CAPÍTULO II: MATERIALES, MÉTODOS Y VOLÚMENES DE LOS TRABAJOS
2.4 Preparación de las muestras y realización de los ensayos
This chapter focuses on Aphra Behn and her contribution to the tradition of female-voiced complaint in a period which sees a renewed focus on Ovid’s Heroides. In a return to a closer engagement with the Ovidian text after more creative developments of the genre, the Heroides was translated in 1680, the first complete translation since 1639, in a multi-authored volume which was to prove extremely popular and influential. I argue that Aphra Behn used her exceptional status as a female translator of the Heroides in Ovid’s Epistles to create a place for herself in the Ovidian female-voiced complaint tradition, to instigate a female-authored tradition, and to use a looseness of translation to make wider comments on both translation itself and other issues in society and politics.
Julia and Ovid: A Female Tradition?
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is one example of a female poet influenced by
the resurgent Ovidian tradition and specifically by Aphra Behn’s contribution.
Montgau, born 1689, was an aristocrat who was very proactive in seeking a classical education. She composed a poem entitled ‘Julia to Ovid’ which she
‘Wrote at 12 Years of Age in Imitation of Ovid’s Epistles’. This added context
in the autograph Harrowby Manuscript compiled in 1730.1 The young
Montagu’s poem is a creative version of a Heroides epistle, taking as its
subject matter the famous quasi-biographical relationship between the poet
Ovid and Julia, the Emperor Augustus’ daughter (or grand-daughter).2
The authenticity of this love affair and its connection to Ovid’s exile from Rome has been debated since antiquity, as Thomas Underdowne’s preface to Ovid his invective against Ibis (1569) translation summarises:
The cause of his banishment is uncertayn, but most men thinke, and I am of that opinion also, that it was for using too familiarly Iulia, Augustus his daughter, who of hir selfe too much enclined to
lasciviousness, unto whom he wrote many wanton Elegies, under the name of Corinna, as Sidonius plainly affirmeth.
‘et te carmina per libidinosa
notum, Naso tener, Tomosque missum, quondam Caesareae nimis puellae,
ficto nomine subditum Corinnae’ (sig.A7r)3
1
Sandon Hall, Stafford, Harrowby MS 256, ff. (57v-8). I thank Lord Harrowby for kindly granting me access to the Harrowby collection and the surviving library of Mary Wortley Montagu. See Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy (eds.), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 176-177. All verse by Montagu is quoted from this edition.
2
There is some confusion over which Julia is meant as both have the same name and both were banished from court by Augustus.
3
Thomas Underdowne, Ouid his inuectiue against Ibis. Translated into English méeter, whereunto is added by the translator, a short draught of all the stories and tales contayned therein, very pleasant to be read (London: Thomas East and Henry Middleton, 1569).
[And gentle Naso, you were notorious for lascivious poetry, and exiled to Tomis, once excessively enamoured of the daughter of Caesar, known secretly under the fictitious name of Corinna]4
Montagu casts Julia into the role of an Ovidian complaining heroine, with Ovid as the abandoning male lover and the fictional addressee. Therefore,
Montagu’s biographical adaptation of a Heroides epistle reverses Ovid’s role
in his original text; rather than the author-ventriloquist, identifying with the complaining heroines, Ovid is in the same position as the heroic male wrong-
doers. He moves from being on the heroines’ side to being one of the cheating
heroes himself.
Montagu’s poem reveals that she was familiar with Ovid’s Heroides
from an early age. As noted by Isobel Grundy in an article on a later unpublished Montagu love-complaint poem ('Epistle from Mrs. Y- to her Husband. I724'), the poet listed all of the characters from the Heroides in the back of one of her albums of juvenile verse and she composed several complaint poems from the perspective of forsaken mistresses at this time. 5 The possibility that she was familiar in her youth with some of Ovid’s works in the original Latin is promoted by her later words to Joseph Spence:
When I was young I was a vast admirer of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and
that was one of the chief reasons that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the Latin language. Mr Wortley was the only person to whom
4
Michael Stapleton, trans., Marlowe's Ovid: The "Elegies" in the Marlowe Canon (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), p. 4.
5Isobel Grundy, ‘Ovid and Eighteenth
-Century Divorce: An Unpublished Poem by Lady Mary
Wortley’, The Review of English Studies, New Series, 23.92 (1972), pp. 417-428 (p. 240); see, Sandon Hall, Stafford, Harrowby MSS. Juvenile albums 250, 251.
