adopted from the
Ancients and modified to fit the new
Christian mythology, the biblical
narrative
Lucifer, a god in his own right in
Antiquity, had been the son of
Aurora, goddess of the Dawn
do you love it
Soon as the father saw the rosy morn,
And the moon shining with a blunter horn,
blunter, less incandescent, dulled
by the advancing light
horn, a lesser phase of the moon,
when it is either waxing or waning,
thus resembling a horn
He bid the nimble Hours, without delay,
Bring forth the steeds; the nimble Hours obey:
the Hours, or Horae, goddesses
of the Seasons, horae is the
Greek word for seasons
From their full racks the gen’rous steeds retire,
retire, come away, from their stalls
in the stables
Dropping ambrosial foams, and snorting fire.
ambrosial, especially fragrant, or
tasty
Still anxious for his son, the God of day,
To make him proof against the burning ray,
His temples with celestial ointment wet,
Of sov’reign virtue to repel the heat;
celestial ointment, ambrosia,
elixir of the gods
sov’reign virtue, exceedingly effective
attribute
Then fix’d the beamy circle on his head,
beamy circle, radiant halo of
solar rays
And fetch’d a deep foreboding sigh, and said,
“Take this at least, this last advice, my son,
Keep a stiff rein, and move but gently on:
The coursers of themselves will run too fast,
Your art must be to moderate their haste.
Drive ’em not on directly through the skies,
But where the Zodiac’s winding circle lies,
Along the midmost Zone; but sally forth
Nor to the distant south, nor stormy north.
The horses’ hoofs a beaten track will show,
But neither mount too high, nor sink too low.
That no new fires, or Heav’n or Earth infest;
Keep the mid way, the middle way is best.
Nor, where in radiant folds the serpent twines,
Direct your course, nor where the altar shines.
serpent twines, serpentine, tortuous
entanglements
altar, probably alter, or other, light
sources, the moon, for instance,
the Morning Star, do not be
distracted by bright lights,
Phoebus / Apollo advises
Shun both extreams; the rest let Fortune guide,
And better for thee than thy self provide!
Fortune, or Fortuna, goddess of Fate,
will be of greater help to you, Phoebus
/ Apollo tells his son, than you, thy self,
can provide for yourself
compare this last fatherly advice,
incidentally, to that of Polonius to
Laertes, his own son, act I, scene
3, lines 55 to 81 in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, proof that Shakespeare
was not only well acquainted
with Ovid, but also much
admired him
See, while I speak, the shades disperse away,
Aurora gives the promise of a day;
Aurora, goddess of the Dawn
I’m call’d, nor can I make a longer stay.
I’m call’d, the time has come to
mount the Chariot of the Sun,
the morning breaks, I must, or
you must, in my stead, go
Snatch up the reins; or still th’ attempt forsake,
And not my chariot, but my counsel, take,
While yet securely on the Earth you stand;
Nor touch the horses with too rash a hand.
Let me alone to light the world, while you
Enjoy those beams which you may safely view.”
should you choose to my counsel, take,
from the Earth you may safely view my
beams while I alone … light the world,
Phoebus / Apollo implores his son
He spoke in vain; the youth with active heat
And sprightly vigour vaults into the seat;
And joys to hold the reins, and fondly gives
Those thanks his father with remorse receives.
