An Imaginary Life: assignment

The class theme is “All that is past possesses the present”. This novel connects to this in many ways. Most obvious is when Ovid begins to recall memories from his childhood, but truer and clearer than he had remembered before. He described it as if “I were being handed a new past, that leads, as I follow it out, to a present in which I appear out of my old body as a new and other self” (95). There are unknowns in his past, and as he stumbles upon things he never knew or never realized he could know, these unknowns come streaming back, and he is conscious of the past he never before conceived to be relevant.

Ovid talks about becoming part of the universe, letting the universe in. The Child is outside himself, his “energy distributed among the beasts and birds whose life he shares, among leaves, water, grasses, clouds, thunder-whose existence he can be at home because they hold, each of them, some particle of his spirit” (pg 96). We are made up of more than we know; we are possessed by more than we are aware of. Ovid realizes this and says when the spirit of all things migrates back into us we will then be whole. He chooses to exist in a world of simplicity and observation. He chooses to become more than himself, and in that pursuit transforms into the truest human he could be.

In this class we read all about transformation. The transformation of stubborn rulers into tragic hero’s, domestic women into radical activists, perfect growing seasons to inhospitable drought and famine, enemies to friends, humans beings into trees and animals and stone. Is it going too far to say that in these transformations our characters are becoming what they were destined to become? Is it a natural part of their fate, as it was for Ovid? We can look for clues, like the prophecies of Tiresias (predicting Creon’s fate, Pentheus’ death), that show us that what has happened was inevitable. And through all these transformations we see much tragedy, and is it still as tragic if it was meant to happen?

Ovid’s story begins as a tragedy and becomes the exact opposite. He goes from being miserably exiled, to not only accepting his fate, but reveling in it as it his “true” fate. It all seems so right, the village, his regression into nature, and finally with the crossing of the Ister he enters into “the final reality”. There is no more time, he stops counting the days, is not thinking of any final destination. All things will continue on, but he will not. His transformation was necessary. His end came naturally.

Isn’t that what we are attempting to discover or become aware of? That is, our existence is in the midst of everything that has ever existed and will ever exist. Ovid exists in every moment in the end “It is summer. It is spring. I am immeasurably happy. I am three years old. I am sixty. I am six. I am there.” (pg152). He is where? He is everywhere—in his past, his present, in the earth. He is whole.

When we read about our past, when we discover that everything that is happening now has already happened and been happening forever, when we find the roots of all our stories and fantasies, when after all that we are still curious, we come ever closer to being whole too.