Essays in Idleness

On Valentine’s Day we, or perhaps only some of us, like to glance again over our old Ovid, which we had in school and was “previously loved” when we were teen-aged. Alas, these days it only reminds me how far my Latin has decayed — which is a much different feeling from that inspired by the crisp ingenious verse I first encountered as a schoolboy.

For in the time since, not only has Ovid faded from my lips, but from the laziness of an inconstant devotion I have come to accept his diminished reputation. We are taught, if taught at all in school any more, to assume that he must be writing a form of pornography, perhaps allied with sophisticated learning, but using that only as an excuse. I remembered that a scandal of two millennia ago had him banished from Rome, and living in exile by the Black Sea; but any great poet is a candidate for political exile. Fortunately, I had a very fine Latin mistress, myself, who would not let me fall into crude misunderstandings, and who supported my proper enthusiasm for art, including the Artis Amatoriae.

Ovid was fastidious. He had nothing to do with harlots. His standards were cultivated, and quite specifically he was looking for a docta puella, for a girl with a mind and with whom an intelligent conversation could be had. He expected her not only to speak, but to speak mellifluously, and be familiar with Callimachus, Anacreon, Sappho. Beyond this, she should know how to walk, how to laugh; and how to be elegant in dress and person. He is not simply trying to avoid disease, but actively to resist everything that is low and ugly.

The poets of the T’ang Dynasty, or of Heian Japan, were as one in this with the poets of civilized Rome. Poetry raises everyone’s consciousness. On Valentine’s, I remember how a young Chinese lady, crossing a busy street in the gruelling heat of Hong Kong, was floating through the air. She would have received elaborate training in comportment, from childhood; and lo, I was being exposed to the grace of a superior culture.