“The Story of Narcissus” (lll) – Ovid
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Tag: the Underworld
March 4, 2021
“The Birth of Bacchus” (ll)– Ovid
“Jupiter and Semele” (1889 – 1895)
Gustave Moreau
_________
Old Beroe’s decrepit shape she wears,
Her wrinkled visage, and her hoary hairs;
Old Beroe, faithful servant of Semele
she, Juno / Hera, goddess
hoary hairs, love it
Whilst in her trembling gait she totters on,
And learns to tattle in the nurse’s tone.
Juno / Hera transforms herself into
Old Beroe, tattl[ing], talking idly, in
the nurse’s tone, impersonating her
in order to seek revenge, if you’ll
remember, on Semele, for bearing
her husband’s progeny
The Goddess, thus disguis’d in age, beguil’d
With pleasing stories her false foster-child.
foster-child, a child who is fostered,
nurtured, by someone other than a
parent, Semele, by Old Beroe,
purportedly, in this instance
false, Juno / Hera is not Old Beroe,
but the nurse’s duplicitous, false,
in both senses of the word here,
double
beguil’d, enchanted, amused
Much did she talk of love, and when she came
To mention to the nymph her lover’s name,
Fetching a sigh, and holding down her head,
“‘Tis well,” says she, “if all be true that’s said.
Juliet’s nurse from Romeo and Juliet,
I thought, meets Sleeping Beauty’s
wicked stepmother, for a more
contemporary coupling
But trust me, child, I’m much inclin’d to fear
Some counterfeit in this your Jupiter:
Some counterfeit, yourJupiter is not
your [actual] Jupiter, Juno / Hera
suggests
Many an honest well-designing maid
Has been by these pretended Gods betray’d,
well-designing, without guile, with
no ulterior motive
pretended Gods, men who unjustifiably
beat their chest, tell tall tales, unequal
to their proclaimed accomplishments
But if he be indeed the thund’ring Jove,
Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,
Descend triumphant from th’ etherial sky,
In all the pomp of his divinity,
Encompass’d round by those celestial charms,
With which he fills th’ immortal Juno’s arms.”
Juno / Hera, as Old Beroe, tells Semele
to ask her lover, when next he courts
the rites of love, to prove he is indeed
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus, to dress
appropriately
Encompass’d round, accoutred,
enveloped, in
the pomp, incidentally, the splendour
of his divinity, take on a couple of
extra poetic lines, verses, indicative
of that very splendour
note also that Semele seems to have
no qualms about Jove / Jupiter / Zeus‘s
marital status, about bearing the child
of another woman’s man, indeed that
of a very, in this instance, goddess,
the redoubtable Juno / Hera
Th’ unwary nymph, ensnar’d with what she said,
ensnar’d, ensnarled, caught up in
Desir’d of Jove, when next he sought her bed,
To grant a certain gift which she would chuse;
Desir’d of, asked of, requested of
chuse, choose
“Fear not,” reply’d the God, “that I’ll refuse
Whate’er you ask: may Styx confirm my voice,
Chuse what you will, and you shall have your choice.”
Styx, goddess of the river Styx, which
forms the boundary between Earth and
the Underworld, had sided with Jove /
Jupiter / Zeus during the War of the
Titans and been granted by him that
oaths should henceforth all be sworn
upon her, and be punctiliously observed
Phoebus / Apollo had similarly granted
his own son Phaeton his wish upon very
Styx, if you’ll remember, with the direst,
for both, of consequences
“Then,” says the nymph, “when next you seek my arms,
May you descend in those celestial charms,
And fill with transport Heav’n’s immortal dame.”
show me, Semele asks of her suitor,
what she gets, what Juno / Hera gets,
when next you seek my arms
go, girl, I thought, if you’re going
to be irreverent
The God surpriz’d would fain have stopp’d her voice,
But he had sworn, and she had made her choice.
on very Styx, he’d sworn, ever so
perilously
stay tuned
R ! chard
December 20, 2020
“The Story of of Cadmus” (lll) – Ovid
“Cadmus Slays the Dragon“
Hendrick Goltzius
__________
And now the scorching sun was mounted high,
In all its lustre, to the noon-day sky;
When, anxious for his friends, and fill’d with cares,
To search the woods th’ impatient chief prepares.
th’ impatient chief, Cadmus, prince of
Tyre, had sen[t] his servants to a
neighb’ring grove / For living streams,
if you’ll remember, a sacrifice to Jove,
to thank that god for these new
dominions, their new home
A lion’s hide around his loins he wore,
The well poiz’d javelin to the field he bore,
Inur’d to blood; the far-destroying dart;
And, the best weapon, an undaunted heart.
