The Art of Love (8 page)
Authors: Ovid
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #History & Criticism, #Criticism & Theory, #Movements & Periods, #Poetry, #Ancient; Classical & Medieval
The wind that spread your sails just offshore
Won’t serve you any more
In the open sea. Young, toddling love gains strength
Through exercise. Nourish it well, and at length
It’ll prove sturdy. The bull you fear, you used to stroke
As a calf; you stretch out under an oak
That was a sapling once; a river begins
From frail, small origins,
But it gathers power as it flows,
Acquiring tributaries. See that your girl grows
Used to you: habit’s the master key,
Daily familiarity.
If boredom’s the price, then pay. Hang around, in her sight,
Chat to her, show your face day and night;
And when you’re strong and confident, when you know
She’ll feel your absence, really miss you, go—
Give her a rest.
A field pays best
If trusted to lie fallow, dry terrain
More eagerly drinks up the rain.
Phyllis was lukewarm while Demophoön was there—
It was his sailing caused her love to flare;
When clever Ulysses left, his wife was on the rack;
And you, Laodamia, longed for your husband back.
But brief partings are safest: affection grows slack
With lapse of time, and it’s not long before
The old love fades and the new comes through the door.
When Menelaus was abroad,
Helen, being bored
And lonely at night, found warmth on the breast
Of her husband’s foreign guest.
O Menelaus, I can’t help wondering whether
You were sane to go off, leaving them together
In the same house. Madman, do you trust doves to a kite?
Or a full sheepfold to a wolf at night?
Neither Helen nor the adulterer carries blame:
You or any man would have done the same.
By offering time and place you almost force
Adultery; if you map out the course,
Isn’t she going to take it? What could she do,
Menelaus, far from you,
With a stylish stranger around, frightened and lonely
In an empty bed? Think hard.
You
were the only
Culprit. In my view Helen doesn’t bear
The blame for the affair—
Her husband was complaisant, Paris there.
As fierce as the tawny boar in a rage, when he rounds
With flashing tusks on the maddened hounds
And tosses them sideways, no less
Ferocious than a lioness
Suckling unweaned cubs, even madder
Than a carelessly stepped-on adder,
Is the woman who finds a rival in the bed she shares.
Her face declares
Everything, the flames of jealousy scorch.
She reaches wildly for a dagger, a torch,
She throws dignity to the wind,
She’s a maenad, she goes clean out of her mind.
When Jason broke his marriage vow, barbarous Medea slew
Her own children. Think, too,
Of Procne, now our swallow, another
Savage, unnatural mother,
Whose crime is still to this day expressed
By the blood-red mark on her breast.
These are the sort of outrages that shake
The closest, firmest friendships; for his own sake,
A prudent man steers clear of them.
My moral rule, though, doesn’t condemn
You (heaven forbid!) to one woman all your life—
That’s beyond the hope even of a young wife.
Play around, but discreetly, decently hiding,
Not smugly advertising, your back-sliding.
Never give one a present the other might recognise.
An element of surprise
In the times of your secret rendezvous
Is essential; also don’t choose
The same well-known retreat
For all your girl-friends—you may, the three of you, meet.
And whenever you write one a letter,
You had better
Check the tablets for traces of a previous note:
Many a woman reads what her lover never wrote
To her. Venus, when she’s sore,
Hurls back the weapon in all-out, righteous war
And hits you where it hurts, as she was hit before.
So long as Agamemnon hadn’t disgraced
His marriage, Clytemnestra remained chaste:
It was
his
beastly conduct that made her a beast.
She’d heard all—reports of Chryses the priest,
Fillet on head, laurel in hand, begging in vain
For his daughter back again,
Of Briseis and her grief,
Stolen from Achilles, Agamemnon the thief,
And of action shamefully deferred,
The war prolonged. All this she’d heard,
But Cassandra she
saw
, and once she’d been
Eye-witness of the scene—
The conqueror enslaved, enraptured
By the princess he’d captured—
She took Aegisthus to her heart and bed
And brought down vengeance on her husband’s head.
If you’re caught out, if your carefully concealed sin
Comes to light, still lie through thick and thin.
Don’t be extra nice to her, and don’t feebly wilt:
Both are sure signs of guilt.
Take her to bed—all peace is made on the pillow—
And with all you’ve got disprove your peccadillo.
Some recommend the use
Of aphrodisiacs such as savory juice
(Believe me, it harms you and it’s vile),
Or pepper mixed with nettle-seed, or camomile
Blended with vintage wine;
But the goddess worshipped at the shrine
On Eryx’s high and leafy hill
Isn’t drummed to her pleasures by man’s will.
