No one gave me a trigger warning for 9-11 or October 7. Or my cancer (long dead> 10 years). Or that one of my children is handicapped. Or a million other things. No triggers--just the bullets. Every little bullet hole in me has paled to life worth living, pitfalls and all. And sensibilities, which make me human. I'm not saying that suffering is good. But I do feel living, come what may, is.
It is very hard to disagree with Liza’s assessment of the situation. Ovid, specifically the Metamorphoses, is both beautiful and important. I do not read Latin, so I can’t throw much weight behind the “beautiful” assertion, but “important” should not be in question.
Besides the fact that Metamorphoses is necessary context for much other literature from the Renaissance onward, it is also crucial for an understanding of the Classical world. Its breadth is much greater than one would think at first, since it appears to focus on one particular aspect of myth, the transformation. But so much of classical mythology is cast in this form that to say “myth of metamorphosis” is nearly the same as to say simply “myth.” To the Classical imagination, every constellation, every flower, every tree, every river was suffused with transformation myth.
This of course assumes that one wants to understand the Classical mind. Such an understanding may have a rather low priority for people engaged in “deconstructing the canon” and “decolonizing literature.” So let’s look at privileged voices in literature for a moment. Literature is inherently a product of privilege, simply because so very few people throughout history had the leisure to write. Leisure was an upper class privilege mostly enjoyed by men. The inequity stems from the social conditions under which most of our literature was written, rather than from literature itself. Silencing the voices of those who had the leisure to write will not bring back the voices of those silenced by circumstance. Thomas Grey, in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” lamented these irrecoverable losses, but he did not therefore decide that he himself should not write. (Grey was offered the Poet Laureate position in England, with its lifetime stipend, but declined because he felt the position would obligate him to celebrate every little thing the monarch did, and he did not want to be a royal propagandist. I can respect that.)
In China, poetry was written by the scholarly class, in India by the Brahmin caste, in the new world by the priests (although we have few records in this case, primarily the translation of the Popol Vuh by Catholic missionaries, which I believe to be a rather biased document, more of a Papal Vuh). Historically, the number of people with talent to write far exceeded the number of those with leisure to do so, which was a tragedy; currently, the number of people with leisure to write far exceeds the number of those with the talent to do so, which is a waste of everyone’s time. But I am wandering off topic.
Requiring trigger warnings for certain pieces of literature is not inherently a bad thing, I suppose, but I do not think it is needed nearly so much as it is required. A personal history of trauma does not automatically make a person susceptible to these triggers. My wife was abused as a child by her father, and as a young adult she was raped on a trip to Tokyo. She did not become delicate as a result; she became fierce. There is something else going on when people are easily triggered, something besides their personal history. It seems to be a societal expectation that everyone will become as sensitive as a mimosa plant and wilt at a touch, and therefore preemptive coddling is necessary. This is not to say that no one has PTSD, but those who do generally already know what their triggers are.
Perhaps there should just be some general warnings:
Literature trigger warning: People tell stories about appalling things. Expect it.
History trigger warning: People have done appalling things. Expect it.
Biology trigger warning: Plants and animals do appalling things. Expect it.
Etc.
There are entirely too many babies being thrown out with the bathwater. I hope they bring back Ovid's Metamorphoses, because I'll get all triggered if I hear they won't.
Ovid is indispensable to Shakespeare. I, myself, cherish the tale of Alcyone and Ceyx. Alcyone pines for Ceyx, her husband, who has travelled to Apollo’s Temple. Long time gone, Alcyone dreams that Juno reveals that Ceyx has drowned. In her suffering she goes down to the sea and, thereby, discovers Ceyx’s drowned body drifting towards her. Running into the sea to meet her beloved, Alcyone and Ceyx metamorphose into halcyon birds.
First married, the tale tore me apart. Now that my Alcyone is drifting away, we talk through the fog of age … and we share our halcyon days.
Columbia has committed a great sin and, you, Liza, rue it for us all.
