Academic literature on the topic 'Epistulae ex Ponto'

Abstract: Ovid's second collection of letters from his place of exile exhibits new strategies to achieve his aims of staying in the public eye and making his case for recall back to Rome. One of these new strategies is to pose as a kind of ethnographer with a ground-level view of Tomitan and Thracian society on the Black Sea coast. In the Epistulae ex Ponto, Ovid poses as a mediator between Rome and the imperial fringe, informing his reader about the activities of the Pontic tribes, describing his alleged interactions with the people of Tomis, and addressing the client king of the region. By doing so, Ovid explores new metaphors of exile, and grants to elegy and the letter a novel utility that slightly empowers his exiled voice.

In Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8, one of the last poems written from exile (dated to 15 or 16 c.e.), Ovid expresses his increasing hopes for Germanicus' assistance in effecting his recall to Rome. Though ostensibly addressed to his stepdaughter's father-in-law, P. Suillius Rufus, the poem contains a petition to Germanicus (27–88), as a poet to a poet, which promises future commemoration in Ovid's poetry if he is removed from Tomis: clausaque si misero patria est, ut ponar in ullo,qui minus Ausonia distet ab Vrbe loco,unde tuas possim laudes celebrare recentesmagnaque quam minima facta referre mora. (85–8)and if my country is closed against me in my misery, may I be placed in any place less distant from the Ausonian city, whence I might celebrate your praises while they are recent and relate your great deeds with the least delay.

As Betty Rose Nagle has remarked, Ovid's exile poetry deploys proper names within a kind of economy: ‘Ovid immortalises his own name by publicising it and exhorting his friends and readers to keep it alive, and he rewards his friends for actively remembering him by immortalising them, i.e. by putting their names in his poetry.’ What interests me here is the shortcircuiting of this system of exchange within the Tristia. For one of the most striking features of Ovid's first run of exilic elegies is precisely the omission of the names of Ovid's addressees. As Ovid will claim in the poem that opens the Epistulae ex Ponto, it is this omission (along with a change of title) that differentiates the Tristia poems from their successors: inuenies, quamuis non est miserabilis index,non minus hoc illo triste, quod ante dedi.rebus idem, titulo differt; et epistula cui sitnon occultato nomine missa docet.(Ex Pont. 1.1.15-18)

exulis haec uox est: praebet mihi littera linguam,et si non liceat scribere, rautus ero.Epist. ex Pont. 2.6.3f.This is the exile's voice; the written word gives me a tongue,and if writing is forbidden, I shall be dumb.Ovid's exilic persona reveals itself over the course of his correspondence as a literary pastiche of other texts and identities. We hear the narrator's voice in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto echoing that of Horace and Propertius, Homer's Odysseus and Vergil's Aeneas. These allusions to canonical works are widely recognised and catalogued. But equally crucial to Ovid's self-presentation are allusions to his own previous masterpieces. I interpret his choice of the letter form for the exile poems as not only an allusion to, but also an authorial statement of identification—on some level—with his earlier epistolary work, the Heroides. The Heroides may be read as letters from exile, epistulae ex exilio in which Ovid pursues his fascination with the genre of letters and the subject of abandonment through literary characters; the Tristia take that fascination one step further as the author himself, in letters to loved ones, writes from the position of an abandoned hero of sorts.

The main purpose of this paper is to present the variable and diverse Ovid’s attitude towards Muses in his works from exile (Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto and Ibis). The poet seeks in these goddesses both the comfort and the cause of his exile, identifies them with his poetry frequently, as their faithful servant feels deceived but also hopes that Muses can ease the anger of Augustus. The article is an attempt to analyze this complex relationship.

The Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto are crucial for understanding Ovid’s use of myth, as he repeatedly uses mythological exempla to illustrate his own condition in exile and to characterise the authorial mask which he adopts in the exilic epistles. My doctorate approaches the author-persona relationship by investigating how Ovid utilises mythological references to construct his persona in literary terms, a methodology that rejects any attempt to reveal the “man behind the mask” and instead focuses on appreciating the complexity of the authorial exilic persona in its own right. By focusing on the mask of the author, this thesis looks in-depth at how the authorial persona is constructed by references to myth and literature, and how this often relates back to other Ovidian personae. My work focuses on the most common myths found in the exile works featuring the gods, epic protagonists, other heroes, the Underworld, and famous wives. The mythical exempla found in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto are commonly equated with the author’s depiction of himself, or paralleled with the portrayals of his wife, friends, and enemies. As these mythical exempla are deployed, Ovid often makes allusions to other texts (Ovidian as well as those by other authors) which feature either the same narratives or characters, giving rise to a rich interplay of myth and intertextual allusions. All in all, the authorial figure in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, the relegatus poeta, becomes increasingly mythologised as he assumes the guises of the protagonists of tragedy and epic; persecuted, abandoned, and doomed to remain away from his homeland like Ulysses, Jason, and Philoctetes.

