Liveley - 2002 - Cleopatra's Nose, Naso and the Science of Chaos

8/12/2019 Liveley - 2002 - Cleopatra's Nose, Naso and the Science of Chaos

1/17

Greece Rome, Vol. 49, No. 1, April 2002

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THESCIENCE OF CHAOSBy G. LIVELEY

'ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelumunus erat toto naturae uultus in orbe,quem dixere chaos.'

Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.5-7'He who will know fully the vanity of man has only to consider the causes and effects oflove. The cause is a 'jene sais quoi', and the effects are dreadful.This 'jene sais quoi', sosmall an object that we cannot recognise it, agitatesa whole country, princes, armies, theentire world. Cleopatra'snose: had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world wouldhave been altered.'

Blaise Pascal, The Thoughts of Blaise PascalThe comments made by the seventeenth-century French philosopherand physicist Blaise Pascal upon the size of Cleopatra's nose might beconstrued as an anticipation of 'chaos theory'. In the twentieth century,the idea that a small variation in a complex system (such as the size ofCleopatra's nose in the complex system of world history) might have adramatic and unpredictable effect upon the dynamics of that systemwas to inform the new science of chaos. The science of chaos, alsoknown as the science of chaotics or complexity, has promised to bearpotential and unpredictable significance for scientists, physicists andmathematicians - as well as for historians, literary theorists, andclassicists.Formalized and popularized as a theory in 1987 by physicist JamesGleick, chaos theory has informed innovative new explanations for theworkings of complex systems - from weather patterns and flu epi-demics to penguin populations. Today, the influence of chaos theorycan be seen in studies of the stock-market, of traffic congestion, andpolitics. Modern models of architecture, of human consciousness, andof world history have all been touched in some way by chaos theory.

1 For an overview of the influence of the trope of chaos and chaos theory on both literarytheoryand science see N. K. Hayles, ChaosBound:OrderlyDisorder n Contemporary iterature nd Science(Ithaca, 1990) and (ed.), Chaos and Order:ComplexDynamics in Literatureand Science(Chicago,1991). In the field of Classical studies K. S. Morrell, Helios 23 (1996), 107-34 engages with chaostheory and the principle of bifurcation to offer an innovative reading of Homer's Iliad.


2/17

28 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOSChaos has already been triumphed as a new scientific paradigm withcultural implications as challenging and as fundamental as quantumtheory, relativity and evolution.2 As one chaos theorist suggests,seeking to explain the broad appeal of chaos and complexity, 'In atime of collapsing explanatory and ideological paradigms and certain-ties, a theory which stresses built-in unpredictabilities seems bothnecessary and congenial to a post-Newtonian, post-Freudian, post-Marxist and post-modern world-view.'3 Employed as trope, metaphorand analogy, - as well as scientific model and theory - chaos hasarticulated issues of key concern across a broad range of disciplines,primarilyin the sciences and philosophy, but also in history, philologyand cultural studies.4Chaos has even assertedits influence upon classicalstudies: Kenneth Scott Morrell has demonstrated one of the potentialapplicationsof chaos theoryto the analysisof ancient texts by employinga scientific model of chaos to inform his narratological study ofbifurcation in Homer's Iliad.sOf course, chaos theory has also had its critics: those who see thisnew paradigm merely as a fashionable fad.6 The very term 'chaos' isseen by some as too vague, too populist a word - with confusingcultural and mythological associations - to be employed as a credibleterm in serious scientific discourse. Bemoaning the broad appeal ofchaos and complexity, critics have objected to the 'Disneyfication' ofchaos theory in films such as Spielberg's Jurassic Park, and to itsperceived misappropriation by post-modernist literary critics. Indeed,in 1996 the physicist Alan Sokal published a hoax article 'Transgress-ing the Boundaries' in the cultural studies journal Social Text in orderto expose, among other 'offences', the misunderstanding and misuse of

2 Cf. Hayles (1991), op. cit., 4.3 H. Hawkins, Strange Attractors:Literature,Culture and Chaos Theory (Hemel Hempstead,1995), 15. To this belated world-view might also be added post-feminism and post-structuralism.4 The collection of essays on literature and the science of chaos in Hayles (1991), op. cit., offersan excellent and wide-ranging introductionto this field. See also A.J. Argyros, New LiteraryHistory23 (1992), 659-73, on chaos ad narrative;E. Eoyang, ComparativeLiteratureStudies 26 (1989),271-84, on chaos and reading practices; I. Hassan, The Postmodern Turn:Essays in PostmodernTheory and Culture (Columbus, 1987), on postmodernism and chaos; Hawkins, op. cit., onliterature,culture and chaos theory; Morrell, op. cit., on chaos theory and bifurcation in Homer'sIliad; S. Peterfreund, Literatureand Science, Theoryand Practice (Boston, 1990), on chaos andliterary theory;I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, Orderout of Chaos, (London, 1985), on philosophy inand of chaos; M. Serres, Hermes:Literature,Science,Philosophy(Baltimore, 1982), on literature,science and philosophy.5 Morrell, op. cit.6 A variety of criticalperspectives on chaos and complexity theory are offered in J. Cohen andI. Stewart, TheCollapseof Chaos (London, 1994), Z. Sarder andJ. R. Ravetz, Futures26.6 (1994),and I. Stewart, Does God Play Dice (Oxford, 1989).