Columbia University removing Ovid's Metamorphoses from its Core Curriculum shows how unserious a school they are. Columbia University used to be a household name, synonymous with prestige where America's intellectual elite attend school. Now, Columbia University and the rest of the Ivy League are a sad joke and a shadow of their former selves. This is a school that boasts alumni such as Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald R. Ford, Barack Obama, Langston Hughes, Milton Friedman, J.D. Salinger, Madeline Albright, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Art Garfunkel, Brian Dennehy, Telly Savalas, Joan Rivers, Robert Kraft, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Koufax, Lou Gehrig, Raymond Burr, Thomas Sowell, Yo-Yo Ma, James Cagney, Gene Roddenbery, Ira Gershwin, Amelia Earhart, Hunter S. Thompson, Stanley Kubrick, and of course, Liza Libes. But the days of them being that illustrious institution of learning are over. Removing Metamorphoses a certified classic, from their Core Curriculum because of a brief vignette subtly implying rape is ridiculous and shows how hyper-sensitive college students have become. Ivy League students are famous for it! Let's not forget the Ivies gave us the infamous Yale University Halloween Costume protests by students mad over an email a professor sent out expressing the commonsense opinion that students should judge for themselves what Halloween costumes are appropriate or not appropriate to wear. The university pulling a literary classic after students did what they do best and whined and then a professor declaring it not an important work of literature tells you all you need to know about them. Columbia has totally forgotten the purpose of literature is the universal moral messages contained within the pages NOT pushing hackney political agendas or identity politics. So, if we shouldn't read Metamorphoses what should we read? What does belong in their core curriculum? Roxanne Gay's "Bad Feminist?", Angie Thomas' "The Hate U Give?", Mychal Denzel Smith's "Invisible Man, Got The Whole World Watching?", Edward Said's "Orientalism?" Give me a break! That garbage will neither stand the test of time nor has anything profound to say. "Lost Paradise", "To Kill A Mockingbird", "The Great Gatsby", "A Midsummer's Night Dream", "The Time Machine", "The Invisible Man", "The Souls of Black Folk", "Up from Slavery", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Notes of a Native Son", "Romeo and Juliet", "The Sound and the Fury", "The Catcher in the Rye", "The Iliad", "The Odyssey", "1984", and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" that's REAL literature that has profound things to say about human existence! Furthermore, you're absolutely right Liza that universities have forgotten that literature is first and foremost art. It's not about exploring the "themes" of the literature! It's about how beautiful for example, "the Iliad" sounds when read in its original Latin. Don't read it in English that ruins it!
Don't know if you've read A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon, basis of The Wire. Anyway, in it, a Baltimore teacher tells him that young kinds in Baltimore don't do literature, except the Iliad and Odyssey - they get with that stuff cos it's their everyday experience - gangs, fights, feuds, altering alliances. Shame those kids don't get a chance to rejuvenate Colombia.
I wonder how many of the people who complained were victims of sexual violence or had even spoken one about this. Even assuming that rape victims need to avoid reading depictions of rape, excusing a student from the class seems more sensible than cancelling the class. It seems like a lynch mob out for dead white men.
Have these puritanical despots even read Ovid? One of my brilliant Ovid professors often went on to great lengths (without the deconstruction mumbo jumbo) that Ovid, despite his "flaws," wrote from the woman's perspective, especially when writing the horrid rape scenes. How revolutionary from a man living two thousand years ago! To actually read these passages in Latin is a wonder, but to see him write from the woman's point of view all the more so. Of course, I pointed out in class, Ovid was no "feminist" and to put him in that modern category is to do injustice to man. Ovid, despite his personal flaws, or perhaps because of them, could write these scenes with empathy and grace; how unlike the hordes of barbarians coming down from the north to erase him.
The good thing about the cultural gutter we live in, there's only one way to go now, and that's towards the light.
Fascinating read, and deeply depressing to see more ignorance and philistinism being wrought by those who should be protecting and treasuring literature.
Very good work to mention Ovid’s Heroides; there are many women “reimagining” the classics as feminist, as if they were the first to think of such a thing.
The humanities have lost a great scholar in you! I never taught at Columbia, fortunately for me, but I would have been proud to have you as a student or a colleague.
Beautifully put. The failure to appreciate the beauty you have identified and the core of Western culture is the point. Those that are destroying the Humanities are doing it on purpose. If only they had something of an idea around what they will do once they have succeeded.
They are the children, screwdriver in hand, who took apart your appliances to see what it looked like, but cannot fathom how to put it back together.
Personally, all I really know about Ovid is that he deliberately told everyone that Medusa was raped in order to defame the myth and broader culture behind it (similar to what some people do now). Why would a classics curriculum ever have tolerated that?
No one gave me a trigger warning for 9-11 or October 7. Or my cancer (long dead> 10 years). Or that one of my children is handicapped. Or a million other things. No triggers--just the bullets. Every little bullet hole in me has paled to life worth living, pitfalls and all. And sensibilities, which make me human. I'm not saying that suffering is good. But I do feel living, come what may, is.
Herewith begins my (as usual too long) comment:
It is very hard to disagree with Liza’s assessment of the situation. Ovid, specifically the Metamorphoses, is both beautiful and important. I do not read Latin, so I can’t throw much weight behind the “beautiful” assertion, but “important” should not be in question.
