The Image of the Poet in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Introduction

Introduction O vid begins the Metamorphoses by explicitly stating his theme of transformation: “In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora” (“My spirit impels me to speak about forms changed into new bodies” [1.1–2]). The governing principle of change is manifested most obviously in the metamorphoses of human bodies to lower forms of life.1 But it also applies to “forms” in almost every sense in this inventive poem that sweeps widely from cosmogony to the supremacy of Rome under the rule of Augustus. Furthermore, as he announces the almost impossible scope of his project, Ovid implies a major paradoxical aspect of his poem: it is simultaneously lengthy (perpetuum) and polished (deductum).2 Major studies of Ovid have recently illuminated the importance of paradox in the Metamorphoses. On the level of style, Ovid employs paradox , along with puns and syllepsis, as a microcosmic version of the constant flux that is the very subject of the poem.3 On the ontological level, the poet creates a dynamic of absent presence, especially in episodes where a character is motivated by a futile desire for a loved one.4 Ovid even plays with the paradox of the poet as both bard who is delivering an oral performance to his “narratorial audience” and implied author who is clearly producing a text for a sophisticated readership.5 On the level of character, considerable critical attention has been paid to the particularly paradoxical figure of the weaver Arachne who in book 6 challenges Minerva to a contest and, incurring the goddess’s anger, is transformed into a spider. Arachne shows that talent is not tied to class yet proves to be obtuse at interpreting the significance of the goddess’s tapestry. On the one hand, this young woman of low social status, the daughter of a dyer, produces a work of the highest elegance 3 and refinement; on the other, she ignores the clear message in her divine opponent’s weaving that mortals pay a heavy price for offending the gods. This episode illustrates a tension between a “centripetal” pull toward a moral point of view consistent with epic as a high, “official” genre and a “centrifugal” pull toward empathy with the young woman as an artist and a victim of divine anger.6 In spite of her hubris, Ovid to some extent identifies with Arachne whose weaving, as many scholars have observed , has strong affinities with his poem. My purpose here is to point out how Arachne may serve as a paradigm for other highly flawed characters who also, in paradoxical ways, function as surrogates for the poet. In her behavior with Minerva, Arachne exhibits a surprising intransigence . Having angrily rebuffed the goddess in disguise as an old woman, she refuses to yield even when Minerva reveals herself (24–51). She makes no effort to spare the goddess’s feelings when she weaves into her tapestry an allusion to a desecration of Minerva’s own temple.7 Vergil’s brief but compelling account of the foolish Misenus in Aeneid 6 is but one of numerous examples in epic of the importance of observing the distinction between divine and human and of deferring to the gods. Playing on his conch, the trumpeter calls the gods to a contest and then pays for his hubris, for he is said to have been drowned by the sea god Triton (156–78). Vergil does not explain why Misenus challenged the gods to a musical contest but characterizes him as mad (demens [172]) to do so. Here, Arachne’s impiety is bound up with a hubristic belief that her talent is, in effect, self-generated.8 When Minerva transforms her into a spider, Arachne’s fate is ironically apropos: the spider seems to weave from nothing but itself.9 Ovid’s ekphrasis of Arachne’s tapestry, however, shifts the focus away from moral criticism of a flawed individual. The aesthetic appeal of Arachne’s work seems clear: its erotic subject matter of gods who adopt disguises in order to rape women is rendered through freeflowing scenes, with the settings sketched out in some detail and the characters marked by individualized features. The poet indeed exclaims that Envy could find no fault with her work (“non illud carpere Livor / possit opus” [129–30]).10 As critics have observed, her tapestry is a graphic analogue of Ovid’s loosely structured narrative emphasizing amorous subjects.11 Arachne’s weaving manifests a sophisticated aesthetic analogous to a Callimachean carmen deductum.12 The...