Author Topic: Ovid's Metamorphoses  (Read 116241 times)

Dana

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #120 on: January 22, 2016, 10:56:24 AM »

"Hand of God" Spotted by NASA Space Telescope

Metamorphosis. We all know what it is every time we look in the mirror. :) And we are all familiar with Midas Mufflers, and the Midas Touch. We eat cereal with no thought as to where the word originated, and we think of Pluto, Jupiter, Callisto,  Saturn, Mercury et al.  as only planets, but have you ever wondered where those names all came from, and what they really mean? We know what an echo is, but do we know who she was?

2000 years ago Ovid wrote an epic poem called The Metamorphoses, about change and transformation. He was the favorite poet of the Renaissance,  and influenced Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton.

When did you last read him?  Here's your chance! Why not join us in a bold new experiment in the New Year with something old and something new, (for us) : Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book I?  It's available free, online,  and can be read in 1/2 hour. We'll compare translations and see which we think is best and enjoy talking about the issues it raises. Come join us!

(The Lombardo translation is highly recommended, but there are tons of them available online, free.   Here is a sampling, or please share with us another you've found which you like:)


---http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph.htm#488381088---Translated by  A.S. Kline...(This one has its own built in clickable dictionary)...


---http://classics.mit.edu         /Ovid/metam.html...---Translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al


----    http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses1.html----Translated by Brookes More




Family Tree of the Gods and Goddesses of Greece and Rome:


-------http://www.talesbeyondbelief.com/roman-gods/roman-gods-family-tree.htm

-------http://www.talesbeyondbelief.com/greek-gods-mythology/greek-gods-family-tree.htm



Week One: January 21-? Chaos and Order:

Bk I:1-20 The Primal Chaos
Bk I:21-31 Separation of the elements
Bk I:32-51 The earth and sea. The five zones.
Bk I:52-68 The four winds
Bk I:68-88 Humankind


What do you think about: :

1. How is this creation story like and unlike other creation stories?

2. The god that creates the world isn't named, and it's not clear whether mankind was created by a god or the forces of nature.  Why do you think it's said this way?

3. What is the shape of the newly created world?

4. Why did Ovid settle on "changes" as the theme of his poem?

5. What do you know about Ovid?  What else did he write?

6. What is "Classical Mythology?" Do you have time to watch less than 10 minutes of Dr. Roger Travis of UCONN explain what "The Rudy Thing" is,  so we can discuss it? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvt3EazHqXY

Discussion Leaders: PatH and ginny


Ovid certainly lived thru chaotic times.  Born in 43BC, the year after Caesar's assassination, he lived till 17AD, three years after the death of Augustus.  So certainly he saw chaos being slowly restored to order and would be trying to flatter or please Augustus who was interested in literature and the arts and actively promoted them (as long as he agreed with them of-course).  As for copying the epic style of the Greeks--well the Romans had an inferiority complex when it came to literature and sculpture and so on, so they always copied the Greeks (as we still do--look at these imposing buildings in Washington for instance, nothing like a Greek column to add a lot of class....same goes for dactylic hexameter I would suppose!)

PatH

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #121 on: January 22, 2016, 12:49:26 PM »
Whew.  I am experiencing CHAOS right now.  That is a lot to absorb without a background in mythology or philosophy.  But I am sitting back for the moment and listening, thinking, and learning.
Don't let the chaos get you down, Mkaren.  If you get information indigestion, just ignore that aspect and concentrate on another side of this multi-layered poem.  I'm kind of letting it soak in gradually.

PatH

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #122 on: January 22, 2016, 01:17:37 PM »
I have two translations.  Before I realized Lombardo had translated it, I bought Martin, as the better of the two in Kramerbooks.  I don't remember what the other was, but it was a close call.

Then I bought Lombardo, because I like his style, and I trust him to minimize the sort of translation inaccuracies we've been finding.

Have any of you ever tried to translate poetry from another language?  Even turning it into prose, it's very hard to get everything to say exactly what it did in the original language.  The subtleties and language tricks aren't equivalent, and words don't mean exactly the same thing.  If you're also trying to make decent verse out of it, you make even more compromises.

Martin talks about this a bit.  One example: Ovid uses a trick (called the Golden Line) in which you have an adjective with its noun at the beginning and end of a line, with the verb in the middle.  This is easy to do in Latin, but you can't usually make it work in English.  His example, when Io's father finds that she has been turned into a heifer:

"Lost, you were less a grief than you are, found."

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #123 on: January 22, 2016, 01:35:45 PM »
Hmm interesting sentence structure PatH - it has been since my school years when I studied Latin but never did realize the structure - I think had the language been taught as a structured sentence I may have been a better student - as much as I am enchanted with chaos and see chaos as the driving force in life, at heart like so many of us I understand and attempt to place life experiences in a structured environment.

OK I am going to attempt to use your sentence guide to start my first sentence to my thought - please Pat let me know if I have it - frankly I am never sure what is or is not an adjective.

I was going to say - I think this bit helps - Using your sentence guide would this do it - Confused, I think to clarify our mind, untangled.

Anyhow, I have been confused if the Greek gods were the embodiment of their 'gift' to the universe or simply in 'control' of an outside force that they have a particular attachment. e.g. is Gaia actually earth and therefore, the words Gaia and Earth are interchangeable or is Gaia a goddess with an attachment to and control over earth.

