Expanding Eyes: A Visionary Education

Ovid’s interest in erotic psychology led him to the pattern of the inaccessible object of male desire, seen in the myths of Apollo and Daphne, Pan and Syrinx, Jove and Io, Atalanta and Hippomenes, Tereus and Philomela. Men’s irrational yearning and sometimes misogynist anger over the lost feminine, which was originally the mother.

For us, Ovid is still relevant for his exploration of the psychology of love. The non-Ovidian story of Oedipus reflects the unconscious longing for the mother, but Ovid explores how other mythological males pursue inaccessible feminine objects of desire. Apollo and Daphne.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is organized in 3 ways: (1) thematically, according to the theme of metamorphosis, or change; (2) chronologically, from Creation to Ovid’s own time; (3) psychologically, according to a typology of human desire, based on the paradigm of the inaccessible object.

The Fall interpreted psychologically was the shattering of the unity of all things, in which the subject or self is alienated from a whole objective environment. This leads to two fallen attitudes: fear and hate, resulting in aggression; and desire to pursue and reunite. Ovid: the poet of fallen desire, the Bad Boy of the Classical tradition.

The forbidden tree in Genesis is identified with Christ’s cross, but the image is echoed in Odin’s hanging on the world tree, in the sacrificed vegetation deities called dying gods. The water of death is the Flood, the Red Sea, also Leviathan, identified with Jonah’s fish. On a symbolic level, we are drowned, like Atlantis.

Paradise is a state of harmony and unity. The Fall or decline from the Golden Age is a fall from unity into disunity, conflict instead of harmony, fear and hate instead of love in three contexts, natural, human, and spiritual. Demonic parodies of ideal imagery. The tree and water of life and the tree and water of death.

The Song of Songs, the Bible’s main treatment of human love, though later allegorized as the love of Christ for his Church. The woman’s body identified with the paradisal garden. Two lovers seek each other and finally unite. Ascribed to Solomon, but may go back to old fertility rituals.

Biblical tradition is wary of the pagan tendency to worship nature and of human love, so much of our imagery of Eros comes from the Classical side. Red and white: the colors of Eros on all three levels of love, sexual, romantic, and spiritual.

The J account beginning in Genesis 2:4 of the Garden. The Classical counterpart of the Ages of Man. Originally four ages, as in Ovid. Hesiod adds a 5th, the age of heroes. Decline: each age is worse than the previous. Nostalgia for “paradise lost.” The dangers of nostalgia, but also paradise as a positive model for the good life.

In many Creation myths, a mystery above interacts with a mystery below, and something comes into being in the middle. This is true in the two Biblical versions of Creation, P and J, also in the Classical versions of Hesiod and Ovid. But also in world mythology. The interaction may be (1) sexual; (2) by combat; (3) by emergence from below reaching towards the above.

Thinking of Creation involves us in paradoxes of being and non-being, as shown in two famous Creation hymns from the Rig Veda. But in these, as in the Biblical and Classical myths, something above interacts with something below, and out of that union something is born in the middle.

Creation commonly means giving form to some material substance. We need a word for a direct emergence either out of God’s spiritual nature or out of some kind of creative void or Nothing. My word for this is emanation. The Son of God was “begotten, not made”—he emanates from the Father. In Hesiod, the heavens and earth emerge spontaneously from Chaos—which means “void.”

Both the Bible and Greek mythology originate in revelation, a visionary mode beyond ordinary knowledge. Hierophanies, revelations of the sacred. The shamans. The Biblical prophets. The Classical oracles and soothsayers—but also the poets.

Beginning an attempt to look at the two sources of Western cultural tradition. The focus will be on the myths and metaphors of Biblical and Classical texts rather than the various ideologies that have used them as vehicles for systems of power. The stories and images that have inspired countless works of literature and art, that haunt us beyond belief or commitment.

This marks 5 years of this podcast. A thank you to my listeners, to my tech support, and a celebration in the form of 6 birthday poems by Marilyn Hacker, Milton, May Sarton, and Dylan Thomas. The theme of time passing and self judgment.

A first recognition scene produces the happy ending for the young generation. Perdita is discovered to be Leontes’ daughter and can be married to Florizel. A second recognition scene is shown onstage, in what Paulina claimed was a sculpture of Hermione steps off her pedestal, and the older generation are reunited. The bittersweet ending of tragicomedy.

Florizel and Perdita follow the standard New Comedy plot of young love defying the will of patriarchal elders, here with a social class element. Camillo directs the couple to Sicilia and goes with them. Florizel exchanges clothes with Autolycus for disguise, enabling Autolycus to take the Shepherd to the King.

Perdita and Polixenes debate whether it is permissible to crossbreed flowers. Embedded in this debate are three kinds of conflict still with us today: of elite and lower social class, of elite and popular art, of Christianity and paganism. Shakespeare’s attempt at a liberal humanist position.

Time speaks at the opening of Act 4, saying he is the spirit of change. Sixteen years have passed, and a grown-up Perdita is seeing Florizel, the son of Polixenes. The sheepshearing festive, actually an inset court masque, because this play was part of the celebration of the marriage of James I’s daughter. Debate over social class issues.

Leontes puts Hermione on trial. The oracle of Apollo pronounces her innocent. Leontes says the oracle is wrong. Immediately Mamillius is reported dead, and Leontes is exorcised of his mad paranoia. Antigonus abandons Perdita on the seacoast of Bohemia, but is killed by a bear. The baby is found by a shepherd and his son.

Leontes suffers from a kind of paranoia that Shakespeare hints has a psychological origin, but is also a way of talking of “original sin,” the predisposition to see cynically and reductively. Paulina plays the role of female prophet confronting a tyrant king, leaves the newborn child. Leontes commands it be exposed.

Numerical symbolism in the play: the number 23 and the theme of time. Leontes arrests Hermione despite his entire court telling him he is mistaken, throws her in prison. The psychology of a conspiracy theorist: “All’s true that is mistrusted.”

Shakespeare’s late career, in the new theatre of Blackfriars, with a new genre, romance. A new version of an age-old genre, the tale of wonders. The theme of redemption over a long span of time. The mad jealousy of Leontes, who for no reason thinks his wife is unfaithful with his best friend Polixenes.

The last event of the play is Othello killing himself as a judgment upon himself. The imagery of a Last Judgment in the play. The difficult paradox in Christianity: punishment or forgiveness, justice or mercy. Desdemona refuses to judge Othello: how do we judge him. Is his final speech an honest judgment of himself?

At the end of Act 4, Emilia and Desdemona debate men. Emilia’s wonderful pre-feminist speech about how women’s feelings are as important as men’s—including revenge when men mistreat them. Versus Desdemona—is she too good to be true? Act 5, like Act 1, in darkness. Roderigo and Cassio wound each other, Iago kills Roderigo. Othello’s great speech before smothering Desdemona.