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“Ovid’s Old Age” : Jacek Kaczmarski and the sung poetry of exile

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Borowski_2020_Clotho_ovids_old_age_CC.pdf (696.4Kb)
Date
18/12/2020
Author
Borowski, Pawel
Stead, Henry
Keywords
Exile
Jacek Kaczmarski
Classical reception
Poland
Ovid
Sung poetry
Communism
DAW Central Europe
DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World
P Philology. Linguistics
T-NDAS
SDG 2 - Zero Hunger
SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
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Abstract
“Ovid’s Old Age” is a sung poem written by the Polish poet and musician Jacek Kaczmarski (1957–2004) which engages with the myth of Ovid’s exile. Kaczmarski’s works were heavily influenced both by classical culture and his experience of political emigration during the communist era. He was famed as an unofficial bard of the opposition movement, but is as yet little known to classical reception scholars. This paper presents Kaczmarski’s creative engagement with Ovid as both a deeply personal reflection on the nature of exile and at the same time a universal commentary on poetry under authoritarian regimes. Our interpretation is based on a thematic analysis of the poem, including landscape, imperialism, displacement, “national” poets in exile, nostalgia, and the force of poetry. We set the reception in its social, political, and biographical context, with reference to several mediating receptions of the Ovidian exile. In Kaczmarski’s poem, the Ovidian voice helps the poet to express the trials of emigration and reveals their effect on his art. It shows how engagements with classical culture may flourish, even while the formal discipline of Classics has been undernourished. We provide a bilingual translation of “Ovid’s Old Age” to foster the understanding of migratory experiences in contemporary poetry and enrich international scholarship on the reception of Ovid with a response from communist Poland.
Citation
Borowski , P & Stead , H 2020 , ' “Ovid’s Old Age” : Jacek Kaczmarski and the sung poetry of exile ' , Clotho , vol. 2 , no. 2 , pp. 5-38 . https://doi.org/10.4312/clotho.2.2.5-38
Publication
Clotho
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4312/clotho.2.2.5-38
ISSN
2670-6210
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright (c) 2020 Paweł Borowski, Henry Stead This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/21562

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