“Ocyrrhoe transform’d into a Mare” (II) – Ovid
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Tag: Phoebus / Apollo
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
June 17, 2020
The Transformation of Syrinx into Reeds
“Pan and Syrinx“ (1617 – 1619)
Peter Paul Rubens
__________
Then Hermes thus:
Hermes, messenger of the gods,
addresses Argus, keeper of Io,
who’s been transformed by Jove,
god of gods, into a heifer, though
she remains daughter, ever, of
Inachus, river god, to tell the
story of his rare, beguiling reeds
A nymph of late there was
Whose heav’nly form her fellows did surpass.
here we go again with nymphs,
beautiful, irresistible, however
ever innocent, prey, due, indeed,
to their very beauty, their very
innocence, to lustful, inordinate
desires, in these instances,
markedly divine
deities, I point out again, make
up their own rules
The pride and joy of fair Arcadia’s plains,
Arcadia, apart from being an
actual area of Greece, is also
the ideal, in our historical
imagination, of an utopia,
much as is the lost island of
Atlantis
Belov’d by deities, ador’d by swains:
Syrinx her name, by Sylvans oft pursu’d,
Sylvans, could only be, though
I’ve been unable to find actual
confirmation of my opinion,
wood spirits, forest entities,
satyrs, goat men, and such
As oft she did the lustful Gods delude:
Syrinx could often, or oft, delude,
or fool, ward off, the lustful Gods
The rural, and the woodland Pow’rs disdain’d;
satyr yourself, Syrinx would’ve
impudently taunted
With Cynthia hunted, and her rites maintain’d:
Like Phoebe clad, even Phoebe’s self she seems,
Cynthia, is Phoebe, both also known
as Diana, goddess of the Hunt, you’ll
remember Phoebe / Diana from her
connection to Daphne, who earlier
here was transformed into a laurel
Syrinx sounds an awful lot, incidentally,
like another version of Daphne
So tall, so streight, such well-proportion’d limbs:
The nicest eye did no distinction know,
But that the goddess bore a golden bow:
the only difference between Syrinx
and Cynthia / Phoebe / Diana was
that Syrinx didn’t have, bear, a
golden bow
Distinguish’d thus, the sight she cheated too.
had she borne a golden bow, Syrinx,
[d]istinguish’d thus, would’ve cheated
the sight, looked identical, to the
beautiful, it is inferred, goddess
Descending from Lycaeus, Pan admires
The matchless nymph, and burns with new desires.
Pan, god of the wild, woodlands
Lycaeus, Latin spelling of Lykaion,
is a mountain in Arcadia
A crown of pine upon his head he wore;
And thus began her pity to implore.
But e’er he thus began, she took her flight
So swift, she was already out of sight.
Nor stay’d to hear the courtship of the God;
But bent her course to Ladon’s gentle flood:
Ladon, a river in Arcadia
flood, rushing, though gentl[y],
water, rhymes in the preceding
verse, you’ll note, with God
There by the river stopt, and tir’d before;
Relief from water nymphs her pray’rs implore.
Syrinx, once by the river stopt, seeks
the help of, assistance, [r]elief from,
the nearby water nymphs, her
consorts
Now while the lustful God, with speedy pace,
Just thought to strain her in a strict embrace,
Pan, like Phoebus / Apollo, or
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus before him,
is, as well, and characteristically,
a lustful God
He fill’d his arms with reeds, new rising on the place.
And while he sighs, his ill success to find,
his ill success, his thwarted,
ineffective, enterprise
The tender canes were shaken by the wind;
And breath’d a mournful air, unheard before;
the reeds that Pan gathered in his arms,
shaken by the wind, create a mournful
air, a melancholy music
That much surprizing Pan, yet pleas’d him more.
though Pan might’ve been much
surpriz[ed] by the sorrowful sounds
he heard, he was more pleas’d by
them than startled
Admiring this new musick, Thou, he said,
Who canst not be the partner of my bed,
At least shall be the confort of my mind:
Thou, Syrinx
And often, often to my lips be joyn’d.
in a kiss of consolation
He form’d the reeds, proportion’d as they are,
Unequal in their length, and wax’d with care,
They still retain the name of his ungrateful fair.