for better, or for worse
stay tuned
R ! chard
July 3, 2020
“The Story of Phaeton” (II) – Ovid
“The Sun“ (1911 – 1916)
Edvard Munch
_______
The Sun’s bright palace, on high columns rais’d,
The Sun, Helios / Phoebus / Apollo
With burnish’d gold and flaming jewels blaz’d;
The folding gates diffus’d a silver light,
And with a milder gleam refresh’d the sight;
since the folding gates of the bright
palace shimmered with a silver light
rather than with the glow of the gold
and flaming jewels of the palace itself,
their milder gleam was easier on the
eyes, refresh’d the sight
Of polish’d iv’ry was the cov’ring wrought:
the palace was covered with polish’d
wrought ivory
The matter vied not with the sculptor’s thought,
the execution of the palace was
everything that its sculptor, its
architect, had had in mind to
create
For in the portal was display’d on high
(The work of Vulcan) a fictitious sky;
Vulcan, god of fire, metal, smiths,
metalworkers
at the entrance to the palace, the
portal, Vulcan had painted the ceiling,
he’d display’d on high … a fictitious
sky, I suspect Dryden must’ve had
Michelangelo and his ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel in mind during his
translation of this passage of Ovid
A waving sea th’ inferiour Earth embrac’d,
inferiour, Earth, surging from under the
greater masses of water dominating it,
especially after the flood, is, therefore,
beneath the waving sea, inferiour to it
And Gods and Goddesses the waters grac’d.
remember that Ovid is describing a
painting here, on the ceiling at the
entrance, the portal, to the palace
of the god of the Sun
Aegeon here a mighty whale bestrode;
Aegeon, marine god, god of storms,
note the similarity of the name with
that of the Aegean Sea, but which
came first, the chicken or the egg,
the god or the expanse of water,
remains, as far as I’ve been able
to determine, undetermined
Triton, and Proteus (the deceiving God)
Triton, another god of the Sea, you’ll
remember him coming to the aid of
Neptune, his father, in settling the
waters after the flood at the request
of Jove / Jupiter / Zeus
Proteus, still another sea god,
described as deceiving, for his
ability to effortlessly, and
spontaneously, change his shape,
from which, incidentally, we get
the adjective protean, for easily
changeable, or versatile
With Doris here were carv’d, and all her train,
Doris, sea goddess, and all her train,
her fifty daughters, if you’ll remember,
are carv’d, etched, given graphic
representation
Some loosely swimming in the figur’d main,
figur’d, painted, depicted, drawn
main, the open ocean, but, probably
also here, the main, or central, part
of the painting itself
While some on rocks their dropping hair divide,
their hair divide, they loosen strands
of their wet hair
And some on fishes through the waters glide:
sea gods and goddesses are often
shown riding sea creatures, dolphins,
seahorses, even whales, see Aegeon
above
Tho’ various features did the sisters grace,
A sister’s likeness was in ev’ry face.
the sisters, the Nereids, all have different
features, but a family resemblance, sister’s
likeness, can always be detected in each
individual sibling’s rendering
On Earth a diff’rent landskip courts the eyes,
Earth doesn’t look, court[ ] the eyes,
at all like what’s painted on the
palace’s ceiling
landskip, landscape
Men, towns, and beasts in distant prospects rise,
distant prospects, from a distance, one
can see [m]en, towns, and beasts
appear, rise, arise
And nymphs, and streams, and woods, and rural deities.
nymphs, consigned, it appears, to
earthly duties, streams, and woods,
are not a feature of the Sun god’s
palace
O’er all, the Heav’n’s refulgent image shines;
the Heav’n’s refulgent, brightly shining,
image, expression, is manifest [o]’er all,
everywhere, the rays of the sun cast a
light on everything
On either gate were six engraven signs.
