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Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher
 Philosophy in Ovid,
Ovid as Philosopher
Edited by
KAT HA R I NA VO L K A N D G A R E T H D. W I L L IA M S

1
 3
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Names: Volk, Katharina, 1969- editor. | Williams, Gareth D., editor.
Title: Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as philosopher / [editiors] Katharina Volk
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DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197610336.001.0001

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 Contents

Preface  vii
Contributors  ix

Introduction  1
Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams

PA RT I : OV I D’ S S A PI E N T IA
1. Ouidius sapiens: The Wise Man in Ovid’s Work  23
Francesca Romana Berno

PA RT I I : T H E E R O T IC C O R P U S
2. Elegy, Tragedy, and the Choice of Ovid (Amores 3.1)  49
Laurel Fulkerson
3. Ovid’s Ars amatoria and the Epicurean Hedonic Calculus  63
Roy Gibson
4. Criticizing Love’s Critic: Epicurean parrhesia as an Instructional
Mode in Ovidian Love Elegy  84
Erin M. Hanses
5. Ovid’s imago mundi muliebris and the Makeup of the World
in Ars amatoria 3.101–​290  104
Del A. Maticic
6. Ovid’s Art of Life  124
Katharina Volk

PA RT I I I : M ETA MOR PH O S E S
7. Keep Up the Good Work: (Don’t) Do It like Ovid
(Sen. QNat. 3.27–​30)  145
Myrto Garani
vi Contents

8. Venus discors: The Empedocleo-​Lucretian Background of

Venus and Calliope’s Song in Metamorphoses 5  164
Charles Ham
9. Labor and pestis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  184
Alison Keith
10. Cosmic Artistry in Ovid and Plato  207
Peter Kelly
11. Some Say the World Will End in Fire: Philosophizing the
Memnonides in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  226
Darcy A. Krasne

PA RT I V: T H E E X I L IC C O R P U S
12. Ovid against the Elements: Natural Philosophy,
Paradoxography, and Ethnography in the Exile Poetry  251
K. Sara Myers
13. Akrasia and Agency in Ovid’s Tristia  267
Donncha O’Rourke
14. Intimations of Mortality: Ovid and the End(s) of the World  287
Alessandro Schiesaro
15. The End(s) of Reason in Tomis: Philosophical Traces,
Erasures, and Error in Ovid’s Exilic Poetry  308
Gareth D. Williams

PA RT V: A F T E R OV I D
16. Philosophizing and Theologizing Reincarnations of Ovid:
Lucan to Alexander Pope  335
Philip Hardie

Works Cited  351

Index of Passages 377
General Index 393
Index of Latin Words  399
Index of Greek Words  401
 Preface

This volume grew out of the editors’ longstanding interest in two apparently
unrelated topics: Ovidian poetry and Roman philosophy. While many clas-
sical Latin poets were increasingly studied for their philosophical allusions
and affiliations, Ovid was until relatively recently still often considered an
irreverent virtuoso averse to serious thought. But could an Augustan poeta
doctus really be so out of touch with one of the most significant intellectual
developments of his time? Was there no philosophy in Ovid—​and no way of
seeing Ovid as a philosopher?
With these questions in mind, we contacted an international group of
scholars—​ both seasoned Ovidians and younger colleagues—​ and asked
whether they might be interested in participating in a conference on Ovidius
Philosophus. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic; one person
even told us that he had been waiting his “whole life for this conference to
come along”! The event took place at Columbia University on March 29–​30,
2019, and the chapters in this volume are (sometimes significantly) revised
versions of the papers delivered then. We are most grateful to the authors for
making the conference a success and contributing their work to the volume.
In organizing the conference and seeing the publication to completion,
we have relied on the support of many individuals and institutions, which
it is a pleasure to acknowledge in these pages. The Stanwood Cockey Lodge
Foundation generously subsidized both the original event and the volume’s
preparation for publication. Additional funding for the conference came
from the Columbia Department of Classics, the Columbia University
Seminars, Columbia’s Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, and Columbia’s
Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities. We are most
grateful for their support and also wish to convey our heartfelt thanks to
Lien van Geel for her skill and good cheer in taking care of the conference
logistics.
We are delighted that our exploration into Ovidian philosophy has found
a home with Oxford University Press and thank Stefan Vranka for his be-
lief in the project and for his help and support throughout. We are grateful
to Ponneelan Moorthy for steering the book through production and to
viii Preface

Donald Watt for his impeccable copy-​editing, as well as to the Press’s anon-
ymous readers, whose detailed comments and suggestions have, we believe,
enabled us to improve the volume significantly. For his invaluable help in
preparing the manuscript for submission, we wish to thank our editorial as-
sistant John Izzo, whose eagle eye has saved us from many an error.
The volume’s cover image is by the Spanish photographer Joaquín Bérchez
from the book Photographica Ovidiana (edited by him and his son Esteban
Bérchez Castaño), a serendipitous discovery made by one of the editors
during a stay in Madrid. We are most grateful to Joaquín for permitting us to
use his beautiful photograph, which we believe provides a most fitting entry
to our volume.

KV
GDW
New York, June 2021
 Contributors

Francesca Romana Berno is Associate Professor of Latin language and literature

at Sapienza University of Rome. She has published mostly on Seneca the Younger’s
prose works, but also on Cicero and Ovid, always paying attention to philosophical
issues, and in particular to rhetorical strategies aimed at moral exhortation.
Laurel Fulkerson is Associate Vice President for Research and Professor of Classics at
the Florida State University. Her research focuses on Latin poetry and the emotions.
She has just published a book with T. E. Franklinos, Constructing Authors and
Readers in the Appendices Vergiliana, Tibulliana, and Ouidiana (Oxford University
Press 2020).
Myrto Garani is Assistant Professor in Latin Literature at the National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She has published widely on Empedocles’
reception in Latin literature, especially in Lucretius and Ovid. She is currently
working on a monograph on Seneca’s Natural Questions Book 3 to be published in
the Pierides series (Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and a commentary on Lucretius’
De rerum natura 6 (for the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla).
Roy Gibson is Professor of Classics at Durham University and has published widely
on Ovid and Roman love elegy. His most recent book, Man of High Empire: The Life of
Pliny the Younger, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
Charles Ham is Assistant Professor of Classics at Grand Valley State University, and
his research focuses on philosophical discourse in Augustan poetry. Current projects
include a book on Ovid’s reception of Empedocles in his elegiac poetry and an article
on Pythagoreanism in Fasti 6.
Erin M. Hanses is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn
State University. Her primary research interests lie in the intersection of Latin love
elegy and Roman Epicureanism, and she has several articles forthcoming on literary
manifestations of Epicurean thought in the Roman world.
Philip Hardie is Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Honorary
Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Cambridge. His Sather Lectures
were published in 2019 as Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry.
Alison Keith is Professor of Classics and Director of the Jackman Humanities
Institute at the University of Toronto. She has published widely on gender and genre
in Latin literature and Roman society, and is the author most recently of a volume on
Virgil in the Understanding Classics series published by Bloomsbury Academic.
x Contributors

Peter Kelly is Lecturer in the Classics department of the National University of

Ireland, Galway. He has published a number of major articles on Ovid and Greek
Philosophy. He is currently finalizing his monograph, The Cosmic Text from Ovid to
Plato, which is under review with Cambridge University Press.
Darcy A. Krasne is Lecturer in Classics at Columbia University. She has published
articles and book chapters on Valerius Flaccus, on Ovid’s Ibis, Metamorphoses, and
Fasti, and on Vergil’s Aeneid; she is also the co-​editor of After 69 ce: Writing Civil
War in Flavian Rome (De Gruyter, 2018). Her current project, a monograph enti-
tled Cosmos and Civil War in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, is under contract with
Oxford University Press.
Del A. Maticic is a doctoral candidate in Classics at New York University, completing
a dissertation on raw materiality in Augustan literature.
Donncha O’Rourke is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh.
He has published widely on Latin elegiac and didactic poetry, including as editor of
Approaches to Lucretius: Traditions and Innovations in Reading the De Rerum Natura
(Cambridge University Press, 2020) and as co-​editor of Didactic Poetry of Greece,
Rome and Beyond: Knowledge, Power, Tradition (Classical Press of Wales, 2019). His
forthcoming monograph Propertius and the Virgilian Sensibility will be published by
Cambridge University Press.
K. Sara Myers is Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. She is the au-
thor of Ovid’s Causes: Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses (Michigan
University Press, 1994), a commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses 14 (Cambridge
University Press, 2009), and numerous articles on Roman poetry. Her current re-
search project is on ancient Roman literary gardens.
Alessandro Schiesaro is Professor of Classics at the University of Manchester. He has
held chairs at Princeton, King’s College London, and Sapienza University of Rome.
His main fields of interest include Latin literature, literary theory, and psychoanal-
ysis, and he has published work on several Roman authors, including Lucretius,
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca.
Katharina Volk is Professor of Classics at Columbia University and has published
widely on both Ovid and Roman philosophy, among other topics. Her most recent
monograph, The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in
the Age of Cicero and Caesar, is about to be published by Princeton University Press.
Gareth D. Williams is Professor of Classics at Columbia University and has published
books on Ovid and Seneca and, most recently, Pietro Bembo on Etna: The Ascent of a
Venetian Humanist (Oxford University Press, 2017).
 Introduction
Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams

The Project

The sixteen essays collected in this volume began life as papers delivered at
a conference held at Columbia University in March 2019. This event, organ-
ized by the present editors under the title of Ovidius Philosophus: Philosophy
in Ovid and Ovid as a Philosopher, brought together a distinguished group
of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic in an attempt to explore from dif-
ferent but mutually informing viewpoints Ovid’s profound engagement with
philosophical sources and influences across his poetic corpus.
Ovid’s close familiarity with philosophical ideas and with specific philo-
sophical texts has long been recognized, perhaps most prominently in the
Pythagorean, Platonic, Empedoclean, and Lucretian shades that have been
seen to color his Metamorphoses. This philosophical component has often
been perceived as a feature implicated in, and subordinate to, Ovid’s larger
literary agenda, both pre-​and post-​exilic; and because of the controlling
influence conceded to that literary impulse, readings of the philosophical
dimension have often focused on the perceived distortion, ironizing, or
parodying of the philosophical sources and ideas on which Ovid draws, as if
his literary orientation inevitably compromises or qualifies a “serious” philo-
sophical commitment.
The Columbia conference sought to counter this tendency by (i) consid-
ering Ovid’s seriousness of engagement with, and his possible critique of, the
philosophical writings that allusively inform his works; (ii) questioning the
feasibility of separating out the categories of the “philosophical” and the “lit-
erary” in the first place; (iii) exploring the ways in which Ovid may offer un-
usual, controversial, or provocative reactions to received philosophical ideas;
and (iv) investigating the case to be made for viewing the Ovidian corpus
not just as a body of writings that are often philosophically inflected, but
also as texts that may themselves be read as philosophically adventurous and

Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams, Introduction In: Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher. Edited
by: Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197610336.003.0001
2 Introduction

experimental. Few scholars would now hesitate to call Ovid philosophically

informed; but what further light might be shed on his poetics if he should
be perceived as philosophically confident, adept, and resourceful? To what
extent can or should Ovidius philosophus be seen as an abiding or evolving
presence in our reading of his oeuvre? In what ways did the post-​Ovidian
literary tradition at Rome recognize philosophical import in, and/​or perhaps
the philosophical idiosyncrasy of, his writings?
Certain of these questions have been well treated in important
contributions on specific Ovidian texts in recent times,1 but we hope in this
volume to broach the topic of Ovid’s philosophical engagement frontally, so
to speak: to prioritize the philosophical component, that is, and to show how
Ovid uses his literary apparatus to deploy, test, and experiment with ideas
received from a range of schools and thought systems. Even though this area
of Ovidian studies continues to show encouraging signs of growth,2 much
work remains to be done: it is telling that in both the Brill and the Cambridge
Companions to Ovid, each of which was published in 2002,3 there is no index
entry on philosophy, let alone any dedicated chapter on Ovid’s treatment of
philosophical ideas; and the same holds true of the Blackwell Companion of
2009.4 Against this background, the essays collected in this volume are in-
tended at the individual level to address in new ways many particular aspects
of Ovid’s recourse to philosophy across his corpus. Collectively, however,
they are also designed at least partially to redress what, in general terms, re-
mains a significant lacuna in Ovidian studies.

Problems of Definition

But what precisely do we mean by the term Ovidius philosophus? Did Ovid’s
philosophical affinities and preferences as glimpsed or revealed in his writings
shift or evolve over time, and can any pattern of philosophical consistency or
development be discerned across his oeuvre? To what extent might any such

1 To focus for now only on Anglophone contributions, see on Ovid’s erotic corpus Kleve 1983;

Dillon 1994; and esp. R. K. Gibson 2007 (building in important ways on Labate 1984). On an exilic
front, see already DeLacy 1947, but esp. Claassen 1999 and 2008 with Kelly 2018. On the Fast. and
Met. (esp. the cosmogony in Met. 1 and Pythagoras’ speech in Met. 15), McKim 1984–​5; P. Hardie
1991 and 1995; Myers 1994; Nelis 2009; van Schoor 2011.
2 See esp. Beasley 2012; Ham 2013; Kelly 2016, 2019, and 2020.
3 Boyd, ed. 2002; P. Hardie, ed. 2002.
4 Knox, ed. 2009.
 Introduction 3

pattern be influenced by generic or thematic considerations—​ethical philos-

ophy predominating in his erotic elegiac corpus, say, before Ovid expands
in a more natural-​philosophical direction in the Fasti and Metamorphoses,
only to reassert the ethical emphasis with a different valence in the thera-
peutic eclecticism of his exilic phase? If the outlines of an overall (if adaptable
and loosely coordinated) philosophical program are posited across Ovid’s
oeuvre, does he strive for any effect or vision of “progress” that connects his
disparate works and career stages?
Then there are different grades of philosophical reference to consider, at
the levels both of literary evocation and technical specialty: if direct refer-
ence to a given source (such as Empedocles, say, or Epicurus, as discussed in
a number of the chapters that follow) constitutes “hard” allusion, to what ex-
tent and effect does Ovid use “soft” evocation of a less source-​specific kind?
In what ways might the difference between “hard” and “soft” here resemble
the difference that has been long (and hotly) debated on a literary-​critical
front between allusion on the one hand and intertextuality on the other?5
That is, to what extent could the presence of well-​known philosophical ideas
in Ovid be viewed as part of a repository of intertextual contact points that
inflect his discourse without necessarily carrying a specially charged or
targeted meaning from a specific source of allusion?
As for the matter of technical specialty, can Ovid be seen to purvey a “phi-
losophy” even when there are few, if any signs of his recourse to any par-
ticular philosophical school or technical language? In the Ars amatoria
and Remedia amoris, for example, Ovid arguably projects an idiosyncratic
outlook on love that promotes its own vision of anthropology, psychology,
and ethics: can this be counted as one example of Ovidian “philosophy” on
a spectrum that embraces at another extreme his harder-​core, directly allu-
sive experimentation with (say) Empedoclean ideas in the Metamorphoses?
In the Metamorphoses alone, Deucalion and Pyrrha in Book 1 and Philemon
and Baucis in Book 8 are rewarded by the gods for the simple piety of their
ways: can this promotion of humility count as an ethical “philosophy” of
sorts, and one that in turn causes us (philosophically?) to question the be-
havior of the Ovidian gods when they resort to more extreme forms of per-
secution and libidinous excess toward mortals elsewhere in the poem? More
broadly, to what extent might Ovid’s portrayal of ethical or ethically ques-
tionable behavior in many episodes of the Metamorphoses as well as other

