8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 1/23

Intertextualidade em Sonho

Intertextualidade acontece quando há uma referência explícita ou implícita de

um texto em outro. Também pode ocorrer com outras formas além do texto,

música, pintura, filme, novela etc. Toda vez que uma obra fizer alusão à outra

ocorre a intertextualidade.

 Apresenta-se explicitamente quando o autor informa o objeto de sua citação. Num textocientífico, por exemplo, o autor do texto citado é indicado, já na forma implícita, aindicação é oculta. Por isso é importante para o leitor o conhecimento de mundo, umsaber prévio, para reconhecer e identificar quando há um diálogo entre os textos. A intertextualidade pode ocorrer afirmando as mesmas idéias da obra citada oucontestando-as. Há duas formas: a Paráfrase e a Paródia.

Paráfrase

Na paráfrase as palavras são mudadas, porém a idéia do texto é confirmada pelo novotexto, a alusão ocorre para atualizar, reafirmar os sentidos ou alguns sentidos do textocitado. É dizer com outras palavras o que já foi dito. Temos um exemplo citado por Affonso Romano Sant’Anna em seu livro “Paródia, paráfrase & Cia” (p. 23):

Texto Original

 Minha terra tem palmeirasOnde canta o sabiá, As aves que aqui gorjeiam Não gorjeiam como lá.(Gonçalves Dias, “Canção do exílio”).

Paráfrase

 Meus olhos brasileiros se fecham saudosos Minha boca procura a ‘Canção do Exílio’.Como era mesmo a ‘Canção do Exílio’? 

 Eu tão esquecido de minha terra… Ai terra que tem palmeirasOnde canta o sabiá!(Carlos Drummond de Andrade, “Europa, França e Bahia”).

Este texto de Gonçalves Dias, “Canção do Exílio”, é muito utilizado como exemplo deparáfrase e de paródia, aqui o poeta Carlos Drummond de Andrade retoma o textoprimitivo conservando suas idéias, não há mudança do sentido principal do texto que é asaudade da terra natal.

Paródia

 A paródia é uma forma de contestar ou ridicularizar outros textos, há uma ruptura com

as ideologias impostas e por isso é objeto de interesse para os estudiosos da língua e dasartes. Ocorre, aqui, um choque de interpretação, a voz do texto original é retomada paratransformar seu sentido, leva o leitor a uma reflexão crítica de suas verdadesincontestadas anteriormente, com esse processo há uma indagação sobre os dogmasestabelecidos e uma busca pela verdade real, concebida através do raciocínio e da crítica.Os programas humorísticos fazem uso contínuo dessa arte, freqüentemente os discursosde políticos são abordados de maneira cômica e contestadora, provocando risos e

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 2/23

também reflexão a respeito da demagogia praticada pela classe dominante. Com omesmo texto utilizado anteriormente, teremos, agora, uma paródia.

Texto Original

 Minha terra tem palmeirasOnde canta o sabiá, As aves que aqui gorjeiam Não gorjeiam como lá.

(Gonçalves Dias, “Canção do exílio”).Paródia

 Minha terra tem palmaresonde gorjeia o maros passarinhos daquinão cantam como os de lá.(Oswald de Andrade, “Canto de regresso à pátria”).

O nome Palmares, escrito com letra minúscula, substitui a palavra palmeiras, há umcontexto histórico, social e racial neste texto, Palmares é o quilombo liderado porZumbi, foi dizimado em 1695, há uma inversão do sentido do texto primitivo que foi

substituído pela crítica à escravidão existente no Brasil.Outro exemplo de paródia é a propaganda que faz referência à obra prima de LeonardoDa Vinci, Mona Lisa:

Leia também:

• Intertexto

Referências

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 3/23

SANT’ANNA, Affonso Romano de. Paródia, paráfrase & Cia, 7.ed. São Paulo: Ática,2000.

Wallace Stevens' poem "Peter Quince at the Clavier" references Shakespeare's

"Midsummer Night's Dream" in the title and references the Old Testament in the

text ...

Peter Quince at The Clavier:

I

Just as my fingers on these keysMake music, so the self-same soundsOn my spirit make a music, too.Music is feeling, then, not sound; And thus it is that what I feel,Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

Is music. It is like the strain Waked in the elders by Susanna;

Of a green evening, clear and warm,She bathed in her still garden, whileThe red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throbIn witching chords, and their thin bloodPulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

II

In the green water, clear and warm,

Susanna lay.She searchedThe touch of springs, And foundConcealed imaginings.She sighed,For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stoodIn the coolOf spent emotions.She felt, among the leaves,The dew Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,Still quavering.The winds were like her maids,On timid feet,

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 4/23

Fetching her woven scarves, Yet wavering.

 A breath upon her handMuted the night.She turned -- A cymbal crashed, Amid roaring horns.

IIISoon, with a noise like tambourines,Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried Against the elders by her side;

 And as they whispered, the refrain Was like a willow swept by rain.

 Anon, their lamps' uplifted flameRevealed Susanna and her shame.

 And then, the simpering ByzantinesFled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV 

Beauty is momentary in the mind --The fitful tracing of a portal;But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.So gardens die, their meek breath scenting

The cowl of winter, done repenting.So maidens die, to the auroralCelebration of a maiden's choral.

