Metamorphosis in Exile

JULIANE PRADE

Metamorphosis in Exile.
Nabokov, Joyce and Ovid on the Acquisition of Poetic Language

by Juliane Prade

Horace puts the question: What exile, flying the fatherland, / escapes himself?
That is: patriae quis exsul / se quoque fugit?1
Walter Benjamin quotes this, as he says, famous commonplace in order to counter:
isnt travelling vanquishing, cleaning off established passions that are bound to the habitual
environment, and thus a chance to develop new [passions] which is certainly a kind of
metamorphosis.2 Elsewhere, that is in his autobiographical text Berlin childhood around nineteen hundred, Benjamin counters the general Roman notion of exile as ex-patriation, as exile
from the fatherland, that exile is a parting not so much from the paternal, but rather from
the maternal that exile means parting from that what can be what it is only by more than
one single contact: by habit. Benjamin takes leave not of a fatherland, but of a metro-polis,
that is to say of a mother-city. I will not go into this here, but it ought to be done. However,
Benjamins consideration that exile may raise the possibility to transform oneself can in turn
be called a commonplace. For Ovid, too, draws parallels between his voyage into exile by the
Black Sea and several of the transformations presented in his Metamorphoses (the book), for
instance to those of Icarus and Achilles.3 The metamorphosis thus initiated is twofold. First,
Ovid transforms exile itself: He transforms the sentence, the capital punishment, into a poetical form by conceiving his exile in terms of the Metamorphoses, that is in poetical terms. Second, and consistently, he depicts his letters from exile as an attachment to the Metamorphoses,
adding the transformation of Ovid into an exile. He says: among those changed figures / the
face of my fortune can be transferred.4 Yet despite such a transformation of exile from a
mere parting into an opening for the possibility of transforming oneself and irrespective of
the question whether exile is a parting from a fatherland or from a mother-city , one aspect of Horaces question is still questionable. What exile, he asks, escapes himself? If
one leaves the fatherland, the patria, does one not take its language with oneself? The language that the Romans do indeed call sermo patrius, father-tongue? And if one takes leave
of a mother-city, does one not take the mother-tongue with oneself? But does one take

leave at all, if it is taken in the language bound to the place that is left? How is it possible to
leave behind the pressure or terror that urges into exile in the language spoken by that very
pressing, terrorizing force? After all, Benjamin actually quotes Horace in German, just as
Ovids poetical, metamorphic terms of exile are still Latin terms. And Latin is the language of
the Empire that banishes him, as he says, to the worlds end, a land from my land remote.5
Does this remaining within the same language not undermine, indeed annihilate, the transformation of exile into an opening for the possibility of transforming oneself to escape the
dictated face of ones fortune? There can only be an opening, and the self-transformation
can only be a transformation, if the father- or mother-tongue is itself transformed.
Transformed, not translated. For it is of course possible to write in a different language in exile. Nabokov does that. But it does not solely mean to give up an audience. Writing in a different language in exile furthermore means to commit both the father- or
mother-tongue and the texts written in that language to the pressure that forces into exile.
Hence Nabokov does not merely shift from Russian to English (with a short stopover at
French), and does not solely translate several of his Russian works into English.6 His autobiography Speak, Memory pays the transition itself the utmost attention. It presents the multiple
translations of the autobiography as a transformation not solely not even primarily of a
text, but of its author.
This re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had been an English re-telling of Russian memories
in the first place, proved to be a diabolical task, but some consolation was given me by the thought that
such multiple metamorphosis, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried by any human before.7
This passage from the foreword insists that its author does not have a mother-tongue. It presents the multiplicity of languages not as a multiplicity of possible articulations, but in principle as an obstacle to, a restriction on any articulated speech. Yet what is unique to this text
is that it is not bound to that principle. And this, the foreword claims, is the way it gives its
authors fortune a unique face. Not only is his writing not motivated by that means:
determined, dictated by the multiple exiles Nabokov had to undergo (from Russia, from
Germany, from France); but his speech is not predetermined by the forms of one single language either. Rather, Speak, Memory insists, his voice only takes up temporary residence in
the languages of this text. Insofar he speaks unlike any human before which does not refer to
just any humans, but to humans like Joyce and Ovid. The foreword mentions the former8 and

