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Vestdijkkroniek. Jaargang 2005 (2005)

Vestdijkkroniek. Jaargang 2005

(2005)– [tijdschrift] Vestdijkkroniek–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Four portaits of Actaeon
Rudi van der Paardt

Enige tijd geleden ontvingen wij van Rudi van der Paardt een artikel van zijn hand, in het engels, dat eerder verscheen in een bundel ‘Metamorphic reflections. Essays presented to Ben Hijmans at his 75th Birthday’ Het artikel vergelijkt vier ‘portretten’ van Aktaion (of, in het artikel, Actaeon), waarvan twee van Vestdijk. Omdat het hele artikel enigszins aan de lange kant is voor de Vestdijkkroniek, en ook omdat twee van de vier portretten niet direct met Vestdijk in verband staan, hebben wij er voor gekozen om die twee portretten, van Ovidius en van Apuleius, niet over te nemen. Dat maakt dat de inleiding en het slotwoord niet helemaal aansluiten op het door ons geplaatste deel, maar we hopen dat dat geen belemmering zal zijn om de bespreking van de twee portretten die Vestdijk van Aktaion geeft te kunnen waarderen. Omdat de oorspronkelijke hoofdstukken II en III zijn weggelaten, hebben we de oorspronkelijke hoofdstukken IV t/m VI omgenummerd naar de nummers II t/m IV.

I

The myth of the hunter Actaeon, son of Aristaeus and Autonoe, king and queen of Thebes, who was punished for having seen the goddess Artemis or Diana bathing - he was transformed by her into a stag and torn to pieces by his own dogs - was a widely known story in Classical Antiquity. We can be sure of this because we possess quite a lot of texts in Greek and Latin dealing with this subject and many representations of it in the pictorial arts (pottery, paintings). The late Carl Schlam, who wrote an excellent survey of the whole corpus of testimonia,1 shows in the first place that there were many versions of the tale and even more possible interpretations of it. The summary of the plot which I gave above, has become the most popular version, for no other reason than that it reflects the story as it was told in the third book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. This effective story had much influence in Late Antiquity, but even more in the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century, when many Dutch painters for instance were attracted by the moralistic elements in the story, as they were found in the text by learned compatriots.2 One can be sure that in the twentieth century too, whenever Actaeon was the subject in art and literature, the Ovidian version was dominant. We find clear reflections of it in Aktaion onder de sterren (1941), by the Dutch author Simon Vestdijk, the only novel in modern literature completely devoted to Actaeon, and in the page or even half a page which Christoph Ransmayr wrote in his Ovidian novel Die letzte Welt (1988).3

Leaving completely aside the subject of Actaeon in art,4 I would like to study again the two portraits of Actaeon that already occurred in Schlam's survey: the one by Ovid and the one by Apuleius in the second and third book of his Metamorphoses. I hope to offer some new views to the reader and especially to the intended reader

of this collection of critical essays, my friend Ben L. Hijmans, who is a specialist both in Ovid's and in Apuleius' work. I propose to contrast these two portraits with two recent ones in Dutch literature: the representations of the famous hunter in a sonnet (1930) by Simon Vestdijk and in his novel Aktaion onder de sterren (‘Aktaion under the stars’), both texts typical for a modern view on the myth.

II

Simon Vestdijk (1898-1971) is generally considered as one of the most important Dutch writers of the twentieth century; undoubtedly he was the most many-sided and prolific one. He was very successful with his short stories and over fifty novels, among which many historical ones. But he also wrote numerous essays, reviews and learned studies, for instance the very influential De toekomst der religie (The Future of Religion), written during the Second World War, as so many texts by Vestdijk, but which was published later (1947). A few months after his death his Verzamelde Gedichten (Collected Poems) were published, in three volumes, covering more than 1500 pages. They were completed by the edition of his Nagelaten Gedichten (Posthumous Poems), which appeared in 1986 and counted some 500 pages with previously unpublished poems, early and (rather) late ones. Among the latter group of poems is ‘Aktaion’, written in 1930, that is more than ten years before Vestdijk wrote a short story and then a novel about the same subject.5 Vestdijk was an expert in Greek mythology. He once deciared that he had become interested in Greek mythology because he wanted to know who the beautiful women were whom he saw on the paintings of Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt and other painters he admired.6 He drew his information from a series of children's books about famous mythological persons or events. It is unlikely that he made a direct step from those booklets to the scholarly works he used for his three Greek novels,7 as he himself suggested: he must have read much more than that.

