Ars Amatoria

So, so he mentions Ovid in the dialogue.

Like, it's, Ovid is, you know, uh, Sandor Szavost asked Alice, "Oh, do you know of Ars Amatoria?" Or, you know, he's, like, asking her about Ovid.

"Have you, do you know of Ovid?" Right? So Kubrick is referencing Ovid right there, and O- it's Ovid's Metamorphosis- ...

was thought to be unfinished because of his exile by Augustus.

it

would seem as if ovid's influence ended and ought to have ended then and there somehow it has survived in certain momentous periods of human history ovid's name has shone brightly among the immortals part of his fame of course is due to other works besides the art of love it may be further that augustus and the puritans of his time and the puritans of other times did not quite understand the qualities of that poem or the character of its author ovid is nothing if not subtle nor had he any desire to present his apologies to those who could not see what he was about moralists have put him on their black list again and again his art too has seemed to many steeped in rhetoric and thoroughly insincere according to mr palgrave no mean judge of letters he is amongst world-famous poets perhaps the least true to the soul of poetry to day in our own country certainly he is hardly more than a school-book he has surmounted the alps of the centuries ut declamatio fiat his own imagination could have contrived no more horrible metamorphosis than this but why should one try to revive him what is our debt to him i ovid in the world of poetry nimia mamator ingenii sui quintilian ingenio perii naso poeta mei ovid ovid's birth in the year forty three b c coincides with the beginning of a new age in roman literature Virgil, whatever he may have written in his youth, was at work on his eclogues, which both marked an epoch in pastoral poetry and presented a program of universal peace through Roman imperialism that was destined to become the watchword of the age and the ideal of its ruler.

Ovid was still in his teens when the Georgics appeared, in which the idealization of Italy and a mirror of the prince, not yet known as augustus were even more splendidly displayed but when the greatest work of the poet the goal of his aspiration and the complete symbol of the augustan age had after his death in nineteen b c been given to the world ovid was already busied with poetry of a very different sort horace had described the roman world and the world of humanity in a new and genial satire he had enticed aeolian song into italian measures in a new and roman lyric and succeeded virgil as the laureate of rome ovid a youth of the rising generation did not aspire to this part he has been called in an admirable work in the present series the least roman of all the latin poets Perhaps we should allow Ovid to enlarge our ideas of what Roman means, for the old Romans were also Italians.

It is true, at any rate, that Ovid's poetry is primarily the expression of his own temperament, rather than that of some national desire into which his temperament has been caught up.

One of the ancient lives of Ovid declares that once when his father caught him writing a poem and proceeded to apply the rod, the lad cried out in his native medium, O father dear, make it no worse, I vow I'll never more write verse.

This promise was ill-kept.

Throughout his life, Ovid's thought flowed into verse, in love-algae, in tragedy, in tragical monologues of deserted heroines, in an art of cosmetics, in an art of love, in a remedy for the disease, in an epic on miraculous transformations, in a calendar of the pagan year.

even after his exile in eight a d to the frozen shore of the euxine pontus his vein of poetry did not freeze he poured forth laments and petitions for forgiveness as well as less gloomy strains Ovid was thrice married, finding at last a true mate to whom he writes from exile in terms of deep affection.

Our debt to Ovid.

what save the warning of an awful example does our age owe to a professed rou the author of a monument so dangerously typical of his degenerate society that the ruler of rome banished him to a frozen land and excluded his book from the libraries it would seem as if ovid's influence ended and ought to have ended then and there somehow it has survived in certain momentous periods of human history ovid's name has shone brightly among the immortals part of his fame of course is due to other works besides the art of love it may be further that augustus and the puritans of his time and the puritans of other times did not quite understand the qualities of that poem or the character of its author ovid is nothing if not subtle nor had he any desire to present his apologies to those who could not see what he was about moralists have put him on their black list again and again his art too has seemed to many steeped in rhetoric and thoroughly insincere according to mr palgrave no mean judge of letters he is amongst world-famous poets perhaps the least true to the soul of poetry to day in our own country certainly he is hardly more than a school-book he has surmounted the alps of the centuries ut declamatio fiat his own imagination could have contrived no more horrible metamorphosis than this but why should one try to revive him what is our debt to him i ovid in the world of poetry nimium amator ingenii sui quintilian ingenio perii naso poeta mei

ovid

ovid's birth in the year forty three b c coincides with the beginning of a new age in roman literature Virgil, whatever he may have written in his youth, was at work on his eclogues, which both marked an epic in pastoral poetry and presented a program of universal peace through Roman imperialism that was destined to become the watchword of the age and the ideal of its ruler.