Found a great site that this bit from the site helps - "Greek mythology emphasized the weakness of humans in contrast to the great and terrifying powers of nature. The Greeks believed that their gods, who were immortal, controlled all aspects of nature. So the Greeks acknowledged that their lives were completely dependent on the good will of the gods. In general, the relations between people and gods were considered friendly. But the gods delivered severe punishment to mortals who showed unacceptable behavior, such as indulgent pride, extreme ambition, or even excessive prosperity."

A link to the site - a nice clear and easy to read page on a site with many links to further our understanding of world history  -  http://history-world.org/greek_mythology.htm


“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Roxania

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #124 on: January 22, 2016, 03:07:23 PM »
Ginny, the abridged Lombardo that I ended up with is called Ovid:  The Essential Metamorphoses.  It is "translated and edited by Stanley Lombardo, Introduction by W. R. Johnson,"  and its ISBN  is 978-1-60384-624-0. It's intended as an undergraduate text, and when I read his note on the abridgment and translation, it DOES say that the whole of Book I was included, so I needn't have worried.

Jonathan

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #125 on: January 22, 2016, 03:55:31 PM »
Hello. Congratulations, Pat, and Ginny, for bringing this provocative, evocative book to our attention. Just look at the posts! This Ovid certainly arouses the creative urge and process in his readers. You all are 'the others' mentioned in the heading:

'He was the favorite Latin poet of the Renaissance, and influenced writers, composers and artists such as  Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dante, Mozart, Bernini, Montaigne, Cervantes, Delacroix, Dryden, Baudelaire,  Botticelli, Petrarch, Bernini,  Poussin,, Peter Paul Rubens, Pushkin , James Joyce,  Benjamin Britten, Bob Dylan, Anne Rice, and many many others.'

That's impressive. They're all among, they make up a constellation of  Western Civilization's stellar writers and artists. Out of curiousity I've just checked my book of  Montaigne's Essays, and sure enough, M quotes Ovid sixty times! But...can you find a single scientist in the group? But, again, that will change. Scientists, as Barb has pointed out, have picked up on the idea of Chaos. Ovid may turn out to be the Einstein of the Ancients. Ovid did with 'change', what Einstein did with 'relativity'.

For the rest of us there's always the poetry. But there will be lingering doubts for some of us whose beginning began with creation and not something described as chaos. On the other hand,  in Ovid's world decline it's not man's fall, but the fault of....?

howshap

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #126 on: January 22, 2016, 04:13:39 PM »
Lombardo's translation is preceded by an  introduction written by an Emeritus  Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, W.R. Johnson.  He explains that Ovid had been exiled to the shores of the Black Sea by Augustus for writing a lewd work instructing Roman men how to seduce Roman women, Augustan requirements for family values notwithstanding.  He opens his essay with a section titled "The Theory of Everything."  And that theory, as he reads the Metamorphoses, boils down to a cosmology which rushes through the creation of the world, to the creation of the major gods assembled under Jupiter's scepter, and then to humankind.  Ovid then moves to the retelling of stories about the interaction between humans and the Olympians which make up the bulk of this epic-like work.  Johnson argues that "the poem is not about [Jupiter and the Olympians].  It is rather about the world in which human beings live and love and suffer."

So all the stuff about gods, God, nature, cosmogony, chaos and the like is just a quick prologue to great stories about people who, by and large, are abused and victimized by the Immortals. Although Ovid compares Augustus and Caesar to the gods, as bringers of order to his world and times, his poem  inevitably raises  questions about what he really believed.  That may be the most interesting question in the work.

Thank you, Ginny, for opening the door to this wonderful work. 

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #127 on: January 22, 2016, 04:26:42 PM »
Phew!   I guess this is what happens when you come late to the party.... I have but only one word floating in my head after reading all these posts and it is,  OXYMORON!

Chaos is order, and order is chaos,   

Before a body can be changed, it must exist. But it cannot come into existence except in virtue of a change,

Where time is, motion is. But time had no beginning; for every moment of time is the end of past and the beginning of future time. Consequently there was no first moment. Movement is not, he states, the result of the influence of one body on another

The origin of all motion is ultimately due to God, the first absolutely unchangeable cause. But the first absolutely unchangeable cause cannot produce motion except from eternity to eternity: for otherwise He would undergo change Himself. It is therefore impossible that motion if existent should ever have had a commencement.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see the loop of contradictions in all of this?  Is Ovid purposefully spinning everything into an infinite loop?  I have to say that for some reason it makes me think of the word, "circle" and a circle is a representation of never ending loveGod is love..........so are we to come to a conclusion it's all about love? 

Oh heavens forbid, my head is spinning for sure!  Must take a break and come back later.
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

Kenneth

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #128 on: January 22, 2016, 04:38:35 PM »
I have just started SPQR - A History of Ancient Rome and find Ovid's introduction to the Metamorphoses to be similar to the problems inherent in the Romulus and Remus background to the founding of Rome.  It seems to me that Roman authors tended to skim over the introductions to get to the meat of their material.  Ovid's introduction looks more like the stage directions one would find at the beginning of a play.  It is not really a philosophical analysis of the beginning of everything but an attempt to simply set the stage.  I also completely agree with PatH as to the difficulties of translating poetry from one language to another.  Look at all of the translations of Dante's Divine Comedy - they all bring something of value to it but none of them recreate it.

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #129 on: January 22, 2016, 04:45:11 PM »
I am reading the version "The Metamorphoses of Ovid a new verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum

His Prologue The Creation first verse reads:

My soul would sing of metamorphoses,
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.


I find it interesting how he refers to this a Ovid's seamless song in the front of his book he writes:

This translation of Ovid's seamless song is inscribed to
my brother in law and in love, Leonard Feldman,
and my sister Rayma.