Besides the fact that Metamorphoses is necessary context for much other literature from the Renaissance onward, it is also crucial for an understanding of the Classical world. Its breadth is much greater than one would think at first, since it appears to focus on one particular aspect of myth, the transformation. But so much of classical mythology is cast in this form that to say “myth of metamorphosis” is nearly the same as to say simply “myth.” To the Classical imagination, every constellation, every flower, every tree, every river was suffused with transformation myth.
This of course assumes that one wants to understand the Classical mind. Such an understanding may have a rather low priority for people engaged in “deconstructing the canon” and “decolonizing literature.” So let’s look at privileged voices in literature for a moment. Literature is inherently a product of privilege, simply because so very few people throughout history had the leisure to write. Leisure was an upper class privilege mostly enjoyed by men. The inequity stems from the social conditions under which most of our literature was written, rather than from literature itself. Silencing the voices of those who had the leisure to write will not bring back the voices of those silenced by circumstance. Thomas Grey, in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” lamented these irrecoverable losses, but he did not therefore decide that he himself should not write. (Grey was offered the Poet Laureate position in England, with its lifetime stipend, but declined because he felt the position would obligate him to celebrate every little thing the monarch did, and he did not want to be a royal propagandist. I can respect that.)
In China, poetry was written by the scholarly class, in India by the Brahmin caste, in the new world by the priests (although we have few records in this case, primarily the translation of the Popol Vuh by Catholic missionaries, which I believe to be a rather biased document, more of a Papal Vuh). Historically, the number of people with talent to write far exceeded the number of those with leisure to do so, which was a tragedy; currently, the number of people with leisure to write far exceeds the number of those with the talent to do so, which is a waste of everyone’s time. But I am wandering off topic.
Requiring trigger warnings for certain pieces of literature is not inherently a bad thing, I suppose, but I do not think it is needed nearly so much as it is required. A personal history of trauma does not automatically make a person susceptible to these triggers. My wife was abused as a child by her father, and as a young adult she was raped on a trip to Tokyo. She did not become delicate as a result; she became fierce. There is something else going on when people are easily triggered, something besides their personal history. It seems to be a societal expectation that everyone will become as sensitive as a mimosa plant and wilt at a touch, and therefore preemptive coddling is necessary. This is not to say that no one has PTSD, but those who do generally already know what their triggers are.
Perhaps there should just be some general warnings:
Literature trigger warning: People tell stories about appalling things. Expect it.
History trigger warning: People have done appalling things. Expect it.
Biology trigger warning: Plants and animals do appalling things. Expect it.
Etc.
There are entirely too many babies being thrown out with the bathwater. I hope they bring back Ovid's Metamorphoses, because I'll get all triggered if I hear they won't.
I like long comments. Especially those as thoughtful as this one
Ovid is indispensable to Shakespeare. I, myself, cherish the tale of Alcyone and Ceyx. Alcyone pines for Ceyx, her husband, who has travelled to Apollo’s Temple. Long time gone, Alcyone dreams that Juno reveals that Ceyx has drowned. In her suffering she goes down to the sea and, thereby, discovers Ceyx’s drowned body drifting towards her. Running into the sea to meet her beloved, Alcyone and Ceyx metamorphose into halcyon birds.
First married, the tale tore me apart. Now that my Alcyone is drifting away, we talk through the fog of age … and we share our halcyon days.
Columbia has committed a great sin and, you, Liza, rue it for us all.
Wait, so next year the students who were triggered by Ovid are going to get ... Titus Andronicus? Haha. That's hilarious.