3/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 29scientific terms such as chaos in contemporary feminist and post-structuralistwriting.7However, interdisciplinaryattempts to make useof some of the principles behind the science of chaos continue.Centralto the science of chaos is the idea that there may be order andpredictabilityin the midst of chaos, and that there may be disorder andunpredictability in the midst of order - akin, perhaps, to the discorsconcordiaor 'disordered order' (Met. 1.433) identified by Ovid in thefirst book of his Metamorphoses.Crucially, in this scientific model chaosis not identified as 'randomness'. Nor, in this semiotic, is chaosdiametrically opposed to order - the science of chaos radically disruptsthe conventional dichotomy of order versus disorder,as we shall see. Butif chaos is not 'true' randomness or 'straightforward'disorder,what is it?How is it to be identified?8

Cultural, scientific and mythic accounts of chaos each contributesomething to the term and to its theoretical modelling. In the Westerntradition, from Hesiod's Theogony hrough Milton's Paradise Lost to theOED,chaos is described asaprimordialvoid, aspacethat ispre-existenttoorder. In Hesiod's account of the 'order'of the cosmos Chaos comes first:9At first, indeed, Chaos came to be, but next came wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-surefoundation of all the deathless gods who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dimTartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth. And then came Eros, fairest among thedeathless gods, who weakens the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of allgods and men. From Chaos came Erebus and black Night; but of Night were bornAether and Day, whom she conceived and bore from union in love with Erebus.(Hesiod, Theogony 116-25)

According to Western creationistmyths,10chaos and disorder are notsimply opposed to order and civilization. Since the cosmos originatesinand is formed from Chaos, disordercomplements order. Order can anddoes emerge from Chaos. In scientific models of chaos theory, however,Chaos is reduced to chaos.11 In scientific narratives, chaos is what7 A. D. Sokal, 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics ofQuantum Gravity', Social Text (1996). Cf. A. D. Sokal and J. Bricmont, Impostures ntellectiielles(Paris, 1997).8 The anonymous referee for this paper suggests that the 'Alexandrian footnote' to Ovid'sidentification of Chaos at Met. 1.7 - 'quemdixere Chaos'- may highlight a lack of 'foundation' forthe use of this term in this context. The universal disorder at the world'sbeginning - which is calledChaos - might be identified otherwise.9 All translationsare my own.

10 So in Milton 'In the Beginning ... the Heav'ns and Earth/ Rose out of Chaos' (ParadiseLost9f.). See also Apollonius Rhodius 1.496-8; Diodorus Siculus 1.7; Aristophanes,Birds693-4; OvidMetamorphoses1.5-20.' Accessible scientific accounts of chaos and complexity are offeredby J. Gleick, Chaos:Makinga New Science(New York, 1987); R. Lewin, Complexity London, 1993); M. Waldrop, Complexity


4/17

30 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOShappens when apparently random events take place, aperiodically, inapparentlydeterministic systems. World history is supposed to provideexamples of this phenomenon and to highlight some of the central,'signature', characteristics of chaos - complexity, eedback, scale, andsensitivedependenceupon initial conditions. The events that have takenplace in world history may seem to be random occurrences. But since itis possible to plot patterns and symmetries in the rise and fall ofcivilizations, for example, history may be described as chaotic ratherthan as truly random: there is some order and predictabilitywithin thegeneral disorder and unpredictability.There is some order and predict-abilitywithin the general complexityof the system, in which interdepen-dent variablesmay be seen to interact in variableways.12Events at localor microcosmic level may have unpredictableand far-reachingeffects atglobal or macrocosmic level - and vice versa. A minor event at apersonal level may assert a major influence upon events at a politicallevel, no less than the reverse.

History is also influenced fundamentally by feedback.Feedback is asignificant aspect of chaos - often ignored in classical scientific modelsand analyses because of its complexity - and broadly describes theprocess by which outcome is seen to affect initial cause. Feedback ischaracterized as a feature of any system in which 'output' influences'input'. Theories of literary reception13 hat see textual influences work-ing dynamically across related texts - so that the reading of a text fromone historicalperiod may influence the readingof an influential text froma previous period - demonstrate sensitivity to such an idea of dynamicfeedback. Thus, readingsof Ovid's Heroidesmay be seen tofeedback ntoreadings of Homer and Virgil, the flow of inter-textualliteraryinfluenceturning back upon itself in a feedback loop. Such retrospectivelyconstrued constructs as The Pre-Socratics, The Second Sophistic, andThe Augustan Golden Age offer related illustrations of feedback,whileMarxist interpretations of Athenian democracy, Freudian analyses ofEuripides, and Feminist readings of Ovid indicate furtherinstances.(London, 1992). Accounts assuming a more scientifically minded reader can be found inS. Kauffman, The Originsof Order(Oxford, 1993); S. H. Kellert, In the Wakeof Chaos (Chicago,1993); E. Lorenz, The Essenceof Chaos(London, 1995); B. B. Mandlebrot, TheFractalGeometry fNature (San Francisco, 1982); D. Ruelle, Chance and Chaos (London, 1993); Stewart, op. cit.12 On the potential implications of a non-linear, chaotic approach to historical studies see inparticularC. Dyke, ThePhilosophicalForum 1 (1990), 369-92; M. Shermer,Historyand Theory34(1995), 59-83.

13 Cf. C. A. Martindale, Redeemingthe Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneuticsof Reception(Cambridge, 1993).