the instrument Pan devised from
the tender canes he fashioned
from the unaccommodating reeds,
what we now name the Pan flute,
was called in Ancient Greece a
syrinx, in honour of the
recalcitrant nymph
listen, coincidentally, to Debussy
tell the story, for solo flute,
however, which is to say, on a
modern instrument, for our having
long ago abandoned at a
professional level the original pipe,
though it remains, apparently, as a
folk instrument in more agrarian,
communities around the world, for
shepherds, one would imagine, to
while away the hours while tending
to their, however wayward, sheep
R ! chard
June 6, 2020
“The Transformation of Io into a Heyfer” (II) – Ovid
“Juno, Jupiter and Io“ (1672)
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
________________
we left Inachus in my last instalment
looking for his daughter, Io
Her, just returning from her father’s brook,
Her, Io
Jove had beheld, with a desiring look:
the sentence structure, as it’s been
crafted in the verses above, has
been an aspect of Ovid’s poem for
some time, though, it must again
be noted, as translated by John
Dryden, the subject goes where
the object should go, the sentence
is inverted
the sentence should be, Jove had
beheld her, … just returning from
her father’s brook
but the placement of Her at the
top of the sentence, and even
capitalized, is, you must admit,
arresting, and of the highest
poetic order
And, Oh fair daughter of the flood, he said,
the flood, the many rivers that came
to comfort Inachus, their sovereign,
in his distress at having lost Io, his
daughter, their many surging
confluences would’ve created
overflowing torrents, the flood
Worthy alone of Jove’s imperial bed,
Jove thinks Io worthy of no one
else’s mattress but his own
Happy whoever shall those charms possess;
The king of Gods (nor is thy lover less)
Invites thee to yon cooler shades; to shun
The scorching rays of the meridian sun.
whoever might partake of her charms,
Jove tells Io, would be Happy
again an inverted sentence, note
but Jove makes his play, flashes
his pedigree,The king of Gods,
nothing less, and invites her to a
shady grove, out of the noonday,
the meridian, sun
Nor shalt thou tempt the dangers of the grove
Alone, without a guide; thy guide is Jove.
Jove / Jupiter, god of gods
No puny Pow’r, but he whose high command
Is unconfin’d,
Jove / Jupiter is not a nobody, but,
rather, unconfin’d, omnipotent,
he boasts
who rules the seas and land;
And tempers thunder in his awful hand,
Jove / Jupiter, supreme master of
the elements
Oh fly not:
Jove urges Io
for she fled from his embrace
O’er Lerna’s pastures:
Lerna, a region of Ancient Greece
he pursu’d the chace
Along the shades of the Lyrcaean plain;
Lyrcaean, after some investigation,
seems to mean from Lycaeus, the
Latin name for Lykaion, a mountain
in Greece, considered by some to
be the birthplace of Jove / Jupiter /
Zeus
otherwise, but very improbably, the
Lyrcaean plain is a literary invention,
of Ovid, or of his translator, Dryden
At length the God, who never asks in vain,
Involv’d with vapours, imitating night,
Both Air, and Earth;
Inform’d with, having transformed
himself into, vapours, a mist,
imitating night, shrouding [b]oth
Air and Earth in darkness,
becoming himself, therefore,
indistinct, indefinite, nebulous,
within them
and then suppress’d her flight,
And mingling force with love, enjoy’d the full delight.
first of all Phoebus / Apollo‘s pursuit
of Daphne, and now Jove / Jupiter‘s
constraint of Io, are not admirable
aspects of male deities, indeed in
our age of action against the
harassment of women, their
behaviour is disturbing, uncomfortable
for me even to read, I’m too reminded
of dissolute American CEOs, not to
mention presidents, but concluding
that this dilemma has been around
for countless ages among vertebrates,
be they animal, human, or, as in these
instances, divine, therefore written in
our antediluvian, our primeval, genes,
maybe, consequently, ineradicably
Mean-time the jealous Juno, from on high,
Juno, goddess of goddesses, wife
of Jupiter / Jove
Survey’d the fruitful fields of Arcady;
Arcady, or Arcadia, a region still
of Greece
And wonder’d that the mist shou’d over-run
The face of day-light, and obscure the sun.
which is to say, Juno, suspicious,
asks herself, what’s up with that
No nat’ral cause she found, from brooks, or bogs,
Or marshy lowlands, to produce the fogs;
she reckons
Then round the skies she sought for Jupiter,
Her faithless husband; but no Jove was there:
Juno knows her Jove / Jupiter
Suspecting now the worst, Or I, she said,
Am much mistaken, or am much betray’d.
it’s one of two things, Juno figures,
after [s]uspecting … the worst, I am
myself in error, she concludes, I am
myself mistaken , or am, by my
husband, much betray’d
With fury she precipitates her flight:
her flight, her plan of action, both
geographical, and tactical
Dispels the shadows of dissembled night;
dissembled, sham, not actual, Jove /
Jupiter, if you’ll remember, Involv’d
with vapours, was imitating night,
not easily visible
And to the day restores his native light.
note that day is masculine here,
his native light
Th’ Almighty Leacher, careful to prevent
The consequence, foreseeing her descent,
Transforms his mistress in a trice; and now
In Io’s place appears a lovely cow.