He uses the word "seamless" which by definition:

seam·less
ˈsēmləs/
adjective
(of a fabric or surface) smooth and without seams or obvious joins.

* smooth and continuous, with no apparent gaps or spaces between one part and the next.

Which could be interpreted as infinity.   So for me I am seeing a song of [i]infinite love.[/i] 

Too simple? 
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

JoanK

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #130 on: January 22, 2016, 06:44:31 PM »
GINNY asks what surprised me? I certainly didn't expect to be buried in theories of the origin of the universe: now I see why you selected such a short piece for the first discussion.

Guess what: we're not going to settle the question of the origin of the universe in this discussion. But it's fascinating to me that people have been asking these questions and finding similar answers for as long as we have written records. And are still doing so  (changes are still coming in astronomer's theories).

JoanK

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #131 on: January 22, 2016, 06:56:35 PM »
Help me out, GINNY. How do Ovid and Virgil relate in time. Did they overlap?

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #132 on: January 22, 2016, 07:10:49 PM »
JoanK.,   
Quote
Guess what: we're not going to settle the question of the origin of the universe in this discussion.

For Christians, we believe the answer is only with God, and we are not to know, and that is why there has never been any astrologers, scientists, theorists, philosophers, etc., etc,. etc. who has been able to settle the question of the origin of the universe.  They are all as confused as Ovid is in this poem.  But yes, it makes for a great conversation piece.
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #133 on: January 22, 2016, 07:35:09 PM »
JoanK.,
Quote
  How do Ovid and Virgil relate in time. Did they overlap? 

Virgil:

Born   Publius Vergilius Maro
October 15, 70 BC
Near Mantua,[1] Cisalpine Gaul, Roman Republic
Died   September 21, 19 BC (age 50)
Brundisium, Italy, Roman Empire
Occupation   Poet
Nationality   Roman
Genre   Epic poetry, didactic poetry, pastoral poetry
Literary movement   Augustan poet

The biographical tradition asserts that Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues (or Bucolics) in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC.   

According to the tradition, Virgil traveled to Greece in about 19 BC to revise the Aeneid. After meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. After crossing to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil died in Brundisium harbor on September 21, 19 BC


Ovid:

Born   Publius Ovidius Naso[a]
20 March 43 BC
Sulmo, Italia, Roman Republic
Died   AD 17 or 18 (age 58–60)
Tomis, Scythia Minor, Roman Empire
Occupation   Poet
Genre   Elegy, epic, drama

The first major Roman poet to begin his career during the reign of Augustus.
Ovid's first recitation has been dated to around 25 BC, when he was eighteen.[11] He was part of the circle centered on the patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, and seems to have been a friend of poets in the circle of Maecenas. In Trist. 4.10.41–54, Ovid mentions friendships with Macer, Propertius, Horace, Ponticus and Bassus (he only barely met Virgil and Tibullus, a fellow member of Messalla's circle whose elegies he admired greatly). Ovid was very popular at the time of his early works, but was later exiled by Augustus in AD 8.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

ginny

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #134 on: January 22, 2016, 07:52:54 PM »
It's a pleasure  to see you all in the middle of this snow crisis which I hope is going to spare most of you on the East Coast, the storm of the century they say. 26 inches predicted in Washington DC, can that be right?

 I do hope you are ALL safe and sound and will remain that way. How cruel were the storms in Mississippi yesterday. What on earth is happening to our weather? Chaos?

hahaha

Our Uverse and phone keep going out and coming back on so I'm  going to make short posts.

PatH

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #135 on: January 22, 2016, 07:56:35 PM »
It's good to see you here, Bellamarie; I wondered where you were.

Thanks for answering JoanK's question.  Ginny's internet has probably been snowed out; it was already pretty flaky this morning.  Mine may go too later.  So Virgil died when Ovid was 24, just beginning to be a part of the poetic scene, and by the time Ovid wrote Metamorphoses, Virgil was surely the respected old guard, the model to look up to.  (Rightly so, of course)

PatH

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #136 on: January 22, 2016, 07:57:16 PM »
Hi, Ginny, didn't expect to see you.  Yes, they're predicting something like that.  It's 4-5 inches so far, with a lull, but plenty more to come.

PatH

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #137 on: January 22, 2016, 08:15:28 PM »
Bellamarie, I like Mandelbaum's "seamless song"--a good example of using different words to express the same idea, in this case continuous thread, epic sweep, etc.

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses Proposed for January 21
« Reply #138 on: January 22, 2016, 08:24:44 PM »
PatH.,  Yes, at least we know Ovid and Virgil were in the same period and knew each other.  It appears in this article, Ovid "only barely met Virgil and Tibullus, a fellow member of Messalla's circle whose elegies he admired greatly)"

I like Mandelbaum's as well.  Seems so much more simpler to understand.

Oh goodness, all you in the path of this snowmageddon please be safe and warm.  I have a friend in the Tn. mountains who is all hunkered down and ready in case her electricity goes out.  Hope you all are prepared.  Ginny, I agree this weather is chaos.  The perfect word while reading this book!!   
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

ginny

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #139 on: January 22, 2016, 09:24:21 PM »
Thank you all for bringing so many riches to the table.  What a joy to be snowbound if you can call it that and have this great discussion to warm ourselves by!

Dana makes a good point. And bellamarie helps with the dates and places. That's most useful, thank you.

Pat, we were posting together! I am glad to see you still here!

