Transcription

• Giulia

  Some weeks ago, a friend of mine introduced me to her fiancé. She told him I was a storyteller. And I don't know why, but as much as I loved this description of my work and, in a way, who I was, I felt it was an important word. One that carries stories, wisdom. One that holds words in its arms, the burden of the world's actions. To me, it was a word with weight, one I felt strongly on my shoulders. One that made me think of an old woman in a village: Long white strands of hair, beautiful wrinkles carved by time across her face, a lifetime of words and stories passing through her tongue, and the movement of her features, lines on her forehead as her brows rose when the characters of her tales had to escape a maze or descend into the underworld. And she would say, 'Listen, listen, for those words will change you. There is no return. There is no return.' I am no old woman in a village. No fire is being set at night where I live. No one gathers, no one plays the drum or the flute to accompany my stories. So I wondered: What is so different from this old woman and me? I wanted to truly understand what it means to be a storyteller, to be one day this old woman. So I turned to my bookshelf. As my eyes wander through the colours and fonts of books that hold my heart, they posed on one: The Metamorphosis of Ovid, a book I had bought recently but hadn't yet opened. Yet, I knew the wisdom it held. As I turned the pages, something caught me in the introduction, written by Mary Innes. Ovid, this man I knew nothing about was described as the prince of storytellers. Was he mine? My friend had called me a storyteller, and Ovid was the prince of storytellers. Well, do the math. He must be my prince, right? If he was to be my prince, I would have to uncover his secret. What made him one? What made him worthy of that title? There are 2,068 years between myself and Ovid, and more than 500 kilometers, as he spent most of his time in Rome. I imagine him in a long tunic, perhaps a toga dropped over his shoulder, drinking wine in places filled with laughter, telling stories in verse, and everyone would stop talking to listen. Because if he was the prince of storytellers, then surely magic happened when his words touched the air, when sound entered their ears and reached their souls. 'Listen, listen, for those words will change you. There is no return. There is no return.' In the Metamorphoses, I discovered that Ovid did not invent new tales. He collected them from the pages of Greek poets, from previous anthologies of Greek myths, from Latin folklore and even farther away, from Babylon and the East. He treated the tales as a prince might treat his lands, learn about them, unite them, cherish them. To understand the storyteller, the prince of storytellers, I had to understand his craft. And what better way to do that than to read his words? So let me take you into the retelling of one of the myths he included in the Metamorphoses. I've kept close to Ovid's voice but shaped it slightly for clarity and flow. Let's set the scene. Imagine you are at a feast. He is there, in his tunic. You hold a cup of wine. It smells of rosemary and lavender. Laughter surrounds you. And then he speaks. And the room falls quiet. Because Ovid has opened his mouth. And everyone knows magic is about to unfold. 'Listen, listen, for those words will change you. There is no return. There is no return.' "On a warm day, when even the wind would not dare disturb the floating leaves, Apollo encountered Cupid, son of Venus. The bright god paused at the sight. Cupid was bending his bow, not realising he was not alone. Apollo's lips curved, retaining a laugh, for only warriors like him could hold such weapons. Those who had seen men die, or fought giant serpents. Cupid was not one of them. Cupid was no warrior. Apollo stepped forward, and when Cupid's eyes met his, he said, 'You naughty boy, what do you have to do with a warrior's arms? Weapons such as these are suited to my shoulders to wound wild beasts or enemies, as I laterly slew the bloated python with my countless arrows. Be content with your torch to excite love, whatever that may be, and do not seek praise that belongs to me.' Cupid's eyes became the ember's colour, as if they were the piercing arrows he was holding. But Apollo smiled, as if to dare him to shoot them. Cupid replied, 'Your bow may pierce anything else, Apollo. but mine will pierce you.' With those words, Cupid winged his way to the air, landing on the shady summit, Apollo's words tainting his mind. Apollo was a warrior, and Cupid was not. But he was no adversary he would like to meet. His arrow would not pierce his limbs, but his heart. And this wound, Cupid knew, was fatal. From his quiver full of arrows he drew two darts with different properties. One puts love to flight, the other kindles it. With the golden arrow of love Cupid pierced Apollo, one shot straight and clean. With the blunt one he pierced a nymph, Peneus's daughter Daphne. Immediately The nymph fled the very word lover, took her delight in woodland hounds, imitating Diana, the maiden goddess. Many suitors wooed her, but turning away from them, she roamed the woods, knowing nothing of men and caring nothing for them. Again and again, her father said, 'It is your duty to marry and give me a son-in-law, my child.' But she blushed, hating the thought of marriage as if it were some crime. Throwing her arms around her father's neck, she cried, 'My dear, dear father, let me enjoy this state of maiden bliss forever. Diana's father once granted her such a gift.' Her father did, indeed, yield to her requests. But her loveliness prevented her from being what she desired, and her beauty defeated her own wishes. When the arrow pierced Apollo, the god pulled it away as he cursed Venus' son. 