An Analysis Of Ovid's Metamorphoses
Irresistible Despite its beauty, love can be dangerous, yet it is so completely fundamental to life. Whether by chance or design, the necessity of reproduction to the survival of our species has brought about intense emotional connections between individuals. Ovid's “Metamorphoses,” translated by Charles Martin, provides an “origin story” for love and desire – that they are the workings of deities outside our realm of existence. Through the selected tragedies within this work, the irresistibility and power of love are shown in relationships between gods, demigods, and mortals. In the story of Apollo and Daphne, Apollo mocks the god Cupid, underestimating love's power. Cupid's scorn is returned, and Apollo is shot with one of the love-god's
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Though Pymalion rejected love of women because of the “lives of sordid indecency” and “numerous defects of character” (1104), he was unprepared for the necessity of love. Lacking this love, when he created his ivory statue, he “gazed in amazement, burning with love for what was in likeness a body” (1104). After his statue was transformed by Venus into a woman, his family line continued, and his great granddaughter, Myrrha, would again demonstrate the irresistible nature of love. This time it would not be Cupid, but the Furies that would doom the characters, as Myrrha found herself tragically lusting after her father, Cinyras. Despite knowing that her culture condemned such a relationship, her struggle against this perversion was unsuccessful and she found herself so infatuated with her father that she finally came to the point where “she had decided to die if she could not possess him,” (1108) and attempts suicide. Her nurse stops her from taking her own life, and after persuasion, aids in bringing Myrrha and Cinyras together while the father was in a drunken state. After her incest was discovered, she was forced to flee. Her desire was undeterred even then and in her sorrow and fear of retribution, she begged to be released from her struggle and like Daphne, was transformed into a
Though Pymalion rejected love of women because of the “lives of sordid indecency” and “numerous defects of character” (1104), he was unprepared for the necessity of love. Lacking this love, when he created his ivory statue, he “gazed in amazement, burning with love for what was in likeness a body” (1104). After his statue was transformed by Venus into a woman, his family line continued, and his great granddaughter, Myrrha, would again demonstrate the irresistible nature of love. This time it would not be Cupid, but the Furies that would doom the characters, as Myrrha found herself tragically lusting after her father, Cinyras. Despite knowing that her culture condemned such a relationship, her struggle against this perversion was unsuccessful and she found herself so infatuated with her father that she finally came to the point where “she had decided to die if she could not possess him,” (1108) and attempts suicide. Her nurse stops her from taking her own life, and after persuasion, aids in bringing Myrrha and Cinyras together while the father was in a drunken state. After her incest was discovered, she was forced to flee. Her desire was undeterred even then and in her sorrow and fear of retribution, she begged to be released from her struggle and like Daphne, was transformed into a