Sunday 9 October 2011

Ono Ovid

Ovid, Fasti: "Est deus in nobis: agitante calescimus illo" ("There is a God in us, and we glow when he stirs us"). Much quoted. But, Richard Jackson King persuades me, much more sexual than is usually thought: 'what Ovid says in book 6 is that a god in nobis, "inside me", causes visionary impetus or passion, when it prods, and he "becomes inflamed" or "warm" (calescimus) ... moreover Ovid suggests a Platonic sexual-agricultural metaphor, in which the god "Love" (in the Symposium) releases divine semina inside the poet. These seeds emerge as visionary, vatic discourses.'

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