I communicated my design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study
five or six hours a day for two years in my father’s library; and so got
that language, whilst everybody else thought I was reading nothing but novels and romances.6
This reveals the gendered hierarchy of literary genres and texts which was very much in the social and cultural consciousness at this time: Latin verse was for men and vernacular ‘novels and romances’ (considered ‘lower’), were for women or girls.
Montagu’s poem also displays the specific influence of English literary
receptions of Ovid. John Dryden’s Ovid’s Epistles, Translated by Several
Hands (1680) had been through six editions by the time Montagu wrote her poem in 1701 (the year of the sixth edition). The Ovid volume continued to be collected and published by the Tonson publishing house into the eighteenth century, constantly updated by various additions and changes.7 As will be explored further below, the popularity of this work was such that it attracted many literary responses and Heroides-inspired projects, both in print and manuscript. The re-imagining of the Ovid-Julia legend as a heroical epistle by Montagu is a reversal of Dryden’s argument on the subject in his famous
preface to this work, perpetuating the ‘fictional’ relationship as Dryden viewed
it.8 Within Dryden’s preface, there is a denouncement as a ‘ghess’ and ‘far
6
Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, J. M. Osborn (ed.), (Vol 1, Oxford, 1966), p. 303 cited in Moy Thomas, The letters and works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1861), p. 53.
7
For a list of all these editions, see Harriette Andreadis, ‘The early modern afterlife of Ovidian
erotics: Dryden’s Heroides’, Renaissance Studies, 22 (2008), pp. 401-413 (Appendix).
8
John Dryden, Ovid’s Epistles translated by several hands (London: Jacob Tonson, 1680).
All quotations from Dryden’s text are from this edition unless otherwise specified as the 1681
from the truth’ of the contention that Ovid was ‘banish’d for some favours, which they say he received from Julia, the Daughter of Augustus, whom they
think he celebrates under the name of Corinna in his Elegies’ (sig.R4r). Significantly, Aphra Behn, herself a contributor to Dryden’s collection, wrote
her own Ovid-Julia Heroides-style epistolary poem, ‘Ovid to Julia. A Letter’, which was first published in 1685.9
This poem has clear connections to Dryden’s Heroides edition and
specifically to Behn’s own ‘Oenone to Paris’contribution. Behn’s complaint
epistles ‘Ovid to Julia’ and ‘Oenone to Paris’ have in common the theme of the
irreconcilability of love and social position. The seducer Ovid with his
‘haughty soul’ writes in terms of frustration that Julia is at once unattainable
and attainable, the space between them being ‘so vast’ (socially) but yet not vast enough (physically):
Who from the Gods durst steal Caelestial fire, And tho with less success, I did as high aspire. Oh why ye Gods! was she of Mortal Race?
And why 'twixt her and me, was there so vast a space? Why was she not above my Passion made
Some Star in Heaven, or Goddess of the Shade? And yet my haughty Soul cou'd ne'er have bow'd To any Beauty, of the common Crowd.
9
Aphra Behn, Miscellany, being a collection of poems by several hands; together with Reflections on morality, or, Seneca unmasqued. (London: J. Hindermarsh, 1685). All verse by
Aphra Behn (excepting her ‘Oenone to Paris’ in the Dryden editions) is quoted from edition by
None but the Brow, that did expect a Crown
Cou'd Charm or Awe me with a Smile, or Frown; (lines 5-14, p. 183)
These lines can be read alongside very similar ones in Behn’s ‘Oenone to Paris’:
What God, our Love industrious to prevent, Curst thee with power, and ruin'd my Content? Greatness, which does at best but ill agree
With Love, such Distance sets 'twixt Thee and Me. Whilst thou a Prince, and I a Shepherdess,
My raging Passion can have no redress.
Wou'd God, when first I saw thee, thou hadst been This Great, this Cruel, Celebrated thing. (sig.H2v)
Both speakers turn to bewailing their situation to the gods before specifying
the problem of the ‘space’ or ‘distance’ between themselves and their lovers.