5/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 31Scale is a further key consideration in the study of world history, as inchaos theory. History may never repeat itself exactly, but - examined

across an appropriate time-scale - ordered patterns of events may beperceived and predicted. The sets and patterns of events will dependupon the time-scale extrapolatedand may change and vary according toany different scales used, just as the use of different scales in scientificstudies and calculations is seen to produce widely varying results.14Thescience of chaos recognizes that apparently small, insignificant detailsand events may have hugely significant ramifications. As in worldhistory, where localized, minor incidents have had major implicationsof global significance, chaos theory is highly sensitive to the idea that'size matters.' Related to this key characteristic of chaos theory is afurther signature feature - sensitive dependenceupon initial conditions.The now familiarprinciple of the 'butterfly effect' - first described bymeteorologist Edward Lorenz'5 - demonstrates one of the ways inwhich such sensitive dependence may be seen to operate. The appar-ently small and insignificant, localized air movement entailed by theflapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil may subsequently result in atornado in Texas. However, this flapping may also prevent a tornado inTexas. According to the science of chaos, sensitive dependence uponinitial conditions makes complex systems - like the weather - unpre-dictable. In order to make reliablepredictions about the likelybehaviourof a complex system it is first necessary to know the initial startingconditions of that system with total and infinite precision. Given theexact initial conditions and an intelligence large enough to perform thecalculations, one could make accurate predictions about the world. Thenew paradigm of chaos, however, admits that this is an epistemicimpossibility.16

While seeking to map patterns and connections, to recognize causesand effects, to chart order in disorder, the scientific model of chaostheory takes into account variation and influence, unpredictability andindeterminacy, plurality and contingency to offer a new interpretativeframe. Is it possible that the principles of this interpretativeframe mightbe used to interpretthe dynamics of a complex literary system such as atext - or, rather the complex interactivesystem of a text, its readingsand

14 Cf. Mandlebrot, op. cit. Mandlebrot illustrated that what we observe or measure dependsupon how we observe and measure it by hypothetically measuring the coastline of Britainusing ametre stick, a 10cm. stick, a 1cm. stick, and so on ... to obtain a set of radicallydifferent results.15 Cf. Lorenz op. cit.16 It is, of course, a metaphysical possibility. Chaos theory allows the possibility of divineomniscience.


6/17

32 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOSreception? A number of other critical models offered by contemporaryliterary criticism - structuralism and post-structuralism, no less thanpsychoanalysis and linguistics - are presented as scientific systems,particularlythose influenced by French theoreticalmodels and theoristsworking with and within a broader scientific framework. Could thescience of chaos offer a new literarycritical model? Might some of thesignature characteristics of chaos and chaos theory - complexity, feed-back, scale, and sensitive dependence upon initial conditions - play apart in classical literarycriticism?The process of reading or interpreting a text, of determining itsmeaning, of closing the hermeneutic gap may be seen as a process ofordering, of identifying (if not of setting) textual boundaries, of limitingthe potential significance of linguistic structures- however contingent,subjective, or partial the process is acknowledged to be. Yet, thecomplex system of a literary text may never be completely 'ordered'in this way: elements of unpredictability, variation and indeterminacyalways threaten to destabilize and disrupt any attempt to establishmeaning with absolute or final precision. Consider, for example, thevarious contradictoryhistoricalappropriationsand re-appropriationsofOvidius Christianus, Ovide Moralise, Ovid the Neoplatonist, and Ovidthe proto-feminist. Texts, like other complex or chaotic systems, aremore than the sum of their parts. Texts may not be straightforwardlyreduced to the ordered and grammaticallydeterministic structures of thelanguage in which they are constituted. Rhetorical figures and tropes -particularlythe allusions, imitations, and metaphors of ancient texts -may not always be meaningful, even when they are identified.17Authorial intentions, like the initial startingconditions that programmea complex system, can never be known with total and infinite precision.

Chaos theory offers a new approach to interpretation as a processwhich can renegotiate unity and plurality, determinacy and indetermi-nacy, recognizing both positions without privileging one over the other,and without attempting to assimilate one into the other. It represents asystem in which traditionalemphases and priorities are subverted, andin which contradiction, discontinuity and variation are viewed posi-tively, as elements to be enjoyed rather than problems to be resolved. Inthis subversion of traditional emphases and priorities, chaos theoryappears to offer readers of literary texts an approach towards orderand interpretation that is not unlike the approaches offered by post-17 See W. Paulson in Hayles (1991), op. cit., 37-53, for a discussion of chaotic 'noise' - textualelements that are 'not immediately decodeable'.


