Per monstra ad sphaeram: Of Pegasus and Poetics

Kachuck, Aaron [UCL]

Today’s paper represents an early form of an attempt to get at the heart of Warburg’s motto—Per Monstra ad Astra—and look to a figure that in mythological terms best exemplifies the connections between the classical grotesque and poetic: Pegasus, the winged steed born of monstrous Medusa, who releases the waters of Hippocrene to be home to the Muses, who together with Bellerophon clears the world of the last vestiges of earth’s chaotic children, only to assume his place in the stars as Zeus’ lightning bearer, as Bellerophon languishes in terrestrial solitude. Our efforts will focus on showing how the figure of Pegasus served Ovid as a symbolic icon for his greatest work of poetry, the Metamorphoses, as well as for his life as a whole. Making clear how and why this was the case will involve looking first at the Greek tradition Ovid inherited, while clarifying the implications of such a focus on Ovid’s part will take us on a long tour from the Roman Principate through Nizami’s Haft Payker, Dante’s Commedia, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and, finally Aby Warburg’s bookplate itself.