The process of reading Ovid, Lucretius, Genesis, the translation of Metamorphoses, and Paradise Lost became somewhat tedious. Although each had different authors and were written in different styles, the repetitive subject matter began to dilute the impact of the writing. I read until I came across a powerful phrase or sentence that I wanted to write or draw in my commonplace book. However, because there were so many moments that caught my eye, they lost some of their value. For example, when I began reading, a simple metaphor or moment of personification would astound me, draw me into, make me think more deeply about the passage, but by the end of Paradise Lost, the figurative language became more mundane. Taking more breaks in between passages would have helped this situation. Maybe reading one, then discussing it in class before moving on to the next piece of writing. I was intrigued with Ovid’s prose, describing in vivid detail the creation of the matter in the world. Because of my participation in the Fall play Metamorphoses, which was based on Ovid’s stories, I continuously noticed similarities between the script’s prologue and the passage assigned. The mention of “bodies” and “chaos” and “man” being born, all hold strong resemblance to the play. More than ever, however, I began to see masculine pronouns in every line. He, his, men, man (in fact, every assigned reading over Thanksgiving break had a strong lean toward masculine words). Ovid’s writing drips with figurative language, my favorite being antithesis. “Hell broke loose in heaven” (276). The juxtaposition of heaven and hell is powerful in this passage, for this comes soon after the story of both heaven and hell being created. Ovid gave them physicality, legitimacy. So stating that “hell broke loose in heaven” holds more substance than can be interpreted from the first read-through. My favorite quote in Ovid’s passage was when he wrote about the flood in the story of Noah’s Ark. He writes “the wolf swims among the sheep” (421). It shows the forced evening of the playing field throughout Earth. God saw the evil, greed, anger taking over the planet and decided that a global cleansing was the only answer. Enemies and friends died together. Below are pictures of my commonplace book. The first shows my page on Ovid’s passage where I drew the stones turning into humans, the man and woman alone on Earth, and Triton’s iconic trident. The second shows the notes I took on each of the nine books in Genesis. “God” is written across the page in various places, showing how His name is everywhere in the passage. Ovid, Lucretius, Genesis, the translation of Metamorphoses, and Paradise Lost all tell the same stories that have been told for centuries in homes, churches, temples. It is astounding how so many can read the Bible and the Torah and all walk away with a different interpretation, a different message they will then live their life in light of. I can’t help but think of Steven Greenblatt. Religious works like the Bible self-fashion everyone and everything in society both directly and indirectly. Even an atheistic cannot live their life without feeling the affects of this phenomenon. The question is how you are self-fashioned and how it will affect your life and the lives around you.
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AuthorJo Palisoc Archives
November 2019
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