As  Dana said, Ovid was born almost a  year to the day after  Julius Caesar was assassinated. So that would have made him 16 when Augustus as  Dana says, began forging order out of the chaos of Civil War. He did not live in Rome but was not so far away that the horror of the Civil War and the proscriptions would have escaped his notice.

Who can say what living thru a Civil War and the particular horror of proscriptions would do  to a child, even on the periphery, if indeed he was?

So he starts THIS story with "Chaos,"  a word which first appeared in the  Latin Language  in this book, in  line 7.   It's thought he created that word, too.  He does a lot of creative things in those first few lines, maybe we can look at them down the road (we can return to anything).

But going back to  Dana's thought, even when order is created out of chaos, that doesn't mean it can always  stay orderly. Phaethon almost destroys the world or order and almost plunges it into chaos again.   How does a man or woman find a place in either world? I just read today a fascinating theory on why the animals in Ovid are personified, and it's a theory which pertains to us today.  Even though we're not talking animals.

And as Bellamarie pointed out, Ovid wasn't a friend of Vergil apparently but there's no doubt he read and knew Vergil's work. As well as the work of each of the people we've mentioned. Hesiod, Homer, Plato,  Lucretius, and the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophical  beliefs.

 How do we know?

Because he makes reference to them in the Metamorphoses. He starts out with X's theory but then changes it  Y. He's changing what WAS and what was known into what he wants it to be and he's very clever with it. 

Let's look at what you've all said:

Jonathan, once again you stir the waters, you're creating your own changes  with: "But there will be lingering doubts for some of us whose beginning began with creation and not something described as chaos. On the other hand,  in Ovid's world decline it's not man's fall, but the fault of....?

My goodness, I love that. How would you fill in the blank?

Howard, those are some really good points! Although Ovid compares Augustus and Caesar to the gods, as bringers of order to his world and times, his poem  inevitably raises  questions about what he really believed.  That may be the most interesting question in the work.

  Especially when you consider what Jupiter does in this poem while comparing him to  Augustus...this is going to be interesting.


JoanK, But it's fascinating to me that people have been asking these questions and finding similar answers for as long as we have written records. And are still doing so  (changes are still coming in astronomer's theories). 

Another unexpected benefit to me has been that the more we know of the prominent Greek thinkers about Creation and Chaos Theory, the more we can appreciate how different Ovid really was. We know he's different from us (or is he) but how did he differ from the prevailing thought on how the world began? I agree with you, it IS interesting. 

I personally found the weight of things in his Creation  fascinating.

The earth is heavy, I can't get my mind off that, in the swirling mists, his description of  the images there, he's done a good job. I spent too much time yesterday trying to figure how I would describe the creation of the universe.   Or even a planet. Look at that photograph from NASA in the heading.  Or any of them from Hubble and take a pencil and write down what you see? It's not easy. Much less put it in a marching meter like Dactylic Hexameter.

(Don't you find it fascinating that a language like Latin which is so  mathematically exact and precise can lend itself to this kind of fanciful imagery?)

(Thank you  Bellamarie for quoting form your Mandelbaum. I love to see different versions).

I think I would love to see, if you all would  care to put it in, the  different takes of the invocation in each of the different translators you all have on the Prologue?  The issue is the word "nam." (for) Some scholars see something there which is kind of startling, I would like to see if we think so when we see all of the translations? (I do hate to miss a point!) hahaha


Thank you Roxania, that's a load off, but it had Book I anyway! :) I imagine it would be hard to stop with I tho. Phaethon spans I and II, and nobody would cut off Phaethon. And thank you for putting this in: the Lombardo:

My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed
into new bodies; O gods above, inspire
this undertaking (which you've changed as well)
and guide my poem in its epic sweep
from the world's beginning to the present day.


I don't see the "nam" theory there, but I think some of you see it in some of yours by your reactions. I am eager to see if I can see it, too.

This is such a good point, Pat!
Have any of you ever tried to translate poetry from another language?  Even turning it into prose, it's very hard to get everything to say exactly what it did in the original language. 

Especially since some ancient cultures had idioms, etc., which are not translatable in our day.

Such good points, Kenneth!  Ovid's introduction to the Metamorphoses to be similar to the problems inherent in the Romulus and Remus background to the founding of Rome. That's astute. I think maybe one reason is the lack of written record for the early Kings, rendering a lot of it apocryphal.  But it sure IS a great comparison!  That's a good point.

This was an interesting statement, Barbara, thank you for bringing it here: controlled all aspects of nature. So the Greeks acknowledged that their lives were completely dependent on the good will of the gods. In general, the relations between people and gods were considered friendly. But the gods delivered severe punishment to mortals who showed unacceptable behavior, such as indulgent pride, extreme ambition, or even excessive prosperity." That's a good thing to keep in the back of our minds because we're going to need it.

So here's a question: if the ...have we seen all the different ways the god or force of nature is described by the different translators? THAT should be an eye opener.

Here's Lombardo: 


Some god, or superior nature, settled this conflict.
Spinning earth from heaven, sea from earth,
And the pure sky from the dense atmosphere.


And here's Belamarie's Mandlebaum:

His Prologue The Creation first verse reads:

My soul would sing of metamorphoses,
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.


So that's two, what does YOURS say?



Have you noticed that this unnamed god or benevolent force doesn't seem very important, does he? He's not even got a name. Did that strike anybody else as odd? What can it mean?



ginny

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #140 on: January 22, 2016, 09:33:44 PM »
Oh I forgot to put this in, so sorry.