alludes to the latter9 as precursors who did not achieve what Nabokov is bound to achieve.
In order to speak unlike any human before, to avoid any determination by history or language,
Nabokov gains the multiple metamorphosis as the forming principle of his text from butterflies.
The metamorphosis allows to articulate a continuous I, in spite of all the breaks that his
multiple exiles brought about: I have hunted butterflies in various climes and disguises: as a pretty
boy in knickerbockers and sailor cap; as a lanky cosmopolitan expatriate in flannel bags and beret; as a
fat hatless old man in shorts.10 Nabokov gains the forming principle of the multiple metamorphosis by bringing the butterflies, to which it is familiar, under his control, that is to say by hunting and organizing them, which he calls my mania, my demon and my obsession.11 This obsession
with hunting and collecting butterflies is neither a harmless absurdity nor a scientific interest
besides writing, as is regularly assumed. In Speak, Memory, this obsession is presented as the
basis of a poetics against bloody terror, producing in turn sterile terror. The text is dominated by one tone, by
the satisfying crackle produced by the pin penetrating the hard crust of its thorax [the butterflys
thorax]; the careful insertion of the point of the pin in the cork-bottomed groove of the spreading
board; the symmetrical adjustment of the thick, strong-veined wings under neatly affixed strips of []
paper.12
Speak, Memory is written not with a pen, but with a pin. Nabokov counters the terror that
forces into exile and threatens to silence him with a self-transformation based on control, and
achieved by the point of the pin. Since / If, however, the poetic language thus acquired springs
from nothing but the constraint to avoid, the transition Nabokov presents is a translation of
the exiling terror into the new language, which is hence a language of constraint: a compelled language, speaking first and foremost of pressure, control, and necessity. And that is,
indeed, what Nabokov is speaking of all the time. This translation of terror can be avoided
only in the father- or mother-tongue of the one who is forced into exile by way of transforming this language. Ovid undertakes such a transformation of Latin in order not to leave
the Metamorphoses to those who relegate him to the Black Sea. Ovids self-transformation in
Latin is not based on control, but on evading control, on eluding being pinned down.
The question whether Ovid was ever actually in exile has been, and still is, subject of
a dispute as extensive as hermeneutically unrewarding. Except for Ovids letters from exile
themselves, there is indeed no other text testifying to the relegation of the author already

well-known at that point and that is not the case with other well-known exiles of the time,
like Cicero. On the one hand, this lack of documentation might be a historiographic accident.
On the other hand, one might speculate about its reasons and read this lack as proving either
that he was never banished or that the reason for his banishment was a misdemeanor so farreaching, it had to be concealed. Yet this question is quite insignificant for reading how Ovid
speaks of exile. This historiographic circumstance indeed raises the possibility of reading
how exile is produced by a text to the precise extent that it excludes the possibility of reading
the text as predetermined and dictated by historical necessities. And that pertains not just to
reading the particularly Ovidian terms of exile but, moreover, to reading his presentation of
exile as a scene of how a text any text shapes and acquires a poetic language.
The scene of Ovids exile is itself based on a lack. Two crimes, Ovid says, are to
blame for his relegation: poems and a mistake duo crimina, carmen et error.13 Poems are to
blame insofar as his book The Art of Love is supposed to have promoted moral decline.14
A large section of his letters from exile is devoted to the defense against this accusation. In
the meantime, he keeps coming back to the error in order to lament over the relegation it
brought about.15 Ovid does, however, never name the error. He revolves around the mistake
incessantly, gives enigmatic hints, just to desist from following them further because, he
says, he does not intent to renew and intensify the error.16 This hesitation is not due to his
mistake having been beyond measure. It is indeed not even a hesitation. It is an insisting
refraining, and it is due to the text seeking to form an error beyond measure. The mistake is a
hollow form; it is indeed missing in the text. For the error is beyond measure only if it is unnamed, only if it is presented as unutterable. As such, as something to refrain from, the error
allows Ovid to speak of the other reason for his exile: of his texts. It allows him to present his
uvre, and to present himself as the poet who perished by his ingenuity.17 Yet Ovid does
not handle the mistake as if it was at risk to be revealed. Rather, he speaks of the error as an
open secret.18 The open secret, the hollow form, turns the authors exclusion from Rome, that
is to say his exclusion from the public, into the readers exclusion from the text. For what can
be called public in Rome around the beginning of the Common Era depends on the physical presence in Rome. At that time, literary public means: reading texts aloud. Romans do
not read in silence.19 Hence the banishment from Rome aims first and foremost at silencing
the banished.20 Ovids letters from exile respond to the silencing by silencing: In the hollow
figure of a reason for his exile, the error, Ovid retreats from his eloquent, extensive discourse.

