TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

10) of their rows over fidelity. For Sullivan, however, Ovid and Propertius deconstruct
one another: ―Propertius‘s light poems [Vertumnus] makes light of the whole conception
of Ovid‘s as yet unwritten Fasti, much as Ovid's Amores made light of his predecessors in
elegy by changing amorous seriousness to mockery‖ (Sullivan 62). This, Pound
perceives.
Interestingly, more recent commentary on Propertius has come to accept Pound's
reading of the real-politik in his work that instrumentalized ―romance.‖ Vincent Katz's
introduction, ―Preserving the Metaphor,‖ to his new translation of Propertius‘s elegies
points out exactly what was at stake in the Alexandrian influence:
Callimachus of Cyrene (305- 240 B.C.E.) had an important
position at the library in Alexandria and was a central figure in a
literary debate on the best means to reinvigorate poetry. In
Callimachus‘s opinion, what was needed was a poetry of erudition,
refinement – arcane and limited in scope. The Roman poets of the
first century B.C.E. saw in Callimachus‘s poetry, and in the
modern and urbane pastoral poetry of Theocritus (c.310-c.250
B.C.E.), ways to escape the rut of pompous epic poetry that, in
Roman times, often served as a crude vehicle for propaganda or
self-aggrandizement. (xxx)
Propertius used myth in a particular way, often foiling his reader‘s expectations, in just
such a Callimachean fashion:
Propertius‘s use of mythology is distinctive: in many cases, details
and emphases of myths are different in Propertius than in other
surviving sources. The myths were received by Romans and
Greeks in various versions, and poets in particular felt free to mold
them to their uses. Still, the frequency of Propertian anomalies
points to a wilful use of material, which is not always consistent,
though it is poetically effective. (Katz xxxi)
Katz gives us an example of this will in Propertius‘s deployment of the myth of
Milanion's wooing of Atalanta in 1.1. This myth would have been understood as an
90