5 For overview, see Hinds 1998, esp. 17–​51.

4 Introduction

parts of his corpus (e.g., the erotic ethic inculcated in the male lover in Ars
1 and 2, say, or the suspect loyalty of various friends in his exilic corpus) be
viewed as philosophically meaningful even if such ideas cannot be straight-
forwardly aligned with any one doctrine or school? In contrast to the
fate-​driven teleology of the Aeneid, moreover, fate in the Metamorphoses
resembles a “historical prop”6 that struggles to assert itself amidst the narra-
tological, chronological, and scene-​shifting twists and turns of Ovid’s met-
amorphic cascade of stories: does this conspicuous rejection of Virgilian
teleology constitute a form of counter-​“philosophy” by which Ovid resists
the implication that the Augustan “Golden Age” is the culmination of Roman
historical development?
For present purposes, the flexible potentialities of “philosophy” that are
opened up by such questions help to delimit the definitional parameters for
the Ovidius philosophus featured in this book. In terming him philosophus,
we broadly mean Ovid’s appeal to, and manipulation of, well-​known phil-
osophical ideas (Pythagorean, Platonic, Epicurean, Stoic, etc.) that were al-
ready in wide currency in Roman literature; what sets him apart is not the
ideas themselves, but his idiosyncratic application of them. In general terms,
we stress that the Roman adaptation of Greek philosophy from Lucretius and
Cicero onward down to the younger Seneca and beyond is deeply complex
in its shifting modes of reception, trends of interpretation, and styles of ar-
ticulation.7 Furthermore, given that Ovid’s uses of philosophy are manifold,
as well as subject to change from one context to another, we have no wish to
assert a monochromatic (and, in our opinion, unprovable) view of his phil-
osophical allegiances and development over time. In contrast to a schematic
approach of this kind, we prefer to stress an organic approach that assesses
each text on its own terms and according to Ovid’s philosophical needs or
aspirations in the moment.
But how then does Ovidius philosophus differ from other late Republican
and Augustan poets who were no less philosophically engaged? Lucretius
must in many ways constitute a special case as a philosophical pioneer
in Latin, a fundamentalist who renders Epicureanism through poetic
techniques of a deep Empedoclean stamp;8 by comparison, Ovid’s recourse
to philosophy is less obsessive in doctrinal focus, more eclectic in its range
of influences, and more varied at least in the diversity of the applications

6 Tissol 2002: 309.

7 See on these tendencies Volk forthcoming.
8 See esp. Sedley 1998.
 Introduction 5

to which he puts those many influences in different contexts.9 More perti-

nent for now are Horace and Virgil, partly because of the scale and variety of
their respective oeuvres, and partly also because of the many different shades
that characterize—​as in Ovid’s case—​their philosophical palettes. For a ho-
listic overview of these palettes, we turn to the elegant summations of two
scholars: John Moles on Horace, and Susanna Braund on Virgil.
In his 2007 essay entitled “Philosophy and Ethics,” Moles tellingly uses in-
verted commas to capture in Horace’s case the slipperiness that we have just
imputed to Ovidian philosophy: “ ‘Philosophy,’ both in its broadest sense and
in the narrow sense of specific philosophies, informs Horace’s own poetry”
(165). In surveying this informing process across Horace’s oeuvre, Moles
nicely captures in his own mixture of firm statement and equivocation (as if
always taking aim at a moving target) the difficulty of “fixing” the Horatian
philosophical position. Yes, the Satires show Bionian, Cynic, and diatribic
traces, but Epicurean shades can also be discerned in a shimmering texture
where recognition is sure in one sense but ever qualified in another (168):

Philosophical programmes, then, can be presented piecemeal and unsequen­

tially, implemented, Romanised, incompletely descriptive, ironised, redefined,
subverted, etc.: but they must be recognized.

“In the Epodes, as elsewhere, ‘soft’ philosophical colouring denotes

Epicureanism, ‘hard’ Stoicism, Cynicism, or both” (170): that “elsewhere,”
of course, includes the Odes, where Stoicism is “the dominant philosoph-
ical presence in few odes,” Epicureanism dominant in “more than twice
as many odes,” the two juxtaposed in “[a]‌nother important group . . . , in
varying relationships of tension” (172). About a third of the Odes are thus
ruled “varyingly philosophical,” and though the pull to Epicureanism is
strong, Horace nevertheless avoids “the exclusive commitment alien to his
temperament (or its representations), to his role as Augustan vates, and to the
collection’s literary, political, social and philosophical fecundity” (173). Once
totally absorbed in philosophy in Epistles 1 (cf. 1.1.11), Horace lies low in
Epicurean fashion (cf. latet, 5), but in thrall to no single philosophical master
(13–​15), oscillating as he does between the Stoics (16–​17) and Aristippus

9 See Schiesaro 2014 (focusing on the story of Phaethon in Met. 1 and 2) for a powerful case

study—​with important ramifications for other parts of the Met.—​of Ovid’s engagement in “a strategy
of active confrontation and pointed contrast” (74) with Lucretius.
6 Introduction

(18–​19). Moles discerns two main strands in Epistles 1: first, “Socratic non-​
commitment and Academic, Panaetian and Aristippean relativism legitima-
tise not just flexibility within philosophies but choice between philosophies”
(177); second, Epicureanism comes to the fore, and there it remains into
Horace’s last decade, “the main thread, not just of his poetry, or even of his
philosophy, but of his life” (179).
Many aspects of Moles’s coverage of Horace usefully contextualize Ovid’s
own philosophical maneuverings: to reapply Moles’s words, “Philosophy,”
both in its broadest sense and in the narrow sense of specific philosophies,
informs Ovid’s own poetry, and the Horatian medley of influences is matched
by a similar Ovidian versatility of philosophical appeal, even if the two may
invoke different strands of doctrinal influence to different extents and effects.
In these respects there is nothing remarkable about Ovid’s turning to phi-
losophy per se; what matters is the idiosyncratic imprint that he imposes on
that larger tendency—​an imprint that Moles’s Horace expresses through “the
main thread” of his Epicureanism. But Virgil now provides another impor-
tant but different philosophical perspective before we focus more closely on
the distinctive Ovidian imprint.
In her 2019 essay entitled “Virgil and the Cosmos: Religious and
Philosophical Ideas,” Braund shows how the poet has been “claimed” for
various philosophical schools, the Stoic and Epicurean chief among them;
but—​like Moles on Horace—​she eschews this reductive approach for a more
flexible view of the poet’s philosophical range and ambitions. She focuses not
on “the narrow questions of Virgil’s sources and consistency” (282–​3), but on
his elaboration of three main ideas—​issues of physics and cosmology; ethical
issues; eschatology—​in contexts where the philosophical component is con-
ditioned by localized concerns. Take the cosmological aspect (289–​90):

It is clear that in matters of cosmology, Virgil absorbs ideas from a variety

of sources and is much less concerned to produce a coherent synthesis than
to integrate his material into its immediate context, which is often highly
politicized.

Virgil was not “a doctrinaire member of any particular school of thought”

but “uses different ideas for different purposes in different contexts” (296)—​
words that could equally be applied to Ovid. What distinguishes the phil-
osophical approach of Braund’s Virgil, however, is its coordination with
mainstay techniques of Roman cultural formation, especially exemplarity
 Introduction 7

and appeal to the weight of tradition (mos maiorum). Hence in summation

(297, our emphasis):

Virgil’s poems are illuminated when viewed not in terms of systems of phil-
osophical thought but as reflecting and participating in the exemplarity
central to the formation of the Roman man (vir) and Roman manhood
(virtus). This in turn corresponds to the function of Roman education,
which was not to develop freethinkers but to focus the individual’s thoughts
upon his role as an individual in the state. Virgil’s prime allegiance is to Italy
and to Rome.

As in Horace’s case (and that of Ovid), Virgil’s recourse to philosophy is

unsurprising, but the conceptual trajectory it enables or supports is all-​
important. If the distinctive philosophical signature of Moles’s Horace lay in
“the main thread” of his Epicureanism, Braund’s Virgil applies his philosoph-
ical apparatus in the wider service of Roman self-​definition—​in an intellec-
tual context, that is, where the strands of Hellenistic thought “were adapted
to serve specifically Roman needs, both for the individual and for the collec-
tive Roman state with its ideal of Romanitas” (282).
What, then, of any signature tendencies in Ovidius philosophus? If the fact
of his appeal to diverse philosophical ideas is unremarkable in itself, what in
general terms might distinguish his approach to those ideas? We offer three
proposals here, the first of them predicated on the view taken of Virgil ear-
lier. Born in 43 bce, Ovid belonged to a generation that came of age after the
battle of Actium in 31 and the dawn of the Augustan era. True, the arrival of
the pax Augusta could hardly dispel overnight the factional hatred that had
riven Rome for decades; but Ovid was too young to know at first hand the
bloody horrors of previous generations, and in this respect the pax Augusta
encouraged, even if it did not cause, the indifference to the cursus honorum
that he himself articulates.10 The consolidation of Augustus’ power and myth
also created a discursive landscape in which Augustanism was an inescap-
able fact of life at Rome, an all-​penetrating phenomenon that manifested it-
self in the emperor’s rebuilding program, his moral reforms, his intervention
in Rome’s religious and ritual calendar, and in so many other facets of Roman
life. From this perspective, the Augustan presence in Ovid’s writings inev-
itably poses a problem of signification: the phenomenon of Augustus is no

10 Cf. Am. 1.15.1–​6, Tr. 4.10.33–​40; McKeown 1987: 31.

8 Introduction

fixed commodity but a fluid object of representation and controversy, and

one that defies a reductive view of Ovid’s attitude to the princeps; at issue
is not whether Ovid can be seen to be solidly or consistently pro-​or anti-​
Augustan, but the extent to which he captures Augustus’ elusiveness as a
floating signifier, or as an idea that is always in development.11
Against this background, the ironic flippancy that has long been
detected in Ovid’s earliest work, his Amores, represents a youthful spirit of
nonconformity—​a voice that is not anti-​Augustan per se, but sets itself in
tension, however playfully, with the new values and conventions of Augustan
discourse. This tendency may undergo adjustment as Ovid expands the scale
of his literary ambition in the Heroides, Ars amatoria, and Remedia amoris
and then, in the early years ce, in the Fasti and Metamorphoses down to his
exile in 8 ce. But if in these works Ovid serially tests the underpinnings of
Augustan meaning and authority, his independence of outlook suggests the
freethinker’s detached viewpoint, not the more disciplined form of Roman
mindset (focusing “the individual’s thoughts upon his role as an individual in
the state”) that Braund associates with Virgil.12 So in the matter of Ovid’s ex-
perimentation on a philosophical front: in an age when the fissures between
the Augustan legend and reality were becoming increasingly open to interro-
gation, when fanciful hypothetical scenarios were all the rage in the declam-
atory schools, and when the compass of Roman self-​identity was being sorely
tested in the transition from Republic to Empire, in many contexts Ovid can
be seen to probe and play with philosophical ideas rather than ideologically
building with and on them in the Virgilian sense; to posit ideologies of the self
rather than of the state (witness the erotic “philosophy” of the Ars), and even,
in his erotodidaxis, to explore certain “techniques of the self ” that touch on
and redirect the ethical-​therapeutic strain in philosophy from the Hellenistic
age onward;13 and, in his restless appetite for experimentation, to be more in-
terested in the intellectual process of inquiry than in its end result. In effect,
the advancing Augustan times set for Ovidius philosophus an agenda very
different from that of Virgil in particular: Ovid is no less seriously engaged

11 On these points, Feeney 1992, esp. 2–​ 6, 9; Barchiesi 1997b, esp. 7–​11, 43–​4, 254–​6; Myers
1999: 196–​8. For the aggression of Ovid’s competitive tendency, cf. Oliensis 2004: 316 (in connection
with the Ibis) for his wish “not just to destroy Augustus but to take over his place and his power.” In
this and other ways Ovid advances a broader movement within Augustan poetry—​a vision now well
articulated by Pandey 2018b in exploring “the poets’ public responses to imperial iconography as a
tool for dissecting, debating, even disrupting imperial power” (5).
12 S. Braund 2019: 297
13 On these techniques, Rabbow 1954; Foucault 1986: 37–​68; Hadot 1995; Sellars 2009.
 Introduction 9

with philosophical ideas than Virgil, but the sociopolitical context gives a
different ideological meaning to and motivation for his probings. True, after
his banishment to Tomis in 8 ce, a more somber philosophical demeanor
prevails, with notable shades of a Horatian turning-​within; but there, too, the
exploratory impulse still remains visible, as several chapters in this volume
seek to show.
Second, and to modify the sociopolitical thrust of this first point: experi-
ence of Ovid’s habit of reapplying received literary tropes with a startling pa-
nache and an eye for extreme effect (hyperbole, bathos, parody, etc.) should
put us on our guard on a philosophical front. In the Metamorphoses, for ex-
ample, epic burlesque competes against itself when, after battle has already
been spectacularly waged at the wedding banquet of Perseus and Andromeda
in Book 5, a still greater battle rages between the Lapiths and Centaurs at
the wedding feast of Pirithous and Hippodamia in Book 12: there, ever
more bizarre weaponry of an impromptu kind—​goblets, a table leg, even a
far-​flung altar—​vastly diversify what now looks like the much more banal,
relatively conventional weaponry (a mere brand from an altar, say, or the
odd mixing bowl) deployed in the Perseus-​Andromeda scene.14 Here is
only one, albeit extreme instance of how Ovid characteristically challenges
the received tradition: might we not anticipate a similar appetite for infla-
tionary elaboration or arch provocation in his deployment of philosophical
ideas? Take, for example, Pythagoras’ discourse on the universality of change
in Metamorphoses 15: one of the many conundrums posed by this speech
arises from Pythagoras’ stress on the wonder-​inducing effects of inquiry
into nature’s secrets. Lucretius’ Epicurus is a major source of inspiration for
Ovid’s cosmic adventurer; but Pythagoras’ eye for wonder is directly at odds
with the Lucretian rhetoric of reason that seeks systematically to demystify
natural marvels.15 A paradoxical mismatch results between the Lucretian
literary aspiration of his discourse and its philosophical thrust—​just one of
the eccentricities that contribute to the episode’s capstone value in Book 15
as a bravura philosophical parody, not paradigm. Again, the Lucretian com-
ponent in Pythagoras’ Empedoclean epos16 underscores the depth and scale
of pre-​Ovidian experimentation in philosophical poetics. But Ovid’s flam-
boyance in treating inherited literary topoi might yet lead us to anticipate a

14 On the parodic element in Book 12, Mader 2013 with Musgrove 1998.
15 For this approach, Beagon 2009 with Myers 1994: 133–​66.
16 P. Hardie 1995.
10 Introduction

similar idiosyncrasy in his philosophical excursions and appropriations: his

treatment of Pythagoras in Metamorphoses 15 offers but one example of how
the literary and philosophical impulses are inextricably conjoined in him,
and how the same capacities of bold initiative are to be expected and looked
for on both fronts simultaneously.
Third, a major aim of the chapters in this volume is to show that philo-
sophical appropriation is not just an ornamental feature of Ovid’s poetics,
but in many ways instrumental to them: the philosophical component drives
contextual meaning rather than offering mere window dressing. The same
is evidently true of Lucretius, say, or Virgil; but the point bears stressing in
Ovid’s case partly to counter any lingering suspicion of philosophical super-
ficiality or dilettantism in him, and partly to highlight what is perhaps the
most distinctive characteristic of Ovidius philosophus: the singularity of effect
that he achieves in any given context where philosophical ideas are invoked,
adapted, or exploited to carefully calculated ends. Hence the chapters that
follow are surveyed from two perspectives in the rest of this Introduction.
First, the individuated focus: our overview of each contribution is meant to
stress not just the restless diversity of Ovid’s philosophical probings across
his corpus, but also how a fresh or renewed sensitivity to philosophical con-
siderations can enrich, deepen, and even transform our understanding of
particular works or contexts. Second, the collective focus: in tracing certain
patterns of thematic commonality and continuity among the chapters, we
aim to capture something of the tension between part and whole that we find
to be central to the functioning of Ovidius philosophus across his oeuvre.
The localized context may crucially condition the point of his philosoph-
ical maneuvering in the moment, but allowance has equally to be made for
the possible accumulations and networks of philosophical meaning that
transcend the localized viewpoint. In effect, our goal is to examine Ovidius
philosophus both in toto and per partes, and to explore the possible interde-
pendence of those categories.