He withholds himself from any attempt to embrace, to comprehend, to fathom what he calls
his fate. The error locks the reading out of the text. In this way, the letters give, as one says,
voice to exile precisely by withholding their voice, by keeping silent.
Still, one problem remains. Ovid keeps silent in Latin. Error is a Roman juridical
term.21 And it is not solely in this one word that the letters from exile speak in the juridical
language that pronounced the banishment and seeks to dictate the face of Ovids fortune. Ovid speaks in juridical terms, too, when he insists (as he repeatedly does), that he has
merely been relegated, not actually exiled22, which means that he has not been deprived of
his possessions and his civil rights.23 Yet the link of Ovids poetical language to the Roman
Empire exceeds the usage of juridical terms: The epilogue of the Metamorphoses links the
transformation of the author into an immortal name both to the mouth of the Roman people,
that is to say to the Latin tongue, and to the rule of the Roman Empire:
Now I have finished a work that neither Jupiters anger, fire or sword can erase, nor the
gnawing tooth of age. Let that day that has power only over my body end my uncertain span
of years, when it will: The better part of me will be borne above the high perennial stars, and
my name will be indestructible. Wherever Rome shall spread her dominion over the conquered world, I will be read by the mouth of the people: and, famous through all the ages if
there is any truth in the poets presages , I shall live.24
Exactly this: the truth of the poets presages has to be re-assured in exile. For the banishment is suitable to annihilate the prophecy at the end of the Metamorphoses. By relegating
him to the end of the world, the very rule upon which the epilogue relies cuts him off from
the Roman tongue envisioned as the medium that keeps his name alive. The relegation dictates and silences. It aims at not leaving any room or any tongue for the exile to form a face
of his fortune himself. Nevertheless, in principle it is everything but daring to link ones
perennial fame to the Roman Empire, since in the Roman notion, Rome equals civilization,
and that means not least literacy. As such, the Roman Empire might indeed be all that can be
relied upon in terms of eternal fame as an author. Hence Ovid comes back to the epilogue in
his letters from exile. He comes back to it in order to say that his ingenuity accompanies
him, that the Caesar (Augustus) has no power over it, so that he, Ovid, is still able to form
the face of his fortune in exile. Still, even in exile he repeats what seems to be a condition
for that: as long as the Rome of Mars surveys the world victoriously from her seven hills, I

shall be read.25 But at the same time, Ovid laments that in his exile at the Black Sea, at the
very edge of the Roman world, there is no one whose ear can hear Latin words.26 The region where he is forced to stay, the Pontus, is an old Greek colony und thus rather Graecophone. Yet in the Roman point of view, to speak no Latin, and, what is more, to speak even
Greek just with an animal accent27, and to ridicule someone who speaks Latin as barbaric,
as Ovid relates28, is the utmost barbarity. And Ovids letters cannot abandon this view, since
it is a Latin uvre that is to be rescued from falling silent. Yet how can it be rescued in a
Latin text when Latin is not understood where Ovid is, and when he cannot be where Latin
is understood? One step is, of course, to send the text as letters to Rome.29 A further step is to
report that one has become a Getic author, that is to say an author writing in the local language.
It might be necessary to mention that the Getic language did exist.30 The few remaining inscriptions were written in Greek characters. Addressing a friend, Ovid claims to have
composed a Getic elegy:
What a shame! Ive even written in the Getic language,
bending barbarian words to our meter:
Congratulate me! I pleased, and Im making a name
for myself as a poet among the inhuman Getics.
Youre asking for the subject? Praise it: I spoke of Cesar;
my novel venture received the deitys aid.
I explained how the body of Father Augustus was mortal,
and how his divine rule has gone to the ethereal sphere.31
On the one hand, this is fully, as it were, Romocentric. Ovid reports to have composed a
panegyric on Father Augustus, on the very ruler he blames to have banished him. Augustus, who had himself called pater patriae, father of the fatherland, was indeed deified after
his death. Ovids Getic elegy imports this official myth of the Empire into the Getic language,
complying with Roman colonization in general and with Augustus policy of expansion in
particular. Ovid claims all that in Latin, without quoting one word of his Getic poem. And
why would he? Not only would no one in Rome understand it it is quite unnecessary, too.
It has been argued, and I think it is right, that the elegiac report of a Getic poem is a figure
that allows avoiding the basic problem of all panegyric. It allows avoiding the incongruence