Here's the deal about Classical Mythology? Classicists all have this mindset, and it might be a great idea of we could share in it, too, so here's Dr. Roger Travis of UCONN, explaining in less than 10 minutes what he means by "The Rudy Thing," and with it, what Classical Mythology really is.

If you get a chance sometime, why not take a look?  I just saw it alluded to in the National Football Championship, and  I think it informs our reading and I wonder what you think of his "cultural truth values" that resonate today?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvt3EazHqXY

iwill

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #141 on: January 22, 2016, 10:07:29 PM »
The chaos discussion and Ginny’s comment on weather in Mississippi (it was snowing very lightly when I went running this morning) put me in mind of the line from Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock:

I'm telling you... Joxer... th' whole worl's... in a terr...ible state o'... chassis!

Kenneth’s post “set the stage” for something I wanted to say, but I thought it might be off topic until I saw his post. 
Today’s Wall St. Journal has an article about Ann Goldstein, who has made a reputation for herself as a translator of works from Italian to English, even though translating is not her “day” job.  Her comments on translators’ styles seem germane to the posts about the various Metamorphoses translations:   she “leans toward fidelity,” whereas other translators “take more liberties with the text.”  If she’s translated anything from Greek, that’s not mentioned, but she did take Greek in college in order to read Homer and Aeschylus.
Here’s the link for the article:

http://on.wsj.com/1PrGuTc

Frybabe

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #142 on: January 23, 2016, 05:57:14 AM »
Ginny, I watched the first intro and will be going on to watch the rest on "the big screen" downstairs since I get YouTube on my Roku. I see that there is a section on Ovid.

We are getting more snow than originally predicted - BOO! - winds to pick up later today, so I hear. Great!

ginny

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #143 on: January 23, 2016, 08:31:39 AM »
Yes we are, too!  I'm shocked to see that thing spiraling back so this is going to be interesting but all of you hang in there!   It's a very serious situation for an awful lot of people.


Frybabe if you watch all of those,  you will know a lot more about mythology and Ovid, and what he was doing than most of  us...I myself haven't seen them all.    I hope you will continue to bring whatever you glean from those films to this discussion.


 I really admire people like Roger Travis and Mary Beard  who continue to bring to all of us, me included, the latest skinny on current thought which we ordinarily wouldn't have a chance to know.  I think it's a great service.   (And anytime you download anything from the Internet you have to be very careful about your antivirus and malware software.) 

Here's the link again for those who might like to know more about Classical Mythology.  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hvt3EazHqXY

IWILL, what a great article on translation. ( Loved the "chassis!").  In an earlier article on them  a while back Lahiri talked about her  great love for Ovid's Metamorphoses which I thought was very interesting.... this is very au courant what we're doing, isn't it, and it's kind of exciting!

 Bellamarie, that "too simple?"   haunted me all night ....I thought I had responded to that but as I look back to see I didn't.... Mandlebaum's translation is very interesting! 

I want to bring here, if I can stay on, if not later in the week, the "nam" theory question and see if you all see it. I don't see it so far, and it may rely on the translator, which of course  opens up at entire new Pandora's box. The difference  in the translations already of the prologue are staggering.  I think you're a very close and careful reader, so let's keep that in mind and watch for seamless or the opposite in this poem and see if we can prove or disprove Mandlebaum's idea. 

Meanwhile do you all agree or disagree with Dr. Travis on what makes mythology relevant today?

 I wonder....can we find anything to relate to in this current section?



ginny

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #144 on: January 23, 2016, 08:44:04 AM »
Oh and one more thing. I'm so intrigued by your reactions to the poem.  Bellamarie is seeing a song of infinite love.    DNix and Karen so far are seeing audacity and hubris, in the author, if I read them right.    What about the rest of you? What are you seeing so far?

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #145 on: January 23, 2016, 10:37:10 AM »
Good morning!  I hope you are not snowed in this beautiful morning.  I was watching the morning news and I just feel awful for the east coast.  The southern states never are really prepared for any type of weather like this because it is so outside their norm.  I live in Toledo, Ohio and we have gotten none, although I as a northerner was hoping for some!

Anyway I found this to be interesting:   ginny
Quote
Have you noticed that this unnamed god or benevolent force doesn't seem very important, does he?

When I read this I immediately thought, how can a god who breathes air into, and is the source of these bodies becoming other bodies be unimportant?  Ovid, by Mandlebaum's translation, I see, is stating this is the god of creation. Breath is the ultimate essence of life, breath represents life in and of itself.  So i see this unnamed god as life, which would be of great importance, with or without a name.  Ovid is asking for this god to breathe into his book (book of life) of changes.  I see, he is asking this god to bring life into his book of changes, which for me he is asking this god to breathe into his very soul, so he can become a changed person, asking for infinite life.

Mandlebaum:

His Prologue The Creation first verse reads:

My soul would sing of metamorphoses,
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.

Got to run to a granddaughter's basketball game.  I'll be back later......
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

chase31

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #146 on: January 23, 2016, 12:23:20 PM »
I am reading the Brookes More translation. In his introduction below, his reads soul, rather than mind.  To me, at least, that changes the meaning almost entirely.
I am also intrigued by idea of the gods changing themselves.

And, before I forget. I wish to thank you Ginny ,Path and all of the participants for making this possible.  May all of our changes (metamorphoses) be for the best.

P. S.
We seem to be completely dodging the snowstorm here in Upstate NY.  Best to all that are being hit.  We here certainly know what you are going through.

METMORHOSES BOOK 1, TRANS. BY BROOKES MORE
INVOCATION
1] My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song in smooth and measured strains, from olden days when earth began to this completed time!