The Chapters in Overview

A single chapter occupies the first of the five sections into which this volume
is divided. In Part I (“Ovid’s sapientia”), Francesca Romana Berno’s “Ouidius
sapiens: The Wise Man in Ovid’s Work” anchors the collection with a wide-​
ranging exploration of the term sapiens and its cognates throughout Ovid’s
 Introduction 11

oeuvre: in exploring the evolution of his use of such terms, Berno argues that
a progressive thread of meaning in the concept of sapientia can be traced
from his erotic and erotodidactic writings into the “middle” phase of the
Fasti and Metamorphoses and finally into his exilic corpus.
The global span of Berno’s chapter sets the stage for the schematic divi-
sion of the Ovidian corpus in Parts II–​IV. The five chapters in Part II (“The
Erotic Corpus”) focus on Ovid’s erotic corpus from a variety of perspectives.
In Chapter 2, “Elegy, Tragedy, and the Choice of Ovid (Amores 3.1),” Laurel
Fulkerson takes her starting point from the epiphany first of personified
Tragedy and then of Elegy in Amores 3.1, where both vie for the poet’s atten-
tion: which poetic path will he take? Elegy wins the day; but in relating Ovid’s
dilemma to Prodicus’ famous “Choice of Hercules” between vice and virtue,
Fulkerson argues that Ovid’s undoing of the traditional generic opposition
between elegy and epic through the insertion of tragedy in Amores 3.1 allows
him to explore a more sophisticated and complex view of “choice” than the
Prodican model allows for: philosophy and virtue, she argues, rarely center
on a single life decision, and by adding tragedy to the generic mix in Amores
3.1, Ovid folds the Prodican dimension into a wider reflection on the nature
of philosophical, poetic, and life choice.
The focus turns to Epicureanism in Chapters 3 and 4. In Chapter 3, “Ovid’s
Ars amatoria and the Epicurean Hedonic Calculus,” Roy Gibson explores
Ovid’s engagement in his amatory corpus with the Epicurean calculus of
pleasure. That calculus is spread unevenly over the three books of the Ars.
It appears largely absent from Book 3, except in those instances where Ovid
recommends gradually decreasing pain and increasing pleasure for men.
Conversely, the concept of Panaetian-​Ciceronian decorum is strongly in
evidence in Book 3, but less prevalent in the books addressed to men. In
exploring this relative imbalance of philosophical emphases for the sexes,
Gibson argues that Ovid turns the spotlight on the Epicurean calculus at
certain significant junctures of the Remedia as well as the Ars to negative
effect: in the midst of his erotodidaxis he expresses serious doubts about fun-
damental aspects of the Epicurean project.
In Chapter 4, “Criticizing Love’s Critic: Epicurean parrhesia as an
Instructional Mode in Ovidian Love Elegy,” Erin M. Hanses argues
that throughout his erotic corpus Ovid engages with a key element of
Lucretian didactic, Epicurean parrhesia. The relationships nurtured or
displayed between student and teacher in Lucretius’ De rerum natura are
manipulated by Ovid as he shifts his own persona from that of student
12 Introduction

of love in the Amores, to teacher of love in the Ars, and finally to doctor
of love in the Remedia. Each of these shifts mimics a different aspect of
Epicurean parrhesia: talking across (student to student), a mode evinced
in the Amores; talking down (teacher to student), as in the Ars; and talking
up (student to teacher), a mode actualized when the Remedia is read as a
response to Lucretius. In progressing through the ranks of these didactic
relationships, Hanses’s Ovid directly challenges Lucretius qua philosoph-
ical authority on love.
The Ars features centrally in the two remaining chapters in Part II. In
Chapter 5, “Ovid’s imago mundi muliebris and the Makeup of the World in
Ars amatoria 3.101–​290,” Del A. Maticic argues that Ovid, in the instructions
he delivers on female cultus in that section of Ars 3, subverts the technique
of ekphrastic world depiction in the well-​known imago mundi shield tradi-
tion. For Maticic, Ovid redirects that tradition by constructing not an imago
mundi but a mundus muliebris (“woman’s world”)—​a description not of a
work of art but of an aesthetic system encompassing the body of the female
practitioner of cultus. The protective connotations of the heroic shield are
also carried over to this mundus muliebris: Ovid delineates a cultus shield
that is forged in the worldly experience of his female reader, and the alter-
native “cosmology” so portrayed is that of her relations with the sociocul-
tural systems surrounding her. On this approach, Ovidian cultus engenders
not so much a quality of worldliness as an aesthetic of what Maticic terms
“worldedness,” where the materials of the female body are enmeshed as phe-
nomena with the apparent beings surrounding her.
Then, after our tour of the localized world of 3.101–​290, Katharina Volk
takes a broader view of the Ars, and also of the Remedia, in Chapter 6,
“Ovid’s Art of Life.” Volk contends that Ovid’s erotodidactic poems, the
Ars and Remedia, constitute philosophical texts, in the senses (i) that both
are very much like philosophy, in that they are influenced by philosophical
doctrines and discourses popular in Ovid’s time; and (ii) that these poems
are philosophical in their own right, deploying their own theories of anthro-
pology, psychology, and ethics to promulgate a method of “loving wisely.”
For all its humor, all its reveling in artifice, and its willing suspension of
disbelief, Volk finds a positive vision at the heart of Ovid’s ars; and this “phi-
losophy” shows numerous similarities to the Foucaultian “techniques of the
self ” that we touched on earlier: methods of cognitive and behavioral condi-
tioning designed to achieve the desired inner state of mind and outer prac-
tice of virtue.
 Introduction 13

In what ways does Ovid’s range of philosophical vision and experi-

mentation expand outward when he progresses from erotic elegy to the
“higher” generic callings of the (still elegiac) Fasti and the (qualifiedly) epic
Metamorphoses? The five chapters in Part III all focus on the Metamorphoses
in particular, and a concerted effort has been made to explore parts and
aspects of the poem that have thus far received relatively little attention from
a philosophical perspective. In Chapter 7, “Keep Up the Good Work: (Don’t)
Do It like Ovid (Sen. QNat. 3.27–​30),” Myrto Garani begins from Seneca’s
grandiloquent visualization of the universal cataclysm at the climax of
Natural Questions 3 to argue that Seneca draws on Ovid’s account of the
mythical flood in Metamorphoses 1 as a proto-​scientific text. According to
Garani, Seneca suggests that he himself is about to build on those earlier “sci-
entific” discoveries so as to elucidate more effectively, from a philosophical
viewpoint, the recurring phenomenon of the cataclysm that heralds the end
of each world cycle. Through selective quotation from the Metamorphoses,
Garani’s Seneca systematically demythologizes Ovidian storytelling and
then turns both mythical and historical events into integral parts of his
own cosmic narrative, thereby formulating an effective Stoic praemeditatio
futurorum malorum, that is, the best means of reconciling his addressee,
Lucilius, to the inevitability of cosmic catastrophe. In effect, Seneca invests
Ovid’s mythical flood with a heuristic value so as to create a “diachronic
analogy” with his own flood narrative, and so to invoke his Ovidian source
as reinforcement for the cosmic projection delivered at the end of Natural
Questions 3.
In Chapter 8, “Venus discors: The Empedocleo-​Lucretian Background
of Venus and Calliope’s Song in Metamorphoses 5,” Charles Ham considers
a particular aspect of the song contest between the Heliconian Muses and
their mortal challengers, the daughters of Pierus—​an aspect that has major
ramifications for the broader Empedoclean presence in the Metamorphoses.
Focusing on the Muse Calliope’s performance, Ham argues that her song,
and specifically its representation of Venus, are to be read against an
Empedocleo-​Lucretian background. Ham’s Calliope represents Venus not
simply as a version of Empedoclean Philia/​Aphrodite or the Lucretian Venus
of the proem to De rerum natura 1, but rather as a chiefly discordant figure
akin to Empedoclean Neikos or Strife. Further, in exploring Venus’ repre-
sentation in the song, this chapter also considers some of the ways in which
Calliope’s Empedocleo-​Lucretian background bears on her status as an im-
portant ideological symbol in the Augustan period.
14 Introduction

The Lucretian/​Epicurean accent then recurs in Chapter 9, “Labor and

pestis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” where Alison Keith examines Ovid’s en-
gagement in three episodes with two famous “problems” of Epicurean phi-
losophy, labor (“toil”) and pestis (“plague”). For Keith, Ovid’s reference to
human toils in the Deucalion and Pyrrha episode—​genus experiens laborum
(Met. 1.414)—​implies the impossibility of mankind’s attaining the chief
goal of Epicurean philosophy, pleasure. Ovid uses the same phrase late in
his account of the plague at Aegina when describing the Myrmidons (7.656),
a hardy new people created by Jupiter from ants. The unexpectedly happy
outcome of Ovid’s Aeginetan plague narrative, in which Aeacus’ piety is
rewarded with the renewal of his people, comprehensively undoes the devas-
tation of Lucretius’ plague narrative in De rerum natura 6 and systematically
opposes the Epicurean logic that underpins it. In his account of Hercules’
demise on Mt. Oeta, Ovid again conjoins the motifs of labor and pestis in the
hero’s mental review of his labors as he lies dying. In his final words on the
pyre, Hercules questions the very existence of the gods in a phrase (9.203–​
4: “Can anyone still accept that the gods exist?”) that recalls Epicurean skep-
ticism of traditional religion. But Ovid’s subsequent narrative of the hero’s
apotheosis methodically refutes this Epicurean position in an episode that
heals the cosmic and physical desolation symbolically embodied in Hercules’
death on the pyre.
Plato enters in Chapter 10, Peter Kelly’s “Cosmic Artistry in Ovid and
Plato.” This chapter explores the particular appeal that Platonic philosophy
held for Ovid, especially when Plato operates at the border with myth and
fuses cosmic and human artistry. Kelly argues that a main attraction for
Ovid lay in the fact that the first major rendition of creationist cosmogony
in the Greco-​Roman tradition is found in Plato. Plato continually utilizes
the imagery of artistic production and mimesis to interrogate the relation-
ship between how the world is formed and how we can come to knowledge
of it, which leads to a pervasive parallelism between the structures of the
world and the text—​a dynamic that is evident throughout Ovid’s work, not
least in the suggestive identification of cosmogony and textual creation in
Metamorphoses 1. Further, Plato repeatedly blurs the interface between myth
and philosophy when attempting to represent the fluid and bodily nature of
the material world in a way that, Kelly proposes, was foundational for Ovid.
After this Platonic interlude, Lucretius again looms large in Chapter 11,
Darcy A. Krasne’s “Some Say the World Will End in Fire: Philosophizing
the Memnonides in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” The cremation of Memnon
 Introduction 15

and the subsequent generation and destruction of the Memnonides in

Metamorphoses 13 have primarily drawn attention as one modulation of the
Homero-​Virgilian Trojan cycle of Books 12–​14. In launching her different
trajectory of argument, Krasne proceeds from the concluding lines of the ep-
isode (13.600–​22). There, Ovid appears to be engaging with scientific termi-
nology, especially the language and imagery of Lucretius’ cosmogony in De
rerum natura 5. Taking this observation as her starting point, Krasne presses
its ramifications further, both within and beyond the Metamorphoses, tracing
Ovid’s intertexts back to Virgil, Lucretius, and Empedocles. Through this
complex of intertexts, Krasne argues, the Memnonides become a metaphor
for Rome’s birth in fratricide and its resulting cyclical trend of ekpyrotic civil
war and rebirth.
We move in Part IV (“The Exilic Corpus”) to Ovid’s place of exile on
the grim Pontic shore in Tomis (modern Constanța in Romania). K. Sara
Myers sets the scene in Chapter 12, “Ovid against the Elements: Natural
Philosophy, Paradoxography, and Ethnography in the Exile Poetry.” The
four Empedoclean elements that underlie the metamorphic physics of the
Metamorphoses reappear in Ovid’s descriptions of the environment of Tomis.
But Myers shows how, in Pontus, these elements are largely reduced to
three: air, water, and earth, all of which behave in unnatural or disordered
ways. Ovid’s frequent use of adynata further underscores the cosmic dis-
array of the natural world of his exile, and the regression to disorder and
Chaos. Missing in Tomis, Myers observes, is the element of heat that could
thaw the icy water, make the land fertile, and set in motion a harmony of
the elements; instead, a continual state of elemental strife persists. Ovid’s ex-
ilic cosmos can thus be seen as the opposite of the universal flux and change
posited by Pythagoras in Metamorphoses 15; in Myers’s Tomis nothing flows
and all stays the same. Yet she demonstrates how Ovid’s employment of the
traditional explanatory discourses of natural philosophy, ethnography, ge-
ography, medical theory, and aetiology signals his continued mastery of
these modes of knowledge, even as he finds himself in an environment where
the impossible becomes real, and in a world that seems beyond the reach of
human understanding.
A different but complementary challenge to human (self-​)understanding
is then explored by Donncha O’Rourke in Chapter 13, “Akrasia and Agency
in Ovid’s Tristia.” Elegy often illustrates a particular condition of personal
agency known in ancient ethical discussion as akrasia, whereby individuals
find that they are powerless to stop themselves from engaging in actions
16 Introduction

that they rationally understand to be objectionable or harmful. O’Rourke

examines how this elegiac concern with akrasia plays out in Ovid’s exilic
oeuvre, when the object of the poet’s unrequited amor is replaced by faraway
Roma, access to which is now denied by an emperor whose indulgence has
given way to unremitting anger. The exilic poetry’s obsessive concern with
the terms crimen, culpa, scelus, and error can similarly be read as an urgent
attempt to understand the degree of Ovid’s agency in his own downfall. For
O’Rourke, however, the exiled Ovid deploys a technical-​ethical vocabulary
not just to articulate and explore his own responsibility for his actions, but
also to mobilize a philosophical evaluation of Augustus’ assent to anger and
his doubtful capacity for meaningful clemency. If philosophical therapy in
the exilic works seems to offer Ovid only slight mitigation of his psycholog-
ical anguish, O’Rourke argues that it does at least enable him to take a view of
the emperor as one who ultimately is possessed of no higher self-​control than
the poet he has sought to disempower.
In Chapter 14, “Intimations of Mortality: Ovid and the End(s) of the
World,” Alessandro Schiesaro brings together different strands of thought
and imagery in the Metamorphoses and the exilic poetry to compare and
contrast Ovid’s treatments of eschatology in the two works. Schiesaro duly
stresses the role that eschatology as a theme plays throughout the entire
Ovidian oeuvre, but with a particular focus on recurrent conceptualizations,
as well as significant changes, across the divide between the Metamorphoses
and the exilic corpus. Whereas in the Metamorphoses Ovid deftly balances
the illusion of permanence with intimations of an end through metamorphic
inevitability, in Tomis “the end” is ever wished for but endlessly deferred: as
the corpus expands into book after book without offering any sign of change
or alleviation for the poet in Tomis, Schiesaro stresses the gradual hardening
of our realization that a standstill has been reached on the Pontic shore. It
is as if the endless cycle of repetition that characterizes the Stoic cosmos—​
and Pythagoras’ speech in Metamorphoses 15—​were now taking shape in the
form of serial, yearly collections of poetry.
Part IV concludes in Chapter 15 with Gareth D. Williams’s “The End(s)
of Reason in Tomis: Philosophical Traces, Erasures, and Error in Ovid’s
Exilic Poetry.” Williams focuses on the extent, manner, and consequences of
Ovid’s philosophical “failure” in exile, but with the ultimate goal of reflecting
anew—​from a philosophical standpoint—​on the nature of his elusive error.
Partly through appeal to Empedocles’ sub-​presence in both Ovid’s pre-​
exilic and Tomitan writings, this chapter first sets the lack of any sustained
 Introduction 17