between its subject to be portrayed as extraordinary, beyond measure, and the language portraying it in an ordinary vocabulary and form, that means in understandable words and in
an established metre. Augustus, as a deified emperor, is a phenomenon without parallel, and is
appropriately celebrated only in a poem which has [novelty] of its own as a literary phenomenon
without parallel.32 In this respect, the Getic work is a hollow figure just like the error. Both allow the portrayal of something as beyond measure by holding it beyond the metre, by keeping it unsaid.
On the other hand, if Ovids letter is indeed Romocentric, one has to say that it
does not import, but rather export the notion of the Emperor as deity into a foreign language.
And this is where his letter exceeds a panegyric. The poem is, as Ovid says, not written in the
father-tongue: non patria [] scripta.33 And what he reports to have exported is not solely
the official myth, but actually a metamorphosis he wrote himself. Augustus deification is the
last transformation in the Metamorphoses (the book), immediately preceding the epilogue that
foresees the transition of the author to an immortal name. Ovid exports his Rome, the Ovidian Rome: the Empire that has to rely upon him to sing its panegyric and to transform its
rulers into gods. The colonization that Ovids letter promotes is his colonization, and it comprises more that the Getics. The letter demonstrates that just as the poet is able to transform
the Emperor into a god, he is able to translate him. And this is essentially what Ovids letter
reports to Rome: The poet is able to ex-patriate the pater patriae. He is able to take the father
of the fatherland beyond the father-tongue, which means nothing less than that the poet
is able to go even further than the ruler who banished him from Rome. He is able to go further than Latin is able to go. It does not matter where exactly he goes. The Getic language
itself is not crucial. Crucial is, on the contrary, that Ovid expatriates the pater patriae in Latin,
in the father-tongue, by referring to a marginal language no one understands. This claim
makes use of the relegation to the worlds end, and turns it into a privileged position. Ovid
takes a position not wholly outside Rome, but at the edge of the reach of Roman terms and
comprehension34, at the edge of the realm within which Latin is the given standard language
a position not just among barbarians, but among inhumans.35 Ovids letter points out that
the poet, to the extent of being a poet, is always at that edge, no matter whether he is in exile
or in Rome. For what is a divine Emperor compared to the one who deifies him? What is an
Emperor, deified in his own language, compared to the one who is able to deify him in that
language? The latter is, Ovids letter suggests, not outside the father tongue, of course not,

