Ovid in the Heartland

There is something affirming about reading great works of literature out loud. Many of us were read to as children, but it is a custom worth preserving and maintaining throughout our lives. I once knew an elderly lady who would read out loud even when she was alone, and over the years she worked her way through many literary pillars of thought. She inspired me to continue the tradition, and it has been a great source of encouragement, self-education and entertainment. Sometimes we would host parties at our house where we would read a play out loud, or share favorite poems. When we read out loud, we are re-establishing a connection with our forebears, our cultural legacies, our ancestors, or, if we read from a contemporary work, we establish a link with those who help shape our present world.

Recently several local organizations here in St. Louis--the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, River Styx and the St. Louis Poetry Center-- banded together for an extended reading of passages from the Roman poet Ovid's masterpiece, Metamorphoses, spread across two days of nine hours of reading each. Various local citizens participated in the readings. This was a wonderful means of communicating to all the citizens of our region that we do share a common heritage--that 2,000 years ago a man of letters lived and wrote words that speak to us today. In an era when so many young people have so little knowledge of history, the words read aloud were a little piece of living history handed down across the centuries.

Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 B.C.--17 A.D., led a life as full of changes as the characters in the myths he retold. Sadly, he died in exile far from his beloved Rome, in what is now Romania, but his poetry lives on to tell the world about the glory of ancient Rome. In the opening lines of The Metamorphoses we learn, among other things, that the Romans were fully aware that the world was round, nearly 1,500 years before Columbus. But more importantly, we begin to learn, through his retelling of classic myths, the stories that have helped shape our visual arts, poetry, music and understanding of human emotions. When we deprive our children of a knowledge of history--their own and that of others--we are robbing them of a piece of their very humanity.

Thanks,
Gary