Susanna's music touched the bawdy stringsOf those white elders; but, escaping,Left only Death's ironic scraping.Now, in its immortality, it playsOn the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Peter Quince at the ClavierFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search 

"Peter Quince at the Clavier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. The poem was first published in 1915 in the "little magazine" Others: A Magazineof the New Verse (New York), edited by Alfred Kreymborg.[1]

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 5/23

It is a "musical" allusion to the Biblical story of Susanna, a beautiful young wife, bathing, spiedupon and desired by the elders. The Peter Quinceof the title is the character of one of the"mechanicals" in Shakespeare's A Midsummer  Night's Dream. Stevens' poem titles are notnecessarily a reliable indicator of the meaning of his poems, but Milton Bates suggests that it

serves as ironic stage direction, the image of "Shakespear's rude mechanical pressing thedelicate keyboard with his thick fingers"expressing the poet's self-deprecation and betraying Stevens's discomfort with the role of "serious poet" in those early years.[2]

The poem is very sensual — Mark Halliday callsit Stevens' "most convincing expression of sexualdesire".[3] (Honorable mention might go to "CyEst Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les UnzeMille Vierges".) But "Peter Quince" has

dimensions beyond Susanna's ablutions and theelders' desire.

For instance, the poem's Part IV contains astunning inversion of Platonism and relatedtheories about universals, such as the universal(property, feature) beauty. Instead of saying that beauty is an abstract unchanging Platonic Form existing perfectly in a world separate from thefive senses, or an abstract unchanging concept inthe mind, the poem says that, paradoxically,"Beauty is momentary in the mind": only

transient beauty in the flesh is immortal. Kessler notes that "Unlike Plato or Kant, Stevens strivesto unite idea and image."[4]

Robert Buttel observes that each of the four sections has its "appropriate rhythms andtonalities", reading the poem as "part of thegeneral movement to bring music and poetrycloser together".[5] He describes Stevens as "themusical imagist" and credits the musicalarchitecture with organically unifying the poem.Some don't like it. For the New York Times

 poetry critic writing in 1931, it is a specimen of the "pure poetry" of the age that "cannot endure" because it is a "stunt" in the fantastic and the bizarre.[6]

"Turning of music into words, and words intomusic, continues throughout the poem,"according to Janet Mcann, "becoming metaphor as well as genuine verbal music." She instances

Peter Quince at the Clavier I

Just as my fingers on these keysMake music, so the self-same soundsOn my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,Is music. It is like the strainWaked in the elders by Susanna:

Of a green evening, clear and warm,She bathed in her still garden, whileThe red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throbIn witching chords, and their thin bloodPulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

II

In the green water, clear and warm,Susanna lay.She searchedThe touch of springs,And foundConcealed imaginings.

She sighed,For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stoodIn the coolOf spent emotions.She felt, among the leaves,The dewOf old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,

Still quavering.The winds were like her maids,On timid feet,Fetching her woven scarves,Yet wavering.

A breath upon her handMuted the night.She turned--

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 6/23

the line "Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna" as mimicking the plucking of strings as well as suggestingthe sexual itch.[5] Because music is feeling, not sound, the analogy between music and poetry istight. Poetry is feeling too.

Other commentators bring out Stevens' use of color images: "blue-shadowed silk", "greenevening", "in the green water", even the "red-eyed elders". This is a reminder that he insisted alsoon the analogy between poetry and painting. In The Necessary Angel Stevens speaks of identityrather than analogy: "...it is the identity of poetry revealed as between poetry in words and poetry

in paint."

[7]

Eugene Nassar explores a more abstract reading (and a more contentious one), according towhich the poem is about the poet's "imaginative faculty", and Susanna represents the poem andthe creative process of writing it. Laurence Perrine objects that Nassar's reading does violence tothe poem and the story it alludes to.

AdaptationsWith all its innate musicality, it is not surprising that the poem has been adapted for music twice.Dominic Argento set it as a "Sonatina for Mixed Chorus and Piano Concertante," and Gerald

Berg set it for bass voice, clarinets, percussion and piano. Both works have been recorded.

Notes

1. ^ Thus the poem is in the public domain in the United States and similar jurisdictions, as it is notaffected by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extends copyright for worksfirst published after 1922.

2. ^ Bates, p. 117.

3. ^ Robert Buttel, "On 'Peter Quince at the Clavier'"

4. ^ Kessler, p. 58

5. ^ a b Buttel

6. ^ The New York Times7. ^ Stevens, p. 159.

References

• Bates, Milton J. Wallace Stevens: a mythology of self . 1985: University of CaliforniaPress.

• Kessler, Edward. Images of Wallace Stevens. 1972: Rutgers University Press.

•  Nassar, Eugene. College English, volume 26.

• Perrine, Laurence. College English, volume 27.

• Stevens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination . (1942:

Knopf)• Top of Form

 

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 7/23

Search pub-4879452091

1 ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1 GALT:#008000;G

en

•

Bottom of Form•

• Lecture on Ovid's Metamorphosis• [The following is the text of a lecture delivered in LBST 301 in

November 1997 by Ian Johnston. This text is in the publicdomain, released November 1997] 

• For comments or questions, please contact Ian Johnston •  •

• Introduction 

•

 The text for this week is Ovid's Metamorphosis, the only workwe study from Latin Literature. And that might strike you asrather curious. Most of us are aware that Latin has played afar more vital influence on our language than Greek orHebrew and that the influence of Roman civilization on thedevelopment of Western Culture has been absolutelydecisive. So you might well wonder why Roman civilizationgets such a short treatment in Liberal Studies, in comparison,say, to the treatment of the Greeks and the Jews. 

• I don't intend to answer that question in any detail, but,before turning our attention to Ovid, I would like to say some

things about Roman culture and history by way of filling insome of the wide gap between Aristotle and Ovid, a leap of alittle over three hundred years. I don't pretend that this is byany means an adequate survey, but it may help to remind usof some reasons why Ovid's text is, while very familiar insome respects, is decisively different from the texts we havebeen reading. 