yet he is inside it in a different manner than the one he renders a god. The poet, Ovids letter
suggests, is inside Latin like a barbarian, like an inhuman. Supported by the claim to have
learned Getic elsewhere in his letters36, the unquoted Getic work is another hollow figure by
which Ovid retreats from his Latin discourse. Yet unlike the error, this one is no figure of
silence, but a figure of rescuing both his texts and his name from silencing. The Getic poem is
a figure of retreating from Latin in order to come back to it. It is a figure of acquiring Latin as
a poetic language, as a language to form not solely the face of ones own fortune, but
moreover: Rome.
In his letters from exile, Ovid does not so much correct as clarify that the rule he relies upon to ensure the immortality of his name is not the rule of political Rome, but the rule
of his poetical Rome, which comprises the former. As long as Rome rules, he will be read,
since he formed Rome in his texts. The transformation of the father-tongue that allows to
articulate this is an alienation: Ovid retreats beyond the father-tongue in order to speak
Latin as if it was a foreign language. And that might be the movement the transformation
fundamental to every scene of acquiring a poetic language: retreating from the father- or
mother-tongue, and coming back into it as if it was a foreign language. If, however, there is
something true about that, it means that any language only becomes a poetic father- or
mother tongue that is a tongue to form not least a father, as Ovid does, or a mother , when
it is spoken as a foreign language. At least that is where Joyce starts.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man starts with a motto quoting a verse from Ovids
version of the myth of Daedalus in the Metamorphoses: Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes.37
(And he turns his mind to unknown arts.) Daedalus is about to render himself, as Joyces
Portrait puts it, a hawklike man38, in order to escape his exile (this Ovids word) on Crete.39
But in Ovid, the verse is also the beginning of the end of Icarus, Daedalus son, who dies on
that flight. The protagonist of Joyces text, Stephen Dedalus, is associated with both father
and son. Yet what is important at the outset is that Joyce omits what is actually the climax in
Ovids text in the next line: naturamque novat40 (and he renews nature). Daedalus is about to
renew human nature by transforming himself into a being that is able to fly. In Joyce, the
Portrait takes the place of the omitted line: the narration of Stephen rendering himself an artist, which is at the same time Joyces not documentary, but self-transformational autobiography. In Joyce, the exile to leave is Ireland, the English colony. Yet it cannot be left merely by
relocation, since the main colonizing feature, as conceived in the Portrait, is the English lan-

guage. It is, as it were, the original exile of the Irish. Conversing with an Englishman,
Stephen remarks to himself: The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. [] His
language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words.41 Yet by this standard, every one is in exile in every tongue. For every language is acquired; no one makes his own words. To that extent, every language is colonizing. Hence Gaelic is no alternative.42 Yet what, then, is a language that allows to speak oneself, and to speak as an artist? Stephen and Joyce differ in that point.
When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight.
You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.43
At the end of the Portrait, Stephen sets out to fly by those nets, to pass them, by leaving Ireland. In his last sentence, he addresses the mythical Daedalus as [o]ld father, old artificer.44
Consistently, in Ulysses, Stephens flight turns out to have failed: he returned to Ireland and
did not render himself a hawklike man, an artist.45 He failed just as in Ovid Daedalus son
Icarus failed in acquiring for himself what his father pre-formed and passed on to him. The
reason for his failure, his error, seems to be his understanding of the artist. Stephen expounds: I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I
can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use silence, exile, and cunning.46 Cunning
is what D(a)edalus Greek name means. He is skillful and smart in evading what holds him
back in exile. Yet if the original exile is ones father- or mother-tongue, and if one seeks to
express oneself, silence might not be the appropriate means to pass the nets holding one back.
For silencing means succumbing to the predetermination of language. Escaping it is possible
only in language, by cunningly transforming it. And that is what Joyces text does: It flies by
those nets, which is to say by means of them. In Joyce, acquiring a poetic language means to
form that language itself, to start all over again, as if it was a foreign language.47 The Portrait
approaches English from the point of view of Latin, not the Latin of Catholicism, but the
Latin of Ovid. And it commences its narration in infancy:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road48
In order to acquire English as a poetical language, Joyce unlike Ovid does not rely upon
the contrast between a father- or mother-tongue and foreign, barbaric, inhuman
tongues. Unlike Nabokov, too, Joyce does not rely upon the difference between languages at
all. Rather, he perceives every tongue, human language itself, as inhuman, insofar as the

non-human shares its sounds and thus participates in every so-called human utterance.
What is usually called language is based on the ignorance of that. Yet a poetic language,
Joyce supposes, forms itself precisely by listening to the metamorphic sounds of language
quite, as Finnegans Wake puts it, ovidently.49

Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter

[GS] Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. R. Tiedemann/H. Schweppenhuser.

Frankfurt a. M. 1974-1987.

Horatius Flaccus, Quintus

Oden und Epoden. Latin/German. Trans. B. Kytzler Stuttgart 2009.

