Publicación: 09. Ovid's Apollo and Daphne: a Foolish God and a Virgin Tree
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Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Historia Antigua y Medieval
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In his legend of Apollo and Daphne (Metamorphoses 1.452-567) Ovid
deforms
and
figure. He
degrades the sun-god, lowering him to the level of a comic
strips the Olympian
of his divine powers
and
solemnity
and
transforms him into a human lover. Foolish in his urgency to capture
the elusive Daphne, the deity enters more and more into the realm of
comedy.
Phoebus appears next in the guise of a predatory hound
and
lastly as a mechanized figure clutching a tree. Descending, as in a chain
of being, the god Apollo becomes human, animal, and machine. Ovid
deprives the narrative of all qualities which might have endowed the sun-god with human pathos or tragedy. Apollo is clearly the foolish lover
in contrast to Daphne who is not comic and who acts to mend the "split”
between her alluring body, which had attracted Apollo, and her virgin
self. To preserve her identity, her conception of herself as virgin, she
surrenders her body to metamorphosis.
Fil: Barnard, Mary E. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Historia Antigua y Medieval “José Luis Romero”; Argentina.
Fil: Barnard, Mary E. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Historia Antigua y Medieval “José Luis Romero”; Argentina.