again I’m reminded of a Renaissance
wonder, Lorenzo Ghiberti‘s gilded bronze
doors for the Florence Baptistery, which
Michelangelo himself called the Gates of
Paradise, a work nearly as famous, then
and now, as his own Sistine Chapel ceiling
Ovid would never have known of these
masterworks, of course, having lived
over a millenium earlier, but I suspect
John Dryden, a cultured man, a couple
of hundred years later than these
cultural icons, would no doubt have
been fully aware of them, much as we,
however disinterested we might be,
can’t help but have heard of, say,
Rembrandt, Chopin, Charles Dickens,
for instance, though they be, similarly,
centuries separated from us
my point is that, without knowledge of
the original Latin, Dryden‘s cultural
heritage must’ve slipped, I think,
consciously or not, into his
translation, for better, or for worse
it should be remembered, however,
that Dryden was writing for an early
18th Century audience, much as I
am presently doing myself with
Dryden for a 21st, and maybe also
similarly skewing his idiom to better
adapt it to our own time, for better,
also, or for worse
Here Phaeton still gaining on th’ ascent,
gaining on th’ ascent, going faster
and faster, climbing higher and
higher
To his suspected father’s palace went,
suspected father, Phaeton doesn’t
yet know if Helios / Phoebus / Apollo
is indeed his father
‘Till pressing forward through the bright abode,
He saw at distance the illustrious God:
He saw at distance, or the dazling light
Had flash’d too strongly on his aking sight.
had Phaeton not been as far, at
distance, from what he was seeing,
the illustrious God, the dazling, or
dazzling, light would’ve hurt his
eyes, hurt his aking, or aching,
sight
The God sits high, exalted on a throne
Of blazing gems, with purple garments on;
Tyrian, surely, purple, a hue we’ve
seen here before, indicative of
stature, of imperial, if not even
divine, as in this instance,
pedigree
The Hours, in order rang’d on either hand,
And Days, and Months, and Years, and Ages stand.
Here Spring appears with flow’ry chaplets bound;
Here Summer in her wheaten garland crown’d;
Here Autumn the rich trodden grapes besmear;
And hoary Winter shivers in the reer.
this is no longer a picture, but the
real thing, Phoebus / Apollo / Helios
sits high, exalted on a throne / Of
blazing gems, with purple garments
on, while Time and all of the Seasons
hold court around him
Phoebus beheld the youth from off his throne;
That eye, which looks on all, was fix’d in one.
Phoebus, who sees everything, who
looks on all, beholds, fixes his eye on,
his son
He saw the boy’s confusion in his face,
Surpriz’d at all the wonders of the place;
And cries aloud, “What wants my son? for know
My son thou art, and I must call thee so.”
Phaeton, according to Phoebus /
Apollo / Helios‘ forthright admission,
is truly his son
“Light of the world,” the trembling youth replies,
“Illustrious parent! since you don’t despise
The parent’s name,
despise, refute
some certain token give,
That I may Clymene’s proud boast believe,
Nor longer under false reproaches grieve.”
your word is good, Phaeton allows,
but incontrovertibly, now, prove it,
some certain token give, he
challenges
The tender sire was touch’d with what he said,
And flung the blaze of glories from his head,
flung the blaze of glories from his head,
reduced the intensity of his presence,
the impact of his charisma, took off
his dazling crown, if only, maybe,
metaphorically, to be father to his son
And bid the youth advance: “My son,” said he,
“Come to thy father’s arms! for Clymene
Has told thee true; a parent’s name I own,
And deem thee worthy to be called my son.
As a sure proof, make some request, and I,
Whate’er it be, with that request comply;
By Styx I swear, whose waves are hid in night,
And roul impervious to my piercing sight.”
an oath upon Styx is incontrovertible,
like swearing on a Bible, as earlier
noted
The youth transported, asks, without delay,
To guide the sun’s bright chariot for a day.
Phaeton wants to drive his father’s
car, the sun’s bright chariot, how
contemporary, how immediate,
how timeless
stay tuned
R ! chard
June 28, 2020
“The Story of Phaeton” – Ovid
“Landscape with a Palace“ (1916)
Eugeniusz Zak
________
Her son was Epaphus, at length believ’d
The son of Jove, and as a God receiv’d;
without proof, it could not have been
absolutely determined, during this
ancient mythological era, that
Epaphus, son of Io become Isis, was
indeed the son of Jove / Jupiter / Zeus,
though that’s what at length, eventually,
came to be believed
and as such Epaphus was
With sacrifice ador’d, and publick pray’rs,
He common temples with his mother shares.
