Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets by Frederick Ahl (review)

REVIEWS FREDERICK AHL. Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other ClassicalPoets. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Pp. 352. $29.95. Ek Plato seith, whoso kan hym rede, The wordes mote be cosyn to the dede. When Chaucerians turn from the Ovid ofArnulfofOrleans, Giovanni del Virgilio, and Pierre Bersuire to the real Ovid, we may let well-deserved respect for the learning and rigor of classical philology blind us to the possibility that Ovid may be only slightly better represented in modern editions and commentaries than he was in the editions and commentaries ofallegorizing clerks in the High Middle Ages. As Frederick Ahl reveals, the real Ovid is still being discovered, and he may be an Ovid more compatible with medieval notions about language than with the modern, more scientific theories that have replaced them. In Metaformations, a brilliant book that seems designed to shake up his fellow classicists, Ahl makes two essential points: there is more and richer wordplay and soundplay in Ovid and other classical poets than has been recognized, and the almost endlessly playful refusal of their language to remain static and unambiguous enriches and complicates the literary value of their poetry and mirrors their entire view of the world: "Ovidian language, like the language ofthe Cratylus or ofVarro, is composed not of words with singular, static meanings but of letters, syllables, and words with plural meanings, constantly shifting in a kind ofHeraclitean flux. It is a matter not of 'either/or' but of 'both/and"' (p. 162). The poet of metamorphoses in man and nature builds the flux of constant meta­ morphosis into the language ofhis poetry. To Ovid, wordplay is neither a crude nor even a sophisticated adornment ofmeaning but a reflection of the essence ofreality: cunctafluunt. But what qualifies as "soundplay and wordplay"? In his lengthy intro­ duction, Ahl lists thirteen "important principles that seem to affect Varro's (and Plato's) concept of 'etymology."' Most important is the first: "The basic unit ofsense, for the purposes ofplay, is the syllable rather than the word" (p. 55). Ahl capitalizes the root syllables, a technique to which one 157 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER quickly becomes accustomed, and includes the roots in his index. A relatively simple example may give some idea of his approach: [Io], like Daphne, attracts the unwanted attentions of a god, the master of the skies himself. Ovid is very careful to postpone any use ofJupiter's name in the genitive case until the end of the narrative (1.749). Io's story, as we see when the form lovis, "ofJupiter," first occurs, is, in Varronian etymology as well as physically, the story of IOvis: the violence (VIS) done to IO by Jove. Violence and IO are blended in IoVIS. (p. 144-45). Most readers will probably accept wordplay of that fairly obvious sort. Other principles, however, open up possibilities that etymological fastidi­ ousness and untrained ears may place almost beyond our comprehension. Differences in vowel length, differences between doubled and single consonants, differences in spelling between "c" and "g," and differences between "ns" and "s" "do not prevent wordplay" (pp. 56-57). Diphthongs "may be related in etymology or wordplay to words based on either constituent vowel" (p. 58), and "a syllabic play may occur even ifthere is a change ofvowel" (p. 57). Finally, wordplay involves not only repetition of visually and aurally identical syllables (CANere and CANis, IGNIS in /IGNIS), but palindromes and anagrams as well. There may be an anagram of PONTUs in PYT(H)ON, and the latter "suggests the Greek root PYTH" (p. 125). DAP(H)NE "contains within it an anagram of the epithet of conquering Phoebus, P(A)EAN" (p. 137). And in CORPORA we find PORCUS, the latter ascertainable when one recalls the nominative ofCORPORA and then rearranges CORPUSto yield PORCUS. In the face of such magic, a cautious philologist may find himself sympathizing with Plato's Hermogenes. Upon hearing Socrates identify rexv71 with exov671 on the grounds that "you have only to take away the T and insert o between the x and v, and between the v and 71," Hermogenes observed, "That is a very shabby etymology" (Craty/us 414bc...