CCIV-CCVI: Metamorphoses 1:1
Ovid wrote Metamorphoses, in his words a “lengthened narrative” of the history of the world according to his own mythology as a Roman. Metamorphoses has been the spring of inspiration for countless stories and retellings, and it claims among the oldest accounts of many remembered myths today.
Below are some of its first lines regarding the original unorganized universe of Greco-Roman myth, and its sole inhabitant: (this I borrow from Hesiod) Chaos. Translations are rife, but here are two. The first is one of Project Gutenberg’s translations, and the second is one I enjoy from Poetry in Translation.
“At first, the sea, the earth, and the heaven, which covers all things, were the only face of nature throughout the whole universe, which men have named Chaos; a rude and undigested mass, and nothing more than an inert weight, and the discordant atoms of things not harmonizing, heaped together in the same spot. No Sun as yet gave light to the world; nor did the Moon, by increasing, recover her horns anew. The Earth did not as yet hang in the surrounding air, balanced by its own weight, nor had Amphitrite stretched out her arms along the lengthened margin of the coasts. Wherever, too, was the land, there also was the sea and the air; and thus was the earth without firmness, the sea unnavigable, the air void of light; in no one of them did its present form exist. And one was ever obstructing the other; because in the same body the cold was striving with the hot, the moist with the dry, the soft with the hard, things having weight with those devoid of weight.”
Or:
“Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place. There was no Titan yet, shining his light on the world, or waxing Phoebe renewing her white horns, or the earth hovering in surrounding air balanced by her own weight, or watery Amphitrite stretching out her arms along the vast shores of the world. Though there was land and sea and air, it was unstable land, unswimmable water, air needing light. Nothing retained its shape, one thing obstructed another, because in the one body, cold fought with heat, moist with dry, soft with hard, and weight with weightless things.”
I’ve decided with my nonexistent qualifications to attempt to make illustrative sonnets of this opening scene. Perhaps I’ll follow through with the rest of the epic history.
~~~
Chaos:
The Earth, the Sky, the Sea (we like these three),
the triplet that we think is natural,
were not, before, when Chaos could roam free—
were not when flux was common and banal.
The raw confusing mass, nothing and all,
inert discordant atoms of all things.
She, She, Her wanton children were Her fall,
but prior to, She flew on eldritch wings.
What was Her reason? Why destroy the grace
She had there all alone in Her cocoon?
When everything was Hers before Her face,
why did Her Primal Grace require a boon?
But She is Chaos—how could we now know,
when we love Earth, and Sky, and Seasides so?
~~~
Titan and Phoebe:
Hyperion had shône no light upon
the sea and air that was together there.
His gaze that brought discernment down thereon
was altogether naught, or else elsewhere.
Nor Phoebe with her piercing horns of white
would make her debut in the darkened sky.
She waxed not on nor waned, and, with no night,
she sang her songs off elsewhere, never nigh.
Their dance could not exist yet, for it was
the time before the dance could e’en be thought.
For how to count off measures with no cause?
And how to dance on skies that weren’t wrought?
And even if the two were there, what fright
to dance before that Mother in the light?
~~~
Amphitrite:
The seas and lands, so separate to us,
were mixed when Chaos flew in maidenhood.
So Nereids who might act like a truss
had nothing to support, if e’en they should.
So Amphitrite, if she had been there,
would flow upon the land and on the sea,
would mix with water and the open air,
and shores, if could be thought, could never be.
Unstable land, unswimmable the sea,
the air unknown, unlit, and so unseen.
How daunting now to know its true debris,
and Mother Chaos, victor of the scene.
Perhaps, for this, she lowered down her crown,
to whatsoever god could still the sound.