both Isis and Epaphus are worshipped
in common, in the same places, and
with a similar degree of devotion
Equal in years, and rival in renown
With Epaphus, the youthful Phaeton
Like honour claims;
Phaeton, another youth, [e]qual in
years to Epaphus, and in renown,
as famous, [l]ike honour claims,
puts forward, his own illustrious
heritage
and boasts his sire the sun.
the sun, Phoebus / Apollo, god,
among a number of other things,
of that very orb
His haughty looks, and his assuming air,
The son of Isis could no longer bear:
Thou tak’st thy mother’s word too far, said he,
And hast usurp’d thy boasted pedigree.
Epaphus, son of Isis, challenges
Phaeton, says that his mother’s
claim that her consort was the
god of the Sun is false, and that
he, Epaphus, is only promoting
the fabricated story of his high,
his boasted, pedigree, ancestry
Go, base pretender to a borrow’d name.
Epaphus delivers a double whammy,
base pretender, borrow’d name, ouch
Thus tax’d, he blush’d with anger, and with shame;
But shame repress’d his rage:
tax’d, confronted
repress’d his rage, Phaeton didn’t
slug Epaphus
the daunted youth
Soon seeks his mother, and enquires the truth:
is he truly the son of the god of the
Sun, Phaeton asks his mother, nearly
intolerable drama must surely follow,
turning on this burning question
Mother, said he, this infamy was thrown
By Epaphus on you, and me your son.
He spoke in publick, told it to my face;
Nor durst I vindicate the dire disgrace:
Even I, the bold, the sensible of wrong,
Even I, Phaeton asserts, the sensible
of wrong, as he describes himself, the
impatient of improprieties, however
bold, quick to respond, impetuous,
might he be, durst not, dared not,
vindicate, validate, the dire disgrace,
Epaphus‘ profoundly distressing insult
Restrain’d by shame, was forc’d to hold my tongue.
I was unable, Phaeton says, too
[r]estrain’d by shame, humiliated,
to even answer
To hear an open slander, is a curse:
But not to find an answer, is a worse.
a worse, we would say just worse,
but note that worse, here, is not a
noun, but the adjective for curse,
which has been elided, left out, a
worse curse, which, included,
would’ve altered, however, the
metre, the pentameter, and thus,
the poetry, style having trumped,
for better or for worse, in this
instance, the substance
a, incidentally, is the first beat of the
iamb, which is to say, the weak beat,
while worse, is the second, the one
with the accent, the determining
thump, a worse, da, dum, an iamb
Dryden didn’t have, in other words,
much choice, were he wanting to
be a poet, but to deftly press his,
surely masterful, grammar, to fit
his meaning to his, however
constricting, verse
If I am Heav’n-begot, assert your son
By some sure sign;
assert your son, acknowledge him,
[b]y some sure sign, Phaeton
demands of his mother
and make my father known,
at the same time, make … known,
identify, Phaeton continues, point
him out, my father
To right my honour, and redeem your own.
He said,
it is the honour[able] thing to do,
the required thing to do, [h]e said,
to restore, [t]o right, our reputations
and saying cast his arms about
Her neck, and beg’d her to resolve the doubt.
a son imploring his mother, can
anything be more poignant
‘Tis hard to judge if Clymene were mov’d
More by his pray’r, whom she so dearly lov’d,
Clymene, wife of Helios, or Phoebus /
Apollo, sun god, mother of Phaeton
Or more with fury fir’d, to find her name
Traduc’d, and made the sport of common fame.
