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Article Excerpt
"Ceyx and Alcyone" is perhaps the least commented upon of all Dryden's Fables. This is not surprising in some ways because compared to other parts of the collection, such as the extensive altered passages in "Palamon and Arcite" or the greatly enlarged "The Character of a Good Parson," Dryden made seemingly few substantive changes to Ovid's original story. But Dryden does alter this tale in three subtle yet fundamental ways: by reworking and enhancing the battle metaphor of the storm in the first section; by intensifying the question of the gods' alienation from the suffering of the couple; and by altering the ending. These, however, are only the intrinsic alterations; the extrinsic alteration is Fables itself. The reader should never forget the presence of the tale within the massive collection of Fables, which contains its own thematic preoccupations--anti-militarism, anti-materialism, and anti-Williamite politics--and its own intricate unity. A particularly relevant context for "Ceyx and Alcyone" is the three other tales that immediately surround it: "The Cock and the Fox," "Theodore and Honoria," and "The Flower and the Leaf." These also concern visions, and looking at these tales and how they deal with this theme sheds light on how Dryden aligns "Ceyx and Alcyone" to cohere within the greater unity of Fables.
Some twenty years before Fables, Dryden had not only published translations but also famously theorized about translation in his "Preface Concerning Ovid's Epistles" (1680), where he divided it into three types: metaphrase, or "turning an Author word by word"; paraphrase, where an author's "words are not so strictly follow'd as his sense"; and imitation, where the translator "assumes the liberty, not only to vary from the words and sence, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion." (1) Even at this early point in his translating career, he privileges the transformative aspect of what a translator could do. Borrowing an image from a poem of Denham's, Dryden is harshest on metaphrase, or literal translation, as being merely the "Ashes" of the originals, wanting the "Flame" (115) of poetry, and he applauds the greater latitude of paraphrase and, with some reservations, of imitation. This liberty with translations he mined to greater purpose in the 1690s, where he drifted more customarily into imitation than paraphrase perhaps largely for political reasons. In 1685, fifteen years before the publication of Fables, Dryden converted to Catholicism in what seemed to his contemporaries a gross act of time-serving just after the Catholic James II had ascended to the throne. Yet when William and Mary came to power, Dryden stuck to his faith and consequently found himself in the awkward position of being a target of hostility as the prop of the former regime, despite his sometimes unenthusiastic support of it, as witnessed in his criticisms of and warnings to his fellow Catholics in The Hind and the Panther. While Dryden did not remain silent on the issues of the day nor about his hatred of William and all he represented, he was cautious in his criticism. In his original works he did not avoid subtle attacks on William. (2) Yet he performed some of his most subtle attacks as translations, where he could disguise himself behind another author's authority. Even his translation of the Aeneis presented an attack on Williamite England. (3) Yet when he came to write Fables, these political and aesthetic reasons joined to form his most elaborate translations, where Dryden reanimates theses ashes not only within each of the parts, but also among them, giving a new spark that the originals never had. Even within just a small slice of Fables, Dryden is able to transform Ovid's "Ceyx and Alcyone" for his present political and philosophical purposes.
Ovid's "Ceyx and Alcyone" is one of the longest episodes in The Metamorphoses. Generally, critics of Ovid look upon it as a celebration of this couple's love, with their metamorphosis into birds being a reward for their love. For example, Brooks Otis considers the pair as uniquely admirable among all the lovers in The Metamorphoses. They are the only example of lovers who nobly struggle outside any interference from the gods, their "passion and catastrophe are fully human." This isolation from divine interference is the center of Otis's enthusiasm--and he claims Ovid's--for this tale. The transformation of the lovers in this tale is "the mystic moment when the powers of nature achieve a perfect harmony, when humanity finds itself atone with nature in a kind of cosmic sympathy." Their outcome distinguishes Ceyx and Alcyone from the other lovers in this section of Ovid's poem, who are the victims of the gods' anger and who all surfer a metamorphosis that "involves a loss of human consciousness and is a true reversion to animal existence." The couple is seen as completely sympathetic, as characters who surfer without fault. In the original sources of the story, Ceyx is punished for his impiety, but Ovid entirely removes this aspect of the tale to make the suffering seem arbitrary and unjustified, and increase our sympathy for him and his wife. (4)
This reading of the original "Ceyx and Alcyone" is consonant with general critical sentiment about Dryden's version of the tale. A1though he only briefly mentions it, Earl Miner calls the tale "tragic" and "idealistic." Cedric Reverand aligns the couple with Dryden's ideal figures and sees them as a "monument to 'conjugal Affection.'" Judith Sloman sees some of the ironies with which, I think, Dryden is playing. She interestingly but cryptically refers to the metamorphosis of Ceyx and Alcyone as a "questionable miracle." She also says the couple is "abnormally dependent on each other," but does not develop this reading. In her earlier article on Fables, she clearly ranks them as a "virtuous married couple." The source of suffering for Ceyx and Alcyone, according to Sloman, is that they are not privy to the revelation of Christ, as no one could be before his birth. (5) David Hopkins's reading, one of the few extensive readings of Dryden's translation, concurs with Otis's analysis and stresses Dryden's ability to deliver the Ovidian message unaltered into English. Hopkins claims that the careful balance between pathos and humor communicates, for Dryden and Ovid, sincere admiration for the couple and delight in their outcome: "Yet Ovid's distance from Alcyone's grief in no way detracts from the sense of release and joy which is felt when the final metamorphosis occurs." Hopkins then proceeds to enumerate in detail how Dryden imitates exactly this effect in his translation. (6)
Whatever we may wish to argue for Ovid's original tale, when we find it translated and placed alongside Dryden's other works in this collection, we must read it with an eye to how it fits within Fables. This is what makes it Dryden's poem and not Ovid's, and this is where the subtle alterations that Dryden engages in can be seen more clearly. Dryden uses Ovid here as he uses all his translations in the collection: to examine, condemn, and satirize the England he sees flourishing around him.
To read "Ceyx and Alcyone," one must consider its place not only in Fables generally, with all its specific preoccupations, but more precisely in the...
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