Philology Fix

#philologydust #ovid #metamorphoses

Pyramus dies with blood that spurts like a Roman sewer:

et iacuit resupinus humo: cruor emicat alte, non aliter, quam cum vitiato fistula plumbo scinditur et tenui stridente foramine lognas eiaculatur aquas atque ictibus aera rumpit.

Here's Raeburn: As he lay stretched out on the earth, his blood leapt up in a long jet, just as a spurt from a waterpipe, bursting because of its faulty leadwork, gushes out through a tiny crack to create a hissing fountain of water and cuts the air with its impact.

And here's Humphries: As he lay there on the ground, the spouting blood Leaped high, just as a pipe sends water spurting Through a small hissing opening, when broken With a flaw in the lead, and all the air is sprinkled.

That's some serious poetry chops, to make a burst pipe the metaphorical domain for murder. It's ridiculous and horrific and the kind of thing that Ovid uses to show off his mad skills.

Nerd stuff: There's a cool sound effect here. Hissing and sighing more than anything else: “alte non aliter” and then later “aquas atque . . . aera” (that last one is the breathy word for air, three syllabus — ah -ehr -ah; it is also a noticeably Greek-y word amidst a lot of good solid Latin)

Interspersed in these lines is Ovid hitting the words for spurt/hit with a clever (and gloriously Ovidian) bit of verbal gymnastics. “iacuit” (he lies down) becomes eiaculatur (spurts out), a word that may be an Ovidian coinage, and then is rounded out by “ictibus” (“with the blows/spurts”): “the air [aera] is broken [rumpit] by the hits [ictibus].“) So... lying down becomes spurting out becomes blows. The twist is that ictibus would normally refer to something like a sword or arrow that has a blow that draws blood. So Ovid transfers the expected referent and makes the image about the result of the blow rather than referring to the blow of the weapon. The blood is “hitting” the air like a weapon would hit a body (in the inversion of terms here). (and note that there is of course a linguistic relationship between iacuit (lie) and iaculatur (throw) even though they are in classical Latin considered different words and may seem particularly different in English. i.e. something that was thrown now lies (Causative vs. Resultive forms). But it is completely in keeping with Ovid to riff on etymology like this.)

That's all to say that there could be a sound effect of sorts, but it doesn't seem obviously humorous. However, note Anderson on this passage, who thinks that the simile is overdone and an indication of Ovid inviting us to laugh at his internal narrator:

However, she [i.e. the internal narrator at this moment] picks a simile that is notably anachronistic and, because of its technical nature, flagrantly “unpoetic.” . . . Earlier critics who have simply been shocked and disapproving, and therefore attributed to the poet an artistic mistake or bad taste, must be regarded as themselves mistaken. Since the archaic Boeotian could not have known about the Roman water system (to which Ovid probably refers), I believe that he is intruding the anachronism and the technical unpoetic details as a way of sabotaging the Minyeid's naive narrative. This spurt of blood turns into a ridiculous geyser that demands a corps of plumbers. We don't' really care how precisely the blood struck the berries — the less detail, the better, on the whole — but the narrator seems more interested in this trivial aetiology than in the love story that is its main justification for Ovid's audience. (on lines 122-24)

Anderson is wrong at every point here. His note betrays his taste, not Ovid's, namely that aetiology is “trivial” and that the technical is “unpoetic”. (Ovid's clear affinity for and dependence on predecessors like Callimachus and Nicander are constant reminder that Ovid's taste is not our taste. And Anderson wages war on “trivial aetiology” throughout his commentary. He seems to think that the explanations which are throughout Ovid's work are somehow external intrusions on the poetic whole.) The question of anachronism is more difficult and there may be something to the point that the anachronism is a wink and a nod to make the narrator humorous or absurd. But the entire premise of the stories that the Minyads tell is absurd and well beyond the kind of thing we might expect them to know. I think, contra Anderson, that Ovid is delighting his audience by making the Minyads into professional mythographers and astoundingly good (perhaps a bit over the top) poets in his own image. We are supposed to marvel at Ovid more than anything.

But of course there is debate. Narratological analyses on this passage complexify things, but I'm not sure that actually gets us much further on the question of whether it is humorous.

In any case, the alliteration and such certainly does not need to be taken humorously. I read it as very much in keeping with Ovid's regular “clever” style, with a nod towards very traditional ways of dealing with scenes like this. e.g. Homer, Callimachus, et al. use similar sound play when dealing with rivers, air, and the like. Things that flow or burst or hiss are particularly fertile ground for this sort of effect.

Ovid's signature gesture is the mic drop. “Blood and sewers? Sure, I can pull that off.”