Love Poems of Ovid

Love Poems of Ovid selected and translated by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books, Toronto, 1964

Ovid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) - full name Publius Ovidius Naso - is considered one of the greats of Latin literature, up there with Virgil and Horace. Certainly his 'Metamorphosis' is a great work, one that has influenced many other authors, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Marlowe, Milton, Chaucer and so on. It's been some time since I have read that book, and I pulled this selection to see if it was of equal worth. I'm afraid not.

The writing of the 'Metamorphosis' was interrupted by Ovid's exile to a small city on the Black Sea in CE 8. There have been endless suggestions and disputes about the reason for this exile, pronounced by Emperor Augustus personally without the intervention of any court. Near the same time Augustus exiled two of his own grandchildren and had the husband of one of them executed for a conspiracy against his life. Perhaps Ovid was a minor player in a conspiracy, or perhaps there are other reasons that might be suggested by his writings prior to Metamorphosis, writings such as the selection presented here.

Augustus was something of a puritan, and it is on record that he struggled mightily to restore what he saw as the moral standards of an earlier Rome. Scandal touched even his own family as he publically complained about the infidelity of his children and grandchildren.

No doubt Ovid could be seen as a contributor to this licentiousness. Before the 'Metamorphosis' his works consisted of love poems with a heavy emphasis on adultery. In fact it seemed to be his only subject. Aside from an excursion into a handbook on women's cosmetics all of his works dealt with love affairs. The book in question here contains selections from three of his works, the "Amores', the 'Art of Love' and the 'Cures for Love'. There were others left out of this collection.

The poems presented are good in parts but nowhere even approaching great literature. Ovid seemed to take himself as some sort of 'expert' on love affairs, the getting into them and the getting out of them. That and the detailing of the psychological manipulation practiced in what makes Rome seem like a gigantic pick up bar. He's quite proud of his accomplishment, but the repetition gives it a 'sameness' that one might get from listening to a braggart talk of his pickups in our time. It also comes across as the height of triviality and boastfulness.

Perhaps the author would play better if a reading was restricted to a very few of his poems or, alternatively, if the full corpus was presented. This selection doesn't work very well. Certainly there are flashes of insight into human motivation, but nothing very great. His devotion to his 'Corinna' often comes across as cloying and exaggerated. The gloating over sneaky past husbands seems quite juvenile.

So... is this a 'must read' book ? Definitely not. Its greatest virtue is that it is short enough to digest in one sitting.

Milton: A Master of Run-On Sentences

MILTON: A MASTER OF RUN-ON SENTENCES:

     I'm about halfway through the collected works of John Milton. It's a project that's taking some time. Mercifully the poetry is at the front of the volume. That's good because most of Milton's prose writings have little intrinsic interest. Aside from a few exceptions they are religious polemics against the high church prelates of his day. Reading such things tends to lower one's estimate of the author. Especially as their tone is beneath even the usual level of political polemics. I'll see if the tone improves with the more political pieces later in the book. It's hard to imagine the author of things like Paradise Lost and Sampson Agonistes using "fart jokes" as arguments, but it's there all right.

     Be that as it may there is another problem besides crudity to Milton's prose. I've discovered that he may be the ultimate master of the run-on sentence in the English language. Just to give the flavour of things here's a quote from one of his essays, 'Reason of Church Government Urged'. Take a deep breath:

     "For not to speak of that knowledge that rests in  the contemplation of natural causes and dimensions, which must need be a lower wisdom, as the object is low, certain it is, that he who hath obtained in more than the scantiest measure to know anything distinctly of God, and of his true worship, and what is infallibly good and happy in the state of man's life, though vulgarly not so esteemed; he that hath obtained to know this, the only high valuable wisdom indeed, remembering also that God, even to a strictness, requires the improvement of his intrusted gifts, cannot but sustain a sorer burden of mind, and more pressing, than any sustainable toil or weight which the body can labour under, how and in what manner he shall dispose and employ those sums of knowledge and illumination, which God has sent him into this world to trade with."

     Yes, that's all one sentence, and it is not an exception. I think it makes grammatical sense, but I'm not certain. Reading this sort of things is about as fun and as "educating" as reading post-modernist nonsense. I hereby nominate John Milton as the patron saint of post-modernism.

    

Reading Mark Twain...'Christian Science'

Reading Mark Twain...'Christian Science'
     'Christian Science'....Mark Twain, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1907

     I was continuing my task of reading anything available, in print or on the internet, when I came upon this book, over a century old, in the recesses of one of my storage boxes. The volume life in 1899 in The Cosmopolitan magazine. This is the first half of the book. The second half, a worthy addendum to the first, also began life as a periodical series in the North American Review in 1907 even though it had been written about 4 years (Twain's estimate) earlier. The two halves were collected into book form in  the same year.