7/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 33modern literary criticism. In emphasizing the impossibilities ofassimilatingor polarizing order and disorder, chaos theory demonstratesa particular affinity with post-structuralism. Like post-structuralism,chaos theory destabilizes symmetries and oppositions, representing anew theoretical perspective in which post-modern concerns with dis-continuity and variation realign structuralist concerns with continuityand relation.18According to Katherine Hayles, it is the recognition thattexts are unpredictable and chaotic systems that distinguishes contem-porary literarycriticism from its predecessors:19The (old) New Critics had taken for granted that a literarywork was a verbal object,bounded and finite, however ambiguous it might be within. But the (new) New Criticssaw textual boundaries as arbitraryconstructions whose configurations depended onwho was reading, and why. As books became texts, they were transformed from orderedsets of words to permeable membranes through which flowed the currents of history,language and culture. Always alreadylacking a ground for their systems of signification,texts were not deterministic or predictable. Instead they were capable of becomingunstable whenever the slightest perturbationwas introduced. The well-wrought urn, itseemed, was actually a reservoir of chaos.Hayles' account of this critical paradigm shift necessarily emphasizessome features of contemporary literarycriticism at the expense of others- mapping discontinuity and disruption rather than continuity anddevelopment in order to pattern symmetry between chaos theory andliterary theory. Yet, this analysis may be seen to highlight the chaoticfeatures that seem to characterize contemporary theories of texts,readers, and reading. In particular, Hayles emphasizes the mutabilityoftexts, theirpotentialto change andto be changed, to be read andre-read-a potential mutability that might be seen as a necessary and particularcharacteristicof any text that is to be labelled a 'classic'.20Her analysisdraws attention to the indeterminacy and instability of the systems ofsignification (systems employed in the processes of both writing andreading) within which literarytexts are produced. And - perhaps mostsignificantly- she implicitly draws attention to the ways in which literarytexts may be shaped and re-shaped by their reception. For it is readerswho may be seen to destabilize texts even as they seek to impose orderupon them - readers through whom 'the currents of history, language,and culture' flow no less than through the texts they read.

18 Cf. Hayles (1991), op. cit., 10-11. For an account of the asymmetriesbetweenpost-modernism nd chaostheorysee K. Knoespel n Hayles (1991), op. cit., 102.19 Hayles (1990), op. cit., 2.20 Cf. F. Kermode, The Classic: T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures1973 (London, 1975).


8/17

34 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOSPotentially all literary texts may be regarded as chaotic systemssusceptible to disturbance by unpredictable readers. Yet Ovid's Meta-

morphoses,with its discontinuous and fragmented narrative,its contra-dictory and varied historical reception, might be seen as anappropriately chaotic text to view from within the interpretativeframe offered by chaos theory. Not only are some of the signaturecharacteristics of chaos and complexity paralleled in both Ovid's textand in the science of chaos, but the semiotic of chaos - as encodingordered structures and patterns, as generating order - is iterated inboth. A well-wrought urn that serves as a container of chaos, the poembegins in cosmic chaos and disorder (Met. 1.5-7) and ostensiblyappears to move towards stability and order - the Augustan Peace.Yet, at the end of the poem chaos returns to the cosmos or, at least,demonstrates that it was and is ever present.21 Pythagoras' philo-sophical re-vision of the Metamorphosesin the final book sees areturn to the cosmic disorder and primordial chaos of the beginning.Once more the fundamental elements of earth, air, fire, and water -separated at the start of the cosmos and at the start of the poem -appear to be indistinct, in a constant state of flux (Met. 15.244-53).The stories of transformation through which this progression fromchaos to chaos is effected suggest, moreover, that flux is the onlyconstant, chaos the only regulation - of both cosmos and narrativeinthis poem. In the Metamorphoses,t seems, the potential for instabilityand disorder is ever present. Indeed, the Pythagorean re-vision ofchaos with which the Metamorphoses oncludes may be seen to initiatea feedback loop which influences our interpretationof the start of thepoem. Pythagoras argues that the cosmos is, in effect, a chaosmos:

These things, distant in space, are yet all formedfrom each other and fall back into each other; the earth set freeis rarefied into liquid water, the water thinnedbecomes wind and air, and losing weight againthe thinnest air springs up as fire;then they return again in the same order reversed.For fire condensed transforms into compact air,from air into water, and water compressed solidifies as earth.Nothing retains its own shape, and the renewer of thingsNature creates forms out of other forms.2221 Cf. G. Tissol, TheFace of Nature: Wit,Narrativeand CosmicOrigins n Ovid'sMetamorphoses(Princeton,NJ,1997),195: Bya strange aradox, haosstillprevailsnthe formsofnature, nd tsviolenceseems to becomemoredeeplyembeddedn the cosmos with each newchange.'22 Ovid, Met. 15.244-53.


9/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 35The order initially imposed upon the primordial chaos, the boundariesand limits originallydesignated for the cosmos, are shown to be unfixedand unstable, subject to their own shifts and changes. What Pythagorassees is a direct and explicit undoing of the order into which theprimordial chaos was previously configured (Met. 15.262f.: uidi ego,quodfueratquondamsolidissimatellus,/ esse retum,uidifactas ex aequoreterras).This ultimate breakdown in order 'feeds back' into our readingof the initial cosmic ordering process, granting a perspective whichallows us to see the new order as provisional and impermanent - to seethe new cosmos as chaosmos. This new (or rather, 'retro') perspectivemay also feed back into our readingsof the stories of transformationthattake place in this chaosmos, encouraging us to see metamorphosis as anongoing process that figures continuity as well as change. From thisperspective, metamorphosis may be seen as a process that does notpermanently or straightforwardly'fix' a human character into a newform: it may be seen to prompt an oscillating, ever changing point ofview that recognizes the wolf in the man and the man in the wolf.In beginning his epic poem with this aboriginalchaos, Ovid appearsto follow the model of his literary predecessors.23 Like his literarypredecessors, Ovid's chaos is primordial- pre-existing and pre-existingorder. His representation of the cosmos figures a world that is alwaysalreadyin a state of chaotic turbulence. However, Ovid's chaos is unlikethat of Hesiod or his successors. The representationsof chaos offeredbyApollonius, Diodorus Siculus, and Aristophanes, all seemingly formedupon the Hesiodic model, each offer an image of the primordialcosmosas inert and empty. While other literary images of chaos are character-ized by their vacuous inertia, Ovid's chaos is characterizedby its activityand violent turbulence. Ovid's chaos does not merely represent the