However this may be, here follows the text of ‘Aktaion’, in the original Dutch version and in an as literal as possible English translation. The poem is a sonnet (though it is not printed like that), but the rhyme-scheme is not perfect (abba baab ede ede), which is perhaps the reason that Vestdijk did not choose it for one of his early collections in the thirties. In the translation the rhyme, alliteration and assonance of the original cannot be brought out. Moreover, the very long first sentence (1. 1-11) has been divided into two parts.

 
Toen hij nadat de druppelen hem raakten
 
Zijn laag viervoetig vluchten over beken
 
Rotsen, paden, waar hij vroeger vaak ter
 
Jacht was gegaan, aanving, - en, na 't breken
 
Van takken onder speerworp haast bezweken
 
Ter neer lag: toen stierf zijn menschzijn uit en maakte
 
Traag plaats voor het ruige, bruine, dat nu braak te
 
Liggen kwam achter het hoornen teken,
 
Waarmee de kuische wraak van de godin der maan
 
Hem wild bezwaard had in een licht verplaatsen
 
Harer hand. - De mensch zag, en zag 't laatste,
 
Het rijzig beeld van zijn vermeetlen waan,
 
Maar ook het andre vlood: als haar weerkaatsing
 
Zag 't stervend dier een witte hinde staan...
 
 
 
When he, as soon as the water drops hit him,
 
Began his low quadruped escape over brooks,
 
Rocks, paths, where of ten in the past,
 
He wished to go hunting - and after breaking
 
Branches and all but succumbing to a spear-thrust
 
Lay on the ground: at that time his manhood died and
 
Made room slowly for the brown and rough, that
 
Came to lie fallow behind the horny sign.
 
With that the goddess of the moon in her chaste revenge
 
Reduced him to game, by just a small
 
Signal of her hand. - The man saw, and saw the last,
 
The tall image of his hazardous delusion,
 
But the other fled too: as its reflection
 
The dying animal saw a white doe standing.

What seems most remarkable in this poem is the number of ‘Leerstellen’, to use the term of the German scholar Wolfgang Iser: there are some important things that have to be supplied by the reader. First, without the title the whole poem would be a riddle for any reader without a firm knowledge of mythology. It is, moreover, not said explicitly that the water drops (line 1) come from ‘de godin der maan’ (line 9), as a punishment for what Actaeon did: the last is only alluded to by the expression ‘de kuise wraak’, an enallage for something like ‘the revenge of the goddess, whose chastity was threatened.’ But in what way, the reader is not told. In short: the poem is meant for a reader who knows the whole story from Ovid as Vestdijk did or, more likely, from a text in which Ovid's version was retold.8 That this is true for Vestdijk himself can be proved by the fact that the motive that Actaeon as a stag chooses the paths along which he went when still a hunter, is in ciassical literature only found in Ovid's Met. 3, 228.