Leacher, lecher
in a trice, very quickly, in the bat
of an eyelash
a cow
see above
So sleek her skin, so faultless was her make,
Ev’n Juno did unwilling pleasure take
To see so fair a rival of her love;
though transformed into a cow, Io
remains lovely, even Juno can see
that, however be she jealous
And what she was, and whence, enquir’d of Jove:
where did you get that, Juno asks
of Jove, surely dryly
Of what fair herd, and from what pedigree?
and what, and when, and how, she
further inquires, probably acidly
The God, half caught, was forc’d upon a lye:
And said she sprung from Earth.
Jove, who’d had to tell a lye, a lie,
said that the heifer, the altered Io,
had sprung, spontaneously, he
claimed, from the earth
She took the word,
Juno accepted Jove‘s explanation
And begg’d the beauteous heyfer of her lord.
Juno asks of Jove that she might
keep the heyfer for herself, the
heifer, a virgin cow
What should he do? ’twas equal shame to Jove
Or to relinquish, or betray his love:
Yet to refuse so slight a gift, wou’d be
But more t’ increase his consort’s jealousie:
Jove / Jupiter was in a bind, to
out Io, or to out himself
Thus fear, and love, by turns, his heart assail’d;
And stronger love had sure, at length, prevail’d:
But some faint hope remain’d, his jealous queen
Had not the mistress through the heyfer seen.
if it weren’t for the fact that Juno
maybe, some faint hope, might
not have recognized Io in the
heifer, Jove / Jupiter would’ve,
had sure, eventually, at length,
confessed to his indiscretion, his
stronger love, having prevail’d
The cautious Goddess, of her gift possest,
Yet harbour’d anxious thoughts within her breast;
As she who knew the falshood of her Jove;
though Juno has been granted her
request, she remains sceptical,
knew her husband was prone to
falshood, or falsehood
And justly fear’d some new relapse of love.
justly, the facts would bear her out,
were she cognizant of them
Which to prevent, and to secure her care,
To trusty Argus she commits the fair.
Argus Panoptes, one of the giants
who must’ve remained after their
war
Panoptes, pan optes, Greek for many
eyes, of which only a few, it came to
be believed, of Juno‘s entrusted
guardian, slept at a time
to be continued
R ! chard
June 1, 2020
“The Transformation of Daphne into a Lawrel” (III) – Ovid
“Laurel” (1901)
Alphonse Mucha
_______
however ardently might’ve Phoebus
been pleading his case before
Daphne, his, however recalcitrant,
intended, flashing his divine pedigree,
vowing to put all that aside to serve
only her
She heard not half; so furiously she flies;
And on her ear th’ imperfect accent dies,
th’ imperfect accent might be the
unnatural tone of a divinity Daphne
might be hearing, the unusual timbre
of a deity’s voice, I can’t imagine Ovid
would be suggesting that Daphne and
Phoebus spoke different Greek dialects
perhaps th’ imperfect accent is the
unsettling manner of his entreaties,
his indecorous urgency
poets can be confounding
Fear gave her wings; and as she fled, the wind
Increasing, spread her flowing hair behind;
And left her legs and thighs expos’d to view:
Which made the God more eager to pursue.
the pagan gods were notoriously
mischievous, spirited, impulsive,
quite human, never sublime and
irreproachable as is the Abrahamic
Supreme Deity
the pagan gods lived in the fields
and streams, the hills and vales,
the seas and mountains, that
surrounded Greek and Roman
communities, Olympus was their
steepest height, never the
supernatural elevations, beyond
even our visible heaven, that our
present pervasive monotheism
proclaims
The God was young, and was too hotly bent
To lose his time in empty compliment:
But led by love, and fir’d with such a sight,
Impetuously pursu’d his near delight.