23 B. Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge, 1970), 94 comments upon Ovid's emphasis onaboriginalchaos that 'obviously the proper way to begin a universal epic of this sort was with theHesiodic chaos'. However, P. Hardie, TheEpic Successorsof Virgil:a Study in the Dynamics of aTradition(Cambridge, 1993), 60 observes that this use of chaos as an epic startingpoint may be'more than the mark of conformity to a convenient and obvious story pattern. It also seems tosymbolize the burst of power needed both by the actors and the narrator o provide the momentumfor a long poem that might be in danger of an inabilityto escape the gravitational pull of its manypredecessors.' Noting the OLD translation of Chaos as a figure for the Underworld, Hardie arguesfor Chaos/Hell as a source of narrativeenergy: 'Heaven is stasis, peace, rest;Hell [Chaos] ceaselessmovement, war, emotional turmoil. Hell [Chaos] is the more invasive, the more disruptive ofequilibrium;Hell [Chaos] is likelyto be the starting-pointof a new movement.' On Ovid's chaos seeC. Altieri, Novel: a Forum on Fiction 7.1 (1973), 31-40; L. Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh:Metamorphosisand the Pursuit of Paganism (London, 1986); D. Fowler, in Innes et al. (eds.),Ethicsand Rhetoric Oxford, 1995), 3-18; R. McKin, CJ 80 (1984), 97-108; K. S. Myers, Ovid'sCauses:CosmologyandAetiology n theMetamorphosesAnn Arbor, 1994);J. B. Solodow, TheWorldof Ovid'sMetamorphosesLondon, 1988); Tissol, op. cit.; S. Wheeler, AJP 116 (1995), 95-121.


10/17

36 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOSdisordered condition of the cosmos before its regulation and order:Ovid's chaos represents the pre-condition to that order. The potentialfor order exists within the aboriginal disorder and it is from chaoticdisorder that the ordered cosmos will be configured. The chaos of theMetamorphosesepresentsa state of continuous change in which nulli suaforma manebat:ts constituent elements - earth,water and air- exist in aconstant state of dynamic flux, and its primaryforces exist in a constantstate of violent opposition:

Before there was sea and earth and sky to cover allthere was one face of nature in the whole world,which is called chaos: a rough and disordered mass,nothing but lifeless substance and crowded togetherthe turbulent seeds of incompatible elements.As yet, the light of the sun did not shine upon the earth,nor did the waxing moon recover her new crescent,nor did the earth hang in the surrounding airbalanced by its own weight, nor had the oceanstretched her arms around the far margins of the earth;although there was earth and sea and air,the land was unstable, the water unswimable,the air lacked light; nothing retained its own form,everything opposed everything else, for in one bodycold fought with hot, wet with dry,soft with hard, those with weight with those without weight.24The cosmos is formed from chaos, according to Ovid, by theintervention of an ambiguous influence, a god or better nature (Met.1.21: hanc deus et meliorlitem natura diremit),who imposes order andstability upon the primordial chaos by setting limits and boundaries

upon its conflicting elements, separatingand relocatingearth,water,andair (Met. 1.32f.: sic ubi dispositamquisquis uit ille deorum/ congeriemsecuitsectamquen membracoegit),and dividing the newly formed earthinto zones reflecting those of the sky (Met. 1.45-8).However, the new order imposed upon the primordialchaos by thisambiguous influence - whoever or whatever he might be - is notabsolute, and confusion - not only in relation to the identity of thecreator- continues to exist. Order is imposed upon the waters as theyare separated into seas and springs, pools, lakes and rivers (Met. 1.36-42). But as in their former chaotic state, the waters do not maintain theirdistinction from the earth (Met. 1.40: partimsorbentur b ipsa), or from

24 Ovid, Met. 1.5-20.


11/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 37each other, as springs become rivers and as rivers flow into the sea (Met.1.42 f.: in mareperueniuntpartim campoquerecepta liberiorisaquaeproripis litorapulsant). The air is similarly turbulent, with the continuingdiscordiaof the winds threatening to tear apart the newly formed world(Met. 1.58-60: uix nunc obsistiturllis, . . . quinlanientmundum; anta estdiscordia ratrum).25 Moreover, as the description of the new cosmosillustrates, earth, water, and air continue to merge together and to takeon each other's characteristics:fog and rain soak the earth, and fill the'liquid' air (Met. 1.65-8). The newly formed cosmos appears to bestable and ordered but its elements are not. In 'essence' the cosmos isreconfigured chaos and, as such, may be seen to retain some of thechaotic features of its former state.Just as the primordialchaos bore thepotential for stability and order, so the ordered cosmos bears thepotential for instability and disorder.Within this reconfigured chaos some elements are more stable thanothers, and one of the most unpredictable elements of the orderedcosmos is humankind. Like Ovid's cosmos itself, inherently unstablefrom its origins, humankindin the Metamorphosess a potentiallychaoticcreation - in part because of the nature of its creation. As in hisambiguous description of the creation of the cosmos, here Ovid offerstwo alternative accounts of the creation of humankind:

