Ovid was the poet who glorified love in his poem: “The main subject of the poem, if one has to specify one, is love rather than metamorphosis” (Galinsky 97). The Metamorphoses is a collection of myths about the transformation of gods and ancient heroes into animals and plants. The metamorphoses in the poem are the result of love affairs.
In general, there are about two hundred transformations which are represented in two hundred myths. Love, as the key image of the poem, is the main element of being. Still, according to Ovid love is the eternal source of conflicts and is the strongest manifestation of a person, it is the essence of life and its pivot. That is why unrequited passion, the death of a sweetheart, and parting are constant sources of torment in The Metamorphoses. Even gods can feel the pain of love: they are highly anthropomorphic creatures.
Thereby, Ovid ridiculed gods, as long as they are attached to the same passions as people, and behave like people who are very often fooled by the laws of love. Nobody could avoid Cupid’s arrows. However, the grief of people in love is one of the most preferred Ovid’s subjects. Nevertheless, the author represents love not only as of the feeling which encourages gods and people to make devoted actions. For Ovid love may be a force that makes people and gods forget about moral principles and turn into a self-destructive feeling. Moreover, metamorphoses in Ovid’s poem touch not only the characters of the presented stories; they also influence faces of love. The poem depicts a distinct ascending motion from the passions of Olympic Gods to devoted kinds of mortal love. Still, this advancement is twisting enough, thereby, we single out only several and the most substantial of them in this work.
The story of Narcissus and Echo is almost the first step in these stairs of love philosophy. The tale presents us a story of two creatures who cannot get in touch with each other as long as Narcissus loves nobody except himself, while Echo cannot say anything besides the last words of those who speak nearby. The last fact may also symbolize love which is so strong that absorbs the one in love, makes him/her forget about everything besides his/her passion, and lose his/her personality. This kind of love may turn one into a shadow of his/her affection. There is a parallel between a shadow and an echo, as long as they both devotedly follow somebody.
Naturally corresponding to the functions, which her name imposes on her, Echo follows after Narcissus and becomes a symbol of those who love unreciprocated and secretly. Still, Ovid gave her the possibility to express her feelings, and her feelings are rejected. She is crushed and turns to a voice people know as an echo. Still, Narcissus also feels the sufferings of unrequited love, which may also be called destructive self-love. His sorrows do not stop even in Hades where the young man obsessively admires his face reflected in Styx waters. At the same time, Greeks, and then Romans interpreted daffodils or narcissus flowers as narcotic (The Metamorphoses. Selected Stories in Verse 27-32).
In The Metamorphoses Ovid speaks about the difference between divine and mortal love, which is presented in the myths about Jupiter’s passions and the story of Pomona and Vertumnus. The author shows two kinds of love, love-coercion, which is often dictated by Olympic gods, and love which appears to the laws of mortals. Speaking about God’s passions one should not forget that they should control the mythological world and thereby, the aesthetic world of the Poem. Still, Ovid does not believe in the impeccability of Olympians. Their almightiness often leads to tyranny. Disobedience is not the only thing to be punished. Olympian gods severely punished arrogance as well as persecuted mortals who displeased them.
Jupiter lacks the commitment and tragic sense of love that human beings exhibit, and he has compromised not only that love but also the very meaning of pudor, as we have seen, by the rape… For Ovid Jupiter regularly lacks self-control, and a fortiori the other gods let their emotions dominate them. (Anderson 16, 170)
If Jupiter wants something he takes it even if he has to deceive his attachment. Although coercion in love is included in The Metamorphoses Ovid cherishes kindly feelings for victims of compulsion. Jupiter comes to Callisto, a votary of the goddess Diana, and seduces her. Still, he had to turn into Callisto’s goddess to gain her love. Still, Jupiter’s attitude towards love affairs is not alien to other gods. Describing Hermes’s passion for Herse Ovid describes him as a hunting hawk that is afraid to touch meat until people are nearby.
Still, the story of Pomona and Vertumnus tells us about the triumph of love which is gained by ordinary, human steps. It presents us with a wood nymph Pomona who is a patroness of the fruit garden. One day a Roman god, Vertumnus falls in love with her. Still, he behaves not like other gods who incline a woman to love him in a manner of constraint. Whereas he is god, he expresses love as if he is a mortal man. Vertumnus tries to please Pomona in all possible ways. One day he transforms himself into a gardener, the next day Vertumnus is a plowman, the next day he is a fisherman, etc.
Once, he turns himself into an old woman-pander and tries to persuade her to choose Vertumnus, himself, as she intended. He promises her that Vertumnus would love her, she would be the only passion in his life, he would fulfill all her wishes, Vertumnus would live all his life with her, etc. Moreover, he tells Pomona the Greek legend about Anaksaret, a rich woman, and poor man Iphis, who fell in love with her, but unrequitedly. As a result, the man committed suicide because of it, and Anaksaret was turned into stone for that. All in all, Pomona reciprocated Vertumnus’s love:
Relent, fair nymph, and with a kind regret,
Think of his Vertumnus weeping at your feet.
A tale attend, though Cyprus known, to prove
How Venus once revenged neglected love. (Ovid: The Metamorphoses, Book X-XV. The Epistles 152)
Vertumnus deserved a favorable answer as long as he was devoted to his beloved woman. He chose a human way to get the desirable person, not divine. For Ovid, it is the most devoted kind of love, when one rejects rules of his/her nature to be closer to the beloved one. The reciprocal love, which is born as a result of the long courting of the god and his desire to share his life with a woman, testifies that the poem completes with the triumph of a human. The poem presents us a long way from coerced and violent love to self-destructive, selfish one, at the same time it shows unrequited devoted love and then love which is an evolutional step from coercion to adoration and courting.
Works Cited
Anderson, William Scovil. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Print.
Galinsky, Karl. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: an Introduction to the Basic Aspects. California: University of California Press, 1975. Print.
Ovid. Ovid: The Metamorphoses, Book X-XV. The Epistles. Oxford: A. J. Valpy, 1833. Print.
Ovid. The Metamorphoses. Selected Stories in Verse. New York: Courier Dover Publications, 2003. Print.