All this would turn the lament into burlesque, if this were all.

Again, as in Briseis, the undertone is pathos, with an approach to tragic irony, for Protesilaus was to leap forth first, not last, and fall by Hector's spear.

the strands of grave and gay fail to unite in the heroides when gayety brings us from the heroic age plump into that of augustus tell-tale reminiscences of the amores are all too plentiful penelope apprehends from her husband the dreadfully ovidian reproach of rusticity briseis slips from her tent quite in the manner of corinna eluding the concierge phdra has studied an advanced copy of the art of love the heroine of euripides to be sure is as adroit and hippolytus delivers a kind of anti ovidius siwe de arte non amandi but all this finesse is in the play caught up in a tragedy with its deep questionings of divine justice and human fate when in the letter jove is displayed as the first augustine and critic of rusticity illusion takes wings and the atmosphere of the amores is about us that ancient piety doomed soon to die lasted through saturn's rustic dynasty jove called things righteous if they pleasant be wedded his sister and made morals free Ovid does not quite turn Phaedra's appeal into comedy.

Would that he had done so, he has merely out-Euripidized Euripides.

It's likely that at most they might approach her for help in certain situations.

Ovid mentions the temple of Bonadir in his Art of Love.

He wrote the eyes of men were banned except those who were ordered to enter.

Presumably then some men might have been permitted though we don't know in what circumstances and on a side note he said it was a very good place for a woman to go if her hair was in a bit of a mess and it needed tidying up.

When his subject is very dry, he adorns it with pleasant digressions.

Ovid has done the same in his Art of Love, and though his subject be of itself very pleasing, yet he thought it tedious to talk of nothing but love.

My subject has more need of digressions than his, yet I have made use of them very sparingly, and of such only as the natural liberty of conversation allows.

I have placed them only where I thought my readers would be pleased to meet with them.

The Art of Love Aviseth you, and put me out of blame, An eke man shall not make earnest of game.

