Tristia

We talked in class about the exile of Ovid to Tomi, where he was to spend the last 10 years of his life, miserable. One consolation was that he wrote poetic letters to absent family and friends. They remain today in a collection titled Tristia. And while they are all on the subject of Ovid’s lamentation, they are actually pretty entertaining! Since Ovid is basically one of the most influential writers you’ve never heard of, I thought it would be interesting to look up some of his other works. Here’s and example, which is the first poem in the collection:

Book TI.I:1-68 The Poet to His Book: Its Nature

Little book, go without me – I don’t begrudge it – to the city.
Ah, alas, that your master’s not allowed to go!
Go, but without ornament, as is fitting for an exile’s:
sad one, wear the clothing of these times.
You’ll not be cloaked, dyed with hyacinthine purple –
that’s no fitting colour to go mourning –
no vermilion title, no cedar-oiled paper,
no white bosses, ‘horns’ to your dark ‘brow’.
Happier books are decorated with these things:
you instead should keep my fate in mind.
No brittle pumice to polish your two edges,
so you’re seen ragged, with straggling hair.
No shame at your blots: he who sees them
will know they were caused by my tears.
Go, book, greet the dear places, with my words:
I’ll walk among them on what ‘feet’ I can.
If, in the crowd, there’s one who’s not forgot me,
if there’s one, perhaps, who asks how I am,
say I’m alive, but deny that I am well:
that I’m even alive is a gift from a god.
Otherwise, be silent – let him who wants more read –
beware of saying by chance what isn’t needed!
The reader, prompted, will soon recall my guilt,
the crowd’s voice make me a common criminal.
Beware of defending me, despite the biting words:
a poor case will prove too much for advocacy.
Find someone who sighs about my exile,
and reads your verses with wet eyes,
and silently wishes, unheard by enemies,
my punishment lightened by a gentler Caesar.
For myself, I wish whomever it is no ill,
who asks the gods to be kind to suffering:
what he wishes, let that be: the Leader’s anger done,
grant me the right to die in my native country.
Though you obey, book, you may still be blamed,
and called inferior to the flower of my genius.
The judge’s duty is to search out time
and circumstance. You’re safe regarding time.
Fine-spun verses come from a tranquil mind:
my days are clouded by sudden miseries.
Verse asks for a writer with leisure and privacy:
I’m tossed by winter gales, the storms, the sea.
Every fear harms verse: I’m lost and always
afraid of a sword slicing at my throat.
Even what I’ve created, will amaze just critics:
they’ll read it, whatever it is, with indulgence.
Set Homer, the Maeonian, in such danger,
his genius would fail among such troubles.
Go then, book, untroubled by fame,
don’t be ashamed to displease the reader.
Fortune’s not so kind to me now
for you to take account of any praise.
Secure, I was touched by desire for fame,
and I burned with ardour to win a name.
Enough now if I don’t hate those studies, verses
that hurt me, so that wit brought me exile.
You go for me, you, who can, gaze at Rome.
If the gods could grant now that I were my book!
And because you’re a foreigner in a mighty city
don’t think you come as a stranger to the crowd.
Though you lack a title, they’ll know the style:
though wishing to deceive, it’s clear you’re mine.
But enter quietly so my verse won’t hurt you,
it’s not as popular as once it was.
If anyone thinks you shouldn’t be read
because you’re mine, and thrusts you away,
say: ‘Look at the title: I’m not love’s master:
that work’s already got what it deserved.’

After reading a more poetic form of Ovid’s writing, I could really see how he would have inspired Shakespeare. The flow, the word choice, the sadness and lamentation imbedded in the dialogue with the book greatly engages our emotions. Switch a couple words around and this could easily be mistaken for one of Shakespeare’s love stories. Ovid could just have easily been talking to one of his children or some lost love, but the fact that it is a book clearly displays the passion with which he wrote and regarded his writing, and only emphasises the total desperation he feels with regards to his exile. It’s like he makes himself his own tragic hero.

Scanning the rest of the poems, although one would think he would run out of things to wail about, he writes about his wife, his journey to exile, his odyssey, being sick of exile, spring in Tomi, etc. Actually a lot of them seem to be quite similar. In any case, I find these poems completely fascinating, and the way they serve as like a memoir or a tragic autobiography, totally genius.