Ovid's Battered Love

I've been reading Ovid's Tristia and his Black Sea Letters, and this passage struck me in the beauty of its description of Love's decrepitude:

Sleep, that common repose from cares, possessed me,
my slack limbs were sprawled out the length of my bed--
when, suddenly, the air was vibrant with beating pinions,
and the window creaked softly open. In alarm
I started up, propped on my left elbow, slumber
gone, driven clear from my thumping breast.
There stood Love, one hand grasping the maple bedpost,
with a sad expression, not how he used to look,
no neck-chain, no hair-comb, locks in wild disorder,
not neatly pinned back as of old,
but hanging loose around his bristled jawline,
wing-feathers ruffled (or so it seemed to me)
like those on the back of some homing pigeon, fingered
by too many rough hands.
(Ovid, Black Sea Letters III.3.7-20)

His description of sleep as something that possesses rather than a state is what initially drew me into the passage, as if sleep is a spiritual entity, a god, that can possess you. Moreover, in these letters and poems, Ovid complains of chronic insomnia, so the sweet sleep coming over him must have seemed a relief, perhaps something as powerful as possession. Then, he awakes to see the god Love flying through his window; nonetheless, the poetry retains its dreamlike quality. It is like waking up into a dream--something that happens, for example, to Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment. I find that, in fact, as frustrating as insomnia--to wake up into a dream, to have nested dreams or dreams within dreams within dreams (I think I've had as many as four nested dreams--a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream--before I could get out of them into full consciousness--that is, if this is not also a dream). Ovid has had a long relationship with Love. His description indicates long familiarity--how he knows that Love does not look like his old self. He looks scruffy, feathers drooping, having wild hair, and general unkempt appearance. And what do we make of being "fingered by too many rough hands"? This familiarity, of course, comes from Ovid's famous Art of Love, the series of seductive poems that provided the reasoning (but probably not the true reason) for his exile. Love here mirrors Ovid's own self-descriptions of his own failing, increasingly emaciated appearance in other poems. Love mirrors Ovid, as, in fact, Ovid often equates himself with the books he writes. Is Love, too, in exile? Has Love felt the full force of Caesar's wrath? Been banished from Rome? Or, do we see, as Love awakens Ovid, as an unkempt Love awakens the emaciated Ovid, the source of Ovid's insomnia? If only he hadn't written that poem to provide a pretext for his relegation to Tomis on the Black Sea? Or is Love a prophet (III.83-4)

Ovidian Odyssey, Odyssean Ovid

Instead
of the warlord from Ithaca our educated poets
should write about my misadventures: I've undergone
worse troubles than he did. He wandered for years--but only
on the short haul between Ithaca and Troy;
thrust to the Getic shore by Caesar's wrath, I've traversed
seas lying beneath unknown stars,
whole constellations distant. He had his loyal companions,
his faithful crew: my comrades deserted me
at the time of my banishment. Hew as making for his homeland,
a cheerful victor: I was driven from mine--
fugitive, exile, victim. My home was not some Greek island,
Ithaca, Samos--to leave them is no great loss--
but the City that from its seven hills scans the world's orbit,
Rome, centre of empire, seat of the gods.
He was physically tough, with great stamina, long-enduring;
my strength is slight, a gentle man's. He spent
a lifetime under arms, engaged in savage warfare--
I'm accustomed to quieter pursuits.
I was crushed by a god, with no help in my troubles:
he had that warrior-goddess by his side.
And just as Jove outranks the god of the rough ocean,
so he suffered Neptune's anger, I bear Jove's.
What's more, the bulk of his troubles are fictitious,
whereas mine remain anything but myth!
Finally, he got back to the home of his questing, recovered
the acres he'd sought so long; but I,
unless the injured deity's wrath diminish, am sundered
for everlasting from my native soil!
(Ovid, Tristia 1.5.56-84; trans. Green)

Sing, Muse, of the man of many metamorphoses...

Ovid's Tearful (Tristia) Transformation (Metamorphoses)

Ovid, famous in his own day for his Art of Love, but today for his Metamorphoses (Transformations), reflects on his Metamorphoses in his tearful Tristia (Lamentations), which were written after he was banished from Rome, exiled to the Black Sea:

There are also fifteen books of Metamorphoses, worksheets
lately saved from my exequies:
To them I bid you say that the new face of my fortunes
may now be reckoned one more
among their bodily changes: by sudden transformation
what was joyful once is made fit matter for tears.
(Ovid, Tristia, I.1.117-22; trans. Peter Green)

There is a certain painful, sad commentary here. At the end of his Metamorphoses, Ovid basically says that he (and his book--he equates them) is the only thing that will endure, not change. His exile, his separation from all his friends, from his homeland, changes him physically, psychologically, and emotionally, transforming his joy into tears. His persona in the Metamorphoses has, itself, transformed through dislocation.