"Dripping Wet (and Still Clueless): Hitting the High Seas...

...with Quintus Horatius Flaccus"

An Ex Libris Talk for Sigma Tau Delta

Central Connecticut State University

Gil Gigliotti

3 April 2014

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

In honor of Quintus Horatius Flaccus' birthday...

I suggest at some point today you:

a) break out some good Falernian wine (Odes I.27, II.3, II.11; Satires II.4;  Epistles I.18),

b) take a walk around town until some boorish individual latches on to you (Satires, I.9),

c) take a walk in the forest until some tree almost falls on you (Odes II.13),

d) visit your city cousin - if you're a country mouse (Satires 2.6),

e) paint a human head on a horse's neck (Ars Poetica),

f) take a nice long look at the snow on Mt. Soracte (Odes I.9),

g) remember your Pyrrha (Odes I.5),

h) build a  monument more lasting than bronze - i.e. write a really good book of poems (Odes 3.30);

or finally,

i) just seize the day (Odes I.11).

Swimming in the deep end of the pool: a review of "Metamorphoses" at Playhouse on Park

Most Americans first learn about classical Greek and Roman mythology in elementary and/or middle school, and that exposure consists of learning the Greek and Latin names of the major Olympians and an episode or two about only the most familiar of those (i.e., Aphrodite/Venus almost always gets more curricular love, as it were, than Hestia/Vesta!).  Later in their educational careers, most students (I'm hoping) still encounter myths again through the drama of an Oedipus the King, Prometheus Bound, or Medea.


But the missing element in all of this exposure is the experience of raw power these myths have to convey the human experience (in all of its glorious and awful aspects).  Too often they are but quaint stories of unenlightened civilizations.  The achievement of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the remarkable First-Century BCE Latin epic "covering" the history of the world from creation to the apotheosis of Caesar, is that it explores that spectrum of humanity --- with wonderfully witty and frightening story-telling.


The superb production of Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of Ovid's  Metamorphoses, running at Playhouse on Park through Sunday, 1 July, captures this same mythic power using some better-known (Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Phaeton, and Midas) and lesser-known (Myrrha and Vertumnus) myths.  But so skillfully wrought are these ancient tales by the playwright, and so deftly directed by Sean Harris and acted by a multi-talented person ensemble**, that they seem as contemporary (or is it "timeless"?) as anything written yesterday.


The set, an elegant pool of water designed by Christopher Hoyt (together with lighting by Jen Philip, costumes by Erin Kacmarcik, and music by Richard Hollman), transports the audience to a place where anything can -- and does -- happen.


You owe it to yourself to take a nice long dip into our cultural past, our collective unconscious, and see who we are...still.

And tomorrow, when asked what you did last night, say, "I went to West Hartford...for the waters."


** In alphabetical order:

Amelia Randolph Campbell
David Goldman
Harrison Greene
Melissa Kaufman
Troy Peckham
Jillian Rorrer
Justin Sease
Quinn Warren
Eric Whitten
Ashley C. Williams


    

Quote for the day

Vergil never needed dashes -- or italics -- in his poetry!

A letter to the editor from the 1/24/09 edition of Hartford Courant

Poetry on Page 1


January 24, 2009

Hooray! Poetry back on Page 1 of The Courant [Jan. 20, "Labor Of Joy; State Poet's Narrative Poem Celebrates Obama Inaugural"].


There's a return to tradition that can only improve America's "oldest continually published newspaper" — back to the days of the 18th century, when periodicals and poets depended upon each other to build readership and literary reputations.


Bring back columns like "The Poet's Corner," "The Parnassiad," or "The Seat of the Muses," throw in a little Latin satiric verse on events of the day for good measure, and watch readership soar.


Now, many readers might think I'm being facetious, but I'm not (well, except maybe for part about the soaring readership.) Anything that brings poetry to us in our daily lives should be encouraged and embraced. It puts us in touch with what makes us all human.


Gilbert L. Gigliotti, New Britain


The writer is a professor and chairman of the English department at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.

Call me Philo (or Pseudolus)

On Monday, a colleague of mine mentioned to me the NY Times Book Review piece on the new translation of the often bawdy but ever-entertaining Roman epigrammatist Martial by Garry Wills, Martial's Epigrams: A Selection (Viking 2008).

It got me to perusing my own copy of Martial's poems (Loeb Classical Library, 1979)

The epigram below struck me as particularly relevant because one of my staffers brings in great food every day to share with the department and is patently unhappy if I don't eat.

"Boss, LUNCH," she cries.

I obey.

Her generosity is a wonderful perk, I cannot deny it, but it is problematic. In those rare instances when she isn't around, I'm truly at a loss for what I'm supposed to do. I've become one of the local geese who's grown so used to being fed by park-goers that, on those rare days when people actually obey the posted "No Feeding" signs, he just goes hungry.

Or, on a more literary note, I've become a Roman stereotype: the sponger!*

V.xlvii

Numquam se cenasse domi Philo iurat, et hoc est:
non cenat, quotiens nemo vocavit eum.

Philo swears he has never dined at home, and that's right!
He doesn't eat if no one invites him.


*See also the title character of Plautus' Pseudolus.

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The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present (First Edition, 1979)

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The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study

Philip Furia
The Poets of Tin Pan Alley

Thomas M. Greene
The Descent from Heaven: A Study in Epic Continuity

Pete Hamill
Why Sinatra Matters

Cotton Mather
Bonifacius or Essays to Do Good

Fred J. Nichols
Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature

Alan Schwartz
Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics

Lee Server
Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing

Jan Ziolkowski and Michael Putnam
The Virgilian Tradition: The First 1500 Years