Eat white onions from Megara, the hot,
Sexy rocket from your garden plot,
Hymettus honey, eggs, the nuts that fall
From the needled pine…
But, learned Muse, why all
This pseudo-medical lore? I must use the rein
To keep my chariot in the inside lane.
If you followed my advice about lapses, “Conceal them,”
You must change tack now, because “Reveal them”
Is my new motto. Don’t blame
Me for inconsistency: the same
Wind doesn’t always drive the ship, we sail
With canvas hauled and set to catch the gale
From north, south, east or west—we veer.
Observe the skill of a charioteer:
How for full speed he lets the reins float slack,
But pulls them taut to hold his horses back.
Some women ill reward
A tame, indulgent lover; they get bored
With lack of competition and grow less
Passionate. Success
Breeds over-confidence; it’s hard to stay
Calm and fair when everything’s going your way.
A fire gradually weakens and dies down
And lies hidden under a crown
Of grey ash, yet sprinkle sulphur and it learns
To revive, and the blaze returns.
So love, grown lazy and self-satisfied,
To be rekindled needs some shock applied.
Heat up her lukewarm heart, alarm her with tales
Of your bad behaviour, so that she pales.
Trebly, incalculably happy is the lover
Whom an injured mistress agonises over.
As soon as she hears what she’d rather not know,
The poor girl faints—her voice, her colour go.
How I’d like to be the man whose hair she tears,
Whose soft cheeks she scratches, at whom she glares
With lovely, tear-filled eyes, the man she would
Cut out of her life, if she only could!
How long should you let her sulk? Not long. The longer
You put off making it up, the stronger
Her anger will grow. To prevent this,
Throw your arms round her neck, give her a kiss,
Pull her sobbing to your breast, hold her there tight,
Keep kissing her, treat her to the delight
Of Venus while she’s weeping. That’ll bring peace:
It’s the one sure way to make the tantrum cease.
When she’s raged her fill but still seems unreconciled,
Then
sue for terms in bed, and you’ll find her mild.
Bed is the place, arms laid down, war forsworn,
Where Harmony dwells, where Tenderness was born.
After a fight doves snuggle, beak to beak,
And coo and murmur in bird-speak.
In the beginning the world was inchoate,
There was nothing but a great
Featureless mass, no earth, sea, stars or moon;
But soon
Sky was set above earth, land ringed with sea,
Chaos retired to its own vacancy,
Forest and air gave beasts and birds their living quarters,
And fish lurked deep in the new waters.
Through this lonely, empty place
Wandered the nomadic human race,
Powerful, uncouth brutes
Whose home was the forest, who ate grass and fruits
And bedded on leaves, long shunning one another
Suspiciously, brother ignoring brother.
What softened those fierce natures? Pleasure, they say.
A man and a woman met in a wood one day
And wondered what to do. No need for tuition:
Venus arranged the rough, sweet coition.
Birds have their mates, fish in the cold mid-ocean,
Thrilled by sexual emotion,
Find partners, hinds follow stags, snakes clasp snakes,
Dogs couple, glued together, the ewe takes
Pleasure in her tupping ram, the heifer’s full
Of desire for her covering bull,
The snub-nosed she-goat happily bears
Her stinking billy, and heat-crazed mares,
Though separated
By miles from stallions, swim streams to get mated.
Act, then. Only a strong dose of love will cure
A woman with an angry temperature.
Better than old Machaon’s drugs, my medicine
Will restore you to her favour when you sin.
While I was writing this, I saw Apollo coming
Towards me with his golden lyre, thumb strumming
The strings, bays in his hand, bays on his head,
Prophet and poet made manifest. “You,” he said,
“Professor of Love’s Affairs,
Lead your pupils to my temple—there’s
A world-famous inscription on it which goes,
Know yourself
. Only the man who knows
Himself can be intelligent in love
And use his gifts to best effect to further every move.
If you’re good-looking, then dazzle all beholders;
If your skin’s fine, then lounge back with bare shoulders.
Let the man with a good voice sing, the clever talker break
Awkward silences, the connoisseur take
Pleasure in wine. But one caveat’s vital:
No ‘inspired’ poet should give a recital,
No ‘brilliant’ speaker deliver an oration
In the middle of dinner-table conversation.”
That was Apollo’s advice. I’d heed it if I were you:
What comes from a god’s mouth
must
be true.