philosophical appeal in Tomis against the very different structuring prin-

ciples that prevail in the Metamorphoses and Fasti: this move from struc-
ture to unstructure after his banishment in 8 ce importantly preconditions,
Williams argues, the phenomenon of philosophical failure in the exilic
corpus. That failure is then explored in relation to Ovid’s infamous error: the
error is so fundamental to his exilic plight—​implicated no less (through the
“mistake” of Augustan misreading) in the incrimination of the Ars than it is
in Ovid’s fateful mistake—​that the poet can never construct any fully ratio-
nalized understanding of his fate; and he therefore struggles to form any co-
herent philosophical response to exile on a foundation that is so undermined
by factors of judicial inexplicability and nontransparency.
Finally, in Part V (“After Ovid”), a single chapter, Philip Hardie’s
“Philosophizing and Theologizing Reincarnations of Ovid: Lucan to
Alexander Pope,” offers an important platform for further inquiry into the re-
ception of Ovidius philosophus. The more recent reception of Ovid has largely
denied his works serious engagement with philosophical issues; but the
longer history of reception shows that over many centuries Ovid was read as
a source and repository of philosophical—​and theological—​wisdom. Hardie
presents a selective survey of this history, with a particular focus on Ovid as
a cosmological and natural-​philosophical poet. The chapter builds outward
from aspects of Ovid’s reception in later antiquity (Lucan and Claudian), in-
cluding among Christian poets who drew on Ovidian cosmogony to lend
a philosophical coloring to versifications of the creation story of Genesis.
Turning to early modern English poetry, Hardie then examines Edmund
Spenser’s use of Ovid in the underpinning of The Faerie Queene with a phi-
losophizing doctrine of mutability (the Garden of Adonis, the Mutabilitie
Cantos); John Milton’s use of the Narcissus and Echo story to teach lessons
about human psychology and theology; and finally, in the eighteenth cen-
tury, Alexander Pope’s self-​alignment with Ovidius philosophus in his Essay
on Man.

The Collective Viewpoint

If the summary of the individual chapters as offered earlier is essentially cen-

trifugal in orientation, conveying the range and versatility of Ovid’s philo-
sophical commitments in particular contexts, certain centripetal tendencies
also conjoin many of the chapters in ways that lend at least a measure of
18 Introduction

coherence to the textual personality of Ovidius philosophus. Our aim in this

section is hardly to posit any generalized Ovidian “philosophy” on the basis
of the findings of the sixteen chapters; rather, we briefly take stock of those
chapters by sketching what they reveal of Ovid’s recurrent philosophical ten-
dencies and interests.
Berno’s tracing of the evolution of the term sapiens and its cognates across
the Ovidian corpus usefully initiates the balance that this book seeks to achieve
between attention to specific texts, on the one hand, and, on the other, sensi-
tivity to broader philosophical developments throughout the oeuvre. Beyond
the Empedoclean epos of Pythagoras’ speech in Metamorphoses 15, Ovid’s
engagement with Empedocles is explored in Books 5 (Ham) and 13 (Krasne),
and then traced into the exilic corpus by Myers and Williams. Lucretius,
too, is profoundly implicated along with Empedocles in the Metamorphoses
(so Keith) and the exilic poetry; but Gibson, Hanses, and Volk all demon-
strate the breadth of Ovid’s part-​interrogation and part-​appropriation of
Epicurean ethics in his erotic and erotodidactic works, while Williams also
touches on the relative “failure” of Epicurean therapy in Tomis. O’Rourke
on akrasia and Schiesaro on eschatology in the Metamorphoses and the ex-
ilic corpus complement Berno’s range of vision by stressing connectivity be-
tween different Ovidian parts; and those chapters that invoke other reference
points—​Fulkerson on Prodicus’ “Choice of Hercules” in Amores 3.1, Maticic
on the imago mundi shield tradition and female “worldedness” in Ars 3, and
Kelly on Plato in connection with the Ovidian cosmogony in Metamorphoses
1—​all enlarge the philosophical mosaic that is an expanding work in prog-
ress throughout Ovid’s career. As for the reception of Ovidius philosophus,
Garani contributes another perspective on the Ovidian cataclysm and con-
flagration in Metamorphoses 1 and 2 in her treatment of Seneca’s response to
Ovid in Natural Questions 3, while Hardie widens the reception horizons yet
further in a survey that whets the appetite for future inquiry in this area.
Empedocles, Epicurus/​Lucretius, Prodicus, Plato, the imago mundi tradi-
tion: beyond the representation in this volume of these different philosoph-
ical authors, schools, and tendencies, three broader concerns create further
networks of linkage between the chapters. First, ethics: several contributions
(Berno, Fulkerson, Gibson, Hanses, Volk, O’Rourke, Williams) are centrally
concerned with the emotions and their control, social ethics, consolation, life
choice, and the ars uitae, and in combination these chapters usefully convey
the breadth of Ovid’s vision in an ethical direction. Second, physics: mul-
tiple chapters (Garani, Ham, Keith, Kelly, Krasne, Myers, Schiesaro) treat this
 Introduction 19

topic from diverse perspectives, especially in reference to the Metamorphoses

and the exilic corpus, focusing notably on the relation of cosmos and chaos;
the Empedoclean elements; and eschatology, partly through cataclysm and
apocalypse in the Metamorphoses, and partly through Ovid’s portrayal of
Pontus as a place of physical extremities and “end-​of-​the-​world” desolation.
Third, aesthetics: various chapters (Fulkerson, Maticic, Kelly) relate Ovid’s
appropriations in ethics and/​or physics to aesthetic concerns that often in-
volve self-​conscious reflection on the poet’s own art. These three broad
categories are themselves hardly mutually exclusive, and their points of in-
terpenetration further enhance the overall unity of the collection.
Through thematic connectivity between various chapters, then, and
through the linkage in multiple contributions between different Ovidian
contexts, we hope that this book offers at least the beginnings of a holistic
appreciation of Ovidius philosophus. But no volume of this sort can seek to
offer fully satisfying coverage of a subject as multifaceted as philosophy in
Ovid. While certain parts of his oeuvre are well represented here, others are
not: the Fasti in particular has suggestive philosophical properties that are
not addressed in these pages (though see Kelly and Williams on the figure of
Janus in Fasti 1); any potential that the Heroides has in this direction goes un-
explored; and even though several chapters are devoted to the erotic corpus,
the Metamorphoses, and the exilic corpus, the philosophical potential of all
three areas far outruns the dimensions of this current project. We never-
theless hope that the quality and interest of the essays assembled here will
significantly offset any restrictions of scope in the volume and, still more im-
portant, that this effort will provide a catalyst for further examinations of
Ovidius philosophus.
 PART I
OV ID’S SA PI E N T IA
 1
Ouidius sapiens
The Wise Man in Ovid’s Work

Francesca Romana Berno

amare et sapere uix deo conceditur

(Publil. Sent. 22)

The focus of this chapter is not so much on a philosophical subject or theme as

on a philosophical term, one of the most conspicuous of all, given the absence
of the word philosophia in Ovid’s vocabulary: sapiens.* In offering an overview
of Ovid’s poetry—​his erotic, epic,1 and exilic works—​I shall concentrate in par-
ticular on passages that touch on the semantic field of sapiens/​sapientia. My spe-
cific goal is to establish (i) whether there is any sort of evolution of this idea
throughout and across his works; (ii) whether any such evolutionary process is
linked with larger philosophical issues, and, if so, how that linkage works; and
(iii) whether Ovid can in some way be regarded as a sapiens himself.

Introduction: The Meanings of sapiens/​sapientia and

Their Uses in Augustan Poetry

Sapientia is not frequently found in Augustan poetry: the sapio family, which
is attested in Ennius and Lucretius,2 is either totally absent or extremely rare

* My thanks to Katharina Volk and Gareth Williams for the invitation to contribute to this volume,

to Alessandro Schiesaro for editing my English, and to Martina Russo for her bibliographical help.
1 I use “epic” referring to Metamorphoses and Fasti, in the latter case only as a convenient

shorthand.
2 Luck 1964: 203–​ 9; Klima 1971: 71–​85; Lucr. 2.8; 5.10 (philosophical meaning). Garbarino
1965: 254–​73 notes that while Plautus explicitly links sapientia with phronēsis (Truc. 77–​9), Ennius
already draws a parallel with sophia (Ann. 218–​19 V.2 = 229–​30 ROL = 211–​12 FRL = Fest. 476.22;

Francesca Romana Berno, Ouidius sapiens In: Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher. Edited
by: Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197610336.003.0002
24 Francesca Romana Berno

in Virgil, Tibullus, and Propertius. The only exception to this trend is Horace,
a poet who explicitly deals with philosophy, and who uses these words espe-
cially in his Satires.3 Given this background, Ovid surely uses such language
with studied deliberation. In his time, the word sapientia had already evolved
from its initial sense of “craftiness” to the common Imperial meaning of
“wisdom.” Cicero played a crucial role in this development, as he himself was
well aware.4
In Ovid’s works we find a wide range of meanings of the word and concept
of sapiens, which go back to the archaic use of the term. In the erotic works, it
defines someone who is theoretically and practically expert in love affairs: in
effect, an artist-​like specialist in the technai pertaining to love. Nevertheless,
the poet is well aware of the philosophical import of this word, and he in fact
uses it with reference to philosophical issues. In the Metamorphoses and the
Fasti, the word sapiens is very rare and is used of characters who are rhe-
torically brilliant, even if not always frank and reliable: Brutus and Ulysses.
Ulysses is a particularly relevant case, because the exiled Ovid later compares
himself to the Homeric hero, and because the Stoics considered him an ex-
ample of the sage. Finally, in the exilic works, and especially in the Tristia, the
term sapiens characterizes Socrates, that paradigm of sapientia in its widest
sense. In sum, we can detect in Ovid’s works a sort of semantic evolution of
sapiens/​sapientia, from a specific meaning linked to the idea of ars (in his
erotic works), to a wider one linked to prudentia (in his epic mode), to the
one applied to the de facto philosopher (in his exilic works).
From a linguistic perspective, Ovid retraces the semantic evolution of this
term, from its older and in his time secondary meaning to the philosophical
one predominant in Imperial usage. For his part, Ovid identifies himself with
the first (“crafty”) embodiment of the sapiens, the one who sapienter amat,
and in that respect he differs from the philosophical sapiens to the extent that
he defines himself as his opposite: stultus.

cf. Magno 2003; Habinek 2006), which will be definitively confirmed by Cicero (Tusc. 5.7; Off. 1.153,
both quoted later).
3 Klima 1971: 145–​59; Massaro 1974.
4 Luck 1964: 210–​ 15; Klima 1971: 85–​139. The different meanings of sapiens are explained in
Cicero’s De amicitia, where the term sapiens is applied to L. Acilius because of his legal compe-
tence; to Cato the censor because of his expertise in many fields; and to Laelius, partly because of
his “mental endowments and natural character,” and partly because of his “devotion to study and his
learning” (Amic. 6–​7; Garbarino 1965: 278–​84). Note that at Ars am. 1.29 Ovid defines himself as an
expert poet, uates peritus.
 OVIDIVS sapiens 25

The Erotic Works: A Lover as sapiens

In the Amores we find few occurrences of sapiens and its cognates, but one of
them notably refers to Jupiter as a sapiens adulter for his seductive skills.5 In the
Ars, however, there are predictably significant instances of sapiens: someone
who is learned, but with specific reference to the erotic sphere. There are cer-
tain specialized usages, such as those in which a mature age group is consid-
ered sapientior in love affairs, in that it has more experience in this domain
than a younger generation (1.65 and 3.565–​6).6 More generally, someone sa-
piens is an erotic expert (1.663; Rem. am. 781), which means that he possesses
the ability to adapt to different situations and nimbly to apply (or distort to his
advantage) the rules of the game of love. This sense, which is rooted in the pri-
mary original meaning of the verb sapio, is well expressed in a passage from
the Ars (1.760–​2, trans. Melville 1990, here and later):

qui sapit, innumeris moribus aptus erit,

utque leues Proteus modo se tenuabit in undas,
nunc leo, nunc arbor, nunc erit hirtus aper.

A myriad natures must the expert know,

and Proteus-​like now melt into a stream,
now tree, now bristly boar, now lion seem.

Ovid’s awareness of the philosophical implications of the word sapiens is ev-

ident in Book 2, where Apollo exhorts the poet to take his students to his
temple, which bears the inscription “know thyself ”7 (497–​509, 511–​12):

is mihi “lasciui,” dixit, “praceptor Amoris,

duc, age, discipulos ad mea templa tuos,
est ubi diuersum fama celebrata per orbem

5 So 3.8.33 (in reference to Danaë), after a Plautine expression whereby the god is said to have acted

sapienter in relation to Alcmene (Amph. 289–​90); see later in the text. Similarly, in Her. 4.96, Aurora is
called sapiens . . . diua for cheating on Tithonus with Cephalus.
6 Cf. Ars am. 2.675–​6; R. K. Gibson 2003: 321 ad 3.565; Ramírez de Verger 2001. On the philo-

sophical aspects of Ovid’s erotic works, see also Fulkerson (Chapter 2), Gibson (Chapter 3), Hanses
(Chapter 4), and Volk (Chapter 6) in this volume.
7 D’Elia 1961: 132; Wildberger 1998: 296–​7; Janka 1997: 372–​3 ad loc.; Labate 1984: 161–​5. Of

course, the sapientia implied here is still far different from the authentic wisdom of which Plato
speaks; indeed, it represents a sort of technical competence (on these issues, see Schiesaro 2002). The
same can be said of Ulysses’ sapientia (see later).
26 Francesca Romana Berno

littera, cognosci quae sibi quemque iubet.

qui sibi notus erit, solus sapienter amabit
atque opus ad uires exiget omne suas.
cui faciem natura dedit, spectetur ab illa;
cui color est, umero saepe patente cubet;
qui sermone placet, taciturna silentia uitet;
qui canit arte, canat; qui bibit arte, bibat.
sed neque declament medio sermone diserti,
nec sua non sanus scripta poeta legat.”
sic monuit Phoebus . . .
...
ad propiora uocor. quisquis sapienter amabit,
uincet et e nostra quod petet arte feret.

“Professor of love’s wanton art,” he spoke,

“come on, your disciples to my temple take;
whereon the words renowned throughout our sphere
that counsel you to know yourself appear.
Who knows himself, alone will wisely love,
and best to suit his talents plan his move.
Whom nature’s dowered with looks his looks must air,
whose skin is white recline with shoulders bare.
From silence mute must witty talkers shrink,
Skilled singers sing, and expert drinkers drink.
But wits must never with lectures intersperse
their talk, nor poets read their crazy verse.”
Thus counselled Phoebus . . .
...
To come to earth, who loves in prudent wise,
will with my teaching win the sought-​for prize.

