Looking (at) Ariadne: Vision and Meaning in Catullus, Ovid and Hofmannsthal
Looking (at) Ariadne: Vision and Meaning in Catullus, Ovid and Hofmannsthal

Summary/Abstract: Ariadne’s story in Catullus’ Wedding of Peleus and Thetis is a drama of looking, seeing, and not seeing. It depicts interpersonal relations and distinguishes presence and absence, life and death, by thematizing the visual contact between the characters, between gods and humans, and between the internal audience and the image described in the ecphrasis. In Catullus the gaze sometimes expresses the objectifying force of power or its failure, but it may also denote the possibility of communication, interpersonal contact, or mutual attachment. The preoccupation with visual perception represents the complexity of the encounter with the Other in the face of those we might or might not love or need: a lover, a close relative, a divine power, a work of art, a fictional reality. Ovid’s Letter of Ariadne to Theseus echoes its predecessor. While Catullus’ Ariadne comes into contact with reality through intense and desperate looking, Ovid’s heroine relies on actual interpersonal contact: she tries to send visual signs, stay visible and thus make Theseus reconsider. Hofmannsthal’s libretto for Ariadne auf Naxos is amazingly comparable to Catullus’ poem. The text is again complex and sophisticated, exploring concepts like memory, fidelity, loss, transformation, surviving and living on. The paradox of the human condition, the dialectic of sameness and transformation, of rigidness and vitality, is expressed through Ariadne’s refusal to look or even stay visible. All three Ariadnes experience a gap between themselves and reality, marked through a visual vacuum, by looking in vain, being unable to see or be seen, or refusing to look and see.

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