     At the time of composition Christian Science was the "cult of the day" in the USA, the very heartland of cults. It was actually newsworthy unlike its embalmed modern cadaver. A few decades earlier the Mormons were the most prominent item in the American bestiary of outr矇 religious opinion, but their appeal was minimal in comparison to Mary Eddy's creation.

     The appeal was so great put forward his opinion that CS would grow powerful enough to challenge the Catholic Church itself. He was obviously mistaken on that point, probably because as an American he had a poor appreciation of more sophisticated ways for shepherds to fleece their flocks than those employed by upstart cults in the USA. He based his belief on the supremely authoritarian organization of Christian Science, and the well demonstrated business acumen of its founder.

     The latter was pretty well the only thing that he found to praise Eddy's cult. His book is an extended demolition of the honesty, consistency and writing ability of Eddy. It also touches on Eddy's pretense to originality. As he drives his bulldozer through the Church's edifice the whole polemic is enlightened by Twain's well known wit and sarcasm.

     An examination of CS' documents and Eddy's other writings presents a picture of a very poorly disguised totalitarianism. Eddy is seen to be a grasping tyrant who evolved from a desire for riches to a person whose main desires were for fame and worship. She, in fact, evolved towards an underhanded claim to divinity. In the end she was divided between seeing herself as the modern Christ and seeing herself as the modern equivalent of her Virgin Namesake.

     Twain tears her written output to shreds. Probably an easy task. He does, however, have an admiration for the writing skills of the author of 'Science and Health', the cult's second Bible. He found it impossible what he considered the lucid and coherent style of this book with the confused muddle of pretty well everything else that Eddy put to paper. Thus he formed the opinion that Eddy's book was either ghost written or lifted in bulk from another author.

     While it is obvious true that Eddy borrowed the ideology of her cult from others - some of this Twain mentioned - I think that MT goes a bit too far in attempting to prove that 'Science and Health' had a hidden author. He relied on literary detective work that left too much to the imagination.

     Twain made one major concession to CS' methods. He recognized the power of suggestion and the efficacy of the placebo. Christian Science's methods of "healing" do occasionally seem to work. They are, however, no more efficient than those of a hypnotist. As an aside Eddy did have an earlier association with a hypnotist. In a later feat of bad temper (or bad faith perhaps) she forbade her devoted flock to have anything to do with hypnotism - on penalty of excommunication.

     Personally I think that MT goes too far in his estimation of what hypnotism could do. I am sure, however, that he would agree with the common sense observation that no hypnotist or purveyor of religion has ever performed the miracle...of...curing..an...amputee.

     Altogether this is an amusing little book on a topic that has, mercifully, shrunk into to obscurity. I wonder how Twain would treat the far more numerous cults of our own day.

LITERATURE:

SO THEY NEVER DID LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER:

I have recently finished 'The Collected Fairy Tales Of Hans Christian Anderson, and am about 80% through 'The Collected Fairy Tales Of The Brothers Grimm'. Lots of things could be said about these collections. The most obvious one is the bourgeois pietism of Anderson which creates a much"grimmer" picture than the bucolic peasants of the Grimm tales.

One little example, however stands out to me. I am reading direct translations from the Danish and German, and guess what ? The phrase "and they lived happily ever after never appears. I suspect it was a Victorian invention to sanitize death out of the originals. Here's a few examples of how the Grimm tales end:

1)"During the rest of their lives the farmer and his wife were tormented by a guilty conscience and spent their days in poverty and misery. (The Poor Boy In The Grave)

2)"The king drowned, but Hans married his daughter and became the king" (The Griffin)

3)"And the ungrateful son had to feed the toad every day; otherwise it would have eaten away part of his face. Thus the son wandered about the world without a moment of rest" (The Ungrateful Son)

The book purlates with such endings, some grimmer than others. About the closest one gets to the traditional fairy tale ending that we grew up with would be statements like, "...and so they lived happily until they died". I'm not a literary historian by any means, and so I am left to wonder when and why the classic fairy tales were bowdlerized.

THE MAN OF LA MANCHA:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIGUEL DE CERVANTES:

Today in 1547 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote, was born in Alcala de Henares, a small town close to Madrid. He was the fourth of seven children in a family of minor nobility. Cervantes spent much of his youth moving from town to town with his family. In 1569 he made his literary debut by publishing some verse in a collection edited by Lopez de Hoyas on the occasion of the death of Isabel de Valois, second Queen of Phillip II of Spain. In this year he left Spain for Italy where he served as chamberlain in the household of Cardinal Guilio Acquaviva in Rome. one theory has it that Cervantes was escaping from the law in his exit from Spain because of his involvement in a duel. . By 1570 Cervantes had enlisted in a Castillian infantry regiment stationed in Naples, then a possession of the Spanish Crown. The next year he took part in the battle of Lepanto where the combined fleets of central Europe defeated the armada of the Ottoman Empire. In this engagement he was wounded three times by gunfire. One of the wounds crippled his left hand for life.