That most famous of all philosophical precepts, “know thyself,” is here read
as an invitation to preen one’s physical aspect and exterior qualities, such as a
good voice, and it is inscribed in a ring composition that is opened and closed
by the expression sapienter amabit (501, 511). The philosophical precept par
excellence is thus framed by two emphatic occurrences of sapienter, which
is itself almost oxymoronically combined with the verb “love” (amabit).
Moreover, the god characterizes Ovid as a specialist teacher in his field
(lasciui . . . praeceptor Amoris, 497): he is given a divine mandate as a learned
 OVIDIVS sapiens 27

poet, and in that respect he resembles a sapiens. Apollo asserts that, by fol-
lowing his injunction, Ovid’s pupils will acquire the necessary skill to inspire
love (qui sibi notus erit, solus sapienter amabit, 501); for his part, meanwhile,
the poet goes on (after Apollo finishes speaking) to recall his audience to dif-
ferent, more specific issues (ad propiora uocor, 511), and he repeats the god’s
words—​sapienter amabit—​in the same metrical sedes. Ovid, it seems, is set-
ting himself in competition with Apollo: the god has said that only one who
follows his “know thyself ” precept will be sapiens (solus, 501); but the poet
replies that anyone (quisquis, 511) can become sapiens, so long as his (Ovid’s)
precepts are heeded (e nostra . . . arte, 512). This implicit competition, in
which Ovid quietly asserts his superiority over the god, is evidently focussed
on how to inculcate sapientia in love affairs.

Sapienter amare

The expression that opens and closes the nosce te ipsum passage (Ars am.
2.511–​12) warrants further inspection:

quisquis sapienter amabit,

uincet et nostra quod petet arte feret.

The expression sapienter amare, an Ovidian creation that recurs elsewhere

in the Ars (e.g., 3.565–​6) but seems to disappear from Latin literature after
him,8 is modeled on two others. The first is the common phrase sapienter
facere (“do well”), which is frequent in archaic Latin, especially in Plautus,9
but also found in Cicero’s speeches.10 A significant occurrence is found in
Plautus, when Mercury says that his father Jupiter acted wisely in sleeping
with Alcumena (Amph. 289–​90, trans. De Melo 2011):

mercvrivs meus pater nunc pro huius uerbis recte et sapienter facit,
qui complexus cum Alcumena cubat amans animo obsequens.

8 With the exception of Calpurnius Flaccus, Exc. 2.1, where we find the expression in a play with

words which underlines the irrationality of love: miraris si aliquis non sapienter amat, cum incipere
amare non sit sapientis?
9 Cf. Plaut. Aul. 477; Bacch. 295, 337; Curc. 547; Poen. 1092. Apart from drama, the adverb is rare

in poetry: Ovid’s use is original in this respect, too.

10 Cic. Rosc. Am. 70; Cael. 16; Rab. Post. 24; Marcell. 9; Phil. 4.6; and in some letters, e.g., Fam.

8.16.5; QFr.1.1.2.
28 Francesca Romana Berno

According to this chap’s words, my father’s now doing the right and clever thing;
he’s lying with Alcumena in his arms, full of passion and enjoying himself.

Here, the meaning of sapienter clearly anticipates the Ovidian reading.

Besides sapienter facere, the second expression informing the creation of
sapienter amare is the philosophical sapienter uiuere, which is also attested in
Cicero, especially in his philosophical works. So, for example, Tusc. 5.12 and
26 (trans. Douglas 1985, here and later):11

nam etiam in tormentis recte, honeste, laudabiliter et ob eam rem bene uiui
potest, dum modo intelligas quid nunc dicam “bene.” dico enim constanter,
grauiter, sapienter, fortiter.

Even while being tortured, it is possible to live rightly, honourably, and rep-
utably, and on that account well, provided that you understand what I mean
by “well.” I mean steadfastly, responsibly, wisely, bravely.

negat [sc. Epicurus] quemquam iucunde posse uiuere, nisi idem honeste,
sapienter iusteque uiuat.

He says that no one can live pleasantly unless he also lives honourably, hon-
estly and justly.

While sapienter facere tends to be practical in its focus on a given situation

or problem, sapienter uiuere is applied to one’s broader existence, if it is lived
according to the philosophical (and especially ethical) precepts that lead to a
happy life.
Sapienter amare appears to represent a more general condition than
sapienter facere, because it denotes a lasting competence and seemingly
presupposes a theoretical grounding. At the same time, this expression is
more specific in its remit than sapienter uiuere, in that it focuses on a single
activity and excludes ethical issues. Ovid, it seems, is gently mimicking (even
perhaps mocking) Cicero’s linguistic innovations relating to the concept and
the expressions linked to the sapio family.
An interesting example of sapienter amare is found in the Remedia amoris
(745–​6):12

11 Cf. Fin. 1.57; 2.51; 4.21. A similar expression is sapienter ferre, with reference to the misfortunes

of life (Cic. Sen. 2; Fam. 1.7.5; 5.7.13); we find it also in Seneca (De ira 3.38.1; Ep. 30.5; cf. Ben. 6.35.1).
12 A. A. R. Henderson 1979: 130 ad loc.; Pinotti 1988: 314 ad loc.; see also Met. 13.433.
 OVIDIVS sapiens 29

Cnosida fecisses inopem, sapienter amasset:

diuitiis alitur luxuriosus amor.

Make Minos’ queen poor, she’d have loved more wisely:

the luxury of love on riches feeds.

Ovid is alluding to Pasiphaë and her monstrous passion for the bull from
which the Minotaur was born. This is defined as an instance of luxuriosus
amor; sapienter amare thus contrasts with this expression in that it denotes
a reasonable, normal love as opposed to a perverse or monstrous pas-
sion. Sapienter amare recurs in this sense also in the Heroides. Phyllis asks
Demophoon (2.27–​8, trans. Slavitt 2011):

dic mihi, quid feci, nisi non sapienter amaui?

crimine te potui demeruisse meo?

Tell me, Demophoon, what have I done wrong,

except to love unwisely? Was that my crime?

Phyllis reproves herself for her mistakes: falling in love with a stranger,
going to bed with him before marriage, and thereby leaving him free to
abandon her without any reproach from society at large. Of course, these
considerations involve pudor, but from the Ovidian female’s perspective
it is more a question of how to keep/​maintain her lover—​essentially the
same question that is raised in the Ars amatoria. At Heroides 2.27, sapienter
clearly alludes to some cognitive background, as is shown by comparison
with the reference to Phyllis at Remedia amoris 55: uixisset Phyllis, si me
foret usa magistro.13 Sapientia is thus linked to learning, just as it is in the
“know thyself ” passage, another aspect that draws this word close to its
philosophical sense.
In general, we may conclude that Ovid’s use of sapiens/​sapientia in his
erotic works reflects his attitude toward literary didactic form:14 he is
aware of the technical philosophical charge of this word, and in deciding
to use it despite its absence in Augustan poetry, he plays on its serious
meaning.

13 Barchiesi 1992: 132 ad loc.

14 And also toward declamation: Tarrant 1995.
30 Francesca Romana Berno

Epic Works: A Skillful sapiens, I. Brutus

The limitation of meaning of the word sapiens as applied in Ovid’s erotic

works is also found in his Fasti and Metamorphoses, but in a different way.
Predictably enough, the idea of sapiens/​sapientia in this more elevated con-
text is no longer linked to love affairs;15 it is, however, still connected with
craftiness more than with philosophical knowledge, even if it shows a slight
turn toward this philosophical valence.
Significant in this regard is the only occurrence of the term in the Fasti, on
the anniversary of the end of the monarchy (2.717–​20, trans. Wiseman and
Wiseman 2013):

Brutus erat stulti sapiens imitator, ut esset

tutus ab insidiis, dire Superbe, tuis.
ille iacens pronus matri dedit oscula Terrae,
creditus offenso procubuisse pede.

Brutus was wise, but imitating a fool in order to be safe from your plots, ter-
rible Superbus. Lying face-​down he gave his kisses to Mother Earth; it was
assumed he had caught his foot and fallen flat.

Brutus played the part of a dullard, even though he was the only one who un-
derstood the true meaning of the oracle: the winner, it portended, would be
the first to kiss his mother. Brutus promptly kissed Mother Earth, thus setting
in train the dissolution of the monarchy; and so in his feigned foolishness (cf.
stulti, 717) he is defined as an artful mimic.16 This well-​known story was, of
course, narrated in similar terms by many Roman authors, especially Cicero
and Livy. But it is noteworthy that among the expressions that are applied to
Brutus’ shrewd strategy, we never find the word sapientia: apparently, Ovid
is alone in using the term in reference to him. Valerius Maximus lists Brutus’
enterprise under uafre dicta aut facta (“things cunningly said or done,” 7.3.2),
and not under sapienter dicta aut facta (7.2), where we find political, military,
and philosophical examples of intelligence and integrity, but no accounts of
sapientia as an ability to defeat an opponent or enemy. Valerius characterizes

15 But cf. Met. 14.675–​8, where Vertumnus, disguised as an old lady, tells Pomona sed tu si sapies . . .

Vertumnum . . . tori socium tibi selige.

16 Bömer 1957–​8: 2.505–​6; M. Robinson 2010: 460–​1 ad loc.; Ursini 2019: 65–​6.
 OVIDIVS sapiens 31

Brutus as follows (7.3.2): obtunsi se cordis esse simulauit eaque fallacia maximas
uirtutes suas texit (“he . . . pretended to be dull of intellect and veiled his great
abilities by that deception”; trans. Shackleton Bailey 2000); Valerius also quali-
fies Brutus’ act of kissing Mother Earth with the adverb uafre (7.3.2). In other
authors, there is praise of Brutus’ industria (Liv. 1.56.8) or prudentia, as we find
in a Ciceronian passage very similar in formulation to the Ovidian one (Cic.
Brut. 53): [sc. Brutus] . . . qui summam prudentiam simulatione stultitiae texerit
(“Brutus . . . who concealed under the guise of stupidity great wisdom”; trans.
Hendrikson and Hubbell 1939). Indeed, Brutus’ kind of intelligence is more
appropriately termed prudentia, or the virtue of distinguishing what is good
and what is bad, rather than sapientia, which implies the knowledge of human
and divine things, as Cicero himself states (Off. 1.153):17

princepsque omnium uirtutum illa sapientia, quam sophian Graeci uocant—​

prudentiam enim, quam Graeci phronesin dicunt, aliam quandam intellegimus,
quae est rerum expetendarum fugiendarumque scientia—​illa autem sapientia,
quam principem dixi, rerum est diuinarum et humanarum scientia, in qua
continetur deorum et hominum communitas et societas inter ipsos.

The foremost of all the virtues is the wisdom the Greeks call sophia. (Good
sense, which they call phronēsis, we realize is something distinct, that is, the
knowledge of things that one should pursue and avoid.) But the wisdom that
I declared to be the foremost is the knowledge of all things human and divine;
and it includes the sociability and fellowship of gods and men with each other.

It is notable that prudentia as a virtue is frequently named by Ovid,18 and also

by other Augustan poets; hence, once again, Ovid can be seen to go his own
way, differentiating himself from other writers by referring intentionally to
Brutus’ sapientia.
Moreover, the Ovidian formulation opposes sapiens and stultus, an oppo-
sition that goes back to archaic comedy19 and that, before and during the
Augustan age, was characterized by Publilius Syrus, Cicero, and Horace as

17 Hellegouarc’h 1963: 271–​4 considers sapientia as linked to prudentia among the virtues of the

ideal politician; cf. Klima 1971: 28–​37.

18 For prudentia in Ovid, see later; we find it applied to the magical arts (Her. 5.150; 21.122, 137,

178), to Echo’s arts (Met. 3.364), to the acceptance of divine judgment (Met. 15.641), to Nestor (Met.
12.178), and to Jupiter while raping Europa (Fast. 5.613, 685). In sum, we may infer that it is used of
specific occasions and applications, while sapientia is more general in its sphere of reference.
19 Plaut. Pers. 375; see also Ars am. 3.655, albeit in a couplet of doubtful authenticity.
32 Francesca Romana Berno

corresponding to the key dualism in Hellenistic philosophy between sophos

and phaulos.20 Hence it seems that Ovid retrieves the sapiens/​stultus dyad
from philosophy, and that he deliberately reapplies it at Fasti 2.717–​20, in
a political rather than a philosophical context, to stress his character’s leg-
endary significance via a striking alliterative oxymoron.
One further consideration remains to be registered about Ovid’s characteri-
zation of Brutus. In his Ovidian guise, Brutus is markedly similar to the most fa-
mous of all deceivers, Ulysses. As is well known, Ulysses, together with Hercules,
was considered by the Stoics a paragon of the sage, and he had long been termed
sapiens in Latin literature, especially by Cicero (Tusc. 5.7) and Horace, who (as
we have seen) offers a significant precedent for Ovid’s use of the word. It is likely
that Ovid’s characterization of Brutus derives from a passage of the Iliad that
refers to Odysseus (Il. 3.216–​18, 219–​21, 223, trans. Lattimore 1951):

ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ πολύμητις ἀναΐξειεν Ὀδυσσεὺς

στάσκεν, ὑπαὶ δὲ ἴδεσκε κατὰ χθονὸς ὄμματα πήξας
...
. . . ἀΐδρεϊ φωτὶ ἐοικώς:
φαίης κε ζάκοτόν τέ τιν᾽ ἔμμεναι ἄφρονά τ᾽ αὔτως
ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ ὄπα τε μεγάλην ἐκ στήθεος εἵη
...
οὐκ ἂν ἔπειτ᾽ Ὀδυσῆί γ᾽ ἐρίσσειε βροτὸς ἄλλος.

But when that other drove to his feet, resourceful Odysseus,

he would just stand and stare down, eyes fixed on the ground beneath him,
...
. . . like any man who knows nothing.
You would call him a sullen man, and a fool likewise.
But when he let the great voice go from his chest
...
then no other mortal beside could stand up against Odysseus.

In this passage, Helen’s account of the Greek heroes as seen from her vantage
point on the walls of Troy, Odysseus’ pose of false modesty and witlessness
(ἀΐδρεϊ φωτὶ ἐοικώς, 219) offers a striking precedent for Ovid’s stulti sapiens

20 Cf. Publil. 40; Cic. Parad. 19; Fin. 1.57; Off. 3.89; Hor. Epist.1.2.17–​
26. See also Garbarino
1965: 274.
 OVIDIVS sapiens 33

imitator. The Iliadic passage was certainly well known to him, as he imitates
it in the long sequence of the so-​called armorum iudicium in Metamorphoses
13 (124–​7, trans. Melville 1986, here and later):

donec Laertius heros

adstitit atque oculos paulum tellure moratos
sustulit ad proceres exspectatoque resoluit
ora sono, neque abest facundis gratia dictis.

Until at last
Laertes’ famous son stood forth, his gaze
briefly upon the ground, then raised his eyes
towards the captains and began his speech,
the speech for which they waited, and his words
were lacking neither grace not eloquence.

