I Love The Beauty That Isn’t Mine: Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Narcissus was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia who was known for his beauty. According to Tzetzes, he rejected all romantic advances, eventually falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his life. After he died, in his place sprouted a flower bearing his name.

This episode explores how aspects of psychoanalysis, in particular, gender, sexuality, visual pleasure, as well as self and other,  are represented.

Recommended Reading:
Ovid, Metamorphoses 

This episode is able to be delivered to you in high quality because of the donation made by Donna Philips, Professor of Pro Tem at Citrus College, California.

This episode is dedicated to Dr. Vincent Farenga, Professor of Classics at University of Southern California. Part of the contents in this episode derive from his comparative literature 101 class called “Masterminds and Masterpieces,” taught  in 2019 fall semester when I was his teaching assistant. Prof. Farenga’s class, a survey of  Western canonical classics, has always remained the most enlightening lecture of all time.

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Transcript

Thank you for tuning in. I'm Claire Hennessy. On my hand is the new annotated edition of Ovid's metamorphosis by Indiana University press. The cover uses the famous painting of Narcissus, by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, painted around 1597 to 99. In this painting, Narcissus is hung up on his own reflection in the river, a reflection that appears to him as an older, more masculine and charismatic man, with observable wrinkles on the face and a beard signifiying his maturity. The painting therefore hints at an intriguing array of psychological terms, apart from narcissism, such as a fetish, scopophilia, and the homoeroticism, revealing profound implications over one sexuality and the sense of self and desire. This episode is going to explore several detailed venues of inquiries into psychoanalysis,such as gender, sexuality, visual pleasure, to name just a few, and particularly how these themes are represented in each story.

Metamorphosis was written in eighth AD in Latin dactylic hexameter, and it chronicles the histories of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar, within a loose mythical historical framework. Although meeting the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple genre classification, by its use of varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from the genre of metamorphosis poetry, and some of the metamorphosis derived from earlier treatment of the same myths. However, he also diverged significantly from all of his models. A writing epic, rather than Homer's speaking epic. Metamorphosis is usually used to to create a coherent network of themes and motifs, with the mythological being on the surface level. It significantly influenced writers such as Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare, creating a set of archetypes for later generations.

Ovid works his way through his subject matter, often in an apparently arbitrary fashion by jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek mythology, and sometimes straying in odd directions. It begins with a ritual invocation of the Muse and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlucations. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, it leaps from story to story with little connection. The recurring theme, as with nearly all of of his work, is about love, be it personal love or love personified in the figure of Cupid. What's subversive about the work is that the other Roman gods are repeatedly perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Cupid, an otherwise relatively minor god of the Pantheon, who is the closest thing he's putative mock epic has to a hero. Apollo comes in for particular rididule as Ovid shows how irrational love can confound the God out of reason. The entire work inverts the accepted order, elevating humans and human passions, while making the gods and their desires and conquests ,objects of low humor. The different genres and divisions in the narrative. Allow the metamorphosis to display a wide range of themes. scholar Steven M. Wheeler notes that metamorphosis, mutability, love, violence, artistry, and power are just some of the unifying themes that critics have proposed over the years.

Why does Ovid use the technique of metamorphosis or transformation to represent the nature of love and erotic desire? Ovid raises its significance explicitly in the opening lines of the poem. In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas ; which in English means I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities. Accompanying this theme is often violence inflicted upon a victim whose transformation becomes part of the natural landscape. This theme amalgamates the much explored opposition between the Hunter and the hunted and the thematic tension between art and nature. There is a great variety among the types of transformation that take place, from human to inanimate object, constellation, animal, from animal and fungus to human of sex and of color. 

The metamorphosis themselves are often located meta-textually within the poem through grammatical or narratorial transformations. And other times, transformations are developed into humor or even absurdity, such that slowly the reader realizes he's being had, or the very nature of transformation is questioned or subverted. This phenomenon is merely one aspect of of Ovid’s extensive use of illusion and disguise.

What kind of personality would the poet be who professed in writing love? If using any word to describe Ovid, it would be the specialist of love. The most enigmatic nature about metamorphosis, is through its storytelling, in which Ovid presumably revealed something that he should not , and thus was exiled by King Augustus. It is generally assumed by early modern scholars that Ovid was once visiting Augustus, and possibly saw something taboo. What did he see about Augustus? Till this day it remains a mystery. The only clue we have at hand is that the women of Augustus household were something of a scandal, so much so that one of them, especially his daughter Julia had to be banished. So it might as well just to banish the rascal who wrote it all about erotic loves, and was the cause of it all. The official reason was probably not the real one. In fact, Ovid says that his fault was a mistake, not a crime, as if there had been some particular incident he had seen something or known something rather than written too much. At any rate, the poet was sentenced to a miserable town named Tomi on Black Sea, nowadays known as Romania, and left there rotten and perished. 

Nevertheless, Ovid wrote this poem of eros by collecting myths, and by inventing stories with each one having a power to transform a person from one species to another, and the work became an instant success. What follows is the story of Apollo and Daphne, as we will do a close-reading of it in order to discuss how sexual pursuit is represented.