'Do not brush your shoulder at me, boy, for you have never tasted my fury.' But Apollo stilled, branches cracked on the ground further away. He moved his head to the sound, and throwing the arrow on the ground, he said, 'Show yourself, Cupid, if you are a man.' But what he caught sight of was the most beautiful woman he ever laid eyes upon. He knew who she was. Peneus's famous daughter, Daphne. Apollo felt himself on fire. His whole heart was aflame. He fell in love with her. 'Marry me,' he whispered. Nothing else came out of his mouth, as she was like the song of a mermaid. Her eyes were sparkling as bright as stars. Her lips, he wanted to do more than look at them. He praised her fingers, her hands and arms, her hidden charms he imagined lovelier still. But Daphne ran off, swifter than the wind's breath, and did not stop to hear his words. He called her back. 'I implore you, nymph, daughter of Peneus, do not run away. Though I pursue you, I am no enemy. Stay, sweet nymph. You flee as the lamb flees the wolf, or the deer the lion, as doves on fluttering wings fly from an eagle. But it is love that drives me to follow you. These are rough places through which you are running. Go less swiftly, I beg of you. Slow your flight, and I, in turn, shall pursue less swiftly.' As Daphne did not stop running, he continued, 'Say a moment and see whose heart you have charmed. I am no peasant living in a mountain hut, nor am I a shepherd who tends his cattle in these regions. You do not know from whom you are fleeing. Indeed, you do not, Or else you would not flee. I am lord of Delphi, Claros, and Tenedos, and of the realms of Patara too. I am the son of Jupiter. By my skill, the past, the present, and the future are revealed. Thanks to me, the lyre strings sing with music. My arrow is sure, but a sure one has already wounded my carefree heart. The art of medicine is my invention. and men around the world give me the name of healer. All the properties of herbs are known to me, but alas, there are no herbs to cure love, and the skill which helps others cannot help its master.' The god and the nymph sped on, one made swift by hope and one by fear. But he who pursued her was swifter, for he was assisted by love's wings. He gave the fleeing maiden no respite until Daphne's strength was spent, and she grew pale and weary with the effort of her flight. Then she saw the waters of the Peneus. 'Oh, father,' she cried, 'help me! If your rivers really have divine powers, work some transformation and destroy this beauty which makes me please all too well.' Her prayer was ended when a deep languor took hold on her limbs. Her soft breast was enclosed in thin bark. Her hair grew into leaves, her arms into branches, and her feet were held fast by roots while her face became the treetop. Nothing of her was left except her shining loveliness. Even as a tree, Apollo loved her. He placed his hand against the trunk and felt her heart still beating under the new bark. Embracing the branches as if they were limbs, he kissed the wood, but even as a tree, she shrank from his kisses. Then the god said, 'Since you cannot be my bride, surely you will at least be my tree. My hair, my lyre, my quivers will always display the laurel. You will accompany the generals of Rome when joyful voices raise the song of victory. You will stand by Augustus' gatepost too, faithfully guarding his doors. Further, as my head is ever young, my tresses never shorn, so do you also, at all times, wear the crowning glory of never-fading foliage.' The laurel tree inclined her new-made branches, and seemed to nod her leafy top as if it were her head, in consent." The myth I just told you is the story of Daphne and Apollo. Before we continue, I invite you to pause the episode for a moment and reflect on what struck you the most. When I shared this story with a loved one, they replied, 'When Daphne transforms into a tree, not because of the transformation itself, but because the courage to follow her will prevail over her life.' And that holds meaning. It reveals something about your own story. Myths speak to the unconscious and help uncover parts of ourselves. We don't really know where Ovid found that story, even if we suppose he came across it through research, studies, oral transmission, and other sources. What strikes me is how modern this story is 2068 years later. Haven't we experienced this in our lives? Loving someone who does not love us back. Sometimes, chasing after them and making it a personal matter. 