Learning from the Masters
By Doug Talley

In an essay entitled, “Poetry and Ambition,” the contemporary poet Donald Hall observed:

 [I]t is essential for poets, all the time, to read and reread the great ones

 ... It is also true that many would-be poets lack respect for learning. How strange that the old ones read books… Keats stopped school when he was fifteen or so, but he translated the Aeneid in order to study it and worked over Dante in Italian and daily sat at the feet of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton...  Ben Johnson was learned and in his cups looked down at Shakespeare’s relative ignorance of ancient languages — but Shakespeare learned more language and literature at his Stratford grammar school than we acquire in twenty years of schooling... We are the first generation of poets not to study Latin; not to read Dante in Italian.

Hall decries the result — in his words a “puniness of… unambitious syntax and limited vocabulary” and a propensity to write over and over the same flat, insipid poetry churned out as the “McPoem” from the creative writing workshops of “Hamburger University.” Donald Hall, Poetry and Ambition: Essays 1982-1988, University of Michigan Press, 1988.

While it might be tempting to continue this aspic vein, perhaps more would be gained by focusing on one or two potential benefits derived from reading an old master, especially in another language.  For this brief study, I will cite Ovid and his classic, the Metamorphoses. 

The Life of Ovid

Ovid was born Publius Ovidius Naso in what is now Sulmona, Italy on March 20, 43 B.C. He was raised by prosperous parents of the equestrian order and at an early age was sent to Rome for education. 

His father insisted that both he and his brother study law and both complied, but Ovid noted that when he devoted himself to his rhetorical exercises whatever he tried to write frequently turned to verse. He entered pubic life somewhat reluctantly, but his talent advanced him from an initial minor magistracy where he resolved litigation between persons of low social rank, such as slaves, to an appointment to the high court of the Decemviri, a judicial forum of ten men. 

After entering an unhappy early marriage in his youth, he entered yet another, but in the proverbial third attempt he established a marriage of charm and joy and found a lifelong, faithful companion. He lived happily and prosperously in Rome and at his country estate and entered the elite literary circle of the day, including among others, Horace and Propertius. 

When he was fifty, at the height of his ability and fame, tragedy struck suddenly when the Emperor Augustus banished him to a cold, bleak town on the Black Sea. The reason for this decree was never fully explained; Augustus cited the immorality of Ovid’s earlier love poems and it is believed there was some additional more personal and private reason, but Ovid protested his innocence and pleaded a mere error of judgment on his part.  Nevertheless, the emperor enforced the decree and Ovid remained exiled and separated from his family until he died in 17 A.D. 

A gentle, temperate soul to the end of his days, he continued writing poetry while in exile, his two major works during this time being the five books of the Tristia (“Sorrows”) and four books of letters in verse in which he continued to plead his case.

His great masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, he reputedly had made ready for publication prior to his exile. The subject of the book is defined in its title and is elegantly outlined in its first lines:

The book is about change and transformation and was vastly ambitious in scope. At the outset he asks:

Ovid intended to chronicle the strange history of the supernatural from the very beginning of time to his own era. This framework allowed him to recount one story after another in the context of a larger history. 

Genesis Retold

From the very beginning of the Metamorphoses Ovid is concerned with how one thing changes into another. Accordingly, he begins with the grand creation myth.  The seeds of all things are joined in discord, so that opposites war with each other in one vast body:

This primal strife of things God halted by separating the earth from sky and water from earth and the thicker atmosphere from the clear heavens. Then the earth was molded into a great ball, and waters were flung around the shores of land. Springs, rivers, pools and lakes were formed, and plains and mountains shaped, and forests clothed with leaves. The stars, which had previously been pressed under darkness, were made to appear and gleam through the sky. 

Home was granted in the seas to sparkling fishes, and on the earth to wild animals, and in the air to birds. And finally a more holy creature still was made; man was born, either made by God from his own divine substance or from the earth, only recently withdrawn from heaven and still imbued with some portion of that ethereal element. It is the story of Genesis retold, of how the earth evolved, and how mankind came to be, not ex nihilo, but through change.

Later Ovid also relates the story of a universal flood that destroys humanity. Jupiter had witnessed the wickedness of the human race and was tempted to hurl lightning bolts against the entire world, but he hesitated fearing that the heavens themselves might ignite from such a vast firestorm and he remembered as well that the fates had decreed that a time would later come when the whole world would be destroyed by fire. Therefore, he decided to destroy humanity by flood and poured down rain until all became sea. 

Dolphins were seen swimming through the high branches of the woods, beating against oak trees in their course. All mankind perished, except for Deucalion and Pyrrha, husband and wife, both of whom, as innocent worshippers of God, were noted for righteousness.  These two weathered and survived the flood in a poor, scanty vessel. This, too, is an old, familiar story, reminiscent of Noah and the flood in Genesis. If for no other reason, the Metamorphoses could be recommended for the interest of some of its connections to the ancient Hebrew stories.