Odes and Epodes. Trans. N. Rudd. Cambridge, Mass./London 2004.

Joyce, James

Finnegans Wake. London 1939.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The definitive text, corrected

from the Dublin holograph by Ch. G. Anderson. Ed. R. Ellmann. New
York 1964.

Ulysses. The 1922 Text. Ed. J. Johnson. Oxford/New York 1998.

Ulysses. The Corrected Text. Ed. H. W. Gabler. New York 1986.

Nabokov, Vladimir

Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited. New York 1966.

Ovidius, Publius Naso

Ars amatoria. Remedia amoris. Latin/German. Trans. N. Holzberg. Dsseldorf 41999.

Metamorphosen. Latin/German. Trans. E. Rsch. Zrich/Dsseldorf 1996.

Ovids Metamorphoses. Trans. A. Golding. Ed. M. Forey. Baltimore 2002.

The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Trans. M. Simpson. Amherst 2001.

Tristia. Epistulae ex Ponto. Latin/German. Trans. W. Willige. Mnchen/

Zrich 1990.

[Tristia. Epistulae ex Ponto.] The Poems of Exile. Trans. P. Green. London

1994.

Tristia. Sorrows of an Exile. Trans. A. D. Melville. Oxford 1992.

Carmina II, 16, 19f.

W. Benjamin, Spanien 1932. GS VI, 456: ist Reisen nicht berwindung, Reinigung von eingesessenen Leidenschaften, die
der gewohnten Umwelt verhaftet sind und damit eine Chance, neue zu entfalten, was doch gewi eine Art von Verwandlung ist.

Cf. Tristia I, 1, 75-100: Phaton, Ikarus, Achilles. Cf. Metamorphoses II, 34ff. VIII, 183ff. XII 580ff.

Tristia I, 1, 119f.: inter mutata referri / fortunae vultum corpora posse meae.

Tristia I, 1, 127f.: orbis / ultimus, a terra terra remota mea. Trans. P. Greene.

(In part) by himself seven: (1926): Mary (1970). , , (1928): King, Queen, Knave
(1968). (1930): The Defense (1964). (1933): Laughter in the Dark (1938).
(1934): Despair (1937, 1965). (1936): Invitation to a Beheading (1959).
(1938): The Gift (1963).

V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited, 12f.

Cf. V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited, 9: The essay that initiated the series corresponds to what
is now Chapter Five. I wrote it in French, under the title of Mademoiselle O, thirty years ago in Paris, where Jean
Paulhan published it in the second issue of M e s u r e s , 1936. A photograph (published recently in Gisle Freunds James
Joyce in Paris) commemorates this event []

Cf. V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited, 16: Through the window of that index / Climbs a rose /
And sometimes a gentle wind e x / P o n t o blows.

10

V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited, 125.

11

V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited, 126f.

12

V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited, 120f.

13

Tristia II, 207.

14

Cf. Tristia II, 211f.

15

Cf. for instance Tristia III, 5, 49-52. III, 6, 15-2. IV, 8, 49.

16

Cf. Tristia II, 208: alterius facti culpa silenda mihi.

17

Tristia III, 3, 74: INGENIO PERII NASO POETA MEO.

18

Cf. Tristia IV, 10, 89-100: causam [] / errorem iussae, non scelus, esse fugae. / [] / causa meae cunctis nimium quoque
nota ruinae / indicio non est testificanda meo. Cf. I, 2, 99: si scitis, si me meus abstulit error.

19

Cf. N. Holzberg, Ovid. Dichter und Werk. Mnchen 1997, S. 37-39. E. Lefvre, Die rmische Literatur zwischen
Mndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. In: Strukturen der Mndlichkeit in der rmischen Literatur. (ScriptOralia 19).
Hg. von G. Vogt-Spira. Tbingen 1990, 13-15.

20

Cf. Tristia V, 9, 25: nunc quoque se, quamvis est iussa quiescere, quin te / nominet invitium, vix mea Musa tenet.