Man was born: either the maker of everything made himfrom his own divine seed, planning a better world,or the new earth, only recently drawn from the highether, retaining some elements of the related sky.Which the son of Iapetus, mixed with running water,made into the shape of the gods which moderate all.26These two alternativeversions of the creation of man aresignificant.27 nboth, his creation is relatedin some way to the gods: he is either formedin the image of the all-moderating gods or from the semen/seed28of theoriginalmoderatinggod, he who firstordered the primordialchaos. Thisemphasis upon the authorityand moderating powers of the god(s) bearscontradictory implications for their creation of man. It suggests that,

25 The term discordia s also used to describe the turbulent conflict of the primordialchaos atMet. 1.9.26 Ovid, Met. 1.78-83.27 Cf. P. H. De Lacy, CJ 43 (1947), 153-61, on the influences of Stoicism, Lucretius,Empedocles, and Anaxagoras upon this passage.28 The same term, semina/semine recallingLucretius' atomic semina rerumn the DRN and thediscordia semina rerum at Met. 1.9), is used to describe the elemental creation of man in bothaccounts.


12/17

38 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOSbeing like the god(s), man may also possess authority and the power ofmoderation, but also, being part of the world which the god(s) mustmoderate and control, man may also possess the potential for unpredict-ability and instability.The chaotic potential of the human race is highlighted in Ovid'ssecond version of the creation of man, which is itself attributedgreateremphasis in the narrative than the first. In this version man is formedfrom a mixture of the very elements - earth, air, and water - thatpreviously composed the primordialchaos, and which even in the newlyordered cosmos display 'chaotic'patternsof behaviour. This connectionis confirmed by the allusions in the narrative o the new earth (Met. 1.80:recens ellus) only recently drawn (Met. 1.80: seductanuper)from the airand still retaining some elements of its related sky (Met. 1.81: cognaticaeli). Man embodies the new chaos. The chaotic elements, which wereseparated and re-configured in order to form the cosmos, are mixedagain in order to form man. Just as Janus, figure of cosmos in Ovid'sFasti, bears two faces in testament to his former identity as a figure ofchaos (Fasti: 1.113-14), so man retains traces of the formerly chaoticforces that form him.

In the creation of man chaos is configured again, with humankind asthe new location of indeterminacy and turbulence - as illustratedby theready transformations which the men and women of the Metamorphosesare seen to experience. Human characterswho challenge the status quoand threatendisorderby transgressingboundaries of permissiblehumanbehaviour (such as behaving like animals or consorting with gods) arepunished in order to restore and maintain order.29Order and stability,itappears,are related to elements of disorderand chaos. For the gods in theMetamorphoses, o frequently represented as being directly responsiblefor the transformations of human subjects and, therefore, as beingresponsible for re-introducing instability into the cosmos, seem to bemotivated by a desire to preserve stabilityand order. Stabilityand orderin Ovid's cosmos, then, are only ever provisional, and the potential forsuch order to disintegrateinto disordered chaos is ever present. In thisrespect, a tension emerges between the divine figure of authoritypotentially responsible for imposing initial order upon the primordialchaos in the creation of the cosmos - the fabricator(Met. 1.57) or opifex

29 Cf. Barkan,op. cit., 29: 'Human nature and society recognize categoriesof orderjust as doesthe physicalworld:to misunderstand or to skewthese categoriesis to invite moral chaos.' Accordingto Barkan, 'Chaos is a breakdown of expectations among rigid categories' including cultural andsocial taboos such as incest.


13/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 39(Met. 1.79) - and the other divine figures of authority responsible for re-introducing disorderinto the world as the agents of metamorphosis.Thistension might also be seen to engage thefabricatoror opifexof the textualworld of the Metamorphoses,he authorialfigure responsible for imposingthe semblance of order upon his fabula, his opus, who may yet beconsidered responsible for similarly re-introducing elements of disorder.Both authors, it could be suggested, contrive to produce an image oforder and stabilitythat is undermined by the complexity of theirwork.30In her study of chaos theory and literary criticism, Harriet Hawkinsidentifies the complexity of a work of art - such as the Metamorphosesas the key element that encourages artistic and critical attempts toimpose order upon it:The signature of a complex non-linear work of art may be that it not only inspires diverseimitations and dialectically opposite critical interpretations but, in effect, elicits successiveartistic and critical efforts to smooth out and impose order (either ideologically, or morally,or structurally) on its structurally, ideologically and morally chaotic components.31

The Metamorphoseshas inspired a particularly diverse range ofimitations and critical interpretations,32and it continues to elicit criticalefforts to impose order upon its 'chaotic components'. Yet, attempts todescribe and define the ideological, thematic, and structuralcomplexityof the Metamorphoses ace significant textual challenges. The text isopen, for example, to both anti- and pro-Augustan readings, resistingstraightforwardassimilationto any one ideological position.33It is opento readings that emphasize both its epic and elegiac characteristics,resisting easy identification with any one generic tradition. Accountsoffered of the text's ideological, thematic, and structuralunity tend todraw attention to the discontinuity and fragmentation of its narrat-ive(s).34 The oft cited criticism made by Quintilian upon the various