'Why not? Why not me? Am I not good enough?' Love between two individuals is such a timeless subject. isn't it? And Ovid 2068 years ago was so passionate about the themes of love. Our word deeply is, romances are growing more popular with each passing year, and we have to understand that Ovid lived in a time when love wasn't always about choice. Marriage was often about duty. And you can feel this tension in the story. Daphne's struggle between duty and her desire for autonomy. As she runs from Apollo, he tells her everything is: 'How can you run from me? Look at me, I'm this incredible god.' The ego . But who wouldn't be troubled? Apollo is handsome. He is a powerful god. And at that time, it was all about power, wasn't it? And you can really feel the power struggle between the two. To be honest, sometimes, when I witness what is enjoyed in romances nowadays, isn't the line very thin between what is loving behaviour and what is obsession and control? Sometimes I picture those male characters with fangs and yellow eyes shining in the night, not as lovers, but as predators. How often do we still see these power dynamics playing out in relationships today? In the end, Apollo agrees to love her, even though she has transformed into a laurel tree. You can see this as a beautiful thing, love transcending obstacles, love going beyond physical attraction. Isn't that true love? But at the same time, for me, it was difficult to be 100% satisfied because he also decides to use the laurel as her symbol, to carve it into lyres, onto doors, onto things that belong to him. I feel it becomes about him again, about what he is going to do with her, with her image, with the idea of her. She remains the object of his love. And isn't love supposed to be selfless? What does it mean to love someone when they've had to become something else to escape you? Shouldn't he have simply looked at her, at least watered her, and from the start accepted her wish to remain autonomous, not to be with him? But characters do learn in myths, don't they? Apollo may have been chasing the wild feminine mystery that Daphne represented, learning perhaps that reverence is the key, not conquest. Letting go is the true power here, not pursuing her. And this is the true power behind this darker masculine archetype. I want to specify I am talking about a myth through the lens of a patriarchal culture, about men as seen through that lens. This is not about men in their essence. But did Ovid ask himself the same question 2068 years ago? Well, he lived in a deeply ingrained patriarchal culture. But I'm sure he understood something about love in his time. Ovid didn't only write the Metamorphoses, but also Ars Amatoria, a handbook on the subject of love, and later Remedies for Love, an antidote to his own prescriptions. Maybe the contradiction is intentional. Maybe Ovid is also playing with the absurdity of it all. That love can be caught, but also dismantled. That it can be controlled and owned, yet dissolved, like poison a prince might melt into his adversary's wine. But isn't that what's so fascinating about love? What do we truly understand about it? What we know is that love transforms, doesn't it? Eros is the love energy that transforms, it's the desire Apollo feels, the attraction for Daphne, her freedom. And Cupid is the little trickster that shook things up, turned things upside down and provoked the transformation. Every kind of love changes something in us. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid gathers many tales, and all of them share one thing in common. Transformation. Transformation myth is central. It's a very important pattern. Characters undergo change, some physically, turning into animals, stones, or stars. Others descend into the underworld to face their darker selves, some transform in spiritual and personal ways. Every story we read is about transformation. Isn't that something so human and so natural? Everything around us is in transformation. We go from one form to another. Trees grow leaves, lose them, then grow them again. The story of Daphne and Apollo is a story of transformation, a story of rebirth. In mythology, trees often symbolise the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The laurel is a symbol of wisdom and immortality. Look at the ancient Mesopotamian myths. Inanna, for example, the goddess of love and war, searches for the tree that will give her wisdom about her sexuality. Or Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, who seeks the tree of immortality. Look at the Old Testament, where the fruit of the tree holds knowledge about the gods, about truth. Trees connect to different worlds, perhaps to another kind of consciousness. They are portals. Daphne's name itself means laurel in Greek. In older traditions, she was worshipped as the goddess who became the tree. But not only does Daphne transform, Apollo's love transforms into inspiration. He imagines Laurel leaves on his lyre. Isn't that a form of creation? But something deeper came to mind when I read the story for the first time. This is what spoke to my deeper self. Reading it, another story came to mind: The story of Melusine, from medieval French folklore. Melusine asks her husband not to question what she does on Saturdays. One day, he breaks his promise and sees her in her true form, half-serpent. Disappointed, she escapes him and returns to nature, some say to the waters, in her true form. I also thought of the story of