In the second sentence that forms the last four lines, Vestdijk does something quite different from his model. In Ovid the metamorphosis was meant as a revenge for what Actaeon, guiltless as he was, came to see: the naked goddess. He was punished not only with his transformation, but also with preservation of his human mind. The end of Vestdijk's poem joins man and beast: in their last moments both see what was dear to them, the projection that has directed their life. The poem consists of only two sentences: a long one of more than ten lines, and a much shorter one of nearly four lines. In the first we read about a man - of course it is the Aktaion of the title, but the name is not mentioned in the poem itself - who has been sprinkled by water (line 1), becomes a quadruped (line 2), flees along the paths he chose when he was a hunter (lines 3-4), and is struck by a spear (line 5). Then he expires and becomes a quadruped not only in a physical way (by ‘het hoornen teeken’ a sophisticated synonym for the antlers is meant) but also mentally: the rough brown (line 7) takes the place of the human brains - slowly (in Dutch the slow movement is accentuated by the repetition of the double aa, in maakte / traag plaats). Next there is a reference to the goddess of the moon (line 9), who has caused all this to happen. One can say that there is a sort of a ring composition: the first and last lines refer to (the unnamed) Diana.

In the second sentence, all attention is directed to the protagonist Actaeon, or rather to what is left of him: his human and his bestial mind,

which both are disappearing. And what they ‘see’ in their last moments is not something different, as might be expected, but very much the same. When the poet says that ‘a white doe’ is what Actaeon as a stag sees (line 14), the conciusion must be that line 12 refers to a last vision of ‘the white goddess’ by Actaeon as a hunter.

For the typical form of the poem (in a sonnet the regular distribution is 2 × 4 + 2 × 3 lines), there are two possible explanations. The first is that this irregular form may have been another reason (the first reason being the peculiar rhymescheme) why Vestdijk was not satisfied with the poem and did not publish it himself. This is possible, but in my opinion a second explanation is the better one: we could interpret the manifest difference in length of both sentences as formal parallels of what they express. The first tells about several movements of the running stag (note also the asyndeton), whereas the second may be short because it describes ‘the ultimate moment’ of Actaeon in his human and bestial form. To sum up: in his poem ‘Aktaion’, Simon Vestdijk dealt for the first time with a subject he would choose once again in his poetry9 and twice in his prose: the story of Actaeon. It is obvious that he used (a version of) Ovid's Met. as his model. Meanwhile he was focussing on something quite different than the Roman poet: in his version the most important point is the contrast, which in the end turns out to be a similarity, between man and animal.

III

Aktaion onder de sterren is the ninth novel by Simon Vestdijk, and his fourth historical novel. Actually, it is not exactly representative of the type: a better term would be ‘mythologicalhistorical novel’. Vestdijk generally retold the story as given by Ovid, with one important addition: in his novel he introduced the centaur Cheiron, who is known as the teacher of Achilles, but who is sometimes also mentioned as Actaeon's paedagogus.

Obviously, Vestdijk derived his information from the mythographer Apollodorus (or a handbook referring to Apoll. 3,4,4, where Cheiron is mentioned). In the latter's compilation Bibliotheke we find the following sentence: ‘When Actaeon was lost, the dogs went searching, all the way yelping, and then they found Cheiron's cave; he was making a statue of Actaeon, and by showing it he managed to calm them.’ At the end of Vestdijk's novel this statue goes to heaven and finds its place amongst the stars (hence the title). Vestdijk was not only a connoisseur of mythology, but also of astrology.10 He showed this by publishing a monograph (1949) Astrologie en wetenschap (Astrology and Science) and by using the twelve signs of the zodiac as psychological types in a handful of novels with twelve or more persons. It goes without saying that the author knew that the sign of Sagittarius is represented by a centaur with his bow and arrows, and that this creature is no other than Cheiron. We will see how in the novel it is not Cheiron, but his pupil who will go to the stars.

Of course Aktaion and his paedagogus are not the only figures in Vestdijk's novel. He has situated the action at the court of Autonoe and Aristaios at Iolkos, in eastern Thessaly. Autonoe is a proud queen, surpassing her husband by far and attempting to stimulate the worship of Apollo, her father in law. This brings her into conflict with her recalcitrant son, Aktaion, who admires only one god, the hunting-goddess Artemis. That is why Autonoe decides that a teacher (in culture, in religion, or in medical healing)11 is very much needed.

