Book I – Creation and the Flood. Earth from heaven, sea from land, Gods and stars fill the heavens, fish the seas, beasts the land, and birds the air. Four ages of mankind follow, the age of gold: a time of trust, goodness, and fruitfulness, the age of silver, a time of work, the age of bronze outbreak of wars, and the age of iron when nothing is sacred. Jupiter is disrespected and punishes humanity with a flood. Ovid tells us of the portent of the great flood, from which new life emerges, but into a world that is torn. We begin with heartbeat, birth trauma, and the quietude of breath. OVID19 takes us to the cusp of the 5th age of mankind. The birth of a tragedy, we hear the strains of breathing, and we take a knee.
Book II – Phaeton and the Scorched Earth. The Sun tells Phaeton that he is indeed his father. Phaeton asks his father to prove it to him by allowing him to drive his chariot and winged horses. His father pleads with Phaeton to ask for something else, but Phaeton is stubborn. He tells Phaeton how to ride the chariot covers his face with sacred ointment to protect him from the heat. As soon as Phaeton takes flight, he realizes that he is not able to control the chariot and as the Earth draws nearer moisture evaporates, mountain and forest are burned and rivers dry up. The earth lament is silenced by smoke. Seeing what is happening Jupiter hurls a thunderbolt at Phaeton, killing him, but saving the Earth from destruction. Our signature opens with contemporary voices of youth and wisdom, the question of the relationship between climate and COVID is on everyone’s lips.
Book III – The Dance of Bacchus. The bloody founding of Thebes. While hunting, Actaeon, stumbles upon Diana bathing in her sacred grove. So offended by this, Diana transforms Actaeon into a deer, only for him to be killed by his own hunting dogs. Semele makes Jupiter to promise her the he will make love to her with all his godly power. He fulfils his promise but Semele cannot withstand it, and she dies. Jupiter brings their son, Bacchus, to full term in his thigh. Ovid draws our attention to the fatal clumsiness of self-destruction, and over estimating the fragile resilience of Mother Earth. Bacchus is the god of excess, and as the World Health Organisation declares a pandemic, there are many who want to continue of the dance of disease. An exotic pulse speaks to the dark allure of Bacchus and all of his devotees.
Book IV – Perseus and Andromeda. When Perseus arrives in the kingdom of the god Atlas he reacts with hostility because an ancient prophecy has told that Perseus will plunder his riches. Perseus’s cannot match the strength of Atlas’s, but using the head of Medusa, Perseus turns Atlas to stone. Perseus sees Andromeda chained to a rock as an offering to a sea monster but using Medusa’s head he petrifies the monster and saves Andromeda. By early Spring 2021 many parts of the world had begun to hunker down. Like the hero Perseus, people of all nations, with great self-sacrifice, isolated in an effort to turn the virus to stone. House music is locked down and fills the air.
Book V – The Rape of Proserpina. As Proserpina picks violets in a grove, Dis rapes her and then takes her to his underworld kingdom. Cyane, a nymph of Sicily, sees the crime, but all she can do is weep. Her tears make her part of the spring she inhabited.
Book VI – Spiders and Peasants. Minerva approaches Arachne, her rival in the art of weaving. Minerva is enraged by Arachne’s skill, but she begins to out weave her with her skill. Arachne is defeated and hangs herself, and Minerva transforms her into a spider. The people hear of the fate of Arachne and take her story as an indication that they should worship the gods. Niobe does not feel inferior to the gods, and against advice to worship the goddess Latona and her children, Apollo an Diana, she mocks those around her. Latona is outraged and seven of Niobe’s sons and daughters are killed. Niobe turns into tears and fear of Latona spreads among the people. Ovid draws our attention to the precarity that is the balance between creatures and humans, we might think of Spiders, Chiroptera. Minerva berates Arachne mercilessly, until she commits suicide, just as UK citizens are subject to relentless propaganda, BREXIT is the UKs suicide note to Europa.
Book VII – Jason & Medea. With the help of Medea and her magic Jason succeeds in in completing the tasks that have been set for him by King Aeetes. Jason’s reward is the Golden Fleece. Medea’s wisdom is undoubted, but so is her cruelty. Jason and the Argonauts make their way home across the sea, with great urgency sailing past the Sirens, unbeknown to Jason what great tragedy awaits him at home.
Book VIII – The Flight of Icarus. Minos orders Daedalus to build a labyrinth to conceal the Minotaur, who is born from union of Minos’s mother and a bull. Daedalus complies, but unhappy in in exile he builds wings so that he and his son, Icarus, may fly away. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus fails to heed the warning and the wax in his wings melts, and he falls to his death.
Book IX – The Deification of Hercules – Spring Eulogy. Hercules protects his love Deianira from the wanton advances of the centaur Nessus killing him with an arrow. Just before he dies, Nessus gives Deianira a poisonous cloak, making her believe that the cloak is a love charm. Deianira gives the cloak to Hercules but when he puts it on they discover the truth, and Hercules dies a protracted, painful death. Jupiter, with the assent of the gods, deifies Hercules.
