Ovid, translated by Julia Dyson Hejduk
The Offense of Love: Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris & Tristia 2.
University of Wisconsin Press, 268 pages, $19.95
reviewed by Sarah Ruden
Generally in the media, the “survival of the humanities” is supposed to be imperiled by business interests’ and the general public’s rejection of high culture in favor of quick cash to be earned by technological prowess. Defensive accounts by humanities teachers tend to stress the spiritual or social-adjustment or vocational value of sampling literature and the arts.
Typically, such a teacher tells of giving a troubled, disadvantaged youth therapeutic nurture, including discussion of Catcher in the Rye or something in a caring, nonthreatening classroom setting. The youth could not function before, but, lo, now he can; reflection on the human condition has healed him. Putting aside doubts about these stories’ plausibility, I’ve never seen in The New York Times et al.—but, heck, maybe I just don’t keep up with right-thinking periodicals—any protest that the humanities don’t need any damn justification in the first place, especially not as alleged Viagra for alleged failures of the body politic.
The refusal simply to laugh at the implied questions (“What right has beauty or insight to exist or to draw attention?” “Why would anyone want to know about past events or different modes of thought?” “What skills could possibly be worth having that don’t work the same way a banking wire transfer does?”) causes the real downward spiral of