Chaucer ah rustic ruder than gothic congreve scis wetis hoc uni lusum mihi carmen et istos ut non laudandos sectamen esse iocos after the experiences recorded in the amores it is small wonder that our poet felt himself an expert in the ways of love he now writes therefore what is in form a didactic poem one that the historian of literature must put on the same shelf with virgil's georgics and the de rerum natura of lucretius as the subject of the new poem is still fit matter for elegy ovid makes no change in his metre had he commenced in the heroic verse that virgil and lucretius had employed cupid would have smiled again as the beginning of the amores pictures him and stolen away a foot from every line the art of love was preceded by a little work which must have created some excitement among roman beauties on the art of cosmetic de medicamine faciei only a fragment of this poem is preserved it opens with a panegyric on culture of which agriculture was the only sort appreciated in primitive days when tatius ruled the buxom sabine dame for feats of spinning known to rustic fame with country dainties piled the groaning shelf and dressed her corn land better than herself but these mid-victorian virtues are outgrown the rising generation in rome as possibly in any age has changed all that for tender mothers bear us tender girls who dress in gold and crimp their fragrant curls or cut them off or wave or bang or part in game complexions with a stroke of art o matre molli filia molior ovid has found his clientele and shown himself a connoisseur perhaps he was in collusion with the beauty shops of his time his lines have the ring of metrical advertisement like andrew lang's poem on matrimony at all events ovid's scholarship is profound he doubtless flowed on for many more verses than those that chance has transmitted to us the art of love is no less scholarly the title ars amatoria suggests not merely a course in intrigue but a text-book of the subject a companion volume to an ars grammatica or an ars rhetorica the poem opens with a panegyric on art which is needed in all the walks of life the skipper needs it on the deep the driver needs it in his speeding car the lover needs it above all ce sont des regles explains moliere's heroine to her rustic uncle tant en bonne gantrie on ne saurait dispenser it is no light task for the poet to instruct cupid still he is a boy after all so then for the invocation except that none is necessary the poet has been blessed with no special inspiration from the muses his subject is true it is also highly moral for he sings only of love sanctioned by the law so matrons long of skirt and high of brow of aunt there is nothing that concerns you here this is the demi-monde with its battles of love where all is fair the reader breathes a sigh of relief nothing to shock us here as in the amores the poet proceeds to a formal division of his subject matter a how to find her b how to win her c how to keep her nothing could be more comprehensive the first article can best be followed by an expert in topography for to show just where the willing maiden may be met ovid takes us all over rome along colonnades to the temples especially of the oriental and liberal divinities to the ancient forum and the fora lately added to the theatre ah there's fine hunting-ground as ants to grain and bees to flowers hie to scenic pictures do our damsels fly a double reason brings them to see they come and come they to be seen all praise to romulus founder of rome and first patron of the stage the poet diverts us into the tale of the stolen sabines so brilliantly and rapidly told that as in a simile of homer's we are transported from the main scene of action into a different world which is its own excuse for existence You, Romulus, knew how your men to pay.

Grant me such wage, and I'll enlist to-day, ends the poet.

He would have relished the by-scene of a worthy Sabine householder, as Xavier de Maistre pictures him, who after the event exclaims in despair, Dieu immortel, pourquoi n'ai-je point amené ma femme à la fête? so much for where to find her now how to win her precepts can guide us as lucretius based his philosophy on the universe on axioms beginning with the law of nihil ex nihilo so ovid starts blithely with a kind of omnia ex omnibus for first and foremost no woman is invulnerable omnes pose Woman seems more modest because man is a less skillful dissembler.

Our debt to Ovid.

what save the warning of an awful example does our age owe to a professed rou the author of a monument so dangerously typical of his degenerate society that the ruler of rome banished him to a frozen land and excluded his book from the libraries it would seem as if ovid's influence ended and ought to have ended then and there somehow it has survived in certain momentous periods of human history ovid's name has shone brightly among the immortals part of his fame of course is due to other works besides the art of love it may be further that augustus and the puritans of his time and the puritans of other times did not quite understand the qualities of that poem or the character of its author ovid is nothing if not subtle nor had he any desire to present his apologies to those who could not see what he was about moralists have put him on their black list again and again his art too has seemed to many steeped in rhetoric and thoroughly insincere according to mr palgrave no mean judge of letters he is amongst world-famous poets perhaps the least true to the soul of poetry to day in our own country certainly he is hardly more than a school-book he has surmounted the alps of the centuries ut declamatio fiat his own imagination could have contrived no more horrible metamorphosis than this but why should one try to revive him what is our debt to him i ovid in the world of poetry nimia mamator ingenii sui quintilian ingenio perii naso poeta mei ovid ovid's birth in the year forty three b c coincides with the beginning of a new age in roman literature virgil whatever he may have written in his youth was at work on his eclogues which both marked an epoch in pastoral poetry and presented a program of universal peace through roman imperialism that was destined to become the watchword of the age and the ideal of its ruler ovid was still in his teens when the georgics appeared in which the idealization of italy and a mirror of the prince not yet known as augustus were even more splendidly displayed when the greatest work of the poet the goal of his aspiration and the complete symbol of the augustan age had after his death in nineteen b c been given to the world ovid was already busied with poetry of a very different sort horace had described the roman world and the world of humanity in a new and genial satire he had enticed aeolian song into italian measures in a new and roman lyric and succeeded virgil as the laureate of rome ovid a youth of the rising generation did not aspire to this part he has been called in an admirable work in the present series the least roman of all the latin poets Perhaps we should allow Ovid to enlarge our ideas of what Roman means, for the old Romans were also Italians.

