Io's Writing: Human and Animal in the Prison-House of Fiction

What is it about?

In this paper, I examine the Ovidian narrative of Io (Met. 1, 568–746) from two specific aspects. On the one hand, I read Io’s story together with Julio Cortázar’s Axolotl, to argue that the figure of Argus can be interpreted as a guard who surveils the border between humans and animals. His task is to guarantee that the transition between observers and observed remains impossible. Although in the framework of the fictional universe, Argus’ mission is, obviously, unaccomplished, on a metafictional level, he still succeeds in putting the narrative in the prison-house of fiction. On the other hand, I examine Io’s act of writing, which serves as a medium of transition between observers and observed. Io’s writing, or more precisely, signature, is interpreted here as an intermediate phase between Greek and Latin, human and animal, articulate and inarticulate, literal and geometric, fixed and fluid. I then argue that Inachus’ act of reading—which, as A. Feldherr claims, 'translates' Io’s written text into spoken Latin—correlates with his being both a human being and a river, reading and obliterating Io’s name at the same time.

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Photo by Mattias Banguese on Unsplash

Photo by Mattias Banguese on Unsplash

Why is it important?

21st-century literary criticism prefers to see Ovid's Metamorphoses as an ancient tour de force on hybridity, fluid identity, and the trasgression of the border between human and non-human, and much more. This chapter, reading Ovid's Io episode together with Cortázar's Axolotl, is a contribution to this trend.

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