30 On the narrativecomplexity of Ovid's Metamorphosesee A. Barchiesi,MD 23 (1989), 55-97;L. Cahoon, Helios 23 (1996), 43-66; Hardie et al. (eds.), Ovidian Transformations: ssays on theMetamorphosesand its Reception (Cambridge, 1999); H. Hoffman, PLLS 5 (1985), 223-41;A. Keith, The Play of Fictions: Studies in Ovid's MetamorphosesBook 2 (Ann Arbor, 1992);S. Wheeler,A Discourseof Wonders:AudienceandPerformancen Ovid'sMetamorphosesCambridge,1999).31 Hawkins, op. cit., 5.32 Cf. C. A. Martindale (ed.), Ovid Renewed:Ovidian influenceson literatureand art from theMiddleAges to the twentiethcentury(Cambridge, 1988).33 Cf. A. Barchiesi, II Poeta e il Principe:Ovidio e il DiscorsoAugusteo (Bari, 1994); Barkan,op.cit.; P. E. Knox, Ovid'sMetamorphoses nd the Traditionsof Augustan Poetry (Cambridge, 1986).34 Solodow, op. cit., 9-36, offers a fine illustration of 'justhow endemic schematizing is to criticalreading of the Metamorphoses.'The schematizing project attempted here might similarlybe seen todraw attention to the (chaotic) unity of the Metamorphosesven as it asserts the (chaotic) disorderofthe text.


14/17

40 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOSdevices and strategies of connection and transition employed by Ovidin the Metamorphoses erves to draw attention to the extent to whichthe continuity and unity of the text is both ordered and disordered anddisrupted by these devices.35 Other critics after Quintilian haveattempted to justify and define the unifying features of Ovid'sMetamorphoses,but their attempts too have drawn attention to thediscontinuity and fragmentary disorder of the text, rather than to itsunity. Stephens claimed that the unifying principle of the text was'Love',36bringing to mind all of the episodes and themes which havenothing to do with love: it is hard to see how the story of Lycaonwould fit this theme, for example.37Buchheit equated the cosmology ofthe Metamorphoseswith the politics and history of Rome to claim thatthe unifying principle of the text was the relation between cosmosandimperium.38His claim brings to mind the vast majorityof episodes andthemes that seem to have nothing to do with Rome or its politics. Wemight, just, make the story of Lycaon fit this theme - but what of thestories of Daphne and Syrinx, narratedin the same book? It might beargued that the issues of gender, of power and violence raised in thesenarratives are related to the history and politics of Rome, but - byvarious strategies of accommodation, of re-ordering - so might anynarrative.More recently Schmidt has asserted that the unifying principle of theMetamorphoses s not Love or Rome, but Man,39 a comprehensivecategory which could be seen to include both Stephens' and Buchheit'sunifying principles. But such a wide-ranging, large-scale category mightalso be seen as too broad to yield reliable results.40This is an orderingprinciple which fails to measure all the subtleties and nuances of theMetamorphoses' omplex structure. The distinct lack of correspondence- of unity - between these different accounts of unity within theMetamorphosess particularly significant. Each one is based upon closecriticalreadingsof the text, each one clearlyidentifies a thematic patternwithin that text, yet each one contradicts the others and offers littlepossibility of reconciliation or agreement. It may be argued that the

35 Quint., Inst. Or. 4.1.77.36 W. Stephens, TAPhA89 (1958), 218-36.37 Although, taken as a whole, book 1 of the Metamorphosesmight be seen to fit this theme. Suchissues arehighly sensitive to scale. Different modes of measurement, differentpoints of observationmay yield very different results.38 V. Buchheit, Hermes94 (1966), 80-108.39 E. A. Schmidt, Ovid's PoetischeMenschenwelt.Die Metamorphosen ls MetapherundSymphonie(Heidelberg, 1991).40 Does this category straightforwardly nclude women, for example?


15/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 41efforts of these readers to demonstrate the thematic unity of theMetamorphoses mphasize instead its thematic disunity.41

Attempts by readers to define the structuralunity of the Metamor-phoses based upon detailed analyses of the text similarly succeed inhighlighting instead its apparent lack of structural and thematic unity,emphasizing its narrativefragmentation and disorder.42Once more, it issignificant that such readings, which each identify a clear structuralpattern within the text, are at odds with each other. The parallels andsymmetries that Ludwig and Otis, for example, each locate in theMetamorphosesfind no parallels in each other's structural plans.Ludwig identifies 'Time' as the unifying principle for his structuralanalysis of the text, dividing the narrative into chronologically orderedsections located in prehistory (Met. 1.5-451), mythical time (Met.1.452-11.193), and historical time (Met. 11.194-15.870).43 LikeLudwig, Otis tries hard to determine 'the plan of Ovid's epic', con-structing twenty-one differentplans and maps to detail the complex butsymmetrical structure of the poem. He argues that this form ofstructuralanalysis 'provides the element of stability against which boththe necessary variety and, above all, the unceasing process of motiftransformation can be set in relief and given some semblance ofcontinuity'.44 He divides the text into four principal sections onostensibly common themes such as 'Divine Amor' (Met. 1.5-2.875),'Vengeance' (Met. 3.1-6.400), 'Amatory Pathos' (Met. 6.401-11.795),and 'Troy and Rome' (Met. 12.1-15.870).Both Ludwig and Otis base their structural organizations of theMetamorphosesupon a patterned symmetry formed of different keyunits.45 Both highlight some episodes, characters and themes at theexpense of others, overlooking some elements of the text in order tohighlight others, and both structuralanalyses necessarily involve variouselisions and omissions of episodes, charactersand themes that cannot bemade to fit into their overall structures. Yet it is these elisions andomissions which disrupt the symmetry and unity of the (dis)ordered

