Cyane (Book 5) merely carries to its logical conclusion her dissolving into tears (‘lacrimisque absumitur omnis’ (and she is completely consumed by her own tears)) until she evaporates into the pool whose nymph she once had been. And the Lycian peasants (Book 6), who hurl abuse and pollute the lake by stirring up its mud when wandering Latona wants to slake the thirst of her newborn twins, were already not too far from the frogs into which a just punishment changes them: all that has to happen is for the neck to disappear, the shoulders to join with the head, the back turn green and the belly assume an off-white colour.
This technique of metamorphosis has been studied by Sceglov in an extremely lucid and persuasive essay. ‘All these transformations’, says Sceglov, ‘concern the distinctive physical and spatial characteristics which Ovid usually highlights even in elements not subject to metamorphosis (“hard rock”, “long body”, “curved back”) … Thanks to his knowledge of the properties of things, the poet provides the shortest route for the metamorphosis, because he knows in advance what man has in common with dolphins, as well as what he lacks compared to them, and what they lack compared to him. The essential point is that since he portrays the whole world as a system made up of elementary components, the process of transformation — this most unlikely and fantastic phenomenon — is reduced to a sequence of quite simple processes. The event is no longer represented as a fairytale but rather as a collection of everyday, realistic facts (growing, diminishing, hardening, softening, curving, straightening, joining, separating etc.).’
Ovid’s writing, as described by Sceglov, appears to contain within itself the model, or at least the programme, for Robbe-Grillet at his most cold and rigorous. Of course such a description does not exhaust everything we can find in Ovid. But the important point is that this way of portraying (animate and inanimate) objects
objectively
, ‘as different combinations of a relatively small number of basic, very simple elements’ sums up exactly the only incontrovertible philosophy in the poem, namely ‘that of the unity and inter-connectedness of everything that exists in the world, both things and living creatures’.
Setting out his cosmogony in the first book and his profession of faith in Pythagoras in the last, Ovid clearly wanted to provide this natural philosophy with a theoretical basis, perhaps to rival the by now remote Lucretius. There has been considerable discussion as to the weight one should attach to these professions of faith, but probably the only thing thatmatters is the poetic consistency of the manner in which Ovid portrays and narrates his world: namely this swarming and intertwining of events that are often similar but are always different, in which the continuity and mobility of everything is celebrated.
Before he has even finished the chapter on the origins of the world and its early catastrophes, Ovid is already embarking on the series of love affairs that the gods have with nymphs or mortal girls. There are several constants in the love stories (which mostly occupy the liveliest part of the poem, the first eleven books): as Bernardini has shown they involve love at first sight, overwhelming desire, no psychological complications, and demand an immediate resolution. And since the desired creature usually refuses and flees, the motif of the chase through the woods constantly recurs; metamorphosis can occur at different times, either before (the seducer’s disguise), during (the pursued maiden’s escape), or afterwards (punishment inflicted by another jealous deity on the seduced girl).
Compared with the constant pressure of male desire, the instances of female initiative in love are rather rare; but to compensate, these are usually more complex desires, not sudden whims but real passions, which involve greater psychological richness (Venus
This technique of metamorphosis has been studied by Sceglov in an extremely lucid and persuasive essay. ‘All these transformations’, says Sceglov, ‘concern the distinctive physical and spatial characteristics which Ovid usually highlights even in elements not subject to metamorphosis (“hard rock”, “long body”, “curved back”) … Thanks to his knowledge of the properties of things, the poet provides the shortest route for the metamorphosis, because he knows in advance what man has in common with dolphins, as well as what he lacks compared to them, and what they lack compared to him. The essential point is that since he portrays the whole world as a system made up of elementary components, the process of transformation — this most unlikely and fantastic phenomenon — is reduced to a sequence of quite simple processes. The event is no longer represented as a fairytale but rather as a collection of everyday, realistic facts (growing, diminishing, hardening, softening, curving, straightening, joining, separating etc.).’
Ovid’s writing, as described by Sceglov, appears to contain within itself the model, or at least the programme, for Robbe-Grillet at his most cold and rigorous. Of course such a description does not exhaust everything we can find in Ovid. But the important point is that this way of portraying (animate and inanimate) objects
objectively
, ‘as different combinations of a relatively small number of basic, very simple elements’ sums up exactly the only incontrovertible philosophy in the poem, namely ‘that of the unity and inter-connectedness of everything that exists in the world, both things and living creatures’.
Setting out his cosmogony in the first book and his profession of faith in Pythagoras in the last, Ovid clearly wanted to provide this natural philosophy with a theoretical basis, perhaps to rival the by now remote Lucretius. There has been considerable discussion as to the weight one should attach to these professions of faith, but probably the only thing thatmatters is the poetic consistency of the manner in which Ovid portrays and narrates his world: namely this swarming and intertwining of events that are often similar but are always different, in which the continuity and mobility of everything is celebrated.
Before he has even finished the chapter on the origins of the world and its early catastrophes, Ovid is already embarking on the series of love affairs that the gods have with nymphs or mortal girls. There are several constants in the love stories (which mostly occupy the liveliest part of the poem, the first eleven books): as Bernardini has shown they involve love at first sight, overwhelming desire, no psychological complications, and demand an immediate resolution. And since the desired creature usually refuses and flees, the motif of the chase through the woods constantly recurs; metamorphosis can occur at different times, either before (the seducer’s disguise), during (the pursued maiden’s escape), or afterwards (punishment inflicted by another jealous deity on the seduced girl).
Compared with the constant pressure of male desire, the instances of female initiative in love are rather rare; but to compensate, these are usually more complex desires, not sudden whims but real passions, which involve greater psychological richness (Venus
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