Reflections on a Symbolic Heritage: Ovid's Narcissus

Abstract

E.J. Milowicki: Reflections on a Symbolic Heritage155 Reflections on a Symbolic Heritage: Ovid's Narcissus Edward J. Milowicki A survey of Ovidian scholarship up to relatively recent times would give no explanation for, and even at times little enough indication of, Ovid's remarkably powerful appeal to writers tiirough the ages. Given the traditional view of Ovid's art as intellectually shallow, earüer scholarship could or would not confront the reasons for Ovid's appeal to such giants as Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton. It would not concede that his art had substance. Only recently has Ovid's astonishing complexity been recognized: R.J. Du Rocher, for example, gets at Milton's highly sophisticated deployment of rhetoric by way of his confrontation with Ovid in Paradise Lost. l Of course, Ovid's art is informed at all levels by rhetoric, which has not had die best of reputations, especially in relation to characterization. R. Scholes and R. Kellogg in their notable study of narrative suggest a kind of evolution from rhetorical to psychological characterization, privileging the latter.2 Certainly Ovid's characterization is affected by his deployment of rhetoric, but not always with unfortunate results. Indeed, Shakespeare achieves striking characterizations with a good deal of rhetoric.3 And du Rocher has shown 1 Milton and Ovid (Ithaca 1985). See my review of Du Rocher in the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (1989) 396-99. For an even more recent study that recognizes Ovid's subtle art, see also the aptly titled Ovid Renewed, C. Martindale, ed. (New York 1988). Martindale's introduction is splendid. 2 The Nature ofNarrative (New York 1966) 181, 185, 188-93. 3 Two of Hamlet's solUoquies deploy the same rhetorical devices as Chrétien de Troyes uses in his Yvain for his hero's principal solüoquy, ratiocinatio (self-questioning), a reflexive diminutio (self-deprecation instead of, presumably, deprecation of an opponent), and the exemplum (example). The figures occur in Ovid's episode of Pyramus and Thisbe in the Metamorphoses, a tale used by medieval schools for teaching rhetoric. See B. Harbert, "Lessons from the Great Clerk," in Ovid Renewed (above, note 1)91. There was apparently a "rhetorical continuity" in characterization which we know relatively httle enough of. 156Syllecta Classica 7 (1996) clearly how rhetoric enhanced both Ovid's and Milton's art. In diis essay I am going to indicate another area where Ovid achieved considerable complexity, and thereby appealed to die subsequent poets who sat at his feet. In examining die conflict between self and society—a continuing concern of much great Uterature—Ovid inevitably focuses upon anatomizing the most complex and compelling of human emotions, love bom of the desire of beauty. His anatomy of love in the Metamorphoses is carefully crafted. Indeed, one can even schematize his treatment of erotic, passionate love: there are four basic kinds of erotic passion. First, there is the most familiar type, romantic or passionate love for a member of the opposite sex. This love can face familial or social barriers, is usually deeply passionate, bordering often on the irrational, and almost always destructive, so that it has about it under the best of circumstances a touch of the illicit. It can range from the relatively normal yet excessive love of Alcyone for Ceyx or Pyramus and Thisbe for each other, to the almost insane desire of a Medea.4 Second, there is homosexual love, exemplified in the tales of Ganymede and Hyacinthus, of Iphis and Ianthe, and found also in the story of Orpheus. Third, there is incestuous love, Myrrha's desire for her father, Byblis' for her brother. I have placed them in the foregoing order because I believe that for Ovid the story of Narcissus is a central myth.5 With Narcissus' fate Ovid suggests the selfish nature of passionate love in its quest for an alter ego, the "mirror" inevitably provided by die brilUant beauty of the other. BybUs' incestuous love for her twin brother restates the motif of reflected beauty in a major key; Myrrha's love for her father, in a minor key. Thus much of the meaning of the Metamorphoses resonates outward...