Traduc’d, translated, transmitted
common fame, the casual, everyday
sport, entertainment, however
inappropriate, however malicious,
of many
She stretch’d her arms to Heav’n, and fix’d her eyes
On that fair planet that adorns the skies;
that fair planet that adorns the skies,
the sun, though Dryden must’ve
known the sun wasn’t a planet, nor
Ovid, for that matter, literary licence
having given style, here again, sway
over substance, for better, it’ll be up
to you to say, or for worse
literary licence, where style
overtakes substance
Now by those beams, said she, whose holy fires
Consume my breast, and kindle my desires;
girlfriend, I have to here interject, your
temperature is, ahem, showing, you’re
sounding, however uncharacteristically,
awfully intemperate, aroused, [c]onsume
my breast indeed, kindle, you audaciously
request, my desires
By him, who sees us both, and clears our sight,
By him, the publick minister of light,
I swear that Sun begot thee;
Clymene swears an oath upon the
very sun, her sire, the publick minister
of light, the very priest of illumination,
of clarity, for everyone, the sun’s
manifest incarnation
if I lye,
Let him his chearful influence deny:
don’t shine on me, Helios / Phoebus /
Apollo, him, Helios / Phoebus / Apollo
himself, Clymene cries, if I lye, lie, if I
tell an untruth
Let him no more this perjur’d creature see;
Let him, let yourself, Helios / Phoebus /
Apollo, be unable any longer to see me,
perjur’d creature that I, Clymene, am
And shine on all the world but only me.
obliterate me, she defies, from your
purview, let the world receive your
rays, but not myself
If still you doubt your mother’s innocence,
His eastern mansion is not far from hence;
With little pains you to his Leve go,
And from himself your parentage may know.
Leve, where Helios / Phoebus /
Apollo lives
With joy th’ ambitious youth his mother heard,
And eager, for the journey soon prepar’d.
Phaeton is off on his mission
He longs the world beneath him to survey;
he wants to see the world from the
perspective of the sun, an astronaut,
a dreamer, pulsing with ambition
To guide the chariot; and to give the day:
to drive his father’s car, chariot, how
contemporary, how immediate
From Meroe’s burning sands he bends his course,
Meroe, a city on the Nile, you’ll
remember that we’re still in Egypt,
where Io / Isis prevails, with Epaphus,
her son, the one who started all this
Nor less in India feels his father’s force:
the sun, his father’s force, is no less
vigorous in India than it is, he, Helios
/ Phoebus / Apollo, is, in Egypt
His travel urging, till he came in sight;
His travel urging, impatient to speed
up his pace, hastening his metaphorical
horses
And saw the palace by the purple light.
purple light, evening, though purple
is also, since antiquity, the colour of
royalty, Phaeton is perhaps seeing
both, the palace, at evening
see above
R ! chard
June 25, 2020
“The Eyes of Argus transform’d into a Peacock’s Train” – Ovid
“Juno and Argus“ (c.1611)
Peter Paul Rubens
______
While Hermes pip’d, and sung, and told his tale,
The keeper’s winking eyes began to fail,
The keeper, Argus, of Io, nymph
become heifer
And drowsie slumber on the lids to creep;
‘Till all the watchman was at length asleep.
all the watchman, all of Argus‘ eyes,
were closed, asleep, at length, after
a time
Then soon the God his voice, and song supprest;
the God, Hermes, messenger of the
gods, on a mission from Jove /
Jupiter / Zeus to save Io, nymph
become heifer
his voice, and song supprest, Hermes
stopped talking, stopped playing his
song, his music
And with his pow’rful rod confirm’d his rest:
his powerful rod, the caduceus, with
which Hermes could both waken those
asleep as well lull the wakeful to
slumber
Without delay his crooked faulchion drew,
faulchion, now spelled falchion,
is a short sword with only one
sharp edge, a sort of sickle
since falchions go back only to the
13th Century, Dryden‘s translation
from the Latin has to be an
anachronism
just saying
And at one fatal stroke the keeper slew.
Down from the rock fell the dissever’d head,
Opening its eyes in death; and falling, bled;
And mark’d the passage with a crimson trail:
Thus Argus lies in pieces, cold, and pale;
And all his hundred eyes, with all their light,
Are clos’d at once, in one perpetual night.