often, the gods of antiquity were
perverse, not at all blameless,
not innocent, not irreproachable,
like the one and only god that,
today, in its several interpretations,
even murderously conflicting, rules,
oversees, mostly, our present, at
least Western, faith communities
As when th’ impatient greyhound slipt from far,
Bounds o’er the glebe to course the fearful hare,
glebe, fields
She in her speed does all her safety lay;
And he with double speed pursues the prey;
O’er-runs her at the sitting turn, and licks
His chaps in vain, and blows upon the flix:
flix, fur, the greyhound’s pelt
perhaps greyhounds do this, blow
upon their flix, you’ll have to ask
Ovid, or maybe Dryden, his
translator
She scapes, and for the neighb’ring covert strives,
a covert, a bush in which to hide
And gaining shelter, doubts if yet she lives:
doubts if yet she lives, she can’t
believe she made it
If little things with great we may compare,
Such was the God, and such the flying fair,
the flying fair, Daphne, the God,
Phoebus
She urg’d by fear, her feet did swiftly move,
But he more swiftly, who was urg’d by love.
love, as Ovid, or is it, once again,
Dryden, who defines it, urg’d,
compelled by hormones, not at all
our romantic conception of it
He gathers ground upon her in the chace:
Now breathes upon her hair, with nearer pace;
And just is fast’ning on the wish’d embrace.
Red Riding Hood and the Big
Bad Wolf
The nymph grew pale, and in a mortal fright,
Spent with the labour of so long a flight;
Spent, defeated
And now despairing, cast a mournful look
Upon the streams of her paternal brook;
her father, Peneus, was a river god,
if you’ll remember, paternal brook,
the rill, the rivulet, of her father
Oh help, she cry’d, in this extreamest need!
If water Gods are deities indeed:
if there is a god, be with me, she
cry’d, you, yourself, I’m sure, have
been there, though Daphne‘s faith
was grounded in help, in this case,
from her father, god of, appropriately
in this instance, streams
Gape Earth, and this unhappy wretch intomb;
I’d rather die, Daphne pleads, I’d
rather the earth swallowed me up,
I’d rather be intomb[ed]
Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come.
transform me, rid me of what makes
me appealing, Daphne pleads
Scarce had she finish’d, when her feet she found
Benumb’d with cold, and fasten’d to the ground:
A filmy rind about her body grows;
a condition I’ve found not unlike the
ravages I call, ironically, bark, crusty
imperfections that afflict my own
ageing body
Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs:
The nymph is all into a lawrel gone;
Daphne is turning into a tree,
a lawrel
The smoothness of her skin remains alone.
of Daphne, only her smoothness
remains
Yet Phoebus loves her still, and casting round
Her bole, his arms, some little warmth he found.
bole, the stem of a tree
The tree still panted in th’ unfinish’d part:
where Daphne had not yet become
a tree, she still panted, pulsed
Not wholly vegetive, and heav’d her heart.
heav’d her heart, passionately
reacted
He fixt his lips upon the trembling rind;
rind, bark
It swerv’d aside, and his embrace declin’d.
kisses not at all sweeter than wine,
said the lawrel
To whom the God, Because thou canst not be
My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree:
Phoebus begins to speak directly
here, Because thou canst not be, /
My mistress, he says, I espouse
thee for my tree:
espouse, marry
Be thou the prize of honour, and renown;
you will be, he continues, the
prize that will represent heroes
The deathless poet, and the poem, crown.
honour, first of all, worthy, deathless,
poets, Phoebus commands, let the
laurel wreath crown deserving
wordsmiths
Ovid had reason to champion poets,
he’d been exiled from Rome by the
Emperor, Augustus, his catering to
the Roman ruler becomes
intermittently evident throughout
this masterpiece
Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,
And, after poets, be by victors worn.
victors, Olympic champions, notably
Thou shalt returning Caesar’s triumph grace;
Ovid curries imperial favour here with
Augustus, by simply immortalizing in
poetry the name of Caesar, the new
Emperor’s great-uncle, and adoptive
father, making his own personal
nemesis shine, for what it might be
worth, by association
When pomps shall in a long procession pass.
the parades will be long ones
Wreath’d on the posts before his palace wait;
the laurel leaves will garland the
posts, stations, before, in front of,
the imperial palace
And be the sacred guardian of the gate.