41 Cf. F. Norwood, CJ 59 (1964), 170-4, on unity in the diversity of the Metamorphoses.42 Cf. Ludwig, Struktur und Einheit derMetamorphosenOvids (Berlin, 1965), and Otis, op. cit.43 Within each section, Ludwig further divides the narrative into a series of frames in which keyprehistorical, mythological, or historical figures predominate.44 Otis, op. cit., 86.45 For a figured comparison of Ludwig and Otis' different analyses of the same section of theMetamorphoses 3.1-6.400), cf. Solodow, op. cit., p. 12f. Solodow observes: 'The remarkable ackof agreement among the analyses points to the poem's extraordinaryproductivenessof structures. Itabounds in parallelsand contrasts, symmetries and variations,with links of every sort, thematic aswell as formal.'


16/17

42 CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOSstructures which both Ludwig and Otis define.46As Solodow observes:'each of these principles of organization... is in its execution somewhataskew or incomplete, neglected or violated. The drive to unity is nearlymatched by the force working in the opposite direction.'47These modelsand plans do not suggest that 'the basic principle of structure here is thatof symmetrical correspondence',48they suggest rather that the basicprinciple of structure here in the Metamorphosess chaos.Solodow attempts to impose his own order upon the chaotic oropposing forces which frustrated Ludwig and Otis. Having arrangedhis analysis of the structure of the poem around the paired themes of'Organizations'and 'Disorganizations',his own organizingprinciple forthe Metamorphosess that of metamorphosis.49However, Solodow's owntheory of unification is subject to the same disruption and disorder asthat effected by the elisions and omissions in the models of thematic andstructural unity whose execution he himself identifies as 'incomplete,neglected or violated.' For, as Solodow admits, not every story orepisode in the Metamorphosesconcludes with or even includes ametamorphosis. Thus, another attempt to map structuraland thematicorder upon the patterned disorder of the Metamorphosess frustrated.Solodow's attempts to describe and define its unity, like those ofLudwig, Otis et al., highlight instead the text's disunity and its orderedchaos.How then are we, as readers, to impose some kind of order, howeverprovisional, upon the text of the Metamorphoses? iklas Holzberg50and,most recently, Stephen Wheelers5have negotiated this issue by mappingpatterns in the organization of the text that demonstrate recursivemovement between ordering and disordering, explicitly identified byWheeler as movement 'From Chaos to Order', and 'From Order toChaos'.52From these analyses of Ovid's complex, chaotic text, it seemsthat Altieri'sunifying principle of flux - another trope of chaos - mightcome closest to offeringa (dis)ordering structurefor the Metamorphoses.

46 Cf. Mandlebrot, op. cit., on measuring the coastline of Britain.47 Solodow, op. cit., 25.48 Ibid.,85.49 Ibid., 14f. Later in the chapter, however, (p. 36) Solodow appears to revise this view ofmetamorphosis as the unifying principle of the Metamorphosesand claims instead that 'thestructures implied and undone in the Metamorphosesamount to a commentary on story telling

and, with it, on mythology and literature.' The unifying theme of the Metamorphosesmay not bemetamorphosis but may instead be 'story-telling'.50 N. Holzberg, Ovid, Dichterund Werk(Munich, 1997).51 S. Wheeler, NarrativeDynamics in Ovid's MetamorphosesTiibingen, 2000).52 Ibid.


17/17

CLEOPATRA'S NOSE, NASO AND THE SCIENCE OF CHAOS 43Altierisuggests that the idea of flux as a mode of structuraland thematic'order' warns us against the possibility of identifying consistentlycoherent patternsand symmetries. 'The theme of flux,' Altieri suggests,'. .. by its very nature asserts both the absence of all informing structuresor principles of form and the equality of all present moments.'53Theinfluence of chaos, however, encourages us to try to see such informingstructures and patternsin Ovid's dynamic text, even as we acknowledgeits aspects of asymmetry and complexity. As we have seen, the discorsconcordia of Ovid's Metamorphosesboth encourages and frustratescritical efforts to impose structural or ideological order upon it. Yetthe influence of chaos theory reminds us to consider the apparentlyincidental details of its narrativesno less than its broader issues and itsdominant motifs. The influence of chaos theory advises us to be mindfulthat if Cleopatra's nose can influence world history, it is not only sizethat matters but also how one looks.54

53 Altieri, op. cit., 33.54 Earlierdrafts of this paper were presented at the 2000 Classical Association conference and ata Departmental Research Seminar in Bristol. Thanks to Professor Robert Fowler of the BristolInstitute of Hellenic and Roman studies for providing the resources and a creative environment inwhich to carry out the research for this paper. Thanks also to Julien Deonna, Duncan Kennedy,

CharlesMartindale,Ellen O'Gorman, Tim Saunders, Vanda Zajkoand the anonymous refereefortheir help and suggestions.

Liveley - 2002 - Cleopatra's Nose, Naso and the Science of Chaos

Documents

Transcript of Liveley - 2002 - Cleopatra's Nose, Naso and the Science of Chaos