Chapter 11 - Eccentric Poetry

Summary

Ovid’s journey towards Tomis is represented as a reversal of Aeneas’ destiny, particularly because – unlike the Virgilian hero – the exiled poet has to leave Rome (the world capital, and not a ruined city) with no promises of a glorious future. Thus, his new subjective elegy which originates at this (wild) periphery of the empire cannot but be a sad elegy. However, Ovid’s ‘eccentric’ exile poetry increasingly displays – from the Tristia to the Epistulae ex Ponto – some remarkable traces of evolution. In particular, towards the end of the second collection, the poet sketches a peculiar image of himself: that of an interethnic uates who has been able to find a new, unprecedented audience in the Greco-Getic tribes. The public role he now plays in Tomitan society allows him to engage in a sort of civilising mission as an imperial officer. Such a complex strategy of self-accreditation emphasises the transnational character of his poetry rather than its merely national dimension. The exile still remains a harsh experience for Ovid: nonetheless, he conceives the possibility of an evolution and cultivates the dream of gaining universal poetic renown even from the extreme boundaries of the world.