• A Historical Interlude 

• At the time of Aristotle, Rome existed as a small, relativelyinsignificant city state (but growing in power) in mid-Italy. Bylegend the city had been founded about four hundred years

previously (in 753 BC). But the city was certainly not yetsignificant enough to attract the attention of the importantstates to the east. 

• During the life of Aristotle, the growing power in Greece wasMacedon (where Aristotle came from). It exerted militarycontrol over Greece with a garrison in the major cities duringhis lifetime, the latter part of which coincided withAlexander's expedition against Persia. With the death of 

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 8/23

Alexander the Great (who died the year before Aristotle), hisgreat empire was divided up among his successors, and thehistory of the next hundred years or so is marked by bitterfighting throughout the Near East among the various rivals(called the Successors). 

• Meanwhile the Romans in the third century BC were growingin power. With their defeat of the Carthaginians (a civilization

based in North Africa) in three consecutive wars, Rome hadestablished itself as the major power in the WesternMediterranean. The inevitable collision between Rome andthe various remaining Macedonian imperial territoriesresulted in Rome's gaining control of Greece (to simplify along and complicated story). Bit by bit throughout theMediterranean and beyond, Roman military forcedemonstrated its efficiency at bringing territories underRoman control, so that before the birth of Christ, Romaninfluence extended from the English Channel to Egypt. 

•  The establishment of an empire was no new achievement.

What the Romans demonstrated, in a way that no one hasever been able to match, is the ability to hang onto in anempire, to administer it efficiently and (for most of the time)peacefully, and thus to create sustained periods of prosperityand harmony in areas traditionally decimated by variousrivalries. In short, the Romans were the greatest imperialculture the West has ever seen. 

• How were the Romans able to do this where others, likeAlexander, the Athenians, the Hittites, and so on had failed? The answer lies in the particular emphasis the Romans placedon public service. And this may help to explain why we read

relatively little of their literature. The Romans, unlike theAthenians, made as their first and only really important orderof business the preservation of public order, and theydedicated themselves to those virtues of character and thosepublic institutions and cultural expressions which would bestcontribute to it.

•  Thus, the Romans, unlike the Greeks, did not encouragecompetition in all things and were not all that interested inspeculation for its own sake. While they clearly admired theGreeks excessively and sent their children to Athens for aneducation, they were so intensely practical in their view of 

life, that they saw no reason to devote the time to the artsand sciences that the Athenians had. For them, the only reallyimportant business of life was defending and advancing theRoman way of life in intensely practical ways. 

•  That is the reason that so many of Rome's greatest figureswere those marked by the public careers and why so many of their contributions to our cultural history were very down-to-earth and practical: roads, aqueducts, a legal system,

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 9/23

concrete, and, most important of all, the finest administrativelanguage the world has ever seen, Latin, which, as we allknow, exerted a decisive influence on the development of European languages and literatures. 

• In setting these priorities, the Romans were very conscious of their cultural inferiority to the Greeks in some respects. Butthe Romans saw themselves as a people destined to carry out

the art of government rather than to advance the frontiers of artistic or scientific excellence. The most famous statement of this view is contained in the great epic poem The Aeneid byVergil, written shortly before Ovid's time (and an importantshaping influence on parts of the Metamorphoses). In the Aeneid , the hero, like Odysseus, visits the underworld andthere receives from the shade of his father the followingvisionary statement of the destiny of Rome (which has yet tobe founded):

• Others, for so I can well believe, shall hammerforth more delicately a breathing likeness out of 

bronze, coax living faces from the marble, pleadcauses with more skill, plot with their gauge themovements in the sky, and tell the rising of theconstellations. But you, Roman, must rememberthat you have to guide the nations by yourauthority, for this is to be your skill, to grafttradition onto peace, to shew mercy to theconquered, and to wage war until the haughty arebrought low. (trans. W. F. Jackson Knight, p. 172) 

•  The Romans thus in extending their empire were, in manyrespects, the most tolerant of imperial powers (although they

could be extraordinary ruthless when they felt the politicalsituation demanded such action). They had no religious orideological agenda, beyond extending the influence of Romeand keeping the peace. And they demonstrated a continuinggenius for administration at the local level of infrastructureprojects (many of which are still in use) and at theinternational level, for which they developed a system of lawwhich laid the basis for much modern jurisprudence. Theextraordinary efficiency of this imperial system managed tomaintain the empire in spite of frequently bloody andconfusing squabbles about who should sit in the Imperial

chair at the heart of it. • Rome's very success led ultimately to the city's downfall. As

the barbarians from the east exerted increasing pressure onthe tribes of the eastern steppes, more and more peoplesought to enter the Roman sphere of influence. Eventuallythe inner dynamics of the empire failed to sustain itself and,after about one thousand years of successful imperial rule,the Roman empire collapsed in the fifth century AD, Rome

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 10/23

was overthrown, and the northern Germanic tribes, onceChristianized, moved in to establish medieval Europe out of the remnants. 

• Ovid 

•  Today we are considering Ovid's Metamorphosis, one of thelast works of the great classical age of Roman poetry--whichtook place roughly half way through that narrative I have just

briefly sketched. In many respects, Ovid does not fit thepicture I have just outlined, for of all the great Roman poetshe was the least interested in celebrating and sustaining theRoman ideal. He preferred to write about love or to dedicatehis art to witty entertaining poetry. That trend may have beenwhat got him into trouble with the Emperor. That he did getinto trouble is clear from the fact that in AD 8, at the age of 50, he was exiled by the Emperor Augustus to a remote andinhospitable part of the Empire, about as far from the urbansophistication of Rome as it was possible to get. There hespent the rest of his life until his death in AD 17.