After Lepanto Cervantes remained in hospital for almost six months. He rejoined the Spanish infantry and served in Naples until 1575. In September of 1575 he was on board a vessel bound for Catalonia which was attacked by Algerian corsairs. He was taken prisoner and spent the next 5 years as a slave in Algiers until he was ransomed by his parents and the Trinitarian Order. Back in Spain he married Catalina de Salazar y Palacios in 1584 and took on a number of minor bureaucratic jobs as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada and later as a tax collector. In 1585 he published his first major work La Galatea and also several plays that attracted little notice except for El Trato de Argel and La Numancia.

Cervantes proved to be even more dishonest than the average Spanish government official. Either that or he was extraordinarily foolish or unlucky enough to get caught because he was sentenced to prison for diddling the accounts that he was responsible for as a tax collector. Or perhaps he was simply loose lipped. According to the prologue of Don Quixote the idea of his great novel first occurred to him while he was serving his time at Argamasilla de Alba in La Mancha. His genius was to give a picture of real life and manners and to express himself in everyday speech. Cervantes remained dirt poor and rather dodgy until 1605 when Part 1 of Don Quixote was first published to great international acclaim. It even led to a plagiaristic sequel by an unknown author who went by the pen name of Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda. In reply Cervantes wrote Don Quixote Part II which was published in 1615. The second part of the book is considerably less comic than the first, but it has its admirers.

Cervantes died in Madrid on April 23, 1616, the same day that Shakespeare died. This has led UNESCO to declare April 23td the 'International day of the Book'. There is actually some dispute about this date because it is the date on his tombstone which the Encyclopedia Hispanica claims would have been the date of his burial rather than his death. The coincidence of the two deaths has also led the famous Mexican author Carlos Fuentes to speculate that Cervantes and Shakespeare were actually the same person. In this Fuentes has added his little theory to the almost endless academic industry of the "hidden author of Shakespeare", for which there are over 60 candidates. Cervantes is one of the more outre. There is also some speculation on Cervantes himself, but most of it revolves around his ancestry. The first English translation of Don Quixote was made in 1608 by Thomas Shelton, but this wasn't published until 1612. Shakespeare evidently read Don Quixote, but it is very unlikely that Cervantes was ever aware of Shakespeare's existence. A rather extreme academic, Francis Carr, has suggested that Francis Bacon wrote both Shakespeare's plays and Don Quixote. To say the least this theory has little credibility.

Don Quixote has been recognized as one of the great works of world literature. It has been translated into almost all modern languages. In Spain today every city that has even the slightest connection with Cervantes attempts to claim him as their own. Molly can remember one "conversation"- no... Molly was an audience rather than a participant- in Granada, Espana some years back. I was taking a picture of the statue dedicated to Cervantes in one of the plazas and fell into conversation with one of the locals. It was one thing to hear that Cervantes was both the greatest and most famous writer ever born. It was another to hear nonsense about how deeply connected he was to Granada. Lots of "si,si sis" in that conversation from Molly's side. None of the other works of Cervantes, good as they are, has achieved the fame of this novel.

To see more about Miguel Cervantes see:

Miguel Cervantes at Online Literature http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes (has the text of Don Quixote available)

Works by Miguel Cervantes at Project Guttenberg http://www,guttenberg.org/browse/authors/c#asos (also has Don Quixote online)

The Wikipedia Article on Cervantes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes

The Cervantes Project http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/cervantes/V2/CPI/index.html (has the complete works of Cervantes in Spanish)

THE WAR PRAYER
BY MARK TWAIN:
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands played, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheered them with voices chocked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meeting listened, panting to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and a half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrunk out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams-visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabres, the flight of the foe, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender ! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory ! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbours and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honour, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:
God the all-terrible!
Thou who ordainest !
Thunder thy clarion and lightening thy sword !
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever merciful and benign Father of us all would watch over our young soldiers and aid, comfort and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory...
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body cloaked in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preachers side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer and at least finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, father and Protector of our land and flag".
The stranger touched his arm, motioning him to step aside- which the startled minister did- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said,
"I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God !"
The words smote the house with a shock, if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention.
"He has heard the prayers of His servant, your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, his messenger, shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think.
God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought ? Is it one prayer ? No, it is two-one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this-keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware ! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbour at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbour's crop which may not need rain and may be injured by it.
You have heard your servant's prayer- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it- that part which the pastor-and also you in your hearts-fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly ? God grant that it was so ! You heard the words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God' ! That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory- must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen !
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle- be Thou near them ! With them- in spirit- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet ! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him who is the Source of Love, and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen !
(After a pause) Ye have prayed for it; if ye still desire it, speak ! The messenger of the most high waits !"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.