I mean, he used elegiac couplets, but I don't think the "lyric/elegiac" distinction holds much water nowadays.

Ovid is better at one literary form (elegiac couplet) than perhaps any other person has ever been at any other form (sans Shakespeare in blank verse drama and sonnets). And the bulk of his non-epic work fits well within the range of what we would classify, broadly, as lyric poetry today.

Dante at terza rima.

John

Yeah. Don't know how I missed that obvious one.

I think Vergil is better at Latin hexameters and Propertius is better at Elegaic couplets. Love, love Ovid--but his poetry is like a comic book to me.

Vergil's Latin hexameters >>>> everyone's Latin hexameters
Ovid's elegiac couplets >>> Propertius's

Comic book is a genuinely funny way of putting it. His persona really does feel, sometimes, postmodern, and not always in a good way. But Horace goes the opposite way, too often. A little too comfortable in his certainties.

Oh, this is going to turn ugly. How much Propertius have you read? The Monobiblos is the best.

Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis,
contactum nullis ante cupidinibus.
tum mihi constantis deiecit lumina fastus
et caput impositis pressit Amor pedibus,
donec me docuit castas odisse puellas
improbus, et nullo vivere consilio.


". . . Love, dogged god, taught me to hate chaste girls and live without counsel."

Yeah!

Ha. One need not denigrate one to elevate the other. I like Propertius just fine, though I will admit I've but dabbled in the Latin of Propertius and dove more liberally into to Ovid, but that's because (given what I've read), I've liked Ovid better. From what I have read, I like Ovid better. because I find him cleverer, and possessing a finer ear to turns of phrases.

I would say de gustibus non est disputandum, but I don't believe that for a second. What is there to do but disagree about tastes?

In a quick reading of your excerpt, the original poem I have not read, I have to say I enjoy the distance "improbus" has from "Amor," and the clever way it stands next to--and consonates with--"puellas." Artfully done.

Passion, man! Passion! Propertius has got balls of fire! Ovid is, in contrast, very clever.

Meh. Performative passion at best, as all love poetry is at its core. Real passion cannot be contained in words, let along elegiac couplets. Ovid knew this. He recognized the poems to Cynthia--and Lesbia and Delia and Marathus and the others who we have lost--for what they were: sham attempts to capture true passion. So he played along, perhaps a little too slyly, but also winking at the audience. Give me that man as a poet.

Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Socrate nec iam sustineant onus
silvae laborantes geluque
flumina constiterint acuto?

You see how [Mount] Socrates stands out white
with deep snow, and the struggling trees can
no longer sustain the burden, and the rivers
are frozen with sharp ice?

For whom else than we on this thread would Horace have overlooked that tremendous Latin typo on Monte Soratte -- and who else but Horace could have, would have gotten away with it?
Straight-on downright upstanding atomistic letter-swapping swivel-eyed Epicurean magic!