•

In dealing with Ovid's most famous poem, we might as wellstart by acknowledging that no work from classical antiquity,neither Greek nor Roman, has exerted such a continuing anddecisive influence on European literature. This poem has notonly always been popular; but it has also been extraordinaryinfluential on other writers and visual artists. The emergenceof French, English, and Italian national literatures in the lateMiddle Ages simply cannot be fully understood without takinginto account the effect of this extraordinary poem. And thedevelopment of a great deal of modern poetry draws no lessheavily on Ovid's masterpiece. The only rival we have in our

tradition which we can find to match the pervasiveness of theliterary influence of this poem is perhaps (and I stressperhaps) the Old Testament and the works of Shakespeare.

• So today I want to see if I can, if not account for exactly, atleast suggest a number of reasons why this poem, more thanany other, should have exerted such a vitally shapinginfluence. This question is particularly curious, of course,because one could hardly find a classical work that is lessobviously Christian than this one--it is thoroughly pagan inspirit, without any apparent trace of a vision of life compatiblewith Christian doctrine (of the sort we can find in Vergil, for

example, or in the work of the successors of Plato). And yet inthe most Christian of ages, the popularity of Ovid remainedextremely high. In fact, as I shall mention, Christian writersand commentators went to enormous lengths to make thispoem acceptable to a culture which had no room forpaganism. And the decline of Christian values as a criterion of literary styles and values (starting in the Renaissance) didnothing to reduce the popularity of the poem. 

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 11/23

• The Popularity of Ovid: The Short Explanation 

• In seeking to account for the remarkable and enduringpopularity of the Metamorphoses, we have recourse to anobvious answer. One of the main reasons is obviously that noother book (except possibly the Old Testament) contains sucha wealth of fascinating stories. The Metamorphoses is, firstand foremost, an extraordinarily fecund resource for

narratives, especially stories of human personalities inconflict. • It's true that most of these stories obviously do not originate

in Ovid. He has culled them from all sorts of sources, andmany of them we have seen already in Hesiod, Homer, andelsewhere. But here they all exist together, rather like anencyclopedia of mythology, giving direct access to a magicalworld of fiction which provides all those interested in art aresource without equal. 

• In some cases, Ovid's account is the only source for aparticular story, one which has been picked up and

embellished and re-embellished throughout Europeanliterature. The tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, for example (76-79), is one of the first to enter European literature. In theMiddle Ages this was turned into a 900 line French poem.Chaucer then takes the story and uses it in his long poem TheLegend of Good Women; the English poet Gower uses it in hispoem the Confessio Amantis; the story reappears inL'Amorosa Fiammetta by Boccaccio, and it is used again inanother Italian Renaissance poet Tasso. Shakespeare usesthe tale as the basis for Romeo and Juliet and, in a comicversion of the same narrative, in Midsummer Night's Dream.

 That's a very brief indication of the fecundity of just one of the stories over a few centuries. •  This business of narrative richness may seem like an

inadequate reason for the success of the book (and by itself itis); after all, there were other such encyclopedias of classicalmythology. But we need to stress it here, because for a greatdeal of European literature, Ovid is the source, not only of thestory but also of a great deal of standard figurative language.Anyone needing a plot for a play or a classical allusion tospice up a pentameter could go immediately to Ovid's poemand find there more than enough to meet the need. 

• We have to look no further than Shakespeare (who read Ovidin Golding's translation) to confirm this point. Shakespeare,quite literally, plundered Ovid for stories and moved themdirectly into his plays--in Titus Andronicus or A Midsummer Night's Dream for example, and, like so many of hiscontemporaries used Ovid as a sort of handbook for classicalallusions and similes (as sad as Niobe, as crafty as Ulysses, asvain as Narcissus, as impetuous as Phaethon, as foolish as

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 12/23

Icarus, and so on). Shakespeare lifts whole speeches fromOvid and adapts them to his purposes (so, for example,Prospero's famous invocation of the spirits in the Tempest isadapted directly from Medea's similar speech inMetamorphoses, a speech Shakespeare had used before, inMacbeth). In Shakespeare's early work, something like threequarters of the classical imagery is derived directly from

Ovid's poem. And if we want to see modern poets doing thesame thing, we have only to look at, say, Eliot's Waste Land ,in which images and references to Ovid are just as frequent.In fact, if one wants to have any sort of historical appreciationfor the development of English poetry, understanding theinfluence of and the reference to Ovid is essential. 

• Some Elements of Ovid's Narrative Style 

• But, of course, that explanation for the success of this poemis hardly adequate, for the Metamorphoses is far more thansimply a dry compendium of interesting stories, and itspopularity rests also, and more importantly, on the delight

people experience in reading the poem. So if we want toaddress why this poem should have enjoyed such a long andvital life, we need to explore some features of the style.

• Ovid's poem is self-consciously epic in its scope. He is seekingto recount the history of the world and of human civilizationin it, starting at the very beginning and ending with the deathof Julius Caesar in 44 BC (about 50 years before the poemwas written). In the course of that story, he, like Homer andHesiod, establishes the nature of the god and goddesses, thecreation of the human race, the interactions of gods andhuman beings, and some major legendary historical events,

like the Trojan War and the founding of Rome. In the courseof this narrative, he is also incorporating many of the mostfamous narratives from the classical tradition--like Homer'saccount of Odysseus (now renamed Ulysses) and Vergil'saccount of Aeneas. Like many epic writers, Ovid issimultaneously reminding us of his great poetic ancestors,drawing on them, and demonstrating (he hopes) his paritywith or superiority over them. 

