20 March, 43 BCE: Ovid Is Born

Abstract

20 March, 43 BCE: Ovid Is Born Diane Middlebrook NOTE FROM DIANE MIDD1EBROOK'S LITERARY EXECUTORS "Ovid Is Born" is the first chapter of Ovid: A Biography, an experimen tal work by Diane Middlebrook (1939—2007) combining research on Roman life with fictional renderings of key moments in the Roman poet's life. As originally conceived, the book was to contain nine chap ters, each designed to represent turning points in the arc of the poet's life story. Since almost nothing has been recorded about the life, exile, and death of Publius Ovidius Naso, each chapter would not only inte grate details of contemporary Roman culture and history with imag ined scenes, the narrative would also draw on the fragmentary auto biographical moments as they figure in the Metamorphoses, as well as in Amores and Tristia. These three intersecting strands would create a complex portrait that captured the poet's extraordinary career. Ovid's poetry had been a lifelong passion of Middlebrook's, a poet and scholar who had taught the Metamorphoses throughout her career as a professor in the Stanford University English department, beginning in 1966. Had her progress with this book not been halted by cancer, it seems nearly certain that Ovid: A Biography would be in print by now. As it was, Middlebrook recognized in the fall of 2007 that she would not have time to complete the full project as she imagined it. She began to transform her chapters into a shorter book, YoungOvid, a multilayered study of Ovid's early years that would take this provin cial young man from his birth (the scene published here) to the FeministStudies38, no. 2 (Summer 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 293 294 Diane Middlehrook dramatic moment in which he "narrowed his stripes," abandoning his expected path to a legal career and the Roman senate—a role for which he would have worn a toga with broad stripes—for the narrow-striped toga of the poet. In the end, YoungOvid,too, had to be abandoned. Although Middle brook remained deeply absorbed in her writing and research for the book until the final weeks of her life (the work served her as welcome escape from the discomforts of illness and treatment), she was not able to complete its four chapters. Members of her family, along with friends and former colleagues, attempted a number of times to assem ble the fragments Middlebrook left behind into a publishable whole. However, we all agreed that the results did not meet the very high standards Middlebrook would have set for herself, as brilliantly on display in her earlier biographies: AnneSexton: A Biography (1992), SuitsMe: The Double LifeofBillie Tipton(1999), and Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath,A Marriage (2003). As Diane Middlebrook's literary executors, we are working to bring the completed sections of the project into print; we are delighted to have the opportunity to place "20 March, 43 BCE: Ovid is Born" in Feminist Studies.In this piece, Middlebrook weaves together a vivid depic tion of midwifery, labor, and childbirth in Ancient Rome with the equally striking thesis of her book: that Ovid the poet was born into a community of women that formed the context for the young Roman boy's early childhood. In preparing this text for publication we have made light edits and minor revisions, primarily to the endnotes, but also, occa sionally, to the translations. The unpublished, unedited drafts of the Ovid biography, as well as other materials from Middlebrook's professional career, are on deposit in the Feminist Theory Archives of the Pembroke Center at Brown University, where they are avail able for in-house research. Leah Middlebrook, Nancy K. Miller Literary executors on behalf of Diane Middlebrook's estate ★ ★ ★ Diane Middlebrook 295 20 March, 43 BCE: Ovid Is Born The midwifewatchedthelaboringwomandiscreetly froma chairin thecorner ofthe room, resting and readying herself for what was to come. The mother had by now under gone many hours of acute and exhausting discomfort before entering this current stage of transition, in which the cervix was approaching its full dilation, accompanied by ferocious pain. Strangled cries rhythmically escaped her clenched teeth as she writhed, wringing herhands. The midwife...