Epic Works: A Skillful sapiens, II. Ulysses

Having considered how Ovid’s Brutus resembles the Homeric Odysseus,

we now turn to the Ovidian Ulysses himself. The context is that of the long
self-​justifying speech made by Ulysses in sly response to the accusatory
speech that has just been delivered by Ajax; it is here that we find two of the
three occurrences of sapiens in the poem.21 The armorum iudicium, derived
from the Homeric Cycle, was by Ovid’s time already a subject of rhetorical
controuersiae,22 and the characterization of Ulysses as primarily an orator
and a deceiver belongs to a minor but not inconsiderable branch of the re-
ception of this figure.23 In Ovid, Ulysses first asserts the superiority of intel-
ligence over courage, thereby rebutting Ajax’s claim that his defence of the
ships counted for far more than Ulysses’ capturing of the Palladium (353–​6):

tibi turba comes, mihi contigit unus:

qui nisi pugnacem sciret sapiente minorem

21 The third and last occurrence (13.433) poignantly refers to what we know will be Priam’s ulti-

mately disastrous, anything but wise decision to trust Polydorus to his murderer, Polymestor.
22 Cf. Sen. Controv. 2.2.8; see the fine synthesis of the status quaestionis in P. Hardie 2015b: 214–​18.
23 Stanford 1954: 90–​101; De Caro 2006: 164–​71 (on the elegiac reception of the topic). Already

Sophocles in his Ajax defines Odysseus as sophos in a sense similar to that in Ovid (1374; cf. Phil. 119;
Stanford 1954: 106 and 109).
34 Francesca Romana Berno

esse nec indomitae deberi praemia dextrae,

ipse quoque haec peteret.

A crowd was around you: I had just the one companion;

and did that one not know that fighting men
count less than wise men, and that prizes are not owed
to a strong right arm, he’d himself be claiming it.

In this passage, where we find the first occurrence of sapiens, Ulysses maintains
that Diomedes, who was his comrade in the theft of the Palladium, knows full
well that being pugnax is less valuable than being sapiens (354),24 and there-
fore does not dispute the allotment to Ulysses of Achilles’ weapons. In this
case, sapiens means not wise but prudent, or clever in planning an action—​a
meaning attested for the cognomina of Roman generals in the old Republic,25
and one that is implicit also in Horace’s characterization of Ulysses at Epist.
1.2.17–​19.26 An ethical valence appears absent from the concept.
In concluding his speech, Ulysses uses the expression sapienter agendum
(13.375–​8, 380):

per spes nunc socias casuraque moenia Troum

perque deos oro, quos hosti nuper ademi,
per siquid superest, quod sit sapienter agendum,
siquid adhuc audax ex praecipitique petendum est
...
este mei memores!

I beg you now, by all the hopes we share,

by Troy’s walls soon to totter, by the gods
that I abducted from the enemy,
by any remaining deeds that require intelligent action,
if there are dangers brave men still should dare,
...
remember me!
24 Casamento 2003: 46 sees a reference to Cic. De or. 3, where sapientia is postulated as a prerequi-

site for effective oratorical performances.

25 E. L. Wheeler 1988.
26 Rursus quid uirtus et quid sapientia possit/​utile proposuit nobis exemplar Vlixen/​qui domitor
Troiae (“Again, Homer has set before us a helpful example/​of what goodness and wisdom can do
in the shape of Ulysses,/​the tamer of Troy”; trans. Rudd 2005). Cf. Massaro 1974: 87–​90; Stanford
1954: 121–​7.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
myöntäisi vain pintapuolisesti tutustuvansa niihin tehtäviin, joiden
tulkkina hän tahtoo olla. Mutta tämän teorian käytännöllisessä
toteuttamisessa oli aihe ristiriitaisuuksiin. Vapaaherra Uexküll-
Gyllenband saattoi, ja tuskin ilman syytä, moittia aikansa teattereita
ja näyttämötaiteen edustajia siitä, että nämä kuittasivat
runoteokseen kätkettyjen arvojen tutkimisen liian vähällä. Itse hän
tunsi menettelevänsä niin perinpohjaisesti tässä työssä, että uskoi
aloittavansa aivan uuden suunnan näyttämötaiteessa. Koska hän
hautoi Ibsenin draamojen salaisuuksia vuosikausia ja käytti
joutoaikaansa tutkimuksiin siitä, millä tavoin draamojen vuorosanat
muodostuivat kokonaisiksi henkilökuviksi, joilla oli ne ja ne
ominaisuudet, hän luuli pääsevänsä niin varmoihin tuloksiin, että
merkitsi oman kantansa totuudeksi. Loppuun asti pysyi hänen
mieluisana väitteenään, kun hän tuomitsi vierasta näyttämötaidetta:
se ei ole totta, se on valheellista taidetta. Hän jaksoi tuskin koskaan
täydellisesti selvittää itselleen, että perinpohjaisinkin analyysi antaa
vain subjektiivisen totuuden, sillä muuten hän tuskin olisi ollut niin
ankara arvosteluissaan. Jos vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandin
tavallisiin teatterinohjaajiin kohdistama pintapuolisuutta koskeva
syytös perustui vakaumukseen, niinkuin se epäilemättä hänen
puoleltaan perustui, oli hänen omalla työtavallaan puolia, joita voitiin
pitää heikkouksina: hänen analyysinsa oli niin perinpohjaista, että se
olisi voitu merkitä pedanttisuudeksi, joka vie elämän ja veren
näyttämötulkinnalta.

Elämänsä lopulla vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandilla lienee ollut se

käsitys, että Ida Aalberg oli täysin toteuttanut hänen aatteensa ja
pyrkimyksensä ja esittänyt sitä suurta ja syvää ja todellista taidetta,
joka hänen mielessään kangasteli. Ennenkuin hän kuitenkaan pääsi
tähän käsitykseen, täytyi hänen tuomita aikakautensa taidekritiikki,
sillä siltä jäi melkein kokonaan huomaamatta, että Ida Aalberg edusti
jotakin uutta suuntaa.

On mahdollista, ettei Ida Aalberg ollut paras mahdollinen tulkki

vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandin aatteelle. Missään tapauksessa
hänen ei voi katsoa tuota aatetta ulkonaisesti erinomaisen
menestyksellisesti toteuttaneen. Ida Aalbergin näyttelemisessä jäi
älyllinen aines, jonka piti olla vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandin
osuus, taka-alalle, ja vieras kieli, jolla hän aluksi koetti toteuttaa
miehensä katsantokantaa, muodostui kaikista valmisteluista
huolimatta esteeksi vaikeuttaen voittoon pääsemistä.

»Hedda Gabler» oli ollut vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandin

hartaitten tutkimusten esineenä pitkän aikaa. Kun Ida Aalberg 1901
Pietarissa esiintyi Heddana, hän näytteli saksankielisessä
amatööriseurueessa, jonka nimenä oli »Draamallisen kirjallisuuden
harrastajat». »St. Petersburger Herold» kirjoitti tuon esityksen
johdosta, mainittuaan ensin, että Ibsenin kappale oli esityksessä
huolella harjoitettu ja tutkittu:

— »Ja niin alamme puhua rouva Aalbergista itsestään.

Hänessä on jotakin vierasta, kun hän seisoo siellä yksinäisessä

korkeudessaan, ja tuo vierauden vaikutelma yhäkin lisääntyy, kun
kuulemme hänen ääntävän saksaa. Omilta saksalaisen näyttämön
suuruuksiltamme olemme kuulleet toisenlaista kieltä, mutta koska
hän on ulkomaalainen, ei ole syytä olla ankara. Eikä oikeastaan voi
sanoa, että rouva Aalbergin kieli olisi mitenkään vaikuttanut
häiritsevältä; se päinvastoin eräissä kohtauksissa yhäkin tehosti, että
entinen Hedda Gabler kuului toiseen maailmaan kuin hänen
ympäristönsä.
 Rouva Aalberg epäilemättä on sangen huomattava näyttelijätär.
On varmaan suuri nautinto saada kuulla hänen puhuvan
äidinkieltään. Silloin hänen suunsa varmaan puhuu kiihkeissä
kohtauksissa vieläkin intohimoisemmin ja silloin hänen sanansa
varmaan soivat vieläkin suloisemmin hänen kiehtoessaan sieluja ja
ottaessaan kuulijan valtoihinsa.» ‒ ‒ ‒

Omituista on, että Pietarin saksalaisten lehtien kritiikit ovat itse

tulkintaan nähden perin erimieliset. »Herold» kiittää häntä
erinomaiseksi keskustelunäyttelijäksi, mutta arvelee häneltä
puuttuvan syvää traagillista intohimoa. Jos tämä arvostelu olisi oikea
ja pystyisi kuvaamaan Ida Aalbergin näyttelemistä, osoittautuisi uusi
koulu sangen voimakkaaksi. Mutta »St. Petersburger Zeitung»
puhuu samasta tilaisuudesta aivan vastakkaista kieltä. Sen kritiikki
on erinomaisen myötämielinen, mutta kaiken kiitoksen ohella lehden
arvostelija väittää Ida Aalbergin tulleen liiaksi esille kokonaisuuden
kustannuksella ja kertoo hänen näytelleen osan liian korkeaan
traagilliseen tyyliin.

1903 Ida Aalberg esiintyi Berlinissä. Hän tulkitsi Heddaa »Hedda

Gablerissa» ja Rebekka Westiä »Rosmersholmissa». Näytännöt
annettiin hyväntekeväisyysnäytäntöinä musiikkikorkeakoulun salissa.
Hänen vastanäyttelijöikseen näihin »Ibsen-
hyväntekeväisyysnäytäntöihin» oli palkattu eräitä Berlinin
kuninkaallisen ja Deutsches Theaterin jäseniä. Yleisöä näissä
tilaisuuksissa kävi hyvin runsaasti — suureksi osaksi salin täyttivät
kuitenkin ei-saksalaiset katsojat —, mutta saamistaan erinäisistä
kiitoslauseista huolimatta Ida Aalbergin taide ei herättänyt
suurtakaan huomiota. Eräistä berliniläisen kritiikin karkeuksista ja
ilkeyksistä lienee johtunut, että luovuttiin kaikista lisäsuunnitelmista
Saksaan nähden ja käännyttiin Itävallan puoleen. Wienistä palkattiin
näyttelijät vuosien 1904—1905 suurta kiertuetta varten, jonka
tehtävänä piti olla vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandin uuden taiteen
julistaminen.

Ida Aalbergin kirjeistä näkyy, että vuosien 1904—1905

saksankielinen kiertue oli tarkoitettu lähinnä julistamaan vapaaherra
Uexküll-Gyllenbandin taiteellista ohjelmaa. Ida Aalberg tosin puhuu
näissä kirjeissään omissa nimissään ja esittää uuden suunnan ilman
muuta omanaan, mutta varsin ilmeistä on, että hänen sanojensa
takana on vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenband.

Ennen tämän kiertueen alkamista Ida Aalberg kirjoitti Bergbomeille

Franzensbadista:

»Rakas Täti Emilie Bergbom!

Minun täytyy teille, Tädille ja Tohtorille, tehdä ilmoitus eräästä

uutisesta, joka ehkä tulee teitä kummastuttamaan, — mutta kun
ajattelen, millä uskollisella sympatialla te aina olette minun
tähänastista kehitystäni seuranneet, niin luulen uskaltavan! toivoa,
että te molemmat minut nytkin ymmärrätte.

Minä olen nim. päättänyt tänä syksynä tehdä suuremman

tourneen saksankielellä, sillä se tulee, paitsi Skandinaviaa,
koskettelemaan useampia maita.

Se on perustettu osaksi uusille ja joka tapauksessa puhtaasti

taiteellisille principeille, jotka nyttemmin ovat tulleet minulle
välttämättömiksi voidakseni saada esille sen sisällön, jonka näen
taiteellisena maalinani ja jonka kerran tahtoisin saavuttaa.
Monenlaiset kokemukset viime vuosien aikana ovat kehittäneet
minussa sen vakuutuksen, että nykyinen näyttelytapa on mitä
suurimmassa määrässä — brutali ja epätosi.

Te Tohtori äärettömän hienolla taiteilia-sielullanne tiedätte mitä

minä tarkoitan, ja — mitä minä etsin. Te joka minua aina tiedolla ja
taiteella mitä hellimmällä kädellä johditte ja herätitte minussa
aavistuksen taiteen huimaavasta korkeudesta. Te jonka kanssa
yhteistyö aina tuli niin harmonilliseksi ja innostuksesta lentäväksi,
— minä niin sydämestäni pyytäisin että Te nytkin sympatialla
seuraisitte tätä minun pyrkimystäni kohden taiteen maalia.

Minä en voinut Huhtikuussa Tädille ja Tohtorille tästä mitään

ilmoittaa, sillä asia ei silloin vielä ollut selvillä.» ‒ ‒ ‒

Tämä Bergbomeille osoitettu kirje sisältää uuden ohjelman

julistuksen sangen yksinkertaisessa ja varovaisessa muodossa.
Kaarlo Bergbom tunsi Ida Aalbergin siksi hyvin, että olisi havainnut
tarkemmin teorian esittämisen opituksi läksyksi. Vieraammille
henkilöille Ida Aalberg uskalsi esittää uutta oppia paljoa suuremmalla
rohkeudella, mutta silloin ei aina käynyt hyvin. Kun Albert Edelfelt oli
saanut valmiiksi näyttelijättärestä maalaamansa komean
muotokuvan, pidettiin hänen kunniakseen juhla, jossa Ida Aalberg
nousi puhumaan ja selitti, kuinka taiteen alalla piti tapahtua suuri
muutos. Edelfelt teki kuitenkin tästä puheesta niin sydämetöntä
pilkkaa, että Ida Aalbergilla oli täysi työ yrittäessään salata
kyyneleitä, jotka kohosivat hänen silmiinsä ja joita hän pyyhiskeli
pois kädessään olevalla ruusulla. Ja varmaa on, että kyyneleet
hänen silmissään olivat aidompia kuin se filosofia, joka vähäistä
aikaisemmin oli virrannut hänen huuliltaan.

Eino Leino toimi tähän aikaan näyttämötaiteen arvostelijana, ja

hänelle Ida Aalberg koetti antaa tarkempaa kuvaa siitä, mitä uusi
ohjelma sisälsi. Eivät vain tuossa selityksessä vilisevät saksalaiset
sanat — »die dramatische Gegenwärtigkeit, »die dramatische
Aktualitet», »die dramatische Wahrheit» (joilla Ida Aalberg suvaitsi
kuvata oikean näyttämötaiteen tehtävää ja luonnetta) ja
»Vergröberung» (jolla hän merkitsi huonon näyttämötaiteen
käyttämää tekniikkaa), »esteettinen jenseits» ja »todellinen
diesseits», vaan kaikki muukin, minkä Leino saamastaan kirjeestä
julkaisi, on niin opittua läksyä kuin mikään voi olla. Ja niin suuresti
kuin Eino Leino olikin osoittanut ihailevansa Ida Aalbergia taiteilijana,
tuommoinen teoretisoiminen ei näy tehneen häneen vakuuttavaa
vaikutusta. Vain se seikka, että noiden sanojen takana on
pohjoismaiden suurin näyttelijätär, estää suhtautumasta teoriaan
epäillen, semmoinen oli loppusumma Eino Leinon yleisöä varten
kirjoittamasta kuvauksesta.

Eino Leino muuten lienee sanonut painavimman sanan, mitä

vuosien 1904—1905 kiertueesta Suomessa julkisuudessa sanottiin.
Hän teki sen »Valvojassa». On syytä lainata tuosta Leinon
juhlakirjoituksesta — Ida Aalberg oli joulukuussa 1904 ollut 30 vuotta
näyttämön palveluksessa, ja »Valvoja» ilmestyi jonkinlaisena Ida
Aalberg-numerona — muutamia kohtia:

»Sanottakoon hänen saksankielisestä tunteestaan mitä tahansa,

— se etu siitä ainakin on ollut, että se on asettanut tarpeellisen
välimatkan päähän nekin katsojat, joille se ennen on ollut vaikeata.
Vieras kieli on sen tehnyt. Me olemme olleet tilaisuudessa
näkemään hänet ikäänkuin lintuperspektiivissä, ilman sitä kansallista
sateenkaarta ja samoin vailla sitä hurmaavaa värivivahdusten
auerta, joka hänen äidinkieltä puhuessaan aina on silmiämme
hivellyt ja — sumentanut. Selvemmin kuin koskaan ennen on
allekirjoittaneelle esiintynyt, kuinka suuri taiteilija Ida Aalberg on,
mutta samalla myöskin, mikä hänen oikea suuruutensa on.