Il presente percorso di ricerca, incentrato sulla figura dell’esule antico e contemporaneo, indaga e pone in evidenza le analogie esistenti tra la produzione ‘tomitana’ del poeta latino Publio Ovidio Nasone - con riferimento principalmente a Tristia ed Epistulae ex Ponto - e le storie degli esuli della nostra contemporaneità, narrate in quelle ‘scritture migranti’ che hanno contributo alla nascita di un recente filone della letteratura italiana definito da Armando Gnisci ‘Letteratura Italiana della Migrazione e della Mondializzazione’. La prima parte del lavoro ripercorre e analizza approfonditamente le tappe di quella che, a tutti gli effetti, può essere considerata l’esperienza esilica per eccellenza, quella relegatio perpetua che nell’8 d.C. portò Ovidio a lasciare Roma e la sua vita da vate di Augusto per il gelo della Scizia e la compagnia dei Geti. Il poeta ha consegnato alla posterità un vero e proprio diario, dal quale emerge una ‘morfologia della narrazione esilica’ ricca di motivi topici: exilium come esperienza di ‘morte in vita’, fattori ambientali e climatici come specchio dell’interiorità dell’esule, stasi temporale e assenza di ciclicità stagionale come riflesso dell’isolamento spaziale e della marginalizzazione. Questi elementi costruiscono effettivamente la ‘retorica del lamento’ del Sulmonese, quella nota ai più. Il lavoro di ricerca riprende quindi le riflessioni sull’esilio nella storia della letteratura elaborate dal comparatista C. Gullién all’interno del saggio El sol de los desterrados (C. Guillén, El sol de los desterrados. Literatura y exilio, Barcelona 1995). Lo studioso stabilisce una netta polarizzazione all’interno della Exilliteratur mondiale, ripartendone la vasta produzione secondo un macro-archetipo ‘plutarchiano’ (o ‘senecano’), che vede nell’allontanamento dalla patria un momento positivo, ‘cosmopolitico’, un’occasione di riscatto e riscoperta di sé attraverso l’incontro con l’altro, e un macro-archetipo ‘ovidiano’, ossia un modello di esilio vissuto e raccontato come crisi dell’individuo, perdita e mutilazione, scissione interiore, rapporto forzato con l’alterità. Il primo obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di riplasmare e rimodellare tale paradigma ovidiano, anche al fine di dimostrarne ulteriormente l’innegabile attualità: l’esperienza del Sulmonese è sì latrice di spaesamento, di una forma di alienazione, figlia di quella che oggi chiameremmo dismatria, ma è anche la testimonianza inaspettata di un’evoluzione, una ‘metamorfosi’, presenta elementi che suggeriscono la possibilità di un’integrazione con la nuova realtà. Troviamo, irrimediabilmente fusi e compresenti, disorientamento e dolorosa sorpresa, nostalgia e accettazione, smarrimento e identificazione, rifiuto e riconoscimento: all’abbandono della patria, al vissuto traumatico del viaggio per mare, al senso di perdita identitaria, alla difficoltà linguistica si affiancano il contatto con la comunità di arrivo, la gratificazione quale membro di una nuova comunità, la possibilità di un dialogo con gli autoctoni, una nuova, imprevista possibilità di poesia in lingua straniera. Ovidio, uno dei poeti maggiormente ‘proiettati’ verso i futuri lettori, fortunati e spesso incoscienti destinatari della sua opera, lascia traccia, evidentemente, di un raggiunto ‘completamento di sé’ ottenuto proprio grazie alla condizione di esule, un’idea che è stata ampiamente sviluppata da scrittori della modernità come Luca Desiato, Marin Mincu, Pablo Montoya. È questo ‘rimodellato’ paradigma ovidiano che contribuisce alla definizione dell’odierno esule-migrante. Nella seconda parte del lavoro viene analizzata la genesi della nuova ‘Letteratura Italiana della Migrazione’ e presentata un’intera generazione di nuove voci dall’esilio. A dimostrazione dell’eterna modernità della scrittura ovidiana, la ricerca individua motivi, tόpoi, corrispondenze e differenze esistenti tra la testimonianza del Sulmonese e le attuali narrazioni dei migrant writers, in particolare attraverso i testi di scrittori come Pap Khouma, Mohamed Bouchane, Ndjock Ngana, Abdelkader Daghmoumi e Aziz Bouzidy, autori provenienti dal Senegal o dai paesi del Maghreb e riconosciuti sulla scena culturale italiana. Tale comparazione dimostra come l’opera di Ovidio exul, definito oggi a tutti gli effetti ‘poeta della migrazione’, conceda la possibilità di rileggere la realtà del moderno esilio e, contemporaneamente, obblighi a ridefinire la figura dell’antico hostis, del nemico-straniero.