[Narrator's content is omitted here, as the transcript of the original text can be located in the book.]

Apollo and daphne is a story about scophophilia, Scopo means seeing, and philia means love with obssession. Therefore, scophophilia can be taken as voiyeurism, or fetish over fragmented parts of the body, parts that arose sexual interest. In the story, Ovid writes that

“Apollo loves her at first sight and desires to wed her . . . . He 

sees the hair that flows all across her neck . . . Sees her eyes flash

like stars, sees her mouth, which merely to see is hardly enough.

He praises her fingers, her hands, her arms, which for the most 

part are bare, and what is hidden he imagines much better.”

This passage provides a very detailed description and explanation of scopophilia.Apollo’s fetish over the tree bark and leaves that Daphne was transformed into further reinforces such a pleasure produced through visual images of body parts. It is in this way that Metemorphoses became a pornography  for Augustus. 

Ovid’s goal here is for sure to bring pleasure for his reader and Metamorphoses is as much about erotic mimesis as it is about sexual and emotional love. But for King Augustus, This seems to be casting a calumny against his own indulgement in sexual affairs.  According to Suetonius, who wrote a biography on Augustus, he revealed the King’s engagement with same-sex pleasure and allegations over “”de-flowering virgins” with his wife involved.

There are many aspects to the definition of love. First and foremost, love is an aggression, as is described in Apollo’s chasing Daphne in a predator and prey relationship.

And then, Love can be ignited by what one sees, and futher seduced by what one cannot see. And Ovid seems to hint at the nature of love, which is, ultimately, the hidden desire behind what Apollo does not see in Daphne’s hidden part of the body.

This theorization on the essence of love and desire, is also artfully represented in the death of Narcissus.

The full name of the story is called Echo and Narcissus. It is said that Echo had already been a known myth figure when Ovid created the story. Therefore Narcissus was completely Ovid’s invention.

The myth of the goddess is told in Book III of the Metamorphoses, and tells the story of a "talkative nymph" whom the goddess Venus admires for her magnificent voice and song. When she tricks Juno into believing that her husband, Jupiter was in the city, Juno curses Echo by making her able to only finish a sentence not started, and unable to say anything on her own. This is the explanation of the aural effect which was named after her.

Sometime after being cursed, Echo spied a young man, Narcissuss, while he was out hunting deer with his companions. She immediately fell in love with him and, infatuated, stalked him quietly. The more she looked at the young man, the more she longed for him. Though she wished with all her heart to call out to Narcissus, Juno's curse prevented her.

During the hunt, Narcissus became separated from his companions and called out, ‘is anyone there,’ and heard the nymph repeat his words. Startled, Narcissus answered the voice, ‘come here,’ only to be told the same. When Narcissus saw that nobody had emerged from the glade, he concluded that the owner of the voice must be running away from him and called out again. Finally, he shouted, "This way, we must come together." Taking this to be a reciprocation of her love, Echo concurred ecstatically, "We must come together!”

In her delight, Echo rushed to Narcissus ready to throw her arms around her beloved. Narcissus, however, was appalled and, spurning her, exclaimed, ‘Hands off! May I die before you enjoy my body.’ All Echo could whisper in reply was, ‘enjoy my body’ and having done so she fled, scorned, humiliated, and shamed.

Despite the harshness of his rejection, Echo's love for Narcissus only grew.When Narcissus died, wasting away before his own reflection, consumed by a love that could not be, Echo mourned over his body. When Narcissus, looking one last time into the pool uttered, "Oh marvelous boy, I loved you in vain, farewell", Echo too chorused, "Farewell." Eventually, Echo, too, began to waste away. Her beauty faded, her skin shriveled, and her bones turned to stone. Today, all that remains of Echo is the sound of her voice.

First of all, In defining what is love in Narccissus, Ovid applies a writing technique called gender reversal. We read in Narccissus when he’s gazing at his own reflection, a rather demasculined version of himself. and we will see a smiliar trope in the story of Cupid and Psyche. And all those descriptions about Narrccissus fair skin and beauty constitute a graphic rendering of a good female body. 

second of all, the meaning that lies behind Narccissus’s infatuation with himself is, on the one hand, that one is not seeing who he is, because it is only a wishful image of one self and that is also an ideal image of the self. On the other hand, one is actually not falling in love with what and whom one sees, but his own desire that is hidden behind these visual pleasures. What one really falls in love is a bodiless fantasy. 

But can we trace this desire? what is it that we fall in love after all? While it is too early to talk about Lacan’s theory of the untraceble origin of desire, we do find in Echo’s inability to express her desire for Narcissus, which is manifest in Echo’s mis-communication in her erotic relationship. Therefore, love is also hindered by the misunderstanding of insufficient words in the very limitation of language itself. It is in this way that both characters die because of their respective unrequited desire.

In fact, reading is a process of identification with a certain character. Therefore, reading as an act itself provides a kind of narciccist pleasure.