Edellinen kysymys lienee jo aikaisemmin tullut, voimien mukaan,

kyllin selkeästi valaistuksi. Kaikki näyttämötaiteemme arvostelijat
ylimalkaan ovat, muusta monikarvaisuudestaan huolimatta, olleet
siinä yksimielisiä, että paitsi sitä, ettei hänellä korkean
traagillisuuden papittarena ole meillä vertaistaan, hän samalla on
koko aikakautensa kaikkein suurimpia näyttämöllä liikkuvia henkiä.
Tässä yksimielisyydessä on tosin usein ylimalkainen ihailu saanut
korvata ymmärtämisen, suuret sanat asiallisen määrittelemisen.
Mutta tämä harvinainen ylistysten kuoro kantaa kaikissa tapauksissa
todistusta siitä, minkä valtavan vaikutuksen Ida Aalbergin taide on
tämän polven sydämeen piirtänyt.

— — — Jos on totta, että kukin taiteilija on arvosteltava

ainoastaan sen parhaan mukaan, mitä hän on tehnyt, niin täytyypä
sanoa, että ainakin Ida Aalbergin suhteen on ollut tuiki vaikea tuota
mittapuuta keksiä. On tuntunut nimittäin kauan kuin olisi kaikki ollut
yhtä hyvää, mitä hän on tehnyt. Olkoon hän esiintynyt Kleopatrana
taikka Gretcheninä, Magdana taikka lady Macbethina, Camillena
taikka Hedda Gablerina, Theodorana taikka Kirsti Fleminginä, —
kaikissa on meille säkenöinyt sama syntyperäinen nero, sama
taiteellinen äly ja sama syvä ihmisyys. Hyviä ovat ne olleet
taideluomina kaikki, mutta siitä ei sittenkään johdu, että ne kaikki
olisivat olleet yhtä hyviä. Niidenkin joukossa on toisia, jotka ovat Ida
Aalbergin parhaita, ja näissä parhaimmissa taas osia, jotka
edustavat hänen parastaan, s.o. hänen syvintään, hänen
alkuperäisintään, sanalla sanoen hänen keskeisintä
persoonallisuuttaan.
 — — — Palataksemme Ida Aalbergiin — on meidän siis
koetettava etsiä hänen tulkitsemiensa taideilmiöiden myllertävästä
paljoudesta ne, jotka ovat olleet hänen punaisinta sydänvertaan ja
joissa hänen persoonallisuutensa on puhtaimpana esiintynyt. Tätä
varten ei suinkaan ole halveksuttava vanhaa, koetettua kriitillistä
mittapuuta: »mikä jää mieleen». Siinä suhteessa asettaisin taas ensi
sijalle kaikista niistä taideluomista, joita hän viimeisen kymmenen
vuodenaikana on pääkaupungissamme esittänyt: Kleopatran, lady
Macbethin, Kirsti Flemingin, Hedda Gablerin. Mikä on näiden
luonteiden yhteinen ominaisuus? — Intohimo.

Kolmen edellisen suhteen on lukija sen varmaankin helposti

myöntävä. Mutta Hedda Gabler? Onko intohimo tämänkin tyynen,
viileän, itseään täydellisesti hallitsevan naisen perusominaisuus?
Epäilemättä. Sillä eroituksella vain, että se, mikä edellisissä koskena
kuohuu, virtana vilisee, on tässä jääksi jähmettynyt. Muuten emme
mielestäni mitenkään voi hänen tekojaan selittää, — esim. Lövborgin
käsikirjoituksen hävittämistä, — emmepä edes hänen aikaisempaa
tunne-elämäänsä, — esim. että hän on vihannut jo koulutyttönä
ollessaan kilpailijattarensa kauniin punaista tukkaa. Ellemme otaksu
intohimoa siksi voimaksi, joka tuon jäisen pinnan alla väkevänä
hyrskyy, jää kenraali Gablerin tytär meille todellakin arvoitukseksi,
kuten se niin monelle on jäänyt. Hedda Gabler on Ibsenin Kleopatra,
tunturien lady Macbeth, nykyaikaisen yhteiskunnan luoman jään ja
lumen Kirsti Fleming.

Intohimo eri muodeissaan on mielestäni Ida Aalbergin

tuhatsärmäisen taiteilijaluonteen perusominaisuus.

Käydessämme taas tarkastamaan, mitkä kohdat yllämainituista

taideluomista esiintyvät muita merkitsevämpinä, on silloin esim.
Kleopatrassa muistettava tuo suurenmoinen kohtaus lähettilään
kanssa, jota villimpää, silmittömämpää ja väkevämpää emme Ida
Aalbergin koko ohjelmistossa tapaa. Samoin lady Macbethissa
murha- ja pitokohtaus. Samoin Kirsti Flemingissä hänen taistelunsa
syntymättömän lapsensa puolesta. Samoin Hedda Gablerissa ne
välkähdykset, jotka Tea rouvan sekaantuminen Lövborgin kohtaloon
hänestä iskee esille. Siis kaikkialla: intohimon kaamea leimu, elämän
suurissa, alkuperäisissä kajastuksissa.

Mitä taas Ida Aalbergin muihin taideluomiin tulee, ovat niistäkin

juuri nuo myrsky- tai myrskyä ennustavat kohdat, jotka kauimmin
ovat jääneet mieleeni kaikumaan. Niin Magdan raivo von Kellerin
halpamaisuuden johdosta, niin Maria Stuartin voitollinen, helisevä
riemu saadessaan häväistä Elisabethia tämän oman rakastajan
läsnäollessa. — Tämä ei suinkaan sulje pois sitä, mitä kerran ennen
(»Suomalainen näyttämötaide 9/1 1902») olen lausunut hänestä,
että hän nimittäin voi hallita intohimoa aina sen »ensimmäisistä
punastuvista oireista suuriin, maailmoita mullistaviin myrskyihin
saakka». Kysymys on tällä kertaa siitä, mitä hän parhaiten voi hallita,
mistä me parhaiten tunnemme Ida Aalbergin. Ja siinä suhteessa on
sanottava, että juuri myrskypääskynä hän meille syvimmin ja
vaikuttavimmin omaa olemustaan tulkitsee. »Ensimmäisiä
punastuvia oireita» voi joku muukin tulkita. Mutta myrskyssä hän
todella on kaiken kilpailun ulkopuolella.

Hänen äskeinen vieraskäyntinsä tarjosi erään tässä suhteessa

valaisevan mielenliikutuksen. Se oli »Rosmersholmissa». Me
istuimme katsomossa ja seurasimme tavallisella mielenkiinnolla
nerokkaan näyttelijättären Rebekka Westiä. Epäilemättä ei se monin
paikoin ollut Ibsenin Rebekka, se oli Ida Aalbergin oman, tulisen
taiteilijaluonteen tulkinto. Mutta se ei saanut mielestämme tarpeeksi
ilmaa siipiensä alle, tekijän sanat olivat liian harkittuja, tekijän
tarkoitus liian silmiinpistävä: jäi huomattava aukko tekstin ja
näyttämöluoman välille. Mutta tultiin siihen kohtaan, missä Rebekka
tunnustaa vähitellen, vähitellen, oman vihansa hiljaisella tulella
kiduttaneensa Rosmerin entisen vaimon hengiltä. Silloin se leimahti.
Ida Aalberg vetäytyi taustaan, joka oli himmeämmin valaistu; hänen
silmänsä suurenivat hurjiksi ja pyöreiksi kuin havukan silmät, hänen
äänensä sai kamalan, hampaitten välissä natisevan kaiun, aivan
kuin olisi jonkun niskoja väännetty nurin. Sitä kesti vain hetkinen,
sitten oli kaikki ohitse. Mutta tuo momentti oli ollut kylläksi
saadakseen meidät unohtamaan sekä Ibsenin että Rosmersholmin,
sekä nykyaikaisen yhteiskunnan että sen sielulliset maailmat, —
viemään meidät takaisin villeihin, väkeviin renessansi-, taikka
paremmin sanoen, esirenessansi-aikoihin, metsäläisluonteisiin,
puolibarbariaan. Toden totta: niin ei vihaa Rebekka West eikä
mikään n.s. »moderni» nainen. Niin vihaa Brunhilda ja Fredegunda
keskellä germaanien kuohumistilassa olevaa yhteiskuntaa,
Burgundian kontioisten korpien hämärässä.

Tietysti oli tämä vielä vähemmän Ibseniä, tietysti vielä vähemmän

»modernia» psykologiaa. Mutta se oli Ida Aalbergia.» — — —

Vaikka Eino Leino oli saanut heittää silmäyksen uuden koulun

teoriaan, puhuu hän Ida Aalbergin taiteesta suunnilleen samanlaista
kieltä kuin esim. Gustaf af Geijerstam oli puhunut kymmentä vuotta
aikaisemmin. Ida Aalberg esitti hänen mielestään erinomaisesti
osiaan salonkinäytelmissä, ja näyttelijättären hienostunut huumori
Sardoun »Erotaan pois» komediassa oli katsojalle todellinen elämys,
mutta syvimmässä mielessä Ida Aalberg näyttäytyi suomalaiselle
runoilijalle suurten, alkuperäisten ja voimakkaiden intohimojen
tulkkina.
 Vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenband ei ihaillut taiteessa suuruutta ja
voimaa, ja myöhemmin ylistäessään Ida Aalbergin taidetta hän ei
milloinkaan liene vedonnut näihin ominaisuuksiin. Jos tutkii hänen
papereissaan olevia ohjeita näyttelijöille, pistää hyvin pian silmään,
että sellaiset määräykset kuin »hiljaa» (»leise»), »hillitysti»
(»gedämpft») ovat niissä kaikkein yleisimpiä. Eräs Ida Aalbergia
varten Hedda Gablerin esittämisestä kirjoitettu ohje alkaa: »Hedda
Gableria ei voi rakentaa efekteille», mikä tietysti on viisasta puhetta,
mutta samalla kuvaa vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandin koko
ohjaustaiteen suuntaa, joka pyrki hillittyyn ja hienostuneeseen. Se
suurentelu ja karkeus (»Vergröberung»), jonka hän maneerin ohella
luki aikakautensa näyttelemistekniikan viaksi, antaa lisäpiirteen
hänen ohjaustaiteensa yleisen luonteen määrittelemiseen. Sanoilla:
»Hän on karkea (grob») hän esim. jyrkästi tuomitsi ja hylkäsi
saksalaisen Max Reinhardtin ohjaustaiteen. Tämä hienostus ja
taipumus hillittyyn on hyvin ymmärrettävissä, kun ajattelee, että hän
oli vanhan aatelissuvun jäsen ja koko olemukseltaan niin heiveröinen
ja hento, että hän, kuten V.A. Koskenniemi hänestä kerran sanoi,
muistutti jotakin eksoottista orkideaa, jonka oikullinen kohtalo on
viskannut saviheinien keskelle.

Suuri kiertue aloitti toimintansa Itämerenmaakunnissa, Tartossa,

näytteli sitten Viipurissa ja Helsingissä, mistä matkaa jatkettiin
Skandinaviaan. Ohjelmistoon kuuluivat Ibsenin »Hedda Gabler»,
»Rosmersholm» ja »Noora», Sudermannin »Koti» ja Tsehovin »Eno
Vanja». Näyttelijät olivat nuoria, Itävallassakin varmaan varsin
tuntemattomia kykyjä, mutta heihin nähden vapaaherra Uexküll-
Gyllenbandin ohjaustaide tuotti hyviä tuloksia: ellei ota lukuun
Suomessa heidän osakseen tullutta yleensä kylmää kritiikkiä, he
saivat matkan varrella suurta tunnustusta; yhteisnäyttelystäkin
ulkomaalainen sanomalehdistö antoi kehuvan arvostelun. Ruotsissa
näyteltiin vain Göteborgissa. Suurinta mielenkiintoa ansaitsevat
arvostelut, joita Ida Aalbergin Ibsen-tulkinnasta annettiin
Kristianiassa ja Kööpenhaminassa.

Kristianialainen »Aftenposten» kirjoitti Ida Aalbergin Heddasta:

»Rouva Aalbergin Hedda Gabler on aivan pohjoismainen esitys

keskellä saksalaista seuruetta. Tulkinnalle on ominaista selvä ja
ylhäinen tyyli, ja se on vailla sitä hysteeristä liioittelua, johon täällä on
totuttu. Suomalainen näyttelijätär on nähtävästi pannut pääpainon
siihen sairaalloiseen tilaan, jossa Hedda Tesman on. Hän on
katsonut hänet ylvääksi, kauneutta rakastavaksi naiseksi, jonka
sielua raastaa demoninen hävittämishalu, halu, joka luonnollisesti ja
ymmärrettävästi johtuu häntä ympäröivistä olosuhteista. Hän on
tahtonut luoda kenraali Gablerin jalosyntyisen ja onnettoman tyttären
ja siinä hän täysin määrin onnistuikin.

Mutta kokonaan toinen kysymys on, onko tuommoinen käsitys

Hedda Gablerista aivan oikea. Joka tapauksessa rouva Aalberg esitti
suurenmoisen dramaattisen kuvan tuosta kompliseeratusta
luonteesta, joka toimii hetkellisten mielialojen vallassa.» — — —

»Nukkekodista» sanotaan:

»Eilen saimme nähdä uudelta puolelta rouva Aalbergin

monipuolista, viisasta ja tunteellista taidetta.

Olisi voinut melkein ennakolta sanoa, ettei suuri taiteilija haluaisi

tuoda esiin ingénu'tä Ibsenin Noorassa. Niin taipuisa kuin hänen
kykynsä onkin, ovat jo ulkonaiset vaikeudet, joita vastaan rouva
Aalbergin tässä suhteessa olisi taisteltava, siksi suuret, että ilman
muuta voisi uskoa taistelun menetetyksi.
 Pitkä ja komea vartalo ja terävät kasvojenpiirteet — Noora ei ole
semmoinen. Arvovaltainen persoonallisuus, joka hallitsee koko
tragedian rekisteriä — Noora ei ole semmoinenkaan.

Hän leikkii ja nauraa, hän laulelee kuin leivonen, kuten pitääkin,

mutta sävy tuossa kaikessa ei ole aivan välitön, se on liiaksi
harkittua, siitä puuttuu tyttömäistä suloa. —

Kaikkia noita vaikeuksia vastaan hyökkäsi Ida Aalberg — hän ei

niitä voittanut, mutta hän sai toisinaan meidät ne unohtamaan. Se oli
äärimmäisen mielenkiintoinen esitys, mutta Ibsenin Noora se ei ollut.

Kyllä sentään — viimeisessä näytöksessä, kun kypsynyt nainen

astuu esiin nukkekoterosta, kun hän tietoisena omasta arvostaan
särkee nukkenaamion, sinä hetkenä rouva Aalberg oli ylväämpi ja
inhimillisempi kuin mikään Noora koko maailmassa. Tuessa lopussa
ei ollut edes pienintä häivettä siitä primadonnataiteesta, jolla moni
muu rouva Aalbergin suurista ammattitovereista on pilannut
vaikutelman.

Agnes Sorma käyttää lopussa suurta traagillista inhon tunnetta

hyväkseen, rouva Réjane ei säästä puhtaasti ulkonaisia
vaikutuskeinoja. Rouva Dybvad taas ei ole saanut esiin sisäistä,
salattua tuskaa tuossa sielullisessa siirtymäkohdassa.

