This new English translation of Rosati’s 1983 Narciso e Pigmalione. Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio (reprinted in 2016) by the author, which also includes an updated introduction surveying recent studies of Ovidian aesthetics and intermediality, makes a highly important and influential study more readily accessible to a new generation of students and scholars. Rosati’s 1983 book represents a solid and penetrating work,[1] ‘advances our understanding of this great poem’,[2] clarifies and deepens known, forgotten, or new aspects of Ovid,[3] and provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of Ovid’s narrative technique.[4] Narcissus & Pygmalion provides readers with everything they need to begin thinking about these two key episodes within the Metamorphoses – texts and translations, detailed yet thoroughly readable critical discussions, and an indication of the study’s place within the broader scholarly tradition. Rosati frames Ovid as ‘an inquisitive analyst of the manifold aspects of reality’, who ‘revels in describing the paradoxical forms in which it can manifest itself’ (p. 130) within a poem that ‘declares its own relative fictitious nature, its own status as appearance’ (p. 171). The importance of making such a work more widely accessible (particularly to Anglophone undergraduate students) cannot be overstated. In fact, as the last four decades of scholarship on Ovid’s Metamorphoses have shown, it is impossible to write about Narcissus, Pygmalion, and related issues without engaging with either Rosati’s work, or scholarship which has followed in his critical wake. This review seeks to present, survey, and contextualise this new Narcissus and Pygmalion for those Anglophone readers who, although likely aware of the book’s subsequent scholarly ramifications, may be approaching Rosati’s work as a whole for the first time.
Rosati’s updated Introduction goes some way to address criticisms of the 1983 edition’s failure to incorporate much post-1975 bibliography.[5] In addition to (re)framing the two myths in the ‘digital context’, Rosati reflects on ‘the enduring usefulness of the themes discussed in Narcissus & Pygmalion’ and some key developments in and ‘potential stimuli for further growth of Ovidian studies’ (p. 2), surveying some major works on visuality and reflection, the simulacrum and the power of the gaze, narcissism and intertextuality, and self-love and the construction of the other. Here, Rosati demonstrates an impressive humility in his reflections on how later works might lead to a re-calibration or reassessment of his own approaches to the two myths. However, some significant intellectual milestones do not feature. Joseph Solodow’s The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1988) is particularly conspicuous by its absence given its discussions of the poem’s narrator, art, and disbelief, as is Stephen Wheeler’s reader-response approach to the poem in A Discourse of Wonders: Audience and Performance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1999). We would also expect mention of more recent major works on the gaze and phantasia within and beyond Ovid, such as Patricia Salzmann-Mitchell’s A Web of Fantasies: Gaze, Image, and Gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2005), Helen Lovatt’s The Epic Gaze: Vision, Gender and Narrative in Ancient Epic (2013), and Anne Sheppard’s The Poetics of Phantasia: Imagination in Ancient Aesthetics (2014). I also wonder whether some of the works which are surveyed here might have been integrated (at least into the notes) throughout the book to indicate the subsequent critical trajectories taken in the wake of Rosati’s work. For instance, we might expect further references throughout to Maurizio Bettini’s The Portrait of the Lover (1999) given its abundance of Ovidian exempla and analysis of major themes explored in Narcissus & Pygmalion, and to Philip Hardie’s Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion (2002), considering its substantial discussions of both myths and broader evaluation of the evocation of phantasia (further examples noted below).
Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the Narcissus and Pygmalion myths respectively, beginning with full texts and translations of the relevant passages followed by overviews of the myths’ origins, developments, and interpretations within and beyond antiquity (19-37, 64-70). Chapter 1 (Narcissus or Literary Illusion) then goes on to consider the Narcissus myth – which features many of the poem’s central motifs – as ‘a prism through which to read the Metamorphoses’ (p. 63). As Rosati masterfully demonstrates, this passage presents us with ‘theoretical and literary considerations that contribute to our understanding not only of this individual episode, but of Ovid’s entire work’ (p. 64). After outlining the myth’s positioning within Metamorphoses 3 and its links to the broader narrative, Rosati explores the centrality of illusion both within in the episode and as part of Ovid’s own narrative strategy. He demonstrates that the Metamorphoses’ narratorial voice represents ‘a ‘true point of view’ relative to the altered psychology of the characters’ (p. 59), which develops an understanding between author and reader to which the fictional character is not privy. For Rosati, Ovid’s account of Narcissus’ illusion ‘tends towards a discourse on literary illusion’, and he argues that ‘the literary dimension is … a reflection of the true reality a partial, relative prospective experience’, which also needs the reader’s belief in order to exist’ (p. 60, my emphasis). Cross-reference to some important works cited in Rosati’s updated introduction (e.g. Bartsch (2006) on the philosophical dimensions of Ovid’s Narcissus, Rimell (2006) on the active role of the mirror, and Elsner (2007) on the inseparability of self and representation) could have been helpful here. The close of the chapter takes us beyond the Metamorphoses, considering Ovid composing poetry in exile as a ‘post-Narcissus … rapt in admiration of his own virtuosity, who basks in the reflected wonderment of his audience’ (p. 63).
Chapter 2 (Pygmalion or the Poetics of Fiction) turns to Ovid’s rendition of the Pygmalion myth, a story which for Rosati represents an ‘illustration of the illusionistic power of art’, but which is ‘not a manifesto of Ovid’s poetics’ (p. 76, emphasis mine). Again, Rosati begins his analysis with a discussion of the episode’s positioning (within Orpheus’ narration in Metamorphoses 10), its various links to other stories, and the implications of its structural organisation for our understanding of its negotiation(s) of illusion and reality. Rosati then moves to a comparison with the Narcissus illusion treated in the preceding chapter, stressing in particular the contrasts between the individuals’ varying levels of consciousness, self-awareness, and control. While Rosati notes the thematic parallels between the Pygmalion’s ‘illustration of the illusionistic power of art’, he (rightly) warns against a ‘mechanical, direct application’ of this episode as a manifesto for Ovid’s entire poem (p. 76). Again, references to works mentioned in the Introduction as important developments in our understanding of Ovid’s Pygmalion (e.g. Elsner (2007) on Ovid’s treatment of the myth as an allegory for reading and Stoichita’s (2008) extra-mimetic considerations of Pygmalion) could have been useful. As in Chapter 1, Rosati then broadens his critical horizons beyond the Pygmalion story to the Metamorphoses as a whole to discuss the theme of nature and art, its importance for the epic, and the cues it offers for an analysis of Ovidian aesthetics. Rosati surveys Ovid’s explorations of the primary function of art to ‘modify the basic elements of reality’ (p. 81-2) against the backdrop of the ‘somewhat anti-naturalistic attitude’ which characterises key aspects of Ovid’s contemporary world and instances of a broader ‘anti-naturalistic trend’ within the Imperial age (p. 83-4), before examining the ‘underlying convergence’ of such tendencies with the theory of phantasia (p.90). Given the focus of the chapter’s closing section on literature as the ‘locus of fabrication’ (p. 100) and Rosati’s comments on literature’s ‘presumed complicity with the reader in the ‘illusion’ to which both lend credit through the literary experience’ (p. 100), I do wonder if a slightly stronger link should have been made to the preceding chapter’s robust discussion of illusion and immersion.