Cadmus here is a precursor of the
mythologically later Heracles, or
Herakles, or Hercules in Latin, a
hero, which is to say descended
from the gods, in that latter’s case,
son of Jove / Zeus / Jupiter, the
very deity who’d just abducted
Europa, Cadmus‘ sister, mother
of all Europeans, divine or human
Soon as the youth approach’d the fatal place,
He saw his servants breathless on the grass;
breathless, not breathing,
deceased
The scaly foe amid their corps he view’d,
Basking at ease, and feasting in their blood.
The scaly foe, the dragon
corps, corpses
“Such friends,” he cries, “deserv’d a longer date;
a longer date, a longer life, a more
extended period of existence
But Cadmus will revenge or share their fate.”
either [t]he scaly foe will die, the
dragon, or Cadmus himself, in the
attempt to avenge his friends, his
servants breathless on the grass,
he promises
Then heav’d a stone, and rising to the throw,
He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe:
in a whirlwind, taking advantage
of a meteorological condition, as
one would a kite
A tow’r, assaulted by so rude a stroke,
With all its lofty battlements had shook;
a tower would’ve swayed at so
powerful a strike, I remember
an earthquake once rocking my
own high rise apartment building
for an unnerving moment before
settling, returning the ground,
my ground, to its, otherwise
imperturbable, placidity
But nothing here th’ unwieldy rock avails,
Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales,
That, firmly join’d, preserv’d him from a wound,
With native armour crusted all around.
native, integral, a constituent
part of
With more success, the dart unerring flew,
the dart, the javelin
Which at his back the raging warriour threw;
the raging warriour, Cadmus
Amid the plaited scales it took its course,
And in the spinal marrow spent its force.
The monster hiss’d aloud, and rag’d in vain,
And writh’d his body to and fro with pain;
He bit the dart, and wrench’d the wood away;
The point still buried in the marrow lay.
And now his rage, increasing with his pain,
Reddens his eyes, and beats in ev’ry vein;
Churn’d in his teeth the foamy venom rose,
Whilst from his mouth a blast of vapours flows,
Such as th’ infernal Stygian waters cast.
Stygian, of the River Styx, which
forms the boundary between the
Earth and the Underworld, named
after the Goddess Styx, daughter
of Tethys and Oceanus, god, and
river also, which encircled the
entire world
The plants around him wither in the blast.
Now in a maze of rings he lies enrowl’d,
enrowl’d, encircled, surrounded
Now all unravel’d, and without a fold;
without a fold, without a hitch, without
an intervening obstacle
Now, like a torrent, with a mighty force
Bears down the forest in his boist’rous course.
Bears down the forest, advances,
like a torrent, against the wall of
trees
Cadmus gave back, and on the lion’s spoil
Sustain’d the shock, then forc’d him to recoil;
gave back, drew back, backed
away, forc’d … to recoil
the lion’s spoil, the dragon’s
venom and its gore
The pointed jav’lin warded off his rage:
the dragon readies for the onslaught,
overcoming his, otherwise consuming
rage, at the sight of [t]he pointed jav’lin
Mad with his pains, and furious to engage,
The serpent champs the steel, and bites the spear,
Till blood and venom all the point besmear.
But still the hurt he yet receiv’d was slight;
For, whilst the champion with redoubled might
Strikes home the jav’lin, his retiring foe
Shrinks from the wound, and disappoints the blow.
the jav’lin is still no match for the,
however wounded, dragon
The dauntless heroe still pursues his stroke,
And presses forward, ’till a knotty oak
Retards his foe, and stops him in the rear;
retards, stops, inhibits
Full in his throat he plung’d the fatal spear,
That in th’ extended neck a passage found,
And pierc’d the solid timber through the wound.
the fatal spear has pierc’d not
only th’ extended neck, but also
the knotty oak behind it, which
had prevented the dragon from
moving onward toward his
escape
Fix’d to the reeling trunk, with many a stroke
Of his huge tail he lash’d the sturdy oak;
‘Till spent with toil, and lab’ring hard for breath,
He now lay twisting in the pangs of death.
