The Rape of Proserpine

This one was really beautiful. Too big to tackle in just one post, I think. Plus, tomorrow I get 110 rough drafts of critical analysis papers from my students that are probably going to eat up my entire life for the next few days ... so expect to see more on this one.

This was the first section of the "Tales from Ovid" where the metamorphosis part of the story was emotionally surprising. The first character to undergo a bodily change in the tale is Cyane, a nymph.


Cyane bewailed the rape of the goddess
And the violation of her fountain.
She wept over these wrongs
In secret, as if her heart
Were weeping its blood.
Nothing could comfort her.
Gradually, her sorrow
Melted her into the very waters
Of which she had been the goddess.
Her limbs thinned, her bones became pliant,
Her nails softened. Swiftly she vanished
Into flowing water ...
and at last
No longer blood but clear simple water
Flowed through her veins, and her whole body
Became clear simple water. Nothing remained
To hold or kiss but a twisting current of water.


To me, this is chilling, because it is (I think) the first time in the "Tales" that the metamorphosis is not brought upon the character by a god/goddess, but instead is self-imposed. Cyane's sorrow is so great that she voluntarily gives up her nymph form in order to become more united with the expression of her grief (her tears).

In addition, the water/blood imagery is full of possibilities. Water seems to have very heavy implications in Ovid (and in all cultures, actually) - it is necessary for life, but it is also used to eliminate life (the great flood) or to catalyze an erasure of memory (the Lethe). Here, the water also eliminates, but not life or memory exactly - simple all parts of Cyane that were not devoted solely to grieving. As a body of water, she is, in a sense, in a constant state of grief - she has literally drowned herself in tears, and in doing so, erased all parts of herself but the tears.

Her sense of responsibility, that she could not stop Pluto from using her fountain as a conduit to the Underworld, is full to brimming. Such an artful suicide is to be admired and mourned.