Behn’s Oenone sees the ‘distance... twixt thee and me’ as one of class which a
priori makes her and Paris incompatible and love impossible. Before Paris’ transformation into a Prince during his capture of Helen, Behn presents the relationship between him and Oenone as one of equality. Indeed this is an
example of when Behn’s ‘translation’, so often marked by expansion, reduces
or distils the original Latin. Ovid’s text contains commonplace meditations on the role of guilt and suffering, which Behn transforms into a logical attachment
of responsibility to Paris’ new status as a Prince.10
Here the distinction can be
10
Showerman (ed.) and trans, Ovid: Heroides, Amores, p. 59: ‘What god has set his will against my prayers? What guilt stands in my way, that I may not remain your own? Softly
drawn with the very similar line in ‘Ovid to Julia’: ‘And why 'twixt her and me, was there so vast a space?’ (line 8). Here the sentiment is rather that the fault lies in the very fact that Julia was made a mortal woman rather than an immortal goddess. The distance was great enough that the love affair hit against social and political barriers but not so great (i.e. she was a woman and
not a ‘star’ or ‘goddess’) that Ovid’s love, or at least desire, could not aspire to
achieve her. The pessimistic realism of Oenone’s words is transformed into an
arrogant ambition when the lines are put into the voice of Ovid.
These alternate ways of reacting to a similar situation perhaps represent a gendered difference as distinguished by the first person female voice of Oenone and the first person male voice of Ovid. Certainly the complaint poems are used to explore the various ‘politics of love’ around thwarted relationships. Edward Burns uses this term to describe the reception of the Heroides in the Restoration:
The politics of love in Ovid, its implication in a court world (‘all his
Poems bear the Character of a Court’ according to Dryden), and
especially the play of class difference between lovers, provide apt material for Restoration Ovidians.11
It should be noted here that Behn actively adapts the Ovidian original with her
‘Oenone to Paris’ version in order to include ideas on the play of class and the
politics of love. Any hints of courtly love and tensions of class in the original
are amplified and altered in Behn’s English version. Furthermore, Behn’s
must we bear whatever suffering is our desert; the penalty that comes without deserving brings
us dole.’ (lines 5-8).
11
‘Ovid to Julia’ is given an extra layer of politicisation when the poem is published in Poems on the Affairs of State (1696). The title of the poem is
changed to ‘Bajazet to Gloriana, 1684’, with the names Ovid and Julia
becoming Bajazet and Gloriana respectively.12 This expanded version of the poem interacts with the series of Ephelia/ Bajazet poems published around this time by the Earl of Rochester and his circle.13 These Heroides-inspired poems
were ‘designedto embarrass Mulgrave’; ‘Bajazet’ is a pseudonym for John
Sheffield, Lord Mulgrave, who was mocked at Court for having inappropriate
‘social and marital ambitions’ towards Princess Anne.14
A Heroides poem was also a particularly apt vehicle to parody Mulgrave because the Earl had co-
written with Dryden a ‘Helen to Paris’ translation included in all editions of
Ovid’s Epistlesfrom 1680 onwards. Satirical details are added to Behn’s poem, for example, five lines are added at line 65 mocking a contemporary figure:
Whose composition was like Cheder-Cheese, (In whose Production all the town agrees) To whom from Prince to Priest was added stuff, From Great King Charles e’en down to Father Goff, Yet he with vain Pretensions lays a claim. (lines 65-69)
12‘
Bajazet to Gloriana, 1684’ in George Villiers, Poems on Affairs of State (London, 1697), pp. 168-170.
13For example, ‘Ephelia to
Bajazet’ by George Etherege and ‘A very Heroicall Epistle in
answer to Ephelia’ by the Earl of Rochester. 14
Janet Todd, The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. 1, p. 413; see also Brice Harris, ‘Aphra Behn’s ‘Bajazet to Gloriana’ [Letter to the Editor].’ Times Literary Supplement, (Feb 1933), p. 92.
Further small editorial changes, such as swapping the name of the female addressee by re-ordering words within couplets15 help to assimilate the
complaint more explicitly to Behn’s contemporary society. Behn actively uses
and adapts Heroides poems in order to express and explore political and social ideas.
Turning back to Lady Mary Montagu’s poem, ‘Julia to Ovid’, we see
that she was particularly influenced by Aphra Behn’s Heroides adaptations.
Montagu opens her ‘imitation’ poem in the voice of Julia with lines
complaining that it is a hereditary entitlement which entraps her and is the
cause of her ‘absent Ovid’:
Are love and power incapable to meet? And must they all be wretched who are great?
