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W.S. Anderson: Artist's Limits in Ovid The Artist's Limits in Ovid: Orpheus, Pygmalion, and Daedalus William S. Anderson It has become increasingly clear to critics that Ovid was closely in touch with the main trends of Alexandrian poetry and that, even more than Propertius, he was the greatest Roman follower of Callimachus.1 Recent research on Callimachus and Apollonius and Theocritus has also revealed unnoticed depths to their work, an awareness of and emphasis on the problematical conditions of human beings in the third and second centuries.2 A principal focus of discussion has been the attitude of the poet toward his art and toward art in general. We can no longer epitomize Alexandrian literature as Art for Art's sake, whether by way of dismissal or warm approval. And in the case of Ovid, whose world was even more complicated and his literary tradition more tangled than that of Alexandria, we encounter a poet who probed the range of art, wrote about its triumphs and limits, played with some of its 1 For studies that place Ovid in relation to the Hellenistic literary and cultural heritage, see H. Diller, "Die dichterische Eigenart von Ovids Metamorphosen," Humanistische Gymnasium 45 (1934) 25-37; M. De Cola, Callimaco e Ovidio (Palermo 1937); H. Fraenkel, Ovid: a Poet Between Two Worlds (Berkeley 1945); W. Wimmel, Kallimachos in Rom (Hermes Einzelschriften 16, 1960); W.V. Clausen, "Callimachus and Latin Poetry," GRBS 2 (1963) 181-96; H. Tränkle, "Elegisches in Ovids Metamorphosen," Hermes 91 (1963) 465-76; John F. Miller, "Callimachus and the Augustan Aetiological Elegy," ANRW 30.1 (1982) 371-417; "Callimachus and the Ars amatoria, " CP 78 (1983) 26-34; and "Ovid's Divine Interlocutors in the Fasti," Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History m (Collection Latomus 180, 1983) 156-92; R.O.A.M. Lyne, "Ovid's Metamorphoses, Callimachus, and l'art pour l'art," Materiali e discussioni 12 (1984) 9-34; Peter Knox, Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry (Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume No. 11, 1986); S. Hinds, The Metamorphosis of Persephone. Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse (Cambridge Classical Studies, Cambridge 1987); and Garth Tissol, The Influence ofCallimachus on Ovid's Metamorphoses (Diss., University of California, Berkeley 1988). 2 See, for example, A.W. Bulloch, Callimachus: the Fifth Hymn (Cambridge 1985), and his valuable chapter on Hellenistic Poetry, in The Cambridge History ofClassical Literature. Vol. I GreekLiterature (Cambridge 1985)541-621. Syllecta Classica 1 (1989) commonplaces, and finally lived and died with its paradoxes. It is my belief that he came to understand and accept, if painfully, the limits of art and the artist and that his poem the Metamorphoses particularly develops his perceptions. That is my subject. For Ovid's audience, the paradigmatic poet of myth was Orpheus. Vergil and Horace wrote of the singer's power over the underworld and death, and even Ovid's mentor, Propertius, referred to his ability to control wild animals and raging rivers in Thrace (3.2.3-4). Ovid assigns to Orpheus a major role in Met. 10 and the beginning of 1 1, and invents for him the longest song that, so far as we know, any ancient poet ever imagined for this archetypal poet.3 The acknowledged high point of his artistic tour de force is another artistic paradigm, the story of Pygmalion. A third artist whose art consists in wonderful inventions is Daedalus. Ovid tells his story in two different ways, in Met. 8 and earlier at the beginning ofArs 2. I shall review all these artists, starting with Orpheus and working my way back to Daedalus ofArs 2. I need not insist that Orpheus and Daedalus end up miserable, but my argument would emphasize Ovid's insight that their misery is due to the failure of their humanly limited art. Pygmalion needs to be included with the other two because, in a genial way, Ovid shows in his case, too, the limitations of art. Ovid presents Orpheus' experiences as an alternating rhythm of wonderful success for the poetic part of him and miserable suffering and failure for the more ordinary human part of him. As he prepares to marry...
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