• One important attribute of this poem is its apparently casualunity. These very disparate elements are joined together in aseamless narrative, so that we move easily from one story

into the next, and often we, as readers, are drawn into somenew tale before we fully realize that the old one is over. Thisprovides a constant sense of movement. None of the storiesis very long, but Ovid avoids any erratic sense of stoppingand starting all the time by the skill of his narrative links.What emerges is something far more than just a catalogue of ancient stories but a genuine narrative with a logic of its own.

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 13/23

•  That logic is supported by a number of other things. Thepoem moves, generally speaking, through some distinctsections: starting with the gods and the creation myth, wemove to the fabulous divine or semi-divine heroic characters(Cadmus, Pentheus, Bacchus, Perseus) and then closer torecognizable (but still legendary) human beings, like Medea,Daedalus, Icarus, and Orpheus; from there the narrative

moves into the great historical sagas of Troy, the wanderingsof Ulysses and Aeneas, and finally comes to a close in recentmodern history. This gentle, unannounced, and consistentseries of transitions enables Ovid to fit into his narrative anumber of different literary genres (from mythology to legendto recent history) without offending our sense of what we aredealing with.

• Finally, the poem's many episodes share a common theme--the idea of metamorphosis or transformation, usuallyaccompanied by violence. This gives to virtually all the storiesan inherently dramatic quality, since the violence frequently

involves a helpless and protesting victim, the evidence forwhose change often remains forever in the landscape, theheavens, or in the natural life around us. This theme enablesOvid to transform whatever story he seizes upon into asituation potentially full of human pathos, something whichtransforms a beautiful setting or person into a symbol of suffering. In fact, in Ovid, as E. J. Kenney remarks in theintroduction to Melville's translation, the description of anidyllic pastoral setting or a happy harmonious life is almostalways the prelude to some brutality or other. 

• And the subject matter of these transformations in almost

every case involves violence, sex, and suffering, topics which,then as now, are of great interest. The victims are ofteninnocent females, pursued by divine or human rapists, andthe narrative repeated calls attention to the dramatic pathosof the moment of transformation, when the enormouslysuffering victim, like Niobe or Daphne, metamorphoses intosomething else, almost as if the pressure of her suffering hadbecome too much for human capabilities. 

• Ovid's Vision of Life 

• Now, there's an important debate about how we are to dealwith this business of metamorphosis, the central organizing

image of the poem. What does this repeated insistence ontransformation, usually through some brutality or other, addup to as a vision of human experience? Is Ovid here sayingsomething about the nature of human life, of the sort that,say, Hesiod or Homer are insisting upon in their poems? Doesthe lasting influence of this poem depend at all on anyunderstanding of life, any vision of experience, which peoplehave found of value? 

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 14/23

• An exploration of this question, I think, leads to the curiousbut very interesting point that the strength of this poem mayvery well rest on the fact that it does not appear to attemptto do what all the other works we have read have beenstriving for, namely, it offers no particular vision of life andhas no particular interest in such a high ambition. It is, bycontrast, a celebration of the literary genius of the writer, a

self-conscious demonstration of the pure pleasures of fictionwithout recourse to any high moral seriousness. • Consider for a moment the following apparent paradox. Much

of this poem concerns very brutal events. If we were temptedto see these events as the very stuff of life, what shouldemerge from the poem would surely be a bleak picture of human actions and possibilities, something much closerperhaps to the dour pessimism of Hesiod or the cosmicfatalism of Sophocles. But the really curious feature of thispoem, for which it is really famous, is that no such despairingvision of life emerges. For all the brutality and transformation,

this poem comes across as delightful, a good read, asupremely comic masterpiece. And that quality, it seems tome, is really worth exploring, because it may well be the mostimportant indication of the long-lasting appeal of the poem.

• Kenney in his introduction puts the matter as follows: •  The true Midas is the poet, the true golden touch

his transforming art. Ovid's achievement in theMetamorphosis is to transmute what ought to bea profoundly depressing vision of existence into acosmic comedy of manners. (xix) 

• Ovid, in other words, takes the most potentially horrific

material and turns it into the stuff of comedy. We witness thesuffering, but we are not moved by it as suffering (certainlynot in the same way we are by, say, the sufferings of Oedipusor Pentheus)--we are kept a secure distance from it andinvited to look at it from a very different perspective. We donot, in other words, take the depicted fiction seriously. 

• The Metamorphoses always keeps us on the surface of thedetails and does not invite us to see that this sequence of disasters says anything significant about the world. It is therefor us to enjoy as an example of a story for its own sake,something we can read and enjoy for the moment, without

being led to some system of belief about the world or somecosmic understanding. 

•  The quest for a deeper underlying meaning, if itexists, Ovid left to others. It was enough to forhim to illustrate and explore the reflection on thepsychological plane of that universal physicalturbulence. (Kenney xix) 

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 15/23

• Now, I want to dwell on this point for a moment, because it isimportant, and it marks a significant departure from thestyles of works we have been dealing with. We have readworks which featured a good deal of violence (e.g., The Old Testament, Hesiod, Homer, The Oresteia), and part of interpretation of the work has required us to take intoaccount what that violence reveals about the nature of the

cosmos, particularly about the nature of the gods. Whateverthe story of, say, the sacrifice of Isaac, the overthrow of Pharaoh's troops, or the destruction of suitors or Dionysus'streatment of Thebes is finally about, those dramatic momentsare intended to be taken seriously. When we try to justify orcriticize the moments we have to explore some widerunderstanding of the world. For example, however we readHesiod or Homer or the Old Testament or Sophocles, we aremost unlikely to say that the nature of the divine is not allthat important; the process of reading the works reveals to usthat the nature of the divine is an essential (perhaps the

essential) thing the work is seeking to communicate. • But this does not seem to be the case with Ovid. The rape of 

Proserpine or the deadly anger of Medea or the deceitfulnessof Ulysses or the nature of the Olympian deities and so on donot appear to reveal anything serious about the nature of theworld. They are just good stories, entertaining because of theway Ovid tells them and because they add variety to thesequence. They are, if you like, merely literary. What I meanby that phrase is not necessarily something demeaning, butrather that these stories exist to display the literaryinventiveness of the poet, his narrative, dramatic, and poetic

skill, and to provide for us the delight which comes fromreading good fiction, without forcing upon us any widerunderstanding of the world: the style is privileging theaesthetic experience over any moral insight. 

