Animals, Gods and Humans - Chapter 4

4 IMAGINATION AND TRANSFORMATIONS Metamorphoses I In this chapter, we will discuss two types of animal–human transformation that were especially pondered upon by the Graeco-Roman imagination. These were imagined relationships – expressions of myth and fantasy – in which animals were drawn into the human sphere. Here they were internal-ized and recreated as aspects of human nature and sometimes mixed with human qualities in other ways. The first of these relationships is a human–animal transformation during a single life (metamorphosis), while the second is a human–animal transformation during several lives (metenso-matosis). Fantasies about animals and humans had their outlet in art, as well as in narratives and literature. One prominent theme is transformation between animals and humans. A transformation could be a metamorphosis, a change of bodily form or species, taking place within one life-time. Alternatively the change takes place in a progression from one life to another in the form of a metensomatosis, a change of body. Such tales of transformation do not describe animals as external antagonists, as was the case with the animals that were confronted by Hercules and Orpheus, but they are more directly a reflection of the inherent bestial aspects of the human situation. The theme of transforma-tion between humans and animals is often an elaboration of how the bestial aspect of humans represents a degradation of human qualities. Ovid’s tales of transformation focus in singular ways on similarities and differences between animals and humans, on essences and changes, on permanence and flux. Gods changing into animal shapes had been a popular theme in Greek mythology, especially with regard to Zeus. Disguised as an animal, the father of the gods visited girls on earth: Leda as a swan and Europa as a bull. In Latin also, the topic of metamorphosis was popular. In these metamor-phoses, the boundaries between mortals and immortals, as well as those between humans and animals, were crossed and thus made less categorical. Human-to-animal changes were especially loved. Metamorphoses were a popular theme that had been taken up and developed by Roman authors, the most famous being Ovid and Apuleius.1 78 IMAGINATION AND TRANSFORMATIONS Playfulness is a vital ingredient in Ovid’s disparate stories, although serious and moving passages are also found. Human bodies are changed into animals, as well as into trees and plants, always into new and different forms of flora and fauna. In a few cases, humans experience an apotheosis (Hercules, 9.262–70; Aeneas, 14.600–7; Romulus, 14. 823–8; Hersilia (wife of Romulus), 14.829–34). It has often been emphasized how varied Ovid’s metamorphoses are. A marble statue is made into the living woman, Pygmalion (10.247–97), and the nymph Arethusa is made into a well (5.572–641). With few exceptions, Ovid’s humans do not usually themselves have the power to turn into animal shapes; they are transformed by a god. This transformation is either a punishment inflicted by the god on the human being – Actaeon was turned into a stag by Diana because he saw her in the nude and was mercilessly torn to pieces by his own dogs (3.177–252) – or a means of salvation from external dangers when the animal body becomes a hiding place for the human personality or soul (Riddehough 1959: 203). When Juno became aware that her husband was having an adventure with the young girl Io, Io was transformed into a heifer by Jove to avoid the fury of Juno (1.610–12). But whether the animal form is an instrument of rescue or a means of punishment and damnation, it is never a preferred form. Sometimes the animal form may be an accentuation of characteristics inherent in the person who was turned into a beast, as when the girl Arachne, an expert weaver, was turned into a spider by Athena. In this way, Arachne was punished because she outdid the goddess in a weaving contest. In her new shape, Arachne continues her weaving, for ever preserved in the form of a spider (6.144–5). For those whom the gods wanted to punish, a transformation into animals usually stresses their evil characteristics. King Lycaon, who tried to kill Jove and served a dish of human flesh to the god, who had taken on mortal form, was turned into a wolf, a shape that accentu-ated his “beastly savagery” (1.230–40). In this new shape, he applied his bloodthirsty nature to slaughtering sheep. In general, the animal shape is never an improvement on the human condi-tion. In the case of Lycaon, who transgressed both the boundaries between god and man (trying to kill a god) and between man and man (cannibalism), he was “rewarded” by being transformed into a beast. His name “Lycaon”, derived from the Greek for wolf, lykos, suggests that the wolfish essence was inherent in him from the very beginning and that he had now become in external form what he essentially had always been: a bloodthirsty beast. In her recent book Metamorphosis and Identity, Caroline Walker Bynum stresses that Lycaon’s vices are boundary crossings, that he really changes but yet that he “is what he was before” (Bynum 2001: 169). The wolfish form fits his nature or essence better than his human form, which means that there is a continuity of personality between man and beast. As L. Barkan puts it, we have been witnessing “a complex combination of change and continuity” (Barkan 1986: 25). 79 IMAGINATION AND TRANSFORMATIONS A metamorphosis presupposes a process where the distinctions between an animal body and a human body collapse, and it gives rise to a moment when the two forms meet and fuse. This moment is described, for instance, by Ovid when Arachne is made into a spider, or by Apuleius when Lucius is finally transformed from an ass into his former human shape. And as she turned to go, she sprinkled her with drugs of Hecate, and in a trice, touched by the bitter lotion, all her hair falls off and with it go her nose and her ears. Her head shrinks tiny; her whole body’s small; instead of legs slim fingers line her sides. The rest is belly, yet from that she sends a fine-spun thread and, as a spider, still weaving her webs, pursues her former skill. (Metamorphoses, 6.143–52) My bestial features faded away, the rough hair fell from my body, my sagging paunch tightened, my hooves separated into feet and toes, my fore hooves now no longer served only for walking upon, but were restored, as hands, to human uses. My neck shrank, my face and head rounded, my great stony teeth shrank to their proper size, my long ears receded to their former shortness, and my tail, which had been my worst shame, vanished altogether. (The Golden Ass, 11.13) In these descriptions, there is a continuum between the external elements and bodily structures of animals and humans. A metamorphosis is usually described as flux and movement and sometimes as a large-scale process (as in Ovid’s poem). In each individual case, however, the result is not seldom that the transformed individual is stuck – frozen for ever in its new shape, as when Arachne is made into a spider or Lycaon into a wolf. Usually the transformed human retains some of his or her former human characteristics in the new animal shape. In this way, the