Cheiron soon finds out the reason for Aktaion's devotion to Artemis on the one hand and his total lack of sexual interest in his beautiful bride Timandra on the other. Certainly, he is not asexual: he has already slept with Batylis, a young girl who was offered to him by his old wet-nurse Simaitha, clearly a mother figure, who has a great influence on her pupil. In Aktaion ‘high love’ and ‘low love’ are not united, the reason being his bond with the mothertype12 (not necessarily Autonoe). But a remarkable characteristic of Cheiron's ideas about paedagogy is that he does not instruct his pupil, but by his own behaviour shows the boy's mental faults. The first lesson is quite peculiar - at least in the eyes of Aktaion. There are women of Iolkos who come together in a sanctuary to find a cure for their infertility. Cheiron makes love to them in a drastic way (more like a horse than like a man), to cure them of their defect. Aktaion cannot see this with his own eyes, because everything takes place behind a fence. But a Phoenician sailor climbs in a tree, observes what is going on and tells Aktaion about it. He is indignant about the acts of his eccentric teacher. He does not understand Cheiron's symbolic lesson: one has to climb the tree of knowledge and look behind the fence of consciousness in order to become a true human being.13

He receives his second lesson at his wedding with Timandra. Cheiron and other centaurs disturb the wedding-party by assaulting the women and attacking the men.14 Several men have seriously been wounded, among whom Aktaion's father. The wedding is postponed; Aktaion thinks this is all the work of Artemis, who does not want him to marry. Cheiron, however, provides quite another explanation. All these things have happened because Aktaion secretly (i.e. subconsciously) wanted them to happen. The third lesson has to do with Timandra: she is raped by a former suitor with the help of Simaitha, who wants to get rid of the girl, because she is coming too close to Artemis. Timandra drowns herself after this shocking event. When Aktaion consults his teacher, he hears once again that it is he himself who wanted this to happen - an explanation he cannot accept. All he really desires is to meet Artemis. But Cheiron doesn't want to fulfil his wish.

When Aktaion hears that Strepsiades has raped his fiancée and is responsible for her death, he stabs him on the agora, where everybody has gathered to decide who should become the new king, now that Aristaios has died of his wounds. Of course on account of his arbitrary intervenience he is no longer acceptable as a monarch; on the contrary, he hardly escapes

lynching and it is Cheiron who puts him on a horseback and takes him along to the cave on Mount Pelion, where he succeeds in curing the young prince. After twenty days Aktaion leaves the cave, for hunting and in search of Arternis. Cheiron remains behind, and makes a statue of his beloved pupil: gradually his equine half disappears - a phenomenon Aktaion, who is roaming over Mount Pelion, cannot witness, but a new pupil of Cheiron's, Melikertes, Aktaion's nephew, does. Aktaion will never find what he is looking for. When he is lost, his slaves try to find him somewhere on the mountain. But all they find is a stag, lacerated by Aktaion's dogs. Cheiron dies too, as soon as nothing is left of the horse his human part was tied up with. Melikertes is the only one who witnesses Aktaion's statue leaving the cave and finding its way to the stars.

 

Vestdijk gave his book the subtitle ‘Roman uit het voor-Homerische Griekenland’ (‘Novel from pre-Homeric Greece’). Like many other writers of his generation - the name of Robert Graves immediately comes to mind15 - Vestdijk was convinced of the existence of a pre-Doric society, dominated by women, and, in connection with this, of a religion of only one goddess, the Great Mother of the Earth and Moon. With the Dorians a new pattern began to dominate society: it was now reigned by men who venerated the Olympic pantheon, with Zeus as the almighty monarch. Some of the older gods were, at least partly, bestial, or adorned with animals, and several of the new gods still had these animals as attributes. When Greece was taken over by the Dorians, there was also a change in the pattern of human life: the men, who had been hunters before, now occupied themselves with agriculture.