PatH

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #147 on: January 23, 2016, 02:26:48 PM »
Why doesn't the god have a name?  It might not be a question of importance; Ovid might be deliberately keeping this vague.  If he's using the first bit as a staging area, and if he's deliberately not taking sides in different theories, this might be a way to be all-inclusive.

Eighteen inches or so here, and still falling, but at least we're not getting the threatened 50mph winds.

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #148 on: January 23, 2016, 02:32:27 PM »
I'm not sure it is important the god of creation have a name.  But what I was thinking of this morning was that the god of creation named everything he created.  Now that is food for thought.....

Eighteen inches..oh my!!!
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

Dana

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #149 on: January 23, 2016, 03:19:14 PM »
I thought that clip on the importance of myth was quite interesting.  The point I was trying to make earlier was that perhaps the old myths don't really matter because we keep on making them for ourselves; now he doesn't say the old myths don't matter, but he does say we keep on making them for ourselves!  (At least the old myths can't be got rid of, like old buildings)
I thought his definition of a myth was worth considering...a story about a person that we can resonate with, that gives us hope, that fills us with exultation......but I wonder....not all myths do that. I guess any lasting story could be a myth, and the reasons for it lasting may be diverse.
 






JoanK

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #150 on: January 23, 2016, 03:47:34 PM »
Thanks for the timing of Ovid and Virgil. As Ginny says, it relates to attitudes toward chaos. And toward change. Rome had been in chaos, until Augustus came along and restored order and prosperity. Ovid lived through that as a youth and it must have made him very aware of change. Interestingly, he sees it as constant. he was right, not so right when he also seems to feel it as good. He had experienced the good changes that Augustus made. But Augustus did it by appropriating more power to his position: he used that power wisely but when he died, those that followed him misused that  power, and more chaos followed.

This is a pattern that seems to recur in history, where chaos is followed by dictatorship, bringing order but eventually problems. (as in Nazi Germany)

Jonathan

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #151 on: January 23, 2016, 03:51:47 PM »
What a pleasure to find myself in such good company. Of course I've heard of Ovid; but only derivatively in the writings of so many others. And now, to get it straight from the horse's mouth...forgive me Ovid, it's only an expression. But I'm dazzled by your audacity...to tell the history of the world, from the beginning, in your inimitable style. What a progression from those charming little love elegies  you used to write. Writing the Metamorphoses has certainly put you into the company of the greats, like Vergil and Homer. Alas, many of us have to read you in translation, but some are very good, don't you think? Here's how Ted Hughes caught the spirit of your opening lines, in his book Tales from Ovid.

'Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed/ Into different bodies./ I summon the supernatural beings/ Who first contrived/ The transmogrifications/ In the stuff of life./ You did it for your own amusement./ Descend again, be pleased to reanimate, This revival of those marvels./ Reveal, now, exactly/ How they were performed/ From the beginning/Up to this minute.'

JoanK

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #152 on: January 23, 2016, 03:52:15 PM »
I really liked the lecture on "the Rudy thing." I'll be looking for it in my reading of Ovid.

JoanK

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #153 on: January 23, 2016, 03:56:06 PM »
JONATHAN: I was posting while you were. Hughes adds a lot, doesn't he. "You did it for your own amusement." I don't see that in the other translations.

bellamarie

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #154 on: January 23, 2016, 04:14:11 PM »
I am simply amazed at the many different translations of just the prologue, and how each translation gives a new interpretation and perception to the words we read.  I can see how I am seeing from my translation so differently than the others.   
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
__Anthony Trollope, The Warden

howshap

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #155 on: January 23, 2016, 05:03:13 PM »
Two feet now in Washington's northern suburbs, and still coming down, with howling winds blasting.  The world, even the air,  has turned white.  Now that's a metamorphosis!

Mandelbaum's translation appears to change Ovid's iambic hexameter (very suitable for Latin) into Shakespeare's iambic pentameter (very suitable for English).  But he has to do some stretching.

Ginny's "nam" mystery comes from the parenthetical in Ovid's second line: di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas), which Lombardo translates as "Oh Gods, inspire my beginnings (for you changed them too).  Could "the beginnings" changed by the gods be biographical, and refer to the changes in Ovid's life as he moved  from his origins outside of Rome to the shores of the Black Sea?

Thinking about the unnamed god or superior nature"....whoever it was" reminds me that the God in Genesis has no name, at least none that can be uttered.   When, in the burning bush episode in Exodus, Moses asks for God's name the answer is simply "I am who I am."  Ex. 3.13.  So the "World Fabricator" needs no name, at least for followers of the Old Testament.

That brings on another thought.  In Genesis, God existed before the beginning, like the unnamed god in Ovid. But unlike the "superior nature" in Ovid, the Creator in Genesis does not establish a subset of gods to rule humankind.  And "whoever it was" does not drop out of the picture as in the Metamorphoses, but takes direct charge by commanding "you shall have no other gods before me,"  and by forbidding the making and worship of graven images.  Ex. 20, v. 3 and 4.

Fun stuff to think about in the midst of a blizzard. 

Mkaren557

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #156 on: January 23, 2016, 05:09:22 PM »
 Just thinking about Chaos on a Saturday Afternoon.
 