transformation is never complete, and the boundaries between the categories of human and animal remain in flux. Hardly ever is the transformed human only temporarily turned into a beast and afterwards turned back into a human shape, as Io eventually was (1.738–46). Especially striking in Ovid’s descriptions of how humans turn into animals is how typical human characteristics, such as hands, an erect posture on two legs and especially the human voice, are changed so that the victim is finally unable to communicate. This is always the outcome when a human is turned into an animal. Because the former human being loses the faculty of speech, he or she is thereby effectively shut out of human society. One of the most moving narratives in the poem is when Actaeon flees from his own hounds and desperately tries to cry out to them, “I am Actaeon! Recognize your own master!” (3.230), to stop them attacking him, but in vain. And 80 IMAGINATION AND TRANSFORMATIONS when they finally bury their fangs in his body, “till there is no place left for further wounds, he groans and makes a sound, which, though not human, is still one no deer could utter, and fills the heights he knows so well with mournful cries” (3.236–9). Actaeon has lost his human voice but kept his human mind. Thus the human–animal border has been dislocated. Formerly it was found outside Actaeon, but now it reappears as a border between his internal mind and his voice and body. Actaeon thinks but is no longer able to communicate, not even with animals. What do the metamorphoses of Ovid imply? What is changed, and what remains the same? Most striking in many of these transformations is the way that being an animal is described as being in a foreign place. It is as if the human soul is peeping out from an animal body, and the human conscious-ness is trapped within the beast. Classicist Penelope Murray has stressed that the continuity in human consciousness from a human to an animal incarna-tion is the distinctive feature of Ovid’s poem: “the retention of human consciousness within a bestial or other kind of form enables Ovid to explore questions about human identity in a peculiarly disturbing way” (Murray 1998: 89). Murray argues convincingly that according to Ovid it is not primarily the human soul or a moral superiority in relation to other crea-tures that differentiates human beings from other creatures, but the human body. Humanity is firmly tied to the human shape. So when humans are changed into animal forms, they lose not only their human shape but also their humanity. It could be added that the continuity in human consciousness also means a narrowing of it. Even if human qualities survive in the altered bodily shape – Cadmus and Harmonia, who were changed into serpents, are still in love with each other (4.575–603) – the new bodily forms also determine the soul’s expression and often seem to narrow the spectrum of feelings and understanding in a way that makes the soul into a single-layered entity. Only the essential qualities of the person remain. There are exceptions – Actaeon and Io, for instance, are clearly humans trapped in the bodies of beasts. But when humans are transformed into beasts, they are normally simultaneously moving away from individuality into typicality, not only on the level of body but also psychologically. In this way, these tales also reveal a reductionist view of animals in relation to humans, a view that conforms to allegorical and metaphorical thinking: humans have individual traits; animals are stereotypes. The individual animal is similar to other animals of the same species. It is possible by means of a metamorphosis to be transferred from one layer of the universe – divine, human or animal – to another. But the transi-tion takes place more easily in some directions than in others. This is in accordance with the concept of a great chain of being that orders the different species and spiritual beings in a hierarchy. There is a fluctuation between the layers, but after being transformed, the victim is usually stuck 81 IMAGINATION AND TRANSFORMATIONS in their new shape and state of being for ever. However, gods may cross the different layers at will. In the story about Arachne, the girl depicts animal forms that the gods used to deceive mundane girls (6.1–145). Gods may turn into beasts when it suits them and back into their original form. However, most important for human–animal relations and for the bound-aries between the two categories in these tales is the fact that the boundaries are held firm in one direction but not in the other. In the case of Io, she was transformed into a heifer and back again. This example shows that animals that in reality are transformed humans can be turned back into human form. But animals that have never been humans are never transformed into a man or a woman. This is in accordance with the view voiced by Plato, who pointed out in the Phaedrus that only a soul that had once been human could pass from an animal into a human; a soul that had never been human could not pass into a human. That mere animals do not become humans is also in accordance with the type of metaphorical system that is expressed through Ovid’s metamor-phoses. Humans are characterized as animals, not the other way around. The fact that mere animals do not turn into humans is also consonant with Ovid’s concern, which is with human beings. However, one of the things that this work also does is to give etymologies and aetiologies for phenomena in the natural world. Animals come in along with plants and other objects that humans are transformed into. Ovid is not writing about animals as such, but all the same his representations of animals reveal some-thing about how the different species of animal are perceived and how the different layers of the universe work in relation to each other. That a “real” animal does not change into a human being is a limitation on the possibilities of transformation that is important because it reveals that there are impassable boundaries in the hierarchy of being that reflect differences between gods, humans and animals, differences that it is impos-sible to eliminate. It has been argued that changes from man to god or into an animal do not imply a movement up or down the existential ladder (for example, Solodow 1988: 190–2). But animals are never transformed into humans precisely because gods, humans and animals in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are also locked into a system that in several ways functions hierarchically. In this system, it is possible to be transformed into lower categories and back again, and in some rare cases, a human being may be transformed into a god. But while it is possible for humans and gods to turn into animals, it is never possible for an animal to turn into a human being or to change into a god. These limitations of the transformation process are not in accordance with what is suggested in Book 15, that the spirit passes “from beast into human bodies” (15.167–8). They imply a more fundamental division between animals and humans than between humans and gods, which is in accordance with a general tendency in people’s thinking concerning animals in these centuries. 82 ... - tailieumienphi.vn