Metamorphoses

I have the Loeb Edition, along with Charles Martin’s poetic translation, Ted Hughes “Tales From Ovid,” “After Ovid: New Metamorphosis” edited by Michael Hofmann, and a few poems by Frieda Hughes. Perhaps this is an appropriate time to be cliché and say that this work is a veritable goldmine…human failing, disappointment with the gods, all human emotions, evil, comedy, tragedy…any story I’ve ever read seems to have its basis in these writings. One can imagine Shakespeare poring over Pyramus and Thisbe, ……“I wonder if I could get them to move to Verona…”

From Charles Martin…as Minerva pays a call on Envy to ask her for a little “favor.”

She headed straight to Envy’s squalid quarters,
black with corruption, hidden deep within
a sunless valley where no breezes blow,
a sad and sluggish place, richly frigid,
where cheerful fires die upon the hearth
and fog that never lifts embraces all…..

The object of her visit sluggishly
arises from the ground where she’d been sitting,
leaving behind her interrupted dinner
of half-eaten reptiles. Stiffly she advances,
and when she sees the beauty of the goddess
and of her armor, she cannot help but groan,
and makes a face, and sighs a wretched sigh.

Then she grows pale, and her body shrivels up.
Her glance is sidewise and her teeth are black;
her nipples drip with poisonous green bile,
and venom from her dinner coats her tongue;
she only smiles at sight of another’s grief,
nor does she know, disturbed by wakeful cares,
the benefits of slumber; when she beholds
another’s joy, she falls into decay,
and rips down only to be ripped apart,
herself the punishment for being her.

Same passage in Loeb:
Straightaway Minerva sought out the cave of Envy, filthy with black gore. Her home was hidden away win a deep valley, where no sun shines and no breeze blows; a gruesome place and full of numbing chill. No cheerful fire burns there, and the place is wrapped in thick, black fog. …there, sitting within, was Envy, eating snakes’ flesh, the proper food of her venom. At the horrid sight, the goddess turned away her eyes. But the other rose heavily from the ground, leaving the snakes’ carcasses half consumed, and came forward with sluggish step. When she saw the goddess, glorious in form and armour, she groaned aloud and pulled a face and therewith heaved a sigh. Pallor overspreads her face and her whole body seems to shrivel up. He eyes are all awry, her teeth are foul with mould; green, poisonous gall overflows her breast, and venom drips down from her tongue. She never smiles, save at the sight of another’s troubles; she never sleeps, disturbed with wakeful cares; unwelcome to her is the sight of men’s success, and witht eh sight she pines away; she gnaws and is gnawed, herself her own punishment….


Here is Ted Hughes writing about the four ages of man. There is a feeling of longing in his description of the Golden Age:

And the first age was gold.
Without laws, without law’s enforcers,
The age understood and obeyed
What had created it.
Listening deeply, man kept faith with the source.


Hughes injects a certain bitterness into his writing on the Age of Iron. Ovid simply writes “victa iacet pietas , et virgo caeded madentis ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit” (piety lay conquered and the last of the immortals, the virgin Astraea abandoned the earth). Martin writes, “piety lies vanquished here below./ Virgin Astraea, the last immortal left/on the bloodstained earth, withdraws from it in horror.” But Hughes (!)…

The inward ear, attuned to the Creator,
Is underfoot like a dog’s turd. Astraea,
The Virgin
Of Justice---the incorruptible
Last of the immortals---
Abandons the blood-fouled earth.

Gotta love Hughes' earthiness.

(As an aside re Nabokov: finished “The Real Story of Sebastian Knight”, “The Gift”, “ Invitation to a Beheading.” (I think “Pnin” is still the favorite.) Also reading “Natasha’s Dance” by Orlando Figes, which seems to be proving an interesting vantage point on the works of Mr. Nabokov. Very helpful in understanding Nabokov the émigré.)

Arturo's Adventures in

Post-Atomic Society

-----------------

Travelling circus

run by Al and lovely Lil

never had a prayer.

Why breed a freak show?

Just go to any mall, or

better yet…the beach.

Why bask in the sun?

Radioactive drugs will

alter the future.

Heroic Arty…

life’s tough with flippers for feet

and a hate-filled heart.

Those mad Arturists

miss the point in their quest for

Purity and peace.

Here a finger, there

a toe...until at last the

very soul is gone.

Even the freaks in

formaldehyde jars knew the

world would end in fire.