Book X – Pygmalion. Pygmalion fashions his own perfect women from ivory, and so beautiful is his sculpt that he falls in love with it. His wishes and prays for the statue to come alive, and to his surprise, his wish is granted by the gods. Ovid portrays Pygmalion as the literary twin of Orpheus. Through the story of Pygmalion, he foreshadows Orpheus’s reunion with Eurydice. He draws parallels between the two men. Orpheus’s art succeeds, as does Pygmalion’s.
Book XI – Troy: When Cities Fall Silent. King Midas is the antithesis of Orpheus, he is a selfish leader who makes ask Bacchus to grant him the power of a golden touch. Like Phaeton in Book II, who could not control his father’s chariot, Midas cannot master the power he has been given. Everything Midas touches turns to gold, including food and drink. And soon Midas sees that he has made a grave error. Midas is a greedy fool, like the founder of Troy, Laomedon, who tricks Neptune and Apollo into building the wall of Troy without paying them. The gods punish Troy with a flood. It is not hard to replace the imago of Midas with the golden buffoons who held power during the pandemic.
Book XII – Requiem for Achilles. Achilles prowess as a warrior are legendary. His final battle is the Trojan War. Neptune and Apollo plot against Achilles, and his only vulnerability is his ankle which his mother held when she dipped him in the River Styx as a child which magically meant hat Achilles could be wounded. Paris kills Achilles. We imagine the funeral of Achilles as the libation bearers walk ahead of the funeral procession. Achilles is accorded the funeral of a hero, like all of the fallen in the pandemic who have given themselves to the services of others
Book XIII – Ulysses, Ajax & the War of Words. The contest between Ajax and Ulysses is not merely a battle of words but also a battle between a doer of deeds and a speaker of words. Ajax is an accomplished speaker who understands the worth of rhetoric, but he is no match for Ulysses who is disarmingly generous about Ajax, before he rebuts each of his arguments. Ulysses’ victory is not merely the triumph of rhetorical trickery over less sophisticated speech, Ovid wants us to see Ulysses’ words as works of art. So many of the battles of the pandemic have been fought in the space of public debate, daily briefings doctoring the truth.
Book XIV – Apothecaries. By mistake Ulysses leaves Achaemenides behind on the island of Polyphemus. Meanwhile, Macareus and Ulysses barely escape Antiphates, the ruler of Lamos. They find Circe, a sorceress, the daughter of Helios, the sun god, who was able by means of drugs and incantations to change humans into wolves, lions, and swine. Circe creates a magical drink which transforms Ulysses men into pigs so they can make their escape. Ulysses and his group stay on the island for a year, hearing many interesting stories. As the pandemic took hold across its second and then third waves, we saw the rush of apothecaries, each trying to find the best concoction to tackle the virus. There have also been those who, like in the tale of Ulysses, have treated the apothecaries with suspicious.
Book XV – The Wisdom of Pythagoras. Pythagoras, a great philosophical thinker, explains the principles of the Universe. Pythagoras urges people to refrain from eating meat because it is counter to the universal principle that all things are in a state of flux, nothing dies, landscapes change over time. Great cities like Sparta, Mycenae and Thebes are no longer great, and Rome is set to become the centre of the world, but a terrible plague breaks out in Rome. Human effort is in vain, the Romans appeal to the gods for help. There perhaps can be no better way of rounding off Ovid’s 15 books. Then as now, we must heed the warnings, eat less or no meat, and observe the planet’s fragile state of flux. The pandemic is the flood brought upon us by, nature, earth, sea and sky, we might even say, as Ovid does, that we need to turn to the gods for help.
Book XVI – Delta Dawn. There was nothing left to say. The variants take hold and resilience is waning, and like being caught in the eye of Medusa, tenderness has turned to stone. A old frail father nears his end, the colour in his eye drains, and we dream of escape, only to be hit by wave upon other wave of despair.
Book XVI – Delta Dawn. There was nothing left to say. The variants take hold and resilience is waning, and like being caught in the eye of Medusa, tenderness has turned to stone. A old frail father nears his end, the colour in his eye drains, and we dream of escape, only to be hit by wave upon other wave of despair.
Book XVII – Cupid, Love of my Life. Son of the goddess Venus and Mars, the god of war. Love is intricate in the time of the plague, the rites desire and passion find themselves torn between beauty and war, just like Cupid’s parent. Between passion and the pandemic, enduring love last not just a lifetime, but forever.
Book XVIII – Ariadne’s Thread. “Get that, a document and a lime. So, what’s it all about?”. We re-imagine the search for solutions to new variants as a Film Noire, the virus as a Minotaur, and our spirit for love and freedom trapped like Ariadne in the labyrinth. Theseus, like Sam Spade is the hero detective who must search for clues, slay the Minotaur, and follow the thread to the Sneinton Dragon and at last free Ariadne.
Book XIX – Where do we go from here? Our final story is melancholic, soaked in tears, waiting for offspring to return, the trace of siblings lost, friendships dimmed as burning rites of passage turn to frost. Partisans in an uncertain world.
MacDonald-Winship 