It is—in my day and age, in any case. Actually, of all of you, Flaccus, it is you who are perhaps the most egocentric. Which is to say, the most palpable. But that isn't so much a matter of pronouns, either: it is, again, the distinctness of your metrics. Standing out against the other guys' sprawling hexameters, they suggest some unique sensibility, a character that can be judged—while the others are largely opaque. Sort of like a solo versus the chorus. Perhaps they went for this hexametric drone precisely for reasons of humility, for purposes of camouflage. Or else they just wanted to play by the rules. And hexameter was that game's standard net; to put it differently, its terra-cotta. Of course, your logaoedics don't make you a cheat; still, they flash rather than obscure individuality. That's why for the next two thousand years practically everybody, including the Romantics, would embrace you so readily. Which rattles me, naturally —in my proprietary capacity, that is. In a manner of speaking, you were that body's tanless part, its private marble.
And with the passage of time you got whiter and whiter: more private and more desirable. Suggesting that you can be an egocentric and still handle a Caesar; that it's only a matter of equipoise. Music to so many ears! But what if your famous equipoise was just a matter of the phlegmatic temperament, easily passing for personal wisdom? Like Virgil's melancholy, say. But unlike the choleric upsurges of Pro- pertius. And certainly unlike Naso's sanguinic endeavors. Now, here's one who paved not an inch of that highway leading to monotheism. Here's one who was short on equipoise and had no system, let alone a wisdom or a philosophy. His imagination couldn't get curbed, neither by its own insights nor by doctrine. Only by hexameter; better yet, by elegiac couplets.
Well, one way or another, he taught me practically everything, the explication of dreams included. Which begins with that of reality. Next to him, somebody like the Viennese doctor—never mind not catching the reference! —is kindergarten, child's play. And frankly, you, too. And so is Virgil. To put it bluntly, Naso insists that in this world one thing is another. That, in the final analysis, reality is one large rhetorical figure and you are lucky if it is just a polyptoton or a chiasmus. With him a man evolves into an object, and vice versa, with the immanent logic of grammar, like a statement sprouting a subordinate clause. With Naso the tenor is the vehicle, Flaccus, and/or the other way around, and the source of it all is the ink pot. So long as there was a drop of that dark liquid in it, he would go on— which is to say, the world would go on. Sounds like "In the beginning was the word"? Well, not to you. To him, though, this adage would not be news, and he would add that there will be a word in the end as well. Give him anything and he will extend it—or turn it inside out—which is still an extension. To him, language was a godsend; more exactly, its grammar was. More exactly still, to him the world was the language: one thing was another, and as to which was more real, it was a toss-up. In any case, if one thing was palpable, the other was bound to be also. Often in the same line, especially if it was hexameter: there is a big caesura. Failing that, in the next line; especially if it is an elegiac couplet. For measures to him were a godsend also.
He would be the first to confirm this, Flaccus, and so would you. Remember his recalling in Tristia how amid the storm that hit the ship taking him into exile (to my parts, roughly; to the outskirts of Hyperborea) he caught himself again composing verses? Naturally you don't. That was some sixteen years after you died. On the other hand, where is one better informed than in the netherworld? So I shouldn't worry that much about my references: you are catching them all. And meters are always meters, in the netherworld especially. Iambs and dactyls are forever, like stars and stripes. More exactly: whenever. Not to mention, wherever. Small wonder that he eventually came to compose in the local dialect. As long as vowels and consonants were there, he could go on, Pax Romana or no Pax Romana. In the end, what is a foreign tongue if not just another set of synonyms. Besides, my good old Celoni had no ecriture. And even if they had, it would be only natural for him, the genius of metamorphosis, to mutate into an alien alphabet.
That, too, if you will, is how one expands the Pax Romana. Although that never happened. He never stepped into our genetic pool. The linguistic one was enough, though: it took practically these two thousand years for him to enter Cyrillic. Ah, but life without an alphabet has its merits! Existence can be very poignant when it's just oral. Actually, as regards ecriture, my nomads were in no hurry. To scribble, it takes a settler: someone who's got nowhere to go. That's why civilizations blossom more readily on islands, Flaccus: take, for instance, your dear Greeks. Or in cities. What is a city if not an island surrounded by space? Anyway, if he indeed barged into the local dialect, as he tells us, it was not so much out of necessity, not in order to endear himself to the natives, but because of verse's omnivorous nature: it claims everything. Hexameter does: it is not so sprawling for nothing. And an elegiac couplet is even more so.
Lengthy letters are anathema everywhere, Flaccus, including in the afterlife. By now, I guess, you've quit reading, you've had enough. What with these aspersions cast on your pal and praise of Ovid practically at your expense. I continue because, as I said, who is there to talk to, anyway? Even assuming that Pythagorean fantasy about virtuous souls' second corporeality every thousand years is true, and that you've had a minimum of two opportunities so far, and now with Auden dead and the millennium having only four years to go, that quota seems to be busted. So it's back to the original you, even ifby now, as I suspect, you've quit reading. In our line of work, addressing the vacuum comes with the territory. So you can't surprise me with your absence, nor can I you with my perseverance.
Besides, I have a vested interest—and you, too. There is that dream that once was your reality. By interpreting it, one gets two for the price of one. And that's what Naso is all about. For him, one thing was another; for him, I'd say, A was B. To him, a body—a girl's especially—could become—nay, was—a stone, a river, a bird, a tree, a sound, a star. And guess why? Because, say, a running girl with her mane undone looks in profile like a river? Or asleep on a couch, like a stone? Or, with her arms up, like a tree or a bird? Or, vanishing from sight, being theoretically everywhere, like a sound? And, triumphant or remote, like a star? Hardly. That would suffice for a good simile, while what Naso was after wasn't even a metaphor. His game was morphology, and his take was metamorphosis. When the same substance attains a different form. The main thing is the sameness of substance. And, unlike the rest of you, he managed to grasp the simple truth of us all being composed of the stuff the world is made of. Since we are of this world. So we all contain water, quartz, hydrogen, fiber, et cetera, albeit in different proportions. Which can be reshuffled. Which already have been reshuffled into that girl. Small wonder she becomes a tree. Just a shift in her cellular makeup. Anyhow, with our species, shifting from the animate to the inanimate is the trend. You know what I mean, being where you are.