ding dong, the dragon is, if not
dead, dying
stay tuned
R ! chard
September 28, 2020
“Ocyrrhoe transform’d into a Mare” (II) – Ovid
“Indigo Sky Mares“
Laurel Burch
______
Thus entring into destiny, the maid
The secrets of offended Jove betray’d:
the maid, Ocyrrhoe, daughter of Chiron
and [t]he nymph Charicle
Ocyrrhoe had offended Jove, but
especially Hades, Jove’s brother,
ruler of the Underworld, when she
had prophesied that Apollo‘s child
with Coronis would be an acclaimed
healer, thus defraud[ing] the tomb,
thereby saving people from the
clutches of Hades, the especially
aggrieved god
More had she still to say; but now appears
Oppress’d with sobs and sighs, and drown’d in tears.
Occhyroe would have had more
to prophesy, but was impeded by
involuntary physical spasms
“My voice,” says she, “is gone, my language fails;
Through ev’ry limb my kindred shape prevails:
kindred shape, the bodily
characteristics of her father,
her kin, the centaur Chiron
Why did the God this fatal gift impart,
And with prophetick raptures swell my heart!
prophetick raptures, Occhyroe, who
knew her father’s arts, and could
rehearse The depths of prophecy,
had inherited through her father,
Chiron, who had himself received
it from Apollo, his own father, the
gift of divination, for better, for
either, we’ll learn, or for worse
What new desires are these? I long to pace
O’er flow’ry meadows, and to feed on grass;
I hasten to a brute, a maid no more;
what’s happening, What new desires
are these?, Occhyroe cries, or nearly
neighs, rather, at this point, I’m
becoming a brute, she groans, an
animal, a maid, no more, she objects
But why, alas! am I transform’d all o’er?
My sire does half a human shape retain,
And in his upper parts preserve the man.”
why, Occhyroe asks, since my
father, Chiron, is partially a man,
am I transform’d all o’er?, why
is there nothing left of me that
is human
Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords,
distinct, clear, easy to decipher
affords, allows, permits
But in shrill accents and mis-shapen words
Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare
The human form confounded in the mare:
Occhyroe has become a horse,
the proof is in her braying
‘Till by degrees accomplish’d in the beast,
She neigh’d outright, and all the steed exprest.
all the steed exprest, was
everywhere the very picture
of a horse
Her stooping body on her hands is born,
born, borne, carried
Her hands are turn’d to hoofs, and shod in horn,
Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane,
And in a flowing tail she frisks her train,
The mare was finish’d in her voice and look,
And a new name from the new figure took.
Occhyroe can no longer be called
Occhyroe, she is no longer she,
but a new figure, needing to be
identified as something else
R ! chard
September 21, 2020
“Ocyrrhoe transform’d into a Mare” – Ovid
“Centaur and Nymph“
Arnold Böcklin
________
Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Charicle to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevel’d on her shoulders, came
To see the child, Ocyrrhoe was her name;
Ocyrrhoe, daughter of Chiron and [t]he
nymph Charicle, c[o]me …[t]o see
the child
With hair dishevel’d on her shoulders,
there’s a suggestion here, regarding
Charicle, of madness, or possession
the child, the babe, the celestial boy,
the infant, ript, by its very father,
Apollo, from his unfaithful lover,
Coronis’, womb, and [given] … to
the centaur Chiron”s charge, into
its, or his, care
She knew her father’s arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
it appears that Ocyrrhoe, daughter of
Chiron and the nymph Charicle, was
a poetess, was possessed, on her
father’s side, of poetry, could reveal,
decipher, or rehearse / The depths
of prophecy, in sounding verse, was
able, as wordmongers sometimes do,
to tell truth, deliver, in rhyme, incisive
evaluations
Once, as the sacred infant she survey’d,
the sacred infant, the child born of
Apollo and Coronis
The God was kindled in the raving maid,
The God, the child, the sacred infant,
by virtue of being half, if only half,
divine, having been fathered by the
god, Apollo
kindled, inspired
the raving maid, Ocyrrhoe, beset by
neurotic, irrational, though prophetic,
it is proposed, powers
And thus she utter’d her prophetick tale:
“Hail, great physician of the world, all-hail;
great physician of the world, the fated
child of Apollo and Coronis would
become a healer of legend
Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations, and defraud the tomb;
defraud the tomb, recall from the
hereafter, resuscitate, revive,
return to life
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfin’d!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
thicker, more populated
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
Thy daring art, medicine, the mighty
infant will eventually be recognized
as a celebrated man of healing
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
guilty head, when Hades, king of the
Underworld, complained to Zeus, his
brother, that the mighty infant was
stealing his subjects, the departed,
Zeus shot the great physician down,
acknowledging the healer’s guilt, of
his defraud[ing] the tomb, condemning
the culprit with a punishing, an
annihilating, thunderbolt
Then shalt thou dye, but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a God.