Suomalaisen näyttelijättären epätoivoinen rauhallisuus, hänen

hallittu kauhunsa elämän viheliäisyyttä kohtaan, oli vaikutukseltaan
valtava. Tuon itsetietoisuuteen heräämisen yllä oli hiljaisuus, joka
vaikutti enemmän kuin tragedian rummut ja pasuunat.

Ja sen Nooran vuoksi, joka astui esiin kauhusta, tuskasta ja

onnettomuudesta, unohdamme kernaasti, ettei ensimmäisen
näytöksen pieni laululeivo antanut meille tarpeeksi illusionia.

Kuinka loistavasti tuo osa onkaan mietitty ja harkittu? Mutta

viisaus on toisinaan näyttelijän pahin vihollinen. Niinpä tässäkin
toisinaan taide ja taiteileminen tahtoivat vaeltaa käsi kädessä,
kunnes lopullinen muoto purkautui näkyviin ja muuttui mitä
ihanimmaksi kuvaksi naisesta, joka on herännyt surun ja tuskan
kautta.

Siksi olemme suurelle näyttelijättärelle jälleen kiitollisuuden

velassa. Hän on avannut meille uuden näköalan tuohon Ibsenin
naisluomaan, jossa liiankin paljon tapaa jälkiä nerokkaasta
draamanrakentajasta.» —

Kun Ida Aalberg »Nukkekodin» jälkeen esiintyi

»Rosmersholmissa», kirjoitettiin hänen Rebekka Westistään:

»On suuri hyppäys Noora Helmeristä Rebekka Westiin — suuri

ero sinisilmäisellä pienellä leivosella ja mustalla, demonisella
petolinnulla, joka kasvaa suureksi intohimossaan.

Ellei rouva Aalberg voinutkaan antaa täydellistä kuvaa siitä

nuoresta naisesta, joka sairaan lapsen silmin tuijotti »ihmeelliseen»,
on hän sitä täydellisempi kypsyneenä Megairana, jolla on niin rohkea
ja ylväs sielu.

Hänen näyttelemisessään oli nousua, joka saavutti huippunsa

komeassa kolmannessa näytöksessä, jossa hän noille kahdelle
kauhistuneelle miehelle kertoo, miten hän avoimin silmin on tehnyt
syntiä ja himoinnut. Demonin sielu tuijotti hänen katseestaan, hänen
äänessään oli epätoivoisen häikäilemätöntä uhmaa — se oli juuri se
Rebekka West, jonka Ibsen on kuvannut yksinkertaisin keinoin ja
synkin värein.

Ja kun näkee tämän esityksen ja vertaa sitä rouva Aalbergin

aikaisempiin, ymmärtää kuinka paljon hän on velkaa Ibsenille ja
Ibsen hänelle. Hänen käsitykselleen suuren draamakirjailijan
naiskuvista antaa leiman fanaattinen ihailu ja pieteetti, jota turhaan
hakee omista näyttelijöistämme.

Ja vielä eräs seikka: huomaa, että rouva Aalberg itse on

muodostanut käsityksensä osasta. Hän on eläytynyt siihen, antanut
sille oman sielunsa. Mikäli tiedetään, ei mikään ohjaaja ole koskaan
vaikuttanut hänen näyttämöluomiensa syntyyn. Ja siksi kaikki se,
mitä hän esittää, on jotakin itsessään — se on itsenäistä ja viisasta
taidetta. —

Ehkäpä juuri tämä antaa rouva Aalbergin taiteelle suuret

mittasuhteet ja suuren tyylin.» —

Ibsenin »Nukkekodin» psykologisena heikkoutena on, että runoilija

antaa siinä »nuken» parissa päivässä kehittyä persoonallisuudeksi,
joka pystyy omintakeisesti ajattelemaan ja toimimaan. On usein
huomautettu, että koko tuo historia on mahdoton todellisuuden
maailmassa. Näyttämötaiteilijan on kuitenkin ratkaistava tuo arvoitus,
ja on varsin luonnollista, että Ida Aalbergin ratkaisu — kuten hän
nimenomaan on sanonut — hänen myöhemmällä iällään kuului:
Noora ei ole kappaleen alussakaan »nukke», »ingénue»,
»leivonen». Yli neljäkymmentä vuotta vanhalle näyttelijättärelle olisi
käynyt liian vaikeaksi ottaa päämääräkseen keveiden ja tyttömäisten
ominaisuuksien tehostamista, ja semmoisiin tuloksiin ei vapaaherra
Uexküll-Gyllenbandkaan liene tutkimuksissaan tullut.
 Norjalainen »Verdens Gang» väitti kategoorisesti, että koko
»Rosmersholminkin» esitys oli ilmeistä väkivaltaa Ibsenin draamaa
kohtaan. Ei oltu seurattu runoilijan tekstiä eikä ohjeita, eikä Ida
Aalberg ollut ollut Rebekka West.

Ida Aalbergin Hedda Gablerissa oli jo vuonna 1891 ollut

inhimillisyyttä ja sovittavaa lämpöä. Vapaaherra Uexküll-
Gyllenbandin papereista näkee, että hänkin tahtoi Heddan kuolevan
kauneudessa ja vaikuttavan katsojaan liikuttavasti ja sympaattisesti.
Sitä ei näe, johtuiko tuo käsitys hänen omista tutkimuksistaan vai
keskusteluista Ida Aalbergin kanssa, mutta omana käsityksenään
hän joka tapauksessa on Heddan luonnetta näin selitellyt.[28]
Tanskalainen sanomalehtikritiikki tuomitsi tuon käsityksen vääräksi
varsin yksimielisesti.

Kööpenhaminalainen »Dannebrog» kirjoitti »Hedda Gablerista»

m.m.:

»Ibsenin 'Hedda Gabler' ei ole koskaan ottanut oikein

vaikuttaakseen Kööpenhaminan yleisöön, tämä yleisö ei ole tahtonut
suopua tuohon kylmään ja dekandenttiin naiseen, joka
hedelmättömässä mustasukkaisuudessaan ajaa poloisen Eilert
Løvborgin kuolemaan. Että tämä itsekäs, sydämetön nainen, jonka
ainoana haluna on tehdä kokeita ympäristöllään, lopuksi joutuu
hakemaan kuolemaa oman käden kautta, ei milloinkaan ole
houkutellut kyyneleitä meikäläisten katsojien silmiin.

Niin paljon erinomaisia yksityiskohtia kuin olikin mainion

suomalaisen taiteilijan Hedda-tulkinnassa, se ei kuitenkaan
herättänyt suurempaa mielenkiintoa. Ida Aalberg panee verraten
vähän painoa koviin, julmiin, sydämettömiin piirteisiin, hänen
Heddansa on pääasiallisesti intelligentti ja häikäilemätön nainen,
joka ikävystyy rajattomasti niihin jokapäiväisiin tusinaihmisiin, joiden
pariin kohtalo on hänet saattanut. Eräs niistä vuorosanoista, jotka
hänen lausumistaan enimmän jäivät mieleen, oli seuraava: »Usein
minusta tuntuu, että minulla on taipumusta vain yhteen tässä
maailmassa, nimittäin ikävystymään kuoliaaksi.»

Tietysti oli paljon muutakin, mikä vaikutti; mykkä näytteleminen oli

erinomaista, Heddan mustasukkaisuuden puuska ja epätoivo, kun
hän menee kuolemaan, kaikki tuo muistetaan kyllä. Mutta nähtävästi
Ida Aalberg saa yleisön enemmän valtoihinsa osissa, joissa
voimakkaampi näytteleminen voi tulla kysymykseen. Jo hänen mater
dolorosa-kasvonsakin tekevät mahdottomaksi, että hänestä tulisi
Hedda. Kun hän muutamissa kohtauksissa mykkänä tuijottaa
eteensä, saavat hänen kasvonsa petolinnun ilmeen, joka hyvin sopii
runoilijan luomaan kuvaan, mutta vain niissä.» —

»København» lehti on julkaissut »Hedda Gablerin» johdosta

pitkän, Ida Aalbergin taidetta ylistävän kritiikin, mutta itse Heddan
luonnehtimisesta se sanoo:

»Rouva Aalberg täyttää tuon kylmän naisluonteen paljon

suuremmalla elämällä ja sisällöllä kuin siihen oikeastaan kuuluu.
Hän täyttää sen kokemuksiensa rikkaudella. Mutta Heddahan ei
oikeastaan ole kokenut mitään pohjaan asti. Hedda on kuin hienoksi
hiottu kristalliksi, joka on täynnä puoleksi pilaantunutta kukkavettä.»
—

»Samfundet» lausui, kiiteltyään ensin seurueen saksalaisia

jäseniä:

»Ja lopuksi sanottakoon, että rouva Aalbergin Hedda oli sangen

huomattava saavutus. Kuinka hän rakentaakaan osansa
voimakkaasti ja varmasti! Ja kuinka hän esittääkään sen kauniisti ja
ylväästi! Tosin hänellä tuntuu olevan taipumuksena kaunistaa liikaa,
hienostaa liikaa, jalostaa liikaa, mitä hän sitten ottaakin käsiinsä.
Hänen tulkintansa tästä »Hjördiksestä», joka on runoilijan ehkä
nykyaikaisin luomus, oli sangen armeliasta. Ibsen, joka loi tämän
»demonisen» luonteen vain muutamia vuosia sen jälkeen kuin hän
»Villisorsassa» oli selittänyt, että demonisuus on paljasta roskaa, on
antanut ruoskan iskujen sataa häneen. ‒ ‒ ‒ Käsityksen oikeudesta
voidaan olla eri mieltä, mutta se, joka kykenee nauttimaan taiteesta,
ei voi jäädä välinpitämättömäksi sille kauneudelle ja rikkaudelle,
jonka Ida Aalberg on kuvaan luonut. Se on näyttelemistä, joka
vaikuttaa voimakkaasti sisäisellä voimallaan eikä millään ulkonaisilla
keinoilla. Siinä on ihmeteltävän vähän virtuoosia, mutta paljon
sielua.» —

»Politikenissa» oli Edvard Brandesin kirjoittama suopea arviointi,

mutta siinä väitettiin, että Ida Aalberg oli liiaksi itkenyt ja valittanut
ollakseen oikea Hedda Gabler.

»Handelstidende» kirjoitti, että Ibsenin kappaleet eivät yleensä

sovi kiertue-ohjelmistoon, koska näyttämöasetus ja koko kulissien
takana tapahtuva huolto jää matkoilla puutteelliseksi. Puutteita oli Ida
Aalberginkin seurueen esityksessä ollut havaittavissa — Hedda
Gablerin huone ei saisi olla mikään huutokaupanpitäjän makasiini,
piano ei saisi ruveta soimaan, ennenkuin soittaja on päässyt siihen
huoneeseen, missä se on j.n.e. — mutta itse pääasiassakin, osien
tulkinnassa, oli erehdytty:

»Hedda Gabler on rouva Ida Aalbergin rakkaimpia osia. Ehkäpä

siksi, että tämä Hedda on hänen oma luomansa. Ainakaan ei kukaan
toinen näyttelijätär ole luonut sellaista Heddaa — ja kaikella
varmuudella ei myöskään Ibsen. —

‒ ‒ ‒Ida Aalbergin Hedda on kerran rakastanut suuresti ja

epäitsekkäästi. Mutta elämä erotti hänet rakastetustaan, ja hän tuli
Jörgen Tesmanin mataliin huoneisiin. Kappaleessa kerrotaan sitten,
kuinka Hedda pääsee pois tuosta ahtaasta kodista. Tämän
käsityksen mukaan Tea Elvsted ei olisikaan se hyvä enkeli, joka
suruisena leyhyttää siipiään Eilert Løvborgin ruumiin yllä, ei, hän olisi
ollut Eilertille kiusaksi ja ja kadotukseksi, kuten Jørgen Tesman
Heddalle. Ja kuolema tulee sekä Heddalle että Eilertille suurena ja
arvokkaana vapauttajana.

Ei tarvita mitään syvää tutkimusta ennenkuin jo havaitaan, että

tuommoinen käsitys tekee suurta väkivaltaa kappaleelle. Siten kaikki
suhteet menevät sekaisin: Tesman, Elvsted, Eilert — kaikki tulevat
epävarmoiksi niin pian kuin Heddan luonne on epäselvä. Eilen
emme nähneet niin paljon Ibsenin kuin Ida Aalbergin »Hedda
Gableria.»

Mutta tämä Ida Aalbergin Hedda esitettiin mitä suurimman taiteen

merkeissä. Se oli taidetta, joka on siksi ylhäistä ja hienoa, että se
hylkää kaiken ulkonaisen taituruuden ja tulkitsee vain sitä, mikä on
inhimillistä. Rouva Aalberg loi kykynsä suvereenilla voimalla
Heddan, joka oli hänen omansa, ja hän teki sen semmoisella
ylivoimaisella kunnolla, että hän koko illan tuli voimakkaan suosion
esineeksi. Tästä Heddasta tuli arvokas ihminen siksi, että hän sekä
ajattelee että tuntee enemmän ja lämpimämmin kuin kappaleen
muut henkilöt.» —

Rebekka Westin tulkinnassa sanoo arvostelu — ja taaskin

verrattain yksimielisesti — Ida Aalbergin eräissä yksityiskohdissa,
eräissä intohimoisissa purkauksissa, esittäneen parasta, mitä hän
tämän vierailun aikana Kööpenhaminassa esitti. Hän oli näyttänyt
niissä samanlaista hurjuutta kuin Sarah Bernhardt. Hänen kappaleen
toisessa näytöksessä käyttämänsä punainen puku ei ole kuitenkaan
ainoa piirre, josta häntä moititaan. Kööpenhaminan arvostelijat olivat
samaa mieltä kuin suomalainen Eino Leino, kuten nähdään esim.
seuraavasta »Rosmersholmia» koskevasta otteesta:

»Ida Aalberg on semmoinen taiteilijaluonne, ettei hänelle riitä tilaa

siinä pähkinänkuoreen sovitetussa tunneskaalassa,
pähkinänkuoreen, johon Ibsenin tapainen runoilija saattaa
mahduttaa maailman. Hän murtaa uudenaikaisen näytelmän
muodon, ja hänen pitäisi mennä kokonaan antiikkiseen tragediaan
saadakseen itselleen ja omalle luonnolleen kaikkein sopivimman
työalan.»

Älyllinen puoli Ida Aalbergin taiteessa ei saavuttanut voittoa

Kööpenhaminassa, se on kieltämätön tosiasia. Hedda ja Rebekka
olivat kuitenkin hänen vanhoja osiaan, ja siksi olisi kohtuutonta
syyttää vapaaherra Uexküll-Gyllenbandin ohjausta niistä
käsitysvirheistä, joita arvostelu väitti hänen tehneen. Vapaaherra
Uexküll-Gyllenbandin voi sanoa »Eno Vanjan» ohjauksella
saavuttaneen suuren menestyksen. Tsehovin hauras runous,
Moskovan Taideteatterin erikoisala, oli kööpenhaminalaisille jotakin
aivan uutta, ja kappaletta ja sen suoritusta näyttämöllä kiiteltiin
kilvan. Niinpä esim. »Samfundet» kirjoitti:

— — — »Ja Ida Aalberg itse! Hänen osansa ei ole suurempi kuin

muidenkaan eikä hän viivyttele siinä enempää kuin soveliasta on.
Mutta hän täyttää kappaleen sielullaan. Kuinka jalosti kaikessa
yksinkertaisessa luonnollisuudessaan näyteltiinkään kohtaus tohtorin