-----------------------------------------

A wild, often horrifying, novel about freaks, geeks and other aberrancies of the human condition who travel together (a whole family of them) as a circus. It's a solipsistic funhouse world that makes "normal" people seem bland and pitiful. Arturo the Aqua-Boy, who has flippers and an enormous need to be loved. A museum of sacred monsters that didn't make it. An endearing "little beetle" of a heroine. Sort of like Tod Browning's Freaks crossed with David Lynch and John Irving and perhaps George Eliot -- the latter for the power of the emotions evoked. (Amazon.com )

When TS talked of Hollow Men
Did he mean the Death of God
or the demise the soul?
Hollow men with empty eyes
whose last vision…

Yeats with his great rough beast
Slouching to God knows where…
small potatoes
compared to the feast Hitler
would bring to the table.
History has nothing to teach
One horror
piled on another
each greater than the last…
Like Steven Spielberg at the movies
Who cares about plot,
Just bring on the Shock and Awe.

Prometheus

Prometheus was one of the sons of Uranus (sky) and Gaia (earth). He took pity on the children of men because they lived in darkness, dwelling for the most part in mountainside caves. Prometheus stole the fire of the gods and gave it to humanity. His gift brought light to their lives and ushered in an age of human innovation. Fire gave man the ability to read, but it also gave him the means to forge weapons. These developments were not pleasing to the gods. In retribution, Zeus had Prometheus chained to a stony crag on Caucasus. Every day, an eagle would come to Prometheus and feast on his liver. Since Prometheus was immortal, this punishment was eternal. (Eventually Hercules took pity on Prometheus and came to his rescue...but that's another story.)

Sure we pray for peace
as if taking the easy way
was ever in our nature.
Gaia's a tough old broad
with a mean right jab
but didn't she have a time
deposing Chaos.

Sure we pray for peace--
while underneath we're Titans
slugging it out in the mud.
The gods smelled trouble
the day the fire went out,
and Prometheus still stinks
in our mirrors.

The Battle Between Carnival and Lent

Thomas Mann in his "Joseph and His Brothers" visualizes this scene almost as well as Brughel. I've always loved this painting, and Mann's words somehow give it a new perspective.

"For it is, always is, though the common phrase may be : It was. That is how myth speaks, for it is merely the garment of the mystery. But mystery's festal garment is the feast itself, the ever-recurring feast that spans all of time's tenses, making both past and future present in the mind of the people. Is it any wonder that on those feast days human beings were all in a ferment and custom accepted degenerate, lewd behavior, for it is then that death and life know one another? Feast of Storytelling, you are the festal garment of life's evoking the myth to be played out in the very present. Feast of Death, descent into hell---you are truly a feast, the reveling of the flesh's soul, which not for nothing clings to the past, to the grave and the 'It was' of piety. But may the spirit be with you as well, and enter into you, so that you may be blessed with blessings of heaven above and blessings of the deep that lies below."

Aside from the painting, Mann's writing in Joseph, the Descent into Hell, causes me to question a concept I've always felt I understood: Soul, Flesh, Spirit. In particular, what is the difference between Soul and Spirit? Clearly, Flesh is set apart. But what of Soul and Spirit? Two names for the same idea? or is Soul only the innermost being and Spirit the anima...the life-giving force that gives breath and unity to the whole?

Joseph Campbell Creative Mythology

One hundred posts is too long and clunky...so how about we continue the Campbell discussion here?

The writer and his work

Three beautiful passages in Nabokov's "The Gift," and I wonder about the truth behind them. The book is about a young poet, Fyodor, who has just published his first book. Here he is engaged in a battle between wakefulness and sleep...or perhaps the battle is between the poem and the self.

"On the table he saw the glistening keys and the white book. That's already all over, he thought. Such a short time ago he had been giving copies to friends with pretentious or platitudinous inscriptions and now he was ashamed to recall those dedications and how all these last few days he had been nurtured by the joy of his book. But after all, nothing much had happened: today's deceptions did not exclude a reward tomorrow or after tomorrow; somehow, however the dream had begun to cloy and now the book lay on the table, completely enclosed within itself, delimited and concluded, and no longer did it radiate those former powerful, glad rays."

(On his new work)
"Fyodor ventured imprudently to repeat to himself the unfinished poem---simply to enjoy it once more before the separation by sleep; but he was weak, and it was strong, twitching with avid life, so that in a moment it had conquered him..."

(Much later...)
"For a long time he could not fall asleep: discarded word-shells obstructed and chafed his brain and prickled his temples and there was no way he could get rid of them...."

Is this true of a writing life? Is there a point where the work takes over the creator? becomes the creator? Does a poem have a life apart from its creator? Can the creator survive without the poem?

Suppose there is a vast universe out there awash with words. The words exist as stars, whether we discover them or no.