• Now, it's interesting to ask why this should be so. Why shouldwe take one story seriously and another as simply literaryshowmanship, a delightful exhibition of literary skill? I thinkthe short answer to this is that we take our cue from thenarrator of the poem. We treat what Hesiod and Homer haveto say about the gods seriously or as something we need toaccount for in a wider vision of the world, because the

narrator of the poem and the characters in it take themseriously. The narrator may tell stories in which the godssometimes look foolish, as Homer does, but he never invitesus the see the very description he is putting forth assomething which might, after all, be only his invention. 

• With Ovid things are different. To begin with, the narrator of the poem often teases us about the reliability of what he is

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 16/23

saying. Again and again, the narrator injects sly comments,calling into question his own veracity:

•  The man was made, perhaps from seed divineFormed by the great Creator, so to foundA better world, perhaps the new-made earth,So lately parted from the ethereal heavens,Kept still some essence of the kindred sky--(3) 

•

 Those stones (who would believe did ancient loreNote testify the truth?) gave up their hardness;(13) 

•  That was the end; the miracle had heldthem fascinated; one denies such thingsCould happen; others say true gods can doAll things--but Bacchus is not one of them. (81) 

•  This habit of commenting on his own stories, calling intoquestion whether people do or should believe themrepeatedly injects a sophisticated slyness into the narrativetone, almost inviting the reader to share an in-joke; this is a

style that treads a very narrow (and dangerous line) betweenthe pathetic and the comic. • We can see this in many examples. One of the best is the

early story of Daphne and Apollo. There's more than enoughdramatic tension here to sustain interest, and yet thecelebrated story does not lead to any illumination orexploration of anything beyond the famous incident. 

• More he had tried to say, but she in fearFled on an left him and his words unfinished.Enchanting still she looked--her slender limbsBare in the breeze, her fluttering dress blown

back,Her hair behind her streaming as she ran;And flight enhanced her grace. But the younggod,Could bear no more to waste his blandishments,And (love was driving him) pressed his pursuit.And as a beagle sees across the stubbleA hare and runs to kill and she for life--He almost has her; now, yes, how, he's sureShe's his; his straining muzzle scrapes her heels;And she half thinks she's caught and, as he bites,

Snatches away; his teeth touch--but she's gone.So ran the god and girl, he sped by hopeAnd she by fear. But he, borne on the wingsOf love, ran faster, gave her no respite,Hot on her flying heels and breathing closeUpon her shoulders and her tumbling hair.Her strength was gone; the travail of her flightVanquished her, and her face was deathly pale.

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 17/23

And then she saw the river, swift Peneus,And called: 'Help, father, help! If mystic powerDwells in your waters, change me and destroyMy baleful beauty that has pleased too well.'Scare had she made her prayer when through herlimbsA dragging languor spread, her tender bosom

Was wrapped in thin smooth bark, her slenderarmsWere changed to branches and her hair to leaves;Her feet but now so swift were anchored fastIn numb stiff roots, her face and head became The crown of a green tree; all that remainedOf Daphne was her shining loveliness.And still Apollo loved her; on the trunkHe placed his hand and felt beneath the barkher heart still beating, held in his embraceher branches, pressed his kisses on the wood;

 Yet from his kisses still the wood recoiled.'My bride', he said, 'since you can never be,At least, sweet laurel, you shall be my tree.My lyre, my locks, my quiver you shall wreathe; You shall attend the conquering lords of RomeWhen joy shouts triumph at the CapitolWelcomes the long procession; you shall standBeside Augustus' gates, sure sentinelOn either side, guarding the oak between.My brow is ever young, my locks unshorn;So keep your leaves' proud glory ever green.'

thus spoke the god; the laurel in assentInclined her new-made branches and bent down,Or seemed to bend, her head, her leafy crown.(17-18) 

•  The first part of the story is potentially brutal enough. WhatOvid highlights in his description is the erotic beauty of thefleeing girl--with precise references to her legs, hair, andskin--combined with her terror. Ovid holds this momentsuspended before us in the long metaphor of the houndchasing the hare, again bringing the image into sharp relief with the references to biting. The sexual brutality is in the

image, certainly, but the emphasis is mainly on the girl in avery cozy and teasingly erotic way (one can immediatelyunderstand the way the narrative inspired visual artists). 

• And the incident is closed off by the transformation,described in such a manner that the scene seems almostcomic--the mighty god of the sun pouring out his heart to atree which he is covering with kisses. It's hard to know how totake this picture, since it moves us beyond the brutality of the

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 18/23

god's intentions to a scene of utter incongruity (with the treenodding its assent). And, significantly, the story ends with apoetic tribute to Apollo, an image of how what really mattersin this story is the immortality of the memory, somethingwhich the woody maiden seems to agree with--theuncertainty of the final gesture is typically Ovidian. Maybe ithappened, maybe it didn't. Still, it's a great story.