Lilith, Adam's first wife, who, refusing to accept a role that stripped her of autonomy, flies away and escapes into the sea. Or even the selkie woman who takes back her seal skin after years of not being herself, going back to the waters where she is from. In many myths, when women sovereignty is not respected, they transform into their true form and return to nature. Often it's linked with water. Women return to water a very ancient symbol in all religions. Water represents fertility, flow and creation. Daphne asks the river to transform her, to save her. Nature in this story becomes her first loving source, not Apollo. Nature is the escape, our nature. And in many myths and folktales, it is through nature that characters undergo transformation. Before transforming, Daphne wanders the forest. Isn't it similar to a story like the Vasilisa who meets the Baba Yaga in the woods? And I thought, what if we told these stories? People who transform into trees. Trees that hold wisdom and serve as portals to other worlds. Would we still cut them? For those who listened to the previous episode, some gods might be angry about it. But more than that, would we want to cut down the holders of wisdom, the ones who carry different words within them? Would we want to cut human beings who transformed into this form? So Ovid knew mythology had powerful wisdom, maybe the kind I pictured the old woman telling around the fire. He knew the secret was in telling them. Again and again. And the magic would work. Because there is something universal and timeless about them: The human nature. 'Myths have a way of bringing what is unconscious to the surface and putting a face on what we cannot see.' This is a quote from Terry Tempest Williams in her book 'When Women Were Birds'. Myths use symbols and patterns as old as time. So the genius of Ovid is the genius of myths. ' Listen, listen, for those words will change you. There is no return. There is no return.' His work inspired many other poets and authors, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, even biblical texts. And I think that not only Ovid's work was important here, But all the people who retold those myths adapted them and used their symbolism and wisdom. Even today, I think of the wonderful and courageous women who are retelling these old myths, bringing in another worldview and the voices of women. And what if Ovid never wrote the Metamorphoses? Would we have heard these stories in another way, by other authors? Would some of the myths have disappeared with oral tradition and transmission fading away? I could have maybe never told you this story. But let me tell you, it was close to happening. Ovid was ordered to live in exile at Tomis, on the Black Sea coast. The reason is not very clear. Maybe it was for the subject he treated, love, seduction and passion, which went against Emperor Augustus' moral reforms at the time. And he died on that island. In a way, if that is what happened, he died as a kind of martyr who believed that poetry and mythology were winning against all. But before dying, Ovid flung his metamorphoses into the fire, saying it was unfit for publication. But he knew. He knew the world had already seen his stories, and they would live on. They were already circulating. The vessels were moving, reaching a near, leaving a mouth. Look at us, talking about it. I tell you this story because he wrote it down 2,068 years ago. Maybe these stories would have reached us through other poets or storytellers, but he was the prince, wasn't he? And princes are supposed to leave the biggest mark, aren't they? But everyone, by telling a story, leaves a mark. Because everyone is a storyteller. You are a storyteller too. Every day you tell stories. You tell your friends what happened during your day, you recount the last book you read to your loved ones, you are a storyteller, and you can decide to tell yourself these stories, to adapt them to your life, to your creative projects. It is difficult nowadays in the modern world to find wisdom, to find a root for our knowledge, as many ancestral cultures still do. This is our way to entertain stories that hold profound knowledge. Lately, I've listened to someone say, 'We are careful about what we buy, we consume our clothes, our food, but not our stories.' Stories shape our beliefs, our actions, our world. Let's be careful about what we watch, what we read, and what we tell. And it made me reflect so much. What are the stories I want to entertain in my life? What are the stories I want future generations to hear, to watch in movies, to read in school or before sleep? How do I want to maintain the precious wisdom our ancestors held, the one shared around the fire thousands of years ago? Well, if Ovid is my prince, he's yours too. And maybe one day we won't need princes, princesses, queens or kings. We will all be one. But that is another story to tell. Thank you for listening to this podcast episode. I hope it resonated with you. If it did, please share it with those around you and rate this podcast five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also leave a comment on the episode on Spotify. I'd be so happy to hear your reflections. I wish you a beautiful day or evening, and I'll talk to you soon.