   It seems to me that I am always trying to bring order out of the chaos in my own life.  Chaos "... an inert lump, the concentrated, Discordant seeds of disconnected entities."  My world and my mind swimming in that void where words and images, yesterday and tomorrow swirl like gasses creating fog and not allowing me to move.  I might as well be chained up, but as Ovid describes, " there was land around, and sea and air, But land impossible to walk on, unnavigable water, Lightless air;  nothing held its shape, And each thing crowded the other out.  In one body Cold wrestled with hot, wet with dry, soft with hard, and weightless with heavy."
     Is it "some god, or superior nature" within me that provides a small nudge that allows me to put one foot ahead of the other in a small uncertain step?  I grasp one small idea, I wash one dish, I type one sentence or paint one stroke and the fog begins to clear. Creation begins anew and I am a "new form."




BarbStAubrey

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #157 on: January 23, 2016, 06:53:11 PM »
I too have been taken with the concept of Chaos and how I see it as a constant - that changing my approach to life most often came about as a decision after what I saw or felt as a chaotic situation. I am seeing every change in our contracts that make legal the changing ownership of property came as a result of a chaotic situation between those involved in the transaction. Change in the face of our map is typical after war and nations change their governess most often after chaos that may include war but is seldom if ever a peaceful transformation.

One bit I came across that said it better than most sites is how change is really the 'order' of things.

Small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes for dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general. This happens even though their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.

I can see from this statement explaining chaos that a small difference in the initial raising of a sibling twins will yield widely divergent outcomes unless, their upbringing were static with no moving or outside influence and even then, any small difference during birth or infancy is a random element therefore, long-term behavior cannot be predicted.

At first I thought the desire for order comes from mankind - our fear of anything we cannot control or understand so that we imagine the desirable as Thomas Moore's Utopia and every time Chaos rears it's, to us, ugly head we panic and figure out how to change it rather than changing ourselves to accommodate the change.

Well looking deeper with this thought in mind was I ever wrong - it seems that is what Ovid is writing about using a tale about earth and sea, trees, mountains, the four winds that we are so familiar with that the implications went over my head.

This is saying it using today's scientific terminology which takes it out of the fanciful story-line of a myth.

Right after the Big Bang, the Universe was almost infinitely hot and energetic. It was so energetic that even the most basic particles such as atoms could not coalesce out of the seething, frothing sea of sub-atomic chaos. And yet somehow out of all this disorder, instead of entropy ruling and the disorder just spreading and cooling, order arose. Atoms formed, then molecules. Gas clouds drifted closer and closer together. Stars formed, stars clustered into well-organized galaxies.

Even today, we see examples of order emerging from chaos all around us. The symmetry of patterns the chaotic desert winds form in sand dunes and the meandering of rivers. All sorts of patterns emerge in nature from completely stochastic processes. We see the same thing mirrored in certain chemical reactions and behavior of materials when pushed far from equilibrium. 


So patterns emerge and humans continue to mirror the idea of patterns as a means of creating order. However, it appears the cards are stacked against us - and that is "THE" aspect of order that we keep trying to tackle and it cannot nor will not be put down is, "Predictability"

Order in NOT predictable! Not only because a small unnoticed change could have occurred at the conception of the body or idea, even if the idea is repeated over and over with success, there is another aspect of Chaos that enters the equation.  It seems as any body or idea increases in size out the window goes the uniform pattern and in comes unpredictability. Only by remaining the same in one place will the orderly pattern remain consistent. An example is told of using numbers in groups of 3 to solve a problem and then using those identical 3 but doubling them to 6 numbers and solving the identical problem, the system is off - the computer world knows this as a given.

What I am learning about Chaos is fabulous - this is a wonderful site if your curiosity is on fire - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202497/

I wonder why did we not want to look closely at the chaos described by Ovid till the last half of the twentieth century - I understand others had to come first but it took several thousand years to satisfy a curiosity to look at the mass described by Ovid.

Looking at just the translations provided in the heading - I found it interesting to see how Chaos is described.

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #158 on: January 23, 2016, 06:59:15 PM »
BY  A.S. KLINE  = Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place.

BY SIR SAMUEL GARTH, JOHN DRYDEN  - Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam'd.

BY BROOKES MORE - the face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste. It was a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap.

Words used to describe Chaos
  • raw
  • Confused mass
  • Inert matter
  • Discordant atoms
  • In one place - * an important concept between Chaos and Order that I wonder if Ovid even understood?
  • Rude
  • Indigested mass
  • Lifeless
  • Unfashioned
  • Unframed
  • Jarring seeds
  • Rude
  • Undeveloped mass
  • Ponderous weight
  • Discordant elements confused
  • Congested
  • Shapeless heap
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Halcyon

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Re: Ovid's Metamorphoses
« Reply #159 on: January 23, 2016, 07:07:42 PM »
howshap  That brings on another thought.  In Genesis, God existed before the beginning, like the unnamed god in Ovid. But unlike the "superior nature" in Ovid, the Creator in Genesis does not establish a subset of gods to rule humankind.  And "whoever it was" does not drop out of the picture as in the Metamorphoses, but takes direct charge by commanding "you shall have no other gods before me,"  and by forbidding the making and worship of graven images.  Ex. 20, v. 3 and 4.

I, too, was interested in this question and did some research on ancient Jews and why they only believed in one god.  I found this article written by Israel Drazin, an author, rabbi, attorney and brigadier general.  This is one smart man.....

Education: Dr. Drazin, born in 1935, received three rabbinical degrees in 1957, a B.A. in Theology in 1957, an M.Ed. In Psychology in 1966, a JD in Law in 1974, a MA in Hebrew Literature in 1978 and a Ph.D. with honors in Aramaic Literature in 1981. Thereafter, he completed two years of post-graduate study in both Philosophy and Mysticism and graduated the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College and its War College for generals in 1985.