•

I don't want to suggest that it is easy to write this way. Itisn't. This coyly erotic tone, half serious, half comic, with thefrisson of violence and the pathos of the loss of a life, isextremely sophisticated. It relies upon a certain sophisticationin the reader, too, since it requires the reader to besufficiently interested to be caught up in the drama andresponsive to the complex poetry and yet sufficiently alert tothe tone not to take the story as a serious insight intoanything.

• Some readers, for example, might be tempted to want to seein the story of Daphne and Apollo some exploration of 

something important, say, the relationship of the gods tonature or the immoral bestiality and cruelty of the divinitiesor something similar. This is surely an overreaction to Ovid'stale. He builds on it no moral, other than the notion of thelasting immortality of the story, and immediately moves on toanother very similar tale. We are not invited to linger or thinkabout what the wider implications of the story might be (aswe are, for example, in the Odyssey , with the story of therevenge of Orestes or the incident with Polyphemos). 

• One interpreter puts the matter this way: • [In the world of the Metamorphoses the] world is

permeated by a sense of the flux, disorder, andchaos of experience. The hints of order thrownout are numerous, but they all prove unreliableand inadequate. A sequence of events rarely isrelated as cause and effect. The point of view onwhat happens is ever shifting. No firm patternsemerge. The emphasis is laid upon the diversity,even the uniqueness, of the individual'sexperience--indeed sometimes upon theindeterminacy of the individual's self, of his veryidentity. No meanings or moralities can be read in

this universe. The manner of narration is itself anobstacle. The relations between stories andbetween parts of stories establish no sense of what is important. They mythological tales arepresented in versions which tend to deny themsignificance. And even metamorphosis itself, thecentral phenomenon in the world of the poem,imparts no meaning. (Solodow 197) 

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 19/23

• What we remember from the poem is the clarity of particularepisodes memorably delivered, rather than any consistentillumination of what one might call a vision of life. Even themetaphysical organizing principle of metamorphosis is notexplored for what it might reveal about the nature of theworld (either as a moral judgment or a physical principle). The lasting impression is that the metamorphoses provide a

wonderful basis for telling stories effectively, nothing more. • [Parenthetically, one might observe that if one is tempted to

view this vision of the world as a seriously intendedillumination of reality, then that view would register, I think,as uncompromisingly grim, something quite at odds with thetone of the stories.] 

• One can sum up this point with a criticism whichcommentators who demand a high moral seriousness fromworks of art have made about Ovid: in his poem "the artist'svirtuosity seems to have outrun his human sympathy"(Martindale 5), a stance which many find an inadequate basis

for art. The lasting success of Ovid's poem, however, wouldseem to suggest a basic flaw with this interpretative judgment. 

• I should mention that not everyone shares this view of Ovid. There are those who claim, for example, that the principle of metamorphosis is what we might call a philosophic positionand that this poem, rather than just being a collection of delightfully amusing stories, also presents what so many findlacking, a coherent vision of experience. The chief evidencefor this position is the section near the end on Pythagoras,where Ovid takes the time to lay out a world view, which he

attributes to Pythagoras: • Everything changes; nothing dies; the soul

Roams to and fro, now here, now there, and takesWhat frame it will, passing from beast to man,From our own form to beast and never dies. (357)

•  The emphasis in this part of the poem, especially near theend of the passage, is the invincible destructiveness of time,and by the end the political implications of this view are madeclear:

•  Times are upset, we see, and nations rise To strength and greatness, others fail and fall.

 Troy once was great in wealth and men and gaveFor ten long years her lifeblood; humbled nowShe shows her ancient ruins, for her richesOnly the broken tombs of ancestors. (364) 

• Much of this section is quite platitudinous, repeating, indelightful verse, a very old view of the world. Whether thatqualifies as a vision of experience or not, I'm not sure (thestress on vegetarianism throughout as the way to avoid much

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 20/23

trouble seems like a comic undercutting of any potentialsolemnity). If it does it would seem quite at odds with thegeneral tone of the poem, for the sense that the onlypermanent thing is the lack of any permanence leads togloomy reflections. 

• I think the function of this passage is, however, somewhatdifferent. Ovid is leading into the conclusion of his poem. The

clear implication in the above quote is that Rome, for all herimperial greatness at the time, will inevitably fail and fall (thereference to the Troy, the legendary source of the Romanpeople is clear enough). So under the final tributes to Caesarand Augustus there is a firmly established irony: whateverelse the achievements of these great political men, their workwill not last. 

• What will last, of course, is Ovid's poem. The epilogue makesit clear that if transformation is the rule of life, the only thingthat can escape it through all eternity is the work of art. There is no stability of truth in life or politics. The only

eternity granted to us comes from great literature, like Ovid'spoem. • Ovid's Transformation of Mythology 

• Before I conclude this lecture, I would like to say a word ortwo about this poem in relation to earlier works we havestudied which use similar material from ancient mythologies.If what I have been saying has any validity, then in this poemwe are seeing a transformation of the traditional myths.When we read Hesiod and Homer and Aeschylus, the mythsare seriously meant. They symbolize and illuminate vitalaspects about the nature of life itself. The destructiveness of 

the gods, their erratic moods, their loves and hates operateas explanatory principles which define the nature of ourexperience. The events may be often irrational, sometimesfunny, dramatic, and eventful, but they are offered as seriousinsights into the nature of things. And there is thus a certainmystery about them, and they earn our respect, because theydeal with things at the very centre of our desire tounderstand or connect with essential forces outsideourselves. The mythology serves to link our familiar worldwith the sense of mystery we experience when we ponderthings beyond our immediate control and understanding. 