Chapter 3 (The Spectacle of Appearances), the longest chapter of the book, is concerned with the spectacle of metamorphosis itself. Rosati begins by critiquing and challenging Fränkel’s discussions of ‘wavering identity’ within the epic, a concept made up of a ‘series of psychological phenomena’ including ‘the dissolution of psychological individuality’ and the ‘indeterminacy of the boundaries of a subject’ (p. 102). His reconsideration presents close analyses of episodes featuring motifs closely associated with metamorphosis – illusion, deception, and disguise – and argues instead for the acknowledgement of the striking disparity between the (altered) external aspect and (unchanged) internal psychology of the metamorphosed subject. Rosati then turns to Ovid’s focus on the intermediate stages of metamorphosis and curiosity regarding ‘that indeterminate space between the old and new realities’ (p. 136). After showing that Ovidian metamorphosis always occurs with a witness present in episodes ‘marked by the qualities of mirum’ (p. 146) and which fulfil the criteria of ekphrastic narratives, Rosati shows that Ovid achieves a ‘poetics of spectacularity’ through the visualisation of these events (p. 154). Rosati extends this discussion to the epic’s linguistic and stylistic registers, focussing on key phenomena – various kinds of word play, manipulations of proverbial expressions, and metaphor – which mirror the overarching principles at work within the Metamorphoses. For Rosati, then, Ovid creates ‘a sort of spectacle of words, an entertaining exploration of the multiform and sometimes mutually contradictory aspects of language’ (p. 170). The chapter closes with a brief final concluding section reflecting on Rosati’s overarching themes and interpretations. Here, we take another step outwards to momentarily consider the deceptive powers of literature, powers which Ovid’s poem declares proudly and overtly. However, the fleeting reference to other contemporary artistic phenomena including Pompeian wall paintings (p.172) is more than a little jarring at this point given the lack of space (or indeed scope) for further elaboration here and the topic’s absence from the meat of the book’s preceding discussions. As such, reference to Elsner’s (2007) wider-reaching work on visuality in Roman culture – highlighted in the Introduction – would have proven helpful. Even so, these last few pages certainly give the sense that we are exiting the world of the Metamorphoses, coming up for air from a world of deception, illusion, and error.
Even almost forty years after its original publication, Rosati’s book remains powerful and highly relevant. An English translation of this major critical milestone in Ovidian studies is most welcome, and will certainly be making its way onto my own undergraduate reading lists. The generous provision of Latin texts and translations (including substantial passages), as well as detailed footnotes unpacking and critiquing other weighty works of scholarship, makes the work highly accessible to readers of all levels. Rosati’s guiding voice runs as a constant reassuring thread between chapters and their subsections in our journey through Ovid’s labyrinthine literary world, rather like Ovid’s authorial voice breaking the surface of his illusory narrative (though the clarity of prose never leads us into error!). Rosati achieves a delicate and effective balance between detailed and rigorous close analysis of individual passages and sweeping, larger-scale consideration of some of the Metamorphoses’ overarching narrative themes and trends. In this nimble dance between the levels of Ovid’s language, specific episodes, and the epic as a whole, Rosati not only offers compelling readings of the Narcissus and Pygmalion myths, but also provides us with the tools and starting points to continue in this interpretation of the epic. The book is well-edited, with only a few minor typographical errors and inconsistencies.
Bibliography
- Bartsch. 2006. The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire. Chicago: IL.
- Bettini. 1999. The Portrait of the Lover. Berkeley: CA.
- Elsner. 2007. Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art & Text. Princeton: NJ.
- Hardie. 2002. Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion. Cambridge.
- Lovatt. 2013. The Epic Gaze: Vision, Gender and Narrative in Ancient Epic. Cambridge.
- Rimell. 2006. Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Difference, and the Poetic Imagination. Cambridge.
- Salzmann-Mitchell. 2005. A Web of Fantasies: Gaze, Image, and Gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Columbus: OH.
- Sheppard. 2014. The Poetics of Phantasia: Imagination in Ancient Aesthetics. New York: NY.
- Solodow. 1988. The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Chapel Hill: NC
- Stoichita. 2008. The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock. Chicago: IL.
- Wheeler. 1999. A Discourse of Wonders: Audience and Performance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philadelphia: PA.
Notes
[1] J. M. Frécaut, 1985. ‘Narciso e Pigmalione, Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, by G. Rosati & A. La Penna’, Latomus 44.1: 186-88.
[2] E. J. Kenney. 1984. ‘Ars Praestigiatrix’, The Classical Review 34.2: 186-88.
[3] J. -P. Borle, 1984. ‘Narciso e Pigmalione. Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, by Gianpiero Rosati and Antonio La Penna’, Museum Helveticum 41.4: 256.
[4] U. Bernhardt, 1984. ‘Narciso e Pigmalione. Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, by Gianpiero Rosati’, Gnomon 56.4: 303-8.
[5] S. Viarre, 1985. ‘Narciso e Pigmalione. Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, (Nuovi Saggi) by Gianpiero Rosati’, L’Antiquité Classique 54: 388-89.