Here's what he writes about the ancient Jews:

Ancient Jews[1] believed that many gods exist but felt that they should only worship y-h-v-h[2] and maintained this notion for hundreds of years, and this fact is found in hundreds of verses in the Hebrew Bible. This is not monotheism, but monolatry. Monotheism is the belief that only a single god exists. Monolatry, from the Greek mono = one and latreia = service, is the belief that many gods exist but only one should be served.
 
Today, Judaism is strictly monotheistic, but scholars have recognized the many examples in the Hebrew Bible of the ancient Israelites being monolatric (although there are also statements in the Hebrew Bible that are clearly monotheistic). The following are some examples of monolatry.
 
The Decalogue, meaning ten statements, commonly called Ten Commandments even though the ten statements contain more than ten commands, begins with y-h-v-h telling the Israelites that while there are other gods, he is the one who helped them in the past, and he alone should be worshipped by them. “I am y-h-v-h your God.” This phrase “your God” reappears frequently in Scripture. God does not say, I am God, meaning the only one, but I am your god, meaning that other nations have a different god. This is similar to saying “I am your father,” meaning that there are other fathers but I belong to you and you to me.
 
Y-h-v-h continues by telling the Israelites why they should serve him, because he, not the other gods, “brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
 
Then he says that although there are other gods “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” meaning, don’t serve them.  The Israelites are told that if they serve any of the other gods, he, y-h-v-h, will be angry “for I, y-h-v-h, your god, am a jealous god.”
 
The famous statement called shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 reflects monolatry: “Hear[3] Israel, y-h-v-h is our God; y-h-v-h is one.”[4] Psalm 82:1 is clearly monolatric: “God (elohim) stands in the Assembly of God (el): in the midst of the judges, he judges.”
 
Many other psalms express monolatry, for example those recited in the Jewish Friday night service. Psalm 95: “For y-h-v-h is a great god and a greater king than all (other) gods…. He is our god.” This psalm lists things that y-h-v-h did for the Israelites. Psalm 96: “Y-h-v-h is great and very praiseworthy. He is more awesome than other gods. For (while) the gods of the nations are gods,[5] y-h-v-h made the heaven.”  Psalm 97: “All gods bow to him…. You are exalted above all gods.”[6]  Psalm 98 has words that are similar to 96. Psalm 99 repeats four times y-h-v-h is “our god.”
 
Psalm 29 and many other sources speak of the Israelites being “God’s people.” This concept that Jews are the “chosen people,” as in the prayer “you have chosen us from all other people,” is misunderstood because people don’t realize that it is a monolatric statement. It is not saying that Jews are special. It is saying that the Israelites understood that y-h-v-h decided to be the god of the Israelites who in turn agreed to serve him rather than the other gods.
 
The repeated references to y-h-v-h being the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, rather than saying that Jews accept him because he is the only god, means that Jews are faithful to the tradition and belief of their ancestors; the ancestors accepted y-h-v-h as god, and so will we. We see this, for example, in Exodus 15: “This is my god, and I will beautify him, my father’s god, and I will exalt him.”
 
The oft repeated phrase y-h-v-h elohim, usually translated “Lord God,” should be understood as “the God y-h-v-h” differentiating him from other gods.
 
The scholar Arnold Ehrlich (1848-1919), author of Mikra Ki-pheshuto, “The Bible Literally,” offered two other interesting examples. When y-h-v-h first spoke with Abraham in Genesis 12, he asked Abraham to make a covenant with him: Abraham should serve him and he, in turn, would reward Abraham for his service. Ehrlich suggests that if Abraham believed that only one god exists there would have been no need for a covenant. God would have simply said, “I am God, serve me.” There would have been no need to bargain, establish a covenant, and promise payment for the service. Ehrlich gives an example: when Adam joined with (married) Eve, he didn’t make a covenant with her, binding her to remain faithful only to him, because there was no need for it; there were no other men for Eve to be unfaithful with.
 
Similarly, in Genesis 14:18, Abraham gives ten percent of the loot he acquired during his battle against the four kings to Melchizedek the priest of el elyon. Ehrlich explains that Melchizedek was not a priest to y-h-v-h, for if he was, he would have been closer to y-h-v-h than Abraham. Abraham gave ten percent of his booty because he had battled in the land where el elyon was god, and he thought that this was the proper thing to do. However, immediately afterwards, in verse 22, Abraham made an oath to his own God, y-h-v-h.
 
This are just some of hundred of biblical verses that could be cited showing monolatry.

[1] The ancient Jews were called B’nei Yisrael, Israelites, in most of the Hebrew Bible. It was only after 536 BCE when many Israelites returned from the Babylonian exile to the small area that once belonged to the tribe of Judah that the people were called Judeans, after their land, or Jews in short.
[2] The Jewish God is named y-h-v-h in the Hebrew Bible. We no longer know how to pronounce these consonants. They are frequently written as Jehovah. Since early time, Jews felt that they should respectfully not mention God’s name. Thus in the first translation of the Bible in about 250 BCE, the Septuagint, the Jewish Greek translators substituted the Greek word curios, which means Lord, and this practice of substituting Lord for y-h-v-h has continued in most Bible translations today.
[3] The term “hear” in the Bible is often used as a metaphor, as it is in English, meaning “accept.”
[4] The word “one” here is obscure. Many understand it to mean “unique,” better than other gods or indicating that he is very powerful.
[5] Ignoring the monolatry, the rabbis interpreted elilim as “idols.”
[6] The rabbis interpret elohim here as “heavenly powers.”