Columbia University removing Ovid's Metamorphoses from its Core Curriculum shows how unserious a school they are. Columbia University used to be a household name, synonymous with prestige where America's intellectual elite attend school. Now, Columbia University and the rest of the Ivy League are a sad joke and a shadow of their former selves. This is a school that boasts alumni such as Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald R. Ford, Barack Obama, Langston Hughes, Milton Friedman, J.D. Salinger, Madeline Albright, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Art Garfunkel, Brian Dennehy, Telly Savalas, Joan Rivers, Robert Kraft, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Koufax, Lou Gehrig, Raymond Burr, Thomas Sowell, Yo-Yo Ma, James Cagney, Gene Roddenbery, Ira Gershwin, Amelia Earhart, Hunter S. Thompson, Stanley Kubrick, and of course, Liza Libes. But the days of them being that illustrious institution of learning are over. Removing Metamorphoses a certified classic, from their Core Curriculum because of a brief vignette subtly implying rape is ridiculous and shows how hyper-sensitive college students have become. Ivy League students are famous for it! Let's not forget the Ivies gave us the infamous Yale University Halloween Costume protests by students mad over an email a professor sent out expressing the commonsense opinion that students should judge for themselves what Halloween costumes are appropriate or not appropriate to wear. The university pulling a literary classic after students did what they do best and whined and then a professor declaring it not an important work of literature tells you all you need to know about them. Columbia has totally forgotten the purpose of literature is the universal moral messages contained within the pages NOT pushing hackney political agendas or identity politics. So, if we shouldn't read Metamorphoses what should we read? What does belong in their core curriculum? Roxanne Gay's "Bad Feminist?", Angie Thomas' "The Hate U Give?", Mychal Denzel Smith's "Invisible Man, Got The Whole World Watching?", Edward Said's "Orientalism?" Give me a break! That garbage will neither stand the test of time nor has anything profound to say. "Lost Paradise", "To Kill A Mockingbird", "The Great Gatsby", "A Midsummer's Night Dream", "The Time Machine", "The Invisible Man", "The Souls of Black Folk", "Up from Slavery", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Notes of a Native Son", "Romeo and Juliet", "The Sound and the Fury", "The Catcher in the Rye", "The Iliad", "The Odyssey", "1984", and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" that's REAL literature that has profound things to say about human existence! Furthermore, you're absolutely right Liza that universities have forgotten that literature is first and foremost art. It's not about exploring the "themes" of the literature! It's about how beautiful for example, "the Iliad" sounds when read in its original Latin. Don't read it in English that ruins it!
Don't know if you've read A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon, basis of The Wire. Anyway, in it, a Baltimore teacher tells him that young kinds in Baltimore don't do literature, except the Iliad and Odyssey - they get with that stuff cos it's their everyday experience - gangs, fights, feuds, altering alliances. Shame those kids don't get a chance to rejuvenate Colombia.
I wonder how many of the people who complained were victims of sexual violence or had even spoken one about this. Even assuming that rape victims need to avoid reading depictions of rape, excusing a student from the class seems more sensible than cancelling the class. It seems like a lynch mob out for dead white men.
I genuinely just think it was an excuse for them to read fewer white men…. And it worked!
And to virtue signal
Do they not know there are no trigger warnings when adulting?
No, that’s why they are fundamentally unable to hold jobs and function in society
As someone who hires people for a living, I can tell you that this is my lived experience.
If you need a trigger warning, then you aren't an adult.
Real Adults don't need trigger warnings. Only people with weak wills, who are perpetual victims need trigger warnings.
Where would we be without warnings about Zeus’s womanizing?
Have these puritanical despots even read Ovid? One of my brilliant Ovid professors often went on to great lengths (without the deconstruction mumbo jumbo) that Ovid, despite his "flaws," wrote from the woman's perspective, especially when writing the horrid rape scenes. How revolutionary from a man living two thousand years ago! To actually read these passages in Latin is a wonder, but to see him write from the woman's point of view all the more so. Of course, I pointed out in class, Ovid was no "feminist" and to put him in that modern category is to do injustice to man. Ovid, despite his personal flaws, or perhaps because of them, could write these scenes with empathy and grace; how unlike the hordes of barbarians coming down from the north to erase him.
The good thing about the cultural gutter we live in, there's only one way to go now, and that's towards the light.
Fascinating read, and deeply depressing to see more ignorance and philistinism being wrought by those who should be protecting and treasuring literature.
Very good work to mention Ovid’s Heroides; there are many women “reimagining” the classics as feminist, as if they were the first to think of such a thing.
The protectors of literature are nowhere to be found…
The humanities have lost a great scholar in you! I never taught at Columbia, fortunately for me, but I would have been proud to have you as a student or a colleague.
Thank you Elana! Appreciate this 😊
I really appreciate the smart conversation.
Beautifully put. The failure to appreciate the beauty you have identified and the core of Western culture is the point. Those that are destroying the Humanities are doing it on purpose. If only they had something of an idea around what they will do once they have succeeded.
They are the children, screwdriver in hand, who took apart your appliances to see what it looked like, but cannot fathom how to put it back together.
Trigger warnings only allow fearful people to build exponentially more fear in their minds than if they had just read the thing.
It is defeatist compassion. "Lets avoid a tiny bit of discomfort right now in favor of long term harm!"
Personally, all I really know about Ovid is that he deliberately told everyone that Medusa was raped in order to defame the myth and broader culture behind it (similar to what some people do now). Why would a classics curriculum ever have tolerated that?