Secure from thunder, and unharm’d by Jove,
even Jove / Jupiter, god of gods,
will stand by, honour, the symbol
of the laurel
Unfading as th’ immortal Pow’rs above:
Unfading, into very eternity
it’s interesting to note that the
laurel has not lost its significance
despite the intervening centuries,
epochs, we find reference to it even
in the honorific title of laureate, as
in Nobel laureate, or even in the
accolade of baccalaureate, the
bachelor’s degree, the prestigious
academic accomplishment
Unfading indeed
And as the locks of Phoebus are unshorn,
Phoebus always sports perfect
hair
So shall perpetual green thy boughs adorn.
it would seem that, according to
this, laurel leaves, perpetual
green, don’t ever lose their
colour, but I can’t attest to this,
being a poet rather than an
arborist, a gardener, though
bay leaves, laurel, even dry,
don’t turn brown, I’ve since
noticed
The grateful tree was pleas’d with what he said;
And shook the shady honours of her head.
and they all lived happily ever
after
or didn’t
myths are the enduring fairy tales
that adults continue to believe in,
according to their culture, about
men and women rather than
boys and girls, they help us, like
fairy tales, make up our moral
order
R ! chard
May 26, 2020
“The Transformation of Daphne into a Lawrel” (II) – Ovid
“Daphne” (1879 – 1892)
George Frederick Watts
__________
The God of light, aspiring to her bed,
The God of light, Phoebus, whose
name, incidentally, finds its roots
in the Greek word for shining,
which I won’t inscribe here for its
being not only in another language,
but also of a different alphabet
Phoebus, also known as Apollo,
was not only god of Light, but
too, god of the Sun, as well as of
several other things that brought
clarity, his shrine at Delphi, for
instance, was famed for providing
oracles, intelligibility in the face of
confusion, however cryptic the
actual words of the presiding
sybil commonly were
Hopes what he seeks, with flattering fancies fed;
Phoebus [h]opes, indeed trusts,
that feeding Daphne flattering
fancies will do the trick
And is, by his own oracles, mis-led.
even his oracles, his sybils, his
priestesses, in this circumstance,
fail him
And as in empty fields the stubble burns,
stubble, what’s left of the shaft once
the grain has been removed,
harvested
Or nightly travellers, when day returns,
Their useless torches on dry hedges throw,
That catch the flames, and kindle all the row;
now that day has arrived, the nightly
travellers‘ otherwise useless torches
can serve to kindle, ignite, and burn
off, the rows of slowly smouldering
stubble
So burns the God, consuming in desire,
Phoebus is similarly, [s]o, kindled,
burns with a desire [s]o, as,
consuming
And feeding in his breast a fruitless fire:
the fire, the desire, however, remains
in his breast … fruitless, unabated,
unquenched
Her well-turn’d neck he view’d (her neck was bare)
And on her shoulders her dishevel’d hair;
Daphne‘s hair would’ve been
dishevel’d, undone, during her
flight, by the wind
Oh were it comb’d, said he, with what a grace
Wou’d every waving curl become her face!
Phoebus begins to idealize her
He view’d her eyes, like heav’nly lamps that shone,
He view’d her lips, too sweet to view alone,
Her taper fingers, and her panting breast;
see above
He praises all he sees,
his flattering fancies at work
and for the rest
Believes the beauties yet unseen are best:
Phoebus has no intention of enjoying
merely what Daphne cannot but allow,
her beauties yet unseen, he believes,
are best, are preferable
ahem
Swift as the wind, the damsel fled away,
Nor did for these alluring speeches stay:
alluring speeches, flattering fancies
Stay Nymph, he cry’d, I follow, not a foe.
a nymph, a nature spirit in the form
of a maiden, imagined frolicking by
rivers, or woods
Phoebus calls her by this metonym,
Nymph, probably because he doesn’t
yet know her proper name
a metonym is the word for a part
which signifies the whole, the pen,
for instance, is mightier than the
sword, where the pen stands for
all that is written, and the sword
represents the much larger
concept of war
Nymph, therefore, to metonymize,
to stand in for, any nymph
Stay Nymph, Phoebus cries, I follow,
I don’t lead, I am not coercing you,
you are in charge, I am not a foe,
not an enemy
Thus from the lyon trips the trembling doe;
Thus from the wolf the frighten’d lamb removes,
And, from pursuing faulcons, fearful doves;
prey flee predators [t]hus, Phoebus
explains, which is to say in the
manner that you’re behaving
Thou shunn’st a God, and shunn’st a God, that loves.
but I am not a predator, I am a God,
a God who loves you, who is in love,
he concedes
Ah, lest some thorn shou’d pierce thy tender foot,
Or thou shou’dst fall in flying my pursuit!
To sharp uneven ways thy steps decline;
Abate thy speed,
slow down, he says, Abate thy speed,
you might hurt yourself, you might
pierce thy tender foot, fall, your path
decline[s], is becoming treacherous,
less secure, sharp uneven ways lie
ahead
and I will bate of mine.
bate, opposite of abate, don’t you
love it
Yet think from whom thou dost so rashly fly;
Nor basely born, nor shepherd’s swain am I.