It is true, at any rate, that Ovid's poetry is primarily the expression of his own temperament, rather than that of some national desire into which his temperament has been caught up.

He writes rather as a citizen of the cosmos than as a subject of imperial Rome.

the life of our poet we see is bisected like the life of cassiodorus and of boccaccio it is natural to divide ovid's poetry and his temperament into two halves one gay and active one sombre and depressed But though exile was a grim reality of horror to Ovid, his genius was steady and normal in its development, and his strength was only gradually unnerved by the catastrophe of his latter days.

His successes and his downfall follow, as he saw, from the same cause, his wit.

section two of ovid and his influence by edward kennard rand this librivox recording is in the public domain part i the poet of love i corinna him who loves always one why should they call more constant than the man loves always all cowley et falsa moi pectus amor the roman love elegy whatever had preceded it in the later greek literature had a rich and varied history before ovid he mentions his precursors gallus tibullus propertius in a kind of apostolic succession and registers himself as fourth in the line catullus does not appear since technically he should not horace quite as justly does not cite him as his master in lyric poetry but though catullus eludes literary categories with a protean agility we as moderns must reckon with him in lyric of a kind that horace could not write and in the poetry of a love that none of his successors could feel jean de meun in the heart of the middle ages as he starts to complete the romance of the rose does not leave catullus out of his galaxy of the poets of love he proudly and truly adds his own name and that of guillaume dolores the author of the first part of the great medieval mirror of love and courtesy the truth is no less apparent to ovid who pays catullus his tribute in the proper place and despite the technical accuracy of ovid's account of the elegists it is also true that catullus should be acclaimed as the inventor of the roman love elegy the history of a passion the rehearsal of adventures and joys and woes is clearly the theme of catullus whatever his form of verse be called though his name may not head the royal four who will deny if we turn from the singers of love to their ladies that the line of lycoris delia cynthia and corinna descends straight from queen who would imagine if we consider ovid's words that he and catullus celebrated their sweethearts in a different kind of song the lines on corinna and those on lesbia seem of a piece if we would know the real history of roman elegy and understand both ovid and catullus but cherchez corinne she is hard to find the name is fictitious as ovid informs us what of her nature what of the poet's passion he tells us how it came he finds his couch hard and the bed-clothes restive a night of insomnia leaves him with aching bones at dawn he concludes that he is in love and reasons that the best way to stand it is to make no protest unconditional surrender to cupid let us celebrate a triumpho d'amore the little god riding in his car compliments confusion and craze parading in the van conscience and common sense trailing behind with shackled wrists and there is the poet the latest catch trudging along with his fellow-captives think back from this gay imagery to the crystal-clear passion of catullus i hate and love the cause i cannot tell but know the feeling and its torture well we need no formal proof that the poet is in love tibullus and propertius took love seriously a bit too seriously ovid's chief inspiration for something new in elegy came from horace who finds tibullus a trifle lachrymose and genially ridicules the lover and his woes horace also understands the admirably protective art of satirizing the third person in terms of the first he did not really blurt out the story of his love when the wine went to his head or really lay his plump body on the cruel sill for an unheeded serenade in the rain in such pictures as these he is having a little fun with the romantic lover as he appears in elegy and ovid is having more with an undeniable interest and perhaps some experience in intrigue with an incorrigible indecency and yet without a touch of the prurience of sterne he invents a mistress and a world of escapades partly to give his fancy reign and partly to indulge in sprightly travesties falsus amor imaginary amours is his name for this invention his amusement must have been vast when one roman dame let it be whispered that she was the genuine corinna let us follow some of the episodes in our lover's uncertain career after his capture the new victim takes vows of perpetual fidelity to his only sweetheart and promises her through his songs the immortality of the famous heroines of myth in the next poem he blithely instructs her how to deceive her husband at a banquet that they all attend then