These Juno takes, that they no more may fail,
And spreads them in her peacock’s gaudy tail.
see above
Juno, wife of Jove / Jupiter / Zeus,
queen, therefore, of the gods and
goddesses
Impatient to revenge her injur’d bed,
Juno had been offended by the fact
that Jove / Jupiter / Zeus had
transgressed
She wreaks her anger on her rival’s head;
her rival, Io
With Furies frights her from her native home;
Furies, also known as Erinyes,
goddesses of vengeance, the
oldest of all the deities, they live
in Erebus, the Underworld, look
frightful, snakes in their hair, bat’s
wings, and haunt, unsettle, the
disrespectful, the insolent, those
who betray, are not true to, their
word
frights, frightens
And drives her gadding, round the world to roam:
her, Io, nymph become heifer
to gad, to wander
Nor ceas’d her madness, and her flight, before
She touch’d the limits of the Pharian shore.
Pharian, relating to Pharos, island off
the coast of Alexandria, notable for
its lighthouse, itself called Pharos,
one of the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World
At length, arriving on the banks of Nile,
Wearied with length of ways, and worn with toil,
She laid her down;
She laid her down, she laid herself
down, stopped, stayed in place
and leaning on her knees,
Invok’d the cause of all her miseries:
the cause of all her miseries, Jove /
Jupiter / Zeus, who’d abandoned
her, Io, to the wrath of Juno, his
wife, when she’d discovered him
to be unfaithful
And cast her languishing regards above,
For help from Heav’n, and her ungrateful Jove.
She sigh’d, she wept, she low’d; ’twas all she cou’d;
And with unkindness seem’d to tax the God.
to tax, to accuse, to make
responsible for
Last, with an humble pray’r, she beg’d repose,
Or death at least, to finish all her woes.
repose, relief, Io, nymph become
heifer, has completely had it
Jove heard her vows, and with a flatt’ring look,
In her behalf to jealous Juno spoke,
a flatt’ring look, a seductive approach,
toward Juno, his reproachful wife
He cast his arms about her neck, and said,
Dame, rest secure; no more thy nuptial bed
This nymph shall violate;
Dame, or Madam
by Styx I swear,
Styx, one of the five rivers that
separate Earth from the
Underworld, also one of the
earliest goddesses, after whom
the river itself was named, who
had, significantly, sided with Jove /
Jupiter / Zeus during the Giants’
War, for which, upon having won,
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus ordained that
all oaths be sworn upon her, Styx,
much as we, in our own day, swear
upon Bibles
this all precedes, note, Bibles
And every oath that binds the Thunderer.
the Thunderer, Jove / Jupiter, Zeus,
god, indeed, of Thunder
The Goddess was appeas’d;
The Goddess, Juno
and at the word
Was Io to her former shape restor’d.
The rugged hair began to fall away;
The sweetness of her eyes did only stay,
Tho’ not so large; her crooked horns decrease;
The wideness of her jaws and nostrils cease:
Her hoofs to hands return, in little space:
little space, the blink of an eye
The five long taper fingers take their place,
And nothing of the heyfer now is seen,
Beside the native whiteness of the skin.
Erected on her feet she walks again:
And two the duty of the four sustain.
rather than walk on four feet, Io
now stands erect, [e]rected, on
two
She tries her tongue; her silence softly breaks,
And fears her former lowings when she speaks:
she can hardly believe she’s
become, not just a nymph,
but indeed
A Goddess now, through all th’ Aegyptian State:
And serv’d by priests, who in white linnen wait.