I carry a big stick, Phoebus says, think
about it
Perhaps thou know’st not my superior state;
And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.
maybe you haven’t recognized me
Me Claros, Delphi, Tenedos obey;
Claros, an ancient Greek sanctuary,
site of another oracle of Phoebus /
Apollo, along with Delphi, the
principal shrine
Tenedos, an island off the coast of
modern Turkey, but under the
dominion then also of the deity
These hands the Patareian scepter sway.
scepter, a staff symbolic of sovereignty
but I’ve found no source at all for the
indecipherable Patareian, forgive me
The King of Gods begot me:
I am the son, Phoebus proclaims, of
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus, depending on
the local vocabulary
what shall be,
Or is, or ever was, in Fate, I see.
Phoebus, like all the gods, sees
everything, past, present, and
future
Mine is th’ invention of the charming lyre;
the lyre, an ancient musical instrument
often associated with Phoebus /Apollo
Sweet notes, and heav’nly numbers, I inspire.
Phoebus / Apollo was also god,
among many other things, of
Music
Sure is my bow, unerring is my dart;
But ah! more deadly his, who pierc’d my heart.
Phoebus has ceded to Cupid, and
acknowledges the superiority of
the stripling‘s, the youth’s, sting
Med’cine is mine; what herbs and simples grow
In fields, and forrests, all their pow’rs I know;
Phoebus / Apollo is also god of
Healing
And am the great physician call’d, below.
that Phoebus / Apollo is god of
Healing is acknowledged below,
which is to say among earthlings
Alas that fields and forrests can afford.
No remedies to heal their love-sick lord!
there is no cure, however, for love,
he moans, the sickness, Alas, No
remedies, among the fields and
forrests for it
To cure the pains of love, no plant avails:
And his own physick, the physician falls.
the physician, Phoebus / Apollo,
falls, which must surely be fails
here, to rhyme with avails, an
unfortunate typo, cannot derive
from the ground, from the wealth
of his own domain, the physick,
the ingredients to make up a
medication
stay tuned
R ! chard
May 22, 2020
“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, XIV) – Ovid
“Landscape with Cows and a Camel“ (1914)
August Macke
________
once Deucalion and Pyrrha had found
the way to bring humans back to life,
it was time to turn to the creation, or
recreation, of other species
The rest of animals, from teeming Earth
Produc’d, in various forms receiv’d their birth.
the rest of animals suggests that
people were also considered to
be animals, of an however more
elevated, presumably, order
The native moisture, in its close retreat,
Digested by the sun’s aetherial heat,
As in a kindly womb, began to breed: ,
Then swell’d, and quicken’d by the vital seed.
by means of the moisture naturally
created by the retreating flood waters,
the native moisture, the heat of the sun,
however aetherial, or etherial, which is
to say of ether, which is to say invisible,
swell[s], and quicken[s] … the vital seed,
the seed which is pregnant with life, or
vital, and nurtures it, swell[s] and
quicken[s] it, as though within a womb
And some in less, and some in longer space,
less, or longer space, of time
Were ripen’d into form, and took a sev’ral face.
different kinds of animals, animals with
sev’ral face[s], see, for instance, above,
ripen’d, or evolved during longer or
shorter periods of time, a notion that
was decisively revisited some nearly
two thousand years later, incidentally,
by Charles Darwin
Thus when the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,
Pharian fields, Egypt, from Pharos,
an island off the coast of Alexandria,
notable for its lighthouse, itself called
Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World
And seeks, with ebbing tides, his ancient bed,
his ancient bed, the area of earth
that the Nile had covered during
the flood, its now exposed river
banks
the Nile is, note, masculine here,
his ancient bed
The fat manure with heav’nly fire is warm’d;
there’s the heat again
And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are form’d;
crusted, it is interesting to note that
apart from the animal feature of the
womb, all of the terms to describe
the process of coming to life refer
to plants, see also ripen’d above,
for instance, not to mention the
vital seed
These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find;
glebe, cultivated land, when the
peasants plough their fields, they
find [t]hese, the crusted creatures
Some rude, and yet unfinish’d in their kind:
Short of their limbs, a lame imperfect birth:
One half alive; and one of lifeless earth.
not all births are successful
For heat, and moisture, when in bodies join’d,
The temper that results from either kind
Conception makes;
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