Apollo, aggrieved, had had his son,
the child, the sacred infant, reinstated,
after tortuous ministrations, as an
immortal god, an entirely, however,
other story
And thou, my sire, not destin’d by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,
How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to dye,
And quit thy claim to immortality;
When thou shalt feel, enrag’d with inward pains,
The Hydra’s venom rankling in thy veins?
the child, the sire, not destin’d by [its] birth
/ To turn to dust, which is to say, to be no
longer mortal but immortal, how will it, not
wanting particularly to survive, quit [its]
claim to immortality, deal with the
impossibility of dying, [w]hen [it] shal[l]
feel, enrag’d with inward pains, agonies,
that compel it to seek personal annihilation
Hydra, a snakelike monster with many
heads, whose venom and very breath
were poisonous, stationed at one of
the entrances to the Underworld
The Gods, in pity, shall contract thy date,
And give thee over to the pow’r of Fate.”
contract thy date, make mortal,
subject once again to Fate
R ! chard
July 7, 2020
The Story of Phaeton (III) – Ovid
“Apollo in His Chariot with the Hours“ (1922–25)
John Singer Sargent
__________
The God repented of the oath he took,
the God, Helios / Phoebus / Apollo,
father of Phaeton, with Clymene,
Phaeton’s mother
the oath, to grant Phaeton his wish
in order to prove his paternity
For anguish thrice his radiant head he shook;
“My son,” says he, “some other proof require,
Rash was my promise, rash is thy desire.
I’d fain deny this wish, which thou hast made,
Or, what I can’t deny, wou’d fain disswade.
fain, willingly, gladly
what I can’t deny, his oath
disswade, dissuade
Too vast and hazardous the task appears,
Nor suited to thy strength, nor to thy years.
Thy lot is mortal, but thy wishes fly
Beyond the province of mortality:
Beyond the province of mortality,
into immortality, for which Phaeton
is not equipped, being human, his
lot is mortal
There is not one of all the Gods that dares
(However skill’d in other great affairs)
To mount the burning axle-tree, but I;
the axle-tree, the bar that joins the
wheels of the chariot, is burning
because it transports the sun
Not Jove himself, the ruler of the sky,
That hurles the three-fork’d thunder from above,
Dares try his strength: yet who so strong as Jove?
not even Jove / Jupiter / Zeus, god of
gods, and of Thunder, will attempt to
mount the burning axle-tree, despite
his immense strength, superior to
anyone’s
The steeds climb up the first ascent with pain,
And when the middle firmament they gain,
the middle firmament, noon, the
middle of the day, where the sun
reaches its zenith
If downward from the Heav’ns my head I bow,
And see the Earth and Ocean hang below,
hang, suspended in the heavens
Ev’n I am seiz’d with horror and affright,
And my own heart misgives me at the sight.
Helios / Phoebus / Apollo admits
to fear of vertigo
A mighty downfal steeps the ev’ning stage,
And steddy reins must curb the horses’ rage.
Tethys herself has fear’d to see me driv’n
Down headlong from the precipice of Heav’n.