The research path, focused on the figure of the ancient and contemporary exile, investigates and shows the analogies between the ‘Tomitan’ production of the Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso - with reference mainly to Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto - and the stories of the exiles of our contemporaneity, narrated in the ‘migrant writings’ that have contributed to the birth of a recent field of Italian literature defined by Armando Gnisci ‘Italian Literature of Migration and Globalization’. The first part of this work retraces and thoroughly analyses the stages of what can be considered the exile experience par excellence, the relegatio perpetua that in 8 A.D. impelled Ovid to leave Rome and his life as a poet of Augustus to reach the frost of Scythia and the company of the barbarians Getae. The poet has given to posterity a real diary, from which emerges a ‘morphology of the exile narrative’, rich in topical motifs: exilium as an experience of ‘death in life’, environmental and climatic factors as a mirror of the interiority, temporal stasis and absence of seasonal cycle as a reflection of spatial isolation and marginalization. These elements actually form Ovid’s ‘rhetoric of lament’, a well-known aspect. The research recalls the reflections on banishment in the history of literature elaborated by the comparatist C. Gullién within the essay El sol de los desterrados (C. Guillén, El sol de los desterrados. Literatura y exilio, Barcelona 1995). The scholar establishes a clear polarization in the global Exilliteratur, distributing its large production according to a ‘Plutarchian’ (or ‘Senecan’) macro-archetype, which describes the banishment as a positive and ‘cosmopolitan’ moment, an opportunity for redemption and rediscovery of oneself through the encounter with the other, and an ‘Ovidian’ macro-archetype, that is a model of exile experienced and narrated as a crisis of the individual, loss and mutilation, as inner splitting and forced relationship with otherness. The first objective of this work is to reshape and remodel this ‘Ovidian paradigm’, also in order to demonstrate its undeniable relevance: the experience of the poet is indeed a biographical evidence of disorientation and of a form of alienation, result of what we call today dismatria, but it is also an unexpected testimony of an evolution, a ‘metamorphosis’. It presents elements that suggest the possibility of integration with the new reality. We find disorientation and painful surprise, nostalgia and acceptance, deprivation and identification, rejection and recognition, irremediably fused and co-present. The separation from the homeland, the traumatic experience of the sea voyage, the sense of identity loss and the linguistic difficulty are ‘flanked’ by the contact with the people, the gratification as a member of a new community, the possibility of a dialogue with the natives, an unprecedented and unexpected possibility of poetry in a foreign language. Ovid, one of the poets most ‘projected’ towards future readers, lucky and often unconscious addressees of his work, evidently leaves traces of an achieved ‘self-completion’ obtained thanks to the condition of exile, an idea that has been widely developed by modern writers such as Luca Desiato, Marin Mincu, Pablo Montoya. It is this ‘remodelled’ Ovidian paradigm that contributes to the definition of today's exile-migrant. The second part of the work analyses the genesis of the new ‘Italian Literature of Migration’ and presents an entire generation of new voices from exile. As a demonstration of the eternal modernity of Ovid's poetry, the research identifies motifs, tόpoi, correspondences and differences between the testimony of the poet and the current narratives of migrant writers, through the texts of authors such as Pap Khouma, Mohamed Bouchane, Ndjock Ngana, Abdelkader Daghmoumi and Aziz Bouzidy, authors born in Senegal or in Maghreb and recognized on the Italian cultural scene. This comparison demonstrates how the work of Ovid exul, defined today as ‘poet of migration’, grants the possibility of re-reading the reality of the modern banishment and, at the same time, obliges to redefine the figure of the ancient hostis, the ‘enemy-foreign’.

Ovid's poetic career testifies a great contamination among genres, from the first works to the exilic ones. Also during his 'relegatio', he continues his experimentation. That allows us to read Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto like a product of rhetoric, elegiac and tragic rules. The aim of this PhD dissertation is to value the influence of the ancient theatre (especially tragedy) on the tale of Ovid's misfortune, analizyng the concept of 'error' through the tragic element of ἁμαρτία, examining the description of Tomi and the settings of tragic plots, comparing the portrait of the 'exul' with the heroes protagonists of those plots and, after that, analyzing the poetic tecniques that Ovid seems to draw from Latin and Greek tragedies. Is possible to read the Ovidian exilic elegies like a tragic tale, constructed in accordance with the Aristotle’s Poetica and its principles? Is his 'relegatio' a new poetic tragedy in an elegiac form? Is Ovid a new tragic hero? This PhD dissertation tries to answer to these questions.

Dottorato di ricerca in Scienze letterarie, retorica e tecniche dell'interpretazione, Ciclo XXII, A. a. 2008-2009
Università della Calabria, Facoltà di lettere e filosofia, Dipartimento di filologia