Io has become the Egyptian
goddess Isis
but that’s an entirely other story
stay tuned
R ! chard
June 11, 2020
“The Transformation of Io into a Heyfer” (IV) – Ovid
“Io Wearing Bovine Horns Watched over by Argos on Hera’s Orders“
(1st century AD)
______________
before moving forward with the trials
of Io in Ovid’s poem, let me interject
a few extracurricular opinions
a great work of art, be it poetry, prose,
a painting, a piece of music, is indicated
by what you can read between the lines
this very Ovid is such an example,
interrupted, as it is, by my
commentaries
but a better example, a more personal
one, I would think, would be that of
listening to music, and finding oneself
wandering, often often, in all kinds of
apparently unrelated areas of
introspection, before being drawn
back into the piece, the present, often
unexpectedly, when it recaptures, with
artful ingenuity, an arresting mixture of
substance and style according to the
poet’s artistry, one’s errant attention,
helping one find one’s way back home
to rekindle again and again your
attention, therein lies the art
the journey, the reverie, has been the
point of the music, where it is that the
enchantment, and I use that word
advisedly here, has taken you, that
jaunt has been your part of the
communication, which has turned it
into, indeed, a conversation
all art tries to do that
here are a few of my own reveries
around Ovid’s poem, that it must be
read as a cooperation in this instance
between Ovid and John Dryden, who
translated it, along with the help, here
and there throughout the work, of a
few other noteworthies, who must be
acknowledged
it would be impossible to translate
alliteration, onomatopeia, other
literary devices from one language
to another, these exist only, and
specifically, in the individual
vernacular, like fingerprints, the
personal and particular impression
of teeth, in people, for example
of a more technical nature is the
fact that though Dryden‘s verse
is in iambic pentameter,
Shakespeare‘s shtick, a notably
conversational metre, Ovid‘s
dactylic hexameter is of a heroic
cadence, orotund and imperious,
like ceremonial music is
unmistakably different from more
lilting popular ditties
the point is that this translation of
Metamorphoses must be read, in
my opinion, as a collaboration
between Ovid for his substance,
which is to say, the essential
story, and John Dryden for his
style
for better or for worse
otherwise we must learn Latin
an interesting element of the style,
meanwhile, I’ve uncovered, upon
reading this text, is that the
apostrophe that is often removed
from verbs we see today with the
e typically installed before the d,
in the first line below, cry’d, for
instance, reply’d in the next,
would’ve been that the poet was
indicating, in his 1717, by the
insistent elision, that the letter
not be pronounced, where
custom had earlier had it that it
often was
for a more vivid impression, compare
bless’d with blessed, both pronunciations
still in use today, where the second
spelling, the one with the e, is a
throwback to a time when most of these
participles would’ve been voiced in that
manner
1717, we learn, however incidentally,
was a year when the English language
was evolving, their is not was turning
into their isn’t
but back now to Ovid
Ah wretched me! her mournful father cry’d;
She, with a sigh, to wretched me reply’d:
how, between two profoundly
different oratories, Inachus, Io‘s
father, wonders, to translate
see my exegesis above
About her milk-white neck, his arms he threw;
And wept, and then these tender words ensue.
Inachus speaks
And art thou she, whom I have sought around
The world, and have at length so sadly found?
So found, is worse than lost: with mutual words
Thou answer’st not, no voice thy tongue affords:
mutual words,a shared language
But sighs are deeply drawn from out thy breast;
And speech deny’d, by lowing is express’d.
lowing, the sound a cow makes
Unknowing, I prepar’d thy bridal bed;
With empty hopes of happy issue fed.
happy issue, children
But now the husband of a herd must be
Thy mate, and bell’wing sons thy progeny.
bell’wing, bellowing
Inachus fears Io will be mothering
calves
Oh, were I mortal, death might bring relief:
But now my God-head but extends my grief:
Prolongs my woes, of which no end I see,
And makes me curse my immortality!
note that even the gods in this
mythology suffer
More had he said, but fearful of her stay,
The starry guardian drove his charge away,
The starry guardian, Argus
see above
To some fresh pasture; on a hilly height
He sate himself, and kept her still in sight.
to sate, to refresh, satisfy
Io is still not out of the woods
R ! chard
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