Enslav’d by titles, and by forms confin’d
for wretched victims to the state design’d (lines 1-4)
This generalisation of political comment, though with a different emphasis,
clearly recalls Behn’s philosophical lines in ‘Oenone to Paris’:
What Stars do rule the Great? no sooner you Became a Prince, but you were Perjur'd too. Are Crowns and Falshoods then consistent things? And must they all be faithless who are Kings? (sig.I1v)
15For example ‘Charming Julia...less Conqu’ring than you are...my glorious Loyalty retain’d’ (lines 24-6) becomes ‘bright Gloriana...less charming than you are...my honest Loyalty retain’d’.
The focus of Montagu’s poem on the class element and the direct address to the banished Ovid (‘O Ovid!’, ‘my Ovid’) further connects it with Behn’s ‘Ovid to Julia’. This pairing of the two female poets’ ‘Ovid to Julia’ and ‘Julia
to Ovid’ reproduces the pattern of the later Heroides (poems 16-21) where
Ovid writes three ‘double Heroides’ consisting of an amatory verse epistle of
wooing from a male hero with a complaint reply from the female lover.
Behn’s particular influence on Montagu is confirmed by the existence
of a 1739 book-list of Lady Mary’s library, now located in the Sheffield Archives.16 On the back of the 23 page list is written ‘Catalogue Lady Mary
Wortleys books packed up to be sent Abroad July 1739’. Grundy identifies the
handwritten list as being made ‘by some unknown employee (though titled by
her husband)’ and notes that, as remarked in Letters 3:261, ‘after her husband’s
death (à propos her son’s challenging his will) she said he had “given” these books to her; this accorded with the legal situation in which a wife’s
possessions belonged to her husband.’17
Although we cannot be sure when the
books were purchased (or inherited) and read, Behn’s works appear several
times, including entries for ‘Behn’s plays’, ‘Love Letters between a Nobleman and his (sic)’ (which must refer to Behn’s biographical epistolary prose fiction
work Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister),18and ‘Behn’s poems’
in the appended ‘Catalogue of Select Books among L. Mary Wortleys’. Furthermore, on the fifth page of the list, there appears an entry ‘Ovid’s
Epistles’, which is in all probability a reference to one of the Dryden editions,
16Sheffield Archives, ‘Catalogue Lady Mary Wortleys books packed up to be sen
t Abroad
July 1739’, Lady Mary Wortley Motagu Booklist, WL.M 135-3 (1739).
17Isobel Grundy, ‘Books and the Woman: An Eighteenth
-Century Owner and Her Libraries’,
English Studies in Canada, 20.1 (1994), pp. 1-22 (p. 5).
18
Aphra Behn, Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (London: Jacob Tonson, 1693).
although no such book is present in her surviving library at Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. This book which she had read from a very early age
(presumably by the age of 12 when she was writing ‘Julia to Ovid’) is still
important to her almost forty years later; important enough that it was packed up to be taken abroad with her. In her letters written during the Embassy to Constantinople (1716-18), another trip abroad taken by Montagu, there is further evidence for the continuing influence of the Heroides. From travel notes she made during the trip, Montagu shows that she is prompted twice on
her travels to recall Ovid’s complaining heroines:
There are now two little ancient castles, but of no strength, being commanded by a rising ground behind them, which I confess I should never have taken notice of, if I had not heard it observed by our captain and officers, my imagination being wholly employed by the tragic story that you are well acquainted with:
The swimming lover, and the nightly bride, How Hero loved, and how Leander died.
Verse again! – I am certainly infected by the poetical air I have passed through. (p. 375)
This was Xanthus among the gods, as Homer tells us and ‘tis by that
heavenly name the nymph Oenone invokes it in her epistle to Paris. (p. 377)19
Montagu uses these Heroides examples to show that these fortifications are insignificant in contrast to their place in literary history. To think of Oenone’s adynaton, from the very epistle which was translated by Aphra Behn in
Dryden’s volume, (as Behn translates: ‘When Paris to Oenone proves untrue, /
Back Xanthus Streams shall to their Fountains flow’ (sig.H4r) on seeing the river Simois and to be so immersed with the Hero to Leander complaint that she almost misses an ancient landmark, reveals how formative and influential Ovidian complaint was for Montagu on her poetry and even in her daily life.