corinna comes to him for a mid-day revel may the gods send many mid-days of this kind and now the lover is singing a sweetly elaborate serenade what is technically known as a closed-door serenade but it has no effect on the lady or on the boorish concierge our hero thus flouted is desperate small wonder that in a fit of indignation he grabbed his sweetheart and scratched her face a poem records his utter repentance and humiliation then follows a dreadful scene witnessed by the poet behind the arras the hag dipsus procurus and type of all evil instructs his darling in the art of love the creature's no man is her omen dipsey is her name and tipsy is her nature ne'er has aurora gilt the morning skies that dipsey sighted her with sober eyes she explains the social standards of the age the slattern sabine under tatius's rule kept but one lover in her simple school while mars abroad fighteth our foemen down good venus reigns within neas town our beauties are at play and she is chaste whom none has asked or if she's not strait-laced a rustic hoyden she herself will ask casta est quam nemo rogawit that motto heads one of the stories of prosper merime and is elaborated wittily by congreve it is not the poet's doctrine oh no dipsus is the speaker but from other poems it is fairly apparent that rusticitas is the ultimate word for moral evil physical evil and spiritual evil finally when the hag exhorts her pupil always to demand pay for her favors and in particular to set no commercial value on the only coin that the poet can pay his verses then his righteous indignation can stand no more he leaps from his covert and pronounces on the beldam the most awful imprecation that mind can conceive homeless and poor by every god accurst have winters lengthy and perpetual thirst a dirge now follows on the loss of his mistress's hair in consequence of a violent application of cosmetic but weep no more lady weep no more augustus has vanquished the sygambri and there should soon come from the north a new supply of wigs in your favourite shade of blonde now germany shall send you caitiff hair thus shall my darling in the triumph share as beaux stand round with admiration big blushing you'll say my charm is but a wig some dimpled gretchen from beyond the rhine merits the fame that once alas was mine such is our lover's career after many successes after loving two sweethearts at the same time after loving with undivided affection each girl that he sees after many buffetings and floutings he would fain resign he has had much to bear it is not pleasant to sing a closed-door serenade to your mistress while the rival is within or to be observed by the latter as he comes away waste no more honeyed words fell charm of yore i'm not so foolish as i was before and yet the battle of hate versus love torments him i cannot live or with you or without i think i know my will and still i doubt if only she were either less beautiful or more virtuous but either wish is vain ah well there is no escape your mine whatever else decree my fate will you by will i love or forced by fate but no let freedom's breeze my broad sails fill i'll nolens wolens will love rule my will this is a complex sort of freedom worthy a place among the metaphysical conceits of donne or cowley there is an unexpectedly calvinistic ingredient in ovid's erotic philosophy he finds no difficulty in being damned for the glory of his mistress to die in her embraces that is the happy end Then at the grave some sobbing friend shall say, Just as he lived, our Ovid passed away.

Section 3 of Ovid and His Influence by Edward Kennard Rand.

Perillus is known to classical literature, notably to Ovid and Pliny, as the inventor for the tyrant Phalaris of a brazen instrument of torture shaped like a bull, of which he was condemned by the patron to be the first victim.

Footnote For Ovid's mention of Perillus, see Ars Amatoria 1.653.

In Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, 1634, page 504, the story of Perillus runs thus As for Perillus, there is no man commendeth him for his workmanship, but holdeth him more cruel than Phalaris the tyrant, who set him a work, for that he devised a brazen bull to roast and fry condemned persons.

In assuring the tyrant that after the fire was made under it, they would, when they cried, seem to bellow like a bull and so rather make sport than move compassion.

Footnote.

For Ovid's mention of Perillus, see Ars Amatoria, one, six hundred and fifty-three.

In Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, sixteen thirty-four, page five hundred and four, the story of Perillus runs thus, quote, As for Perillus, there is no man commendeth him for his workmanship, but holdeth him more cruel than Phalaris the tyrant, who set him a work, for that he devised a brazen bull to roast and fry condemned persons.

In assuring the tyrant that after the fire was made under it, they would, when they cried, seem to bellow like a bull, and so rather make sport than move compassion.