A Poet’s Poet

The Metamorphoses, in recounting one ancient story after another, “forms a manual of classical mythology, and is the most important source of mythical lore for all writers since Ovid’s time.”  Ovid, Metamorphoses, Books I-VIII, Loeb Classical Library 1999, p. xii. This provides a second reason for reading Ovid, to understand his influence on other great writers.  A knowledge of his works illuminates the vast library of great English literature beginning with the principal poet of our language, Shakespeare. 

One need only possess a passing familiarity with Venus and Adonis or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to see how heavily Shakespeare drew from Ovid.  Studies indicate that the overwhelming majority of mythical allusions in Shakespeare derive from Ovid and “the influence of Ovid is at least four times as great as that of Vergil; the whole character of Shakespeare’s mythology is essentially Ovidian.”  Id., p. xiii.  

Dante in high homage made Vergil his guide through the Inferno and the Purgatorio, but it is evident Ovid wielded almost as great an influence on him as did Vergil.  Ovid does not reach Vergil in solemnity of tone or in majesty, but he may perhaps surpass Vergil in vividness, narrative skill, and poetic charm. His Latin hexameter is more straightforward, less prone to interruption and digression than Vergil’s. 

Ovid typically does not let style disrupt his narrative, while Vergil on occasion does, and will be found offering grand speeches set as poetry almost for its own sake. Dante’s characters, too, will offer high speeches, but rarely do they lapse into mere posture, and neither does Dante allow style to distract from the otherwise compelling flow of his story. And Dante’s poetic line possesses a clarity, vividness and directness that arguably are more Ovidian than Vergilian. 

A Gift for the Vivid

This leads to a third reason for studying Ovid, particularly in the original Latin.  He is gifted with a poetic imagination that freshens and enlivens even the old stories. He teaches the modern writer, whether poet or novelist, how to select the few vivid details that offer sensory impact and dramatic interest sufficient to rival good cinema. That may be a tall claim, but I believe Ovid’s narrative ability provides more in sheer vividness than anything Star Wars and its progeny of cinematic effects have ever offered. A brief example will prove the point. 

In Book I of the Metamorphoses Ovid recounts the tale of Apollo and Daphne.  Cupid in boyish spite fires an arrow tipped in gold — one that inspires love — at Apollo. Another arrow tipped in lead he fires at Daphne, the daughter of a river-god named Peneus, in order to inspire her flight from love and Apollo.  The chase is on and continues until Daphne’s strength fails and she calls to her father in despair:

  “fer, pater,” inquit “opem! Si flumina numen habetis
 qua nimium placui, mutando perde figuram!”
 “Father,” she cried, “grant thy power! If thy waters hold enchantments,
 transform and destroy my beauty, by which I pleased overmuch.”

Her prayer was immediately answered:

Apollo nevertheless was still thoroughly smitten:

My translation falls miserably short of the original. I could find no way of rendering the power and immediacy of the Latin verb trepidare, the root of our English word “trepidation.”  Daphne, but only now turned into a laurel tree, is nevertheless still ridden with the panic of the chase and her narrow escape. And even now she has not fully escaped, as the god stretches forth his hand to feel beneath the bark a heart still racing with trepidation. 

As Lively as any Good Flick

I defy any filmmaker, any mere movie director, to create an effect more compelling, more vivid, more alive with sheer drama, than this moment of trembling.  It simply cannot be done, because Ovid, a master poet and storyteller, has communicated through language what is impossible to communicate through any other medium.  Easily half of this magic is worked through the rhythms of the Latin original, a quality impossible to translate. The fast pace of the narrative slows to a point of utter lyricism and pathos in the final line quoted:

 oscula dat ligno; refugit tamen oscula lignum. 
 On wood he pressed his kisses; still the wood refused them. 

The lyricism of this passage is created in the repetition of oscula (“kisses”) and lignum (“wood”).  The line is perfectly balanced visually, dramatically and rhythmically. 

Space will not allow an explanation of the incredible rhythmic flexibility provided by the Latin hexameter, nor can its power and beauty as a meter be understood without some experience in reading it.  I simply have to sigh, throw up my hands, and say that the hexameter is nimble enough to handle the lyric as well as the epic. The most compelling English equivalents I can think of are found in the Cantos of Ezra Pound.  Disregard any need for meaning in the following two examples and simply soak in the rhythms. The “epic pulse” of a Latin hexameter can be felt in Pound’s opening Canto:

The “lyric pulse” of the hexameter can be felt in a later Canto:

Imagine line after line of Latin poetry filling whole books with the stateliness and beauty of these rhythms and you may then gain some appreciation for the range of Ovid’s meter in the Metamorphoses.  Pound’s admiration for Ovid, by the way, was openly professed by the poet himself. 

In the end, all the many good reasons for reading Ovid, or any master, especially in a foreign language, combine into one final, overriding reason. Simply put, a master guides us to the heights.  Once those heights of language are experienced first hand by the would-be writer, nothing else will satisfy, and the writer then may venture safely onward, undeceived by any counterfeit art — any false coin — whether of one’s own, or another’s stamp and making.