Throughout Aktaion onder de sterren one can see references to this evolution (or disorder in the evolution). There is, e.g., a conversation between Cheiron and Aktaion, together observing the sowing of grain. Cheiron declares:

 

‘This has to do with royalty. (...) One can easily understand why a king does not hunt but applies himself to agriculture: it is mightier, has more impact, and is dearer to the gods. Zeus sends his raindrops; Helios or Apollo (...) shoots his rays, not to increase the game population, but only on behalf of the grain.’

 

Cheiron himself is a personification of the evolution from dark to light, from animal to man. He is half-horse, half-man. He has both a dark and a light side: he can both be a brutal beast at the wedding, and a sophisticated physician who helps Timandra. By loosing his bestial part in the cave at Mount Pelion, he symbolizes the evolution of his time: growing from the dark, bestial existence to real civilization. He cannot help the real Aktaion, so he makes a statue of his pupil, which, as the texts says, ‘wins in the end.’16

Aktaion, on the other hand, is a young man who does not follow the developments in society. His father is a peasant-king, but he went back to hunting. His mother tried to promote the veneration of Apollo, the god of the Sun, but Aktaion seeks Artemis, the one and only Mother-Goddess, who is the guide of his life. This has to do with his fixation on his childhood (compare

the bond with Simaitha17): he has not grown up mentally. From an astrological point of view he is a typical Cancer-figure18, about whom Vestdijk's teacher in the field, Helena Burgers19, says that he or she does not want to grow. When a human being is not ready for new developments, he or she experiences the new as something hostile, a foolish abnormality. This is exactly the case with Aktaion in this novel.

The type of a young man, a strong and intelligent personality, but emprisoned in the world of the Mother, occurs often in Vestdijk's work. A good parallel is Philippe Corvage, the protagonist of the novel Ivoren wachters (Ivory Watchmen), published ten years (1951) after Aktaion onder de sterren. Here too the author uses Greek mythology to underline a psychological approach, presenting the Oresteia by Aeschylus as a kind of metatext.20 As we can expect, Vestdijk sees the myth of the Atrids also as a representation of the struggle between the old, chthonic mothergods and the new Greek pantheon, with only victims in the end.

IV

Four portraits of Actaeon: four different young men, all of them victims of the Goddess. The innocent prince of Thebes, who lost his way and became a stag and was killed by his own dogs; the young man in marble, who paid heavily for his curiosity: an exemplum for Lucius, who became an ass instead of a stag; a hunter, who expired both as a human being and as an animal; a recalcitrant adolescent, who did not obey his paedagogus who tried to teach him that one can only grow up if one dares to look into one's own mind. Above all it is a testimony of Ovid's greatness, that the three texts discussed in this paper appear to be, each in its own way, deeply influenced by his narrative talent.21

