"Ovid in the Third Reich" is a poem by the English writer Geoffrey Hill. It consists of a monologue in two quatrains and reflects on politics and innocence by transposing the ancient poet Ovid to Nazi Germany. The poem was published in the New Statesman in 1961 and opens Hill's poetry collection King Log from 1968.
One of Hill's most famous poems, "Ovid in the Third Reich" is known for its ambiguity which has led to disparate interpretations. Scholars have discussed its treatment of despair, the Third Reich, political complicity and the autonomy of poetry. Ovid's presence divides critics, who have associated his attitude in the poem with the average person during the Third Reich, or interpreted him as a contrast to ordinary people because he appears in a place where he does not belong.
Background
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) was an English poet and scholar of English literature. He began to publish poems in 1952, at the age of 20. When he wrote "Ovid in the Third Reich" he was a lecturer at the University of Leeds.
Structure and summary
Through its title, "Ovid in the Third Reich" transposes the ancient Roman poet Ovid to Nazi Germany. The poem is introduced with a Latin quotation from Ovid's Amores 3.14: "" ().
The two quatrains that make up "Ovid in the Third Reich" are written as a monologue and reflect on politics and innocence. In the first four lines, the subject says he loves his "work and children", that God is distant, that violence is both ancient and near, and that innocence is not a weapon in the world. In the last four lines he shows sympathy for "the damned", because he has learned to appreciate a harmony between them and divine love. From his own sphere, he celebrates "the love-choir".
Publication
"Ovid in the Third Reich" was first published on 17 February 1961 in the New Statesman. It was first collected with seven other Hill poems in the volume Preghiere, which was handset at the University of Leeds in 1964. In 1966, "Ovid in the Third Reich" appeared in volume eight of the series Penguin Modern Poets, which consisted of poems by Hill, Edwin Brock and Stevie Smith. "Ovid in the Third Reich" is the opening poem of Hill's 1968 collection King Log, published in the United Kingdom by André Deutsch and in the United States by Dufour Editions.
Among the collections of Hill's poems that include "Ovid in the Third Reich" are New and Collected Poems, 1952–1992, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1994, and Selected Poems, published by Penguin in 2006. It is anthologised in The Columbia Anthology of British Poetry from Columbia University Press, published in 1995. A recording of Hill reading it is included on the CD Geoffrey Hill: Poetry Reading, Oxford, 1 February 2006.
Analysis and reception
"Ovid in the Third Reich" is one of Hill's most famous poems. It has led to different readings and interpretations and has been criticised for being more ambiguous than necessary. The scholar E. M. Knottenbelt says it appears both lucid and intentionally ambiguous and is among the poems by Hill that have baffled readers the most.
According to Knottenbelt, "Ovid in the Third Reich" portrays Ovid as a disillusioned man in a godless world, aware of the uselessness of appealing to a belief in God, love—in the conception of the Latin word caritas—or ignorance amid brutality. Knottenbelt says the second quatrain can be read as if Ovid has learned to not despise the damned because that judgement is reserved for God. He says it also can be read as a decision to not indulge in a self-destructive despair and instead contemplate the suffering of the damned, tying in with a Christian tradition. According to Knottenbelt, the very last lines add complexity by contrasting the exorcising of despair, which makes the subject capable as a poet, with the isolation caused by his dedication to lyrical poetry. This indicates a failure to be compassionate and may pit him against the world. Michael Wood reads the poem as a statement about the proximity between the damned and the rest of humanity, which also might be damned.