Tethys, a Titaness, of the race of
Giants, who were defeated during
the Giants’ War
what I’ve learned in the meantime
is that the Giants, the Titans, had
actually ruled the cosmos before
being defeated by the Olympians,
something Ovid had misrepresented
in his retelling, where he suggests
that they were upstarts, rather,
mortal, however gigantic, who were
trying from the Earth, Hills pil’d on
hills, on mountains mountains … /
To make their mad approaches to
the skie, in order to unseat the
gods of Olympus
the Titans, as it turns out, were
immortals, who ruled the cosmos
before being ousted by the
Olympians, Jove / Jupiter / Zeus
and his cohorts, and relegated,
most of them, to the Underworld,
though Tethys herself seems to
have made it out, and been
reconciled with, at least, the
Sun god
should I point out that to try to set
out in one, however comprehensive,
manuscript, a mythology that had
endured for going on a thousand
years was likely to reflect some
inconsistencies, some inaccuracies,
not to mention the dictates of not
only cultural, but also political
considerations, we’ll have to
forgive Ovid, or not, it appears,
his transgressions
Besides, consider what impetuous force
Turns stars and planets in a diff’rent course.
Helios / Phoebus / Apollo continues
to speak, warning his son Phaeton
of the strong, impetuous, and
unpredictable, currents that [t]urn,
jostle, stars and planets
I steer against their motions;
that’s what I have to deal with,
Helios / Phoebus / Apollo
cautions, these motions,
these irascible, interplanetary,
interstellar, streams
nor am I
Born back by all the current of the sky.
neither am I born back, which is
to say borne back, carried back,
guided back, by any regular,
orderly, current of the sky, by any
rhythm, of the days, for instance,
or of the, however intransigent,
hours, that could, potentially,
redirect his path
But how cou’d you resist the orbs that roul
In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole?
roul, roll, swirl
adverse whirls, of the winds, like
ocean currents, that stem, are
created by, are the source of, as
in the stem of plants, the rapid
pole, or pull, to rhyme with roul,
a bit, I think, of a poetic stretch
But you perhaps may hope for pleasing woods,
And stately dooms, and cities fill’d with Gods;
While through a thousand snares your progress lies,
Where forms of starry monsters stock the skies:
dooms, eventualities, a wonderful
conjunction here of stately, or
exalted, expectations, with the
more dire threat of a thousand
snares, or starry monsters, that
the word doom would usually
suggest
For, shou’d you hit the doubtful way aright,
even if you stay on the right track,
even if you hit the … way aright
The bull with stooping horns stands opposite;
you’ll have to confront [t]he bull,
Taurus
Next him the bright Haemonian bow is strung,
Haemonian, of Thessaly, a region
still of Greece
the Haemonian bow, representative
of Sagittarius
And next, the lion’s grinning visage hung:
the lion, Leo
The scorpion’s claws, here clasp a wide extent;
The scorpion, Scorpio
And here the crab’s in lesser clasps are bent.
the crab, Cancer
an array of astrological configurations
obstruct the sky
Nor wou’d you find it easie to compose
The mettled steeds, when from their nostrils flows
The scorching fire, that in their entrails glows.
mettled, spirited
Ev’n I their head-strong fury scarce restrain,
When they grow warm and restif to the rein.
Ev’n I, Helios / Phoebus / Apollo, can
barely, scarce, hold them back, restrain
them, when they grow … restif, restive,
unable to keep still
Let not my son a fatal gift require,
don’t require of me a fatal gift,
Phaeton’s father pleads, a gift
that will destroy you
But, O! in time, recall your rash desire;
You ask a gift that may your parent tell,
a gift that may your parent tell,
that is meant to determine, to
prove, your descent
Let these my fears your parentage reveal;
And learn a father from a father’s care:
Look on my face; or if my heart lay bare,
Cou’d you but look, you’d read the father there.
were you to just look at my face,
see my concern, you should be
able to make out that I’m your
father, Helios / Phoebus / Apollo,
says
Chuse out a gift from seas, or Earth, or skies,
[c]huse, choose
For open to your wish all Nature lies,
Only decline this one unequal task,
For ’tis a mischief, not a gift, you ask.
unequal task, a challenge that
is too great for Phaeton
You ask a real mischief, Phaeton:
Nay hang not thus about my neck, my son:
don’t hang about my neck, Helios
/ Phoebus / Apollo tells his son,
you don’t need to try to cajole me
I grant your wish, and Styx has heard my voice,
Helios / Phoebus / Apollo has
sworn an oath on Styx, the
goddess, the river, an
unshakable promise, which
he intends to deliver
Chuse what you will, but make a wiser choice.”
now it’s up to you, Phaeton, for
better or for worse, to decide
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
December 7, 2019
“Orfeo ed Euridice” – Christoph Willibald Gluck
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