References

1.Texts, commentaries, translations
Anderson, W.S. 1997. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Books 1-5, ed. and comm., Norman.
André, J. Ovide, Tristes, Paris.
Hanson, J.A. 1989. Apuleius, Metamorphoses, ed. and transl. vol. I, Cambridge, Mass. - London (Loeb).
van Mal-Maeder, D. 2001. Apuleius Madaurensis. Metamorphoses. Livre II. Texte, Introduction et Commentaire, Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius, Groningen.
Marg, W. and Harder, R. 1968. Ovid, Liebesgedichte, text and transl., München.
Melville, A.D. 1995. Ovid, Tristia, transl.; with intr. and notes by E.J. Kenney, Oxford.
van der Paardt, R.Th. 1971. Apuleius, The Metamorphoses III, text and comm., Amsterdam.
Ransmayr, C. 1991. Die letzte Welt, Frankfurt am Main (Nördlingen 1988).
Simpson, M. 2001. Ovid, The Metamorphoses, transl. and comm., Amhorst.
Vestdijk, S. 1941. Aktaion onder de sterren, Rotterdam.
Vestdijk, S. 1986. Nagelaten gedichten, Amsterdam.
For translations of Apuleius' Met. the Loeb-edition by Hanson 1989 has been used; for Ovid's Met. Simpson 2001; for Ovid's Tristia the ed. by Melville-Kenney 1995 - for all must be said: unless stated otherwise.
2.Studies; commentaries on other works than those of Apuleius and Ovid
Burgers, H.S. 1963. Leonardo da Vinci's psychologie der twaalf typen, Amsterdam.
Camps, W.A. 1966. Propertius, Elegies Book III, Cambridge.
Coleman, R. 1977. Virgil, The Eclogues, Cambridge.
Cuynen, A. 2001. ‘Ik houd er niet van, al te zeer begrepen te worden.’ De kunstenaar in het werk van Simon Vestdijk, Gent.
Fisser, C. 1994. ‘Mogelijkheden met metamorphosen in de beeldende kunst’, in: C.A.C.M. Fisser e.a. (red.), Metamorphosen: Receptie van de klassieken, Suppl. II, Leiden, 64-95.
Haasse, H.S. 1965. ‘Het heroon van Temesa: over een romanthema bij Simon Vestdijk’, in: ead., Leestekens, Amsterdam, 45-50.
Hijmans, B.L. 1978. ‘Significant names and their function in Apuleius' Metamorphoses’, in: B.L. Hijmans and R.Th. van der Paardt (edd.), Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass, Groningen, 107-122.
Holzberg, N. 1977. Ovid: Dichter und Werk, München.
Konstan, D. 1977. Catullus' Indictment of Rome: The Meaning of Catullus 64, Amsterdam. Krabbe, J. 1989. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, New York etc.
Leach, E.W. 1981. ‘Metamorphoses of the Actaeon Myth in Campanian painting’, MDAI Römische Abteilung, 88, 307-327.
Meyer, J.W.L. 1990. ‘Narcissus' offerdood’, in: ead., Oude vrienden in een veranderende wereld, Amsterdam, 97-103.
Paardt, R.Th. van der. 1978. ‘Various aspects of narrative technique in Apuleius' Metamorphoses’, in: B.L. Hijmans and R.Th. van der Paardt (edd.), Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass, Groningen, 75-94.
Paardt, R.Th. van der. 1979. Over de Griekse romans van Simon Vestdijk, Amsterdam.
Paardt, R.Th. van der. 1993. ‘De Orestie en de eeuwige strijd’, in: C.A.C.M. Fisser e.a. (red.), Receptie van de Klassieken V, Leiden, 11-21.
Paardt, R.Th. van der. 1997. ‘De volheid van het flonk'rend weefgetouw: over enkele Griekse sonnetten van S. Vestdijk’, in: C.A.C.M. Fisser e.a. (red.), Receptie van de Klassieken IX, Amsterdam 1997, 45-60.
Paschalis, M. 2002. ‘Reading Space: a Re-examination of Apuleian ekphrasis’, in: M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis (edd.), Space in the Ancient Novel. AN Supplementum 1, Groningen, 132-142.
Riefstahl, H. 1938. Der Roman des Apuleius, Frankfurt am Main.
Schlam, C.C. 1978. ‘Sex and Sanctity: the Relationship of Male and Female in the Metamorphoses’ in: B.L. Hijmans and R.Th. van der Paardt (edd.), Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass, Groningen, 95-106.
Schlam, C.C. 1984. ‘Diana and Actaeon: Metamorphoses of a Myth’, CA 3, 82-110.
Schmitzer, U. 2001 (a). Ovid, Hildesheim.
Schmitzer, U. 2001 (b). ‘Strenge Junkfräulichkeit. Zur Figur der Göttin Diana in Ovids Metamorphosen’, WS 114, 303-321.
Sluijter, E.J. 1986. De ‘heidensche fabulen’ in de Nederlandse schilderkunst, circa 1590-1670, Leiden.
Tatum, J. 1979. Apuleius and the Golden Ass, Ithaca - London.
Willemsen, F. 1956. ‘Aktaionbilder’, JDAI 71, 29-51.


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