• In Ovid, this serious intention changes. Here the mythologyacts, first and foremost, as an extraordinary basis for merestories, which we are invited to enjoy precisely because theyare not serious offered as an insight into anything. Themyths, in other words, have become, not the organizingprinciple for understanding life, but rather pure literature, tobe enjoyed for their fictive nature. A wedge is being drivenbetween the traditional stories and their wider meaning. 

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 21/23

• Hence, when we celebrate Ovid's great skill as a poet, wecelebrate, above all, his poetic inventiveness, rather than hisinsight. He is a story teller's storyteller, a poet's poet, amaster of transforming serious matters into lightentertainment, perhaps the wittiest poet we have (if weremember that wit means, among other things, technicalingenuity). What we are learning, as we read this poem, is not

how to understand the world but how to use language andthe resources of fiction delightfully. In that sense, it is not atall difficult to understand Ovid's enduring popularity amongwriters and other artists, even those who bring to the poem amuch more coherent and complete world vision. 

• In a sense, that removal of moral significance emerges as themost important metamorphosis of all--the change in ourattitude to these old stories. If we see them through the verseof Ovid, then we do have good reason for seeing thisamazingly rich collection of events as simply an invention of the poets, created as entertainment, with no wider religious,

cosmic, or cultural significance. And it may well be the casethat the enduring popularity of Ovid is a major reason why ithas taken us until this century to begin to deal with the godsand goddesses in Homer as something a good deal moreimportant than merely literary inventions designed to showoff the poet's skill in dreaming up pleasant stories for theaudience. 

•  There are many places where one might further develop thispoint. Let me just mention one, since it bears upon somethingwe have already read and discussed. The story of Acis andGalatea (which begins on page 318) reintroduces us to

Polyphemos the Cyclops (before the incident with Ulysses).But in this incident Polyphemos has been transformed into acomic lover, deliberately satirized in order to give the readera good laugh, as he sings the praises of his ugly appearanceand his single eye. As usual, Ovid focuses upon thepsychology of suffering and resolves the story with a brutaltransformation. But there is nothing in this story of what wemight find in the Odyssey --some insight into the nature of thesemi-divine in the wilderness or in the heroic character of Odysseus or the hostility of a powerful god like Poseidon. Themonster here works so well as a pathetically comic figure

precisely because we do not have to take him seriously. • Another way of saying this is to claim that Ovid takes the

gods off Olympos and puts them into our drawing rooms andliterary salons: 

• Mythology so handled is brought and kept firmlywithin the realm of the familiar. . . . [B]y givinglife to the inanimate and rendering the divinehuman, Ovid makes mythology the everyday,

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 22/23

flesh-and-blood world of his reader. Humor is oneof the consequences. And at the same time, itworks to confine the meaning of mythology. Theinjection of humor inoculates mythology againstexcessive solemnity; it shuts out interpretationswhich tend to reduce man to a figure within someabstract scheme, whether moral or historical,

political or theological. Ovid's version of mythology intimates that the past was not largerthan life: it was like the present. There were noheroes: mankind was made up of men likeourselves. No gods preside over the course of events or represent a principle like justice.(Solodow 108). 

• We might want to sum this up by claiming that if there issome coordinating vision that we take away from Ovid'spoem, it is that there is no vision be had, other than thedeliberately fictional world created by the poem. There is no

mysterious universe to celebrate, worship, or be fearfulabout. There is only the pleasure to be derived from thepoem, which exists independent of any frame of meaningbeyond the links it establishes with other works of literature. 

• In a sense, especially in comparison with what we have read,we might like to call this tendency an indication of literarydecadence. By that I mean that in this poem to a largedegree the style has taken over from the substance, and wehave moved to a new form of literary expression (for us), onein which the art is celebrated for its own sake, for the wit,inventiveness, skill, and scholarship of the poet, rather than

for some illuminating insight. • I mention this in passing in order to mention that we should

be familiar with this decadence, for our own artistic age is fullof it. We celebrate style in theatre, the visual arts, and film(to name only three areas) by our preoccupation with style,especially with originality, special effects, and sensation, andpay relatively less attention to the sense, that is, to thecontent. Even much of our most serious fiction, like theEnglish Patient , for example, is deliberately written tocelebrate its own achievement as art. So in a sense we arewell equipped to understand and appreciate Ovid's

techniques, his humour, and his general debunking of anyattempts to explore anything beyond the complexities of thefiction itself. 

• Postscript on Ovid's Popularity 

• Now, while it may seem paradoxical, it may be that thisquality of Ovid's poem is one great reason for its lastingpopularity. Since it puts no pressure on us to enter into acomprehensive and coherent world vision different from our

8/6/2019 Intertextualidade Em Sonho

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/intertextualidade-em-sonho 23/23

own, we can easily adapt it to our own purposes withouttension, without, that is, a sense that we are violating theessential basis of the poem.

• Hence, we can draw on Ovid for all sorts of poetic resourcesor else interpret the poem in such a way as to fit our ownvisions. The extraordinary tendency of the Middle Ages tomoralize Ovid, to force onto the poem very didactic

interpretations entirely consistent with the doctrines of theRoman Catholic Church, becomes easier to understand. thishabit is indeed putting something into the poem that is notthere, but it is not displacing or violating some central visionof things. Thus, we do not have to be afraid of it or ban it; wesimply need to adapt it, retaining the inherently interestingstyle of the narratives and imposing upon it the bestconstruction which suits our fancy. 

• Bibliography• Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman

Influences on Western Literature. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1957. • Martindale, Charles, ed. Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on

Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the TwentiethCentury . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 

• Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. A. D. Melville. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1987. 

• Solodow, Joseph B. The World of Ovid's Metamorphoses.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. 

• Virgil. The Aeneid . Trans. W. F. Jackson Knight.Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970