21

Cf. A Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law. New York 1953, p. 456: E r r o r . A false knowledge or want of
knowledge of legally important circumstances [] An e r r o r may occur in unilateral (testaments) and bilateral acts
(contracts). It creates a divergence between the will of a person and the manifestation of his will in spoken or written
words. One thing is declared as wanted whereas another is really wanted.

22

Cf. Tristia II, 136f.: in poenae nomine lene fuit: / quippe relegatus, non exul, dicor in illo. Cf. V, 11, 21.

23

Cf. Tristia V, 2, 56-58 and IV, 4, 46. For relegatio and deportatio, the two Roman forms of exile, cf. T. Mommsen,
Rmisches Staatsrecht II, 1. Darmstadt 1963, p. 140.

24

Metamorphoses XV, 871-879: Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignes / nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas. / Cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius / ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi: / parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis / astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum, / quaque patet domitis Romana potentia
terris, / ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, / siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam.

25

Tristia III, 7, 47f.

26

Tristia IV, 1, 89f.: nec qui / auribus accipiat verba Latina suis (of his poems).

27

Cf. Tristia V, 2, 67f.; V, 7, 51-54; V, 7, 17; V, 12, 55.

28

Tristia V, 10, 37f.: Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intellegor ulli, / et rident stolidi verba Latina Getae.

29

As letters, however, these texts are marked by the deficit of present voice; cf. Epistulae ex Ponto II, 6, 1-4: Carmine Graecinum, qui preaesens voce solebat, / tristis as Euxinis Naso salutat aquis. / exulis haec vox est: praebet mihi
littera linguam, / et si non liceat scribere, mutus ero.

30

The Getics have before been mentiones by Vergil, Georgica IV, 463 and Horace, Carmina III, 24, 11 (rigidi Getae).
Getics is their Greek name; in the Roman nomenclature they are usually called Dacians; cf. Pliny the Elder,
Naturalis historia IV, 80: omnes Scytharum sunt gentes, varie tamen litori adposita tenuere, alias Getae, Daci Romanis
dicti.

31

Epistulae ex Ponto IV, 13, 19-25: a! pudet, et Getico scripsi sermone libellum, / structaque sunt nostris barbara verba
modis: / et placui (gratare mihi) coepique poetae / inter inhumanos nomen habere Getas. / materiam quaeris? laudes: de
Caesare dixi. / adiuta est novitas numine nostra dei. nam patris Augusti docui mortale fuisse / corpus, in aetherias numen abisse domos.

32

G. D. Williams, Banished Voices. Cambridge 1994, 95.

33

Epistulae ex Ponto IV, 13, 33: non patria [] scripta Camena.

34

Which means, first and foremost, at the edge of the reach of Roman law; cf. Tristia II, 199f.: haec est Ausonio sub
iure novissima vixque / haeret in imperii margine terra tui.

35

Cf. Epistulae ex Ponto I, 5, 66 and III, 5, 28. Cf. Tristia V, 7, 45: homines, vix sunt homines hoc nomine digni.

36

Cf. identical in Tristia V, 12, 58 and Epistolae ex Ponto III, 2, 40: didici Getice Sarmaticeque loqui.

37

J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, not paginated. Ovid, Metamorphoses VIII, 188.

38

J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 168f.

39

Cf. Metamorphoses VIII, 183f.: longumque perosus / exilium.

40

Metamorphoses VIII, 189. In Ars amatoria, Daedalus says: sunt mihi naturae iura novanda meae (II, 42).

41

J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 189.

42

And, what is more: My ancestors threw off their language and took another, Stephen said. They allowed a handful of
foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? (J. Joyce, A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 203.)

43

J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 203.

44

J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 253.

45

Cf. J. Joyce, Ulysses. Johnson 202; Gabler 173.You flew? Whereto? [] Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. P a t e r , a i t .

46

J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 247.

47

K. Wales calls it The Joycean Paradox, that in Finnegans Wake at the end of his career, and after years of exile Joyce
speaks much more Gaelic than in his earlier writings, where, she sais, it tends to be devaluated, mostly by
Stephen Dedalus. (The Language of James Joyce. Basingstoke et. al. 1992, 32.) Yet that is no paradox. It is precisely what it means to fly by those nets.

48

J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 7.

49

J. Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 166, 11.