Back to my theme:
The wise lover who follows my scheme
Will win through, achieve his goal. The sown
Furrow doesn’t invariably repay the loan
Of seed with interest,
Or the wind always spring to the help of the distressed
Vessel. Love offers less pleasure than pain;
Lovers must make up their minds to suffer again and again.
Like hares on Athos, shells on the seashore, bees
On Hybla, olives on the grey-green trees
Of Pallas, their pains are innumerable—and all
The shafts that wound us are steeped in gall.
She’s “not at home,” though you’ve glimpsed her indoors? Don’t doubt
The maid’s word but your own eyes: she’s out.
The night’s promised, but the door locked when you come round?
Take it like a man, doss on the filthy ground.
And if one of the cocky, barefaced liars
Among the maidservants enquires,
“What’s this fellow doing besieging the door?”
Use your charm, implore
The hard door to open, the hard heart to unlatch,
Take your wreath off and attach
The roses to the post. If she wants you to, enter; if not, just go.
Why force a mistress to say,
“I can’t escape the pest”? Moods change by the day.
And don’t think it a disgrace to take curses and blows,
Or even to kiss, grovellingly, her toes.
But why waste time on trifles? I must ascend
Higher, treat greater themes. Attend
Closely, reader. Although the task may strain
My powers, nobody can attain
Excellence without difficulty: my art
Demands exacting work on the poet’s part.
Put up with a rival, be patient, and in time
You’ll end up, like the generals who climb
The Capitol, triumphant. This is no secular
Proverb, it’s Jupiter’s oracular
Truth. In all my hanging_eng this
Advice merits the greatest emphasis.
If she flirts, bear it; if she writes on the sly,
Don’t touch her letters; and never try
To check on where she comes from, where she goes.
Husbands grant wives this freedom—they even doze
While sleep assists the comedy. It must be confessed
That as student in this role I’m not the best;
But what can you do when you fail your own test?
Should I tamely watch while some would-be lover
Makes passes at my girl? No, rage takes over.
I remember, her husband kissed her once and I complained—
My love is savage and untrained
(A failing that has done me in the past a
Great deal of harm). The true Master
Is affable with rivals. Ignorance is better
Than knowledge; tolerate lies, for if you get her
To confess too often, her face may tire
Of blushing and she’ll become an inveterate liar.
And so, young lovers, don’t play the detective;
Let them cheat and think their cover-up’s effective.
Passion, unmasked, grows; a guilty pair
Always persist in a ruinous affair.
The whole world knows the myth:
Venus and Mars caught by Vulcan, the crafty smith,
When Father Mars, in the grip
Of mad passion, resigned his awesome generalship
To join the ranks of lovers. For her part
(For no goddess has a softer heart),
Venus was not averse to being wooed,
She certainly didn’t play the country prude.
Oh, the times the naughty jade
Mocked her husband’s bandy legs and made
Fun of his hands coarsened by fire and trade!
In front of Mars she had but to imitate
Vulcan’s peculiar gait,
And charm lent piquancy to beauty acting lame.
At first, through modesty and shame,
They kept their affair dark, but the game
Was up when the Sun (who can fool that all-viewing
God?) told Vulcan what his wife was doing.
(You’re a bad example, Sun. Just ask her, and she’ll treat
You to it too, if only you’re discreet.)
And so Vulcan set,
All round and over the bed, an invisible net,
And shammed a trip to Lemnos. The lovers met
As arranged, were caught stark naked in the snare,
Vulcan invited the gods round, and the pair
Made a ridiculous spectacle. Venus, they say,
Could hardly restrain her tears. Anyway,
They couldn’t conceal their faces or even move
Their hands away from the private parts of love.
One god laughed: “Brave Mars, I see
Your chains are a nuisance—hand them over to me!”
It took all Neptune’s pleading before Vulcan agreed
Reluctantly to release them. Freed
From their embrace,
Venus rushed off to Paphos, Mars to Thrace.
So what, Vulcan, did you achieve?
The formerly furtive couple leave
And carry on with even less
Shame than before. Word has it that you now confess
You acted like a lunatic
And bitterly regret your clever trick.
Be warned by the fate of Venus, beware
Of setting the sort of snare
She
had to suffer. Don’t forge fetters
For rivals, don’t intercept secret letters;
Leave all that for accredited husbands to handle—
If they think the detective game is worth the candle.
I repeat, there’s no sport here the law doesn’t permit:
Married ladies don’t feature in
my
wit.
